The Soviet Union: The Ukrainian Independence Movement

Holodomor occurred during 1932-1933, but corrupt events and poor leadership led up to the famine and starvation. Vladimir Lenin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924, declared Ukraine as an independent nation. Sadly, the new country’s government was very unstable and could not withstand. So, the country became a part of the Soviet Union once again. As a result of getting a taste of independence, a new pride and patriotism rose among the Ukrainians along with a political elite group. Joseph Stalin, who rose to power in 1924, saw that this wave of nationalism in Ukraine as a threat. So Stalin set up a new form of economic production called collectivism. Collectivism is where individual farmers were

In the beginning of 1932, the Soviet government had sharply increased the Ukraine's production quotas in the collectivized farms. This ensured that the people would not be able to meet them. This resulted in an even larger widespread of starvation. In the summer of 1932, Stalin ordered a decree that called for the arrest or execution of any person that was caught taking any amount of grain or food item from their place of work. This led to military blockades stationed around many Ukrainian villages, preventing food from coming in and the starving people from going out in search of food. Soviet guards were brought into the villages to confiscate any hidden grain. Eventually all food from any farmer’s home was taken. When news of the Famine reached the outside world, food supplies were sent from the United States and Britain, however through Stalin, the shipments were denied and new policies from the Soviet Union that denied their part in the famine refused all outside aid were instilled. Stalin refused entry even to journalists, as he feared the media would reveal the Soviet Unions’ crimes against the Ukraine.

Between the years of 1932 and 1933, an estimated 4 to 5 million Ukrainians perished in a famine unprecedented during peacetime. Called the Holodomor, Ukrainian for ‘death by hunger’, the famine fits into a number of other famines that occurred simultaneously in the Soviet Union including but not limited to Kazakhstan, the north caucuses, and the Urals. The famines were a consequence of Stalin’s first 5 year plan, which called for mass collectivization and nationalization of industry with the intention of ushering forth rapid industrialization. Industrialization was prioritized in order to bring the Soviet Union in line with Marx’s dialectal history, according to which worldwide Communist Revolution can only be spearheaded by

The genocide in the USSR is connected with the policies of social engineering carried out under Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s against the Kludks. Kludks are farmers or peasants that were referred to as vampires by the previous leader Lenin. On January 1990 communist party of Ukraine adopted a policy. Stalin felt that Ukrainian nationalism through religion and culture could overpower the people's loyalty to the USSR (Soviet par. 2). Later the law of “Five Ear of grain” was put into act, anyone who was caught stealing would be shot or imposed for stealing from the “socialist party” (par. 3). Quotas for grains were raised and blockades were formed around villages blocking any imports or exports leaving the villages

There was a man in Russia long ago. He was a man that that shape Russia from weaken and proviety strict to the great empire it’s consider today. His name is Joseph Stalin. Stalin was a man who ran the USSR during World War II. He was a brutal rule to his country causing millions of his own people to die. He even went so far to even make a pact with Hitler to conquer Poland. During Stalin’s reign Russia was known for communist ways being known the Soviets.

Stalin made collectivization mandatory after everyone had ignored his idea and there had been a famine. The peasants hated the idea, so instead they burned their crops and killed their animals rather than hand them over to the state. Then another famine occurred in 1930. Stalin then stopped trying to enforce the rules, but in 1931 he again tried to enforce collectivization. Again this time there was the same resistance and another and even worse famine. This lead to Stalin blaming the Kulaks, and he declared war on them. The Kulaks were executed or sent to Russian labor camps. There were soldiers all over the place—in the railroad station, in the avenues, all varying outstandingly from the non military personnel. The British journalist’s report

The soviet government forcefully confiscated land, livestock and grouped the farmers in what is known as collective farming by which everything is owned and run by the state. They also increased Ukraine’s grain production quotas to such an extent were it was not possible to reach. There were also arrest, deportations and execution of lower class peasant and their families. This event was suppressed

The article “Stalin, collectivisation and the Kulaks” by Vince Wall explains the motive and structure of collectivisation in the USSR, and its repercussions. The author is authoritative on this subject, as he has his masters in historical studies and bachelor of government/political science, is the head of the social sciences department at a private secondary school in Australia, and is well established in the teaching and history communities. He explains the three problems Stalin faced in the agricultural sector; food shortages, the need to import machinery from western capitalists, and the small independent farms which opposed communist ideals. This second point could have been explained more, as the relevance isn’t obvious. Vince recounts

