Famine in the USSR (1932-1933).

IVNITSKY Nikolay Alekseevich

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Forced collectivization and the inextricably linked so-called liquidation of the kulaks as a class, as a result of which the most capable and hardworking layer of the peasantry was expropriated and a significant part of it was deported, led to a decline in agricultural production. As a result of this and the anti-peasant grain procurement policy of the Stalinist leadership, in the fall of 1932 - spring of 1933, an unprecedented famine broke out in the country.

The famine of 1932-1933 was perhaps first mentioned in Soviet literature in 1940. In a collection of articles published in connection with the 60th anniversary of I.V. Stalin, M.A. Sholokhov wrote that, under the guise of fighting sabotage, all bread was confiscated from collective farmers, including that given in advance for workdays, as a result of which “famine began on the collective farms.” True, the blame for this was placed not on the central, but on the regional leadership of the North Caucasus.

In the same 1940, on September 9, Stalin, at a meeting in connection with the discussion of the film “The Law of Life” by A. Avdeenko, was forced to admit that “in our country, for example, 25-30 million were starving, there was not enough bread, but now they live well"2. But he did not name either the causes of the famine or its culprits, and his speech was not published in the press.

Who is to blame for the famine and death of millions of people in 1932-1933?

The article by M. Tauger (USA), published in this collection, analyzes the objective reasons for the decrease in the gross grain harvest in 1932 (drought in a number of areas, the spread of grain diseases, etc.) and concludes that in 1932 there was The grain collected was approximately 100 million quintals less than what is indicated in official data. Without disputing the author's calculations on the merits, it should be noted that even the collected grain would have been enough to avoid mass starvation if the grain procurement policy had been carried out differently.

In fact, when calculating gross receipts in 1931 and 1932. The calculations were based on biological (species) yield, and not on the actual harvested grain. But if in 1932, as the author claims, much less grain was collected than officially stated, then, apparently, in 1931 there was a similar situation. However, in 1931 there was no such terrible famine as in 1932/33. Apparently, the matter is not only and, perhaps, not so much in the harvest, but in the procurement policy of 1932. Indeed, back in 1929, when N.I. Bukharin and his supporters proposed, in order to avoid the use of emergency measures, the import of bread from abroad as “a temporary measure in the most difficult months from the point of view of the food crisis,” the Stalinist majority in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decisively rejected this proposal. In this regard, I.V. Stalin wrote to the secretary of the Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) SI. Syrtsov and the chairman of the regional executive committee R.I. Eikhe: “We cannot import grain, because there is little currency. We would still not import grain even if there were currency, since the import of grain undermines our credit abroad and aggravates the difficulties of our international position. Therefore, we must do without the import of bread at all costs. And this cannot be done without strengthening grain procurements.”

Stalin did not change his attitude to this issue even in 1932, when famine began in the country. Moreover, while millions of people were starving and dying, the Soviet leadership not only refused to import bread, but also exported grain so as not to “undermine credit abroad” and not to “aggravate the difficulties of the international situation.” It was forbidden to even mention the famine in the USSR. Truly it was a “top secret famine”!

Back in April 1930, standards for grain delivery by collective farms were established in the amount of 1/4 to 1/3 of the gross harvest in the main grain-growing regions and approximately 1/8 in the remaining grain-producing regions. In fact, much more was seized. Thus, in Ukraine in 1930, 30.2% of the gross grain harvest was seized, and in 1931 - 41.3, in the North Caucasus - 34.2 and 38.3, in the Lower Volga - 41.0 and 40, 1, in Crimea - 32.7 and 41.7, in the Middle Volga - 38.6 and 32.3, in Western Siberia - 26.5 and 29.3, Kazakhstan - 33.1 and 39.5%. On average for these same areas in 1930 the percentage of seizures was 31.5, and in 1931 - 37.0. In general, in all grain-producing regions of the USSR, 28.2% was confiscated in 1930, and 32.4% in 1931. Even in consuming areas, bread was confiscated: in the Moscow region in 1930 - 14.5%, in 1931 - 20.0, Nizhny Novgorod region - 10.5 and 14.8, Leningrad region - 8.8 and 9.9 , Western region - 7.9 and 9.8, Ivanovo-Voznesensk - 7.4 and 10.0%.

In this regard, Anastas Mikoyan in a note to I.V. Stalin proposed to increase in 1932 the percentage of grain seizures for grain-growing regions to 30-40, including for collective farms served by MTS - to 35-45. This was accepted. Despite the decrease in gross grain harvests in 1931-1932, procurement plans grew: in Ukraine in 1932 grain harvested (excluding state farms) was 36.7% more than in 1930, in the North Caucasus - by 56.3 , in the Middle Volga - by 46.0, in the Central Black Sea Region - by 28.75%. In general, the USSR harvested 32.8% more than in 1930

Of course, the need for grain and other agricultural products grew every year. The need for them was enormous, especially considering that the urban population in four years, by 1932, had grown by 12.4 million people, not to mention the increased industrial needs for agricultural raw materials. But in order to increase grain production, it was necessary to financially interest the peasants. This was of little concern to Stalin and his inner circle. In practice, almost all the grain produced by peasants (collective farmers and individual farmers) was confiscated to account for grain procurements.

In January 1932, Stalin and Molotov in a telegram to SV. Kosior, members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine and members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) decisively demanded the unconditional implementation of grain procurement plans: “We consider the situation with grain procurements in Ukraine alarming. Based on the data available to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the workers of Ukraine are spontaneously focusing on the failure to fulfill the plan by 70-80 million poods. We consider such a prospect unacceptable and intolerable.

We consider it a shame that Ukraine this year, with a higher level of collectivization and a larger number of state farms, prepared 20 million poods less as of January 1 of this year than last year. Who is to blame here: the highest level of collectivization or the lowest level of management of the procurement business?

We consider it necessary for your immediate arrival in Kharkov and for you to take the entire matter of grain procurement into your own hands. The plan must be carried out completely and unconditionally. The decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks must be implemented.”

It is clear from the telegram that Stalin and Molotov placed grain procurements in direct connection with collectivization, although two years ago Stalin denied that collective farms were being created to solve the grain problem. He said that partial collectivization was sufficient for this and that collective farms were being organized to resolve issues of socialist construction in the countryside.

Referring to the statements of V.I. Lenin on the need to take into account the material interests of the peasants, Stalin in practice ignored this instruction, which manifested itself, in particular, when planning grain procurements.

In January 1932, the Chairman of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (TsKK-RKI) Ya.E. Rudzu-tak, in a note to Stalin, proposed, among other issues of collective farm development (improving the organization of labor, introducing piecework, creating permanent teams on collective farms), to revise the grain procurement planning system. “Plans,” wrote Rudzutak, “must be given at the beginning of the business year, so that the collective farm has the opportunity to plan the sale of part of the products on the market after completing the state task. For some products (fruits, vegetables, etc.), centralized plans should be reduced to a minimum.”

The same was said in Kosior’s coded message to Stalin (March 15, 1932). He proposed: “To announce on behalf of the union organizations the procedure for grain procurements from the future harvest, based on the fact that the greater the harvest the collective farm and the collective farmer achieve, the larger the fund should be allocated and distributed for personal consumption.” However, the Politburo of the Central Committee rejected this proposal on March 16.

Meanwhile, the confiscation of grain from the peasants was in full swing. Thus, on February 10, the team of the Pravda newspaper sent a letter to Stalin, Kaganovich, and Postyshev about grain procurements in Moldova. The letter reported that during the grain procurement campaign, wholesale searches were carried out among collective farmers and individual farmers, and if grain was found, the peasant was declared a “firm-dealer” and all his property was taken away. There are cases of peasants being beaten (sometimes with injury), illegal arrests are being made, etc. As a result of this, peasants are fleeing abroad, especially from the areas bordering Romania. Stalin sent a letter to members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) “for information.” True, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine on February 29, 1932 adopted a special resolution on excesses in Moldova, which emphasized that these excesses “are the reverse side of right-wing opportunist sentiments in the party leadership of the grain procurement campaign.” The Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U reprimanded the bureau of the Moldavian regional party committee, a severe reprimand to the former secretary of the regional committee Ilyin, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Moldova Dmitriu and the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the MASSR Voronovich - he proposed to immediately organize “several show trials.”

On June 18, 1932, Stalin wrote from Sochi to Kaganovich and Molotov (for members of the Politburo of the Central Committee) that although the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution on some reduction in the grain procurement plan, there was no need to bring the reduced plan to the villages; it is necessary to use the difference between the original plan, which must be carried out locally, and the reduced plan "solely to stimulate planting work." Stalin was forced to admit that the main mistake of the grain procurement campaign of 1931, especially in Ukraine and the Urals, was that the grain procurement plan was distributed among the regions and collective farms “mechanically without taking into account the situation in each individual collective farm.” “As a result of this... a glaring incongruity resulted, due to which in Ukraine, despite a good harvest, a number of productive regions found themselves in a state of ruin and hunger, and in the Urals the regional committee deprived itself of the opportunity to provide assistance to unharvested regions at the expense of the region’s productive regions.”

In order not to “repeat the mistakes of the past year,” Stalin proposed ... “to allow an increase to the plan of 4-5%, thereby creating the opportunity to cover the inevitable errors in accounting and fulfill the plan itself at all costs.”

To discuss the issues of the grain procurement campaign of 1932, Stalin proposed no later than June 26-27 to convene a meeting of party secretaries and chairmen of the executive committees of the Soviets (Sovnarkoms) of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Sea Region, the Lower and Middle Volga, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, as well as Belarus, Moscow, Western regions, Nizhny Novgorod region, Tatarstan and Bashkiria “on the organization of grain procurements and the unconditional implementation of the grain procurement plan”^. Based on Stalin’s letter and the meeting on July 1, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the organization of the grain procurement campaign of 1932.”

While on vacation in Sochi, Stalin again returned to grain procurements and on July 24, in a letter to Kaganovich and Molotov, he confirmed his intention “to unconditionally implement the grain procurement plan for the USSR.” However, given the special situation of Ukraine, he believes that “an exception will have to be made for particularly affected areas of Ukraine. This is necessary not only from the point of view of justice, but also in view of the special situation of Ukraine, the common border with Poland, etc.”10. But the plan was so unrealistic that even after some reduction they could not implement it.

Not content with the direct supply of grain through grain procurements, on August 15 Stalin, in a telegram to Kaganovich from Sochi, expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the state “is spending hundreds of millions of rubles on organizing MTS to service collective farms, and it still does not know how much the peasantry pays it for MTS services.” . Therefore, he proposes to find out whether MTS are unprofitable or profitable, “how much bread and other products the state receives from collective farms for the work of MTS.” “Without this, MTS will turn from state-owned enterprises reporting to the state into almshouses or into a means for systematically defrauding the state. MTS cannot be allowed to operate uncontrollably.” In a word, Stalin sought by any means to pump out bread (as well as money) from the villages.

Pressure on the peasants began immediately during the harvest. However, collective farmers, and especially individual farmers, took a wait-and-see attitude and were in no hurry to hand over grain. B.P. Shebochdaev (North Caucasus) reported to Stalin on August 14, 1932 that “despite the massive work on grain procurements, in the individual sector there is great resistance and outright refusal to fulfill the plan.” Therefore, he asked the Central Committee to authorize the following measures:

a) carry out joint threshing with individual farmers under the control of the Council;

b) deprive those who do not comply with the plan of the right to purchase industrial goods;

c) bring to justice under Art. 61 of the Criminal Code for failure to fulfill the grain procurement plan.

Less than a week had passed, on August 20, Sheboldaev again turned to Stalin, but in connection with the attitude of collective farmers to grain procurements. He writes that collective farmers “are working better this summer than last year, but there is heightened caution in relation to grain procurements.” The main discontent of the collective farmers was along the lines of “criticism of our poor management of agriculture,” the intensity of work, and “against administration.” Almost everywhere, peasants openly say that the North Caucasus is expecting what happened in Ukraine (famine). Under these conditions, the district leadership refuses to communicate the grain procurement plan to the collective farm due to its tension - there is no grain left for either fodder or food. Therefore, Sheboldaev asks to lower the plan and replace the delivered wheat (5 million poods) with rye and corn^. Stalin answered Sheboldaev on August 22: “I received your note and sent it to the Central Committee. I cannot support you due to the poor performance of the region in grain procurement. If the Middle Volga, which survived the drought, surrendered 4 million poods in the third five-day period, and your region did not surrender even 2, then this means that the regional committee has given up in the face of difficulties and has surrendered its position to the apostles of gravity, or the regional committee is being diplomatic and trying to lead the Central Committee by the nose. Agree that I cannot support this kind of work.

True, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, according to letters from B.P. Sheboldaeva adopted a resolution on August 14 and 20 that allowed the replacement of wheat (5 million poods) with rye and corn and authorized the use of Art. 61 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and the deprivation of individual farmers who have not fulfilled the grain procurement plan of the right to purchase manufactured goods^. As for the request of the regional committee to reduce the grain procurement plan, the Politburo rejected it as clearly incorrect, indicating a “pessimistic attitude towards the implementation of the plan”, “demobilizing” the party organization, and demanded that “measures be taken to ensure the grain procurement plan.”

Submitting to the decision of the Politburo, on August 21, 1932, the regional committee in a telegram to the rural district committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks categorically demanded the implementation of the grain procurement plan and the application of repression to those workers who do not ensure the fulfillment of grain procurement tasks. Another telegram gave instructions to apply repression to individual farmers who did not fulfill the grain procurement plan. Nevertheless, the grain procurement plan for August was fulfilled by 32%, the September one by 65%, and by October 20, 18% of the monthly target was procured in the region*6.

Information about the failure to fulfill grain procurement plans came from Ukraine, the Lower Volga, and other regions of the country. This alarmed the Stalinist party and state leadership. On October 22, 1932, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided: “In order to strengthen grain procurements, send plenipotentiary commissions under the leadership of V.M. for two decades. Molotov to Ukraine and under the leadership of L.M. Kaganovich - to the North Caucasus region""7.

It was no coincidence that Politburo commissions were sent to Ukraine and the North Caucasus, since these regions accounted for almost half of the grain harvested in the grain regions.

The Central Committee commission headed by L.M. Kaganovich entered A.I. Mikoyan (People's Commissariat of Supply), M.A. Chernov (Procurement Committee), T.A. Yurkin (People's Commissariat of State Farms), Ya.B. Gamarnik (Political Directorate of the Red Army), M.F. Shkiryatov (TsKK VKP(b)), G.G. Yagoda (OGPU), A.V. Kosarev (VLKSM Central Committee).

On November 2, Kaganovich’s commission arrived in Rostov-on-Don. On the same day, a meeting of secretaries of rural district party committees was convened, and on November 4, a meeting of directors of state farms of the region. At the same time, a meeting of the bureau of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was held with the participation of members of the Central Committee commission. The resolution “On the progress of grain procurements and sowing in the Kuban”, adopted on November 4 by the North Caucasus Regional Party Committee, stated: “In view of the particularly shameful failure of the plan for grain procurements and winter sowing in the Kuban, set a combat mission for the party organization in the Kuban regions - to break the sabotage of grain procurements in the villages and sowing , organized by the kulak counter-revolutionary element, to destroy the resistance of some of the rural communists who had become the actual agents of sabotage, and to eliminate the passivity and conciliation towards saboteurs, incompatible with the title of party member.

Ensure a rapid increase in the pace, complete and unconditional implementation of the grain procurement plan, thereby achieving unity in the party ranks and strengthening the collective farms.” This was followed by severe measures of influence on the “saboteurs”: the villages Novo-Rozhdestvenskaya (Tikhoretsky district), Medvedovskaya (Timashevsky district), Temirgoevskaya (Kurganinsky district) were put on the “black board”. The following measures were applied to them:

a) the importation of goods immediately ceased, state and cooperative trade ceased, and all goods were exported;

b) collective farm trade was prohibited both for collective farms and for collective farmers and individual farmers;

c) all lending was stopped and loans were collected ahead of schedule;

d) it was proposed to check and clean “all kinds of alien elements”;

e) The OGPU was entrusted with the “seizure of counter-revolutionary elements.”

But it seemed to the commission that this was not enough to “break the sabotage,” and the resolution of the regional committee states: “To put before these villages that if sabotage continues, the question of their eviction to the northern regions will be raised.”

Not limiting itself to measures against the three Kuban villages, the regional committee, at the proposal of the Kaganovich commission, “as a last warning” banned the import of goods into ten “lagging regions” (Nevinno-Myssky, Slavyansky, Ust-Labinsky, Bryukhovetsky, etc.), and in relation to ten others (Yeysky, Krasnodar, Kurganinsky, etc.) proposed not only to stop the importation, but also to remove all goods from there.

