The bodies of the dead were just piled up on the roadside and people would literally go and cut up the bodies for food, not only that, people would regularly go missing, and of course there was a black market for human meat too. One thing that we see time and again throughout history in times of widespread famines and massive food shortages is cannibalism. And it was the aftermath of this into which Andrei Chikatilo was born. The death toll is contested as you would expect, but it is estimated that as many as 12 million people died across the Soviet Union as a result of famines in the 1930. It wasn’t until 1940, 12 years after its implementation, that Collective farming in the Soviet Union finally surpassed pre-collectivism production levels. The worst of this famine was 1932-33 and is known as the Holodomor in Ukraine, and an estimated 3.5 million ethnic Ukrainians died in this two year period. Grain supply fell massively due to successive bad harvests, and because all of the harvested crops were collected to be redistributed by the state, mass starvation throughout the Soviet Union followed, and Central and Eastern Ukraine were the worst affected areas. Needless to say, Stalin’s five year plan didn’t work. Farmers were not paid, but they were allowed to cultivate a small patch of land for themselves, essentially they had a vegetable garden in exchange for their crops.

The goal of Collectivisation was to increase grain production throughout the Union, this in turn would increase food supplies to the growing urban areas, provide more grain for export and trade, as well as provide raw materials to power the processing industries. So in 1928 Stalin implemented a policy of Agricultural Collectivisation throughout the Soviet Union. The Soviet government saw private farming as a gateway to capitalism because it was mostly tenant farming, and the government had to pay for its grain, and Stalin argued that Collectivism would free poor peasant farmers from economic servitude under the farm owners known as Kulkas. Ukraine was known as the Breadbasket of Europe because of its nutrient rich soil and ideal climate which made it perfect for wheat farming. Today we’re looking at the early life and early crimes of serial Killer Andrei Chikatilo.Īndrei Romanovich Chikatilo was born to a family of collective farmers in Yablochnoye, a rural farming village in eastern Soviet Ukraine, on October 16 1936.

Andrei chikatilo murder photos