The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor

In this distilled account, Stanislav Kulchytsky ably incorporates a vast array of sources and literature that have become available in the past three decades into a highly readable narrative, explaining the motives, circumstances, and course of this terrible crime against humanity. As the author shows, the Holodomor was triggered by the Bolshevik effort to build a communist socioeconomic order in the Soviet Union. Excessive requisitioning of grain and other foodstuffs in the collectivization drive led to famine and deaths in grain-producing regions of the USSR by early 1932. In Ukraine, punitive measures authorized by the Kremlin’s top leadership greatly worsened the famine in late 1932 and turned it into the Holodomor, which claimed more than three million lives in the first half of 1933.