Introduction to the Special Issue on the Soviet Famines of 1930–1933

The Soviet famines occupy a crucial, exemplar position within the larger context of human-provoked famine to which they properly belong. Besides clearly illustrating the different kinds of faminogenic behavior, they represent the first instance of a “family” of political famines—those ignited in peacetime by communism’s inspired political transformative projects of peasant-based societies—of which the Chinese 1958–1962 catastrophe was later to provide the most glaring example (Graziosi and Sysyn 2016). Yet scholars started to seriously study the Soviet 1930–1933 famines only in the 1980s, after decades of denial and marginalization, and only recently have they fully entered the scholarly debate (Applebaum 2017; The Contemporary European History Editorial Team 2018). It is thus possible to claim that the failure to properly take into account their importance and exemplary role has seriously impaired our understanding of 20th century’s dynamics.