"In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine,...

In 1929 Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukranian farms in an effort to destroy the well-to-do peasant farmers. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terrorizing, and murder spread throughout Urkainian villages. What food remained after the seizures was insufficient to support the population. In the resulting famine as many as seven million Ukrainians starved to death.