Non-Soviet Scholarship on the Ukrainian Famine

That which took place in the Ukrainian SSR in 1932-33 was the most terrible of all the acts of the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine. Only later did it become clear that P. Postyshev, who unquestionably was familiar with the Kremlin’s secret plans, had grounds to state at
the November plenum of the Ukrainian Central Committee:

“The January 24, 1933 decision of the All-Union Central Committee was the decisive moment which opened up new vistas for the victorious struggle of Ukraine’s Bolsheviks.”

In 1932-33 relations between Moscow and the Ukrainian SSR were fundamentally altered. The unarticulated struggle that had gone on between them thus far finally exploded. Even the spurious independence of the Ukrainian SSR, which existed formally, was brutally stamped out by Muscovite bolshevism. 58

Pigido traced a struggle by members of the Ukrainian Soviet government during the Spring of 1932. The rebellion was led by Premier Vlas Chubar and Education Commissar Mykola Skrypnyk who hoped to slow the rate of the forced collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture, lower the grain procurements to a more realistic level, and to distribute immediately much needed seed and food to the peasants. He interpreted the Drabove trial of June 1932, in which the leadership of an entire raion was convicted of abusing its authority over the peasantry, as part of this campaign. At the July 1932 Third All-Ukrainian Party Conference, held a week after the Drabove verdicts were handed down, the conflict came to a head, as Kaganovich and Molotov, Stalin’s representatives in attendance, flatly refused any reduction of the quotas set in May. Pigido also maintained that the law of August 7, 1932, “On the Safeguarding of Socialist Property,”‘ which provided for the death penalty or ten years imprisonment for pilfering an ear of wheat, “was directed exclusively against Ukraine’s starving population.” The culmination of the struggle was, of course, the All-Union decision of January 24,1933, by which the communist leadership in Ukraine was condemned for its inability to seize the requisite quantity of grain and placed under the authority of Pavel Postyshev, who ruled Ukraine essentially as Stalin’s satrap with the help of thousands of new men brought from Moscow. 59

Pigido cited two major pieces of evidence concerning recalcitrance of rank-and-file Ukrainian communists. A November 18, 1932 resolution of the Ukrainian Central Committee referred to “the intimate connection of whole groups of communists and individual heads of party circles with kulaks and Petliurists, as a result of which party organizations have become branch offices of the class enemies.” A few days later, on November 24, the Ukrainian party daily, Komunist, denounced cases of local party organizations failing to accept the procurements quotas assigned them. 60

Pigido overextended his evidence in an attempt to demonstrate that the Ukrainian Famine was planned beforehand. This, however, does not diminish his contribution in pointing out the measures taken by the Soviet state to exacerbate the situation and the fact that it fundamentally altered relations between Moscow and Ukraine.
Soon after Dmytryshyn’s and Pigido’s books appeared, Vladimir Timoshenko also pointed out the link between the Famine and nationality policy in Ukraine.
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Ibid., pp. 107-108. Original emphasis.
Ibid, pp. 108-111.
Ibid., p. 112.