Ukrainian Famine 

     The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern
Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the
rssult 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.  According to a
Soviet author, "Before they died, people often lost their senses
and ceased to be human beings."  Yet one of Stalin's lieutenants
in Ukraine stated in 1933 that the famine was a great success. 
It showed the peasants "who is the master here.  It cost millions