The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 affected major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union which included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan[1], South Urals, West Siberia[2][3]. The manifestation of this famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is referred to as Holodomor. Unlike a famine in the Russian SFSR in 1921, information about the famine of 1932–34 was suppressed by the Soviet authorities until perestroika, the political and economic reforms which ended the Soviet Union in the beginning of 1990s.
[edit] Estimation of the loss of life
- Encyclopædia Britannica estimates that six to eight million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, about four to five million of whom were Ukrainians.[4]
- Robert Conquest estimated at least 7 million peasants deaths from hunger in the European part of the Soviet Union in 1932–33 (5 million in Ukraine; 1 million in the North Caucasus, and 1 million elsewhere), and an additional 1 million of deaths from hunger as a result of collectivization in Kazakhstan[5].
- The Black Book of Communism estimates 6 million deaths in 1932–33.
- The 2004 book The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–33 by R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, gives an estimate of 5.5–6.5 million deaths.[6]
- Another study[7] using data given by Davies and Wheatcroft estimates "‘about eight and a half million’ victims of famine and repression" combined in the period 1930–33.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, by S. G. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies April 1990.
- The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered, by Hiroaki Kuromiya, Europe-Asia Studies, Volume 60, Issue 4 June 2008, pages 663–75.
- The Soviet Famine of 1931–33: Politically Motivated or Ecological Disaster?, Carla Thorson, UCLA International Institute, May 5, 2003.
- Aftermath of a Soviet Famine, Washington Post, April 27, 2008.
- Famine in the Soviet Union 1929-1934 - collection of archive materials
