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Step 7 of 16 · February 1933

Deaths go unrecorded

Recording hunger deaths becomes the OGPU's job alone. Grain collection from the 1932 harvest stops and seed loans start, but aid goes to those who can work. Foreign correspondents can't get permission to visit the villages.

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  • Where the losses will fall
  • Cordon of 22 January 1933

Circles show each 1932 oblast's total losses for 1932–34 (HURI); no month-by-month split per oblast is published. Borders and the cordon are approximate.

Claims

Hiding the famineMedium confidence
1) Time range
1933-02-16
2) Group profile
Party-state directive · Issuing body not named in the sourcesSelector: Received by village soviets and civil registries of the Ukrainian SSR
3) Decisions
  1. Barred everyone except the OGPU from recording swelling and deaths from hunger
  2. Village soviets told not to record causes of death
  3. In 1934 the 1932–33 death books were sent to "special sections"; they survived by chance in 4 village soviets of Vinnytsia oblast (1,193 deaths in 1933)
Affected
The civil and medical record of the famine
Gap
Ivnitsky, citing the 1993 Kyiv conference volume, gives 16 Feb; UK Wikipedia cites the same volume for 6 Feb, likely a dropped digit. RU Wikipedia mentions a closed 8 Feb resolution on hunger cases; the EN article does not mention it. No primary text opened.

Ivnitsky, Голод 1932—1933 годов в СССР (2009)UK WikipediaRU Wikipedia

FamineMedium confidence
1) Time range
1933-02-25 … 1933-07-31
2) Human profile
Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov · VKP(b) CC and SNK USSR; distributed in Ukraine by Postyshev and Kosior
3) Decisions
  1. 25 Feb: seed loans of about 320,000 t to Ukraine and 240,000 t to the North Caucasus
  2. Aid given first to "conscientious" kolkhozniks and field workers, by class
  3. 31 Mar: exports of 1932-harvest grain halted
Affected
Kolkhozniks able to work; individual farmers and those unable to work often got nothing
Gap
Totals range from 176,000 t to over 600,000 t (a 2026 Russian OSCE statement gives 616,000 t); the share that was food, not seed, is unclear.

EN WikipediaWerth, Sciences Po

Hiding the famineMedium confidence
1) Time range
1933-02 … 1933-09
2) Group profile
NKID Press Department · Chief censor Konstantin Umansky; Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim LitvinovSelector: Moscow; the accredited foreign press corps
3) Decisions
  1. Required correspondents to get permission before leaving Moscow; refused trips to rural Ukraine and the Kuban
  2. Refused the joint request led by Eugene Lyons (UP) in late August 1933
  3. Allowed controlled visits only after the harvest, from about September 1933
Affected
Western readers: almost no accredited journalist saw the villages at the peak of mortality
Gap
No decree text found; the often-cited 23 Feb 1933 Politburo decision is unverified.

garethjones.orgEN Wikipedia · Denial

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