The Second Great Socialist Genocide
Soviet policies in the 1930s that killed one out of every four people living in Ukraine, and helped Hitler win Germany.
Holodomor: "Punishment by Hunger"
“The Capitalist way, through the wholesale ruin of the peasants and the organisation of big capitalist estates exploiting labour; and the Socialist way, through the union of the small peasant farms into large collective farms, without ruining the peasants and without exploitation of labour. Our Party has chosen the Socialist way." [1]
“The Sixteenth Congress is the congress of the sweeping offensive of socialism along the whole front, of the elimination of the kulaks as a class, and of the realisation of complete collectivisation.” [1]
Reporting on the progress of collectivization, Stalin claimed that by 20 February 1930 about “50 percent of the peasant households in the U.S.S.R.” had joined collective farms and declared that “we have achieved a radical turn of the countryside towards socialism.” [1]
The first steps toward the Holodomor occurred when Joseph Stalin abandoned the New Economic Policy (NEP) and launched the First Five‑Year Plan. Collectivisation of agriculture, announced in November 1929, forced peasants to join collective farms and turned Ukraine's independent farmers into state‑controlled labourers[1]. Individual land and equipment were seized, and the state required collective farms to deliver grain to finance industrialisation, effectively stripping peasants of the means to feed themselves. Soviet leaders framed resistance as "kulak sabotage" and used violence and propaganda to coerce compliance[2]. In these early decisions, the Soviet government began to treat Ukraine's rural population as an exploitable resource rather than citizens with rights.
To enforce collectivisation, the regime implemented dekulakisation, targeting so‑called "kulaks" (prosperous farmers) for confiscation, deportation or execution[2]. By labelling resistant peasants as class enemies and nationalists, authorities justified repression and intimidation, dismantling rural leadership and destroying production. At the same time, grain procurement quotas escalated: Ukraine delivered 36% of the Soviet Union's grain in 1929 and 7.7 million tonnes in 1930 – more than other regions combined[3]. These unrealistic quotas stripped farms of food reserves and seed, leaving little for consumption or the next planting season. By late‑1931, Soviet officials acknowledged that forced deliveries were depleting seed stocks and causing famine, yet Molotov's December 1931 resolution still ordered Ukrainian leaders to extract even more grain[4], demonstrating the regime's willingness to sacrifice peasant survival for state goals.
When the 1931 harvest fell, the Politburo refused to lower Ukraine's quotas. Molotov and Kaganovich were dispatched to enforce deliveries, using mobile tribunals to punish alleged theft and sabotage on the spot[5]. Grain requisition continued through March 1932 and extended to seed and fodder grain, leaving peasants without seed to plant or grain to eat[6]. The IEU notes that this seizure of seed and fodder ensured famine conditions by spring 1932[6]. Officials ignored petitions from Ukrainian leaders for relief, showing that famine was treated not as a failure but as a tool to break peasant resistance.
As hunger spread, Stalin intensified repression. On 7 August 1932 the Central Committee and Council of People's Commissars adopted the decree "On the Safekeeping of Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms and Cooperatives and Strengthening of Socialist Property", popularly called the "Law on Five Ears of Grain." The law equated collective‑farm property with state property and authorised the death penalty or ten‑year imprisonment for anyone taking from collective fields—even gleaning leftover stalks[7]. Fields were guarded by watchtowers and activists, and peasants were forbidden to use grain from their own plots; hidden bread and potatoes were seized[8]. Within five months the Soviet courts convicted more than 54,000 people and executed 2,110 for "theft" of food[9]. By criminalising any attempt to find food, the decree ensured that starving peasants could be legally shot or imprisoned, turning hunger into a weapon.
Failure to meet quotas was treated as treason. On 18 November 1932 Chubar and Khatayevich circulated a Politburo decree "On the liquidation of counter‑revolutionary nests and the crushing of kulak groups." The decree mandated blacklisting villages that fell short, suspending all trade, calling in loans, imposing punitive quotas and ordering searches to identify "counter‑revolutionaries." This decree led to economic blockades: entire villages and farms were cut off, their goods seized and populations surrounded by military units[10]. Subsequent orders deepened repression: the 5 December 1932 decree "On measures for eliminating sabotage of grain procurements" created troikas (three‑man commissions) that could arrest or execute peasants without trial[11]. On 14 December 1932 Stalin and Molotov signed a joint decree "On grain procurements in Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and the Western Region," which directed authorities to break resistance, terminate Ukrainisation policies and imprison resistant peasants for five to ten years[12]. Following letters from Kossior on 24 December, all remaining reserves—including sowing seed—were expropriated and those who resisted were arrested[13]. These measures deliberately stripped villages of food and means of production, institutionalising starvation as policy.
On 1 January 1933 Stalin sent a telegram to Kossior ordering intensified repression and authorising execution by shooting[14]. The next day Chubar and Khatayevich sent a similar directive to all Soviet and party bodies in Ukraine[15], instructing total confiscation of grain and food. Most consequentially, on 22 January 1933 Stalin and Molotov issued the directive "On preventing the mass flight of starving peasants," which sealed Ukraine's borders and forbade peasants from leaving to seek food[16]. Armed guards blocked railway stations and roads, ensuring that starving families could not escape. The regime also implemented an internal passport system that tied peasants to their villages and prevented them from obtaining city jobs. These decisions trapped millions inside the famine zone and cut them off from potential relief.
The cumulative effect of these policies—forced collectivisation, dekulakisation, exorbitant quotas, criminalisation of gleaning, blacklisting, blockades, troikas, border closures and confiscations—was a genocide by starvation. A Ukrainian court's examination of Soviet documents concluded that Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kossior, Chubar and Khatayevich deliberately created life‑threatening conditions through unrealistic grain procurements, blacklisting and isolation of villages, preventing movement, imposing fines in kind and constant searches[17]. The court found that 3.941 million people died between February 1932 and mid‑1934[18]; historians estimate that roughly one‑quarter of Ukraine's rural population perished. By 1933 the famine peaked, with searches confiscating even cooked food, children starving and reports of cannibalism[19]. While Soviet authorities eventually introduced fixed taxes and modest aid, these changes came only after millions were dead[20]. The Holodomor illustrates how state policies and decrees—rather than natural causes—produced one of the twentieth century's worst genocides.