Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

by Anne Applebaum

By November 1932 it was nevertheless clear that the autumn harvest would not meet the plan. It came in 40 per cent lower than the planners had expected in the USSR as a whole, and 60 per cent lower in Ukraine.19 Intriguingly, the overall drop in production was not as dramatic as it had been in 1921, and over the next few years it remained about the same. All across the USSR the total grain harvest for 1931–2 was 69.5 million tonnes (down from 83.5 million in 1930–1); for 1932–3 the total was 69.9 million tonnes. In 1933–4 the USSR harvested 68.4 million tonnes, and in 1934–5 the total was 67.6 million. But the state’s unrealistic demands on the peasants—the expectation that they meet unattainable goals—created the perception of total failure. The insistence that the peasants deliver grain that Stalin believed should exist created, in turn, a humanitarian catastrophe.