There came a moment in Ukraine when there was little or no grain, and the only meat was human

Cannibalism is a taboo of literature as well as life, as communities seek to protect their dignity by suppressing the record of this desperate mode of survival . Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union, then and since, have treated cannibalism as a source of great shame, Yet while cannibalism in soviet Ukraine in 1933 says much about the Soviet system, it says nothing about Ukrainians as a people. With starvation will come cannibalism. There came a moment in Ukraine when there was little or no grain, and the only meat was human. ... In the villages smoke coming from a cottage chimney was a suspicious sign, since it tended to mean that cannibals were eating a kill or that families were roasting one of their members.

T. Snyder, Bloodlands (2010), 51