As for individual farmers who refused land because they could neither cultivate it nor pay exorbitant taxes, such a measure as deprivation of their personal plots was applied to them. Moreover, the government was asked to evict peasants to the northern regions and transfer their tools and means of production to collective farms. It was also recommended to apply Art. 61 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (speculation).

The resolution also noted that the decree of August 7, 1932 was poorly applied, and suggested that the regional court and the prosecutor's office consider 20 cases and publish the verdicts in the press; Bring to court the storekeepers and bookkeepers who hide the grain. The OPTU authorities should have strengthened punitive measures.

On the day the resolution was adopted, it was transmitted by telegraph to Stalin, who edited it and wrote a resolution: “Publish in the local press.” The next day, November 5, it was published in the Molot newspaper.

On November 4, 1932, the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to carry out a purge of rural party organizations in the North Caucasus, and primarily in the Kuban: “The purge must free the party from people alien to the cause of communism, pursuing kulak politics, decomposed, unable to carry out the party’s policy in village. Those who have been purged will be expelled as politically dangerous.”

L.M. Kaganovich and A.V. Kosarev asked the Politburo of the Central Committee to authorize the purge of Komsomol organizations in the North Caucasus. In Kuban alone in November 1932, as a result of the purge, 43% of communists were expelled from the party and more than 5 thousand people were arrested. In total, 15 thousand people were arrested in the North Caucasus2^.

November 21, 1932 Kaganovich and Sheboldaev send Stalin a resolution from the Bureau of the North Caucasus Regional Committee on the eviction of the “saboteurs” and ask him to approve it. It was proposed “to evict, within two days, 2,000 wealthy kulak and individual households in the Kuban who refuse to cultivate the land and abandon their sowing.” The eviction was carried out from 45 villages in 14 districts of Kuban; 1,000 households were subject to eviction to the Northern Territory, 1,000 to the Urals.

The eviction was carried out in each village by special troikas (the chairman of the district executive committee, the secretary of the district committee and the authorized representative of the OPTU). The final approval of the eviction lists was entrusted to the regional troika. “Kulak-wealthy” elements were classified into the second category of kulak farms, their tools and means of production were confiscated in favor of collective farms, and they themselves were deported to the North. Individual owners were also evicted, but were not deprived of their civil rights. Unlike the first group of those evicted, individual farmers could have a supply of food for three months, two heads of small livestock, two pieces of simple equipment, tools and things, but not more than 70 pounds.

In Kuban, instead of those evicted, households from the arid regions of Stavropol (Red Army soldiers, variable composition, rural communists and Komsomol members) moved in.

In December 1932 B.P. Sheboldaev, in a certificate to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the progress of grain procurements and sowing in the North Caucasus, reported that by December 5, 80% of the annual plan had been prepared for all sectors. This was achieved as a result of the use of strict (even cruel!) measures. Thus, in Kuban, 70-75% of lower-level managers received penalties; In total, about half (47%) of the communists who were purged were subject to penalties. In the region, 1,193 people were expelled from the party, including 536 people in November. The regional court and its visiting sessions during November, according to the decree of August 7, 1932, convicted 949 people, of which 175 were sentenced to capital punishment (the sentences were carried out). It is significant that among those convicted there were 125 people, i.e. 15% are kulak-wealthy elements or classified as them, the rest are collective farmers and officials.

The People's Court convicted 6,206 people in 68 districts of the region (out of 83) (half of them under the law of August 7, the other under Article 61 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). In terms of social status, kulaks made up less than a third, the rest were collective farmers and individual farmers.

Sheboldaev asked the Politburo of the Central Committee to authorize the additional expulsion and resettlement of 5 thousand families; purge of collective farms from kulak elements (2-3%) with the expulsion of the “most malicious”; cleaning the collective farm, state farm and cooperative apparatus; proposed to send, in addition to the 1,500 already sent to the villages in November, another 150 workers to MTS, raizo, state farms and 50 district-scale workers as part of the special mobilization of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

On December 14, 1932, according to the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, all residents of the village of Poltavskaya, with the exception of “truly loyal to Soviet power,” were evicted to the northern regions. On December 23, the Politburo accepted Sheboldaev’s proposal “to evict 5,000 families, including 2,000 from the station. Poltava".

By December 19, 1932, 1,992 families (9,442 people) were evicted from 13 regions of the Kuban to Northern Kazakhstan, and by December 27, as Yagoda reported to Stalin, the “operation to evict the village of Poltavskaya” was completed: 2,158 families (9,187 people, i.e. the entire population of the village) were loaded into five echelons and sent to the Urals. Some were convicted and imprisoned in camps.

An interesting conversation with one of the prisoners, a former Cossack, chairman of a collective farm, is given by A. Avdeenko in his autobiographical story “Excommunication.” When the writer asked why he got involved in the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, the Cossack replied that he was accused of sabotaging grain procurements: “He criminally withheld, they said, foreign-currency grain, did not want to sell it to the state at a fixed price in order to sell it secretly at the market. They said that he created inflated, fraudulent funds, three times more than needed to feed people and livestock. They said that I openly praised collective farms, but secretly, on the sly, I created a counter-revolutionary nest on the board, “Collective farms without communists.” Have you read the article by Comrade Stalin... sorry, citizen Stalin, “On work in the countryside”? The judge sealed everything bad from this article to me. Personally! We wiped out the old beastly fist, with horse teeth, with a thick neck, visible to everyone, a poster fist, as citizen Stalin said. Now there is a new kurkul, “quiet”, sweet, almost holy. So, when I fell under the hot hand, they included me in the quiet and sweet ones...

It’s true, I didn’t hand over all the bread, I fell a little short of the above-plan quota. Why, you ask, didn’t it last? Very expensive. Expensive. Collective farmers had to be left without bread and livestock without feed. Conscience did not allow people to starve. I’m not a saboteur, but the head of a collective farm, a confidant of the grain grower... That’s how the “unsighted” village worker thundered, unseasoned and overrated, as citizen Stalin said. And now I’m being reforged on the camp anvil, gaining insight”24.

The same repressions were carried out in Ukraine at the direction of the Molotov Commission. On November 5, Molotov and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine Khataevich gave a directive to the regional committees, demanding from them immediate and decisive measures to implement the decree of August 7, 1932, “with mandatory and rapid implementation of repressions and merciless reprisals against criminal elements in the boards of collective farms.”

On November 18, 1932, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, with the participation of Molotov, adopted a resolution “On measures to strengthen grain procurements,” which provided for the same draconian measures of influence on the peasants of Ukraine as in the Kuban (listing on the “black board” with all the ensuing consequences consequences of this). Villages were included on the “black board” by resolution of the regional executive committee. The resolution especially emphasized that during the period of grain procurements, “the closure of entire groups of communists and individual party leaders with the kulaks, Petliurists, etc. was revealed, which in fact turns this kind of communists and party organizations into agents of the class enemy.” In view of this, the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine decided to “immediately purge a number of rural party organizations that are clearly sabotaging the implementation of the grain procurement plan and undermining the trust of the party among the working people.” The cleansing was primarily to be carried out in the Snegurovsky and Frunzensky districts of the Odessa region, Solonyansky, Vasilkovsky and Verkhne-Lepetikhsky districts of the Dnepropetrovsk region.

In relation to individual farmers who do not fulfill the grain procurement plan, it was prescribed to apply natural fines in the form of establishing additional meat procurement targets in the amount of a 15-month norm and a year's delivery of potatoes. However, this did not exempt people from donating grain. As for the kulaks, repressions provided for in Art. 58 of the Criminal Code (counter-revolutionary crimes).

Noteworthy is the fact that the decisions taken in the North Caucasus and Ukraine, and then in the Volga region, were very similar, and since the North Caucasus resolution was edited by Stalin, it is possible that the Ukrainian resolution was adopted on his instructions. Although, of course, the views of both Kaganovich and Molotov did not contradict Stalin’s guidelines.

On November 20, 1932, Molotov telegraphed Kosior from Genichesk: “There is still an order in the regions to sell matches, salt and kerosene everywhere. There is a telegram from Blyakher dated November 9 about this. This must be canceled immediately and the implementation monitored” -27. At the same time, he writes a letter to Chubarevka to the secretary of the district party committee, Konstantinov, and the chairman of the district executive committee, Bulava (he sends a copy to the regional committee to Stroganov and to the regional executive committee to Alekseev) regarding the strengthening of grain procurements. Molotov believes that this requires the following.

First, to understand the tactics of the class enemy in the countryside, where “agents of the kulaks have climbed into many collective farm cracks and holes and skillfully pretend to be “friends” of collective farmers, crawling into the boards, and sometimes choosing for themselves the posts of accountants and supply managers, and the criminal “work” of these The false friends who have clung to the collective farms are greatly facilitated by the opportunistic blindness and spinelessness of some communists.”

Secondly, to direct the spearhead of political work “to exposing in the collective farms all and any tricks and tricks of the agents and the henchmen who trail behind them, who are sophisticated in all sorts of deceptions of honest collective farmers and our workers’ and peasants’ state by stealing and plundering collective farm public grain, and open up to all these are the eyes of collective farmers.” Without this, Molotov believes, it is impossible to ensure the fulfillment of basic responsibilities to the state, which “must be placed by conscious collective farmers above other matters.”

Thirdly, do not rely on mass propaganda work, even if, in addition to it, a large number of resolutions on party penalties are adopted.

Fourthly, focus on practical work on grain procurement, establishing control over the threshing, transportation and storage of grain. Timely carry out measures of economic influence on collective farms, as well as firmly carry out repressive measures against “counter-revolutionary saboteurs of grain procurements.”

As we see, a whole system of measures has been outlined to put pressure on collective farms and the peasantry to fulfill the grain procurement plan. Molotov was especially determined against individual peasants. In mid-November, he writes to the Politburo: “The individual owner is cheating us greatly (in all procurements, in subscribing to a loan, in the market, etc.). We are putting pressure on the collective farms, and the individual farmer is getting out of it very well.

I propose, among other measures, to immediately (back in 1932) pass a law on a special tax for individual owners in the amount of 300 million rubles. This matter can be developed and carried out quickly. Comrade Grinko (People's Commissar of Finance - N.I.) agrees with this.

V. Molotov."

On November 16, 1932, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks accepted Molotov’s proposal to introduce a special tax on individual farmers in 1932. Since that time, a special tax on individual peasants was introduced annually, and its amount grew from year to year, although the number of individual peasant farms was steadily declining.

In general, pressure on individual farmers increased everywhere. Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I.M. Vareikis in a letter to I.V. Stalin on November 28, 1932 reported that individual farmers were given significantly larger grain procurement plans than were established for the regions. “Because of this, the procurement plans for the individual sector turned out to be significantly exaggerated and the bulk of the unprocured grain was kept by the individual owner, who puts up furious resistance - hides the grain in pits, among neighbors, squanders it, etc.” To fulfill the grain procurement plan, 12 thousand collective farm brigades were sent, not counting those authorized by the regional and district committees. Nevertheless, “we will not fulfill the grain procurement plan for the individual sector, and in some areas for the collective farm sector,” Vareikis wrote. In connection with the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on special measures taken regarding grain procurements in the Kuban, the regional committee of the Central Black Sea Region also took “a number of measures to clean up the collective farms and intensify the fight against the ravenous kulak elements.” However, Vareikis believed that it would be a mistake to transfer the implementation of such measures to the Central Black Sea Region, since the situation here is different - the overwhelming majority of collective farms have already fulfilled the grain procurement plan. Therefore, “the main task now is to approach the collective farm correctly and skillfully, to know its economy, to be aware of what is happening on the collective farm, and not to mechanically carry out certain measures or decisions on all collective farms that have not fulfilled the grain procurement plan.”

Vareikis’ letter contains a resolution: “To Molotov, Kaganovich (personally). Please read. I. Stalin."

In the spring of 1933, famine began in the southern regions of the Central Black Sea Region. Kaganovich’s attitude towards grain procurement is eloquently evidenced by his activities in the North Caucasus. As for Molotov, it is not without interest to cite the controversy between him and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine M.M. Khataevich.

Khataevich wrote in a brochure prepared for publication that only marketable bread should be procured, and not bread in general. This caused sharp criticism from Molotov, who believed that grain should be taken from the village at any cost and first of all. In this regard, Khataevich, in a letter to Molotov in mid-November 1932, wrote: “I agree that in the current conditions, the conditions of the struggle for bread in Ukraine this year, it was wrong on my part to leave such a place in the brochure, because in order to feed Now, immediately the working class and the Red Army, we will have to take any grain from collective farms and anywhere, regardless of whether it is marketable or non-commodity (emphasis added - N.I.).

But if we raise the question of grain procurements in general, then I continue to consider the wording I gave on page 7 of the brochure to be correct. I believe that we should stock marketable grain on collective farms, and not bread in general. The struggle for bread must mean not only obtaining the bread that has already been produced, but also increasing the production of bread. And in order for grain production to increase in accordance with the needs and requirements of the proletarian state, we must ensure that the basic production and consumer needs of collective farms and collective farmers are satisfied, otherwise they will not sow and expand production.”

Rudzutak and Kosior adhered to approximately the same opinion when telegraphing Stalin (January-March 1932) about planning grain procurements.

“It seems to me,” continued Khataevich, “that this was the basis for the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of May 6 this year. g., which announced a slight reduction in grain procurement plans and the collective farm trade in grain.

Until now, in all the places and cases where I had to organize and carry out grain procurements, I proceeded precisely from this position and am deeply convinced that, given the general formulation of the question of grain procurements, it is impossible to approach the struggle for grain.

The formula “collective farms for the proletarian state, and not the proletarian state for collective farms” is more than indisputable for me. But on collective farms there are also collective farmers, peasants - yesterday’s individual farmers who can turn away from collective farms and give up on them if we do not provide them with the necessary interest in collective farm production. The working class and its party must subjugate and lead the peasantry, especially the collective farm peasantry, but we must achieve this, first of all, through measures of the correct Leninist policy in relation to the peasantry, calculated and built on ensuring the side of the collective farm peasantry, its advanced part in particular, due support for the proletarian state...

If, in your opinion, there is opportunism in what I have written here, then you should then classify me as an incorrigible opportunist.

With com. Hello.

M. Khataevich"

This was followed by Molotov’s response (from Kharkov):

“Comrade Khataevich!

I started to write a response to your letter, but I don’t have time and therefore I limit myself to a few lines.

Your position is fundamentally wrong, non-Bolshevik. It is impossible for a Bolshevik to push the satisfaction of needs - minimal needs, according to a decision strictly and repeatedly verified by the party - the needs of the state to tenth and even second place, to the satisfaction of these needs from collective farms and other “backlogs”.

The Bolshevik, having thought through and checked their size and the situation as a whole, must prioritize meeting the needs of the proletarian state.

On the other hand, one must not go to the opposite opportunistic extreme: “take any grain anywhere, without regard, etc.” This position is also non-Bolshevik and stems from despair, for which we have no grounds.

So, you need to correct your mistake, not insist on it and conduct your work in a Bolshevik way, for which you have a lot of evidence.

From comrade Hello.

V. Molotov."

Khataevich was also under pressure from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, and he himself was forced to make a proposal: “In view of some unsatisfactory formulations in Khataevich’s brochure on grain procurements, withdraw it from circulation until Khataevich makes the necessary corrections to it.” After making corrections, invite the members of the Politburo to review and only then publish - "-".

Of course, neither Khataevich, nor Kosior, nor other leaders of party organizations were opponents or opposition to the Stalinist leadership (they themselves were part of it), but since they directly carried out Stalinist policies and knew better the attitude of both the peasantry and grassroots workers to the activities of the Center, then they were forced to somehow adjust this policy so as not to lead to an all-peasant uprising (as happened in the spring of 1930). They turned to the Politburo and Stalin with a request to reduce grain procurement plans, since almost all the grain was confiscated and famine began.

The repressions acquired unprecedented proportions. In November and five days of December 1932 alone, Kosior reports to Stalin, in Ukraine, in connection with grain procurements, the GPU authorities arrested 1,230 people, including 340 collective farm chairmen, 750 board members, 140 accountants. In addition, 140 foremen, 265 supply managers and weighers, and 195 other collective farm workers were arrested. In total, 1,830 people were thus arrested. By decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) and the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine, six large villages were included on the “black board” and by resolutions of the regional executive committee - up to 400 collective farms.

