Talk:Causes of the Holodomor

POV at Cause of Holodomor
clear POV political statement becouse historical and legal matters is out of legal jursdiction of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) . While if return to prepared by them "showoff" at 2006 with 1921-22 famine pictures posed as 1933, the reliability of this source press releases regarding out of it jursdiction matters is irrelevant for WP articles - see WP:ISNOT for more detials Jo0doe (talk) 20:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Cause of Holodomor - deliberately engineered

NPOV TAG
NPOV tag was added because this article only deals with the minority POV that the HOLODOMOR was a consequence of collectivization while ignoring the majority POV that the HOLODOMOR was deliberately engineered. Bobanni (talk) 21:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Which one majority you are spoken about? Jo0doe (talk) 08:33, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The majority POV(according to sources not WP editors) that the HOLODOMOR was deliberately engineered.Bobanni (talk) 09:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Red Herring
Editor Jo0Doe claims:

This part of the article is NOT used in the Cause of the Holodomor article; however it states Ukraine formed as part of the USSR in 1922 and ratified the constitution in 1924.

This data is accurate however Editor Jo0Doe's assumption that Encyclopedia Britanica is not accurate is not correct.

Bobanni (talk)
 * EB does not claim
 * The famine was caused by the food requisition actions carried by Soviet authorities
 * It's clear OR and POV


 * So historicaly correct version should be Ukrainian SRR was amoungst founders of USSR.in 1922 as also as UN in 2+ decades later
 * EB claim Its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine
 * see data for harvest and livestock (widelly accepted by economists in the past and historians which worked with figures)


 * EB article clearly contradict the article facts
 * Soviet authorities set requisition quotas for Ukraine at an impossibly high level.
 * Soviet authorities never " set requisition quotas" for Ukraine in 1932 -it's histrically illiteral POV claim
 * Procurement quota was lowered four time as compared to 1931 plan from 440 to 280 million poods - in 1930 was procured 440 and similar figures in 1931.

Again - it's a history article. Please remove OR POV statement from the top of article Thank you. Jo0doe (talk) 17:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * DYK what Kyivska and Vinnitska region fulfilled the grain procurement plan in time (by January 5, 1933) and very few counties and kolkhozes was listed at them at "black board".
 * DYK what most affected areas at this regions was sugar beet cropping - were no or few grain procurement actions was.

Miscitations on Tauger
Tauger emphatically does not attribute the famine to drought. He documents the fact that rustic plant disease destroyed the crops so that much fewer grains appeared in the individual stalks. That in turn led to a rumor that a plentiful crop had been stolen by someone which caused the confusion that aggravated the famine. If you're going to post criticisms of Tauger, then at least get them from someone who accurately describes what his work. Mace is not a reliable source as he's known for publishing books with photos stoled from 1921-2 and falsely attributing to different years, including 1934 when there was no famine any longer. Davies & Wheatcroft do mention the occurrence of drought, but Tauger has focused instead on the plat rust which caused the crop of 1932-3 to be so small. Mace, on the other hand, has falsely used the officially published Soviet figures from that time to claim that there was no major grain shortage caused by natural disaster, which is emphatically not true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.86.226.37 (talk) 03:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Natural reasons ?
The "Natural reasons" paragraph discusses mostly Soviet politics or its results.Xx236 (talk) 07:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Tag for more refs needed removed
Considering that tags are not designed to be used as "badges of shame", and that there has been no discussion or acknowledgement of improvement to the number and quality of references being used since 2008 (when the article was tagged for more references), I've removed this redundant tag.

If editors have issues with the calibre of the references (WP:RS), WP:POV, etc., please use inline tags and bring your content concerns to the talk page. Discussion of content, sources and presentation is the function of article talk page and not subject to the addition or removal of content with no justification other that personal opinion. Such article development requires more that WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT comments in the edit summaries. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:54, 22 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I believe the tag is still very much needed. The pervasiveness of unsourced claims in this article is clearly well beyond the scope of inline tags. Just because no one has discussed the issue since the tag was added is no reason to assume that it is redundant, or that it was added in bad faith. -- slartibartfast 03:37, 12 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry hedden (talk • contribs)

