According to some sources, the death toll was 8 million, and according to some sources, this number reached 12 million. 80% of the dead were Ukrainian, 4% Russian, 1.4% Jewish and 1% Polish, the rest was never known. The Holodomor was a genocide accepted by 16 countries, this disaster was not caused by natural disaster, drought or bad harvest, the disaster was designed by human hands.
Joseph Stalin was the leader and dictator of the Soviet Union, a communist country. The Stalin regime wanted to radically change the order of the farmers. Thousands of people were forced to work on state-owned farms for very little money. Ukrainian farmers rejected this imposed collective system, and Stalin was surprised by this unexpected attitude. "I will teach Ukraine a lesson they will never forget." he was saying. Ukraine, which slept with the desire for independence, would be dealt a great blow.
The famine hit parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan the hardest. The so-called cooperative policy forced the peasants to give up their lands, their homes. Many people were deported indiscriminately, and new state-owned farms were set up on their lands. The Ukrainians were not far from famine. They suffered a famine in 1921-1923 and would suffer another great famine between 1946 and 1947, but the famine of 1932-1933 was the worst the land had ever seen.
Holodomor was a derived term from two words. "Holodo" means hunger, "mor" means destruction. Ukrainians preferred special production. This mode of production meant a revolt against central planning for the Bolsheviks. This system aimed to control the villagers more easily. In line with this idea, thousands of officials went to the villages where they received less support and tried to organize them, and soon there were signs that the 1932 harvest would not be good.
Authorities blamed the private farms outside the system and the rebellion movements. The armed forces forcibly took the people's seeds and grain for the next year. Farmers slaughtered the state's forcibly confiscated and employed cattle to avoid giving them to the state, which meant that there were no longer any animals that could be used in the fields. At the same time, "Rather than give it to Soviet officials, we burn it." they burned many foods. After a short time, the fertile agricultural lands in Ukraine turned into a famine area. Journalists who wanted to cover the famine were banned from accessing the area.
Although the government said it would take urgent measures and help in the region, it did not fulfill any of its promises. While people were dying in Ukraine, Stalin was increasing his grain exports even more. Thousands of people who fled Ukraine were sent back to their families or to orphanages and left to die in these places where hunger and neglect prevailed. Stalin withheld food from the people, people were forbidden from accessing the fields, they were even prevented from searching across the country for food. The communists were confiscating grain, buying most of the harvest at a price well below its value.
The wealthy peasant class was forcibly driven from their land, these people were exiled to the western and northern parts of the Soviet Union, their remnants turned into state farms called kolkhoz. Ukrainians had suffered from the regime's oppression for many years. The regime had enacted 5 spike laws for a while, imprisoned people who stored grain in their homes, and confiscated everything, including wheat, food, and pets. There were special groups created just for this task, schools providing education in the Ukrainian language were closed during this period, scientists and intellectuals were tortured, 28 thousand people lost their lives every day due to famine in Ukraine, every place where there was a famine was full of soldiers.
Food was forcibly taken from people, the Ukrainian-Soviet border was closed to prevent aid. Undoubtedly, this was one of the most interesting battles in history. By June 1933, 34,000 people were dying every day, with 1,940 dying every hour. Almost every Ukrainian family suffered a loss. This balance sheet, which came out in June, showed that 1 million people died in a month, only half a year, as many people lost their lives as the population of the country. According to some sources, the Soviet administration exported 1,84 million tons of grain in 1933, which is considered the peak point, even the previous year, this amount was 1,7 million tons, that is, the export increased.
Just because he was against his policies, Stalin left a whole people to die without hesitation, he wanted to kill them slowly and with great pain. Ukraine had a struggle with the regime between 1917-1920 but lost this struggle. The Soviets had installed puppet governments in Ukraine that they could easily direct and thus solved the problem.
It was a well-known fact that Ukraine led the regions prone to revolt in the Soviet Union, which put the existence of communist regimes in jeopardy. Ukraine, which wanted to secede from the Soviet Union, had to pay the price bitterly. According to some claims, Stalin did not have any supplies to feed the army, so he directed his troops to Ukraine. The soldiers took all the food from the people, so much that they took the bite they were about to put in their mouths. They ate the villagers' cows, goats, chickens, and when they left there was nothing left. People had to hunt rats in their attics.
This disaster was always denied until the Soviets collapsed, and it was forbidden to talk about it for 50 years. This shame of humanity was tried to be meticulously hidden from the world public opinion. Even the penalty for saying anything about the Holodomor was imprisonment.
When it all ended, millions of people had died. 600,000 of them were babies, but those who managed to survive were not so lucky, most of them were psychologically dead, they were walking around like the living dead. Those who survived this disaster did not survive for very long, but they managed to pass on the pain they experienced from generation to generation.
Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, so Ukrainian scientists had the opportunity to research the Holodomor. In 1993, 60 years after the famine, the Holodomor was commemorated for the first time on a national level. In 1998, the day of the Holodomor tragedy was determined by the decree of the President of Ukraine. Every November, Ukrainians commemorate this day and their loved ones. When the sun goes down, they put a candle in front of their window to commemorate the millions of people who died of starvation.
There are those who argue that the Holodomor is a great western fabrication, according to them, a civil war started with the intervention of many states such as the USA, England and Canada in the Russian Revolution of 1917, after 6 years of war, a serious drought came and a great hunger began, famine Bolsheviks 1917. It also existed long before they came to power, and was also seen in 1920-21-24-27 and 1928, when the Bolvesics were in power. According to the allegations, Stalin even sent wheat, bread and seeds to the famine regions.
Other rumors were Nazi and western fabrications, it is not possible to believe them. Was the Holodomor a fictional holocaust or was it real? It is impossible to even know this, but there are hundreds of Ukrainians who lived at that time and told what they went through afterward. There is only one subject that is not discussed and accepted by everyone, and that is the fact that millions of people died due to famine...