Repression was also applied to communists who did not zealously carry out the directives of the Center - 327 people were put on trial. And yet, Ukraine was unable to fulfill the grain procurement plan - on December 8, 1932, another 94 million poods remained to be procured.

Khataevich, in a letter to Stalin on December 27, explains the reason for the unsatisfactory progress of grain procurements in Ukraine. In particular, he writes about poor planning of grain procurements: “Despite repeated corrections of plans, numerous errors that occurred in planning procurements, in the form of giving unrealistic, impossible tasks to some regions, and easy tasks to others (?), the errors have not yet been corrected .

I consider it necessary to say that the grain procurement plan of 425 million poods (after a reduction - 315 million), which Ukraine initially received, did not contribute to the creation of proper mobilization in the struggle for grain. Many were convinced of its impracticability and did nothing. If Ukraine had received 350 million at the beginning, it would have been fulfilled sooner.”

Stalin writes in the letter: “Interesting,” and Molotov: “Comrade Khataevich is deepening his false attitude.”

However, nothing changes. On the contrary, pressure and repression are intensifying. Stalin is implacable. On December 10, 1932, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Kosior’s report was heard. The progress of grain procurements is considered unsatisfactory. Kaganovich and Postyshev are invited to “immediately go to Ukraine to the aid of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, sit down in decisive areas as specially authorized persons... and take all necessary organizational and administrative measures to carry out grain procurements.” The resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine on collective farm funds was repealed, and now seed funds began to be exported as part of grain procurements.

On December 14, a resolution was issued by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on grain procurements in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and the Western region, which obliges the party bodies of these regions to “resolutely eradicate these counter-revolutionary elements (“saboteurs of grain procurements.” - N.I.) through arrests , imprisonment in a concentration camp for a long period of time, without stopping to apply capital punishment to the most malicious of them." Among the "worst enemies of the party, the working class and the collective farm peasantry" are now also included "saboteurs of grain procurements with a party card in their pocket, deceiving the state and failing tasks of the party and government... In relation to these degenerates, enemies of Soviet power and collective farms, who still have a party card, the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars oblige to apply severe repressions, sentencing to 5-10 years of imprisonment in a concentration camp, and under certain conditions - execution.”

All communists expelled for disrupting grain procurements were subject to deportation to the northern regions along with the kulaks.

Kaganovich, sent to Ukraine, on December 22, 1932, informs Stalin that seven representatives of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U and three representatives of the regional party committees for grain procurements have been removed, and the files on their presence in the party have been transferred to the Central Control Commission of the CP(b)U. “Today,” Kaganovich reports, “they decided to arrest and put on trial, with publication in the press, the four most maliciously disrupting grain procurement directors of state farms.”

Stalin writes on Kaganovich’s telegram: “Good!”

Two days later, on December 24, the Chairman of the GPU of Ukraine V.A. Balitsky telegraphs from Odessa to Yagoda that he and Kaganovich consider it necessary to expel 500 families from the Odessa region to the North. Kosior, in turn, asks Stalin to allow the eviction of another 300 families from the Chernigov region. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on December 26 and 31 agrees to repressive measures

The “experience” of the North Caucasus and Ukraine is instantly adopted. And now in the Lower Volga, in the Nizhne-Chirsky district, 25% of collective farms are listed on the “black board”. Stalin and Molotov sent a telegram to the Stalingrad region of the Lower Volga region, in which they demand that the “criminals” responsible for stopping the delivery of grain (due to hunger) should be “immediately judged and given 5, preferably 10 years in prison.”

With great tension, the beginning of December 1932. Siberia fulfills the grain procurement plan by 81.5%. The remainder of the regional committee secretary R.I. Eikhe asks I.V. Stalin to postpone until March 1, 1933. The request is rejected: as an “extreme measures" Stalin and Molotov agree to a postponement until February 1. "We place responsibility," the telegram says, "on Eikhe, Gryadinsky (chairman of the regional executive committee - N.I.) and authorize them to apply all measures of repression that they find necessary to apply"40 .

December 5, 1932 Stalin is informed that the state farms of the Urals cannot fulfill the grain procurement plan due to the low harvest (3.65 c/ha). To fulfill the plan, everything is mobilized there: seeds are exported, straw is threshed, etc. Stalin and Molotov immediately telegraphed to Sverdlovsk: “We consider Mirzoyan’s encryption about the non-fulfillment of the plan by state farms to be unconvincing: formally bureaucratic. The regional leadership cannot escape responsibility for the failure of state farms to comply with the plan. The Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee oblige you to inform Moscow of the names of the directors of lagging state farms, and to announce to the directors on behalf of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee that if the plan is not fulfilled, they will be arrested as deceivers, saboteurs and enemies of the Soviet state, just as a number of directors of Western Siberia and Ukraine have been arrested , North Caucasus. Announce to the directors that a party card will not save them from arrest, that an enemy with a party card deserves greater punishment than an enemy without a party card.”

At the end of 1932, Stalin, in a conversation with the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine and the Kharkov regional party committee R. Terekhov, who told him about the mass famine in Ukraine, said: “We were told that you, Comrade Terekhov, are a good speaker, it turns out that you a good storyteller - they composed such a fairy tale about famine, they thought to intimidate us, but it won’t work! Isn’t it better for you to leave the post of secretary of the regional committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks and go to work for the Writers’ Union; You will write fairy tales, and fools will read.” Two weeks later, Terekhov was fired from his job.

Punitive measures at the state level could not but affect the methods of grain procurement: all the grain was taken away from collective farmers and individual farmers, as in the years of surplus appropriation, with the difference, however, that now everything was taken from the notoriously poor. People were plump from hunger, dying...

The famine began in the winter of 1932 and became widespread in the spring of 1933, when tens of millions were already starving. On March 15, 1933, Kosior wrote in a letter to Stalin: “In total, according to the registration of the GPU in Ukraine, 103 regions are affected by famine. It is unlikely that all these figures about the number of districts correctly reflect the state of affairs.” The head of the Kyiv regional department of the GPU, reporting on thousands of starving, swollen, and dead people, noted: “The given figures are significantly reduced, since the regional offices of the GPU do not keep records of the number of starving and swollen people, and the real number of deaths is often unknown to village councils.”

In the Vinnytsia region in the spring of 1933, approximately 121 thousand people were starving. In a letter from the secretary of the Bratslav district party committee to the regional committee we read: “Now we must openly say that starvation is taking place in most villages of our region, and in some villages, mortality from starvation has become widespread, especially in such villages: Skritskoye, Semenki, Zenkovtsy, Samchintsy, Silnitsy, Grabovitsy, Volchok, Marksovo, Vishkovtsy, Ostapkovtsy, etc. There are cases when a collective farmer goes into the field to work, lies down there and dies.”

Secretary of the Vinnytsia Regional Party Committee V.I. Chernyavsky reports to Kosior: “Recently the number of deaths has increased and the facts of cannibalism and corpse-eating do not stop. In some of the most famine-stricken villages, there are up to 10 deaths every day. In these villages, a large number of huts are boarded up, and in most huts the peasants lie flat and are not fit for any work due to their physical condition...

I ask that the issue of the food situation in our region be urgently resolved in the minimum amounts that I am writing about.”

Kosior was unlikely to be able to really help. After all, Stalin stubbornly ignored the needs of starving Ukraine. True, later Postyshev managed to convince him to stop pumping out bread and leave 9 thousand poods of bread for the Vinnitsa region for 121 thousand starving people, i.e. one kilogram per person (?!).

In this regard, one can hardly agree with Prof. M. Tauger, who writes that the Soviet government, although it did not stop grain exports, “did try to alleviate the famine.” As an argument, he cites data that in 1933 Ukraine was provided with a seed loan in the amount of 320 thousand tons, and the North Caucasus - 240 thousand tons. In addition, Ukraine was allocated 80 thousand tons of grain for food. But, firstly, a seed loan is not help for the hungry, but concern for the future (1933) harvest, since Ukraine and the North Caucasus at that time were the main “breadbasket” of the country. If in the spring of 1933 they had not received (their own!) grain for sowing, then the entire population of the USSR - and not just the peasants - would have been doomed to starvation. Secondly, 80 thousand tons of food for Ukraine meant 3 kg of bread per person. What kind of “hunger relief” is this?

Stalin's leadership did nothing to prevent famine. Back in the summer of 1932, Molotov, returning from Ukraine, declared at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: “We are really facing the specter of famine, and, moreover, in rich grain-producing regions.” But the Politburo decided “to fulfill the approved grain procurement plan at all costs.”

Not only Ukraine and the North Caucasus, but also other areas were engulfed in famine. 1932-1933 - the most difficult period in the life of the nomads of Kazakhstan. Numerous documents acknowledge this.

“All the villages of the region are engulfed in a hunger strike,” we read in a telegram from Ush-Tobe dating back to the beginning of 1932. “Three villages near Balkhash have disintegrated. In the remaining six administrative villages there were 4,417 households, leaving 2,260, of which 63 percent are starving. The rest of the population is in dire need... In total, according to inaccurate data, at least 600 people died. The hungry eat the carrion of horses, the waste of the slaughterhouse.”

In the report of Kaz. The OGPU PP dated August 4, 1932 reports that in the Atbasar region, due to hunger, “massive cases of swelling and death are observed.” From April 1 to July 25, 111 deaths were recorded. “About 100 thousand farms of Kazakhs of nomadic regions that are still on the ground are gripped by famine. There are massive illnesses and deaths among the Kazakh population,” notes the note of the Council of People’s Commissars of Kazakh. ASSR.

In August 1932, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic U.D. Isaev pi

tells Stalin that in 10-12 regions of Central Kazakhstan there is a significant

part of the population is starving; in the spring of 1932, at least 10-15 thousand people died

century The total number of peasant farms in the region compared to 1931

decreased by 25%.

One of the reports from the political sector of the MTS People's Commissariat of Agriculture of Kazakhstan reports that mass migrations, high mortality of the Kazakh population, lack of bread for food and fodder for livestock are characteristic of the winter of 1932/33: “Collective farmers went to the mountains, sands, went to collect roots and seeds of wild plants herbs The remaining collective farmers could not work due to severe exhaustion and illness.”

to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: “According to local authorities, in Turgai and Batbakarin-

20-30 percent died out in the regions. population and most of the rest

population migrated. In the Chelkarsky district, in a number of village councils, it became extinct

30-35 percent population."

From the political report of the head of the political department of the Tamalinsky MTS (Lower Volga) dated June 4, 1933: “According to incomplete data, in the Tamalinsky region, due to insufficient nutrition, from January to May 25 of this year, 1,028 people became swollen, including 624 collective farmers. For the same 725 people died during this time.” In the collective farms of the MTS Burassky district of the same region, 495 people died in January-May 1933, and a total of 800 people died of hunger. In the collective farms of the Blagoveshchensk MTS of the Samoilovsky district (Lower Volga), 301 people died in just a month and a half (April - May 15). In the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans in 1932, the population decreased by 20,152 people, etc.

The head of the political department of the MTS of the Kamepkirsky district (Middle Volga) reports that in the spring and summer of 1933 on the collective farm “Zavety Ilyich” “from 4 to 6 people died every day from hunger, and in just four months 400 people died.”

The head of the political department of the Chernoerkovskaya MTS of the Slavyachsky district of the North Caucasus in one of his speeches says: “Individual, complete swelling, daily deaths of up to 150 people in one village and more.” In the area of ​​activity of the Plastunovskaya MTS in the spring of 1933, 1,300 people died of hunger; in the village of Staronizhnesteblievskaya for three months of winter-spring 1933 - 873 people; in the Dolzhanskaya MTS zone in January-May 1933 - 435 people; in the village of Novo-Zolotovskoye - 140 people, etc.

In February 1933, Sholokhov wrote to Stalin that the Veshensky district “is heading towards disaster... A large number of people are plump. This is in February, but what will happen in April, May..."

At a time when tens of millions of people are starving, 18 million centners of grain are exported abroad - payment for foreign currency for industrialization. This bread could have saved millions of peasants from starvation.

Hundreds of thousands of peasants - hungry, poor - are leaving their native lands< в поисках куска хлеба. Но даже это решительно пресекается сталинским руководством. 22 января 1933 г. за подписью Сталина и Молотова рассылается директива партийным и советским организациям, органам ОГПУ ряда районов СССР, в которой отмечается: до ЦК ВКП(б) и СНК СССР дошли сведения, что на Украине и Кубани начался массовый выезд крестьян в ЦЧО, на Волгу, в Московскую и Западную области, в Белоруссию. «ЦК ВКП(б) и СНК СССР не сомневаются, что этот выезд крестьян, как и выезд из Украины в прошлом году, организован врагами Советской власти, эсерами и агентами Польши с целью агитации „через крестьян" в северных районах СССР против колхозов и вообще против Советской власти». В связи с этим органам власти и ОГПУ Украины и Северного Кавказа предписывается не допускать массового выезда крестьян в другие районы, а органам ОГПУ Московской, Западной, Центрально-Черноземной f областей, Белоруссии, Средней и Нижней Волги «немедля арестовывать пробравшихся на север „крестьян" Украины и Северного Кавказа и после того, как будут отобраны контрреволюционные элементы, водворять остальных на места их жительства»". Соответствующие указания даются и транспортным отделам ОГПУ.

By the beginning of March 1933, 219,460 people were detained, but even the OGPU authorities were forced to admit that the bulk of the detainees were peasants who went in search of bread. Of those detained, 186,588 people are returned, the rest are brought to justice.

In April 1933, when hunger reached its climax in the North Caucasus and grain procurements continued, Sholokhov wrote to Stalin about the tyranny that was being committed on the Don: the mass expulsion of collective farmers from their homes and the ban on accepting them at night, abuse and mockery of people, etc. .

“These are not isolated cases of bending,” continues Sholokhov, “this is a “method” of carrying out grain procurements legalized on a regional scale... If everything I described deserves the attention of the Central Committee, send genuine communists to the Veshensky district who would have the courage, regardless of the faces, to expose everyone through whose fault the collective farm economy of the region was fatally undermined, who would truly investigate and reveal not only those who applied disgusting “methods” of torture, beatings and abuse to the collective farmers, but also those who inspired this.” Stalin responds on May 6, 1933:

“Dear comrade. Sholokhov!

Both of your letters have been received, as you know. The assistance (food - N.I.) that was demanded has already been provided. To analyze the case, Comrade Shkiryatov will come to you in the Veshensky district, to whom I ask you to provide assistance.

This is true. But that’s not all, Comrade Sholokhov. The fact is that your letters make a somewhat one-sided impression. I want to write you a few words about this. I thanked you for your letters, since they reveal the sores of our party-Soviet work, reveal that sometimes our workers, wanting to curb the enemy, accidentally hit their friends and descend into sadism.

But this does not mean that I agree with you on everything. You see one side, you see well. But this is only one side of the matter. In order not to make mistakes in politics (your letters are not fiction, but typical politics), you need to look around, you need to be able to see the other side. And the other side is that the respected grain growers of your region (and not only your region) carried out “Italian” sabotage and were not averse to leaving the workers and the Red Army without bread. The fact that the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (no blood ), - this fact does not change the fact that respected grain growers were essentially waging a “quiet war” with Soviet power. A war of attrition, dear comrade. Sholokhov.

Of course, this circumstance in no way can justify the outrages that were committed, as you assure us, by our employees. And those responsible for these outrages must suffer due punishment. But it is still clear as day that respected grain growers are not such harmless people as they might seem from afar.

Well, all the best and I shake your hand.

Your Stalin."

And this was written in response to Sholokhov’s message that in the area “there are plump and dying people”, people “ate not only fresh carrion, but also shot glander horses, and dogs, and cats, and even boiled in a lard boiler, devoid of any nutritional value.” carrion"55. True, according to Sholokhov’s letter and the results of Shkiryatov’s inspection (the same one who was a member of the Kaganovich commission and took part in the development of a cruel resolution on grain procurements in the North Caucasus dated November 4, 1932), a resolution was adopted on July 4, 1933 by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ), which admitted “excesses” in grain procurements in the Veshensky district. But they confessed in such a way that they were actually justified. “The Central Committee believes,” the resolution said, “that the completely correct and absolutely necessary policy of putting pressure on collective farmers sabotaging grain procurements was distorted and compromised in the Veshensky district due to the lack of sufficient control on the part of the regional committee.” The perpetrators of the abuses against the peasants received mild punishment: the regional committee was pointed out for “insufficient control over the actions of its representatives and authorized representatives”; Second Secretary of the Regional Committee Zimin was relieved of his work; the initiator of the excesses, secretary of the Rostov city party committee Ovchinnikov, was severely reprimanded and removed from work with a one-year ban on working in the village; district workers Plotkin and Pashinsky were also severely reprimanded, “prohibiting them from working in the Veshensky district.”

