Joseph Stalin was the leader and dictator of the Soviet Union, which was a communist country. He made farmers in the Soviet Union change the way they farmed, then he tried to make the farmers work harder for the government-owned farms, for less money. Many people in the Ukraine did not want to go along with this. When the Ukraine had a famine, Stalin refused to help the people in the Ukraine. Instead, the government took food away from people. It became illegal (against the law) to pick up food from the ground of fields. The government also tried to stop people from moving around the country to look for food.