The Communist BlocBoard

Table of Contents:
- Part 1: Basic Summary
- Part 2: Background
- Part 3: Economics before, and during the Famine
- Part 4: Soviet Government Response
- Part 5: What Caused/Worsened the Famine:
- Kulaks and Collectivization
- Part 6: Conclusion
- Sources

Basic Summary:
In 1932, during the period of Great Depression in the world, there was a famine affecting large areas of the world. Its effects lasted up until 1934. Among those countries was the 2 decade old Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, otherwise known as the USSR or Soviet Union. This famine like others before it, was a period of hardship for the USSR, which had only started its first 5 year plan and was thus lacking industrial or agricultural power. Let me put you in the picture. Most farming was still medieval, three fields with crop rotation, one winter grain planted in the fall, one spring planting, one fallow field. The fall crop only gained a few weeks on the spring planting. It appears from the dates people started dying that they got in the first, fall-planted crop, but lost the second, spring-planted one and it was fall, '32, before it began to sink in.The push for the genocide theory began in the 1980s. There was a “documentary” (with no original film) made in Canada, and O.U.N.-Bandera in its American incarnation hired a pen-for-rent called Robert Conquest, fraudulently represented as a “historian” despite his lack of P.hD, to put his name on it while they supplied him with all his research material and staff, and also got space in the book to air their pet theories on Ukrainian nationalism for 220 pages before we actually get to the famine. Robert Conquest was a former member of Britain's MI-6, working in their propaganda department the IRD, writing anti-communist scare-stories for Western press to re-print. he continued to do so even after he left the agency, writing various books and pamphlets of scurrilous, poorly cited and inaccurate nature. [1]

The following bolded/italicized points are arguments made by the Banderites. Each point is refuted by facts [1]:
- The government set quotas that were impossible to attain.
These same “impossible” quotas were obtained by 75% of farms, and obtained easily in 1933, in spite of all the extra difficulties made following a famine, such as draft animals getting slaughtered for food, or the limited machinery sabotaged and broken.
- The government enforced these impossible quotas even when people were starving.
The Soviet government lowered the quotas by three times as reports came in of shortages.
- The government exported the grain that would have prevented the famine.
Government contracts were for 4 million tons out of a total harvest of 77 million tons. They cancelled half the contracts and sold no more grain after problems were reported.
- The government would not open the grain stores even when people were starving outside the doors.
You do not eat seed grain. even if most of it were edible in that raw form, its like killing the golden goose, eating the only hope for actually surviving in the long run. This is basic survival 101.
- City dwellers got a ration card but there was nothing for the villages.
Of course there was, but it couldn’t be set centrally because conditions in the villages were more variable. In the cities, there were no crops for anybody.
- People were prevented from travelling, even when they knew somewhere they could buy food.
(I imagine this was fever. Over the river and through the trees is a big rock candy mountain.) But if not it was searching for black marketeers or looking for something to steal. Nobody in a strange village is going to give travellers a ration card. Why would they leave home? Moreover, due to disease epidemics, it is standard procedure to quarantine those areas.
- The government gave no aid of any kind.
We’ve got the railway bills of lading. The government returned tens of millions of tons of grain in response to emergency appeals.

The aftermath of the 1st World War and Civil/Revolutionary war (and the Interventions) was like the aftermath of the American Civil War but far worse due to sheer scale. People away from the farm didn’t go home; they pointed their horses out across the prairies and began living by robbing trains and raiding. There were a lot of politico/bandidos running amok. They held meetings and screamed slogans like “Sow no seed.” “Burn the fields.” There was a vast amount of sabotage. The crops were left standing in the fields, or mowed but left lying. The agitators actually told the peasants that if they didn’t want to pay 30% of the crop to the government, they should plant 30% less. And apparently some people believed that should work. This couldn't be allowed to occur as it endangers everyone else.

The government’s job in a famine is to freeze everybody in place; gather what food there is; ration it; distribute it. And guard the seed grain, that's what it did.

