In the years 1932 and 1933, a catastrophic famine swept across the
Soviet Union. It began in the chaos of collectivization, when millions
of peasants were forced off their land and made to join state farms. It
was then exacerbated, in the autumn of 1932, when the Soviet Politburo,
the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, took a series of
decisions that deepened the famine in the Ukrainian countryside. Despite
the shortages, the state demanded not just grain, but all available
food. At the height of the crisis, organized teams of policemen and
local Party activists, motivated by hunger, fear, and a decade of
hateful propaganda, entered peasant households and took everything
edible: potatoes, beets, squash, beans, peas, and farm animals. At the
same time, a cordon was drawn around the Ukrainian republic to prevent
escape. The result was a catastrophe: At least 5 million people perished
of hunger all across the Soviet Union. Among them were nearly 4 million
Ukrainians who died not because of neglect or crop failure, but because
they had been deliberately deprived of food.
