Winter is the Perfect Season for State-Starvation
Remembering the Holodomor and the many other planned winter famines
«The snow fell on the dead and the living alike, but only the living were expected to feel grateful for it.»
Holodomor memorial, Kyiv
The Season When States Most Easily Kill by Hunger
December–March has historically been the most efficient time frame for governments to carry out mass death by starvation. There are cold, hard reasons for this:
- People burn far more calories just trying to stay alive in sub-zero temperatures
- Vegetation is dead or buried under snow — foraging becomes impossible
- Rivers and lakes freeze → fishing & water transport collapse
- Weakened, edemic populations are far less capable of resistance or mass escape
- The cold itself provides a plausible deniability cover: “It was just a bad winter”
Almost every large-scale, man-made famine engineered by a modern state has had its deadliest months during winter or very early spring.
A short, incomplete winter killing calendar
| Period | Event | Peak death months | Estimated deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932–1933 | Holodomor (Ukraine SSR) | Dec 1932 – Apr 1933 | 3.5–5+ million |
| 1946–1947 | Soviet famine (post-war) | Winter 1946/47 | 1–1.5 million |
| 1958–1961 | Great Leap Forward famine (China) | Winter 1959/60 & 1960/61 | 30–55 million (total) |
| 1994–1998 | North Korean Arduous March famine | Especially brutal winters 1995–97 | 600,000–3 million |
| 2022–present | Blockade + destruction of grain infrastructure (Ukraine) | Winter months consistently worst | Still unfolding |
The recurring pattern is not coincidence
When a state wants to break a population without leaving the same kind of photographic evidence as gas chambers or killing fields, winter famine remains one of the most repeatable, low-accountability methods available.
The corpses are hidden under snow for months.
The survivors are too weak to organize.
Foreign journalists are told it’s “just weather”.
And the next spring, the regime can always blame the previous government, the kulaks, the drought, the imperialist sanctions — anything but itself.
«People died so quietly that the neighbors didn’t always realize until morning that the person they spoke with yesterday was already a corpse.» — survivor testimony, Kyiv oblast, spring 1933
Remember them when you see snow this winter.
And remember who historically has most often used that snow as a murder weapon.
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