Executive Summary

euphemism for famine in the USSR) in various parts of the Ukrainian SSR. 26 However, Molotov, who, along with Kaganovich, represented Stalin at the conference, noted the necessity of sending aid to the Middle and Lower Volga, the Southern Urals, Western Siberia, and Kazakhstan as the reason why Moscow would permit no relaxation of its demands for grain from Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kaganovich made it clear that, “Above all, all forces must be devoted to bringing in the harvest successfully and to the total fulfillment of the grain procurements plan.”27

The resolution passed by the Conference adopted the grain procurements quota Moscow insisted on-356 million metric tons—and simultaneously called for an end to so-called leftist distortions.28 Only the former would long remain a priority.

The late Summer and Fall witnessed a series of repressive measures. The most serious and best known was the law of August 7, 1932, “On Safeguarding Socialist Property,” which authorized the use of the death penalty or ten-year imprisonment in cases where even an ear of wheat or a sugar beet root had been “stolen” from the crop grown by the peasants.29 Though the law was in force for less than half of the year, fully 20% of all persons convicted in Soviet law courts in 1932 were sentenced under its provisions, and it was hailed as the basis of “socialist legality at the present moment”30

7) The inability of Soviet authorities in Ukraine to meet the grain procurements quota forced them to introduce increasingly severe measures to extract the maximum quantity of grain from the peasants. 31

From the beginning of the 1932 grain procurements campaign, the Ukrainian SSR rapidly fell behind targets.32 Local organizations were ordered to “take appropriate action” to ensure the immediate repayment of grain loaned to the collective farms for the previous Spring sowing. Simultaneously, the Party was told, “Every Party member, every member of the Communist Youth League, every collective farmer and every worker must be conscious of Ukraine’s decisive role in the overall grain procurements plan of the USSR.” “Right opportunism” was elevated to “the main danger at the present moment.” The main thing was to “guarantee victory in the struggle for bread.”33

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26 Visti VUTsVK (Soviet Ukrainian government newspaper), July 11-17,1932.
27 Visti VUTsVK July 14,1932.
28 Visti VUTsVK, July 11,1932.
29 Text in Vazhneishie resheniia po sel’skomu khoziaistvu, pp. 65-66.
30 Robert Conquest, ed., Agricultural Workers in the USSR (London, Bodley Head, 1968), pp. 24-25.
31 See chapter three below.
32 Visti VUTsVK, August 3,1932.
32 “Za bil’shovyts’ku organizatsiiu ta udarni tempy khlibozahotivel’” (For Bolshevik Organization and Shock Work Tempo of the Grab Procurements), Bil’shovyk Ukrainy (Communist Partv of Ukraine journal), 1932, No. 15, pp. 9-11. Quotation from p. 11.