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posted ago by Oh_Well_ian ago by Oh_Well_ian +174 / -1

https://allthatsinteresting.com/holodomor-ukrainian-famine

n 1932 and 1933, millions died in the Ukraine. The country was hit by the Holodomor, a famine so terrible that, for the people caught in the middle of it, seeing an emaciated body collapsed on the side of the road had become an everyday sight.

The country became a living nightmare; a place where thousands of starving people had turned to cannibalism to survive. And yet, in the news outside of the Ukraine, newspapers denied it was even happening.

The Ukrainians call the famine the "Holodomor," a name that means "murder through starvation." The Holodomor, they believe, wasn't just a natural disaster, it was deliberately planned to starve them out.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been warned that the country would be hit with a famine two years before the Holodomor started, but he did little to stop it from happening. He was bent on industrializing the Soviet Union. Even with a famine coming, he kept moving workers into the city and out of the farms of the countryside.

When the Ukraine famine started, Stalin actively made things worse. He exported almost two million tons of food out of the Ukraine, pulling away the little food the people had to survive. Then he barred the people there from moving to any other part of the country. They had no food; they had no way to escape – nothing to do but wait and die.