The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933

The
1933 Ukrainian famine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population
of 32 million. Historians offer three main explanations: weather, economic
policies, genocide. This paper documents that (1) available data do not support
weather as the main explanation: 1931 and 1932 weather predicts harvest roughly
equal to the 1924–1929 average; weather explains up to 8.1 percent of excess
deaths. (2) Policies (collectivization of agriculture and the lack of favored
industries) significantly increased famine mortality; collectivization explains
up to 52 percent of excess deaths. (3) There is some evidence that ethnic
Ukrainians and Germans were discriminated against.