But Soviet Russia’s greatest blow to Ukraine was through the famine-genocide which lasted from the spring of 1932 to the autumn of 1933.

The famine was generated by relentless requisitions of grain and food products, under circumstances of indescribable terror. In order that the famine produce the desired results, villages were isolated from towns, and Ukraine was isolated from other Soviet republics and the rest of the world. Extremely harsh punishment was imposed for stealing food, even for a single stalk of grain. In order to hamper peoples’ move¬ment, a system of internal passports was introduced at this time.

During the famine-genocide in Ukraine, while millions of Ukrainians were dying, the Russian Soviet government was exporting food products abroad.

In 1933, approximately 1.7 million tons of grain were exported (8% of total ex¬ports). The cheap price of the exported grain warrants special attention. Moscow received 312 million rubles for the 1.7 million tons of grain (that is, Moscow accepted less than 2 kopecks per kilogram!); Moscow also exported 31,500 tons of flour for the sum of 3.1 million rubles (one kilogram of flour cost less than 10 kopecks). Other ex¬ports from the U.S.S.R, at this time included 7,900 tons of meat and meat products;
37,200 tons of butter; 29,200 tons of fish; 49.3 million tins of canned fish; 7.4 tons of
10 hulled grain; and 38,400 tons of sugar.

W. H. Chamberlin, an eyewitness of the famine, wrote that “the famine was deliberately used as an instrument of national politics to suppress the peasant opposi¬tion to the new government.”11

Obviously, Ukrainian peasants opposed the Russian occupational government, but not solely for social reasons. The Soviet Russian rulers had sufficient means at their disposal to accomplish collectivization without inciting the famine. Through the use of terror, the government had already collectivized Ukrainian agricultural areas, to a large degree. In 1932, 70% of Ukraine’s agricultural areas were already collectivized, whereas in Russia only 60% were collectivized, and in Byelorussia, around 48%12. In Ukraine, therefore, there was absolutely no need to talk about speeding up a lagging collectivization, because the state of collectivization was satisfactory.

It was during the famine that the Soviet Russian government attempted to colonize those Ukrainian villages whose residents had died from the famine. The government sent native Russians from regions of Ufa, Vyatka, Orel, Kluga, and Ryazan, into Ukrainian villages or into those houses that had become empty.13

The famine in Ukraine coincided exactly with the successful completion of the first five-year plan. In summarizing the plan, Stalin declared on January 7, 1933 (at the time when the famine reached its culminating point): “We had only one coal and metallurgical base-namely, in Ukraine-where we had difficulties with exploitation. We have not only improved this base, but also built a new coal and metallurgical base

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10 Vneshnaya torgovlia S.S.S.R. Statisticheskyi sbornik, 1918-1966. (Foreign Trade of the USSR Statistical Collection, 1918-1966). Moscow, 1976, pp. 8-9.
11 W. H. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age. Boston, 1943, p. 88.
12 Istoriya S.S.S.R., op. cit., pp. 579-580.
13 Varsity Grossman, Tout passe. (Translated from Russian). Paris, 1972, pp. 207-210.