Background:
I'll provide a picture of what life in Eastern Europe was like prior to the USSR's collectivization.[2]

Roughly 95% of the people from Eastern Europe (mostly within the Russian empire) were poor peasant farmers who owned no land but paid high rents to the country's landlords who made up the middle/upper class. These Pomeshiks were rich, privileged and had no problems withholding grain-stocks if necessary. Russian peasants lived in villages cut off from the rest of the world. The villages were not much more than a typical third world collection of single room log cabins built with no pegs or nails or any tools other than a hatchet, possessing dirt floors and moss in the cracks of the logs. They would usually be lining a main road or near a stream. These villages are where illiterate peasants lived and worked as indentured servants, farming the land to keep some food on the table and as payment of rent to wealthy landlords. When land grants were made originally to these Russian lords, they were huge. The grantees came into possession of a huge chunk of land and whatever was on it, including towns and villages. The people became serfs, including the townspeople. The shopkeeper or blacksmith was a serf and paying rent or labour to a master on the same basis as a peasant serf. He was not free to move, or to go out of business, but he could start another, and occasionally a town serf would prosper. Some were given special privileges by whoever owned the land and would enforce their rule locally.

Town serfs were emancipated before the peasants; the peasants were freed in 1860, but on terms that worsened their living standards and security. The state bought 80% of their land from their landlord and sold it to them on a long-term mortgage. Since they considered it theirs already, this was no windfall. Around the middle of the 1800s, the British abandoned protectionist import barriers to grain, the Corn Laws, which gave southern Russia access to an export market. This created an opportunity for southern Russia to export, and they began growing wheat and other cereal grains. The serfs who had originally worked half the landlord’s holding for him and half for themselves had often paid cash rent instead of labour and worked the whole holding for themselves. Now there was a new incentive in the mix and landlords reversed the terms. Serfs lost the produce from the extra land but still had to work it. Whatever entries into the cash economy they had contrived such as planting cash crops like flax frequently had to be abandoned.

Russian peasants had one other alternative to a miserable life of tenant farming. They could move to the city to find work in one of the many miserable factories that were springing up all over Russia, becoming proletariat. By Official Russian law workers couldn’t be forced to work more than 11 ½ hours in a day (already a huge amount), but most factory bosses ignored this and the Czarist police were easily bribed to look the other way. Wages were very low, a few rubles for a months work. The factories were dirty, dark, and dangerous. Workers were given free housing but the conditions of these barracks were so terrible that they made a New York City tenement from 1890 look like a room at the Ritz. Each room was nothing more than a long, empty warehouse where each family stayed in a room divided by a piece of cloth. Each “room” was only large enough to fit a bunk bed that often touched the one next to it, (compare that to communals that at the least had proper rooms and were in themselves created ONLY because Czarist Russia did not provide any proper houses for the people).

The Russian Empire's peak production levels were in 1913 and the top estimate put it at roughly 1/5 of America's production prior to WW 1 (and even less as soon as the war began). The majority of these factories used outdated and inferior equipment and did not actually produce many indigenous products despite the many inventors and inventions popping up over Russia during the 18th and 19th century. For example the top line new Battle-cruisers and Battleships that were to be the future of the Russian navy had almost all of its systems and products made over-seas because the Russian industry had no ability to provide an alternative. Several of these ships of the line were almost completely made over-seas in German, American and British Ship-yards. At the end of WW 1 and the Civil war, Russia's production levels were about 0 because almost all the factories had been destroyed and what few remained were outdated and lacked the trained cadres required to man them.

A most distinct comparison is of course cars. The Russian empire had one engine manufacturing company with a single workshop which manufactured the first Russian automobile in 1896. A German company (Van der Zypen & Charlier) opened a subsidiary called Russo-Balt in Riga in 1874 the majority shareholders of which became Baltic, German and Russian investors in 1894 (notably the family of the arch-liberal anti-communist polemicist Isaiah Berlin who would never cease to be arseblasted about the Bolsheviks expropriating his family's factory). Russo-Balt still had only one factory altogether which was actually producing railway carts and only did cars on the side. The Czar ordered 6 new automobile factories to be opened in Feb 1916 but it was never done because the Russian economy was swamped trying to handle orders for the army in the middle of WW-1.

