Case Study: The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33

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Over four million people starved to death between the fall of 1932 and the summer of 1933 in Ukraine and the Kuban, an administrative unit of the Russian Republic in the northern Caucasus populated largely by Ukrainians. Up until Gorbachev’s perestroika, this tragedy was never spoken of in the USSR. The 1932-33 famine was officially recognized in Ukraine only in December 1987 during a speech given by Shcherbytskyi, the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Republic. Since then, the opening up of once inaccessible archives has brought to light a number of documents that have made it possible to analyze and better understand the political mechanisms behind the genesis and aggravation of the famine in Ukraine and Kuban, and the role of the Soviet leadership in this process. These sources include secret resolutions passed by the Politburo or the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Stalin’s correspondence with his closest collaborators Molotov and Kaganovich, and secret police reports on the situation in the countryside, in particular at the “collection fronts”. The documents also help to delineate the particular characteristics of the Ukrainian famine vis-à-vis other famines that ravished a slew of regions in the USSR in 1931-33, including Kazakhstan, where between 1.1-1.4 million died (or almost one third of the indigenous Kazakh population), and western Siberia and the Volga area, with several hundred thousand victims (Abylhozin, Aldazumanov and Kozybaev, 1992; Ohayon, 2006; Malyseva and Poznanskii, 1999; Ivnitskii, 2000).

Any discussion of the contributions of recent studies on the Ukrainian famine must acknowledge the pioneering works that first sought to pierce the deafening silence surrounding this taboo event. Among these, one cannot overstate the major role played by Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow (1986), which underlined the link between the famine and the national question, a key issue that the American historian Terry Martin has recently subject to deeper analysis on the basis of new materials in his book The Affirmative Action Empire (2001). James Mace also produced several important works before the opening up of the Soviet archives, including Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation (1983), while the Ukrainian Association of the Victims of the Communist Terror published testimonies by famine victims in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin (1955). Information and insights provided by more recent studies incorporating newly accessible archival sources allow us to reconstruct the processes behind the political decisions taken, the sequence of events, and the responsibility borne by the Soviet leaders who drove the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine. The more important of these latter include works and compilations of various types of documents — correspondence, resolutions, directives, decrees, speeches, etc… — by V. P. Danilov, N. A. Ivnitskii, S.V. Kulchytskyi, and I. Shapoval and V. Vasilev, A. Graziosi, and R. W. Davies and S. G. Wheatcroft, among others (see bibliography).

 The Mechanisms of a Murderous Famine: Prologue (First Half of 1932)

In 1931, Soviet state collection agencies managed to extract a record quantity of grain (almost twenty-three million tons) from a very mediocre national harvest (sixty-nine million tons), five million of which was exported. Owing to poor harvests in western Siberia and Kazakhstan, the three most important grain-producing centers of the country, i.e. Ukraine, the northern Caucasus and the central black earth region, were targeted for particularly heavy contributions that year. Thus in 1931, more than 42 percent of Ukraine’s total harvest was taken, an exceptionally large levy that would disrupt a production cycle already seriously shaken by the forced collectivization and de-kulakization begun the year before. Many kolkhozes were forced to give up some of the seed required for the following year’s crop, seriously undermining future yields. Beginning in February-March 1932, reports by the Secret Political Department of the OGPU sent to the chief Soviet leaders mentioned “isolated sites of food problems”. These reports were confirmed by Kosior, the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, in a letter to Stalin on April 26, 1932. According to Kosior, these “isolated cases of starving villages” were the result of “excesses and deviations by local officials who had gone a little too far in the last collection campaign…”. He added, “One must categorically reject all talk of a supposed “famine” in Ukraine” (Kulchytskyi, 1990: 147-148).

In the course of the following weeks, which coincided with the traditional “gap” between two harvests, the food shortage deteriorated to such an extent that Petrovskyi, the President of the Executive Committee of Ukrainian Soviets, and Chubar, the head of the Ukrainian government, decided to each address a long letter to Stalin and Molotov on June 10, 1932. Both letters described the now critical situation in the Ukrainian countryside: “At least 100 districts (as opposed to sixty-one in May) need emergency food assistance,” wrote Chubar, adding, “I visited many villages and I saw people starving everywhere … Women were crying, even the men sometimes”. Criticism was pointed: “Why have you created this artificial famine? We had a harvest, why did you confiscate it all? Even under the old regime, no one would have done this!” [1] Like Petrovskyi, Chubar blamed the situation on “excesses” and “the giddiness of success” among local officials, remaining silent on the fact that these officials were simply obeying specific orders to fulfill the plan at all costs. Both warned of danger ahead: If the muzhik was too weak to work, the 1932 harvest would be catastrophic. Chubar asked for emergency assistance, albeit modest, of one million poods (16 000 tons) of grain. Petrovskyi boldly requested a little more, one and a half million poods (24-32 000 tons) (Shapoval and Vasilev, 2001: 206-215).