The Black Book of Communism
I couldn't help noticing that the "Deliberately engineered" section cites The_Black_Book_of_Communism as a source. I think that citing such an obviously biased and controversial book is a bad idea, especially in and article that already has issues with neutral POV and reliable sources. -- slartibartfast 03:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry hedden (talk • contribs) 03:54, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reliable sources are not contingent on your personal point of view, most particularly in view of its not being the only source cited in an overview of a well documented context. WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT is not an argument for excluding research by globally recognised scholars. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:45, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Henry, what is your source of obviously biased?Xx236 (talk) 07:27, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

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Removing Natural Reasons for the Holodomor
Tauger's view is WP:FRINGE and thus shouldn't be included on this article. The data given in this article is also for the quota in the whole USSR, not Ukraine, as given by Tauger. Also there is an overreliance on primary sources that are WP:NIS like the Soviet Agricultural Encyclopedia 1st and 2nd editions as the Soviet Union covered up the famine and denied it's existence to foreigners. Davies and Wheatcroft's works are referenced as part of the argument why the famine was due to a lack of draft animals and tractors despite the fact that they concluded that the famine was man-made, being a byproduct of Stalin's forced collectivisation(WP:STICKTOSOURCE).Originalcola (talk) 18:54, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

POV violations and comparison to other famine articles
This article is a pretty blatant violation of the NPOV policy. The only potential "causes" listed are 1) the government did it, or 2) the government did it in a different way. It makes virtually no mention of any imaginable factor besides Soviet government policy; nothing about the ongoing Great Depression and global economic pressures on the USSR as a developing semi-industrialized nation facing an extremely hostile western bloc, nothing about the recent Soviet grain procurement crisis of 1928 and the rationale for agricultural collectivization, nothing about the well-documented phenomenon of peasants burning their own crops (it very briefly mentions slaughtering of their livestock but that's not the whole story at all) and virtually nothing about the weather, climate, crop disease, or the history and causes of repeated famines in the Russian Empire. And, very uniquely amongst famine articles on Wikipedia, it brings up the charge of genocide in the very first sentence and then a second time in the intro alone. Whether you agree with the charge of genocide or not, it's worth noting just how unusual that is on this website for an article about this type of thing. The fact that this is a specifically dedicated article for discussing not just the famine in genral, but all the possible causes of the famine, makes these omissions and one-sidedness even more glaring. To illustrate how unique this article is in this respect, it's worth comparing this to any other Wikipedia article on any alleged man-made or human-affected famine to see none others are written even close to this way. To illustrate:


 * The article on the Bengal famine of 1943 doesn't mention the word genocide once. But in the intro alone it mentions natural causes, the Japanese invasion of Burma, cyclones, tidal waves, flooding and crop disease among possible causes; that article has no less than 5 subsections specifically devoted to non-British government causes for the famine, including "Soil and water supply", "Natural disasters", "Unreliable crop forecasts", "Japanese invasion of Burma" and "Air raids on Calcutta". It variously mentions mosquitoes, monsoons, seasonal dryness, seasonal heat, tidal waves, rice fungus disease and storm surges as possible causes.
 * The Orissa famine of 1866 article doesn't say "genocide" once. The Rajputana famine of 1869 doesn't say "genocide" once. Indian famine of 1896–1897 doesn't use "genocide" once. Great Famine of 1876–1878 doesn't either. Great Bengal famine of 1770 doesn't either. All of these articles discuss environmental and climatic factors in depth.
 * Even the Great Leap Forward article doesn't use the word genocide until a subsection near the end (but that's another article about famine in communist countries so of course its in a subsection totally blaming the famine on the government, and the word "genocide" is in 3 of its citations). The article on the Great Chinese Famine, despite covering the same era as the Great Leap Forward, doesn't say genocide once and has a whole section on natural disasters as a factor.
 * Similarly, 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan doesn't use the word genocide until its 3rd section, but (evidently since it's about Communists) it uses the word once more in its 5th section and again in a citation.
 * The 1958 famine of Tigra and Wollo famine, which don't get their own articles but merely subsections in the Haile Selassie, don't get the word genocide once in reference to the famines.
 * The Famine in Yemen (2016–present) article doesn't use the word genocide once. The Hunger in Zimbabwe article doesn't use "genocide" once.
 * The Great Famine (Ireland) article doesn't mention the word genocide until its 2nd-last subsection. It mentions potato blight in its intro and has an entire subsection about potato blight.
 * The Great Famine (Greece) article doesn't mention "genocide" once.
 * The Kazakh famine of 1919–1922 article doesn't use the word genocide once.
 * The Russian famine of 1921–1922 article doesn't use the word "genocide" once.
 * The Soviet famine of 1946–1947 doesn't use the word "genocide" in reference to that event until its 17th subsection, while using it 5 times in total.
 * The St. Lawrence Island famine article doesn't use the word genocide once and refers to numerous possible environmental factors.
 * The 1950 Canadian caribou famine article doesn't mention genocide once, and refers only vaguely to environmental factors.
 * The 19th century famines in Algeria during the French conquest have no article or dedicated subsection anywhere, just a brief mention in the Pacification of Algeria article, where the word genocide isn't used until the last subsection.