Meanwhile, Zimin, having arrived in the Veshensky district, not only did not stop the outrages that were happening, but began to “wind up and spur” the authorized and district workers “in the spirit of further carrying out excesses”56. Stalin did not raise his hand against the executors of his will.

Stalin's response to Sholokhov and the Central Committee resolution of July 4, 1933 clearly illustrate the attitude of the Stalinist leadership towards the peasantry - collective farmers and individual farmers. Indicative in this sense is Stalin’s speech at the joint meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on November 27, 1932 in connection with grain procurements. He said: “Our rural and regional communists idealize collective farms too much. They often think that since the collective farm is a socialist form of economy, then everything is given and there can be nothing anti-Soviet or sabotage in collective farms, and if there are facts of sabotage and anti-Soviet phenomena, then we must ignore these facts, because in relation to collective farms it is possible act only by persuasion, and methods of coercion are not applicable to individual collective farms and collective farmers... It would be stupid if the communists, based on the fact that collective farms are a socialist form of economy, did not respond to the blow of these individual collective farmers and collective farmers with a crushing blow.”5

And this line was firmly implemented by the Stalinist leadership. Repressions against collective farms, collective farmers and individual farmers, the cruel law of August 7, 1932, written by Stalin - all these are links in one chain. The law of August 7 introduced “as a measure of judicial repression for theft (theft) of collective farm and cooperative property, the highest measure of social protection - execution with confiscation of all property and, in mitigating circumstances, replacement with imprisonment for a term of at least 10 years with confiscation of all property"5" Amnesty for cases of this kind was prohibited.

The real meaning of this terrible law (which established lawlessness!) was quite clear to contemporaries: “for every ear of ear cut, a person should be shot.” This is how he was assessed by the “Smirnov-Tolmachev-Eismont group”, whose members - old Bolsheviks - were expelled from the party and subsequently repressed. They believed that “the failures of grain procurements in the North Caucasus region and Ukraine are explained by old mistakes in agriculture in carrying out collectivization,” and A.P. Smirnov directly stated: “Bastards, scoundrels, bastards, what they have brought the countries to, God knows, what they have sunk to, what the tsarist government has not sunk to.”

N.V. Krylenko, who was at that time the People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR, in January 1933, at the Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, presented the following data on the first results of the application of the law for five less than five months of 1932: “If we take the total number of cases and persons, convicted under the law on August 7, then, at first glance, we seem to have a rather impressive figure - 54,645 people... But as soon as you raise the question of what kind of repression was used here, you will see the following picture... the use of higher a measure that was one of the main measures to hit the hangers-on of this class enemy, those who follow him - it was applied by the court of first instance in only 2 cases to date. It was implemented in much smaller quantities - hardly in 1,000 cases.” Subsequently himself illegally repressed, Krylenko brought down his anger on those judges who “do not raise their hands” -^.

An analysis of 20 thousand cases shows that among those convicted, 83% were collective farmers and individual peasants, and only 15% were “wealthy kulak elements.” This means that the spearhead of this inhumane law was directed against peasants who, while saving children from starvation, were forced to bring home from the current or field a kilogram or two of grain that they themselves had grown.

Famine 1932-1933 claimed a lot of human lives. Unfortunately, there is no direct data on the number of deaths. But indirect information also allows us to judge the scale of the human tragedy that took place in the early 30s in the USSR due to the fault of the Stalinist leadership. The population of the USSR, for example, from the autumn of 1932 to April 1933 decreased by 7.7 million people, mainly due to peasants.

Interesting in this regard is the memorandum of the deputy head of the population and health sector of the TsUNKHU of the USSR State Planning Committee dated June 7, 1934, from which it follows that the population of Ukraine and the North Caucasus as of January 1, 1933 decreased by 2.4 million people. But the winter of 1933 was not the most critical period; it was the spring of 1933, when famine in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, the southern regions of the Central Black Sea Region and the Urals became catastrophically widespread. According to Ukrainian scientists, at least 4 million people died of hunger in Ukraine; in Kazakhstan, between 1 and 2 million people died; in the North Caucasus, Volga region, Central Black Sea region, Western Siberia and the Urals - 2-3 million, etc. Thus, we can consider that the famine of 1932-1933. claimed 7-8 million human lives.

Forced collectivization and the liquidation of the economically strong and capable population of the village destroyed the productive forces of agriculture and turned the peasants not even into hired workers, but actually into serfs who received almost nothing for their labor. Unlike Tsarist serfdom, when the peasants largely belonged to the landowner, they were now serfs of a totalitarian state.

Collective farms were that organizational form of enslavement of peasants, which, on the one hand, allowed the state to tie them to the land, and on the other, facilitated the seizure of bread and other agricultural products from the village. In January 1933, after the failure of grain procurements, in conditions of mass hunger, the party and state leadership introduced mandatory supplies of collective farm products (per-hectare principle), which had the force of law. Prices for agricultural products, and primarily for grain, were set symbolic - 10-12 times lower than market prices. Although this somewhat streamlined grain procurements, it did not significantly change the situation of the peasants - almost all grain was still confiscated from the villages.

By the beginning of the 30s, it was clear to the leadership of the USSR that it would not be possible to avoid a major war with the imperialist states. Stalin wrote about this in the article “On the tasks of business executives” like this: We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do this or we will be crushed.”

Having set the task of industrializing the country in 10 years, the leadership of the USSR was forced to accelerate the collectivization of the peasantry.
If initially, according to the collectivization plan, only 2% of peasant farms should have been collectivized by 1933, then according to the accelerated collectivization plan, collectivization in the main grain-producing regions of the USSR should have been completed in a year or two, that is, by 1931-1932.

By collectivizing peasants, Stalin sought to enlarge farms. It was relatively easy to seize produce from large farms. Agricultural products were the main export, providing currency for accelerated industrialization. And most importantly, only large, mechanized farms in the climatic conditions of our country could produce marketable grain.

The main problem of Russian peasants was weather and climatic conditions, a short warm season, and, consequently, the high burden of agricultural labor.

Chayanov, through a thorough statistical analysis of labor effort, income and expenses of peasant farms, proved that excessive labor can become a significant limiter on the growth of labor duration and productivity.

The law of A.V. Chayanov, if expressed in simple language, says that the burden of labor prevents the peasant from increasing labor productivity, and when prices for his products rise, he prefers to curtail production.

In accordance with Chayanov's law, under the NEP the average peasant began to eat better than in tsarist times, but practically stopped producing marketable grain. During the NEP, peasants began to consume 30 kg of meat per year, although before the revolution they consumed 16 kg per year.

This indicated that a significant part of the grain was redirected from supplies to the city to improve their own nutrition. By 1930, small-scale production had reached its maximum.

According to various sources, from 79 to 84 million tons of grain were harvested (in 1914, together with the Polish provinces, 77 million tons).

The NEP allowed a slight increase in agricultural production, but the production of commercial grain decreased by half. Previously, it was provided mainly by large landowner farms that were liquidated during the revolution.

The shortage of marketable grain gave rise to the idea of ​​consolidating agricultural production through collectivization, which, in the geopolitical conditions of that time, became a necessary necessity, and was taken up with Bolshevik inflexibility.

For example, by October 1, 1931, collectivization in the Ukrainian SSR covered 72% of arable land and 68% of peasant farms. More than 300 thousand “kulaks” were expelled outside the Ukrainian SSR.

As a result of the restructuring of the economic activities of peasants associated with collectivization, a catastrophic decline in the level of agricultural technology occurred.

Several objective factors of that time worked to reduce agricultural technology. Perhaps the main thing is the loss of incentive to work hard, as the peasant’s work has always been during the “suffering”.

In the fall of 1931, more than 2 million hectares of winter crops were not sown, and losses from the 1931 harvest were estimated at up to 200 million poods; threshing in a number of areas took place until March 1932.
In a number of areas, seed material was submitted to the grain procurement plan. Most collective farms did not pay the collective farmers for workdays, or these payments were meager.

Labor activity fell even more: “they’ll take it away anyway,” and food prices in the cooperative network became 3-7 times higher than in neighboring republics. This led to a mass exodus of the working population “to buy bread.” In a number of collective farms, from 80 to 100% of able-bodied men left.

Forced industrialization led to a much larger outflow of people to cities and industrial areas than expected. The population of cities grew by 2.5 - 3 million per year, and the overwhelming majority of this increase was due to the most able-bodied men of the village.

In addition, the number of seasonal workers who did not live in cities permanently, but went there for a while in search of work, reached 4-5 million. The shortage of labor has noticeably worsened the quality of agricultural work.

In Ukraine, one of the important factors was the sharp reduction in the number of oxen, used as the main tax, during the process of collectivization. Peasants slaughtered livestock for meat in anticipation of their socialization.

Due to the growth of the urban population and the increased shortage of grain, the procurement of food resources for industrial centers began to be carried out at the expense of feed grain. In 1932, half as much grain was available for livestock feed as in 1930.
As a result, in the winter of 1931/32 there was the most dramatic reduction in the number of working and productive livestock since the beginning of collectivization.

6.6 million horses died - a quarter of the remaining draft animals; the rest of the livestock was extremely exhausted. The total number of horses decreased in the USSR from 32.1 million in 1928 to 17.3 million in 1933.

By the spring sowing of 1932, agriculture in the zones of “complete collectivization” came virtually without draft animals, and there was nothing to feed the socialized livestock.
Spring sowing was carried out in a number of areas manually, or plowed with cows.

So, by the beginning of the spring sowing season of 1932, the village approached a serious lack of draft power and a sharply deteriorated quality of labor resources. At the same time, the dream of “ploughing the land with tractors” was still a dream. The total power of tractors reached the figure planned for 1933 only seven years later; combine harvesters were just beginning to be used

A decrease in the incentive to work, a drop in the number of working and productive livestock, and spontaneous migration of the rural population predetermined a sharp decline in the quality of basic agricultural work.
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As a result, the fields sown with grain in 1932 in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and other areas were overgrown with weeds. But the peasants, herded into newly created collective farms, and having already had experience “they will take it away anyway,” were in no hurry to show miracles of labor enthusiasm.

Even parts of the Red Army were sent to weeding work. But this did not save, and with a fairly tolerable biological harvest in 1931/32, sufficient to prevent mass starvation, grain losses during harvesting grew to unprecedented proportions.

If in 1931, according to the NK RKI, about 20% of the gross grain harvest was lost during harvesting, then in 1932 the losses were even greater. In Ukraine, up to 40% of the harvest remained standing; in the Lower and Middle Volga, losses reached 35.6% of the total gross grain harvest.

By the spring of 1932, severe food shortages began to appear in the main grain-producing areas

In the spring and early summer of 1932, in a number of areas, starving collective farmers and individual farmers mowed down unripe winter crops, dug up planted potatoes, etc.
Part of the seed aid provided to the Ukrainian SSR by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March-June was used as food.

As of May 15, 1932, according to Pravda, 42% of the total sown area was sown.
By the beginning of the harvesting campaign in July 1932, more than 2.2 million hectares of spring crops were not sown in Ukraine, 2 million hectares of winter crops were not sown, and 0.8 million hectares were frozen.

The American historian Tauger, who studied the causes of the 1933 famine, believes that the crop failure was caused by an unusual combination of a set of reasons, among which drought played a minimal role, but the main role was played by plant diseases, an unusually wide spread of pests and grain shortages associated with the drought of 1931, rains in time of sowing and harvesting grain.

Whether it was natural reasons or the low level of agricultural technology due to the transition period of the formation of the collective farm system, the country was threatened with a sharp drop in the gross grain harvest.

Trying to rectify the situation, by decree of May 6, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks lowered the grain procurement plan for the year. In order to stimulate the growth of grain production, the grain procurement plan was reduced from 22.4 million tons to 18.1 million, which is only a little more than a quarter of the predicted harvest.

But the grain yield forecasts that existed at that time, based on their biological productivity, significantly overestimated the actual indicators.

Thus, the grain procurement plan in 1932 was drawn up based on preliminary data about a higher harvest (in reality it turned out to be two to three times lower). And the party and administrative leadership of the country, after lowering the grain procurement plan, demanded strict adherence to the plan.

Harvesting in a number of areas was carried out ineffectively and belatedly, the ears stopped growing, crumbled, stacking was not carried out, loaf warmers were used without grain catchers, which further increased considerable grain losses.
The intensity of harvesting and threshing of the 1932 harvest was extremely low - “they will take it away anyway.”

In the fall of 1932, it became clear that in the main grain-producing regions the grain procurement plan was catastrophically not being fulfilled, which threatened the urban population with starvation and thwarted plans for accelerated industrialization.
So in Ukraine, at the beginning of October, only 35.3% of the plan was fulfilled.
The emergency measures taken to speed up the procurement helped little. By the end of October, only 39% of the annual plan had been fulfilled.

Expecting, as last year, non-payment of workdays, collective farm members began to steal grain en masse. In many collective farms, advances in kind were issued that significantly exceeded the established norms and inflated standards for public catering were indicated. Thus, the collective farm management circumvented the norm for the distribution of income only after the plans were fulfilled.

On November 5, in order to strengthen the struggle for grain, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) proposes to the People's Commissariat of Justice, regional and district committees, along with the deployment of broad mass work, to ensure a decisive increase in assistance to grain procurements from the justice authorities.

It was necessary to oblige the judicial authorities to consider cases of grain procurements out of turn, as a rule, in mobile sessions on the spot with the use of severe repressions, while ensuring a differentiated approach to individual social groups, applying especially harsh measures to speculators and grain resellers.

In pursuance of the decision, a decree was issued, which stated the need to establish special supervision by prosecutors over the work of administrative bodies regarding the use of fines in relation to farms that fall far behind the grain delivery plan.

On November 18, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine adopted a new tough resolution, which plans to send 800 communist workers to villages where “kulak sabotage and disorganization of party work have become most acute.” https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Resolution_of_the_Politburo_of_the_Central_KP_KP (b) U_18_November_1932_"On_measures_to_strengthen_grain procurements"

The resolution outlines possible repressive measures against collective farms and individual farmers who do not fulfill grain procurement plans. Among them: 1. Prohibition of the creation of natural funds on collective farms that do not fulfill the procurement plan

2. A ban on the issuance of advances in kind on all collective farms that are unsatisfactorily fulfilling the grain procurement plan, with the immediate return of illegally issued grain in advance.

3. Confiscation of bread stolen from collective farms, from various kinds of grabbers and loafers who do not have workdays, but have reserves of grain.

4. To bring to court, as plunderers of state and public property, storekeepers, accountants, bookkeepers, supply managers and weighers who hide grain from accounting and compile false accounting data in order to facilitate theft and embezzlement.

5. The import and sale of all manufactured goods, without exception, must be stopped in districts and individual villages, especially those that perform grain procurements unsatisfactorily.

After the release of this decree, excesses began in the localities with its implementation, and on November 29, the Politburo of the Central Committee (b) U issued a decree indicating the inadmissibility of excesses. (Annex 1)

Despite the adopted resolutions, both the delivery plan and
threshing of bread was significantly delayed. According to data as of December 1, 1932, in Ukraine, on an area of ​​725 thousand hectares, grains are not threshed.

Therefore, although the total volume of grain exports from the village through all channels (procurement, purchases at market prices, collective farm market) decreased in 1932–1933 by approximately 20% compared to previous years, due to low harvests, and with such exports Cases of virtually complete confiscation of collected grain from peasants were practiced. Famine began in areas of mass collectivization.

The question of the number of victims of the famine of 1932-1933 became the arena of a manipulative struggle, during which anti-Soviet activists in Russia and the entire post-Soviet space sought to increase the number of “victims of Stalinism” as much as possible. Ukrainian nationalists played a special role in these manipulations.

The theme of the mass famine of 1932-1933 in the Ukrainian SSR actually became the basis of the ideological policy of the leadership of post-Soviet Ukraine. Monuments to victims of the famine, museums and exhibitions dedicated to the tragedy of the 1930s were opened throughout Ukraine.
Exhibition displays sometimes became scandalous due to obvious manipulations with historical material (Appendix 3)

In 2006, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine declared the Holodomor a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out with the aim of “suppressing the national liberation aspirations of Ukrainians and preventing the construction of an independent Ukrainian state.”

In the Russian Federation, anti-Soviet forces widely used the famine of 1932-33 as a weighty argument for the justice of transferring the country to capitalism. During Medvedev's presidency, the State Duma adopted a resolution condemning the actions of the Soviet authorities who organized the famine of 1932-33.