These requests met with no response. Addressing an assembly of top Party officials on June 12, 1932, Molotov, the head of the Soviet government, declared: ”Even if we are confronted today with the specter of famine, mostly in the grain-producing zones, the collection plans must be fulfilled at all costs” (Ivnitskii, 1996b). A week later, on 18 June, Stalin shared his opinion with Kaganovich. In Stalin’s view, the situation in Ukraine was the product of a “mechanistic approach to the last collection plan... The real situation of each kolkhoz had not been considered” [2]. He explained that it was out of the question, however, to ease the 1932 plan. On June 21, Stalin and Molotov sent a very firm telegram to the leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party, reminding it that “no decrease in deliveries owed by the kolkhozes and the sovkhozes will be tolerated and no extension of the deadline is granted” (Shapoval and Vasilev, 2001: 93).

 The Mechanisms of a Murderous Famine: The Second Phase (July-October 1932)

At the Third Conference of the Ukrainian Party, which assembled in Kharkiv between 6-10 July, the vast majority of speakers (secretaries of district or regional committees) deemed Moscow’s collection plan “unachievable”. Nevertheless, the delegates ratified the 1932 plan, under pressure from Molotov and Kaganovich, who had been rushed to Kharkiv for the occasion. The two intervened brutally in the debates, not hesitating to declare that “any attempt to ease the plan is fundamentally anti-Party and anti-Bolshevik”. Ukraine was required to provide 356 million poods of grain, or about six million tons (Shapoval and Vasilev, 2001: 152-178). However, in July 1932, the first month of the new “levy”, “grain is not coming in”, and at the end of July, barely 48 000 tons were delivered, or seven times less than the year before (Shapoval and Vasilev, 2001: 98)! The opposition demonstrated by the Ukrainian chiefs did not, of course, go unnoticed by Stalin, as his recently published correspondence with Kaganovich shows: On 11 August, Stalin sent Kaganovich a long letter that helps to illuminate the history of the Ukrainian famine. According to Stalin:

The most important thing now is Ukraine. The current situation in Ukraine is terribly bad. It’s bad in the Party. They say that, in two regions in Ukraine (Kiev and Dnieprepetrovsk), some fifty district committees have spoken against the collection plan, declaring it unrealistic. Things are no better in the other district committees. What does it sound like? It’s no longer a party, it’s a parliament, a caricature of a parliament. Instead of leading, Kosior has been maneuvering between the directives of the Party Central Committee and the requests of the district committees: Now he’s squeezed into a corner. Things are bad with the soviets. Chubar is not a leader. The situation with the GPU is not good. Redens is not up to leading the struggle against the counter-revolution in a republic as large and particular as Ukraine. If we do not immediately take charge of straightening out the situation in Ukraine, we could lose Ukraine. Bear in mind that Pilsudski never rests, his espionage capabilities in Ukraine are much stronger than Redens and Kosior realize. And remember too that, in the Ukrainian Communist Party (500 000 members, ha ha !), we find no few (no, no few!) rotten types, conscious and unconscious ‘petliurites’, as well as direct agents of Pilsudski. As soon as things get worse, these elements will lose no time in opening up a front within (and outside) the Party, against the Party. The worst of it is that the Ukrainian leaders are oblivious to these dangers (Khlevniuk, 2001: 273-274).

Continuing, Stalin proposed that Kaganovich take charge of the Ukrainian Party, that Balitskyi replace Redens at the head of the GPU and Chubar be dismissed. The letter ended with: “Ukraine must be transformed as soon as possible into a true fortress of the USSR, into a truly exemplary republic. Spare no effort. Without these measures (economic and political reinforcement of Ukraine, firstly in the border districts, etc…), we risk losing Ukraine” (Khlevniuk, 2001: 273-274).

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