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In
1932-33, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet
Union, imposed the system of land management
know as collectivization. This resulted in
the seizure of all privately owned farmland
and livestock. By 1932, much of the wheat
crop was dumped on the foreign market to
generate cash to aid Stalin's Five-Year
Plan. The law demanded that no grain could
be given to feed the peasants until a quota
was met. By the spring of 1933, an estimated
25,000 people died every day in the Ukraine.
Deprived of the food they had grown with
their own hands, an estimated 7,000,000
persons perished due to the resulting famine
in this area known as the breadbasket of
Europe. |
