2021/07/01 by Andreĭ Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, Nancy Qian · 1 citation
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Global Health Care Issues #Health and Conflict Studies #Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management #Famine #Ukrainian #Geography #Archaeology #Linguistics #Philosophy
paper · pdf · doi:10.3386/w29089
openalex publication_date 2021/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We construct large, unique panel data to study the causes of Ukrainian famine mortality (Holodomor) during 1932-33 and document several new facts: i) Ukraine (the Soviet Union) produced enough food in 1932 to avoid famine in Ukraine (the Soviet Union); ii) mortality was increasing in the pre-famine ethnic Ukrainian population share and unrelated to food productivity across regions; iii) this pattern exists across the Soviet Union, even outside of Ukraine; iv) the pattern was similar at different administrative levels; v) migration restrictions exacerbated mortality; vi) actual and planned grain procurement were increasing, while actual and planned grain retention (production minus procurement) were decreasing in the ethnic Ukrainian population share across regions. Anti-Ukrainian bias in Soviet policy explains up to 92% of famine mortality in Ukraine and 77% in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus; approximately half of the total effect comes from bias in the centrally planned food procurement policy.