The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–22 that affected other parts of the USSR,[296] in which up 5,000,000 people died in total.[297][298] According to Roman Serbyn, a professor of Russian and East European history, the Tatarstan famine was the first man-made famine in the Soviet Union and systematically targeted ethnic minorities such as Volga Tatars and Volga Germans.[299] The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine,[300] and in 2008, the All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921–22 Tatarstan famine as genocide of Muslim Tatars.[301][302]