Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-5mcgw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-09-15T16:20:36.399Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2021

Natalya Naumenko Open the ORCID record for Natalya Naumenko [Opens in a new window]
Natalya Naumenko*
Affiliation:
Natalya Naumenko is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, George Mason University, 4500 Roberts Rd, Carow Hall, Office 10, Fairfax, VA, 22032. E-mail: nnaumenk@gmu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The 1933 Ukrainian famine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population of 32 million. Historians offer three main explanations: weather, economic policies, genocide. This paper documents that (1) available data do not support weather as the main explanation: 1931 and 1932 weather predicts harvest roughly equal to the 1924–1929 average; weather explains up to 8.1 percent of excess deaths. (2) Policies (collectivization of agriculture and the lack of favored industries) significantly increased famine mortality; collectivization explains up to 52 percent of excess deaths. (3) There is some evidence that ethnic Ukrainians and Germans were discriminated against.

Information

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 156 - 197
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

For helpful comments and support, I thank Maxim Ananyev, Dan Bogart, Joseph Ferrie, Carola Frydman, Andrei Markevich, Cormac Ó Gráda, Yannay Spitzer, two anonymous referees, seminar participants and conference audiences at Northwestern University, Oxford Graduate Workshop in Economic and Social History (2016), LSE Workshop in Economic History “Command Economies and State Intervention in Economic History” (2016), Economic History Society Annual Conference 2017 in London, the World Congress of Cliometrics 2017 in Strasbourg, “The Greatest Economic Experiment Ever: The Economic Consequences of the October Revolution” conference at Northwestern University 2017, and the NES 25th Anniversary Conference in Moscow 2017. I express my most profound gratitude to my mentors Joel Mokyr and Nancy Qian. This research is supported by the Balzan Foundation and by the Economic History Center at Northwestern University.

