Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust

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THIS IS one of the rare eyewitness accounts of the Great Famine which struck several regions of the Soviet Union in 1932–33. The author experienced its horror as a young lad in a Ukrainian village, and Ukraine was one of the areas struck most cruelly by the disaster: it is estimated that five to seven million Ukrainians starved during that terrible year. Famine also raged over other parts of the USSR. In the Soviet Asian republic of Kazakhstan, half the native population fell victim to its ravages.[1] But Ukraine, along with the North Caucasus (also severely stricken), is normally the most fertile area of the vast country, hence all the more paradoxical and poignant the tragedy that overwhelmed the second most populous nation of the Soviet Union.

Famines when caused by natural factors such as drought and crop failure are terrifying phenomena. But what endowed the one of 1932–33 with special horror was that it was both caused and compounded by the policies of the Soviet government or, more specifically, those of Stalin, by that time the absolute dictator and the main author and enforcer of the scheme that caused the deaths of millions of his countrymen, as well as untold sufferings to the entire rural population of the USSR.

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