“The region where people went to seek refuge”: Roman Moldavskyi discusses the Holodomor in the Donetsk region

The Holodomor claimed thousands of lives in the Donetsk region. In Bakhmut, at least 500 people are known to have been victims of the Holodomor, and the data remains incomplete. How did the catastrophe unfold in the industrial east of Ukraine? How did the Holodomor differ in mining settlements and agricultural districts?

Roman Moldavskyi, senior researcher at the Department of Holodomor Oral History at the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide, discussed these issues in an interview with the media portal Bahmut.in.ua.

“The Holodomor in the Donetsk region was not unique. Exceptional were the region’s characteristics.”

“In fact, if we talk about the course of the Holodomor as such, there were no specific features,” Roman Moldavskyi explains. “At that time, a general state policy was being implemented, a grain procurement campaign. There were no special conditions for the Donetsk region.”

However, the historian emphasises that there were some differences, and they were related to the region itself. While Ukrainians made up 60 to 90 per cent of the population in most administrative units, Germans, Greeks, Moldovans, Russians, and many other nationalities lived there.

“The Donetsk region is an agro-industrial area, not just an agricultural one. According to the 1926 census, it had a population of about 2.9 million, of which approximately 1.9 million were rural. However, the proportion of the urban population was increasing due to both internal and external migration: people were moving here from other Ukrainian regions, indicating that internal migration was taking place. People were also moving there from the neighbouring Russian regions.”

The historian says that, as in other regions, the Holodomor in the Donetsk region had begun with malnutrition and local famines as early as the end of 1931, with large-scale famines starting in February-March 1932. The so-called ‘socialist competitions’ also played a role.

“This is another distinctive feature: the authorities viewed the Donetsk region primarily as an industrial area and promoted the practice of socialist competitions, similar to those used in industrial enterprises. This was not only done in the Donetsk region, but, in my opinion, it was more pronounced here. The local press constantly reported on the achievements of various collective farms: who was in first place for a given period, who was in second place, and so on. This resulted in some collective farms not only fulfilling but even exceeding their quotas. In 1931–1932, people were faced with the fact that they were getting nothing in return, i.e. everything they had handed over, the entire harvest, had been taken away, and there was nothing left to give the farmers for their labour days.”

The primary reason for the mass famine was the excessively high grain procurement quotas. Collective farms received quotas from above that were excessive from the very beginning. The leadership understood this, but could not change anything. To meet these quotas, some villages even handed over their seed reserves.

“Activists would go from house to house; they were known as ‘towing brigades.’ They would tap around with sticks to look for hidden items and take everything, even seed stocks. They would seize not only grain but also any food. They would even destroy everything they found. When a village failed to meet its quota, it faced punishment, and leaving the area was basically impossible,” says Roman Moldavskyi.

Roman Moldavskyi describes several elements of the Soviet system that turned famine into an instrument of destruction:

Blocking exits from villages with military units;

The absence of passports for peasants, who were effectively ‘attached’ to collective farms.

the impossibility of finding employment in the city without documents;

A complete information blockade to prevent international aid.

“The authorities were extremely concerned that the myth that ordinary peasants lived very well in the country would be destroyed. There is evidence that in western Ukraine and the part that was then part of Poland, people heard about the great famine that began in Soviet Ukraine, and they collected aid themselves. However, obviously, this aid never reached its destination. It was intentionally destroyed.”

“The myth that Ukrainians in the Donetsk region perished and Russians replaced them is false.”

One of the prevalent myths about Donbas is the assertion that the Ukrainian population died out during the Holodomor, and Russians resettled the area.

“That is absolutely not true. The resettlement of Russians began long before the Holodomor, with the beginning of industrialisation. And the resettlements that took place after 1933 mostly affected Ukrainians from the Chernihiv, Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions,” the historian explains.

Moldavskyi says that some Russians who agreed to move quickly returned because the conditions in the region were too harsh. Meanwhile, there were cases when people from other Ukrainian areas deliberately moved to the Donetsk region. The industrial nature of Donbas created an opportunity for salvation. First and foremost, residents of the nearest regions, such as Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Poltava, fled to the Donetsk region in search of salvation.

“The first to flee were dekulakised families who tried to hide and survive on rations. Therefore, many people in the Donetsk region attempted to escape. Some succeeded, others did not. The fact is that there were factories and mines there, so it was possible to find employment even without documents or with forged ones. In those days, in order to save themselves, people often had fake documents, stealing the village head’s seal and making their own papers. But staff turnover at enterprises was huge, up to 50%. Why? Because working conditions were terrible. Unskilled people worked in dangerous places, and the mortality rate was high. Some managed to save themselves, but many did not. Yet, it did give a chance to those who fled the village,” explains Roman Moldavskyi.

People left in the hope of feeding themselves and their families, and their priority was to find work in a factory, particularly in the mines as the Donetsk region had the highest food rations at that time, which were given to miners (not counting civil servants, but such work was out of the question for a peasant who had fled with forged documents).

Initially, the daily ration for miners was approximately 1 kilogram of bread. Later, however, it was reduced to 800 grams per day. For other categories of workers, the situation was worse: metallurgists received 400 grams of bread, while machine builders and chemists received only 200 grams. In addition to bread, rations could include cereals (4–4.5 kilograms per month), herring, oil and other products, depending on the “importance” of the enterprise. Some factories in different regions (not only in the Donetsk region) were not subject to ration reductions; however, those cases were rare.

Serhii Plokhii, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, estimates that over 230,000 people died in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Testimonies from survivors of the Holodomor have been collected and continue to be gathered today. According to Roman Moldavskyi, the Holodomor Museum has collected nearly 200 testimonies.

“There are approximately two thousand testimonies: from in-depth interviews to short questionnaires collected by teachers and students. There are nearly 200 testimonies from the Donetsk region and another 40 from the Luhansk region. The Holodomor Museum began actively collecting the materials quite recently, only in 2018.”

The last large-scale expedition was planned for 2025; however, some areas were closed to researchers due to safety concerns.

Source: Вahmut.in.ua.