References

REFERENCES

Adamets, Serge. Guerre civile et famine en Russie. Paris: Institut d’études slaves, (2002).Google Scholar
Alfani, Guido, and Gráda, Cormac Ó, eds. Famine in European History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert C. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Andreyev, Yevgeniy, Darskiy, Leonid, and Khar’kova, Tatiana. “Opyt otsenki chislennosti naseleniya SSSR 1926–1941 gg.: kratkiye rezul’taty issledovaniya [An exercise in estimating the population of the USSR 1926–1941: Brief results of the study].” Vestnik statistiki, 7, 1990.Google Scholar
Applebaum, Anne. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart, 2017.Google Scholar
Belov, Fedor. The history of a Soviet collective Farm. Great Britain: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1956. Reprinted in 1998 by Routledge.Google Scholar
Cameron, Sarah. The Hungry Steppe. Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Chen, Shuo, and Xiaohuan, Lan. “There Will Be Killing: Collectivization and Death of Draft Animals.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9, no. 4 (2017): 58–77.Google Scholar
Chen, Yuyu, and David, Yang. “Historical Traumas and the Roots of Political Distrust: Political Inference from the Great Chinese Famine.” Mimeo, 2019. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2652587.Google Scholar
Cheremukhin, Anton, Golosov, Mikhail, Guriev, Sergei, and Tsyvinski, Aleh. “The Industrialization and Economic Development of Russia through the Lens of a Neoclassical Growth Model.” Review of Economic Studies 84, no. 2 (2017): 613–49.Google Scholar
Conley, Timothy G. “GMM estimation with Cross Sectional Dependence.” Journal of Econometrics 92, no. 1 (1999): 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Danilov, Viktor. Istoriya krestyanstva Rossii v XX veke [The history of the peasantry of Russia in the twentieth century], 1. Moscow: Rosspen, 2011.Google Scholar
Danilov, Viktor, Manning, R., Viola, Lynne, Davies, Robert, Yong-Chool, Ha, Jonson, R., Kozlov, V., Sakharov, A., Vinogradov, V., and Wheatcroft, Stephen, eds. Tragediya Sovetskoy derevni. Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivaniye. Dokumenty i materialy v 5 tomakh 1927–1939 [The Tragedy of the Russian Village. Collectivization and Dekulakization. Documents and Materials In 5 volumes 1927–1939.]. Moscow: Rosspen, 1999–2006.Google Scholar
Davies, Robert W. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia 2: The Soviet Collective Farm 1929–1930. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980.Google Scholar
Davies, Robert W., and Wheatcroft, Stephen G.. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia 5: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.Google Scholar
Dell, Melissa. “The Persistent Effects of Peru’s Mining Mita.” Econometrica 78, no. 6 (2010): 1863–903.Google Scholar
Dikötter, Frank. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2010.Google Scholar
Dower, Paul Castañeda, and Andrei, Markevich. “Labor Misallocation and Mass Mobilization: Russian Agriculture during the Great War.” Review of Economics and Statistics 100, no. 2 (2018): 245–59.Google Scholar
Ellman, Michael. “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited.” Europe-Asia Studies 59, no. 4 (2007): 663–93.Google Scholar
Graziosi, Andrea. “The Uses of Hunger: Stalin’s Solution of the Peasant and National Questions in Soviet Ukraine, 1932 to 1933.” In Famines in European Economic History: The Last Great European Famines Reconsidered, edited by Curran, Declan, Luciuk, Lubomyr, and Andrew, G. Newby, ch. 9. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar
Gregory, Paul R. Before Command: An Economic History of Russia from Emancipation to the First Five–Year. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, Paul R., and Manouchehr Mokhtari. “State Grain Purchases, Relative Prices, and the Soviet Grain Procurement Crisis.” Explorations in Economic History 30, no. 2 (1993): 182–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosfeld, Irena, Sakalli, Seyhun Orcan, and Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina. “Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire.” Review of Economic Studies 87, no. 1 (2019): 289–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Holland. “Soviet Agriculture with and without Collectivization, 1928–1940.” Slavic Review 47, no. 2 (1988): 203–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iordachi, Constantin, and Arnd, Bauerkämper, eds. The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entanglements. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Kabanov, P. G. Pogoda i pole [Weather and Field]. Saratov, Russia, 1975.Google Scholar
Kelly, Morgan. “The Standard Errors of Persistence.” Mimeo, 2019. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3398303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kontorovich, Vladimir. “The Military Origins of Soviet Industrialization.” Comparative Economic Studies 57 (2015): 669–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin. Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. New York: Penguin Press, (2014).Google Scholar
Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin. Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. New York: Penguin Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Li, Wei, and Dennis, Tao Yang. “The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a Central Planning Disaster.” Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 4 (2005): 840–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libanova, Ella. Demohrafichna katastrofa v Ukrayini vnaslidok Holodomoru 1932–1933 rokiv: skladovi, masshtaby, naslidky [Demographic catastrophe in Ukraine as a result of the Holodomor of 1932–1933: factors, scale, consequences]. Kiev, Ukraine: Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 2008.Google Scholar
Lin, Justin Yifu. “Collectivization and China’s Agricultural Crisis in 1959–1961.” Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 1228–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litoshenko, Lev. Sotsializatsiya zemli v Rossii [Socialization of land in Russia]. Novosibirsk, Russia: Sibirskiy khronograf, 2001.Google Scholar
Liu, Chang, and Li-An, Zhou. “Does Setting Performance Targets Work in Bureaucracies? Evidence from China’s Great Leap Forward.” Mimeo, 2019. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3075015.Google Scholar
Maddison, Angus. Monitoring the World Economy, 1820–1992. Paris, France: OECD, Development Centre Studies, 1995.Google Scholar
Markevich, Andrei, and Mark, Harrison. “Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia’s National Income, 1913 to 1928.” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 3 (2011): 672–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markevich, Andrei, and Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina “The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire.” American Economic Review 108, nos. 4–5 (2018): 1074–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsuura, Kenji, and Cort, Willmott. “Terrestrial Air Temperature and Precipitation: 1900–2014 Gridded Monthly Time Series (Version 4.01).” Washington, DC: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014.Google Scholar
Meng, Xin, Qian, Nancy, and Yared, Pierre. “The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959–1961.” Review of Economic Studies 82, no. 4 (2015): 1568–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meslé, France, Vallin, Jacques, and Andreev, Evgeny. “Demographic Consequences of the Great Famine: Then and Now.” In After the Holodomor: The Enduring Impact of the Great Famine on Ukraine, edited by Graziosi, Andrea, Hajda, Lubomyr A., and Hryn, Halyna, 217–42. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Nafziger, Steven. “Communal Property Rights and Land Redistributions in Late Tsarist Russia.” Economic History Review 69, no. 3 (2016): 773–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naumenko, Natalya. “Replication: The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933.” Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-8. https://doi.org/10.3886/E128401V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac. Famine: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Razuvaev, V. N., Apasova, E. G., Martuganov, R. A., Vose, R. S., and Steurer, P. M.. Daily Temperature and Precipitation Data for 223 USSR Stations. Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Lab, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rennie, Jared J. et al. “The International Surface Temperature Initiative Global Land Surface Databank: Monthly Temperature Data Release Description and Methods.” Geoscience Data Journal 1, no. 2 (2014): 75–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozenas, Arturas, and Zhukov, Yuri M.. “Mass Repression and Political Loyalty: Evidence from Stalin’s ‘Terror by Hunger’.” American Political Science Review 113, no. 2 (2019): 569–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudnytskyi, Omelian, Levchuk, Nataliia, Wolowyna, Oleh, Shevchuk, Pavlo, and Kovbasiuk, Alla. “Demography of a Man-Made Human Catastrophe: The Case of Massive Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933.” Canadian Studies in Population 42, no. 1–2 (2015): 53–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanin, Teodor. The Awkward Class. Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910–1925. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York City, NY: Basic Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Solovieva, Antonina. “Sent by the Komsomol.” In In the Shadow of Revolution:. Life stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War, edited by Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Slezkine, Yuri, 235–40. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
State Duma of the Russian Federation. “Pamyati zhertv goloda 30-kh godov na territorii SSSR [In memory of the victims of the famine of the 30s in the territory of the USSR],” 2008. Available at http://duma.gov.ru/news/1293/.Google Scholar
Tauger, Mark B. “The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933.” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 70–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tauger, Mark B. “Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (1506). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 2001.Google Scholar
Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, S. G. “Indicators of Demographic Crisis in the Soviet Famine.” In Golod v SSSR, 1929–33 [Famine in the USSR, 1929–33], vol 3, book 2. Moscow, 2013. Available at http://www.melgrosh.unimelb.edu.au/famine.php.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, S. G., and Garnaut, A.. “Losses of Population in Separate Regions of USSR (1929–1934): Statistics, Maps and Comparative Analysis (with Special Reference to Ukraine).” In Famine 1933 Ukraine: Collection of Scientific Papers, 376–91. Kiev: “Priority,” 2013.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, Stephen. “Eastern Europe (Russia and the USSR).” In Famine in European History, edited by Alfani, Guido and Cormac, Ó Gráda, 212–39. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar