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Concept
Soviet famine of 1930–1933
Summary
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine and different parts of Russia, including Northern Caucasus, Kuban Region, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union. Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, and forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization and a decreasing agricultural workforce. Sources disagree on the possible role of drought. During this period the Soviet government escalated its persecution against the kulaks. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had ordered kulaks "to be liquidated as a class", so they became a target for the state. Persecution against the kulaks had been ongoing since the Russian Civil War, and had never fully subsided. Once collectivization became widely implemented, the persecution against the kulaks increased which culminated in a Soviet campaign of political repression, including arrests, deportations, and executions of large numbers of the kulaks in 1929–1932. Some kulaks responded by carrying out acts of sabotage such as killing livestock and destroying crops intended for consumption by factory workers. Despite the death toll mounting, Stalin chose to continue the Five Year Plan and collectivization. By 1934, the Soviet Union established an industrial baseline; however, it did come at the cost of millions of lives.
Some scholars have classified the famines which occurred in Ukraine and Kazakhstan as genocides which were committed by Stalin's government, targeting ethnic Ukrainians and Kazakhs. Others dispute the relevance of any ethnic motivation, as is frequently implied by that term, and focus on the class dynamics which existed between the land-owning peasants (kulaks) with strong political interests which were vested in the ownership of private property, and the ruling Soviet Communist party's fundamental tenets which were diametrically opposed to those interests.
Official source
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