Then after the Bolsheviks took over and nationalized the Russo-Balt factory, they built a second one. In 1922 they launched new models after the war(s) ended. Between 1932 and 1939 the amount of car production in the Soviet Union increased up to 844.6% and by 1937 the USSR was the world's second largest producer of trucks, producing over 200,000 vehicles. But I digress. Let us return to the topic of peasants and food and famine.

In Russia the concept of famine was as normal as the 4 seasons, it was something that happened every 5-15 years or so and ravaged the country. The lack of education also meant a lack of doctors, which meant that despite the many medical innovations of the few Russian Doctors there were, not many were put into practice during the Czarist regime and instead people relied on folk remedies to get by. But folk remedies won’t do much for Dysentry, especially when there is no food. When yet another famine began during WW-1 this became the straw that broke the camels back and the result was massive protests, the reaction to which was the Czar ordering the army to fire on the unarmed and peaceful protest. This became the reason for the coup that over-threw the Czar, by the liberal-democratic party headed by Kerensky. However because he did not end the war as promised, nor change the situation he quickly grew unpopular, culminating in the October Revolution. Lenin quickly made peace with Germany, re-drawing the border at the Curzon line, which gave away the territories of Poland and the Baltic states to the German Empire. Germany turned around and continued to fight France and Britain and the newly arrived USA until 1918. In the meantime, Lenin and the Bolsheviks established a War-Communism government, while they fought with the White Guard. However after WW-1 ended, Britain, France, Germany, the USA, Japan and multiple other countries began the Intervention, sending in thousands of troops to back up White Guard generals such as Denikin to try and crush the Bolsheviks and divide Russia as they had done with China. The Eventually the Worker-Peasant Red Army defeated the intervention and these countries retracted their troops, white guard officers evacuating with them. Aside from other smaller wars and battles fought on the soviet borders, by December 30th, 1922 when the Soviet Union formed, the fighting had ended. But now they had a new problem. In 1921 (right before Soviet Union is officially established) a new wave of starvation ran across Europe including Germany, Switzerland, France and Austria as well as the territories of the former Russian Empire. This was the result of the war, and in Russia, a continuation of the famine that began in 1914. From this time period come the famous Hearst/Walker photographs later attributed to the 1932 famine.[1] The USA, nearly untouched by WW-1 and the other conflicts was experiencing the Roaring Twenties, and felt free to send some assistance these countries, even Russia, in spite of ideological dispute.

Economics before, and during the Famine
In early 1920s the recently proclaimed Soviet Union, having gotten past the worst of the famine, was anxious to restore and build up its industry. What little of it existed under the Czar had been totally destroyed after WW-I and the Russian Civil War (1918-1921). They needed machinery and new technology to create an industrial base from which production could kick off of. The Czarist empire had left behind practically nothing - The trans-siberian railway was a rickety, 1-way structure that had to be rebuilt from scratch, the industrial sectors were working with worn out machinery and the lack of refineries made the huge resources of the USSR useless to it. They needed to buy almost everything from foreign countries as they did not have time or money to spend on wholly indigenous production. In the beginning the Soviet government was able to offer to the international market only three items: grain, minerals and gold. In 1922, at the Genoa Conference [3] the new Gold Exchange Standard [4] was introduced. Since the end of 1922 the Soviet Union was issuing the golden chervonets – a new Soviet currency fully covered by the golden reserves and convertible to gold. In 1923 the Soviet chervonets was one of the most stable and secured currencies of the world. It represented a clear and present danger for emerging financial epicentre – the United States of America. In 1924 the Soviet chervonets was replaced by a softer rouble without golden equivalent. This diminshed the menace to the US dollar and British pound. In return Soviet Union was recognized by the UK, France, Norway, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, China, Japan, Mexico and other capitalist countries.

