"Neither crop failure nor bad weather caused the famine in Ukraine. Although the chaos of collectivization helped create the conditions that led to famine, the high numbers of deaths in Ukraine between 1932 and 1934, and especially the spike in the spring of 1933, were not caused by collectivization either. Starvation was the result, rather, of

the forcible removal of food from people’s homes;

the roadblocks that prevented peasants from seeking work or food;

the harsh rules of the blacklists imposed on farms and villages;

the restrictions on barter and trade;

and the vicious propaganda campaign designed to persuade Ukrainians to watch, unmoved, as their neighbors died of hunger."

—Anne Applebaum in Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.