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I agree with u/jschooltiger.

There are a lot of different posts all over reddit arguing one way or the other. Genocide itself is an extremely politicized term which says often more about the user of the word than the accused party. By claiming it is a genocide it shows one believes that the Soviet Union, or certain individuals within that government, consciously attempted to in whole or in part exterminate a 'people', and by that it could be an ethnic group (Ukrainians) or a class (Kulaks) or those within a geographic region (generally the Ukrainian borderland, what Timothy Snyder calls 'The Bloodlands').

By denying any such genocide happened, this is a claim that 'it' as in the high number of deaths, either didn't happen, or wasn't purposeful. There are more contentious issues of genocide in history than there are clear-cut cases examples, and it's almost always the 'losers' of history who are declared guilty of committing or attempting to commit the crime of genocide.

Rather than focus on the terminology and become embroiled in the historicisms inherent therein, I would advise you read more about it, and read into the political situation in Russia/USSR and decide for yourself. Keep in mind that both those who argue it was and who argue it wasn't have very valid and credible points, and as such there can be no definitive answer unless Stalin/Krushchev (he was the Boss in Ukraine at the time) come back from the dead and declare their intentions, honestly, and then historians can begin debating all over again.

The Ukrainian famine first came to wide-spread Western attention, particularly in academia, with Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow. The key allegation was that Stalin engineered a 'terror-famine' as part of an ideological programme to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. While noting the disastrous impact of collectivisation, Conquest was arguing that there existed a top-down initiative from Moscow to kill millions.

This was an horrific picture, convincingly painted, and it it found a ready audience in the West. In particular it built on Ukrainian emigre accounts (eg The Golgotha of Ukraine) to publicise these deaths as a campaign of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Today about two dozen countries explicitly recognise the famines as genocide, all in the decades following the publication of Conquest's book.

There are a few problems with Conquest's thesis though that became apparent, particularly in the 1990s. The big ones are:

• This first is the 1932 harvest figures. The initial assumption that the 1932 harvest was adequate (or at least 'not disastrous') was strongly challenged by Mark Tauger. Tauger's figures are themselves disputed by Davies and Wheatcroft but it is today accepted that 1932 produced a very poor harvest. There was a shortage of food to begin with.

• A bigger problem was that the archival evidence that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s hasn't supported many of these claims. Not only have we no 'smoking gun' that Stalin intended to kill millions of Ukrainians but we know that as the scale of the disaster became apparent the Politburo did reduce the quotas for Ukraine (by 28% in 1932), some food and seed assistance was provided and exports were reduced. None of these fits with the idea of genocidal campaign.

As a result the argument has shifted somewhat. No one today would argue that the famine was deliberately engineered. Instead it's accepted that there were a range of factors (some of which I discuss here) but that it caught the Stalinist elite by surprise.

The picture that emerges, particularly from Davies and Wheatcroft's probing of the Soviet decision-making process, is that of an elite that was:

• Hell-bent on rapid industrialisation at any cost

• Inherently distrustful of the peasantry, foreign powers and its own party apparatus

• Prone to resorting to savage repression when panicked

The result was that when a combination of the weather, collectivisation and gross economic mismanagement brought about a severe agricultural crisis, the Soviet elite reacted with its usual brand of savage repression.

But the question of surprise is is the important point. Because most, though not all, definitions of genocide require a degree of intent. Did the Soviet state specifically intend to murder millions of Ukrainians or did it merely do so through rank economic incompetence?

There's no way to say for sure. Conquest and Timothy Synder argue that the Politburo reacted to the famine by enacting a set of specifically anti-Ukrainian policies that amounted to a decision "to kill millions of people in Soviet Ukraine" (Synder). In contrast, Davies and Wheatcroft portray the same repressive measures as a response from a "ruthless and brutal" regime that was nonetheless "struggling with a famine crisis which was... unexpected and undesirable".

To my mind the latter narrative, which is richer in the workings of the Politburo, rings truer. It's hard to overstate the brutal callousness of the regime or its indulgence in paranoid delusions. But you can take your pick.

And, ultimately, I'd question whether it matters. Whether we call it genocide or not, millions died in the USSR (not just Ukraine) as the result of an agricultural crisis almost certainly facilitated by the Stalinist industrialisation drive. We can apportion blame to the regime without having to construct arguments to call it genocide. (Not least when there are better examples, ie the national operations, of Soviet ethnic cleansing.) This is an argument that is often far more politicised than it has to be.

Sources

First of all, here's a neat breakdown of the various schools of opinion around the famine, and Stalinist repression in general.

Michael Ellman's paper Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932 – 33 Revisited contains the best summary of the genocide question. (Ellman, on balance, inclines towards 'not proven' on the charge of genocide.)

The key works for the 'pro-genocide' (ugh) arguments are Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow and Synder's more recent Bloodlands. I have issues with both but they're worth reading.

On the other side, the key Tauger paper is The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933. The most important work in the field over the past two decades is, IMO, Davies and Wheatcroft's magisterial Years of Hunger.