All of those famines have been routinely labelled genocides by historians, and many of them are mentioned in the State-sponsored famines section of the main Famine article, or in the Genocide of indigenous peoples article. I don't say this to imply we should rush out and add genocide charges to all of these articles' intros or bodies, but clearly the trend on this website goes against that approach, with the very specific exception of Stalin and Mao. Some of the aforementioned famines I agree with the designation of famine, some I don't. But I'm including them all regardless to illustrate the clear trend and the blatant mismatch. Somehow, this article (Causes of the Holodomor), along with the other articles about the 32-33 Soviet famines (Holodomor, Soviet famine of 1932–1933, Kazakh famine of 1931–1933) seem to be the only articles about famines on all of Wikipedia to use the word "genocide" right away in the intro; it seems to be the only famine on Wikipedia with its own separate dedicated article about allegations of it being genocide (Holodomor genocide question, which again the editors here decided needed to be mentioned in the first sentence of this "Causes" article), even though there's surely also enough material to make a similar article about the Irish famine genocide question, the 1943 Bengal famine, or the 1876-78 famine in British India. Along with the Great Leap Forward article, the 1930s Soviet famine articles seem to be the only ones to never discuss any environmental or non-governmental policy factors beyond the briefest mention, usually in the same sentence as theories blaming the government are mentioned. (I'm of course excluding the Nazi Hunger Plan article here, where the genocidal intent was spelled out in the perpetrators' documents. In fact one could argue Trevelyan writing the Irish famine was a "judgment from God" to "teach the Irish a lesson" was a much clearer statement of genocidal intent than any conjectures about Soviet genocidal intent, yet again the Irish famine page doesn't mention genocide until the very end, and doesn't have its own separate article on the subject, but I digress.)

This being so, you'd think the Soviet famines should logically be treated as all the others as famines whose causes are debated and where explicit genocidal intent has not been proven or stated, and given that lack of proven stated intent, you'd think the Soviet famine articles should conform to the standards of every other article about every other famine, none of which use the word "genocide" from the get-go (let alone 2 times in the intro with its own dedicated article to the allegations) and none of which fail to discuss environmental or external factors as a central or even possibly exclusive cause. Yet only the famines under Stalin are given such a narrow exclusive interpretation that seems to be totally lacking in any other comparable article, even those famines whose allegations of genocide are clearly mentioned in other articles on those subjects in general. This "Causes of the Holodomor" article seems to be the only article on English Wikipedia specifically devoted to discussing the causes of a famine, so you think it'd deserve even more nuance and exploration. Yet it's totally lacking in any nuance beyond "the government did it, or the government did it". It is one of the only articles about any famine on the entire site which don't have dedicated sections to considering environmental or external factors. Evidently the articles on famines under Stalin (along with the Great Leap Forward under Mao article) seem to be the only ones on this entire website which are lumped in with the Nazis as deserving no discussion of any possible external factor, and the articles on famines under Communists seem to be almost the only ones to repeatedly invoke the charge of genocide -- even though many other famines are called genocide by many scholars, not to mention that articles about other famine-genocides by the Nazis (like the Greek famine) don't even get a single mention of the word "genocide".

