The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 affected major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union which included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, South Urals, West Siberia.

Estimation of the loss of life

• Encyclopædia Britannica estimates that six to eight million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, about four to five million of whom were Ukrainians.
• Robert Conquest estimated at least 7 million peasants deaths from hunger in the European part of the Soviet Union in 1932–33 (5 million in Ukraine; 1 million in the North Caucasus, and 1 million elsewhere), and an additional 1 million of deaths from hunger as a result of collectivization in Kazakhstan.
• The Black Book of Communism estimates 6 million deaths in 1932–33.
• The 2004 book The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–33 by R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, gives an estimate of 5.5–6.5 million deaths.
• Another study using data given by Davies and Wheatcroft estimates "‘about eight and a half million’ victims of famine and repression" combined in the period 1930–33.

See also

• Holodomor
• Povolzhye famine of 1921

Notes

1. Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7, p. 306.
2. Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 401. For a review, see

References

• More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, by S. G. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies April 1990.
• The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered, by Hiroaki Kuromiya, Europe-Asia Studies, Volume 60, Issue 4 June 2008, pages 663–75.
• The Soviet Famine of 1931–33: Politically Motivated or Ecological Disaster?, Carla Thorson, UCLA International Institute, May 5 2003.
• Aftermath of a Soviet Famine, Washington Post, April 27, 2008.
• Famine in the Soviet Union 1929-1934 - collection of archive materials