In 1931, five regions of the Soviet Union: West Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Urals, and the middle and lower Volga river basins. The drought caused crop failures, which significantly reduced the food supply balance and demand of the authorities. The situation in agriculture at that time and the policies that were not very realistic, as well as the situation of food crop exports in 1931, was grim. In 1932, food production declined further, mainly due to the decline in the main grain-producing regions of the SOVIET Union, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Kuban. By the fall of 1932, Ukraine was having great difficulties in feeding its urban population. By the beginning of the spring of 1933, the national food situation was even more severe: there were food crises in Moscow, Leningrad and several military districts of the Red Army, as well as in West Siberia, the Urals, the Middle Volga and Lower Volga, and the black soil areas in the central region. But the situation in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and Kazakhstan is the most difficult. The situation deteriorated further.
Map of Ukraine
During the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union, a large number of Soviet government personnel were sent to the countryside to mobilize peasant households to join the collective farms, but this encountered passive and active resistance in Ukraine, and eventually the Soviet Union decided to collectively arrest and exile the rich class in Ukraine. A large number of Ukrainian farmers who are good at farming and have rich experience in agricultural production are classified as "kulaks" and their families are exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, which leads to a further decline in Ukrainian agricultural production technology and productivity. Farmers who were exempt from exile were reluctant to farm for fear of being classified as kulaks, and the immediate result was a collapse in Ukrainian food production in 1932. The Soviet Union was expected to harvest 90.7 million tons of grain that year, but in reality only 55 to 60 million tons were harvested. The amount of grain collected by the Soviet government also fell from an estimated 26.5 million tons to 18.5 million tons. In order to solve the problem of food shortages, on August 7, 1932, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a new decree stipulating that "theft of collective farm property" was punishable by death. This decree essentially prohibits farmers from appropriating any agricultural product for themselves. By January 1933, 79,000 farmers had been arrested on charges, of whom 4,880 had been sentenced to prison.
Collective farm trade in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1933-1935 (delivery of agricultural products to major cities)
At the same time, after prohibiting the peasants from possessing the harvested grain, on December 6, 1932, another secret decree was issued: all means of production (agricultural tools, livestock, seeds) throughout Ukraine were confiscated into public ownership, the transport of any grain and manufactured goods into the Ukrainian countryside was prohibited, and the off-site trade of commodities and agricultural products was prohibited throughout Ukraine. In addition, food search teams were dispatched to rural Ukraine to confiscate farmers' seeds, surpluses and rations.
Ukrainians waiting for food
A few months after these punitive measures were imposed, by the spring of 1933 there had been an extremely severe famine throughout Ukraine. The CPSU and the Ukrainian Politburo issued some remedial orders, including the shipment of 320,000 tons of grain to the famine areas, but at the same time the movement of grain out of Ukraine has not stopped. Drought in western Russia and much of Ukraine that spring further exacerbated the famine. At the same time, the Soviet government banned the movement of victims, and communication between Ukraine and the Don River valley and the outside world was cut off, and the outside world was forbidden to enter these areas. Anyone who tries to leave Ukraine without permission will be arrested.
From 1933 onwards, Soviet officials adopted a new means of food statistics, no longer using the figures actually received in the barn, but using "biological yields", extremely exaggerated farmland yields, in order to quantitatively force collective farms to overpay grain, so that the agricultural output of the Soviet Union in the 30s and 40s exceeded the imagination of any foreign expert. Soviet experts in the 50s tried to correct the numbers from the 30s to the 40s when they were studying. But there was no support.
From the winter of 1933 to the following spring, the climatic conditions in Ukraine improved. In 1934, crop harvests improved, and famine in Ukraine gradually disappeared
Exact data on the number of deaths caused by the famine in Ukraine are unclear. According to the latest estimates released by the National Institute of History of Ukraine before 2015, the famine in 1932-1933 caused a population loss of 3.9 million people. This data is supported by historians at some Western research centers. But the electronic version of the British Encyclopedia estimates that between 1932 and 1933, the Soviet Union had a population loss of 5 million, of which 4 million were Ukrainians. According to the Brockhouse Encyclopedia, the Soviet Union lost between 4 and 7 million people.