One of the things those Wikipedia articles shows is that to flatly state it was a "genocide" is intentionally misleading. For a start try this: Robert Conquest, the author of the Harvest of Sorrow, has stated that the famine of 1932–33 was a deliberate act of mass murder, if not genocide committed as part of Joseph Stalin's collectivisation program in the Soviet Union. Conquest, R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft believe that, had industrialisation been abandoned, the famine would have been "prevented" (Conquest),[79] or at least significantly alleviated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Genocide_question That bold sentence shows exactly why these westerners claimed it was a genocide. They were actually blaming "industrialisation" and were saying if the Soviets had abandoned it, then the famine would have been avoided... in other words if the USSR had remained a backward nation with no power to influence the west's plans. It was bullshit propaganda from the very start, aimed at trying to force the Soviets to stop modernising their nation. There had been several famines in the region even before the revolution... but never one after 1933. It showed that the USSR took a region that often suffered famines, modernised it, and eventually was able to feed everyone so that no more famines occurred. Put simply, the famine of 1932-33 was no different from the other famines that had happened previously, was not an intentional act and at most can be ascribed to bad planning rather than intentional malfeasance.