Russia and Ukraine: The Great Famine and The Great Terror

The relationship between Russia and Ukraine is framed by hundreds of years of interdependence and very painful and destructive events. Russia, whether the Empire led by the Czars, the Soviet Union led by the Communist Party or the Russian Federation led by Vladimir Putin has always had an intense and focused interest in controlling Ukraine. The territory we now label Ukraine has undergone regular changes in borders and governance for centuries. Today’s Ukraine has been incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was not recognised as an independent and sovereign nation-state until 1991. Today, we focus on the Soviet era which ran from 1917 to 1990 and analyse how the events of that time impacted Ukraine’s decision to separate itself from the Russian Federation.

We begin our timeline with the abdication of Czar Nicholas in February of 1917. His downfall was caused by major food shortages, economic collapse and military losses against Germany in WWI. He was an inept leader and he and his family were ultimately murdered by the Bolsheviks. The immediate replacement of the Imperial government was a Provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky. He chose to continue the war against Germany and Austro-Hungary and the regime’s popularity declined rapidly. Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia and embarked on a vigorous campaign to elevate the Bolsheviks to national power. In a burst of democracy, regional and municipal elections were held throughout Russia in 1917 and the Bolsheviks never received more than 25% of the vote. However, they initiated a series of strikes and violent uprisings and the Kerensky government collapsed in October of 1917. The Bolsheviks seized power and the Communist party ruling era began. It lasted almost three quarters of a century.

Lenin was the Chairman of the Communist Party and de facto leader of the regime in its early years. His governing and political themes were “Peace, Land and Bread.” He immediately entered into negotiations with the Germans and signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918. To cease hostilities, Russia admitted military defeat and made enormous territorial concessions. Russia renounced its claims to Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Lithuania and Estonia. Germany agreed to determine the future status of those areas after consultations with the local populations. Many forget, in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in the West and the severe penalties imposed on it at the Versailles Peace Conference, that Germany had actually prevailed in the East before collapsing in France.

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty was rendered obsolete when Germany signed the armistice with the Allies in November of 1918. The fate of the lands lost by Russia on WWI battlefields again came into play. The Treaty of Versailles established new countries- Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Significantly, Ukraine despite intense lobbying at the conference, was not identified as a new nation-state. Instead, the current western section of Ukraine was incorporated into Poland eg Lvov. The status of Ukrainian eastern lands would depend on what happened in Russia after the fall of the Czar.

In Russia, a bloody civil war ensued after the Bolsheviks assumed power. This conflict (Whites v Reds) lasted from 1918 to 1922. Ukraine made several attempts to establish an independent state but were unsuccessful politically and militarily. The Bolsheviks eventually beat the Whites and occupied Ukraine. Ukraine was a primary battlefield in the Civil War and millions were killed in the conflict. The Bolsheviks then created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Ukraine was one of the founding republics. In the early stages, Lenin gave Ukrainian leadership a great deal of leeway in their economic and farming policies. Russia was extremely dependent on Ukrainian food production. Lenin needed to feed his people and looked the other way when much of Ukrainian land remained in private hands. Ukraine did experience a poor harvest in 1921-1922 and famine threatened, but Lenin agreed to accept western humanitarian assistance and disaster was avoided in Ukraine and Belarus.

Lenin died in 1922 and Stalin consolidated his power by 1924. He took a radically different view of the proper policies in Ukraine and sought to make the basic principles of the communist revolution “permanent”. He based his rule on a centralised, cohesive and disciplined party rule committed to promulgating the revolution and guaranteeing its survival by force if necessary. The overriding policy goal was to immediately eliminate any vestige of the capitalist economic system The threshold principle in pursuing that policy was the complete confiscation and expropriation of private property by the State. Stalin viewed owners of private property, either industrial or agricultural, as exploiters of the working class, robber barons and enemies of the people.

How did Stalin’s policy pronouncements impact Ukraine. To put it mildly, things did not go well! Ukraine was a “hard” case for Stalin. The Ukrainians presented two ideological problems for the regime. First, there were still strong nationalist sentiments in Ukraine. The Ukrainian nationalist movement was 150 years old and they had attempted to establish their own country multiple times. Stalin believed nationalism in any part of the USSR was a distraction from the principles of universal socialism. He ordered Ukrainian influences to be stripped from all institutions. He targeted Ukrainian intellectuals, academics, artists, lawyers, teachers and political leaders and thousands were liquidated, imprisoned or deported. The original local Ukrainian communists were deposed and replaced by party cadres from Russia. He demolished Ukrainian Orthodox churches. He killed 10,000 clergy. He banned Ukrainian newspapers, theatres and museums. The onslaught on Ukrainian culture was systematic and brutal, The second Ukrainian nuance was the existence of a large and prosperous landowning class and their very existence directly contravened Soviet doctrine.