The resolution states:
“As a result of the famine caused by forced collectivization, many regions of the RSFSR, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus suffered. The peoples of the USSR paid a huge price for industrialization... About 7 million people died in the USSR from hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition in 1932-1933.”

Almost the same number of deaths from the famine of 1932-33 was given by Goebbels propaganda during the Second World War

The famous Russian historian-archivist, V. Tsaplin, who headed the Russian State Archive of Economics, calls the figure 3.8 million people

In the school textbook on Russian history, in use since 2011, edited by Sakharov, the total number of famine victims is determined to be 3 million people. It also states that 1.5 million people died of hunger in Ukraine

The venerable ethnographer Professor Urlanis, in his calculations of losses from famine in the USSR in the early 1930s, gives a figure of 2.7 million

According to V. Kozhinov’s calculations, collectivization and famine led to the fact that in 1929–1933 the mortality rate in the country exceeded the mortality rate in the previous five years of NEP (1924–1928) by one and a half times. It must be said that a similar change in mortality rates in Russia took place starting in 1994 compared to the second half of the 80s.

According to Doctor of Historical Sciences Elena Osokina, the number of registered deaths exceeded the number of registered births, in particular, in the European part of the USSR as a whole - by 1975 thousand, and in the Ukrainian SSR - by 1459 thousand.

If we are based on the results of the All-Union Census of 1937 and recognize the natural mortality rate in Ukraine in 1933 as the average natural mortality rate for the years 1927-30, when there was no famine (524 thousand per year), then with a birth rate in 1933 of 621 years, in Ukraine there was natural population growth equal to 97 thousand. This is five times less than the average increase in the previous three years

It follows that 388 thousand people died from famine.

Materials “On the state of population registration of the Ukrainian SSR” for 1933 give 470,685 births and 1,850,256 deaths. That is, the number of residents decreased due to famine by almost 1,380 thousand people.

Zemskov gives approximately the same figure for Ukraine in his famous work “On the Question of the Scale of Repression in the USSR.”

The Institute of National Memory of Ukraine, naming the increasing number of Holodomor victims every year, began collecting a martyrology, “Books of Memory,” of all those who died of hunger. Requests were sent to all settlements of Ukraine about the number of deaths during the Holodomor and their national composition.

It was possible to collect the names of 882,510 citizens who died in those years. But, to the disappointment of the initiators, among those people whom the current Ukrainian government is trying to present as victims of the famine of the 30s, not the largest part actually died from hunger or malnutrition. A significant part of the deaths were from domestic causes: accidents, poisonings, criminal murders.

This is described in detail in the article by Vladimir Kornilov “Holodomor. Falsification on a national scale." In it, he analyzed data from the “Books of Memory” published by the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine.

The authors of the regional “Books of Memory”, out of bureaucratic zeal, entered into the registers all the dead and deceased from January 1, 1932 to December 31, 1933, regardless of the cause of death, sometimes duplicating some names, but were unable to collect more than 882,510 victims, which is quite comparable to the annual (!) mortality rate in modern Ukraine.
While, increasing every year, the official number of “Holodomor victims” reaches 15 million.

The situation is even worse with evidence of the “genocide of the Ukrainian people.” If we analyze the data for those cities of Central and Southern Ukraine, where local archivists decided to meticulously approach the matter and not hide the nationality column, which is “inconvenient” for the east of Ukraine.

For example, the compilers of the “Book of Memory” classified 1,467 people as “victims of the Holodomor” in the city of Berdyansk. Nationalities are indicated on the cards of 1,184 of them. Of these, 71% were ethnic Russians, 13% were Ukrainians, 16% were representatives of other ethnic groups.

As for villages and towns, you can find different numbers there. For example, data for the Novovasilievsky Council of the same Zaporozhye region: of the 41 “Holodomor victims” whose nationalities were indicated, 39 were Russian, 1 was Ukrainian (2-day-old Anna Chernova died with a diagnosis of “erysipelas,” which can hardly be attributed to hunger ) and 1 – Bulgarian (cause of death – “burnt”). And here is the data for the village of Vyacheslavka in the same region: of the 49 deaths with the specified nationality, 46 were Bulgarians, 1 each was Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan. In Friedrichfeld, of the 28 “victims of the Holodomor,” one hundred percent are Germans.

Well, the lion’s share of the “Holodomor victims,” of course, came from the most populated industrial eastern regions. There were especially many of them among the miners. Absolutely all deaths from injuries received in production in Donbass or in mines are also attributed by the compilers of the “Book of Memory” to the results of hunger.

The idea of ​​compiling “Books of Memory,” which obliged regional officials to search for documents related to the “Holodomor,” led to an effect that the initiators of the campaign did not expect.

Examining the documents that local executive officials included in the regional “Books of Memory of Holodomor Victims,” you do not find a single document confirming the thesis that then, in the 30s, the authorities took actions the purpose of which was to deliberately cause famine, and even more so completely exterminate the Ukrainian or any other ethnic group on the territory of Ukraine.

The authorities of that time - often on direct orders from Moscow - made sometimes belated, sometimes clumsy, but sincere and persistent efforts to overcome the tragedy and save people's lives. And this in no way fits into the concepts of modern falsifiers of history.

Annex 1
Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee (b) U dated November 29 “On the progress of implementation of Politburo resolutions of October 30 and November 18”,
1. The resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) U on funds in local collective farms is being simplified and distorted. The Central Committee once again warns that the application of this decision is a matter that requires great flexibility and knowledge of the actual situation on the collective farms.

Simply and mechanically transporting all funds to grain procurement is completely wrong and unacceptable. This is especially wrong with regard to the seed fund. The seizure of collective farm funds and their inspection should not be carried out indiscriminately, not everywhere. It is necessary to skillfully select collective farms in such a way that abuses and hidden grain are really discovered there.

A more limited number of inspections, but inspections that yield serious results, exposing saboteurs, kulaks, their accomplices, and decisive reprisal against them will put much more pressure on other collective farms, where the inspection has not yet been carried out, than a hasty, unprepared inspection of a large number of collective farms with insignificant results .

It is necessary to apply various forms and methods of this verification, individualizing each collective farm. In a number of cases, it is more profitable to use a hidden verification of funds without informing the collective farm about the verification. Where it is known that the check will not give serious results and is not beneficial to us, it is better to refuse it in advance.

The removal of at least part of the seed material should be allowed only in particularly exceptional cases, with the permission of the regional party committees and with the simultaneous adoption of measures that actually ensure the replenishment of this fund from other intra-collective farm sources.

For the unauthorized removal of at least part of the seed fund, the regional committees in relation to the PKK, and the PKK in relation to their authorized representatives, must apply strict penalties and immediately correct the mistakes made.

2. In the application of repression both to individual farmers, and especially against collective farms and collective farmers, in many regions they are already straying into mechanical and indiscriminate use, counting on the fact that the use of naked repression itself should provide bread. This is incorrect and certainly harmful practice.

Not a single repression, without the simultaneous deployment of political and organizational work, can give the result we need. While well-calculated repressions applied to skillfully selected collective farms, repressions carried through to the end, accompanied by appropriate party-mass work, give the desired result not only in those collective farms where they are applied, but also in neighboring collective farms that do not fulfill the plan.

Many grassroots workers believe that the use of repression frees them from the need to carry out mass work or makes it easier for them to do this work. Just the opposite. It is the use of repression as a last resort that makes our party work more difficult.

If we, taking advantage of the repression applied to the collective farm as a whole, to the directors or to the accountants and other officials of the collective farm, do not achieve the consolidation of our forces on the collective farm, do not achieve the unity of the activists in this matter, do not achieve real approval of this repression from the mass of collective farmers, then we will not get the necessary results regarding the implementation of the grain procurement plan.

In cases where we are dealing with an exceptionally unscrupulous, stubborn collective farm that has fallen entirely under kulak influence, it is necessary first of all to ensure support for this repression from the surrounding collective farms, to achieve condemnation and to organize pressure on such a collective farm from the public opinion of the surrounding collective farms.

All of the above does not mean at all that enough repression has already been applied and that at present in the regions they have organized really serious and decisive pressure on the kulak elements and the organizers of the sabotage of grain procurements.

On the contrary, the repressive measures provided for by the resolutions of the Central Committee in relation to kulak elements both on collective farms and among individual peasants have yet to be used very little and have not given the necessary results due to indecision and hesitation where repression is undoubtedly necessary.

3. The fight against kulak influence on collective farms is, first of all, a fight against theft, against the concealment of grain on collective farms. This is a fight against those who deceive the state, who directly or indirectly work against grain procurements, who organize sabotage of grain procurements.

Meanwhile, completely insufficient attention is paid to this in the regions. Against thieves, grabbers and grain plunderers, against those who deceive the proletarian state and collective farmers, at the same time as using repression, we must raise the hatred of the collective farm masses, we must ensure that the entire mass of collective farmers brand these people as kulak agents and class enemies.

Appendix 2.
Discussion of falsifications of the Holodomor topic on social networks.

1. The falsifications of the “Holodomor” continue to this day and take the form of a spectacle that is no longer even criminal, but something like a procession of feeble-minded, backward clowns. So recently, the Security Service of Ukraine was caught falsifying the “Ukrainian Holocaust” exhibition held in Sevastopol - the photographs were passed off by scammers from the Ukrainian special services as photographs of the “Holodomor”.

Without blinking an eye, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Valentin Nalyvaichenko, admitted that “part” of the photographs used in Sevastopol at the “Holodomor” exhibition were not authentic, because supposedly in Soviet times all (!) photographs from 1932-33 from Ukraine were destroyed, and now “they can be found with great difficulty and only in private archives.” This suggests that even in the archives of the special services there is no photo evidence

2. Cases of well-confirmed hunger are characterized by nutritional dystrophy. Most patients do not die, but become emaciated and turn into living skeletons.

The famine of 1921-22 showed mass degeneration, the famine of 1946-47 - mass degeneration, the Leningrad siege famine - also mass degeneration, prisoners of Nazi concentration camps - total degeneration.

The swelling of the starving people of 1932-33 is recorded everywhere, while dystrophy is very, very rare. There is evidence that swelling indicates poisoning by grain stored in improper conditions.

The grain was hidden in earthen pits; the grain was not cleaned of fungi, which is why it spoiled, becoming poisonous and life-threatening. So, often, people died from grain poisoning by grain pests such as smut and rust.

The myth that most modern people blindly believe and is even voiced by many politicians is that the famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 was artificially provoked by the USSR government. Allegedly, the industrialization of the country was then carried out through the massive sale of grain and other food raw materials abroad. However, anyone can be convinced of the falsity of this statement if they are not too lazy to look at the reports of the Conference of Wheat Exporting Countries, held from August 21 to 25, 1933 in London. Exporters strictly controlled compliance with mutual agreements, so the figures given do not raise doubts. With the export rate set for the USSR at 50 million bushels (1 bushel = 28.6 kg), only 17 million were exported in 1932. For this, the Soviet delegation was literally thrown into a scandal with a demand to immediately restore supplies in accordance with their obligations. But the obligations were never fulfilled. Compared to the previous year, wheat exports decreased significantly and, according to the London conference, amounted to 486,200 tons. If in 1931 the USSR supplied only 714 tons of flour through Turkey and Egypt, Palestine and the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, then in 1932 and later for three years such deliveries were not carried out at all.

On the contrary, it was in 1932 that our country, for the first time in its history, became one of the world's largest importers of food products and agricultural raw materials. In connection with the crop failure that occurred both in the USSR and in most European countries, urgent measures were taken. Agreements were concluded with Persia (present-day Iran) for the supply of grain and rice. If the import of bread in grain in 1931 amounted to 172 tons, then in 1932 alone, in addition to other food products, 138.3 thousand tons of bread and 66.9 thousand tons of rice were imported into the Union. In 1931, 22.6 thousand heads of large and 48.7 thousand heads of small livestock were purchased in Turkey, and in 1932 these figures increased respectively to 53.3 (2.4 times) and to 186.2 thousand . heads (3.8 times). In total, in 1932, the USSR purchased abroad 147.2 thousand heads of cattle and 1.1 million small cattle, as well as 9.3 thousand tons of meat and meat products (an increase of 4.8 times compared to 1931).

Bread

Ukraine was in a special position with the Soviet government. In 1932, according to both the State Statistics Committee of the Ukrainian SSR (declassified in 2001) and the official statistical directory “Socialist Construction of the USSR (1933-1938)”, the gross harvest of grain crops amounted to 146,571 thousand centners. According to the rules in force at that time, collective farms and individual farmers had to sell a third of the harvest to the state at a set price. Considering that the population of the Ukrainian SSR was 31.9 million people, the remaining grain was enough for 839 g per day for each inhabitant. This was even more than the norm established in Germany (700 g). But the Stalinist government decided to increase this figure.

From the Politburo decision of January 7, 1933: “65/45 – on the grain procurement plan: 1. Reduce the grain procurement plan from the 1932 harvest by 28 million poods. 2. In accordance with paragraph 1 of the resolution, approve as final, subject to unconditional and full implementation, the annual grain procurement plan (without garnet): ... Ukraine - 280 million poods". We consider: according to several (including Ukrainian) sources, the gross harvest of grain crops for 1932 amounted to 146,571 thousand centners, rounded - 916 million poods. Let's subtract the plan - 280 million poods. It turns out that there are 636 million left for food. We divide this amount by the population of 31,901.4 thousand people (as of 01/01/1933) and by the number of days in the year. We get 873. Such a supply of bread at that time would have been the envy of many developed European countries.

The year 1933 is even more interesting. Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) No. 129 of January 10, 1933 for the Ukrainian SSR for 1933 established a plan of 256 million poods of grain (including 232 collective farms and 24 individual farmers). Another 9.5 million was added as a separate item. The total figure for the grain delivery plan was 265.5 million poods (42,480 thousand centners). The gross grain harvest amounted to 222,965 thousand centners. Taking into account the plan for 1933, 180,485 thousand remained in the republic. The population as of January 1, 1934 was 30,051.1 thousand people. In per capita terms, the overall figure for a wealthy fist is 1.6 kg per day. That's almost 2 kg of baked bread! What hunger, comrades?

In terms of the provision of mechanized agricultural equipment, Ukraine ranked first among all the republics of the Union and was among the top five in Europe, because both tractors and other agricultural machines were supplied there as a priority in accordance with the resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Of the 102 machine and tractor stations (MTS) organized in the USSR in 1929, 34 were created in Ukraine. In 1932, 445 MTS worked there, and in 1933 there were already 606 MTS. In 1933 alone, the agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR received 15,000 tractors, 2,500 combines, and 5,000 complex machines. Let us note that none of the republics of the Union received such a large amount of agricultural equipment from the center. Even virgin Kazakhstan received significantly less. As of June 1, 1932, the MTS of Ukraine had 18,208 tractors, and as of January 1, 1934 – 51,309. And this was for cultivating 19.8 million hectares!

Meat

As of February 1, 1932, the total number of livestock in Ukraine was 13,533 thousand heads, including 4,257.7 thousand among peasants and individual farms. It is noteworthy that four months later, by June 1, 1932, the total number of livestock increased by 250 thousand. This indicates a sufficient supply of livestock with feed, the absence of epidemics and diseases, which not only eliminated the loss of animals, but also contributed to an increase in the herd. It turns out a strange situation: they fed the cattle, but they themselves died of hunger? What dedication!

However, in this case too, Moscow reduced the norms for the delivery of meat to the Ukrainian SSR relative to other republics of the country. So that, God forbid, fraternal Ukraine is not deprived. When the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of the republic issued a resolution on the delivery of meat in accordance with the plan, the center decided to cancel it and proposed to reduce the norm. P. 48/35 dated 29 IV.1933 “On the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) U on the delivery of meat. To propose to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to repeal its resolution of April 3, 1933 on the issue of the procedure for compulsory delivery of meat.”. (Who is interested: RGASPI, fund 17, inventory 3, file 922, sheet 12.) But, despite all the measures, an acute food shortage still arose among the population of Ukraine. Therefore, the number of cattle began to decline. From February 1, 1932 to July 1, 1933 - by 1226 thousand heads. Yes, they ate it. But the question arises: if you were really hungry, why didn’t you eat more?

