Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor:

 

Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor:

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. 

Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much higher.

Most cases of cannibalism were "necrophagy, the consumption of corpses of people who had died of starvation". But the murder of children for food was common as well. Many survivors told of neighbors who had killed and eaten their own children. One woman, asked why she had done this, "answered that her children would not survive anyway, but this way she would". She was arrested by the police. The police also documented cases of children being kidnapped, killed, and eaten, and "stories of children being hunted down as food" circulated in many areas.

 When nearly all grain and all kinds of animal meat had been exhausted, "a black market arose in human flesh" and it "may even have entered the official economy.... A young communist in the Kharkiv region reported to his superiors that he could make a meat quota, but only by using human beings."

In March 1933 the secret police in Kyiv province collected "ten or more reports of cannibalism every day" but concluded that "in reality there are many more such incidents", most of which went unreported.

 Those found guilty of cannibalism were often "imprisoned, executed, or lynched". But while the authorities were well informed about the extent of cannibalism, they also tried to suppress this information from becoming widely known, the chief of the secret police warning "that written notes on the subject do not circulate among the officials where they might cause rumours".

Causes

The overlying causes for the famine are still disputed. Some scholars suggest that the famine was a consequence of human-made and natural factors. The most prevalent man-made factor was changes made to agriculture because of rapid industrialisation during the First Five Year Plan. There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government under Stalin designed to exterminate the Ukrainians. 

Low harvest

According to historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft, the grain yield for the Soviet Union preceding the famine was a low harvest of between 55 and 60 million tons, likely in part caused by damp weather and low traction power, yet official statistics mistakenly reported a yield of 68.9 million tons. (Note that a single ton of grain is enough to feed 3 people for one year.

Historian Mark Tauger has suggested that drought and damp weather were causes of the low harvest. Mark Tauger suggested that heavy rains would help the harvest while Stephen Wheatcroft suggested it would hurt it which Natalya Naumenko notes as a disagreement in scholarship.

Another factor which reduced the harvest suggested by Tauger included endemic plant rust.[58] However in regard to plant disease Stephen Wheatcroft notes that the Soviet extension of sown area may have exacerbated the problem,[f] which Tauger also acknowledges.

Collectivization, procurements, and the export of grain. 

Joseph Stalin due to factional struggles with Bukharin wing of the party, peasant resistance to the NEP under Lenin, and the need for industrialization declared a need to extract a "tribute" or "tax" from the peasantry.

This idea was supported by most of the party in the 1920s.The tribute collected by the party took on the form of a virtual war against the peasantry that would lead to its cultural destruction and the relegating of the countryside to essentially a colony homogenized to the urban culture of the Soviet elite.

 This campaign of "colonizing" the peasantry had its roots both in old Russian Imperialism and modern social engineering of the nation state yet with key differences to the latter such as Soviet repression reflecting more the weakness of said state rather than its strength.

In this vein by the summer of 1930, the government instituted a program of food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. According to Natalya Naumenko, collectivization in the Soviet Union and lack of favored industries were primary contributors to famine mortality (52% of excess deaths), and some evidence shows there was discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians and Germans. In Ukraine collectivisation policy was enforced, entailing extreme crisis and contributing to the famine. In 1929–1930, peasants were induced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-labourers for payment in kind.

Food exports continued during the famine, albeit at a reduced rate.[62] In regard to exports, Michael Ellman states that the 1932–1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes, which would have been enough to feed 5 million people for one year.

 The collectivization and high procurement quota explanation for the famine is somewhat called into question by the fact that the oblasts of Ukraine with the highest losses were Kyiv and Kharkiv, which produced far lower amounts of grain than other sections of the country. Historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft lists four problems Soviet authorities ignored during collectivization that would hinder the advancement of agricultural technology and ultimately contributed to the famine: