Holodomor

The Holodomor was a man-made 1932-1933 famine and a major national catastrophe in Ukraine. A lower estimate of the total death toll is near 5 million, with a top of 7.5 million. This disaster was part of the larger famine in the Soviet Union, which also affected Kazakhstan, the lower Volga region, and northern Caucasus, and in which several million persons died of starvation; estimates vary.

Many Ukrainian historians view this as an artificial famine, a deliberate genocide committed as part of Joseph Stalin's collectivization program under the Soviet Union. Russian historians often maintain that the famine was a natural consequence of collectivization and associated resistance, exacerbating an already-poor harvest. While the course of the events as well as their underlying reasons are still a matter of debate, the decrease of population in Ukraine between 1927 and 1939 by 4 million is confirmed by the official Soviet statistics.

On 15 May 2003, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine declared the famine of 1932-1933 an 'act of genocide' that was deliberately organized by Stalin's totalitarian regime against the Ukrainian nation. Since 2006, thirteen countries have recognized the Holodomor as genocide.