481. “In the archives of Russia, in the archives of the republics of the former USSR, millions of documents have been preserved [of] the famine in the USSR at the beginning of the 1930s of the last century in various regions of the large country,” wrote V. P. Kozlov, the head of the Russian archival service, in the preface to a collection of declassified materials. “Not a single document has been found confirming the conception of a ‘Holodomor-genocide’ in Ukraine or even a hint in the documents about ethnic motives of what occurred, including in Ukraine.” Antipova, Golod v SSSR, 6–7 (the collection consists entirely of facsimiles of original documents). Klid and Motyl define the Holodomor (or Ukrainian Holocaust) as “the murder by hunger of millions in the 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine and the Kuban region of the North Caucasus, where Ukrainians formed a large percentage of the population.” This becomes “genocide” when the authors include the executions of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, poets, musicians, artists, church officials. They offer no evidence of intentional starvation or of ethnic targeting. They do not dwell on the ethnic Ukrainian agency in the alleged genocide against Ukrainians (in regions where lots of Russians lived and died). They do not include the Volga Valley, Kazakhstan, the Urals, Western Siberia, and other famine-wracked regions where Ukrainians did not form a large percentage of the population. Klid and Motyl, Holodomor Reader, xxix–xxx.
482. Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv, 441–4 (at 443: March 15, 1933).
483. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 238 (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 19, l. 66–8: Feigin, April 12, 1933).
484. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 799, l. 24–5, 30–1; Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 88–9. Stalin did not refer to “enemies” or “wreckers” in his explanations to Robins. The conversation was severely edited when originally published: Sochineniia, XIII: 260–73. See also Salzman, Reform and Revolution, 355–6. See also Postyshev’s public comments about “teaching” the peasants: Izvestiia, June 22, 1933.
485. Davies et al., “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” 653.
486. The threat of attack by Japan, the need for grain stockpiling, and the fact that an overwhelmed transport network had had to carry military and industrial equipment, troops, and deported kulaks to Siberia and the Soviet Far East, would be another way the regime would explain the severe domestic hardships to the party. Duranty, USSR, 190–2; Dalrymple, “Soviet Famine of 1932–1934,” at 273; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 206 (citing RGAE, f. 7297, op. 41, d. 33, l. 23–4: directive sent by Stalin and Molotov: March 31, 1932). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, part 1, l. 9 (Stalin to CC plenum, Jan. 7, 1933); Sochineniia, XIII: 182–3. But Davies, rightly, discounts militarization and instead blames absurd plan targets. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 176ff; Davies, “Soviet Defence Industries,” 266.
487. Barmine, One Who Survived, 101–2.
488. Trotskii, “Nuzhno chestnoe vnutripartiinoe soglashenie.” See also Deutscher, Stalin, 352.
489. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–5), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).
490. Additional arrests were carried out by the various grain procurement plenipotentiaries and the regular police. In Ukraine, OGPU arrests totaled 124,463 in 1933 (compared with 74,859 people in 1932); OGPU arrests in Ukraine would fall to 30,322 in 1934. Vasil’ev, “Tsena golodnogo khleba,” 144. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–45), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).
491. Zelenin, “O nekotorykh ‘belykh piatnakh,’” 15. The regime issued numerous decrees to provide food aid to orphaned children in the tens of thousands in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 428 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, d. 74, l. 97: June 13, 1932), 487 (d. 75, l. 255; d. 61, l. 155: Aug. 20, 1933).
492. Penner, “Stalin and the Ital’ianka,” 45–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 166, op. 1. d. 12, 1. 4 and “Golod 1932–1933 godov na Ukraine: svidetel’stvuiut arkhivnye dokumenty,” 79. See also Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 214–5.