To me this is a flagrant inconsistency which clearly evades the requirement of neutrality and balance on this website because sadly, many editors and mods have made up their mind on what position to take here. I see the issue has been brought up several times on this very talk page, only to be dismissed and any source from any other perspective has been removed. I'm not here to add sources of my own since I have no doubt they would immediately be dismissed and removed like others' have. Rather I wanted to point out this bias and omission which becomes very clear when you review articles on similar topics, in the hopes that some other users or moderators here will agree with the obvious and we can agree to make a point of including a bit of balance in this article. Otherwise I would call for some drastic rewrites to many other articles about other famines to immediately include and centralize any and all allegations of genocide in every instance they've been raised, or else this site will continue to show blatant favouritism in its historical judgments and investigations. VolatileChemical (talk) 16:14, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That’s a lot to read. You won’t get good responses because editors won’t take the time to read a WP:TEXTWALL.
 * Regarding causes, the article should discuss the well established causes, and not create a false balance by dwelling on multiple debunked theories, WP:FRINGE, and propaganda (but see Holodomor denial. WP:BALANCE says “Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence.” There’s little academic debate about causes.
 * Regarding genocide, maybe it’s mentioned because “For the past two decades, this scholarship has largely been dominated by the debate about whether the Holodomor constitutes genocide” (Andriewsky 2015), and because a couple dozen sovereign states have recognized it as such. —Michael Z. 00:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * there have only been 15 countries that have recognized this famine as genocide and most of them are for political reasons. most of the research convinced that it is genocide fail to mention their right wing nationalist character and lack of evidence of intent. plus if we are talking about recent research most of it are against naming it a genocide. not to mention that comparing it to the holocaust is a very fascist argument. i don't have to read tottle to get this conclusion, i read the recent articles in the Jerusalem post. 2600:6C56:6100:62A:BD7C:3967:FB5A:E42B (talk) 22:43, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Genocide termonology introduced later
- «Partial revert of user:Alexander Davronov: this is superfluous information, since the definition came 15 years later, but the mentioned historians mainly only considered it still later»
 * It's superfluous only for those, who already know when genocide terminology was first introduced. It's better to clarify for the rest. Especially in light of the said historians opinions. Regards! AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 08:43, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Then how about this?: in the open, less fussy than a note. —Michael Z. 17:28, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Nice! Thanks! AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 14:36, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The genocide terminology was introduced later, but it was literally introduced on the base of studying Holodomor, which was called a "classic soviet genocide" by the co-author of the Genocide Convention, Rafael Lemkin. I would consider the authorship of the Genocide Convention as a trustworthy level of expertise.
 * https://education.holodomor.ca/teaching-materials/role-of-lemkin/ Krispe13 (talk) 04:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Wheatcroft and Tauger

 * Causes of Holodomor is a heavily researched topic and there have been dozens of historians that worked and examined the topic of Holodomor (among Ukrainians it was most notably Stepan Kulchytskyi), yet a very large chunk of the article is based on works of only Stephen Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies and Mark Tauger. There are a lot of other works on Holodomor too, why only these three are cited so often? Виктор Не Вацко (talk) 18:56, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Articles are written by whoever volunteer to write them, using whatever reference works they have to hand. So an editor had those works, and so they are used extensively in the article. If you think other viewpoints should be in the article go ahead and add them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:04, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd love to but I have very little time to do so, besides some minor changes from time to time that are uncomparable to the massive amount of work done here. The point is that the article heavily relies on works of only those three people even though there have been dozens of others' works. And works of those three people not only deny the genocidal intent of the Holodomor, but even slightly tilt towards the "natural factor" argument (primarily Tauger). Whether some of us consider Holodomor a genocide or not, this heavy tilt towards the "not" argument makes the neutrality and objectivity of the article questionable. Виктор Не Вацко (talk) 18:39, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree. These seem to be responsible for some important contributions in contributing to analysis of the harvests, etcetera. But they are repeatedly overemphasized because they are used to support the anti-genocide side of the genocide question (even though they criticize each other’s research to a degree).
 * With the mainstreaming of the field of genocide studies, and Holodomor studies as a sub-specialty, and with post-colonial history, this whole debate is no longer central to study of the Holodomor. Academia has moved on to a degree. WP:DUE begs us to balance articles in this series. —Michael Z. 02:07, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite/sourcing needed
ctrl+f for "citation needed" yields 34 results. 34 unsourced claims in an article this important isn't acceptable. Aachenshinto (talk) 21:18, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Due weight in the lead
There is an academic consensus since the 1980s on the causes of the Holodomor. The lead currently starts by citing Wheatcroft, a dissenter from this view, and Getty, who I don’t even think has conducted research on the Holodomor.

