Demography and social economy, 2009, 2(12):3-11
doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/dse2009.02.003

JACQUES VALLIN, FRANCE MESLE, SERGUEI ADAMETS, AND SERHIY PYROZHKOV
THE GREAT FAMINE: POPULATION LOSSES IN UKRAINE
Section: DEMOGRAPHY AND PROCESSES OF POPULATION REPRODUCTION
Language: English
Abstract: The new estimates for the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33 “Holodomor” losses are given on the basis of census data 1926 and 1939 and vital statistics. The approach of projecting the 1926 population until 1939 on the basis of fertility, mortality and migration rates that would have prevailed without crisis, and comparing it to the observed 1939 population was implemented.
Key words: holodomor; human losses; natural movement; fertility rate; death rate; migration rate.
References:
i Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorro: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terro-Famine (London: Arrow Books, 1988 [1986]).
ii Stanislav Kulchytsky, Ukraine’s demographical losses from famine in 1932–1933 according to the general census of the population in 1937 (Kyiv: Institute or History of Ukraine, 1995); paper presented to the conference “Population of the USSR in the 1920s-!930s in light of newly classified documentary evidence. – Toronto, 1995.
iii Evgueny M. Andreev, Leonid E. Darskij and Tatiana L. Khar’kova, Население Coвemского Союза: 1922–1991 [Population of the Soviet Union: 1922–1991] (Moscow : Nauka, 1993).
iv Serguei Adamets and Vladimir Shkolnikov, O дoвоeнных ma6лицах смертности CCCP [About pre-war life tables] (Moscow: Institute for Economic Forecasts, Centre for Population and Human Ecology, 1995); paper presented at the conference on “Population of the USSR in the 1920s-1930s in light of newly classified documentary evidence.” – Toronto, 1995.
v Serguei Maksudov, Пomepи нaceления CCCP [Demographic losses of the Soviet Union] (Benson: Chalidze, 1989).
vi Sergiy I. Pyrozhkov, “Les pertes demographiques en Ukraine dans les annees 1930 et 1940, “ Population 51: 4–5 (1996): 1032–1040.
vii France Mesle and Jacques Vallin, Mortalite et causes de deces en Ukraine au XXe siecle (Paris: INED, 2003) (Les cahiers de J’INED, cahier n° 152, with contributions by Vladimir Shkolnikov, Serhii Pyrozhkov and Serguei Adamets).
viii Adamets, Serguei, Alain Blum, and Serguei Zakharov, Disparites et variabilite des catastrophes demographiques en URSS (Paris: INED, 1994) (Dossiers et Recherches n° 42); Alain Blum, Naitre, vivre et mourir en URSS : 1917–1991 (Paris: Plon, 1994).
ix Serguei Adamets, Alain Blum, and Serguei Zakharov, Disparites et variabilite des catastrophes demographiques en URSS (Paris: INED, 1994) (Dossiers et Recherches n° 42).
x RGAE document (record group 1562, file 329, document 200, p 191).
xi It should also be made clear that people who were deported, once outside Ukraine, also suffered from high excess mortality, which is not taken into account here.
xii Kari J. Pitkanen, Deprivation and Disease: Mortality During the Great Finnish Famine of the 1860s (Helsinki: Hakapaino, 1933).
xiii Evgueny M. Andreev, Leonid E. Darskij, and Tatiana L. Khar’kova. Демографическия ucmopuя Pоссии: 1927–1959 [Demographic history of Russia: 1927–1959] (Moscow: Informatika, 1998).
xiv Evgueny M. Andreev, Leonid L. Darskij, and Tatiana L. Khar’kova. L’histoire de la population de l’URSS 1920–1958,” Annales de demographie historiquе (1992): 61–150.
xv Alain Blum, Naitre vivre et mourir en URSS : 1917–1991 (Paris: Plon, 1994).
xvi For example, in Courtois et al. (Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek and Jean-Louis Margolin, Le livre noir du communisme: crimes, terreurs, repression [Paris : Robert Laffont, 1997]), while a chapter devoted to the Great Famine gives the already exaggerated amount of 6 million “victims” for the whole USSR (179), the same number of deaths is attributed to Ukraine in the introduction (19).

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