Famine in the Volga and North Caucasus, 1932–33

three extraordinary committees headed by Molotov in Ukraine, Kaganovich in North Caucasus (dispatched on October 22, 1932), and by Postyshev in Lower Volga (dispatched on November 29, 1932)

Volga German ASSR, Krasnodar kraj, and Saratov oblast had the highest losses in 1932–1934: 207.5, 141.2, and 132.0 per 1,000 population, respectively.

The second group is composed of North Caucasus kraj (excluding Krasnodar kraj) and Lower Volga kraj (excluding Volga German ASSR and Saratov oblast), with 76.0 and 57.3, respectively.

the nationality factor in some regions is also important, such as Krasnodar krai for Ukrainians and Volga German ASSR for Germans.

On the other hand, we have the case of Saratov oblast with high levels of losses

Therefore, there was no Ukrainian national factor. Instead, there was a common tragedy due to excessive grain procurements in Ukraine, in the Don region and the Kuban, the Central Black-Earth oblast, the Volga region, the Urals, and Western Siberia

However, the blacklisting policy was not used on such a mass scale in Lower Volga kraj as in UkrSSR

but the scale of detention of peasants and returning them back was much smaller than in UkrSSR.

February 16, 1933: extension of the directive as of January 22, 1933 to the Lower Volga kraj, prohibiting peasants’ travel outside their region

Viacheslav Molotov or Lazar Kaganovich, who were sent two months earlier to Ukraine and the Kuban as the heads of similar extraordinary commissions

Hundreds of thousands—as many as 700,000 according to Viktor Kondrashin—died from famine in the Volga and Central Chernozem Regions

Although very high, the death rate (up to five percent of the total population in the lower Volga Region) never reached the staggering levels that occurred in regions populated by Ukrainians (where the losses represented

ten to twelve percent of the total population, and much more in some rural areas).

Unlike in Ukraine, there was clearly no national issue here, no major political threat coming from a national movement supposedly linked with émigré or foreign countries.

the resolution of terror in the Kuban, which was used by L. Kaganovych

The Kazakh famine was a part of the collectivization famines that afflicted the Soviet Union during the years 1930-33, most notably in Ukraine but also in the Volga, Don, and Kuban areas

Many regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) (the Volga region, the Central Black Earth region, the Northern Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea and part of Western Siberia) and of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus suffered as a result of the famine