Holodomor—Ukrainian Famine and Genocide

 

Dr. Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D. PhD 

The Holodomor (kill by starvation) was the first genocide that was methodically planned out and perpetrated. It was one of the gravest crimes against humanity. The Holodomor was a genocide by artificial famine. It caused an immense cultural trauma. Holodomor had prolonged psychosocial repercussions. The persons subjected to the Holodomor and survived showed higher levels of conformism, anxiety, phobias, behavior avoidance, and inner conflicts. Holodomor has an intergenerational impact. Holodomor represents intergenerational transmission of trauma. The survivors of the Holodomor genocide have transmitted it to subsequent generations, impacting their physical emotional well-being and behaviors. 

The term Holodomor refers specifically to the brutal artificial famine imposed by Stalin’s regime on Soviet Ukraine and primarily ethnically Ukrainian areas in the Northern Caucasus in 1932-33. In the spring of 1933, the rural population of Ukraine was dying at a rate of 25,000 a day, half of them children. The land that was known worldwide as the breadbasket of Europe was being ravaged by a man-made famine of unprecedented scale. 1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin’s “dekulakization” policies.  

After the October Revolution and the rise of the Bolsheviks, the economic policy of War Communism lasted from the middle of 1918, when the Civil War broke out, until it was replaced by the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. War Communism involved the forced requisition of grain and output, and after the currency collapsed, it also involved a commitment to a nonmonetary economy. Acemoglu et al., 2010). Following these economic transformations and other reasons, a devastating famine descended on Russia in 1921. More than 25 million people were threatened by starvation and hunger-related diseases. 

The famine was centered in and beyond the Volga River valley and also in southern Ukraine. The best estimates of the death toll from the Great Famine of 1921 run from 5 million to 10 million people (Patenaude, 2007). As reported by Haller (2003), after the killing fields of the First World War, the political upheavals in Russia and elsewhere, and the rampant spread of disease among exhausted communities came the threat of food shortages that put an estimated 32 million lives at risk in Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. In 1921, on top of the political chaos that caused the breakdown of whatever health services existed, the region experienced a devastating drought, leading to a generalized famine. In October of 1921, Volga refugees brought typhus and cholera to Ukraine, and in the next month, the whole country was swept by epidemics. The epidemics continued, on and off, throughout the whole period of the famine. Although no complete statistics are available on deaths from diseases, the epidemic cases were recorded by the hundreds of thousands, and their mortality rate was very high. The prime victims of the famine and the epidemics were children. They also were the main targets for kidnappings and cannibalism. A million children had been orphaned by wars and famine, and they had to fend for themselves as best they could since neither the state nor state-controlled charitable collectivize Gremyachy in one meeting (Russian Collectivization—George Beers). 

But in reality, collectivization caused massive collective trauma in Soviet society. Under the new legislation by Stalin, the farmers who lived in the countryside were labeled as Kulaks (wealthy landowners) and banished from their native land. Thousands were arrested and shot without any judicial proceedings. People became displaced and subjected to famine and disease. Hundreds of thousands perished due to Stalinist unplanned forced collectivization. Stalin deported or killed nearly five million peasants labeled as kulaks. Their equipment and livestock were sent to collective farms. Many of the remaining peasants were forced into collective farms to work, where they faced disease, starvation, and death. The effects of Stalin’s collectivization resulted in mass disruption of agricultural productivity and incalculable human losses. Collectivization lasted from 1928 until 1938, a decade of complete failure. Collectivization did not lead to agricultural production but rather to a famine that killed millions and the terror unnecessarily imposed on the Kulaks. Stalin’s Five-Year Plan for collectivization failed in a number of ways. Millions of people died of starvation, disease, and repression. (Russian Collectivization—George Beers).

References

Bezo B, Maggi S. Living in "survival mode:" Intergenerational transmission of trauma from the Holodomor genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Soc Sci Med. 2015 Jun;134:87-94. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.04.009. Epub 2015 Apr 15. PMID: 25931287.

George NS, Okeji FO, Iseghehi L. Beyond the Holodomor: Current hunger in Ukraine and global food insecurity. Public Health Chall. 2024 Jan 10;3(1):e149. doi: 10.1002/puh2.149. PMID: 40497074; PMCID: PMC12060754.

Jayatunge, R.M. (2016). PTSD in the Soviet Union. Godage Internationa Publishers. Colombo. 

Lumey LH, Li C, Khalangot M, Levchuk N, Wolowyna O. Fetal exposure to the Ukraine famine of 1932-1933 and adult type 2 diabetes mellitus. Science. 2024 Aug 9;385(6709):667-671. doi: 10.1126/science.adn4614. Epub 2024 Aug 8. PMID: 39116227.