Robert Conquest , author of '' The Harvest of Sorrow '' , has stated that the famine of 1932 – 33 was a deliberate act of mass murder , if not genocide . R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft believe that if industrialisation had been abandoned , the famine could have been " prevented " or at least significantly alleviated . They see the leadership under Stalin as making significant errors in planning for the industrialisation of agriculture : Michael Ellman argues that , in addition to deportations , internment in the Gulag camps and shootings ( see the law of spikelets ) , there is evidence that Stalin used starvation as a weapon in his war against the peasantry . He analyses the actions of the Soviet authorities , two of commission and one of omission : ( i ) exporting 1.8 million tonnes of grain during the mass starvation ( enough to feed more than five million people for one year ) , ( ii ) preventing migration from famine afflicted areas ( which may have cost an estimated 150,000 lives ) and ( iii ) making no effort to secure grain assistance from abroad ( which caused an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths ) , as well as the attitude of the Stalinist regime in 1932 – 33 that many of those starving to death were " counter-revolutionaries " , " idlers " or " thieves " who fully deserved their fate . Based on this analysis Ellman concludes , however , that the actions of Stalin 's authorities against Ukrainians do not meet the standards of specific intent required to prove genocide as defined by the UN convention ( with the notable exception of the case of Kuban Ukrainians ) . Ellman further concluded that the actions of Stalin 's authorities do meet the relaxed definition of genocide ; however , under this more relaxed standard , genocide is a common historical event , according to Ellman . Regarding the actions taken by Stalin in the early 1930s , Ellman unambiguously states that , from the standpoint of contemporary international criminal law , Stalin is " clearly guilty " of " a series of crimes against humanity " and that , from the standpoint of national criminal law , the only way to defend Stalin from a charge of mass murder is " to argue he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions " . He also rebukes Davies and Wheatcroft for , among other things , their " very narrow understanding " of intent . He states : Genocide scholar Adam Jones stresses that many of the actions of the Soviet leadership during 1931 – 32 should be considered genocidal . Not only did the famine kill millions , it took place against " a backdrop of persecution , mass execution , and incarceration clearly aimed at undermining Ukrainians as a national group " . Norman Naimark , a historian at Stanford University who specialises in many fields of modern European history , genocide and ethnic cleansing , argues that some of the actions of Stalin 's regime , not only those during the Holodomor but also Dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular ethnic groups ( with over 110,000 shot ) may be seen as genocidal . In 2006 , the Security Service of Ukraine declassified more than 5,000 pages of Holodomor archives . These documents suggest that the Soviet regime singled out Ukraine by not giving it the same humanitarian aid given to regions outside it
Dekulakization
Dekulakization
Holodomor