This is completely a non-neutral point of view, formulated to give the wrong impression to readers. —Michael Z. 05:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree it is a problem. But main issue in the lead is different. It says that there is a significant dispute about the causes: Soviet historians, Stephen Wheatcroft and J. Arch Getty believe the famine was the unintended consequence of problems arising from Soviet agricultural collectivization which were designed to accelerate the program of industrialization in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Other academics conclude policies were intentionally designed to cause the famine. Well, no, there is no any dispute that the Soviet industrialization was an intentional policy (although probably not with the intention to kill as many people as possible), and that it was one of key factors that contributed to the famine. My very best wishes (talk) 18:18, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, saying “industrialization was a cause of famine” is not very helpful, because industrialization is not a mechanism that causes people to lack food or starve, and I am doubtful that even Wheatcroft (“anthropologic hazards such as various agrotechnological failures”) or Getty (“‘the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity’”) would ever have completely glossed over so extremely in a single sentence. I have seen this mentioned in a few Wikipedia articles but it makes zero sense on its own. —Michael Z. 21:09, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What needs to be done in the lead? Just list all the contributing causes and contributing policies and factors that are currently described on the page, i.e. the harvest, collectivization, dekulakization, targeting of Ukrainians,  requisition quotas, confiscation of reserve funds, restrictions on freedom of movement, information blockade, refusal to provide aid, export of grain and other food, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 18:44, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, please. —Michael Z. 21:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Tauger summary
This article: Tauger, in contrast, argues that human factors such as low traction power and an exhausted workforce were worse in 1933 than previous years yet that year there had been a higher harvest, so the cause of the low harvest was mostly due to various natural factors.

This sentence is confusing, and seems to necessarily miss some critical part of the source’s argument. It says that 1933 had a higher harvest than previous years, and then refers to “the low harvest” (in 1933? relative to what?) as if that were the direct cause of famine in 1933. And so what is the effect or relevance of these human factors if the cause was natural factors? The picture is muddy.

Needs to be rewritten for clarity by someone familiar with Tauger’s argument. —Michael Z. 21:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, a lot of things on this page are confusing, lacking any logic, difficult to understand, etc. I will look at this later. My very best wishes (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Mass removal of content
I believe this belongs on the talk page for visibility and review.

The following section was removed from the article here

Ethical evaluation of Soviet policy
According to Simon Payaslian, a tentative scholarly consensus classifies the Soviet famine (at least in Ukraine) as a genocide, whereas John Archibald Getty states that the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a policy blunder that affected many nationalities, rather than some genocidal plan. Scholars say that it remains a significant issue in modern politics and dispute whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide. Several scholars have disputed that the famine was a genocidal act by the Soviet government, including Stephen G. Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies, and Mark Tauger. Getty says that the "overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives [...] is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan." Wheatcroft says that the Soviet government's policies during the famine were criminal acts of fraud and manslaughter, though not outright murder or genocide. In regard to the Soviet state's reaction to this crisis, Wheatcroft comments: "The good harvest of 1930 led to the decisions to export substantial amounts of grain in 1931 and 1932. The Soviet leaders also assumed that the wholesale socialisation of livestock farming would lead to the rapid growth of meat and dairy production. These policies failed, and the Soviet leaders attributed the failure not to their own lack of realism but to the machinations of enemies. Peasant resistance was blamed on the kulaks, and the increased use of force on a large scale almost completely replaced attempts at persuasion." Wheatcroft says that Soviet authorities refused to scale down grain procurements despite the low harvest, and that "[Wheatcroft and his colleague's] work has confirmed – if confirmation were needed – that the grain campaign in 1932/33 was unprecedentedly harsh and repressive." Joseph Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin supports a similar view, stating that while "there is no question of Stalin's responsibility for the famine" and many deaths could have been prevented if not for the "insufficient" and counterproductive Soviet measures, there is no evidence for Stalin's intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately. There are letters from Grigory Petrovsky and Vlas Chubar to Stalin and Molotov stating that "At least 100 districts require urgent supply assistance" enforcing the fact the Stalin was well aware of what was going on. While Mark Tauger considers the famine to be the result of natural factors stating that "the harsh 1932–1933 procurements only displaced the famine from urban areas" but the low harvest "made a famine inevitable." Ultimately concluding that it is difficult to accept the famine "as the result of the 1932 grain procurements and as a conscious act of genocide" he still concurs with Wheatcroft that "the regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the Soviet population in the early 1930s", and "if anything, these data show that the effects of [collectivization and forced industrialization] were worse than has been assumed."

IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC) IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Hmph. It’s just a list of views scholarly dissenters against the Holodomor as genocide. It doesn’t appear to be wrong, but it’s completely one-sided (WP:UNDUE and non-WP:NPOV) as a purported “ethical evaluation” of the Soviets in the Holodomor. I am prone to agree that the text as written doesn’t belong in this article or any other. —Michael Z. 21:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)