In 1925 the Soviet leadership decided to accelerate industrialization of the country because, although they had surpassed Tsarist Russia in industrial output (superseding the production of 1913), they were nowhere near any of the previously mentioned countries in terms of development. However this was not something the West liked and in 1925 a so-called "golden blockade" was imposed on the USSR: the Western powers refused to accept gold as payment for industrial equipment they delivered to Russia. They demanded that the Soviet government pay for the equipment in timber, oil and grain. These sanctions were not removed the following years. In 1929 the US bankers lack of regulation initiated the Great Depression, ushering in a period of international currency instability. In 1931 Germany and Austria failed to repay the foreign debt and stop exchanging marks into gold, thus abolishing Gold Exchange Standard. By the autumn 1931 the UK suspended the gold exchange as well. This seems unrelated until the further actions that followed are taken into account. With this economic crisis at hand it would be the logical and natural move to lift the golden blockade of Soviet Union at that time, thus allowing Soviet gold to relieve the suffocating Western economies. But the decision taken was the absolute reverse, not only did they leave the gold blockade of the USSR in force, but also imposed a severe trade embargo on the majority of Soviet export. Such embargoes were further introduced throughout the 30s such as in April 17, 1933, when the British government introduced embargo: Russian Goods (Import Prohibition) Act 1933 [5].

Here is the export data [6] [7] [8]:
In the year 1930 they exported 4,846,024 tonnes, In 1931 the number increased to 5,182,835 tonnes. In 1932, which is the year when the famine began they exported much less. Only 1,819,114 tonnes. AND here it comes. They imported 750,000 tonnes during the first half of 1932 and from late April 157,000 tonnes. The amount of export further decreased the next year and another 200,000 tonnes was also imported. They exported only a fraction of what they normally would have and even imported over a million tonnes and sent food aid when they realized the extent of the famine. Doesn’t seem much like deliberate genocide, does it.
Let's elaborate however. Let us examine the figures for the exportation of grains from the Ukraine during this time frame [9]:

Cereals (in tonnes):
1930 – 4,846,024
1931 – 5,182,835
1932 – 1,819,114
1933 – 1,771,364

Only wheat (in tonnes):
1930 – 2,530,953
1931 – 2,498,958
1932 – 550,917
1933 – 748,248

As we can see, the amount of grains exported from the Ukraine was actually far lower in the year leading up to, and in the year of the supposed Holodomor; therefore, other causes must have been at work than excessive exports. Dr. Mark Tauger suggests that the cause of this was mostly natural, and “fundamentally not man-made.” Dr. Tauger comes to the conclusion that the only impact that human actions had was to simply compound the already existing problem. Dr. Tauger’s data reveals that, in 1932, drought-like conditions in some areas of the country harmed production, while strangely humid weather allowed for blights to occur. Dr. Tauger gives the estimate that these entirely natural occurrences had the effect of wiping out up to 20% of the total harvest. [10]

Also the reason they even exported grain and various raw materials to begin with was because that is what all under developed agrarian and semi-feudal countries do. Soviet Union in particular had a good reason for it because they were trying to acquire the necessary capital to industrialize and escape backwardness forever, which they did. They were one of the rare countries to actually pull off such a feat. This is particularly impressive considering that they had no access to foreign loans, not to mention the lack of colonies. Thus it would be completely unreasonable and in contradiction with material reality to except the Soviet Union to not export at all during the 1932 to 33 period.

Soviet Government Response:
Initially soviet leadership in Ukraine (and thus in Moscow) was not fully aware of the famine’s extent as shown here in a translation of several letters and telegrams:

From the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation [11]. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
"The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine."
Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN

Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
"There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation]."

Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
"Comrade Kosior!
You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation invillages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures."
Sincerely, J. Stalin

The first word of famine to reach the Soviet government in mid-January 1933, and the first shipment of food aid from the Soviet government arrived in the Ukraine on 7 Feb. 1933[12]. Food continued to arrive by the millions of pounds. Furthermore, on 20 March 1933, Stalin himself intervened, lowering the amount of grain to be used elsewhere by 14,000 tons; he further decreed that those 14,000 tons would be distributed to provide help to citizens in Kiev.

