Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

   33. ‘Case History LH57: Mikhail Frenkin, Baku’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 363.

   34. Testimony of Nicolas Chymych, in U.S. Congress and Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: Second Interim Report, meetings and hearings of and before the Commission on the Ukraine Famine held in 1987: hearing, San Francisco, California, 10 February 1987; hearing, Phoenix, Arizona, 13 February 1987; hearing and meeting, Washington, D.C., 30 April 1987; hearing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 June 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: For sale by the Supt. of Docs. U.S. G.P.O., 1988), 126–8.

   35. Testimony of Valentin Kochno, in ibid., 18.

   36. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 8.

   37. Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 439–40.

   38. Ekaterina Olitskaia, ‘My Reminiscences’, in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, eds., In the Shadow of Revolution, 39–40.

   39. TsDAZhR Ukraïny 539/7/71 (1929), 139, reproduced in Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi et al., Kolektivizatsiia i holod na Ukraïni, 1929–1933: zbirnyk dokumentiv i materialiv (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1992), 106–7.

   40. Lynne Viola explains that the podkulachnik was thought to be animated by kulak ‘essence’, even though he owned no property (Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 34).

   41. Hindus, Red Bread, 45–6.

   42. Otto J. Pohl, Eric J. Schmaltz and Ronald J. Vossler, ‘ “In our hearts we felt the sentence of death”: Ethnic German Recollections of Mass Violence in the USSR, 1928–48’, Journal of Genocide Research 11, no. 2 (2009), 325–7 and 343.

   43. TsA FSB RF 2/8/40 (1930), 6–17, in Danilov, Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 292–303.

   44. GARF 9414/1/1944 (1930), 17–25, in Viola and Danilov, eds., The War Against the Peasantry, 240–1.

   45. TsA FSB RF 2/8/3 (1930), 2, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU–NKVD, vol. 3, 71.

   46. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 18–19.

   47. RGAE 7446/1/283 (1930), 13–18, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 292–303.

   48. Testimony of Anastasia Shpychka, in L. B. Kovalenko and Volodymyr Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod: narodna knyha-memorial (Kyiv: Radians’kyi Pys’mennyk, 1991), 53.

   49. TsA FSB RF 2/8/678 (1930), 163–5, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 141–4.

   50. Testimony of Kylyna Vasylivna Dykun, in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 1, 89.

   51. RGAE 7446/1/283 (1930), 13–18, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 198–203.

   52. Testimony of Maria Leshchenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 522.

   53. RGASPI 17/3/779/ (1930), 18–20, in Danilov et al., eds. Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 303–5.

   54. ‘Case History LH46: anonymous, Dnipropetrovs’k area’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 339–41.

   55. Testimony of Olena Davydivna Demchenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 505–6.

   56. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 25.

   57. TsA FSB RF 2/8/40 (1930), 6–17, in Viola and Danilov, eds., The War Against the Peasantry, 281.

   58. Testimony of Ivan Samsonovych, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 503–4.

   59. Testimony of Mykola Demydovych Fenenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 540–2.

   60. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 124.

   61. TsA FSB RF 2/8/823 (1930), 342–51, in Viola and Danilov, eds., The War Against the Peasantry, 248.

   62. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 155.

   63. Testimony of Henrikh Pidvysotsky, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 78.

   64. TsDAZhR Ukraïny 27/11/543 (1930), 215.

   65. RGAE 7446/1/283 (1930), 13–18, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 198–203.

   66. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘The Great Departure: Rural-Urban Migration in the Soviet Union, 1929–1933’, in William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, eds., Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 22–5. In footnote 56, Fitzpatrick writes that Rykov remarked that ‘the kulaks are fleeing from the raions not yet affected by total collectivization, anticipating that even if there is not total collectivization in their region today, there will be tomorrow’. Desiataia Ural’skaia oblastnaia konferentsiia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (bol’shevikov) (Sverdlovsk, 1930), Bulletin no. 7, 19.

   67. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, 35–41.

   68. ‘Case History LH38: Oleksandr Honcharenko, Cherkasy oblast’’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 317.

   69. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 155–6.

