What is Holodomor?

About Holodomor:

• It is a man-made famine that occurred in the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. 
• It left an estimated 3.9 million people dead.
• The primary victims of the Holodomor (literally "death inflicted by starvation") were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 percent of Ukraine's population in the 1930s.
• It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. 
• In 2006, by the Law of Ukraine “On the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine”, the Holodomor was recognized as genocide of the Ukrainian nation.
• Causes:
  • The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929.
  • Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms, and they deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—as well as any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether.
  • Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages.
  • It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in some parts of Ukraine.
  • In 1932, the Communist Party set impossibly high quotas for the amount of grain Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state.
  • When the villages were not able to meet the quotas, authorities intensified the requisition campaign, confiscating even the seed set aside for planting.
  • Farms, villages, and whole towns in Ukraine were placed on blacklists and prevented from receiving food. 
  • Peasants were forbidden to leave the Ukrainian republic in search of food.
  • In some cases, soldiers were posted in watchtowers to prevent people from taking any of the harvest. Millions starved as the USSR sold crops from Ukraine abroad.