The second wave of famine hit in May 1933, and the Soviet government reacted by allocating 576,000 tons [13], later to be increased to 1.1 million tons[12], to be distributed as aid to the suffering Ukrainians. However, this aid was given to local government to be distributed accordingly, and, judging by the fact that some of these local government officials were heavily reprimanded for “sabotage” of the Soviet government’s efforts [14], it is likely that these local governments bear much of the burden that is usually placed entirely upon Stalin.

What Caused/Worsened the Famine:
Natural factors while, not many, were hard hitting and very obvious: In 1932 there was a severe drought that struck the USSR’s grain-belt areas, especially Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Lower Volga. Additionally there was a brief epidemic of Wheat Rust Diseases [15], spanning from Bulgaria to the Volga river areas, effectively encompassing the worst struck areas. The result was lower crop yields for the harvests. This accounts for lower exports, and the lower food amounts resulted in lowering of birth rates. This, along with the fact that there was significant immigration to and from the USSR (including Ukraine).

Along side the natural issues affecting the land, there were those that affected the people such as epidemics of diseases.
“Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever." - Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 153 [16]
In addition to disease, and unintentional famine there was sabotage and local mismanagement. As far-fetched as that sounds, it is actually a major part as to why the famine got out of hand, at least on a local level.

Kulaks and Collectivization:
In 1920 when the NEP was implemented and the Soviet Union moved from War-Communism, to a temporary stage where a free market existed, the much feared consequences of the market became evident. Despite the previous land reform, nearly 3 million peasants, were quickly once again without land, because the kulaks had driven them bankrupt and then bought their land cheaply. This resulted in 10 or 11 percent of the population (kulaks) owning so much land (and also horses and machinery) compared to the rest of the peasant population that they produced 56% of the marketed food. The kulaks were not a creation of the NEP however, they existed a class for a while under the Russian Empire, a petty bourgeoisie in contrast to the pomeshik lords. [17]
These Kulaks would often decide if the towns under their control would get food or not. Kulak speculation on the food market caused another shortage already in 1927 when the marketed share of grain was only one third of the pre-war years despite production exceeding pre-war figures. This ineffectiveness was what initiated the idea of collectivization, with Lenin writing down the basic idea before his death and Stalin putting down the plans and implementing them in the first 5 year plan. Among the many actions of the collectivization program was the confiscation of farm land and the machinery and livestock that was on it (private property, NOT personal property).

Long story short; Collectivization came about many years after the Civil War, once the New Economic Policy had run its course. To ignore the practice of poorer peasants joining in the struggle against the kulaks, or the grassroots nature of collectivization in general is to falsify the entire action of collectivization.[18]

However there were some problems, some were natural causes and others caused by poor local implementation and direction.
“Collectivization was not an orderly process following bureaucratic rules. It consisted of actions by the poor peasants, encouraged by the Party. The poor peasants were eager to expropriate the “kulaks,” but less eager to organize a cooperative economy. By 1930 the Party and already sent out cadres to stem and correct excesses… After having exercised restraint in 1930, the Party put on a drive again in 1932. As a result, in that year the kulak economy ceased to produce, and the new collective economy did not yet produce fully.” - Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 152 [16]

“During the 1932 harvest season Soviet agriculture experienced a crisis. Natural disasters, especially plant diseases spread and intensified by wet weather in mid-1932, drastically reduced crop yields. OGPU reports, anecdotal as they are, indicate widespread peasant opposition to the kolkhoz system. These documents contain numerous reports of kolkhozniki, faced with starvation, mismanagement and abuse by kolkhoz officials and others, and desperate conditions: dying horses, idle tractors, infested crops, and incitement by itinerant people. Peasants’ responses varied: some applied to withdraw from their farms, some left for paid work outside, some worked sloppily, intentionally leaving grain on the fields while harvesting to glean later for themselves.” - Tauger, Mark. “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 81.