The harvest was good, and in Ukraine already in July 1933 grain deliveries were completed by 87%, and in August - by 194.8%! The plan was almost doubled. First Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) M.M. Khataevich reported to the 17th Party Congress: “Comrade Stalin yesterday quite correctly, with the greatest urgency, raised the question of animal husbandry. In our region, only the last 4-5 months are designated as months of turning point, as months of a noticeable turn towards the rise of livestock farming... We had 210 thousand pigs in our region at the beginning of 1932, by July 1, 1933, 80 thousand pigs, and on January 1, 1934, 155 thousand pigs. In five months, the pig population has almost doubled.". From this and from many hundreds of other documents it is clearly visible that things were going well in the Dnepropetrovsk region. Yes, the number of animals decreased because they were simply eaten. In a year and a half, 130 thousand pigs alone were eaten. If we add to this figure 452.7 thousand heads of cattle, as well as sheep and goats, and take into account that grain procurements were also completed on time and in planned volumes, then why in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk region, 179,098 people died of hunger? Some kind of paradox.

Fish

To provide the Ukrainian SSR with fish, by 1932, four republican trusts were organized in the Azov-Black Sea basin: Crimean, Azov-Black Sea, Azov-Donetsk and Ukrainian-Black Sea. At that time they were quite well equipped. So, for example, the Ukrainian-Black Sea Trust alone had at its disposal, not counting hundreds of sailing and sailing-rowing vessels, 415 motor vessels (including 350 in the production fleet and 65 in the service fleet). 9893 people worked in various divisions of the trust (as of 01/01/1933). And in the Ukrainian newspaper “Voice of the Fisherman” No. 34 dated May 18, 1932, there was data on how much money fishermen received per hundredweight of fish caught (in rubles): herring - 8, roach - 7, large piece - 7, red fish - 40 , caviar - 300. For comparison: even the fishermen of developed Italy, in terms of Soviet currency, were content with 25-30% lower fees. Moreover, in 1932, all fishing products remained in Ukraine. The Ukrainian People's Commissariat of Supply prohibited Ukrrybtrest from concluding an agreement with Glavryba, citing the fact that Ukrrybtrest is a republican one and therefore everything caught should be distributed among the orders of Ukrrybtrest. And the Soviet center did not object to this state of affairs. Let them eat all the fish themselves, as long as everything is safe in the republic. After all, this is our western outpost.

According to the surviving reports of Ukrrybtrest, in 1932 and 1933, 4336.6 thousand centners, or more than 433 thousand tons of fish, were caught in Ukraine. It was processed in artels and collective farms and supplied both fresh and frozen, and smoked, salted and canned. For example, the Azov-Donetsk Fish Trust in 1933 produced 5,285 thousand conventional cans of canned fish. At the trust warehouses in Mariupol on January 1, 1933 (just during the hungry winter), due to interruptions in transport, 1,336 centners remained unexported, and as of January 1, 1934 - 1,902 centners of finished products. Moreover, from Donetsk, where people were starving, to the warehouse is a little more than 100 km. How can this be understood?!

Evgeniy Shvedko, who at that time worked as chairman of the village council of the town of Bezymyanny, said: “...And in the 30s there was nowhere to put the fish. In 1933, one artel of Bezymyanny handed over to the state almost 1000 pounds of valuable sturgeon species - 16 tons. Each sturgeon walked under 2 meters, and the beluga was even more. Could dying men pick up such a catch from the sea, and, having picked it up, die of hunger? Understand that no one denies the tragedy of the Holodomor. But why lie and falsify? Why, for example, did they include a family from our village, who burned down in their hut, and all our fishermen who died at sea, among the “famine” victims?!.. This is a lie!”

How is it “And in the 30s there was nowhere to put the fish,” when the starving Donetsk region was nearby? From Donetsk to the coast of the Azov Sea is only 114 km. It turns out that the fish were not transported intentionally? Moreover, coal was delivered to seaports by rail, but in order to take fish back, there were not enough wagons? Fantastic, isn't it? It is worth recalling that in the Donetsk region in the same year, 1933, 119 thousand people died.

The Soviet government sought to provide the Ukrainian population with even delicious seafood. The meeting at Glavryba on November 17, 1932 made the following decision: “... 2. The Ukrainian and Crimean fish trusts should immediately begin the production and processing of minor seafood, allocate the required number of floating units for fishing... 4. The trusts, through fish canning factories, begin to carry out experiments in the canning of oysters and mussels... 6. The Ukrrybtrust, simultaneously with the extraction of edible shellfish, should begin in the Odessa-Skaddovsk region, production of shrimp and sea grass. 7. The trusts named above should work on the issue of using shells of oysters and mussels, as well as small shrimp for feed meal...”

In addition, Chernomorzverprom operated in Ukraine, which was engaged in the production of dolphins, spiny sharks (katrana), beluga, and sturgeon. In 1932, he caught 56,163 dolphins, and in 1933 – 52,885. Of these, the Sevastopol Salotop Plant produced technical and medical fat, which, by the way, was supplied to the pharmacy chain of Ukraine. For example, 1040 kg of fish oil were supplied to Vinnitsa, and 424 kg to pharmacies in Kherson. In total, Chernomorzverprom caught 2,003 tons in 1932, and 2,249.5 tons of fish and marine animals in 1933. There was also industrial fishing in areas of “small” fishing (ponds, lakes, rivers), which amounted to 23,770 tons in Ukraine in 1932, and 20,100 tons of fish in 1933. And all these nutritious products remained in the republic, and in some cases, fish were even supplied there from other regions. Here is an interesting decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: "P. 82/69 dated May 8, 1933 – “On the release of fish for Ukraine and the Central Black Sea Region. “To propose to the People’s Commissariat for Supply in the second quarter to release 1,500 tons of fish for collective farmers working on weeding, breaking and harvesting beets, of which 1,200 tons to Ukraine and 300 tons to the Central Black Sea Region.”.

Deliveries from the Center

For those who are especially curious, I will immediately indicate the path: Special Politburo folders, which reflect the entire progress of deliveries to Ukraine, are located in the RGASPI, in fund 17, inventory 162, storage units 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

The volume of grain crops alone supplied from the Center at the expense of the famine-stricken regions and territories of the USSR to Ukraine from March 19, 1932 to July 4, 1933 alone is more than 1 million tons. Including: for seeds 497.98 (including 64.7 thousand tons for fodder) and for food 541.64 thousand tons. This does not count food, equipment and fodder, the supply of which was regulated by special orders of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It is also interesting to analyze the data from budget plans of those times. The revenue side of the budget of Ukraine in 1933 amounted to 1033.4 million rubles with expenses of 1021.5 million. Unlike all previous and subsequent years, in 1933 Ukraine did not transfer a penny to the all-Union budget, and the subsidy to the republic from the all-Union budget amounted to 21 .1 million rubles.

For comparison: Belarus transferred 0.3 million rubles to the country’s budget in 1933. The sown area in Belarus for grain crops in 1933 occupied 2.48 million hectares, in Ukraine - 19.86. The tractor fleet of the BSSR as of 01/01/1934 amounted to 3.2 thousand units, in Ukraine - 51.3 thousand units. With a sown area eight times smaller than in Ukraine, the number of tractors was 16 times less, that is, twice as large areas were cultivated with a horse-drawn plow. But the money was transferred to the general budget regularly.

The conclusion is clear: the amount of grain that was collected in the Ukrainian SSR, even not counting that sent from the Center, the number of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, as well as fish products, is quite enough to adequately feed the population of Ukraine in 1932-33. Where did this hunger come from anyway? I would like to add: Hello! Garage!

Working with the archives of original documents from the Stalin era fascinated me, just like playing DOOM 2 when I was a child. I wanted to dig further and deeper. I came across such “tasty” circulars, imbued with a piece of the author’s soul, that if I had my way, I would have cited them all in the article. Here's one of them. “No. 231-28ss dated 17.VI.1933. I ask the Politburo to approve the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the release of 7 mil from the reserve fund of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR to the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR. rubles for the costs of maintaining children's institutions in 1933 due to the need to expand their network. V. Molotov. "Behind". Stalin, Kaganovich, Andreev, Kuibyshev, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov". Wow: expanding the network of expensive child care institutions during a period of total famine! By the way, the number of school students, whom the state provided with food and proper living conditions, increased by 1,096,141 people during the most famine-stricken time (1932-33) in Ukraine. And this, as we understand, is not due to population growth. That is, the socio-economic situation of Ukrainian children improved during this period. Also at the expense of the Center.

Another interesting fact: it turns out that in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 there was a large, extensive network of resorts. It was funny to read people's reports and testimonies about this. Here, for example, is “a memorandum on the state of resorts in 1933 and the prospects for the development of the industry in the second five-year plan.” In 1933, the number of bed-months was 80,387, the actual number: sanatorium patients - 66,979 people and those assigned to the course - 12,373 people. From the report: “...The significant under-fulfillment of the resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars is due to the fact that collective farm organizations, despite a number of demands from Ukrkurupra and other organizations, did not develop the educational sites allocated to them.” Although the expenditure part of the budget for sanatoriums in 1933 amounted to 20.258 million rubles, including 10.275 million for food. Sorry, but this is generally some kind of nonsense: the republic is suffocating from mass hunger, in Kiev in 1933 9 thousand corpses are collected, and 10% (almost 7 thousand) of resort places already paid for (and, accordingly, provided with food) by the state have not been developed!

Mortality in the Ukrainian SSR

According to declassified data from the TsUNKhU of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, compiled on the basis of certificates from the UNKHU of the Ukrainian SSR, the population decline in Ukraine in 1932 from all causes (including death under the age of 1 year, old age and from external causes, including hunger) amounted to 668.2 thousand . Human. In 1933 - 1850.3 thousand people. And the average mortality rate in the period from 1927 to 1937 (excluding 1932 and 1933) with an average population of 31.9 million was 456.6 thousand. Let’s compare: in Ukraine, 782 people died from all causes in the quite prosperous year of 2005 thousand with a population of 47.1 million people. The numbers are quite comparable.

The number of people sick with life-threatening infectious diseases in the republic in 1933 (in thousands of people) was: typhoid fever - 50.4, typhus - 65.6, measles - 89, whooping cough - 46.8, dysentery - 30.5, diphtheria – 21.1, malaria – 767.2. In total, 1,082 thousand people suffered from these diseases. According to the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR, mortality from infectious diseases accounted for 25.6% of total mortality, or 250.1 thousand people. I will give an excerpt from a memo from the Dnepropetrovsk regional department of the GPU dated March 5, 1933 to the chairman of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR Balitsky: “In the Novovasilievsky district, the high mortality rate is largely due to mass diseases of tropical malaria, which has taken on the character of a mass epidemic with a large number of deaths.”. Let us note that after the revolution, an economic blockade was declared in our country and among the goods prohibited for supply was quinine, which was used to treat malaria. Soviet healthcare throughout the Union was free, and the provision of medical services to the population was one of the highest in Europe (even in those difficult times), but the healthcare system was physically unable to respond so quickly to the sudden malaria epidemic that affected most regions of the USSR.

In books, films and television shows, you can often find the statement that people were kept in their places of permanent residence. Not a single authentic document has confirmed this fact. In 1931, 1.212 million people arrived in 21 cities of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1932 in 18 cities - 962.5 thousand, in 1933 in 21 cities - 790.3 thousand, in 1934 in 71 cities - 2.676 million There were many visitors from Russia. For example, refugees from the Volga region came to Zaporozhye in search of food, where severe crop failure was observed.

About data representativeness

In cities and villages, all acts of civil status (birth, death, marriages, divorces) were processed by the Civil Registry Office departments. In villages, their functions were performed by village councils.

An example of their conscientious work is the presence of very detailed figures on marriages concluded in the hungriest year, 1933. This information is presented not only for each region of Ukraine, but also for each quarter and month separately for cities and villages. In total, 229,571 marriages were concluded in the Ukrainian SSR in 1933, of which 70,799 were in cities and 158,772 in villages. Since we are talking about weddings, we will ask only one question: “Did they do without the traditional crowded feast?” Every day In populated areas of Ukraine, an average of 629 marriages were registered. Of these, 194 weddings took place in cities, and more than twice as many in rural areas – 435 weddings per day. How can this knowledge be combined with information about widespread hunger?

These data, the same as for mortality, were received by the Ukrainian National Research Administration from the same inspectors and sent to the Center, and there is no reason not to believe them.

Moscow deception

In November 1933, Ukrainian party leaders reported to Moscow about the unprecedented successes of republican agriculture.

“Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - comrade. Stalin, comrade Kaganovich, Council of People's Commissars of the USSR - comrade. Molotov

...the Ukrainian party organization... completed grain distribution ahead of schedule and completely by November 6th for all crops and all sectors. The decisive role in this victory was played by the enormous assistance provided by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the Union to collective farms and individual farmers of Ukraine in the spring of 1933 with seeds, food and fodder, as well as a huge number of tractors, cars, combines and other agricultural machines. This victory was the result of the Bolshevik struggle of the Ukrainian party organization... for the implementation in practice of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - to bring the agriculture of Ukraine from a breakthrough state to the forefront. Kosior, Postyshev, Chubar".

Such cheerful reports sounded against the backdrop of unprecedented mortality in the republic. And to confuse the trail, throughout 1932 and 1933 the Ukrainian party organization was engaged in endless reorganizations of the administrative division of the republic. In 1932, 41 districts were divided into 492 districts, which were subordinated directly to the leadership of the republic (what sick brain could think of this!), then, during the famine, in 1933, the districts were collected into eight regions. And in order to make it impossible to understand anything at all in the affairs, it was during the period of the most severe famine in 1933 that the transfer of the capital of Ukraine from Kharkov to Kyiv began. From S. Kosior’s speech at the XVII Congress: “Comrade Stalin, even before the liquidation of the districts, warned us that we would not be able to cope with the leadership of such a large number of districts as in Ukraine and that it would not be better to create regions in Ukraine. We then essentially dissuaded ourselves from this proposal of Comrade Stalin, assured the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) that we ourselves - the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine - would cope with the leadership of the regions without the regions, and this caused very great harm to the cause ... "

Theft and sabotage

Here I will not argue or make assessments, but will simply provide several documents without comments.

“Resolution No. 364 of the Bureau of the Soviet Control Commission “On the illegal expenditure and squandering of funds by the People's Commissariat of Justice of the Ukrainian SSR”

The Commission of Soviet Control established that the People's Commissariat of Justice and the Prosecutor's Office of the Ukrainian SSR, represented by their responsible employees, illegally spent, squandered and used for self-supply from March 1933 to April 1934 - 1202 thousand rubles...” For comparison, this is four (!) times more than the funds transferred by the Belarusian SSR to the all-Union budget in 1933.

From the minutes of the Joint meeting of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Board of the NK RKI of the USSR: "15L/1-33. About the squandering of products and raw materials at the confectionery factory named after. Karl Marx in Kyiv. The Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Board of the NK RKI USSR note that the management of the confectionery factory named after. Karl Marx... in 1932 and 1933 allowed a massive squandering of finished products (in 1932, 300 thousand pounds of confectionery products worth 20 million rubles)..."

“From a memo from the Economic Directorate of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Comrade. To Kosior, December 10, 1932

...Across the Odessa region. 264 mills were identified that produced secret grinding. According to one Dnepropetrovsk region. 29 secret mills were identified and 346 mills were allowed to operate without permission from the Procurement Committee. In Vinnytsia region 38 secret mills were identified that secretly grind grain... In the indicated areas alone, the GPU authorities discovered more than 750 secret mills in just 20 days.” Please note that these are the regions where the highest mortality rates were observed. In them, 1.086 million people died from hunger and disease in 1933.

Note from I.V. Stalin to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine S. Kosior:

"T. Kosior! 26/IV 32

Be sure to read the attached materials. Judging by the materials, it seems that in some parts of the Ukrainian SSR Soviet power ceased to exist. Is this really true? Are things really that bad with the villages in Ukraine? Where are the GPU organs, what are they doing? Maybe they could check this matter and report to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party about the measures taken?

Hello. I. Stalin"

In my research, I was unable to draw an unambiguous conclusion about where such a huge amount of food ended up. This will be the subject of a separate time-consuming work. But absolutely all documentary materials - Ukrainian, Moscow, German, international - indicate that the Soviet government paid the closest attention to the food well-being of Ukraine and did everything possible (sometimes even impossible) to prevent famine in this republic. Let us only note that after a thorough investigation in 1935-39, in which hundreds of leading investigators and criminologists participated, those responsible for mass thefts and organizing an artificial famine in the Republic of Ukraine were found and their guilt was proven. In 1939, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of 1928-38 S.V. Kosior, as well as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR in 1923-34 V.Ya. Chubar were convicted and executed by court verdict.

In 1932-33 of the last century, another tragedy occurred in the tragic history of the USSR - mass famine in many regions: in the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, in Western Siberia and in the south of the Urals, in the Volga region, in the North Caucasus and in Kazakhstan. In total, up to 8 million people died from hunger during this period. Almost half of them are Ukrainians (about 3.9 million). Some sources indicate that there were much more victims in the Ukrainian SSR (up to 12 million).

