Authors

Discussion

Viacheslav Molotov was dispatched by the Kremlin’s top leadership to Ukraine to procure more grain and intensify grain procurement efforts in Soviet Ukraine on three occasions. These special missions took place in: (1) late December 1927/early January 1928; (2) late December 1931/early January 1932; (3) and in October/November 1932.

The first and the third missions have been examined fairly adequately in historiography. The second has not. In Ukrainian historiography there are short treatments of Molotov’s second mission by Vasiliiiev and Kulchytsky; in Russian historiography Ivnitskii and Zelenin,  and in English by Watson, Davies/Wheatcroft and Kulchytsky. The best is by Kulchytsky, which although providing some insight into this pivotal event and its consequences, is brief. This incomplete treatment is in part explainable by the tendency of historians to write on developments in the second half of 1932 and early part of 1933, covering the period leading up to and including the most intense months of the Holodomor, when mist of its victims (about 3.5 million) perished.

It is also partly explainable by the relatively sall number of documents used by these scholars in their treatments. Recently, more documents on Molotov’s late 1931 dispatch to Ukraine have become available to supplement that which has already been written about Molotov’s time in Ukraine and its consequences.

Bearing in mind that famine conditions in Ukraine were already developing at the time Molotov came to Ukraine, highlighting what he said and did during his one-week stay in Ukraine is critical to understanding how and why famine conditions intensified sharply following his departure for Moscow. Describing and analyzing thesewill shed more light on the key practices authorized to promote and encourage more aggressive grain procurement efforts by lower-level communist party members and activists. The longer-term consequences of his visit also need to be brought to light and analyzed. For one, demographers have estimated that in 1932 about 250,000 people died as a result of starvation and famine-related causes. The relationship of the central leadership in Moscow and the Ukrainian party leadership was also affected by Molotov’s visit, which I also plan to discuss in the paper. Finally, the Molotov visit and its consequences will to be placed into the larger context of our understanding of the Holodomor.