Popularly, the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 is often labeled a genocide and seemingly equivocated to the holocaust in the holodomor naming. When it is not referred to as a genocide it is often called a "man-made" famine. What does it mean for a famine to be "man-made"? I have never heard this language used in reference to any other famine, and I am curious of the significance in this qualifier. Blights, droughts, or floods may not appear to be a man-made occurrence, but they are very often precipitated by unforeseen long term side-effects of particular agricultural practices and it seems to be a meaningless distinction. It's very true that communist nations engaged their farmers in inadvisable mass agricultural experiments which of course failed, but wasn't the intention to produce more food rather than to make a famine?

To prove a non-controversial genocide-famine I'd imagine there would have to be some fully intentional, documented policy of purposeful starvation for a particular region or people that can be disassociated with disruptions in food supply. This would rule out logistical bottlenecks, failures in intelligence or bad analysis by leadership, and so on, but I suppose there is always that grey area for deniable but purposeful inaction.

I have never heard the 'potato famine' in Ireland spoken of as a genocide famine but rather as the unfortunate result of a natural blight. Swift's satiric Modest Proposal, while not contemporary, still portrays a truly hostile British policy towards the Irish, and I have also read that food exports from Ireland in fact increased during the potato famine. However, even the mildest language afforded the Soviets, the "man-made famine," is spared here and the mass death in Ireland is fully naturalized in every source I can remember. Am I reading a bias into holodomor? Is it simply that the liberal mind tends towards naturalization, some invisible hand is responsible, whereas the more positive Marxist point of view gives humanity far more agency?