Executive Summary
counterrevolutionary elements,” and sending more people to the villages and collective farms to help procure grain. 45
9) The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 was caused by the extraction of agricultural
produce from the rural population.
The pursuit of the above-detailed policies at a time of agricultural scarcity could only lead to famine. That such a famine would not otherwise have occurred is demonstrated by official Soviet crop statistics for the period, which show that Soviet grain production in 1932 was no worse than in other years when no famine occurred.
10) Officials in charge of grain seizures also lived in fear of punishment
On December 14, the newspaper Visti VUTsVK published a notice from the republic Justice Commissariat and General Prosecutor’s office about trials of two cases of local officials who had allegedly gone over to the class enemies. 46 On December 21, the CP(b)U Central Committee removed ten leading district officials from their posts “for total inaction” and “failure to carry out measures to break the kulak sabotage of the grain procurements,” while a joint Party-State decree ordered the expulsion from the Party and arrest of five state farm directors “for criminally frustrating the task of the Party and State in the grain deliveries.” 47 A week later the entire leadership of Kobeliats’kyi District, Kharkiv Region, was given sentences of two to ten years imprisonment for allegedly organizing “the kulak sabotage of the grain procurements.” 48 Similar cases were also reported.
11) Stalin knew that people were starving to death in Ukraine by late 1932. 49
Any doubt that Stalin personally knew about the situation in Ukraine was dispelled in the 1960s when Roman Terekhov, a former obkom (regional party organization) secretary in Ukraine, announced in Pravda that he had told Stalin of the Famine in late 1932, appealed for aid, and was refused:
“When in 1932, in connection with the poor harvest in Kharkiv region, it was necessary to tell Stalin about the grave situation in the villages and ask for bread to be sent to the districts, he listened and then sharply interrupted, “We are told that you, Comrade Terekhov, are a fine orator. It also seems that you’re a fine storyteller. You spin this yarn about famine thinking that you’ll intimidate us, but it won’t work! Maybe it would be better if you stopped being a secretary of an obkom and of the CPU and went to work in the Union of Writers where you would write fairy tales for idiots to read…”50
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45 Visti VUTsVK December 11,1932. Petliurists were followers of Symon Petliura, who as leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1919-1921 led Ukrainian socialists in their war against the Bolsheviks. In pre-war Soviet usage, Petliurist was really a generic term for a Ukrainian nationalist. Makhnovists were followers of the the Ukrainian anarchist leader Nestor Makhno, who in 1919-1920 dominated large areas of eastern Ukraine. In this period, Makhnovist thus meant a peasant anarchist.
46 Visti VUTsVK December 14,1932.
47 Visti VUTsVK December 23,1932.
48 Visti VUTsVK December 29,1932.
49 See chapters two and three below.
50 Pravda, May 26,1964.