Kazakhstan Famine of 1932. Filipp Goloshekin
In the early 1930s the process of Sovietization of the various socialist republics which made up the Soviet Union led to the reduction of the native ethnic populations in many. One of the preferred means of eliminating native populations was through the use of starvation. Census data from the Soviets reveals that over 1.5 million Kazakhs died during the fifteen years between counting, nearly all of them during the famine which occurred from 1932-33.
The famine was not due to natural disaster or catastrophe, but from Soviet policies and procedures regarding the administration of the ethnic republics. It was a man-made famine, a policy of designed starvation intended to reduce the ethnic majority of the Kazakhs to a minority.
Filipp Goloshekin was a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee during the famine, which in Kazakhstan came to bear his name as the Goloshekin Famine. On his resume was participation in the murder of the Romanov family, an act for which he was to boast to a British Minister.
His administration of Kazakhstan led to the ethnic Kazakh population being reduced to less than 40% of the overall population, down from over 60% when the republic was brought into the Soviet Union. The deaths by starvation cannot be accurately counted as many children died during and shortly after childbirth, but most historians place the total as near 2,000,000.
Goloshekin remained in power as a party functionary after leaving the Central Committee in 1934, until he was himself arrested in June 1941, as the German army was driving into Russia. Imprisoned by the Russian secret police – the NKVD – he was held until October of that year, when he was shot, probably by the direct order of Stalin. The NKVD buried him in an unmarked grave.