The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr];[2] derived from морити голодом, moryty holodom, 'to kill by starvation'),[a][3][4][5] also known as the Terror-Famine[6][7][8] or the Great Famine,[9] was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. It was a large part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933. The term Holodomor emphasises the famine's man-made and allegedly intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement. As part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.[10] Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine[11] and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.[12]
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly.[13] A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished.[14] Current scholarship estimates a range of 4 to 7 million victims,[15] with more precise estimates ranging from 3.3[16] to 5 million.[17] According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.[18]
Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths.[19][20][21] Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.[10][22] Others suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of Soviet industrialisation.[23][24][25]
Holodomor literally translated from Ukrainian means "death by hunger", "killing by hunger, killing by starvation",[26] or sometimes "murder by hunger or starvation."[24] It is a compound of the Ukrainian holod, 'hunger'; and mor, 'plague'. The expression moryty holodom means "to inflict death by hunger." The Ukrainian verb moryty (морити) means "to poison, to drive to exhaustion, or to torment." The perfective form of moryty is zamoryty, 'kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work.'[citation needed] In English, the Holodomor has also been referred to as the artificial famine, famine genocide, terror famine, and terror-genocide.[27]
It was used in print in the 1930s in Ukrainian diaspora publications in Czechoslovakia as Haladamor[28] and by Ukrainian immigrant organisations in the United States and Canada by 1978;[29][30][31] in the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a constituent republic, any references to the famine were dismissed as anti-Soviet propaganda, even after de-Stalinization in 1956, until the declassification and publication of historical documents in the late 1980s made continued denial of the catastrophe unsustainable.[27]