Holodomor

This article is about the anti-communist conspiracy theory that the Soviet government purposefully starved Ukrainians. For the actual famine, see Soviet famine of 1931–1933.

The term Holodomor refers to a popular conspiracy theory that the famine of 1932–1933, rather than being accidental, was an atrocity that the Soviets consciously orchestrated. However, there is simply not enough evidence to support the accusations of mass murder. Most antisocialists deny that it is a conspiracy theory, but sometimes concede that it differs from the Holocaust in that the intent in regards to the Holodomor to kill cannot be clearly demonstrated and that the planning must have been more ‘covert’ or ‘secret’, which suggests that their theory is mostly based on guesswork. Among historians it is debated to which extent natural factors were exacerbated by Soviet policy, instead of whether this famine was intentional or genocidal. Ukrainian famine conditions varied from place to place, and it remains largely unclear on the famine's scale.

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Those in favor of the famine‐genocide conspiracy theory have yet to establish a clear motive behind why it was enacted, either; proposed reasons vary from classicide to ethnocide to politicide. Professor Dallin of Stanford University stated:

There is no evidence it was intentionally directed against Ukrainians. [T]hat would be totally out of keeping with what we know — it makes no sense.

— Alexander Dallin,

Professor Lewin of the University of Pennsylvania:

This is crap, rubbish. […] I am an anti-Stalinist, but I don’t see how this [genocide] campaign adds to our knowledge. It’s adding horrors, adding horrors, until it becomes a pathology.

— Moshe Lewin,

Professor Viola of the University of Toronto:

I absolutely reject it. […] Why in god’s name would this paranoid government consciously produce a famine when they were terrified of war [with Germany]?

— Lynne Viola,

Even the late Robert Conquest eventually renounced the famine‐genocide conspiracy theory. M. Tauger, Professor of History at West Virginia University (reviewing work by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W. Davies) has this to say:

Popular media and most historians for decades have described the great famine that struck most of the USSR in the early 1930s as “man-made,” very often even a “genocide” that Stalin perpetrated intentionally against Ukrainians and sometimes other national groups to destroy them as nations. […] This perspective, however, is wrong. The famine that took place was not limited to Ukraine or even to rural areas of the USSR, it was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made, and it was far from the intention of Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership to create such as disaster. A small but growing literature relying on new archival documents and a critical approach to other sources has shown the flaws in the “genocide” or “intentionalist” interpretation of the famine and has developed an alternative interpretation.

It should be noted that this does not excuse the Soviet administration from any and all responsibility for the suffering that took place; one could accuse the government of insufficiently rapid response, and note that initial reports were often downplayed to avoid rocking the boat. But it is clear that the famine was not deliberate, was not a genocide, and (to quote Professor Tauger) "was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made."

There were a lot of factors contributing to the deaths at the time, including natural causes such as poor weather and a lack of cooperation from kulaks, one part of which was grain hoarding. Some of the casualties of this famine were because the kulaks withheld their grain supplies during a time of nationwide crisis, in defiance of Soviet authority. Besides selling the grain for high prices, many kulaks also refused to work, or outright destroyed their crops in an attempt to assert their independence. More broadly however, there were many non-Ukrainian casualties at the end of it all, with famines being present in many places outside of Ukraine, and even within Ukraine many non-Ukrainian areas were affected. There is also an absence of proper motives in killing the populace that accounts largely for the production of grain for the country, especially given the push for industrialization.

The Holodomor narrative is pushed as an attempt to discredit the USSR and ultimately socialism. However, this particular famine was just at its time the latest in Russia's history. Prior to industrialization, Russia had routine famines, although the USSR had none after 1947 following the completion of collectivization. It should be kept in mind that the USSR and the US, or any other developed capitalist country, have not started on the same footing, with the USSR inheriting a land that was much less developed and materially insecure.

As for the notion that the famine was engineered to deal with a troublesome ethnic group, this was not the practice in the USSR. Internal deportation, not famines, were used to combat nationalist rebels. Plenty of people were moved around in the Soviet Union to prevent uprisings and maintain stability, but they were not killed in a wholesale manner – for one, that would needlessly shrink the Soviet labor pool which at the time they desperately needed for industrialization. The famine extended to other areas beyond Ukraine too. The vast majority of Ukrainians were on board with Soviet policies and so a genocide against them would not have improved stability, nor served for any other benefit.

The notion of the “Ukrainian genocide” is rather poorly substantiated and does not hold up to scrutiny, and is generally not accepted by historians of Soviet history, including anti-communist ones such as Robert Conquest and Orlando Figes, among other mainstream Soviet historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick, Moshe Lewin, Terry Martin, and J. Arch Getty. The Holodomor is not even nowhere nearly as recognized as widely as the Holocaust is; not to say that this confirms its falsehood but rather that it indicates its weakness as a claim. While the Holocaust has been found to be a legitimate crime by an international tribunal, only twenty-six countries recognize the Holodomor, and rather, those which do recognize it are ones that have diplomatic and internal reasons for doing so, such as doing securing business with Ukraine or placating a significant Ukrainian diaspora. The Soviet Union is gone, and modern Russia is rather comfortable with talking negatively of it, so the argument that the Holodomor is not recognized because countries do not want to insult Russia is operating on a rather tenuous basis.

Some other holes in the Holodomor narrative include the fact that korenizatsiya within Ukraine continued, as well as the existence of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a political entity. There is also the lack of closing down Ukrainian-language press and universities, the lack of demonization of Ukrainians, and the coincidence of the supposed genocide ending right as collectivization was finished, rather than continuing onwards.