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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

28. Stalin’s Terror Famine Killed Millions

Map of the depopulation of the Ukraine and southern Russian from 1929 to 1933, with the territories that were not part of the USSR during the famine in white. Wikimedia

The Terror Famine of 1932 – 1933, also known as the Holodomor in the Ukraine, was a man-made disaster caused by Joseph Stalin’s policy choices. In a quest to rapidly industrialize the USSR, Stalin sought to force peasants off their privately owned plots, and into collective farms. Collectivization was widely resented and resisted by the peasants, especially in the Ukraine. Stalin, being Stalin, resorted to overwhelming brutality and repression to have his way. The result was widespread chaos, which combined with a poor harvest in 1932 brought about famine.

The exact number of victims is unknown, with estimates ranging from six to twelve million people dying in the Soviet Union, of whom four to five million were Ukrainians. The famine was man-made, but there is no consensus as to whether famine had been a goal in itself, or whether it was caused by badly thought out policies that backfired spectacularly. Some scholars believe that the famine was an end in itself, intended to demoralize the Ukrainian public and crush a budding independence movement.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.