Holodomor

- "De pé, ó vítimas da fome!" do FMS no No Quinto dos Impérios, relembra a crueldade de um regime que num só acto de opressão programada liquidou pelo menos 7 milhões de cidadãos.

The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin's policy of forced collectivization. The heaviest losses occurred in Ukraine, which had been the most productive agricultural area of the Soviet Union. Stalin was determined to crush all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. Thus, the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian Communist party itself. The famine broke the peasants' will to resist collectivization and left Ukraine politically, socially, and psychologically traumatized.

The policy of all-out collectivization instituted by Stalin in 1929 to finance industrialization had a disastrous effect on agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, in 1932 Stalin raised Ukraine's grain procurement quotas by forty-four percent. This meant that there would not be enough grain to feed the peasants, since Soviet law required that no grain from a collective farm could be given to the members of the farm until the government's quota was met. Stalin's decision and the methods used to implement it condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation. Party officials, with the aid of regular troops and secret police units, waged a merciless war of attrition against peasants who refused to give up their grain. Even indispensible seed grain was forcibly confiscated from peasant households. Any man, woman, or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a collective farm could be, and often was, executed or deported. Those who did not appear to be starving were often suspected of hoarding grain. Peasants were prevented from leaving their villages by the NKVD and a system of internal passports.

The death toll from the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine has been estimated between six million and seven million.
(Revelations from the Russian Archives, Library of Congress)

"At the height of the Famine (...) The Soviet regime dumped 1.7 million tons of grain on the Western markets - nearly a quarter of a ton of grain for every Ukrainian who starved to death;" (UCCA)

- The Artificial Famine/Genocide in Ukraine 1932-33 - Famine - Genocide in Ukraine 1932-1933 - Holodomor - the Famine Genocide in Ukraine; - Ukranian Weekly;