In the space of little more than a decade the Soviet Union managed to inflict
two devastating famines on its people and provide a blueprint for how governments
could and would transform limited natural disasters into full blown starvation.
The Famine of 1921
The famine of 1921 began with a drought that caused massive crop failures,
including total crop failure on about 20 percent of Soviet farmland (1).
Although certainly a disaster of large proportions, such periodic drastic crop
failures were not unknown in Russia. A similar drought struck in 1892, for example,
which led to the worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia (2).
The comparisons between the droughts ends, and the tragedy begins, when the
Bolsheviks reacted markedly different to the natural disaster. Tsarist officials
arranged for the delivery of food supplies to the affected regions which, in
combination with private relief efforts, kept deaths down to 375,000 to 400,000
(3).
The Bolsheviks, by contrast, simply ignored the famine until it was largely
too late. Unable or unwilling to admit natural disasters could strike in the
worker’s paradise, Lenin took actions to protect himself politically but did
nothing to prevent the starvation. In May and June 1921, Lenin ordered food
purchases abroad, but earmarked them for the politically important cities rather
than for starving peasants. Bolshevik leaders avoided visiting the areas suffering
from famine (4).
Even when finally requesting famine aid, the Bolsheviks relied on the nominally
private All-Russian Public Committee to Aid the Hungry (Pomgol). Pomgol requested
the assistance of the American Relief Association founded by Herbert Hoover,
then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce. The ARA responded by spending over $61.6 million
to relieve the Russian famine. The ARA fed up to 11 million people a day at
the height of relief efforts. The ARA suspended relief operations in June 1923
when it was revealed the Soviet Union was offering foodstuffs for sale abroad
— specifically millions of tons of cereals which it preferred to sell for hard
currency rather than feed its starving people (5).
With the worst of the famine over, though, this posed little political risk.
For helping relieve the famine, Pomgol’s members were liquidated; all but two
of its members were arrested by the Soviet secret police and imprisoned (6).
Although exact casualty figures don’t exist, a Soviet estimate put the death
toll at 5.1 million (7).
1932-33
The massive famine which struck the Soviet Union in 1932-33 was, like the 1921
famine, caused by government actions but unlike that famine appears to have
been at least partially intentional as part of Stalin’s efforts to further his
political goals.
Following the disastrous famine of 1921 and similar failures of central planning,
the New Economic Policy liberalized agricultural policy in the Soviet Union
and the country experienced a recovery. That all changed in 1928 when uncertainty
caused by Soviet central planning schemes created disequilibrium in agricultural
products (farmers had grain which they held in reserve due to artificially low
prices created by the Soviet regime) (8).
Rather than rectify those problems, the Bolsheviks exacerbated the problem
by ordering the seizing of grain from peasants. This soon gave way to dekulakizaton
— the liquidating of “rich” peasants — and collectivization of agriculture.
Combined with agricultural quotas that left peasants with almost nothing to
eat, the results were predictably tragic. So predictable in fact that historians
such as Robert Conquest believe Stalin intentionally inflicted the 1932-3 famine
as part of a general assault on the Ukraine.
Conquest notes, for example, that in an unprecedented move in the autumn of
1932, seed grain was removed from the Ukraine and put in storage in cities –
a move which Conquest suggests shows authorities were concerned at protecting
seed grain from hungry peasants who surely would have eaten it had they access
to it at the height of the famine (9). More
ominously, Conquest reports that beyond merely withholding food aid from the
Ukraine, the Soviets stationed troops on the Ukrainian-Russian border to ensure
neither food nor people went in or out of the Ukraine during the famine (Russia
was spared the worst of the famine). As Conquest writes,
The essential point is that, in fact, clear orders existed to stop Ukrainian
peasants entering Russia where food was available and, when they had succeeded
in evading these blocks, to confiscate any food they were carrying when intercepted
on their return. This can only have been a decree from the highest level and
it can only have had one motive (10).
Regardless of the motives, the death toll was staggering. Conquest estimated
7 million people died from famine in 1932-3, with 5 million of those being Ukrainian
victims. An additional 7.5 million died from dekulakization and other state
violence from 1930-7 (11).
Footnotes:
1. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 2. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 3. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 4. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 5. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 6. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 7. Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik 8. Conquest, Robert. The harvest of sorrow: Soviet 9. Conquest, Robert. The harvest of sorrow: Soviet 10. Conquest, Robert. The harvest of sorrow: 11. Conquest, Robert. The harvest of sorrow:
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.411.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.412.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.413.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, pp.413-6.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, pp.415-9.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, pp.416-419.
regime. New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.419.
collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University Press,
1986, p.87-9.
collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University Press,
1986, p.326.
Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986, p.327-8.
Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986, p.306.