The famine in Ukraine began in late 1931 during the Soviet Union’s first Five-Year plan, which called for rapid industrialization and the forced collectivization of agriculture. During the collectivization drive that began in 1929, private farms were abolished, and in their place state-owned and collective farms were established. Ostensibly run by the collective farmers themselves, the collective farms were actually controlled and monitored by Soviet or Communist Party officials. At the same time, successful, well off-farmers, labelled kulaks (according to the Soviet regime, these were exploiters of poorer peasants), were persecuted, stripped of their possessions, arrested and deported. Many were sent to far-off lands, and some were even executed. In practice, any farmer opposed to collectivization, even if not well off, was often labelled a kulak or kulak supporter.
Most peasants (subsistence and small-scale farmers) in the Soviet Union were reluctant to give up private farming to join the new collectives. In Ukraine, which had a strong tradition of private farming, resistance was particularly strong. In some cases, Ukrainian peasants and urban dwellers resented collectivization and other policies that emanated from Moscow. Reaction to these policies reinforced sentiment for more autonomy or even independence for Ukraine. Ukrainians had established an independent state in 1918, but this attempt at achieving full-fledged statehood failed by 1920 owing mainly to military intervention from Communist Russia. In 1922 Ukraine became incorporated into the Soviet Union as a republic, retaining nominal forms of statehood and autonomy.
The establishment of state and collective farms in the Soviet Union was justified by its leaders as an essential part of building socialism. Soviet officials also considered them more reliable than individual farms as sources of surplus grain production, which was to fulfill compulsory state grain collection quotas. Grain collected by the state was used to feed the rapidly growing urban population, and for exports to finance purchases of machinery abroad to support the industrialization drive. However, the collectivization of agriculture led to chaos and a drop in farm production in Ukraine, which was a key grain-producing area in the Soviet Union. Despite this, the Soviet leadership maintained high quotas for Ukraine’s farmers to deliver grain to the state.
When famine broke out in Ukraine—triggered by confiscatory measures taken by Soviet officials to fulfill unrealistically high grain collection targets in the wake of the substantial drop in agricultural production—top Soviet Ukrainian government leaders informed the Kremlin of starvation, requesting aid and a reduction in the grain quota for the country. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, called instead for an intensification of grain collection efforts. He also voiced his distrust of Ukrainian officials, suspecting many of them as nationalists, and expressed fear that opposition to his policies in Ukraine could intensify, possibly leading to Ukraine’s secession from the Soviet Union.