   70. TsA FSB RF 2/8/678 (1930), 163–5, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 161–3.

   71. N. A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, nachalo 30-kh gg. (Moscow: Interpraks, 1994), 122–37; also V. N. Zemskov, ‘Spetsposelentsy (po dokumentam NKVD-MVD-SSSR)’, Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia 11 (1990), 4.

   72. N. A. Morozov, GULAG v Komi Krae, 1929–1956 (Syktyvkar: Syktyvkarskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1997), 104.

   73. RGASPI 17/3/775 (1930), 15–16, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 174–5.

   74. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 122–37; also Zemskov, ‘Spetsposelentsy (po dokumentakm NKVD-MVD-SSSR)’, 4.

   75. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 46–50.

   76. James Harris, ‘The Growth of the Gulag: Forced Labor in the Urals Region, 1929–31’, The Russian Review 56, no. 2 (1997), 265–80.

   77. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 125.

   78. Ibid., 269–71.

   79. ‘Case History LH38: Oleksandr Honcharenko, Cherkasy oblast’’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 325–9.

   80. See for example the testimony of Vasyl’ Pavlovych Nechyporenko and Iakiv Antonovych Dziubyshyn in Mytsyk et al., eds., Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 1, 163, and vol. 2, 116; and ‘Testimony of Mr. Sviatoslav Karavansky’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933: First Interim Report of Meetings and Hearings of and Before the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, meeting and hearing 8 October 1988 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1987), 79; as well as ‘Case History LH8’, ‘Case History LH46’ and ‘Case History SW34’, all in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 256, 345 and 386.

   81. Oleksandra Bykovets, ‘Interview with Oleksandra Bykovets’ (Sviatoslav Novytskyi, 1 September 1983) excerpted from the archives of the copyright holder, UCRDC.

   82. Testimony of Larysa Donchuk, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933, second report, 138.

   83. Olesia Stasiuk, ‘The Deformation of Ukrainian Folk Culture During the Holodomor Years’, trans. Marta Olynyk, in Key Articles on the Holodomor Translated from Ukrainian into English, Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, 12–13, http://holodomor.ca/translated-articles-on-the-holodomor.

   84. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 340–87.

   85. TsDAHOU 1/20/3108 (1930), 1.

   86. Hiroaki Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 109.

   87. Ibid., 110.

   88. Boleslaw Szczesniak, The Russian Revolution and Religion: A Collection of Documents Concerning the Suppression of Religion by the Communists, 1917–1925 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), 158; Alla Kyrydon, ‘Ruinuvannia kul’tovykh sporud (1920–1930-ti rr.): porushennia tradytsiinoï rytmolo
hiï prostoru’, in Ukraïns’kyi Istorychnyi Zhurnal 22, no. 6 (2013), 91–102.

   89. McDonald, ‘A Peasant Rebellion in Stalin’s Russia’, 125–46.

   90. Testimony of Mykola Ievhenovych Petrenko, in Kovalenko and Maniak, eds., 33-i Holod, 460.

   91. Grigorenko, Memoirs, 39.

   92. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 251–4.

   93. Stasiuk, ‘The Deformation of Ukrainian Folk Culture During the Holodomor Years’.

   94. Noll, Transformatsiia hromadians’koho suspil’stva, 242–50.

   95. Lytvyn, Ekonomichna istoriia Ukraïny, vol. 2, 231–2, 261.

  6. REBELLION, 1930

    1. Quoted in Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 132.

    2. Ibid., 134.

    3. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/118 (1930), 1–13, reproduced in Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 477.

    4. Sholokhov, Virgin Soil Upturned, 157.

    5. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991 (New York: Penguin, 1992), 186.

    6. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/120 (1930), 1–18, reproduced in Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 538.

    7. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/118 (1930), 1–13, reproduced in ibid., 479.

    8. TsGANKh SSSR 7446/5/87 (1930), 35–9, in V. P. Danilov and N. A. Ivnitskii, eds., Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut: iz istorii derevni nakanune i v khode kollektivizatsii, 1927–1932 gg. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), 305.

    9. ‘Testimony of Mr. Valentin Kochno’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine: First Interim Report, 119–20.

