In the early 1930’s, the Soviet Union created a policy in an attempt to increase the food supply. Stalin was convinced an agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans. The policy turned out to be devastating as it helped spawn one of the biggest famines in history.
The most affected areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. The famine was extremely bad in Ukraine, and became known as the Holodomor, which many historians felt was an actual genocide, carried out by Joseph Stalin and comparable to the Holocaust.
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| Holodomor - Death by starvation |