The following years in 1930, when 60% of workers were in kolkhozes, Stalin suddenly tended to his subjects with an article, in which he criticize his own particular past actions. According to “Of Russian Origin article”, it was a misstep to drive the people into kolkhozes by force, thus everybody had right to have own farm. Also, the article mentions that 21% of the laborers left the kolkhozes quickly, yet down the middle a year they needed to return back: the government announced deplorably vast taxes for individual households. So there was another starvation in 1930. Stalin stopped the policy for a while, but in 1931 he again attempted to enforce collectivization. Again there was a similar resistance and another, more terrible starvation

People resisted against collectivisation, but were punished through means of deportation and execution. Stalin could subdue the peasants by means of only providing to those who co-operated with the government. However, many people died of starvation, which represents Stalin’s desire to improve the standard of Soviet Production through the creation of a dictatorial system, no matter the negative effects that were experienced by the mass population of peasants.

If the massive changes of the five-year plan to work, Stalin had to modernise agriculture in the USSR. In 1928 the country was lacking in 2 million tons of grain. The farming was not designed and organised to meet demands. Collectivisation made farms come together to share the land, resources and money. They would pool resources to produce grain and could save up together to buy better and more modern farming equipment such as tractors. Stalin wanted to collectivise the farms because he wanted more food for the industrial workers, he needed a surplus to sell to foreign countries, he wanted people to leave the countryside and work in the cities and he also wanted an excuse to kill all the kulaks. The collectivisation policy was fairly successful

Some underlying failures of the Soviet Union’s five year plans were well hidden from outsiders. The main failure was the forced collectivization of farms throughout the country. The primary issue with collectivization was that if a group failed to meet a quota set out by the government they would not be provided with adequate means to survive. The government barely provide enough for those who achieve the unrealistic quotas set out by them so failing to hit said quota would essentially cause for starvation. “Peasants under Stalin” documents experiences of farmers found in these collective settings. The structure of the farms was that farmers would be paid a low rate for all grain until they reached the quota and everything above that would

Stalin was essentially determined to ‘modernize’ Soviet agriculture, that is, the farmland, and so he introduced a policy of collectivization to do so. Essentially, the issue that founded the collectivization was that Soviet peasants were somewhat ‘old-fashioned’. They used inefficient farming methods, and were not manufacturing enough food for the workers in the city. Stalin believed that collectivization had to occur because the USSR had plans to industrialize in the future. Thus, the farming had to be amended and developed as more workers would have to be fed, peasants were needed as

Indeed, not only did this process hinder the effectiveness of agricultural production by the elimination of the state’s most capable farmers, the period between 1929 and 1930 in which mass disturbances occurred throughout the whole USSR shows that the attitudes of the peasantry towards collectivisation was extraordinarily negative. As the peasants made up 80% of Russia’s populace, their support could seen as near-essential were modernisation to be effective. In the aforementioned years, there were over 30,000 arson attacks and organised rural disturbances increased by one-third from 172 to 229. Bewildered and confused, the peasants would often refuse to co-operate in the deliberate destruction of their traditional way of life. As a result, the majority of the peasants would eat their own crops and slaughter their livestock in protest. Despite the lack of crops and livestock, Soviet authorities instead responded with even fiercer coercion,

Even though he has never actually seen the starvation, Stalin went as far as to claim that the Ukrainians were the aggressors and he was the victim. Additionally, from Stalin’s point of view “it was not food shortages but food distribution that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine [and Stalin] decided who was entitled to what.” Stalin’s paranoid attitude was linked to his belief that the Ukrainian SSR had nationalistic schemes to secede and become sovereign. He executed these policies as a reaction to this and hoped that they would be forced to focus on filling the grain production quota rather than Ukraine’s national identity. Moreover, he accused anyone of not filling the quota to be a traitor. Loyal members of the politburo, Lazar Kaganovich and Viacheslav Molotov, would tell Ukrainians that the starvation was an excuse for laziness for those “who did not wish to work and activists who did not wish to discipline [the peasants].” In essence, Stalin and his officials refused to take accountability for the famine and even went as far as to deny it saying that it was not occurring and it was simple laziness on the part of the