page_title: Holodomor
section_title: Genocide question
hierarchical_section_title: Holodomor / Genocide question
caption_attribution_description: English: Chicago's American front page depicting Holodomor's starvation to death of six million Ukrainians
context_page_description: The Holodomor, also known as the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, the Terror-Famine and sometimes referred to as the Great Famine or the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33, was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The term Holodomor emphasises the famine's man-made and intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement. As part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.
  Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished.
context_section_description: Scholars continue to debate whether the Holodomor was (on one extreme) man-made, intentional, and genocidal and (on the other) nature-made, unintentional, and ethnicity-blind. Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics and there is no international consensus on whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide.
  Scholarly positions are diverse. Raphael Lemkin, James Mace, Norman Naimark, and Timothy Snyder consider the Holodomor a genocide and the intentional result of Stalinist policies. Michael Ellman considers the Holodomor a crime against humanity, but does not use the term genocide. Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde consider the deaths primarily due to intentional state policy, not poor harvests. Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen Wheatcroft consider the deaths largely unintentional, as Stalin acted to reduce them—but highly insufficiently. Mark Tauger considers the Holodomor primarily the result of natural conditions and failed economic policy, not intentional state policy.
caption: Chicago American's front page
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