La carestia in Ucraina, come ogni storico obiettivo conviene, si dovette ai sabotaggi messi in atto dagli agricoltori più ricchi che, in risposta al nuovo potere sovietico e alla collettivizzazione delle terre, dapprima provocarono una guerra civile, poi procedettero a distruggere i macchinari, uccidere il bestiame, appiccare il fuoco ai kolchoz e, in generale, a sabotare semine e raccolti con ogni mezzo.
This specific famine in Ukraine was mainly due, as all objective historians agree, to massive sabotage by the rich peasants who, in reaction to the new Soviet power and collectivisation of the land, first caused a civil war and then destroyed machinery, killed animals, set fire to the property of the kolkhoz and generally sabotaged the sowing and harvesting of crops in any way they could, and to the huge drought and typhus epidemic which broke out in that area of Ukraine at the time.