Considering the systemic and politically motivated oppression and political terror and taking all their food, leaving them to starve, torturing people on the suspicion of not giving all of their grain etc just “grain requisitions” is pretty wild.’

But for the promised quotes, this is the first I came accross from the book “Stalin - A New Biography of a Dictator” by Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (2015)

While the en­tire coun­try suffered from fam­ine and mass re­pres­sion, Ukraine and the North Cau­casus were the most af­fected.37 It was in these two im­port­ant re­gions of the USSR where the policy of pun­ish­ing grain re­quis­i­tions and ter­ror were most bru­tally ap­plied. Two in­ter­re­lated reas­ons ex­plain Stalin’s fo­cus on these areas. The first could be de­scribed as eco­nomic. Ukraine and the North Cau­casus sup­plied as much as half of all grain col­lec­ted by the state. But in 1932–1933 they turned over 40 per­cent less than the pre­vi­ous year. While this de­cline was par­tially com­pensated by Rus­sian grain-pro­du­cing areas, which des­pite go­ing hungry had sig­ni­fic­antly over­ful­filled their plans, they could not com­pletely make up the short­fall. In 1932 the state col­lec­ted al­most 20 per­cent less grain than in 1931.38 These fig­ures par­tially ex­plain the de­mands Stalin placed on Ukraine and the North Cau­casus. He wanted “his” grain and was in­furi­ated that they were not provid­ing it.

Second, Stalin saw the crisis of 1932 as the con­tinu­ation of the war against the peas­antry and as a means of con­sol­id­at­ing the res­ults of col­lect­iv­iz­a­tion, and he had a point. In a let­ter to the So­viet writer Mikhail Sho­lok­hov on 6 May 1933, he wrote: “The es­teemed grain grow­ers were in es­sence wa­ging a ‘quiet’ war against So­viet power. A war by star­vation.”39 He un­doubtedly con­sidered the peas­antry of Ukraine and the North Cau­casus to be at the fore­front of this peas­ant army bat­tling the So­viet gov­ern­ment. These re­gions had al­ways been hot­beds of anti-So­viet sen­ti­ment, and Ukraine had been at the fore­front of the anti-kolk­hoz move­ment in 1930. Re­peated in­cid­ents of un­rest flared up in both Ukraine and the North Cau­casus in 1931–1932. A fur­ther cause for con­cern was Ukraine’s bor­der with Po­land. Stalin feared that Po­land, in its hos­til­ity to­ward the USSR, could ex­ploit the Ukrain­ian crisis.40 Over­all, as Hiroaki Kur­om­iya points out, Stalin was sus­pi­cious of all peas­ants, but “Ukrain­ian peas­ants were doubly sus­pect both for be­ing peas­ants and for be­ing Ukrain­ian.”

By pro­claim­ing grain col­lec­tion to be a war, Stalin was un­ty­ing his own hands and the hands of those car­ry­ing out his or­ders. The ideo­lo­gical basis for this war was the Sta­lin­ist myth that “food dif­fi­culties” res­ul­ted from acts of sab­ot­age by “en­emies” and “ku­laks.” Any sug­ges­tion of a link between the crisis and gov­ern­ment policy was cat­egor­ic­ally re­jec­ted. By blam­ing all food short­ages on “en­emies” and on the peas­ants them­selves while also pro­mot­ing the idea that the scale of the fam­ine was be­ing ma­li­ciously ex­ag­ger­ated, Stalin re­lieved him­self and the cent­ral gov­ern­ment of any ob­lig­a­tion to help the hungry. A state­ment by the gen­eral sec­ret­ary in Feb­ru­ary 1933 at a con­gress of kolk­hoz shock work­ers shows the depth of his cyn­icism: “One of our achieve­ments is that the vast masses of the poor peas­ants, who formerly lived in semi-star­va­tion, have now, in the col­lect­ive farms, be­come middle peas­ants, have at­tained ma­ter­ial se­cur­ity.… It is an achieve­ment such as has never been known in the world be­fore, such as no other state in the world has yet made.”42 This state­ment came at a time when thou­sands were dy­ing every day.

And so on.

It’s a good book and very approachable. I highly recommend it.