The Political Economy of Famine: the Ukrainian Famine of 1933

The Political Economy of Famine: the Ukrainian Famine of 1933. Natalya Naumenko. Job Market Paper, 2017. http://sites.northwestern.edu/nnl504

Abstract: The famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of the population of approximately 30 million. Three main explanations have been offered: negative weather shock, poor economic policies, and genocide. This paper uses variation in exposure to poor government policies and in ethnic composition within Ukraine to study the impact of policies on mortality, and the relationship between ethnic composition and mortality. It documents that (1) bad government policies (collectivization and the lack of favored industries) significantly increased mortality; (2) collectivization increased mortality due to drop in production on collective farms and not due to overextraction from collectives (although the evidence is indirect); (3) back-of-the-envelope calculations show that collectivization raised total 1933 death toll by at least 19%; (4) controlling for exposure to poor Soviet economic policies, Ukrainians seem more likely to die (although this result is underpowered); (5) Ukrainians were more exposed to policies that later led to mortality (collectivization and the lack of favored industries); (6) conditional on being exposed to the same bad economic policy, Ukrainians are not more likely to die (e.g., there is no evidence that collectivization was enforced more harshly on Ukrainians). These results provide several important takeaways. Most importantly, the evidence is consistent with both sides of the debate. (1) – (3) support those who argue that mortality was due to bad policy. (4) is consistent with those who argue that ethnic Ukrainians were targeted. For (5) and (6) to support genocide, it has to be the case that Stalin had the foresight that his policies would fail and lead to famine mortality years after they were introduced (and therefore disproportionately exposed Ukrainians to them).