The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933

Natalya Naumenko

The Journal of Economic History, 2021, vol. 81, issue 1, 156-197

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2021
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