Holodomor (‘death by hunger’), or the Great Ukrainian Famine, was one of the worst famines in modern history. It primarily occurred in 1932 and 1933 and was part of a wider series of famines which occurred across the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1933, with famine, albeit ones which resulted in considerably fewer deaths, occurring in the Volga Region of western Russia, the Caucasus and further east into the Urals, western Siberia and Kazakhstan. Holodomor was caused by a number of factors, the main issue being rapid and wide-ranging changes to the Soviet economy through the First Five Year Plan which transformed the agricultural sector by imposing collective farms and also pulled millions out of agricultural work to work in the expanding industrial sector. The result was a sharp drop in food production followed by famine. Some studies place the death toll as high as seven or even ten million in Ukraine, but the modern consensus is that it lies closer to five million. There was significant migration associated with Holodomor both before and after the crisis.[1]
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Holodomor chronology of eventsHolodomor chronology of events
.jpg)
One of the key aims of the Bolsheviks when they attained power in Russia in 1917 and then consolidated it in the course of the Russian Civil War (1917–23) was to transform the Russian economy. The country was still largely an agrarian society in the early twentieth century, although industrialization on a large scale had occurred in cities like Moscow and Petrograd (Leningrad/St Petersburg). Additionally, the form of agriculture practiced in many parts of the country was not mechanized or modern in its methods. Therefore, when Joseph Stalin launched the First Five Year Plan in 1928 the goal was to develop heavy industry across the country, promote rapid urbanization and make the country’s agricultural system more productive by introducing farm collectivization more widely, a policy first developed during Vladimir Lenin’s time in charge of the USSR.[2]
These policies would lead to massive famines across the Soviet Union, but particularly in Ukraine, in the early 1930s, though there has been ongoing debate as to whether these were intentionally man-made or the inadvertent result of badly conceived policies. Collectivization aimed to end private ownership of farms and instead amalgamate agricultural land into vast state-owned collective farms. Modern farming methods using mechanized machinery would then be introduced, the idea being that this would make food production across the USSR more efficient and free-up manpower for more people to go and work in the Union’s growing number of industrial factories in the cities. Farmers across the Union were also given grain quotas of produce which they had to relinquish to the central government.[3]
By 1930 the first stirrings of famine across the Soviet Union began, caused by a combination of factors, including the collectivization strategy, the grain quotas which saw foodstuffs shipped out of regions where there was a shortage, and also a period of particularly wet weather in the early 1930s which lowered harvest yields. Famines were occurring across the south and southwest of the USSR in places like the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, the southern Urals and western Siberia. It is believed approximately 1.5 million people died in Kazakhstan alone.[4]
The worst, though, occurred in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. The harvest of 1932 was exceptionally poor and this was exacerbated by the decision to continue to impose grain quotas, thus stripping millions of tons of food out of rural Ukraine at a time when it was badly needed. Famine ravaged rural areas that year and spread to the cities and towns in the winter and spring of 1933 as even the food which had been sent here through the grain quotas declined. By the time the famine came to an end approximately five million people had lost their lives, though the figure is disputed and may have been either higher or lower, with a minimum death toll of three and a half million and a maximum of ten million.[5]
Extent of migration during and after HolodomorExtent of migration during and after Holodomor
Considerable migration occurred as a result of Holodomor both during and after the famine. In the immediate term people fled from their homes and the regions where they lived in search of food, many trying to congregate in the towns where the food collected as part of the grain quotas was available for some time. Nevertheless, there was little respite to be found by moving after a certain time as the towns and cities ran out of food as well and the adjoining regions in Moldavia, the Caucasus and south-western Russia were also experiencing famine conditions. The migration, though, did not end in the mid-1930s. In the second half of the 1930s and again after the Second World War many Ukrainians and other people form the south-western parts of the Soviet Union were forcibly removed to developing industrial towns in parts of Russia as far away as Siberia or Kazakhstan as Stalin’s government continued its policies in line with the First Five Year Plan.[6]
Demographic impact of HolodomorDemographic impact of Holodomor
The demographic impact of Holodomor was extensive. It was felt most intensely in Ukraine itself, where upwards of 10% to 15% of the population died during the famine, though the mortality was disproportionately higher in the east of the country and cities like Kyiv, as well as further east into the Kuban region of south-western Russia. An accurate assessment of the scale of death is difficult to acquire as the country was devastated again just a few years later when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, with Ukraine suffering more deaths per capita than any other part of the USSR.[7]
Abroad Holodomor and the migrations, forced and voluntary, which followed it, led to the development of significant diaspora communities of Ukrainians in several parts of Russia and in Central Asia. The most notable was in Kazakhstan where Ukrainians had been settling since the 1890s when another massive famine in their homeland, the Russian famine of 1891–2, had led to tens of thousands of people leaving Ukraine each year thereafter. As a result, a 1989 census determined that 896,000 people in Kazakhstan identified as Ukrainian Kazakhstanis, over 5% of the total population, while the region around northern Kazakhstan and the adjoining parts of Siberia is often referred to colloquially as Grey Ukraine.[8]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about HolodomorExplore more about Holodomor
- Famine and Family History at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Beginning Ukrainian Genealogy at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- 107 Years Late for Dinner: How I Uncovered My Grandmother’s Lost Identity at the MyHeritage blog
References
- ↑ https://holodomor.ca/resource/holodomor-basic-facts/
- ↑ https://www.historyhit.com/first-five-year-plan-begins/
- ↑ https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CO%5CCollectivization.htm
- ↑ https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-kazakh-famine-1930-33-and-the-politics-history-the-post-soviet-space
- ↑ https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CO%5CCollectivization.htm
- ↑ https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
- ↑ https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/the-history-of-the-holodomor/
- ↑ Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver, ‘Growth and diversity of the population of the Soviet Union, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 510, No. 1 (1990), pp. 155–177.