Economic reasons and consequences of the Holodomor in Ukraine (to the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor in Ukraine and the 95th anniversary of Vsevolod Golubnychy)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the economic causes and consequences of the Holodomor organized in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities in 1932–1933. The study was conducted on the basis of the conceptual approach of one of the first researchers of the Holodomor, Vsevolod Golubnychy (1928–1977). It is substantiated that the main cause of the famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933 was the Soviet economic policy, which was aimed at the total monopolization of economic power, one of the mechanisms of which was collectivization. Having become part of a total state monopoly and the object of merciless exploitation by economic and non-economic methods, agriculture ceased to fulfill its main function – providing the population with food and saturating the commodity market. This caused a deformation of the market structure and an imbalance in the ratio of product demand and supply. Taking into account the fact that the main tool of collectivization was disinvestment, i.e. the liquidation (including physical) of the most efficient agricultural producers, it was concluded that the priority of Soviet policy was not the creation of an effective system of farming in the countryside, but the overcoming of public opposition the most an organized and independent stratum of agrarians, with the subordination of the rest of the Ukrainian peasantry to Bolshevik rule. The ineffective policy of collectivization caused a drop in productivity and led to a large-scale Holodomor, the negative economic consequence of the Holodomor was the physical destruction of a huge part of the able-bodied and hard-working population. Collectivization and the Holodomor, which was caused by it, caused irreparable damage to the agriculture of Ukraine, effectively destroying the effective traditional system of management, led to a decrease in the efficiency of the Ukrainian agricultural economy, and in the long run became one of the leading factors in the decline of the Soviet economic system.