The most aggressive component of Stalin’s attack on private property in Ukraine was the targeting of the “Kulaks.” Kulaks were wealthy or middle class people who controlled a significant amount of the land. They were successful farmers who provided grain and food products to the locals, the country and internationally. Ukraine was the “breadbasket.” The Kulaks were subject to a vigorous propaganda campaign. They were demonised as greedy and scapegoated for all ills experienced by the peasants. It was a classic class warfare- turn the poor against the affluent. Divide and conquer! The initial step was to raise taxes substantially on landowners and the second step was to confiscate Kulak “surpluses.” Basically, everything they don’t need for there own sustenance. He then upped the ante by evicting Kulaks from their land and shipping them off to the Gulag in Siberia. There were 2 million evictions and deportations. The communist party decapitated the Kulak landowning class in Ukraine.

The elimination of private agricultural property necessitated the creation of a new farming system. The new policy was “collectivisation”- large modern farms operated by the state. All peasants were forced to give up their land plots and farming equipment and were ordered to live in state owned barracks type collective housing. This draconian policy was frequently implemented by young communist idealists from the city- people who knew very little about farming. Collectivisation began as a voluntary program, but quickly became coercive and violent because Ukrainian farmers lacked “enthusiasm” for the new farming methods imposed from the outside. Incentives were destroyed because you no longer kept the fruits of your labor and there was no economic benefit to being efficient in your tasks. Cash was eliminated. Payments were made in kind or through barter. No salaries. The new system was designed to fail and foodstuff production fell in the early 30’s. Stalin was not an economic genius!

The collective farm disaster was compounded by Stalin’s overall economic plan. The country was broke after revolution, civil war, mass emigration and stupid policy. He needed cash and currency. He chose to focus on export and grain and foodstuffs had an international market. Butter, eggs, poultry and apples were potential cash cows. He needed product to sell abroad. Therefore, he radically increased requisition demands to food producing regions-particularly Ukraine. The increased requisitions and confiscations of grain and foodstuffs occurred at the same time food production was down because of the failure of the collective farming experiment. Ukraine was producing less and being forced to deliver more- essentially leaving the local populations with very little to eat. When people stop eating, they starve. When people starve, they die.

The government was frustrated by Ukraine’s inability to meet its requisition demands. They cracked down on individuals and communities who they thought were intentionally avoiding compliance with the new order of things. If you abandoned the collective or hid your equipment or personal property, you were arrested and imprisoned. Villages that fell short of their targets were blacklisted from other critical aspects of economic life. They were not allowed to purchase kerosene, manufacture goods, engage in trade or obtain credit. Requisition shortfalls were attributed to sabotage and alleged saboteurs were tried summarily and received long prison sentences. Local Ukrainian leaders were blamed for mediocre harvests and paid the penalty by losing their job and sometimes their life. 200,000 Ukrainian party members were arrested and exiled to the Gulag. Stalin punished the recalcitrant Ukrainians by doubling down on his attacks on Ukrainian culture. Newspapers were closed and publishing houses shutdown. Ukrainian language instruction was banned from schools. The Ukrainian dictionary was tossed into the waste bin. Russification was the policy now.

The net result of this insane combination of polices was horrific. 4 million Ukrainians died from starvation. This loss represented 15% of the Ukrainian population. Mass starvation had very negative societal impacts; Cannibalism, madness, crime, indifference, cynicism, breakdowns in order, orphans and substantially reduced life expectancies for survivors of the famine. Stalin achieved his goal- the practical elimination of Ukrainian nationalist aspirations and the total destruction of the private landowning class. Memories are long though and the tales of the Great Famine are passed down from generation to generation in Ukraine. Skepticism about Russian goodwill appears to be more than justified. Whether the famine qualifies as a “genocide” is a hot topic for scholars. Their answers and theories will not resurrect the dead. The issue of whether Stalin intentionally set out to destroy the Ukrainian people is an intriguing academic question. One of the defences to the charge is that 1 million people died in regions other than Ukraine so he was not singling them out! Not a compelling answer. It is certain that the famine was not created by natural weather events. It was an artificial creation of policies authored, directed and executed by Stalin and the Soviet communist leadership.

Stalin remained alert to the Ukrainian nationalist threat for the rest of his dictatorship. He consistently accused Ukrainian leadership of being too comfortable with imperialists and Nazis and too attracted to Western capital. He believed they didn’t resist the Nazi invasion with sufficient vigour. He said that political bandits had run Ukraine for too long and that class enemies were always lurking in the Ukrainian woodwork. He embarked on a violent campaign to eliminate political deviants in 1937-1938. He targeted “disloyal” members of the military, the professions and the universities. He gutted his own intelligence service. The early defeats against the Nazis had a direct relationship with the Great Terror. The generals who should have been running the Army had been killed by Stalin 3 years before. Ukraine bore the brunt of “The Great Terror.” 167,000 Ukrainians were arrested and “disappeared” into the Gulag.

The Soviet regime experienced its childhood and adolescence from 1918 to 1941. As described above, a dark and difficult time for Ukraine. WWII followed and 7 million more Ukrainians perished at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets. 2 million Ukrainians Jews were murdered. You can spin the globe 100 times and place your finger on it when it stops and you will never select a country or region with a more tragic history than Ukraine. It is understandable they chose to follow their own course in 1991.