   10. ‘Testimony of Dr. Valentyna Sawchuck of Hamtramck, Michigan’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine: First Interim Report, 144.

   11. TsA FSB RF 2/8/232 (1930), 101, 101a, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 220–1.

   12. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 59–60.

   13. Andrea Graziosi, ‘The Great Famine of 1932–33: Consequences and Implications’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25, nos. 3/4 (Fall 2001), 162.

   14. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 53.

   15. D. D. Goichenko, Krasnyi apokalipsis: skvoz’ raskulachivanie i golodomor: memuary svidetelia (Kyiv: Ababahalamaha, 2013), 29–31.

   16. Testimony of Olena Doroshenko, in O. M. Veselova and O. F. Nikiliev, Pam’iat’ narodu: Henotsyd v Ukraïni holodom 1932–1933 rokiv: svidchennia, 2 vols. (Kyiv: Vydavnychnyi dim ‘Kalyta’, 2009), vol. 1, 408.

   17. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 55–7.

   18. Pohl, ‘ “In Our Hearts We Felt the Sentence of Death” ’, 336.

   19. ‘Case History SW34: anonymous, Kyiv oblast’’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 392.

   20. Testimony of Maria Makukha (Chukut), in ibid., vol. 1, 129.

   21. Testimony of Kateryna Laksha, in ibid., vol. 2, 66–7.

   22. Ibid.

   23. TsA FSB RF 2/8/232 (1930), 72, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 219–20.

   24. Pasha Angelina, ‘The Most Important Thing’, in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, 310.

   25. TsA FSB RF 2/8/23 (1930), 2–13, and 2/8/23 (1930), 45–65, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 144–50, 180–9.

   26. Josef Stalin, ‘Dizzy with Success: Concerning Questions of the Collective-Farm Movement’, Pravda, 2 March 1930, reproduced in Works, vol. 12, 197–205.

   27. Ibid.

   28. RGASPI 17/3/779 (1930), 18–20, in Danilov, Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 303–5.

   29. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 3.

   30. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 84.

   31. Testimony of Ivan Hazhyman, in Mytsyk, Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 3, 113.

   32. ‘Case History LH38: Oleksandr Honcharenko, Cherkasy oblast’’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 325–9.

   33. ‘Testimony of Mr. Zinovii Turkalo’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine: First Interim Report, 96.

   34. TsA FSB RF 2/8/679 (1930), 23, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 420–6.

   35. Testimony of Leonida Fedorivna Tkachuk, in Mytsyk, Ukraïns’kyi holokost, vol. 2, 50–1.

   36. ‘Case History LH38: Oleksandr Honcharenko’, 325.

   37. Pohl, ‘ “In Our Hearts We Felt the Sentence of Death” ’, 336.

   38. TsA FSB RF 2/8/679 (1930), 23, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 424.

   39. Ibid., 421.

   40. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 183.

   41. TsA FSB RF 2/8/679 (1930), 23, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 420–6.

   42. ‘Case History LH57: Mikhail Frenkin, Baku’, in U.S. Congress, Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, Report to Congress, 359–65.

   43. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 103–5, 135–6.

   44. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/118 (1930), 1–13, reproduced in Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 474–83.

   45. TsDAHOU 1/20/3191 (1930), 37.

   46. TsA FSB RF 2/8/232 (1930), 101, 101a, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 220–1.

   47. TsA FSB RF 2/8/23 (1930), 2–13, in ibid., vol. 3:1, 144–50.

   48. TsA FSB RF 2/8/23 (1930), 45–65, in ibid., vol. 3:1, 180–9.

   49. Iurii Shapoval, Vadym Zolotar’ov and Volodymyr Prystaiko, ChK-GPU-NKVD v Ukraïni: osoby, fakty, dokumenty (Kyiv: Abrys, 1997), 39.

   50. TsDAHOU 1/20/3154 (1930), 11.

   51. TsA FSB RF 2/8/232 (1930), 115, 115ob, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 221–2; RTsKhIDNI 85/1/119 (1930), 1–2, reproduced in Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 549–50.

