Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
STALIN’S GREAT HOLODOMOR
Why did Stalin’s government starve millions to death?
Guest: Professor Walter Zaryckyj Center for U.S. – Ukrainian Relations
In 1932 and 1933, approximately seven million Ukranians and Cossacks were starved to death in the breadbasket of the Soviet Union by the central government of Joseph Stalin.
Some scholars suggest the Holodomor (“extermination by hunger”) was caused by bad weather and poor planning – an accident of policy. It was, after all, the time in which Stalin’s central government was going about the countryside eliminating private property. The resulting economic chaos, the argument goes, was enough to cause the killings.
Other scholars suggest the Holodomor was an act of willful intent. This argument points to the recalcitrance of the Ukranian people toward Stalin’s central government. The Holodomor, their argument goes, was a deliberate act of genocide.
Stalin’s starving to death of tens of millions of Ukrainians and Cossacks leads us to ask…
How did Stalin’s government take control of the Ukraine’s food?
How did that government manage to withhold the food from the people who grew the food?
