Terror by Famine: The Holodomor (1932–1933)
The use of artificial famine as a weapon of mass destruction for the physical and psychological suppression of national resistance. The launch of a merciless grain-procurement machine, the confiscation of absolutely all food, the introduction of the "blackboard" regime (a total blockade of settlements)[1], and a ban prohibiting peasants from leaving the starving districts: the directive of Stalin and Molotov of January 22, 1933 ordered "not to allow the mass departure of peasants from Ukraine to other regions," declaring the flight of the starving "for bread" a plot "organized by enemies of Soviet power, SRs and agents of Poland"[2]. Physical extermination was accompanied by total psychological terror and show trials[3].
Actors
Instruments Applied
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| S0017 | Secret Police and Security Services | 4 |
| S0008 | Government | 1 |
| S0010 | Regular Army | 1 |
Procedures Carried Out
Confiscation of absolutely all food, including the extraction of seed stocks, through the mechanism of crushing grain procurement quotas, which led to mass deadly famine[3].
The introduction of the "blackboard" regime - a total economic blockade of settlements. The resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR and the CC of the CP(b)U of December 6, 1932, signed by Chubar and Kosior, prescribed "the immediate cessation of the delivery of goods, the complete cessation of cooperative and state trade on site, and the removal of all available goods from the respective cooperative and state shops," as well as "a complete ban on kolkhoz trade both for kolkhozes and kolkhoz members and for individual farmers"[1].
Deliberately starving millions of Ukrainian peasants to death as a direct result of Moscow's state policy[3].
Systematic psychological suppression through public show trials of "saboteurs" and the introduction of the punitive law on the protection of socialist property (the "law of five ears of grain")[3].
Sealing off the starving region: peasants who tried to escape from the blockaded villages were intercepted on roads and at railway junctions. The directive sealed off precisely Ukraine and the Kuban: "all peasants who had managed to leave Ukraine and the North Caucasus were subject to return to their places of residence," while permits to leave were denied even "to the national districts of the krai, where there was no famine at all"[3]. Within 50 days "219.5 thousand peasants were detained, including 38 thousand in the Ukrainian SSR, 47 thousand in the North Caucasus, 44 thousand in the Central Black Earth region, 5 thousand in the Western oblast, 65 thousand on the railways"; of these, "186.5 thousand were sent home under convoy, almost 3 thousand were convicted, and all the rest awaited trial or were under investigation in filtration camps"[3]. The point of the operation lay not in sentences but in marching people back into the starving villages: the coded telegram "documentarily attests to his intention to organize absolute famine in the rural areas of Ukraine"[3].
Lethally dangerous exploitation of the labor of Ukrainian peasants, convicted en masse under the "law of five ears of grain" and exiled to corrective labor camps during the Holodomor[3].