Joseph Stalin And The Holocaust

“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic,” Joseph Stalin, a former leader of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin was the supreme leader of the Soviet Union for almost a quarter of the 20th century. He ruled through fear and would stop at nothing to gain and control power. When asked about World War II, most people would highlight the Holocaust as the most devastating genocide of that time. When, in actuality the most devastating and what resulted in the most deaths was the time in Soviet Russia under the command of Joseph Stalin. Here is an eye witness of one of Stalin’s genocides. "What I saw that morning ... was inexpressibly horrible. On a battlefield men die quickly, they fight back ... Here I saw people …show more content…
This is why the world should be more informed about the genocidal acts of Joseph Stalin, in order to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. The Holodomor, which directly translate from Ukrainian to english means death by forced starvation, and refers to the devastating event that took place in the Soviet Union from 1932-1933. In 1928 Joseph Stalin implemented a program of agricultural collectivization, that forced all of the farmers to give up their land, equipment, and livestock. All farmers were then forced to work in major industrialized collective farms. The crops that were harvested from these farm would be collected to meet a certain quota that the government would set, which would then be distributed around Russia to meet what the government thought …show more content…
After being in power for a couple years now he had no intentions of losing it, and quickly became paranoid because of it. He had always thought of the Ukrainians of being the “bread basket” of the Soviet Union, and thought that if an uprising was going to happen, it was going to happen there. So, Stalin decided that he had to do something about it, and his answer was starvation. In 1932 Joseph Stalin sharply increased the quota from the collective farms in the Ukraine, specifically so they couldn’t survive. He then put military blockades up around villages, so that people could not get in or out, guaranteeing that the people get very little food. Soon there after the same year he ordered that anyone caught sneaking extra food would be executed for their crime. The people of Ukraine resorted to eating dirt, frogs, or insects. Whatever they could scavenge they would eat. By 1933 people are dying at a rate of 30,000 people a day. The total death toll was around 7,000,000 Ukrainians. Later that year in 1933 Joseph Stalin denies to the world that there is a famine in the Ukraine. Because of Joseph Stalin’s paranoia, he would do anything he could to control his power. Even if that meant killing millions of his own