People & Histories
1932–33

The Holodomor

A famine caused by Soviet policy kills millions in Ukraine.

Debated by historians soviet ruletraumaidentity

Holodomor means “death by hunger” in Ukrainian. It is the name for the famine that killed millions of people in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–33.

How it happened

From 1929 Stalin forced the peasants of the Soviet Union into collective farms. Peasants branded “kulaks”, nominally the better-off but in practice also anyone who resisted, had their farms confiscated, and many were deported.

  • Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 — R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)
The collective farms were then set grain quotas they could not meet. When harvests fell short, the state did not ease off. Brigades searched homes for hidden food, villages that missed their quotas were “blacklisted” and cut off from goods, and peasants were barred from leaving to look for food elsewhere.
  • Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)
  • The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 — R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)

Some of the harshest measures of late 1932 and January 1933 targeted Soviet Ukraine and the largely Ukrainian-populated Kuban region specifically. They came together with a purge of “nationalists” and a rollback of the 1920s policy of Ukrainization.

Deaths peaked in the first half of 1933. In the countryside, excess deaths equalled about one in six of the rural population.
Ukraine was not the only victim. Famine also struck other Soviet regions, and proportionally the deadliest was in Kazakhstan.
  • Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 — R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)
  • Golod 1932–1933 godov: tragediia rossiiskoi derevni (The Famine of 1932–1933: Tragedy of the Russian Village) — Viktor Kondrashin, ROSSPEN (2008)

How many died

The numbers are still debated. Scholarly estimates range from about 2.6 million excess deaths (Vallin, Meslé and colleagues) through 3–3.5 million (Stephen Wheatcroft) to 3.9 million, and some sources give higher figures. The most detailed recent reconstruction counts 3.9 million excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932–34, or 4.5 million total losses including births that never happened. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine says about 4 million.

Silence, then memory

Inside the USSR the famine officially did not happen. It could not be discussed until late 1987, though Ukrainians abroad had marked it as a national tragedy since 1933.

After independence it became a central event in Ukraine’s national story. In 2006 parliament recognised it as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Public opinion has moved the same way. In 2023, 92% of Ukrainians polled agreed that it was a genocide, up from about 60% in 2010, and another 2023 survey found 91%. Part of that rise reflects a changed sample: the wartime polls could not include occupied areas, where agreement had been lowest, while the 2010 poll covered all of Ukraine.

Was it genocide?

Here historians genuinely disagree, and it is worth being precise about how. Almost no serious scholar doubts that Soviet policy caused the famine or that the regime let millions die. R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, for example, hold Stalin responsible but argue the famine was not planned as an attack on Ukrainians as a nation. Others, such as Anne Applebaum, stress that policy deliberately intensified the famine in Ukraine, which she links to Stalin’s fear of Ukrainian national resistance.

  • The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 — R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)
  • Memory Crash: Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s–2010s — Georgiy Kasianov, Central European University Press (2022)

The Russian state, and Russian historians such as Viktor Kondrashin, reject the genocide label and describe a “common tragedy” of Soviet peoples. In 2021 Russia’s president complained that this common tragedy “was portrayed as the genocide of the Ukrainian people”.

  • On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians — Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru (2021)
  • Golod 1932–1933 godov: tragediia rossiiskoi derevni (The Famine of 1932–1933: Tragedy of the Russian Village) — Viktor Kondrashin, ROSSPEN (2008)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)
For most Ukrainians the debate is not academic. It is about whether the world believes what happened to their grandparents.

How it's seen
How Ukraine sees it

A deliberate genocide of the Ukrainian nation, recognised as such by Ukrainian law since 2006. Most Ukrainians today agree.

The scholarly debate

Historians agree that Stalin's policies caused the famine. They differ over intent. Some see a deliberate assault on Ukrainians as a nation; others see a catastrophe of collectivisation that the regime then made worse in Ukraine.

  • The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 — R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)
  • Memory Crash: Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s–2010s — Georgiy Kasianov, Central European University Press (2022)

How the Russian state sees it

A tragedy shared by many Soviet peoples, caused by collectivisation and not aimed at Ukrainians as a nation.

  • On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians — Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru (2021)
  • Golod 1932–1933 godov: tragediia rossiiskoi derevni (The Famine of 1932–1933: Tragedy of the Russian Village) — Viktor Kondrashin, ROSSPEN (2008)
  • Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine — Anne Applebaum, Doubleday (2017)

Why it matters today

Ukraine

Many Ukrainians see Russian domination as a threat to their survival as a people, not just a political dispute, and the Holodomor is a big part of the reason. Denying or playing down the famine is deeply hurtful.