Iryna Voichuk
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irynavoichuk.bsky.social
Iryna Voichuk
@irynavoichuk.bsky.social
MD. Kharkiv is my home, aber jetzt wohne ich in Deutschland. War reporting & life notes. Wandering deeper on http://patreon.com/IrynaVoichuk | [email protected] | https://buymeacoffee.com/irynavoichuk
One of the few surviving photographic records of the Holodomor, taken by Alexander Wienerberger in 1933 in Kharkiv.
“A mother with her starving children.”
“A body of someone who died of hunger lying in the street.”
“A bread line at the market.”
“Mass graves near Kharkiv.”
9/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
During the Holodomor, no official counts of the dead were kept, as the Soviet authorities tried to conceal the scale of the tragedy. The first Ukrainian investigation estimated that 3.9 million people died as a result of the Holodomor. However, other studies report as many as 7 million deaths.
8/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
By the spring of 1933, mortality in Ukraine had reached catastrophic levels. The peak of the Holodomor came in June, when around 28,000 people were dying every day. All of this happened despite the existence of large grain reserves in state storage and ongoing large-scale grain exports.
7/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
The Soviet government also prohibited Ukrainians from leaving for other territories, creating conditions that led to the deliberate starvation and extermination of a part of the Ukrainian nation.
6/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Searches were carried out in the homes of Ukrainians, during which grain, other food supplies, and even items that could be exchanged for food were confiscated. All of this was accompanied by terror, as well as physical and psychological violence.
5/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Under the “Law of Five Spikelets,” adopted by the USSR in 1932, all collective farm property was equated with state property, and any theft was harshly punished. Starving people who tried to gather the remaining grains in the fields could be executed on the spot.
4/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
This sparked resistance among farmers, who began leaving the collective farms and taking their equipment and livestock with them. To keep the collectives under state control, the Soviet government introduced a repressive decree, later known as the “Law of Five Spikelets.”
3/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM
In 1928, the USSR introduced a policy of collectivization. Private farms were absorbed into state-owned collective farms. People were compensated for their labor with natural goods, which were nowhere near enough to feed their families.
2/9
November 22, 2025 at 11:11 AM