Academic Perspective: Ukrainian Famine

The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, popularly known as the Holodomar (“murder by hunger”), defies traditional conceptions of the causes of famine, not least because scholars still do not agree on its causes.  The majority of recent scholarship, led by Robert Conquest as well as Dana Dalrymple and others, has argued that the Ukraine Famine was a man-made catastrophe, caused by Stalin’s deliberately harsh procurement policy.  This policy was designed to put down the Ukrainian peasantry, perceived by Communist party officials as a threat to their regime because of Ukrainian nationalism and national culture.