Daria Mattingly: Russia should be held accountable
“The famine in Ukraine was different from the famine in the Soviet Union. Ukrainians were the object of targeted persecution, compared to other regions,” emphasises historian and lecturer at the University of Cambridge Daria Mattingly in the Ukraїner podcast, which was also broadcast on the social network of the X Holodomor Museum.
In this interview, Dr Mattingly examines the Holodomor as genocide and its lasting impact on Ukrainian identity and historical memory. Here are some highlights from the conversation.
How how did the Soviet government manage to engineer it on this scale?
People often ask me, “How could a man-made famine happen in 20th-century Europe? Does it mean taking away all the food?” And I tell them that’s exactly what happened. Collectivisation created the mechanism that made the Holodomor possible. First, collective farms were introduced, requiring all Ukrainian peasants — and all Soviet citizens living in the countryside — to work on them. This ensured that all the food they produced was accounted for and centrally procured by the state. What little was left — vegetables from their plots, pickles, or any other foodstuffs — was taken away by brigades organised locally and by plenipotentiaries sent from district centres.
It was all centrally managed. Of course, it starts with somebody at the top issuing an order, which is disseminated to the bottom. On the ground, you have district officials and village officials, such as the head of the village council or the head of the collective farm, who oversee the enforcement of these orders. The orders were to procure everything produced because the state’s quotas for Ukraine’s 1932–33 grain procurement were completely unrealistic. They were lowered three times and still never met. And so, these brigades went from house to house, taking away all food and valuables that could be exchanged for food. There were also different legislative acts punishing people who went to the fields and tried to cut some ears of wheat, and so on. As a result, we have a very meticulously planned man-made famine. There was already a famine provoked by collectivisation because collectivisation destroys agriculture. It removes any motivation to work hard because you’re not paid money; you’re effectively a serf. So, when you enact such policies from the top to the bottom within a year, and when you remove food, it is reasonable to conclude that the politicians want the population to starve.
What were the differences between the famine in Ukraine and the Soviet Union?
Ukraine’s famine was different from the rest of the Soviet Union’s famine. Ukrainians were specifically targeted, compared to other regions. There were legislative acts designed to prevent people from obtaining food elsewhere. Just imagine: all food is taken away from you, and you live in a small village — what would you do? You can’t even go to the fields to gather food because of a law from 7 August, 1932, commonly known as the Law of Five Ears of Grain or Five Stalks of Grain (the law that criminalised gathering more than five ears of grain from the field, subjecting accused peasants to labour camps, long prison terms, or execution – ed.). Everything is taken from you; naturally, you’d want to leave the village to seek food elsewhere or take your family. But then, in January 1933, a special decree prohibited Ukrainians from leaving the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. You couldn’t cross into Russia or Belarus, and, of course, you couldn’t go abroad. Many tried to cross into Romania or Poland — most were unsuccessful, but some did manage to escape and survive. This measure wasn’t applied to other parts of the Soviet Union, except for the Lower Volga region in February 1933, where ethnic Germans lived in an autonomous republic (a short-lived administrative region in the USSR, established in 1924 and dissolved in 1941 – ed.). So, we see certain groups within the Soviet Union being deliberately targeted. In Ukraine, people were prevented from leaving, though that didn’t stop them from trying. Within four weeks of that decree, over 200,000 Ukrainians were detained. Some went through “filtration camps” and were forcibly returned to Ukraine. The authorities controlled people’s movements, stopped them from eating, and created policies to starve them.
Those policies also included the “blackboards”. This tactic was applied extensively in Ukraine, earlier than anywhere else, and was used to punish collective farms, districts, or villages for failing to meet their grain procurement quotas. By “grain procurement quotas”, I mean the targets set by the state for how much grain your collective farm or district had to deliver. It wasn’t paid for, but was rather a tax; during the Holodomor, it essentially became a target that the peasants were forced to meet. If a village didn’t meet the target, it would be punished by being placed on a blackboard, meaning that all provisions — essential items like food, matches, kerosene, and salt — along with anything in storage or village shops, would be confiscated. Soldiers would sometimes surround the village to prevent anyone from escaping. This created conditions that were incompatible with life. For me, these were genocidal policies. They began in November 1932 in Ukraine, much earlier than in other targeted parts of the USSR.
And what did the USSR do with the food they took from Ukrainians?
