17. Was This Man-made Disaster an Accident or Deliberate Genocide?
Stalin’s Terror Famine is a bone of contention to this day between the Ukraine, where it is known as the Holodomor, derived from a term meaning “to kill by starvation”, and Russia. Kiev views the disaster as a deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. It contends that industrialization was implemented despite the knowledge that it would lead to famine, and that Stalin had used famine as a weapon against Ukraine’s peasants. Moscow denies that the famine had been artificial, and counters that other Soviet republics suffered from famine as well.
Depending on how one defines “genocide”, a credible argument could be made for either position. Either way, Stalin’s industrialization and forced collectivization policies set the stage for catastrophe. Then once the famine began, Soviet actions made things worse. Confiscating food from peasants who hardly had enough to feed themselves, turning down international humanitarian aid, and preventing people in the starving regions from leaving, led to many avoidable deaths.