In Ukraine, this period was recognized at the legislative level as the Holodomor. This is the name of genocide, the deliberate extermination of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet government with the help of an artificially created famine. A person who publicly denies this fact acquires the status of a criminal in Ukraine. However, the punishment for this crime is not legally defined in any way.

The Holodomor of the 1930s was not the only case of mass famine in the USSR. The first occurred immediately after the revolution, in 1921-1922. Then, according to rough estimates, about 5 million people died in the Volga region, the Urals, Crimea and many other regions controlled by the Bolsheviks.

This was the first time that the Bolshevik government admitted its complete helplessness and accepted financial support from the “imperialist West.” Subsequently, famines recurred periodically in the USSR, but not as widespread. The next case of multi-million deaths from starvation was recorded in 1932-1933.

Genocide of the Ukrainian nation or the common tragedy of many peoples of the USSR

The term "genocide" was invented by Polish-American lawyer Rafael Lemkin. He also became the author of the draft UN Convention on Genocide as a Crime against Humanity and on Measures to Prevent It. It was Lemkin who in 1953 gave the classification of the events of the 30s in Ukraine as “genocide against the Ukrainian people.” This has been recognized by 23 states of the world: Australia, USA, Canada, Mexico, almost all European countries, including the Vatican.

Most historians still do not consider it correct to classify this situation as genocide specifically against the Ukrainian people. The then President of Ukraine, V.F. Yanukovych, said the same thing in 2010 at a speech in Strasbourg at PACE. He recalled that in those years, representatives of different nations were dying of hunger on the territory of the Land of the Soviets.

Forced confiscation of food

Statistics from those years show that mostly people died in villages. These were the same collective farms to which the Soviet government set increased grain procurement standards. In Kharkov and some other regions of the Ukrainian SSR, collective farmers died out in entire villages, without exception. Residents of the cities were somewhat protected from this disaster, since there was a rationing system for food distribution.

Many historians consider the incompetent management of the Bolsheviks to be the first cause of the famine in Ukraine. Ukraine was considered the “granary” of the Land of the Soviets, so the bulk of grain procurements fell on its shoulders. The Bolsheviks confiscated everything from collective farmers, from livestock to last year’s dried apples. These were real punitive brigades.

Execution for collecting ears of corn on a collective farm field

At the same time, Stalin’s law appeared on the execution of anyone who collected ears of wheat on a collective farm field in order to feed themselves. It was popularly nicknamed the “Law of 5 Spikelets.” The lightest punishment that such an “enemy who robbed the Soviet people” could suffer was 10 years in the camps.

In addition to the brutal fleecing of collective farmers by the Soviet government, two lean years, one after the other, also played a role. Despite the plight, Stalin ordered an even greater acceleration of the export of grain from the villages. Due to this, he hoped to quickly receive loans and expand large-scale industrialization of the country.

As a result of this policy, people died in families and entire villages. Cases of cannibalism were recorded everywhere. About 2,500 people were convicted for it. This happened in all regions of the USSR that could give at least something to the “young Soviet state.”

Devastation, economic chaos, and a crisis of power after the Civil War caused a new mass famine in 1921-1922. This famine was the first under Soviet rule. Regional and local food problems and hunger among certain segments of the population, caused by various factors, periodically arose during the years 1923-1931. The second mass famine in the USSR broke out in 1932/33. During the period of collectivization, about 7 million people died from hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition. During the famine periods of 1921-1922 and 1932-1933, due to severe depletion of the population, repeated cases of cannibalism were noted. And finally, after the Great Patriotic War, the population of the USSR was gripped by the last mass famine in the history of the Soviet Union in 1946/47.

Subsequently, there was no mass famine with starvation deaths in the USSR and Russia. At the same time, a difficult food situation occurred in the winter of 1991/92, during the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of the union economy. The problem of hunger again became relevant at the beginning of the 21st century: according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 4% of the population (5.2 million people) suffered from hunger in Russia in 2000-2002.

At the same time, as historian V.V. Kondrashin notes in his book dedicated to the famine of 1932-1933:

Other Russian researchers believe that the cause of the famine of the 1930s was the consequences of forced grain procurements in 1929 and complete collectivization, which began in 1930, which created a food shortage in the countryside. The famine was a direct result of the course of the Stalinist leadership towards accelerated industrialization, which required foreign exchange sources for its implementation, including grain exports. For this purpose, impossible tasks were set for peasant farms for grain delivery. Stalin emphasizes in a letter dated August 6, 1930: “ Force the export of bread with all your might. Now this is the crux of the matter. If we export grain, there will be loans» .

Prerequisites for the occurrence of famine in the USSR in 1932-1933

Collectivization

From 1927−1929, the Soviet leadership began to develop a set of measures for the transition to complete collectivization of agriculture. In the spring of 1928, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the Kolkhoz Center of the RSFSR prepared a draft five-year plan for the collectivization of peasant farms, according to which by 1933 it was planned to unite 1.1 million farms (about 4%) into collective farms. The Resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated July 10, 1928, “Grain Procurement Policy in Connection with the General Economic Situation,” stated that “despite the achievement of 95% of the pre-war norm of sown areas, the marketable yield of grain production barely exceeds 50% of the pre-war norm.” In the process of finalizing this plan, the percentage of collectivization changed upward, and the five-year plan approved in the spring of 1929 already provided for the collectivization of 4–4.5 million peasant farms (16–18%).

With the transition to complete collectivization in the fall of 1929, the party and state leadership of the country began to develop a new policy in the countryside. The planned high rates of collectivization suggested, due to the unpreparedness of both the bulk of the peasantry and the material and technical base of agriculture, such methods and means of influence that would force the peasants to join collective farms. Such means were: strengthening the tax pressure on individual farmers, mobilizing the proletarian elements of the city and countryside, party, Komsomol and Soviet activists to carry out collectivization, strengthening administrative-coercive and repressive methods of influence on the peasantry, and primarily on its wealthy part.

According to some researchers, this created all the prerequisites not only for economic, but also for political and repressive measures of influence on the peasantry.

As a result of collectivization, the most productive mass of healthy and young peasants fled to the cities. In addition, about 2 million peasants who fell under dispossession were evicted to remote areas of the country. Therefore, by the beginning of the spring sowing season of 1932, the village approached with a serious lack of draft power and a sharply deteriorated quality of labor resources. As a result, the fields sown with grain in 1932 in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and other areas were overgrown with weeds. Even units of the Red Army were sent to weeding work. But this did not help, and with the harvest of 1931/32 sufficient to prevent mass starvation, grain losses during harvesting grew to unprecedented proportions. In 1931, according to the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, more than 15 million tons (about 20% of the gross grain harvest) were lost during harvesting; in 1932, the losses were even greater. In Ukraine, up to 40% of the harvest remained standing; in the Lower and Middle Volga, losses reached 35.6% of the total gross grain harvest. Data from grain balances of the USSR in the early 1930s, reconstructed by Robert Davis and Stephen Wheatcroft from archival sources, indicate that there was a sharp drop in grain harvests for two years in a row - in 1931 and especially in 1932, when the harvest was at best, a quarter less than the 1930 harvest and 19% less than the official figure.

Grain procurement

According to the research of Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Kondrashin, in a number of regions of the RSFSR and, in particular, in the Volga region, mass famine was created artificially and arose “not due to complete collectivization, but as a result of forced Stalinist grain procurements.” This opinion is confirmed by eyewitnesses of the events, speaking about the causes of the tragedy: “There was a famine because the grain was handed over,” “every grain, down to the grain, was taken away to the state,” “they tormented us with grain procurements,” “there was a surplus appropriation, all the grain was taken away.” The villages were weakened by dispossession and mass collectivization, losing thousands of repressed individual grain farmers. In the Volga region, the commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on grain procurement issues, headed by the Secretary of the Party Central Committee P. P. Postyshev, decided to confiscate grain reserves from individual farmers and bread earned by collective farm workers. Under the threat of reprisals, collective farm chairmen and heads of rural administrations were forced to hand over almost all the grain produced and in stock. This deprived the region of food supplies and led to widespread famine. Similar measures were taken by V. M. Molotov and L. M. Kaganovich in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, which caused corresponding consequences - famine and mass mortality among the population.

It should be noted that the grain procurement plan for 1932 and the volume of grain actually collected by the state were significantly less than in the previous and subsequent years of the decade. In fact, the total volume of grain alienation from the village through all channels (procurement, purchases at market prices, collective farm market) decreased in 1932-1933 by approximately 20% compared to previous years. The volume of grain exports was reduced from 5.2 million tons in 1931 to 1.73 million tons in 1932. In 1933, it decreased further - to 1.68 million tons. For the main grain-producing regions (Ukraine and the North Caucasus), grain procurement quotas were repeatedly reduced during 1932. As a result, for example, Ukraine received only a quarter of all grain handed over to the state, whereas in 1930 its share was 35%. In this regard, S. Zhuravlev concludes that the famine was caused not by an increase in grain procurements, but by a sharp drop in grain collection as a result of collectivization.

Already in 1928-1929, grain procurements took place with great stress. Since the beginning of the 30s, the situation has worsened even more. Objective reasons that caused the need for grain procurements:

• population growth in cities and industrial centers (from 1928 to 1931 the urban population increased by 12.4 million);
• industrial development, increasing industrial needs for agricultural products;
• supplies of grain for export in order to obtain funds for the purchase of Western engineering products.

To meet these needs at that time it was necessary to have 500 million poods of grain annually. Gross grain harvests in 1931-1932, even according to official data, were significantly lower compared to previous years.

A number of foreign researchers (M. Tauger, S. Wheatcroft, R. Davis and J. Cooper), based on official data on gross grain harvests in 1931-1932, note that they should be considered overestimated. To assess the harvest in those years, it was not the actual grain harvest that was determined, but the species (biological) yield. This assessment system overestimated the true yield by no less than 20%. Nevertheless, based on it, grain procurement plans were established, which increased annually. If in 1928 the share of grain procurements was 14.7% of the gross harvest, in 1929 - 22.4%, in 1930 - 26.5%, then in 1931 - 32.9%, and in 1932 - 36.9% ( for individual regions, see table. 1).

Grain yields were declining ( see table 2). If in 1927 the average for the USSR was 53.4 poods. per hectare, then in 1931 it was already 38.4 poods. per hectare. However, grain procurements grew from year to year ( see table 3).

As a result of the fact that the grain procurement plan in 1932 was drawn up on the basis of preliminary data on a higher harvest (in reality it turned out to be two to three times lower), and the party and administrative leadership of the country demanded strict compliance with it, virtually complete seizures began locally. collected grain from the peasants.

The repressions were managed by two emergency commissions, which on October 22, 1932, the Politburo sent to Ukraine and the North Caucasus with the aim of “accelerating grain procurements.” One was headed by Molotov, the other by Lazar Kaganovich, and the latter included Genrikh Yagoda.

Repression of the rural population

After the Kaganovich commission arrived in Rostov-on-Don on November 2, a meeting of all secretaries of party organizations in the North Caucasus region was convened, at which the following resolution was adopted: “In connection with the shameful failure of the grain procurement plan, force local party organizations to break sabotage organized by kulak counter-revolutionary elements, to suppress the resistance of rural communists and collective farm chairmen leading this sabotage." For a number of blacklisted districts, the following measures were taken: return of all products from stores, complete stop of trade, immediate closure of all current loans, imposition of high taxes, arrest of all saboteurs, all “socially alien and counter-revolutionary elements” and trial them according to an accelerated procedure that the OGPU was supposed to provide. If the sabotage continued, the population was supposed to be subjected to mass deportation.

In November 1932, 5,000 rural communists of the North Caucasus, accused of “criminal sympathy” for “undermining” the grain procurement campaign, were arrested, and along with them another 15,000 collective farmers. In December, mass deportations of entire villages began.

Peasants who resisted the confiscation of grain were subjected to repression. This is how Mikhail Sholokhov describes them in a letter to Stalin dated April 4, 1933

But eviction is not the most important thing. Here is a list of the methods by which 593 tons of bread were produced:

1. Mass beatings of collective farmers and individual farmers.

2. Planting “in the cold”. "Is there a hole?" - "No". - “Go, sit in the barn!” The collective farmer is stripped down to his underwear and placed barefoot in a barn or shed. Duration of action - January, February, often entire teams were planted in barns.

3. On the Vashchaevo collective farm, collective farm women’s legs and hems of their skirts were doused with kerosene, lit, and then extinguished: “Tell me where the pit is!” I’ll set it on fire again!” On the same collective farm, the interrogated woman was placed in a hole, buried halfway, and the interrogation continued.

4. At the Napolovsky collective farm, the representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a candidate member of the bureau of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Plotkin, during interrogation, forced him to sit on a hot bench. The prisoner shouted that he could not sit, it was hot, then water was poured from a mug under him, and then he was taken out into the cold to “cool off” and locked in a barn. From the barn back to the stove and interrogated again. He (Plotkin) forced one individual farmer to shoot himself. He put a revolver in his hands and ordered: “Shoot, but if you don’t, I’ll shoot you myself!” He began to pull the trigger (not knowing that the gun was unloaded), and when the firing pin clicked, he fainted.

5. In the Varvara collective farm, the secretary of the Anikeev cell at a brigade meeting forced the entire brigade (men and women, smokers and non-smokers) to smoke shag, and then threw a pod of red pepper (mustard) onto the hot stove and ordered not to leave the room. This same Anikeev and a number of workers of the propaganda column, the commander of which was candidate member of the bureau of the Republic of Kazakhstan Pashinsky, during interrogations at the column headquarters, forced collective farmers to drink huge quantities of water mixed with lard, wheat and kerosene.

6. At the Lebyazhensky collective farm they stood him up against the wall and shot past the interrogated person’s head with shotguns.

7. In the same place: they rolled me up in a row and trampled underfoot.

8. In the Arkhipovsky collective farm, two collective farmers, Fomina and Krasnova, after a night interrogation, were taken three kilometers into the steppe, stripped naked in the snow and released, with orders to run to the farm at a trot.

9. In the Chukarinsky collective farm, the secretary of the cell, Bogomolov, selected 8 people. demobilized Red Army soldiers, with whom he came to a collective farmer - suspected of theft - in the yard (at night), after a short questioning, he took them to the threshing floor or to the levada, formed his brigade and commanded “fire” on the tied up collective farmer. If the person, frightened by the mock execution, did not confess, then they beat him, threw him into a sleigh, took him out to the steppe, beat him along the road with rifle butts and, having taken him out to the steppe, put him back and again went through the procedure preceding the execution.

9. (The numbering was broken by Sholokhov.) In the Kruzhilinsky collective farm, the authorized representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kovtun, at a meeting of the 6th brigade, asks the collective farmer: “Where did you bury the grain?” - “I didn’t bury it, comrade!” - “Didn’t you bury it? Oh, well, stick out your tongue! Stay like that! Sixty adults, Soviet citizens, by order of the Commissioner, take turns sticking out their tongues and stand there, drooling, while the Commissioner makes an incriminating speech for an hour. Kovtun did the same thing in both the 7th and 8th brigades; the only difference is that in those brigades, in addition to sticking out their tongues, he also forced them to kneel.

10. In the Zatonsky collective farm, a propaganda column worker beat those interrogated with a saber. On the same collective farm, they mocked the families of Red Army soldiers, opening the roofs of houses, destroying stoves, and forcing women to cohabitate.

11. In the Solontsovsky collective farm, a human corpse was brought into the commissar’s room, placed on a table, and in the same room the collective farmers were interrogated, threatening to be shot.

12. In the Verkhne-Chirsky collective farm, Komsomol officers put those interrogated with their bare feet on a hot stove, and then beat them and took them out, barefoot, into the cold.

13. At the Kolundaevsky collective farm, barefoot collective farmers were forced to run in the snow for three hours. The frostbitten victims were taken to the Bazkovo hospital.

14. Ibid: the interrogated collective farmer was put on a stool on his head, covered with a fur coat on top, beaten and interrogated.

15. At the Bazkovsky collective farm, during interrogation, they stripped people, sent them home half naked, returned them halfway, and so on several times.

Dear comrade Sholokhov!

Both of your letters have been received, as you know. The help that was required has already been provided.

To analyze the case, Comrade Shkiryatov will come to you, in the Veshensky district, to whom I ask you very much to provide assistance.

This is true. But that’s not all, Comrade Sholokhov. The fact is that your letters make a somewhat one-sided impression. I want to write you a few words about this.

