What does the term Holodomor mean?

The term Holodomor, when translated from Ukrainian, means “death by hunger”, “killing by hunger, killing by starvation”, or sometimes “murder by hunger or starvation”. It is a combination of the Ukrainian words holod, ‘hunger’; and more, ‘plague’. The term moryty holodom means “to inflict death by hunger”.

Background of Holodomor

After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Joseph Stalin took over and sought to discard Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP-21) , which was not aligned with his vision of rapid industrialization. Stalin aimed to industrialise agriculture through collectivization.

Collectivization involved replacing individually owned and operated farms with state-run collectives. Ukraine was the focus of this initiative as it was the primary source of food for the Soviet Union .

However, the farmers of Ukraine, who relied on their land for their livelihood, were not willing to participate in Stalin’s experiment. Despite the resistance, Stalin was determined to implement collectivisation, even if it required the use of force.

Farmers who resisted were labelled as “kulaks” – a term used for well-to-do peasants. As per the Soviet state ideology, such peasants were considered enemies of the state. As a result, these peasants were driven off their lands, with up to 50,000 peasants being deported to Siberia. Stalin was unyielding in his determination to transform Ukraine into a modern, socialist nation.

The collectivization drive was not successful. By 1932, it was clear that the Soviet planners targeted 60%. There was enough food for peasants to survive, but Joseph Stalin confiscated most of it as punishment for not meeting quotas, leading to a massive food crisis.

By the summer of 1933, some collective farms had only a third of their households left, and prisons and labour camps were filled to capacity. With hardly anyone left to raise crops, Stalin’s regime resettled Russian peasants from other parts of the Soviet Union in Ukraine to cope with the labour shortage. Faced with the prospect of an even wider food catastrophe, Stalin’s regime in the fall of 1933 started easing off collections.

Toll of the Holodomor

Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million.

According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.

Despite attempts by the Soviet authorities to hide the scale of the disaster, it became known abroad thanks to the publications of journalists Gareth Jones, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ewald Ammende, Rhea Clyman, photographs made by engineer Alexander Wienerberger, etc. In response, the Soviet Union launched a counter-propaganda campaign, whereby celebrities such as Bernard Shaw, Edouard Herriot, and several others traveled to the USSR, and then made statements that they had not seen hunger.

During the German occupation of Ukraine in W