S. V. Kosior and the famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: to the 85th Anniversary of the Common Tragedy of the Peoples of the USSR

Abstract

The article is timed to the 85th anniversary of the common tragedy of the peoples of the USSR — The famine of 1932–1933, as a result of the agrarian policy of the Stalinist leadership of the country. It is devoted to such an important aspect as the grain procurement campaigns in Ukraine in the early 1930s, which became the main cause of this tragedy. The main attention in the article is given to the analysis of the role of Kosior — the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the republican leadership of the Ukrainian SSR in the implementation of grain procurement in Ukraine in 1931–1932. Its source base is made up of documents from the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation and other central archives, as well as published sources. In the article for the first time in the domestic historiography, the relationship between the republican leadership of Ukraine and the Center in the person of I. V. Stalin and his closest associates at the peak of the crisis of the grain procurement campaigns in the early 1930s in the Ukrainian SSR and the famine of 1932– 1933. As a result, it is concluded that in explaining the circumstances of the tragedy of 1932–1933, in Ukraine, it is necessary to take into account the subjective factor: the actions of the local republican leadership, primarily S. V. Kosior, during the grain procurement of 1931–1932. They exacerbated their negative consequences for the fate of the millions of inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine. This conclusion does not call into question the decisive role of Stalin’s leadership and Stalin personally in organizing the great tragedy of the peoples of the USSR in 1932–1933, both in Ukraine and in other regions of the country.