Some of the Kulaks, angered and resentful, rather than integrate into society as an average worker (who frankly lived in conditions far better than under Tsarist times), decided to take action. They burnt crops and slaughtered livestock, those with machinery broke it if they could. In addition to their vandalism and arson they murdered government officials and peasants siding with them, there are even some (unconfirmed) accounts of them poisoning water supplies.

“Almost all the collective farms established in 1931 and 1932 were shockingly mismanaged. What else could be expected when every village in Russia had been the scene of bitter internal strife, when animals had been slaughtered or allowed to die through incompetence, and grain had been buried, and barns and houses burned? It has been estimated that livestock dropped by 50% during those tragic years and there were large areas, as I saw with my own eyes in the North Caucasus in 1933, where miles of weeds and desolation replaced the former grainfields…” - Duranty, Walter. Stalin & Co. New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1949, p. 77[19]

“During the thirties, the far-right, linked with the Hitlerites, had already fully exploited the propaganda theme of `deliberately provoked famine to exterminate the Ukrainian people’. But after the Second World War, this propaganda was `adjusted’ with the main goal of covering up the barbaric crimes committed by German and Ukrainian Nazis, to protect fascism and to mobilise Western forces against Communism.” - Martens, Ludo. Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27 2600, p. 113 (Pg 96 on the internet pdf) [20]

“This destruction of the productive forces had, of course, disastrous consequences: in 1932, there was a great famine, caused in part by the sabotage and destruction done by the kulaks. But anti-Communists blame Stalin and the `forced collectivization’ for the deaths caused by the criminal actions of the kulaks.” - Martens, Ludo. Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27 2600, p. 79 [p.66 on the pdf]

“In 1931 and 1932, the Soviet Union was in the depth of the crisis, due to socio-economic upheavals, to desperate kulak resistance, to the little support that could be given to peasants in these crucial years of industrial investment, to the slow introduction of machines and to drought.” - Charles Bettelheim. L’Economie sovietique (Paris: ƒ editions Recueil Sirey, 1950), p. 82, Martens, Ludo. Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27 2600, p. 93 [p. 78 on the pdf]

“Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. […] Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.” - Russia Since 1917, Four Decades Of Soviet Politics by Frederick L. Schuman[21]

To Conclude:
This was not a man-made famine, the reasons for its occurrence were mostly natural and was exacerbated by international trade relations and the actions of certain people.
The population drops were caused by a combination of famine, disease and murders by anti-communist groups, as well as immigration and a lowered birth rate. No specific ethnic, religious, or racial group was persecuted, and those people that were persecuted for crimes related to the incident were persecuted for their crimes alone rather than for being connected to said group.
Due to the above reasons the “holodomor” is a false name for the famine of 1932 as it fits practically NONE of the UN criteria of genocide and was not a crime against humanity considering there was no intent behind the deaths.

Additional Source:
Articles summarizing and disputing holodomor myths;

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/08/10/the-holodomor-hoax-joseph-stalins-crime-that-never-took-place/

http://orientalreview.org/2012/12/17/episodes-10-who-organised-famine-in-the-ussr-in-1932-1933/

https://hameemmias.vuodatus.net/lue/2014/08/miten-maailman-paras-yliopisto-sepitti-ukrainan-jarjestetyn-nalanhadan

In short the famine was not deliberate and not man made - unless you’re talking about kulak sabotage that is - but was caused by difficult weather conditions and the general backwardness left by tsarism in the country.
As there exists no evidence of deliberate genocide, and the case relies entirely on the false assumption that the USSR kept exporting more and more food grain, completely disregarding the famine, one can confidently say that the holodomor has been debunked as a myth and a despicable fabrication.

