Holodomor: The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 as an Instrument of Consolidatory Mass Violence

The Ukrainian famine or ‘Holodomor’ of 1932–1933 claimed the lives of an estimated 4 to 4.5 million people. General consensus has it that the famines that swept the Soviet Union were caused largely by the collectivisation drive of the First Five-Year Plan, after which the situation in Ukraine was exacerbated by Stalin’s policies in the winter of 1932–1933. However, the underlying motives for Stalin’s actions with regard to Ukraine remain a matter of lively debate. Combining the existing literature on the initiation of mass indiscriminate violence in general and on the causes of the Holodomor in particular with novel insights from studies on authoritarian politics, I posit that the Ukrainian famine may have been intentionally aggravated because the Ukrainian leadership was considered a liability to Stalin’s rule. Rather than facing these elites head on, I suggest that Stalin weaponised the famine as a means of mass indiscriminate violence to enable the capture of local institutions...Show moreThe Ukrainian famine or ‘Holodomor’ of 1932–1933 claimed the lives of an estimated 4 to 4.5 million people. General consensus has it that the famines that swept the Soviet Union were caused largely by the collectivisation drive of the First Five-Year Plan, after which the situation in Ukraine was exacerbated by Stalin’s policies in the winter of 1932–1933. However, the underlying motives for Stalin’s actions with regard to Ukraine remain a matter of lively debate. Combining the existing literature on the initiation of mass indiscriminate violence in general and on the causes of the Holodomor in particular with novel insights from studies on authoritarian politics, I posit that the Ukrainian famine may have been intentionally aggravated because the Ukrainian leadership was considered a liability to Stalin’s rule. Rather than facing these elites head on, I suggest that Stalin weaponised the famine as a means of mass indiscriminate violence to enable the capture of local institutions and to undermine the individual support bases of his potential rivals. In this way the Ukrainian Communist Party was purged from the bottom to the top, culminating with the executions of Stanislav Kosior and Vlas Chubar and the expulsion of Grigory Petrovsky, as well as the executions of Pavel Postyshev and Vsevolod Balytsky during the Great Purges of 1937–1939.Show less

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Holodomor: The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 as an Instrument of Consolidatory Mass Violence