Soviet famine of 1932–33

For the same famine particularly in Ukraine, see Holodomor.
Famine in USSR, 1933. Areas of most disastrous famine marked with black. A – grain-consuming regions, B – grain-producing regions. C – former land of Don, Kuban and Terek cossacks, C1 – former land of Ural and Orenburg cossacks. 1. Kola Peninsula, 2. Northern region, 3. Karelia, 4. Komi, 5. Leningrad Oblast, 6. Ivanovo Oblast, 7. Moscow Oblast, 8. Nizhny Novgorod region, 9. Western Oblast, 10. Byelorussia, 11. Central Black Earth Region, 12. Ukraine, 13. Central Volga region, 14. Tataria, 15. Bashkiria, 16. Ural region, 17. Lower Volga region, 18. North Caucasus Krai, 19. Georgia, 20. Azerbaijan, 21. Armenia.[1]
Depopulation

The Soviet famine of 1932–33 affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, leading to the deaths of many millions in those areas and severe food shortage throughout the USSR. These areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan,[2] the South Urals, and West Siberia.[3][4] Gareth Jones was the first western journalist to report the inhumane devastation.[5][6][lower-alpha 1] The subset of the famine within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Kuban, is called Holodomor, all of which were heavily populated by Ukrainians.

Process

The government's forced collectivization of agriculture, a part of the Soviet Union's first five-year plan is considered by some a main reason for the famine,[7] as it caused chaos in the countryside. This included the destruction of peasant activists' possessions, the selling and killing of horses for fear they would be seized, and farmers' refraining from field work. Authorities blamed the agitation on the kulaks (rich peasants) and kolkhozs (collectivized farmers), and accused them of sabotage. The authorities wrongly expected that production would increase as a result of agricultural collectivization, because of plans for exporting agricultural products based on attempts to industrialize.

Mark B. Tauger suggests that the famine was caused by a combination of factors, specifically low harvest due to natural disasters combined with increased demand for food caused by the collectivization, industrialization and urbanization, and grain exports by the Soviet Union at the same time.[8] Similar view was presented by Stephen Wheatcroft, who has given more weight to the "ill-conceived policies" of Soviet government and highlighted that while the policy was not targeted at Ukraine specifically, it was Ukraine who suffered most for "demographic reasons".[9]

Central authorities maintained that the collapse was caused by peasants' hiding their grain crops, despite repeated requests from local authorities that their quota be decreased. As a consequence, local activists led searches for hidden stores of grain; this caused seizure of seed corn that should have been used for sowing the next year's crop and the loss of the stocks needed to feed peasant families.

The Law of Spikelets

For those who stayed in the countryside, often the only place where any food could be found was on collective farms, but the peasants were forbidden to eat their own crops. The "Decree About the Protection of Socialist Property" – nicknamed by the farmers the Law of Spikelets – was enacted on August 7, 1932. Under the Decree, political police and party officials were allowed to confiscate unlimited amounts of grain from peasant households. Thus, taking food – even a handful of rotting grain or produce – was considered theft of "socialist property."

Passports

Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933

There was a wave of migration due to starvation, although authorities responded by introducing a requirement that passports be used to go between republics, and banning travel by rail.

Soviet internal passports (identity cards) were introduced on 27 December 1932 to deal with the mass exodus of peasants from the countryside. Individuals not having such a document could not leave their homes on pain of administrative penalties, such as internment in Gulag labor camps. The rural population had no right to freely keep passports and thus could not leave their villages without approval. The power to issue passports rested with the head of the kolkhoz, and identity documents were kept by the administration of the collective farms. This measure stayed in place until 1974.

The lack of passports could not completely stop peasants' leaving the countryside, but only a small percentage of those who illegally infiltrated into cities could improve their lot. Unable to find work or possibly buy or beg a little bread, farmers died in the streets of Kharkiv, Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, and other major cities of Ukraine.

Reactions

The famine of 1932–1933 was officially denied, so any discourse on this issue was classified as criminal "anti-Soviet propaganda" until Perestroika. The results of the 1937 census were classified as they revealed the demographic losses attributable to the Great Famine.

