Reconstructing Ukrainian Fertility During the Years of Cataclysms in the 1930s and 1940s

Few nations of Europe have experienced such a continued series of crises and cataclysms as the population of the Ukraine over the course of this century. With little time to recover from the deep wounds of World War I and the following civil war of 1918–1921, the forced collectivism of 1931–33 brought about hunger and starvation only to be followed by the years of mass repressions 1934–37 and, subsequently, World War II. After this, periods of hunger came again, and during the 1950s the painful reconstruction of the economy began.