The Holodomor (extermination by hunger) originated in Stalin's decision (1929) to collectivise agriculture, which led to a steep drop in production and sparked peasant uprisings. Nonetheless, food requisitions were increased. It peaked in the winter of 1932–‘33, when police and communist apparatchiks stripped peasant homes of everything edible. More than five million people perished across the USSR, four million in Ukraine alone. The Holodomor provided cover for the repression of the Ukrainian language and the persecution of Ukrainian leaders. Though the Kremlin denied the famine for more than half a century it played a large role in oral family traditions. Since Ukrainian independence its memory became prominent in public. The blue signs on the largest map indicate recent memorials and monuments in honor of the victims. The yellow crosses designate commemorative plaques from before 1990.