I thanked you for your letters, because they reveal the sore point of our party-Soviet work, they reveal how sometimes our workers, wanting to curb the enemy, accidentally hit their friends and descend into sadism. But this does not mean that I agree with you on everything. You see one side, you see well. But this is only one side of the matter. In order not to make mistakes in politics (your letters are not fiction, but pure politics), you need to look around, you need to be able to see the other side. And the other side is that the respected grain growers of your region (and not only your region) carried out the “Italian” (sabotage!) and were not averse to leaving the workers and the Red Army without bread. The fact that the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (without blood) does not change the fact that respected grain farmers were essentially waging a “quiet” war with the Soviet regime. A war of attrition, dear comrade. Sholokhov...

Of course, this circumstance cannot in any way justify the outrages that were committed, as you assure us, by our employees. And those responsible for these outrages must suffer due punishment. But it is still clear as daylight that respected grain growers are not such harmless people as it might seem from afar.

Well, all the best and I shake your hand.

Yours I. Stalin

Socialization of livestock

Some researchers consider one of the reasons for the occurrence of famine to be the policy of forced socialization, which caused a response from the peasantry - the mass slaughter of livestock, including workers, in 1928-1931 (since the autumn of 1931, the number of livestock among individual farmers decreased significantly, and the decline began to occur due to collective and state farm herds (lack of feed/poor living conditions and irresponsibility of collective farms).

At the same time, by the decree “On Meat Procurement” (September 23, 1932), from the beginning of the next month, the presentation of obligations “with the force of a tax” for the supply (delivery) of meat to the state began to be handed over to collective farms, collective farm households and individual farms.

Consequences of hunger

About 40 million people suffered from hunger and deprivation. In the rural areas around Kharkov, mortality in January and June 1933 increased ten times the average mortality rate: 100,000 buried in June 1933 in the Kharkov area versus 9,000 in June 1932.

Those who worked on the collective farm were paid in grain and seeds, but people in leather coats came and took everything to the last grain, leaving nothing for us.

The older sister worked in Kharkov, where she tried to collect food for us. Her father went to see her and returned with crackers, potatoes, and beetroot. Mom did not eat, she left everything that father brought to the children and died in the spring of 1933 from hunger, and father died at the end of 1933. Everyone could barely move, walking around swollen from hunger. During the famine they ate all the cats and dogs. They caught wild birds, and it was great happiness, then they cooked a delicious dinner.

People tried to walk through the harvested fields to collect spikelets, but people were beaten with whips for this, arrested and locked up in the village council.

In the spring, green grass appeared, which we ate: quinoa, nettle, but some did not have the strength to collect it, their hands did not obey. Those who survived spring found life easier later.

A lot of people died in the village, carts drove around the village, collected the dead and even those who were still barely breathing, and took them outside the outskirts and buried them there in a common pit.

Special report of the SPO PP OGPU for the NVK (Lower Volga region) on food difficulties in the region as of March 20, 1933.

Food difficulties continue to affect new districts and collective farms: as of March 10... 110 collective farms were counted in 33 districts experiencing family food difficulties - 822.

...In most cases, various surrogates are used for food (admixture of chaff, quinoa, pumpkin and potato peels, millet husks, crushed roots of “chakan” plants in flour and bread waste, eating only surrogates without admixture of flour, eating exclusively cabbage, pumpkin, etc. vegetables), and also consumes the meat of dead animals and, in some cases, cannibalism.

OGPU PP for NVK Rud

In the hope of getting food, collective farmers rushed to the cities. But on January 22, 1933, an order signed by Stalin and Molotov was issued, which ordered local authorities and, in particular, the OGPU to prohibit “by all possible means the mass movement of the peasantry of Ukraine and the North Caucasus to the cities. After the arrest of the “counter-revolutionary elements,” other fugitives must be returned to their previous residence.” This order explained the situation as follows: “The Central Committee and the Government have evidence that the mass exodus of peasants was organized by enemies of Soviet power, counter-revolutionaries and Polish agents for the purpose of anti-collective farm propaganda, in particular, and against Soviet power in general.” In all areas affected by famine, the sale of railway tickets was immediately stopped; Special OGPU cordons were set up to prevent the peasants from leaving their places. In early March 1933, a report from the OGPU specified that in one month alone, 219,460 people had been detained in operations designed to limit the mass exodus of peasants to the cities. 186,588 people were returned to their places of residence, many were arrested and convicted.

Within a week, a service was created to capture abandoned children. As peasants arrived in the city, unable to survive in the countryside, children gathered here, brought here and abandoned by their parents, who themselves were forced to return to die at home. The parents hoped that someone in the city would take care of their offspring.<…>The city authorities mobilized janitors in white aprons, who patrolled the city and brought abandoned children to police stations.<…>At midnight they were taken by truck to the freight station on the Seversky Donets. Other children found at train stations, on trains, and in nomadic peasant families were also collected there, and elderly peasants wandering around the city during the day were also brought here. There were medical personnel here who carried out the “triage”. Those who were not yet swollen from hunger and could survive were sent to barracks on Golodnaya Gora or to barns, where another 8,000 souls, mostly children, died on straw. The weak were sent on freight trains outside the city and left fifty to sixty kilometers from the city to die far from people.<…>Upon arrival at these places, all the dead were unloaded from the wagons into large ditches dug in advance.

As a result of the famine in Kazakhstan, about 200 thousand Kazakhs fled abroad - to China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Actions of the Soviet government to combat famine in 1934

In April 1933, by decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, grain exports from the USSR were stopped due to the fall in grain prices on the world market due to the Great Depression, as well as for sowing needs. The Soviet government, during the harvest period in the summer-autumn of 1933, was faced with the fact that grain procurements were falling, despite tightening repressions, the forced 100% expropriation of grain from collective farms and individual farmers, and mass hunger. Hunger, as mentioned above, began to spread to the cities. The actions of the Soviet government to overcome the food crisis mainly boiled down to allocating food and seed loans to the main grain-growing regions of the USSR, including Ukraine, which found themselves in the famine zone. Measures were taken to strengthen the collective farms organizationally and economically with the help of MTS (machine and tractor stations), and the development of personal subsidiary plots of collective farmers and urban residents was partially allowed.

In the conditions of constant famine in the cities that was intensifying in the USSR in 1933, the Politburo of the Central Committee decided on December 23, 1933 and January 20, 1934 to expand individual gardening. " Meeting the wishes of the workers - to acquire small vegetable gardens for working on them with their own labor in their free time from work in production“The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided in 1934 to allow 1.5 million workers to start their own individual vegetable gardens. Of these, the share of Ukrainian workers, in the total number of USSR workers allowed to engage in gardening, amounted to 500 thousand people, or 33%.

There are facts that at the very peak of the famine, in 1933, food was taken from the regions of the RSFSR for the regions of the Ukrainian SSR. For example, in 1933, Joseph Stalin personally allowed grain to be sent to the territory of Ukraine to the detriment of Russian regions. June 27, 1933 11 p.m. 10 min. Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U, M. M. Khataevich, sent Stalin a coded message with the following content:

There is a coded telegram from I.V. Stalin and V.M. Molotov to the secretary of the Central Black Earth Regional Committee I.M. Vareikis dated March 31, 1933, demanding to lift the ban and complete additional loading of 26 thousand tons of potatoes to Donbass.

At the same time, data on the functioning of the collective farm system do not allow us to talk about any serious improvement in the situation of the peasantry in subsequent years, after 1933. For example, in 1934-1935. up to 30% of collective farms in Mordovia gave collective farmers an average of only 2 kg of grain per workday (less than 100 kg of grain per eater per year). The leadership of the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic repeatedly appealed to the center with a request for food, seed and fodder loans, which were issued, but in minimal amounts. The famine in Mordovia in the first half of 1937 was no less widespread than the famine of 1932-1933.

Estimates of the scale of hunger

The famine affected an area of ​​about 1.5 million km² with a population of 65.9 million people. The scale of the incident can only be estimated approximately.

The famine was most severe in areas that in pre-revolutionary times were the richest in terms of the amount of bread produced and where the percentage of collectivization of peasant farms was highest.

The population of the countryside was more affected by famine than the population of the cities, which was explained by the measures taken by the Soviet government to confiscate grain from the countryside. But even in the cities there were a significant number of hungry people: workers fired from enterprises, employees purged, who received special passports that did not give the right to food rations.

General estimates of the number of victims of the 1932-1933 famine, made by various authors, vary significantly and reach up to 8 million people, although the latest estimate is up to 7 million people

The topic of the 1932-1933 famine first appeared in the Soviet information space only towards the end of perestroika. By now, a clear idea has formed in the post-Soviet information space about the famine of 1932-1933 as one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the Soviet period.

Regarding the scale of the famine “caused by forced collectivization,” there is an official assessment prepared by the State Duma of the Russian Federation in an official statement issued on April 2, 2008. According to the conclusion of a commission under the State Duma, in the Volga region, Central Black Earth region, North Caucasus, Urals, Crimea, part of Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus, “about 7 million people died from hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition” in 1932-1933 people, the reason for which was “repressive measures to ensure grain procurements,” which “significantly aggravated the severe consequences of the 1932 crop failure.” Objectively, the harvest in 1932 was sufficient to prevent mass starvation. A comparative analysis of the population censuses of 1926 and 1937 shows a reduction in the rural population in areas of the USSR affected by the famine of 1932-1933: in Kazakhstan - by 30.9%, in the Volga region - by 23, in Ukraine - by 20.5, in the North Caucasus - by 20.4%. On the territory of the RSFSR (excluding Ukraine and Kazakhstan), 2.5 million people died from famine.

The electronic version of the Encyclopedia Britannica gives a range of 4 to 5 million ethnic Ukrainians who died in the USSR in 1932-1933, out of a total of 6-8 million victims. The Brockhaus Encyclopedia (2006) provides data on losses: from 4 to 7 million people (translation from German):

An assessment of the total number of demographic losses during the collectivization period, taking into account the correction of population census data from 1926 and 1939, carried out at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University (USA), gave a total estimate of the population losses of the Soviet Union in the amount of 11 million 167 thousand people.

On the territory of the Ukrainian SSR

The massive famine that engulfed the entire territory of the Ukrainian SSR in 1932-1933, which was part of the general famine in the USSR in 1932-1933, entailed significant human casualties, the peak of which occurred in the first half of 1933, and also, according to supporters of the theory of the deliberate nature of the famine against exclusively Ukrainians, which is genocide of the Ukrainian people. According to the latest estimates published in 2015 by the Institute of History of Ukraine and supported by a number of historians of Western research centers, demographic losses from the famine of 1932-1933 on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR amounted to 3.9 million people as a result of excess mortality (excess of the actual number of deaths compared to calculated figure for normal conditions), as well as 0.6 million people due to a decrease in the number of children born due to the consequences of hunger.

In Ukraine, there is a widespread idea that the famine of 1932-1933 was a consequence of Moscow’s anti-Ukrainian, deliberately genocidal policy; this idea has penetrated, among other things, into scientific circles. At the same time, it is hushed up and ignored that the population of the North Caucasus, Volga region, Kazakhstan and other regions found themselves in exactly the same situation, since famine at that moment reigned over vast areas and many Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and people of other nationalities died. Indirectly, the fact that in 2008 the world community did not recognize the fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people is indirect evidence that it was precisely these considerations that guided the United Nations. (The United States and Great Britain voted for such recognition, but were in the minority).

According to the report of the International Conference “Historical and Political Problem of Mass Famine in the USSR of the 30s” (2008, Moscow): “It is not enough to say that not a single document has been found confirming the concept of “Holodomor-genocide” in Ukraine or even a hint in documents on ethnic motives of what happened, including in Ukraine. Absolutely the entire array of documents indicates that the main enemy of the Soviet government at that time was not an enemy based on ethnicity, but on a class basis.”

On January 13, 2010, the Kyiv Court of Appeal found the leaders of the Soviet state guilty of genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933. The court confirmed the conclusions of SBU investigators about the organization of genocide of the Ukrainian national group on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, that is, the artificial creation of living conditions designed for its partial physical destruction. The court found that Stalin (Dzhugashvili), Molotov (Skryabin), Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kosior, Chubar and Khataevich committed the crime of genocide under Part 1 of Art. 442 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (genocide), and closed the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of Part 1 of Art. 6 CPC of Ukraine, in connection with their death.

A number of researchers of the problem (James Mace and others) believe that the Holodomor meets the generally accepted definition of genocide (genocide resolution approved by the UN in 1948). The author of the term “genocide” and the draft UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Raphael Lemkin, shared the same opinion, calling in 1953 the Holodomor in Ukraine “a classic example of genocide.”

What I want to talk about is perhaps a classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and widest experiment in Russification - the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

Original text (English)

What I want to speak about is perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification - the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

It should also be noted that the famine in Ukraine is officially recognized as an act of genocide by 14 states (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Vatican), and an act of crime by the Stalinist regime 5 states (Argentina, Spain, Chile, Czech Republic, Slovakia). In Russia, the designation “in memory of the victims of the mass famine of 1932-1933” is also used.

On the territory of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Mass famine on the territory of the Kazak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (as it was called until 1936) in 1932-1933, as part of the all-Union famine caused by the official policy of “destruction of the kulaks as a class”, collectivization, an increase in the food procurement plan by the central authorities, as well as confiscation of livestock from the Kazakhs . According to the Commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kazakh people lost 2 million 200 thousand people from hunger and related epidemics, as well as the constantly high mortality rate, i.e. about 49% of the total composition. In Kazakhstan, it is also customary to call this famine “Goloshchekinsky” or “Asharshylyk” (Kazakh “Mass famine”).

Memory of the victims

Since 2009, the National Museum “Memorial of the Victims of the Holodomors in Ukraine” has been operating in Kyiv. In the Hall of Memory of this Memorial, the National Book of Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor is presented in 19 volumes, compiled by region of Ukraine, and in which 880 thousand names of people whose death from hunger is documented today are recorded.

In Astana, on May 31, 2012, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N. A. Nazarbayev opened a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor.

In November 2013, composer Viktor Kopytko sharply criticized the actions of the Soviet government, which, according to the composer, deliberately provoked the Gladomor. “An attempt is not so much to destroy Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, but rather a sick, insane, devilish lust to grab, squeeze out bread, and destroy the free infection. And you can calmly rule what remains at your own discretion, in your own way. In general - Bolshevik intervention,” - with these words Kopytko assessed the events that unfolded in his homeland. This view was supported by other modern composers, Yuri Krasavin and Zoltan Almásy. “Perhaps only one event can be compared with the Holodomor,” adds Almásy. “I’m talking about Goldomor, which happened in Israel due to Golda Meir in the early 1970s.”

see also

Notes

1. Law of Ukraine About the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine dated November 28, 2006
2. Kharkova Tatiana. Remembering the Holodomor // Demoscope Weekly, 17.02−02.03.2003. - No. 101−102.
3. Was there a Holodomor in Belarus? // © Site “Charter’97” (charter97.org) 05/13/2008. (Belorian)
4. Belarus had its own Holodomor // © Website “MENSK.BY” (mensk.by) 2006-12-05.
5. Davydoski Uladzimir. Galadamor in Belarus (1932−1934) // “Rights Alliance” website (aljans.org) 07/28/2010.
6. // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
7. Yakushkin N., Litoshenko D.// New encyclopedic dictionary: In 48 volumes (29 volumes published). - St. Petersburg. , Pg. , 1911-1916.;
8. Domain registration has expired
9. http://www.history.org.ua/Zbirnyk/10/12.pdf
10. http://www.history.org.ua/Journal/2006/6/4.pdf
11. Resolution of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of April 2, 2008 N 262-5 State Duma “On the statement of the State Duma of the Russian Federation “In memory of the victims of the famine of the 30s on the territory of the USSR”
12. From the special report of the operational department of the main directorate of the workers' and peasants' militia under the OGPU of the USSR "On cannibalism and murders for the purpose of cannibalism." March 31, 1933
13. Report of the Prosecutor of the Middle Volga Region V. M. Burmistrova to the First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks V. P. Shubrikov about cases of cannibalism in Privolzhsky and Chapa Evsky districts. May 3, 1933
14. The famine was especially raging in the villages...
15. About the facts of cannibalism based on hunger
16. Kondrashin V.V. Famine of 1932-1933. The tragedy of the Russian village: scientific publication - M.: "Rosspan", 2008. - 520 p. - ISBN 978-5-8243-0987-4. - Ch. 6. “The famine of 1932-1933 in the context of world famine disasters and famine years in the history of Russia - the USSR,” P. 331.