Socialist programs such as collectivization increased the quality of life for the people of the Soviet Union, lengthening their lives and industrializing the nation. It's not magic, however, as the country is still based in the same geography that impoverished it to begin with. Regardless of the policies which are implemented, the Soviet Union will still have summer bogs and winter freezing -- those things are imaginably very difficult to change. To quote the 1892 book "Russian Characteristics" by bourgeois author E.J. Dillon, "Famine in Russia is periodical like the snows, or rather it is perennial like the Siberian plague. To be scientifically accurate, one should distinguish two different varieties of it the provincial and the national; the former termed golodovka or the little hunger, and the latter golod or the great hunger. Not a year ever elapses in which extreme distress in some province or provinces of the Empire do not assume the dimensions of a famine, while rarely a decade passes away in which the local misfortune does not ripen into the national calamity. If we go back as far as the year 996 and follow the course of Russian history down to the year of grace 1892, we shall find that, while the little hunger is an annual incident, as familiar as the destruction of human lives by wolves, the normal number of national famines fluctuates between seven and eight per century."[22].
However, consider the alternative -- for Russia to have remained as it were, suffering the full force of every famine, which before collectivization came every ten years. After the program matured, however, there was not a single major famine in the USSR after 1947, which was caused by WW-2 and the brutal destruction by the nazis.
To quote Eisenhower, "When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian Government would never be able to estimate the total." [23]

Sources Cited:
[1] http://www.garethjones.org/tottlefraud.pdf
[2] http://www.hist.msu.ru/Labour/Babushkin/index.html, Memories of Ivan Vasilyevich Babushkin. 1893–1900. State Publishing House of Political Literature Moscow-1955
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa_Conference_(1922)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
[5] http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16977991
[6] http://avr.org.ua/index.php/Ust/169/?a=1
[7] http://busin.biz/library/soviet%20union/stalin/Wheatcroft,%20Stephen%20G.%20'The%20Industrialisation%20of%20Soviet%20Russia%20-%20Volume%205,%20The%20Years%20of%20Hunger%20Soviet%20Agriculture%201931-1933'.pdf
[8] http://www.archives.gov.ua/Sections/Famine/Publicat/Fam-Pyrig-1933.php
[9] СССР в цифрах ЦУНХУ Госплана СССР. Москва 1935, page 574, 575
[10] Mark B. Tauger, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933, Slavic Review, Volume 50, Issue 1 (Spring, 1991), 70-89,
[11] http://online.eastview.com/projects/ticfia/titles_eng.html
[12] http://www.mid.ru/ns-arch.nsf/932b471b7dc29104c32572ba00560533/22fa7cb39af8e09ec32574bb003a7f8c? Documents 69 and 70. Also traces of such decisions (at least for Dnipropetrovsk region) can be found at Голод 1932-1933 років на Україні: очима істориків, мовою документів in [7]
[13] Голод 1932-1933 років на Україні: очима істориків, мовою документів
[14]On April 6, 1933, Sholokhov, who lived in the Vesenskii district (Kuban, Russian Federation), wrote at length to Stalin, describing the famine conditions and urging him to provide grain. Stalin received the letter on April 15, and on April 16 the Politburo granted 700 tons of grain to that district. Stalin sent a telegram to Sholokhov stating "We will do everything required. Inform size of necessary help. State a figure." Sholokhov replied on the same day, and on April 22, the day on which Stalin received the second letter, Stalin scolded him, "You should have sent your answer not by letter but by telegram. Time was wasted". Davies and Wheatcroft, pg. 217
[15] https://books.google.com/books?dq=wheat+rust+USSR+1932&hl=en&id=m4kJDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA112&ots=4GysBM7uoq&pg=PA112&sa=X&sig=3RMuCODu1ioedz_VxP5_CNPjzg4&source=bl&ved=0ahUKEwiUwPvK3q3YAhWBgZAKHX7jAPwQ6AEIXzAN#v=onepage&q=wheat%20rust%20USSR%201932&f=false
[16] https://www.abebooks.com/9780887720345/Life-Begins-candid-autobiography-drifter-088772034X/plp
[17] https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/kulax-heroes-or-villains/
[18] http://b-ok.org/book/936296/93946c
[19] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/walter-duranty-2/stalin-co-the-politburo-the-man-who-run-russia/
[20] https://stalinsocietypk.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/another-view-of-stalin1.pdf
[21] https://archive.org/details/russiasince1917f009793mbp
[22] http://people.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1994-5/Lilly.htm
[23] Eisenhower, Dwight D., Crusade In Europe, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1948 (page 469)