The famine took place during the Great Depression in the West, which meant that only a small amount of money could be made from selling grain internationally. While the Soviet Union did sell it at a low price, this strategy helped undermine capitalist economies. Grain producers like the USA and Canada couldn’t make much from their grain, and, of course, those economies were already depressed, with people facing hardships. Therefore, Soviet grain exports further sabotaged capitalist economies and international trade. But ultimately, selling grain at low prices didn’t generate much money to finance industrialisation. This contradicts the common belief that Ukrainian grain was used for industrialisation. It was, but only partially.
Recent studies show that the export of gold was the primary source of financing for industrialisation in the Soviet Union during the first half of 1933. And where did that gold come from? It didn’t come from industrial-scale gold mines in the 1930s. Instead, it was supplied by Torgsin, a state-owned chain of shops initially set up to trade with foreign citizens. During the famine and collectivisation, Torgsin essentially bought gold from the starving population at abysmally low prices in exchange for food. Imagine this: in the heart of Ukraine, far from the major cities, there would be a small branch of this network where peasants could trade their earrings, rings, family heirlooms, crosses, medals, awards — even historical artefacts like Kozak crosses or pieces of Orthodox icons, church gold, and silver. These items, now considered cultural heritage, were melted down. It was not only an assault on individuals but also on cultural heritage. When people lost everything that kept their family memories alive — everything material that connected them to their ancestors — they were left with nothing to remind them of a pre-collectivisation, pre-Holodomor past. This erasure of material identity effectively made them Soviet collective farmers. Their material culture — clothes, furniture, personal items — became indistinguishable from someone in Russia or Central Asia. Unfortunately, the majority of Ukraine’s rural population experienced this transformation.
Why did the Soviet regime intentionally target Ukrainians?
I think the current Russian-Ukrainian war is very illustrative of this approach, especially when the Russian opposition tries to present it as a shared experience, portraying both sides as equal victims of Putin’s regime. However, their experiences are not the same. Yes, people suffer, but Ukrainians are explicitly targeted because they are Ukrainians and live in Ukraine. Collectivisation indeed devastated agriculture in the USSR, and everyone suffered to some extent — there’s a similarity there. However, starting in the summer of 1932, we see these completely unrealistic grain procurement quotas for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leadership, including district officials, voiced concerns at a Communist party conference in Kharkiv that July. They warned that these quotas would worsen the famine. They spoke about the suffering and the facts, but Stalin, Kaganovich (the head of Soviet Ukraine’s government at the time — ed.), and Molotov (head of the Soviet government — ed.) refused to listen. We have excellent transcripts of these conferences showing resistance, but Stalin pushed forward. By August 1932, about 30% of Ukrainian local officials refused to procure grain during the autumn campaign. Some even put their party tickets down, wanting nothing to do with what was happening. A few officials sabotaged the quotas, leading to show trials. Though no one was executed, they were shuffled to other positions.
At the same time, we see the concurrent persecution of the clergy, political elites, and intellectuals — everyone who was instrumental in the Ukrainian struggle for independence or opposition to the Bolsheviks 10 years prior, following the October Revolution. Intellectuals who questioned Soviet rule and the colonial relationship between Ukraine and Russia were also put on trial, as seen in the show trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine in Kharkiv in 1930. We also have tens of thousands of intellectuals, teachers, and political leaders later put on trial under the same premise in the 1930s (a fabricated trial that accused and ultimately repressed leading Ukrainian intellectuals of alleged underground separatist activities — ed.). So, we see the systematic persecution of everything that made Ukraine uniquely Ukrainian — not Soviet Ukraine. Alongside this, there was the abandonment and closure of the policy of Ukrainisation or indigenisation, which promoted Ukrainian culture, education in Ukrainian, and the broader use of the language, along with other projects that stimulated cultural development.
That can bring closure to Ukrainians about the Holodomor?
Russia should be held accountable, and I hope that after Ukraine’s victory in the war, Russia will be held responsible not only for the current war crimes and genocide against Ukraine but also for the Holodomor. This recognition would have significant symbolic value. Of course, most of the top perpetrators are gone now, and we can’t prosecute local perpetrators, many of whom have intermarried with descendants of the victims. However, the recognition would symbolise the rule of law and Ukraine’s democratic future.
Ukraine is not perfect, but it is moving in the right direction, and I hope for the rule of law to prevail. It will never be absolute, but in Ukraine, it would mean that no one can follow criminal orders, even from the top, and no one can assume they will get away with a crime, whether they are part of the local elite, a judge, prosecutor, or police officer. Many officials during the Holodomor believed they would get away with it, and unfortunately, they often did. For Ukrainians, closure would mean a responsible and responsive state with checks and balances, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. The Holodomor and the current war highlight what Ukrainians need and deserve. I remain optimistic about it and hope for the best.
You can listen to the podcast in English here.