The government used disinformation measures against Western journalists. Many contemporary correspondents in the Soviet Union are now accused of deliberate concealment of facts, being referred to as "useful idiots." The most infamous of the Great Famine deniers was Walter Duranty, a New York Times journalist whose articles downplayed the famine and its death toll.[10] In 1932, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his coverage of the Soviet Union's first five-year plan and thus, he was considered the most expert and savvy western journalist to cover the famine.[10] In an article "Russians Hungry, But Not Starving", he intentionally refused to mention that non-Russians were dying of the man made starvation by the millions.[11] Duranty's coverage with disinformation led directly to Franklin Roosevelt officially recognizing the Soviet Union in 1933 and thus revoked the United States' official recognition of an independent Ukraine.[12] A similar position was taken by the French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, who toured the territory of Ukraine during his stay in the Soviet Union. However, other Western journalists did report on the famine at the time, including Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones who both severely criticised Duranty's account and were both banned from returning to the Soviet Union.[13]

The cube at the site for future monument for victims of the Soviet famine (1931-1933) in the center of Almaty, Kazakhstan

George Orwell's Animal Farm was inspired by Gareth Jones articles about the manmade Great Famine of 1932-33.[14]

Estimation of the loss of life

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ In November 2009, Gareth Jones' diaries recording the manmade genocide of the Great Soviet Famine of 1932-33 went on public display for the first time at Cambridge University.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Markoff, Dr. Alexandr Pavlovich (1933). professors of the Russian Commercial Institute, eds. "Famine in the USSR" (pdf). Bulletin Economique Russe (in French) (91, Rue Lecourbe, 91; Paris 15e, France: English translation by the Russian Commercial Institute in Paris) 9. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  2. ↑ Engerman, David. Modernization from the Other Shore (Google Books).
  3. ↑ "Famine on the South Siberia". Human Science. RU: NSC. p. 15.
  4. ↑ "Demographic aftermath of the famine in Kazakhstan". Weekly. RU: Demoscope. Jan 1, 2003.
  5. 1 2 "Welsh journalist who exposed a Soviet tragedy". walesonline.com. November 13, 2009. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  6. ↑ Brown, Mark (November 12, 2009). "1930s journalist Gareth Jones to have story retold: Correspondent who exposed Soviet Ukraine's manmade famine to be focus of new documentary". The Guardian (London). Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Ukrainian Famine". Soviet exhibit. Ibiblio public library and digital archive. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
  8. ↑ Mark B. Tauger. "Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-01-27.
  9. ↑ "The Soviet Famine of 1931-33: Politically Motivated or Ecological Disaster?". www.international.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2015-05-07.
  10. 1 2 Lyons, Eugene, Assignment in Utopia (Google Books).
  11. ↑ Walter Duranty (31 March 1933). "RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING; Deaths From Diseases Due to Malnutrition High, Yet the Soviet Is Entrenched". The New York Times: 13. Archived from the original on 2009-01-01.
  12. ↑ Taylor, Sally J. (1990). Stalin's Apologist. Oxford University Press.
  13. ↑ Shipton, Martin (June 20, 2013). "Welsh journalist hailed one of greatest 'eyewitnesses of truth' for exposing '30s Soviet famine". Wales Online.
  14. ↑ Obenson, Tambay A. (July 23, 2015). "140 New Projects Selected for the IFP's 2015 Project Forum Slate". indiewire.com. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  15. ↑ Davies & Wheatcroft 2004, p. 401.
  16. ↑ "Ukraine – The famine of 1932–33". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
  17. ↑ Conquest, Robert (1986), The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Oxford University Press, p. 306, ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  18. ↑ Ellman, Michael (September 2005). "The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1934" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies (Routledge) 57 (6): 823–41. doi:10.1080/09668130500199392. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
  19. ↑ Naimark, Norman M (2010), Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity), Princeton University Press, p. 131, ISBN 0-691-14784-1.
  20. ↑ Works related to Soviet famine of 1930s at Wikisource
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