Overview

This map shows total excess deaths per 1,000 of the population in each raion of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1933.

The total number of 1932-1934 famine losses in Soviet Ukraine is estimated at 4.5 million, with 3.9 million direct losses (excess deaths) and 0.6 million indirect losses (lost births). The 1933 midyear population of Ukraine is estimated at 29.6 million. The 3.9 million direct losses are approximately equivalent to 13 percent of the total population in 1933. The 3.9 million is composed of 0.3 million in urban areas and 3.6 million in rural areas; these numbers are approximately equivalent to 4 percent of the urban and 16 percent of the rural population in 1933. It is important to note that the Holodomor is commonly understood as occurring in the period 1932-1933. However, the analysis here shows that significant famine-related losses also occurred in 1934. This is the first time that regional estimates of direct losses have been made for Ukraine.

Sources

This map visualizes data based on estimates of deaths during the Holodomor period derived under the "Estimation of Regional Losses of the 1932-1934 Famine in Ukraine" project conducted by Oleh Wolowyna (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Omelian Rudnytskyi, Nataliia Levchuk, Pavlo Shevchuk, and Alla Kovbasiuk (Institute of Demography and Social Studies in Kyiv).

Estimation of famine losses at the raion level is limited to direct losses for 1933. This is due to lack of detailed data. This limitation made it impossible to apply the methodology used for oblasts, i.e. detailed population reconstructions for the period 1926-1939. The approach used here to estimate direct losses by raion took the following steps: a reconstruction of annual data on population for 1925-1930 and annual numbers of births and deaths for 1925-1929 within the administrative structure used in the 1926 census; recalculations of these data according to the administrative structure as of 1 April 1933; adjustment of births and deaths in 1933 for undercount; estimation of excess deaths in 1933 that would have not occurred had there been no famine. Direct 1933 losses for each raion were estimated as the difference between actual (adjusted) deaths and hypothetical deaths estimates had there been no famine. Once direct estimates were made for rural and urban areas in all raions of each oblast they were adjusted to the respective total direct losses in each oblast.