Modern Era · Europe · Disaster

1932

Soviet famine kills millions in Ukraine

1932

Stalin's collectivization drive and grain requisitions cut Ukrainian villages off from their own harvests. Peasants hid grain in holes; NKVD teams dug it out. By the following spring, cannibalism was reported in some districts. Perhaps four million died in the Holodomor, a famine caused by policy, denied for sixty years.