   52. TsDAHOU 1/20/3154 (1930), 11.

   53. The Pavlohrad material comes from Danylenko et al., eds., Pavlohrads’ke povstannia, 1930: dokumenty i materialy (Kyiv: Ukrains’kyi Pys’mennyk, 2009).

   54. Palij, The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 46–51.

   55. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/120 (1930), 1–18, reproduced in Graziosi, ‘Collectivisation, révoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales’, 537.

   56. Ibid., 537–8.

   57. RTsKhIDNI 85/1/118 (1930), 43–9, reproduced in ibid., 577–8.

   58. TsA FSB RF 2/8/232 (1930), 115, 115ob, in Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, vol. 3:1, 222.

   59. Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 294–5.

   60. Shapoval, ‘The Case of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” ’, 178–9.

   61. Ibid.

  7. COLLECTIVIZATION FAILS, 1931–2

    1. RTsKhIDNI 82/2/139 (1932), 145–51, in Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, 298.

    2. R. W. Davies and S. G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–33 (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1–4.

    3. RGASPI 17/2/60 (1931), 89, tipografskii ekz.; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, Izd. 9–3. T.5.C. 233–4, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 773–4.

    4. TsA FSB RF 2/8/328 (1930), 336–45, in ibid., vol. 2, 530–6.

    5. TsDAZhR Ukraïny 27/11/104 (1930), 75–80, in Kul’chyts’kyi, Kolektyvizatsiia i holod na Ukraïni, 226–30.

    6. This is Lynne Viola’s term, used in Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 205–10.

    7. RGAE 7486/37/132 (1930), 59–60, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 467–72.

    8. Diana Bojko and Jerzy Bednarek, Holodomor: The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933, from the series Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s–
1940s: Unknown Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, Commission of the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, 2009), 70–1.

    9. The best account of harvest statistics as well as the controversy around them is in Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger, 442–7. See also A. V. Bashkin, ‘Urozhai tridtsatykh ili ukradennye dostizheniia’, Istoricheskie materialy, accessed 2017, http://istmat.info/node/21358.

   10. Serhiichuk et al., Ukraïns’kyi khlib na eksport, 3–4.

   11. Elena Osokina, Zoloto dlia industrializatsii: Torgsin (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009), 17–102.

   12. Serhiichuk et al., Ukraïns’kyi khlib na eksport, 5–6.

   13. Ibid., 7.

   14. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘The Boss and His Team: Stalin and the Inner Circle, 1925–33’, in Stephen Fortescue, ed., Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 62–3.

   15. RGASPI 588/1/5388 (1930), 116ob, 121ob, in Kondrashin et al., eds., Golod v SSSR, vol. 1:1, 340; RGASPI 588/11/75 (1930), 15, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 2, 577.

   16. RGAE 8043/11/12 (1930), 22–22ob, in Kondrashin et al., eds., Golod v SSSR, vol. 1:1, 350.

   17. RGASPI 17/162/9 (1930), 74, in ibid., vol. 1:1, 351.

   18. Figures from Andrea Graziosi, L’Unione Sovietica 1914–1991 (Bologna: Il mulino, 2011), table 1.

   19. Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger, 48–78.

   20. RGASPI 631/5/54 (1931), 25–45, in Danilov et al., eds., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, vol. 3, 137–40.

   21. RGAE 8043/1/7 (1931), 61, in Kondrashin et al., eds., Golod v SSSR, vol. 1:1, 405–6.

   22. RGASPI 17/167/31 (1931), 105, in ibid.

   23. RGAE 7486/37/166 (1931), 230–7; RGAE 8043/1/48 (1931), 106–9, 116–30; AP RF 3/40/77 (1931), 186; and various other archival documents, all reproduced in ibid., vol. 1:1, 488–515.

   24. RGASPI 17/167/29 (1931), 43, in ibid., vol. 1:1, 344.

   25. A. V. Bashkin, ‘Urozhai tridtsatykh ili ukradennye dostizheniia’.

   26. RGAE 8043/11/17 (1930), 208, in Kondrashin et al., eds., Golod v SSSR, vol. 1:1, 230.