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Stalin becomes General Secretary of the USSR, introducing the Five-Year Plan to transform the USSR into a modern economic powerhouse. Selling grain in international markets was an essential part of the plan, providing funding for the military and Ukrainian economic policies.
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Forced collectivization throughout the Ukrainian SSR brings all labor and landholdings under state control, with protests from farmers. Stalin launched the dekulakization campaign to break the resistance of the successful farmers (the "Kulaks") and to eliminate them as a class. More than 500,000 farmers and their families were executed, deported to Siberia, or sent to the Gulag camps. Political and most popular/rich/talented were also deported, jailed, or disappear.
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Thousands of churches in Ukraine were destroyed, priests were arrested. Farmers are assigned unrealistic assignments for how much grain is needed to be delivered to the state.
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Ukraine’s wheat harvest was down compared to prior years, yet grain quotas are further increased, forcing collective farms and small farmers to hand over even seed grain reserves set aside for planting.
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The famine starts in Ukraine. Close to half of the harvest was seized by the Soviets. Villages were unable to meet the assigned grain collection due to blockades.
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People arrive with more than 100,000 apparatchiks and military personnel to ensure that grain procurement quotas are met in Ukraine. They traveled to the countryside conducting house-to-house searches and seizing hidden grain stores.
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Villages and collective farms that fail to meet their grain quotas are "blacklisted" and blocked from receiving any food or other goods. More than 1/3 of all villages are placed on these blacklists.
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A decree is known as “The Law of Five Stalks of Grain” is instituted that calls for ten years of imprisonment or the death penalty for taking even a handful of grain, which was considered state property, from the fields.
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28,000 deaths per day due to starvation. Moscow denies there is a famine
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A secret directive closed the borders of Ukraine as local officials were instructed to prevent peasants from leaving Ukraine.
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The politburo passed a resolution condemning Ukraine's party leadership for failure to carry out its duties. A huge number of Ukrainians commit suicide.
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The harvest is significantly worse than in 1932 and 1933 and people continue to die of starvation.
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Russa continues to deny that the Holodomor famine was a state genocide.