The Soviet Famine of 1946-47 in Global and Historical Perspective

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The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective

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The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective Nicholas Ganson

THE SOVIET FAMINE OF 1946–47 IN GLOBAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Copyright © Nicholas Ganson, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–61333–1 ISBN-10: 0–230–61333–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ganson, Nicholas. The Soviet famine of 1946–47 in global and historical perspective / Nicholas Ganson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–61333–0 1. Famines—Soviet Union—History. 2. Soviet Union—Economic policy—1946–1950. I. Title. HC340.F3G36 2009 363.80947 09044—dc22 2008050348 Design by Integra Software Services First edition: May 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America

Contents

List of Tables

vii

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: Famine of Victors

xiii

Part I Origins of the Crisis 1 Tracing the Roots of the Failed 1946 Harvest

3

Part II Societal Impact and Official Policies 2 Exploring the Causes of Child Mortality 3 Food Shortages and Ration Reforms in the Towns and Cities: Moscow and Beyond 4 None Dare Call It Resistance? Coping, Opposition, and the Soviet State

27 47 69

Part III The Crisis in Broader Perspective 5 The Famine, the Dawn of the Cold War, and the Politics of Food 6 The Famine of 1946–47 in the Context of Russian History 7 Placing the Famine of 1946–47 in Global Context

95 117 137

Conclusion

149

Notes

153

Bibliography

199

Index

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List of Tables

1.1 Harvest yields of various food crops in centners (=100kg) per hectare 1.2 Average amount of grain and money distributed to collective farmers per earned workday by region 1.3 Number of agricultural implements and machines in the USSR in thousands 1.4 Number of tractors and other sources of horsepower in the USSR 1.5 Head of livestock on collective farms in Ukraine, on November 1, 1946, as a percentage of prewar levels 2.1 Number of deaths by age group in Infant Home No. 1 during the first half of 1947 2.2 The physical condition at the time of admittance to Infant Home No. 1 of those children who eventually died, by month of entry 2.3 The sotspolozhenie or “social position” (i.e. reason for entering) of those children who died in Infant Home No. 1 during the first half of 1947 2.4 Length of time spent in Infant Home No. 1 before onset of death for those that entered the home during the first half of 1947 7.1 Mortality estimates for famines in late Victorian-era India and famines in the USSR

7 10 11 12 14 34

35

35

36 142


List of Figures

3.1 Bread distribution breakdowns in towns and cities, late 1945—early 1946 6.1 Postwar Soviet grain exports per harvest year (millions of tons) 6.2 Per capita grain production in the Russian Empire and the USSR

54 129 131


Acknowledgments

As an undergraduate majoring in biology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, I had the good fortune of taking two courses with James Flynn: one was in Russian history and the other in Irish history. This experience started me on the path of a formal education in history and sparked in me an interest in famine, which figured prominently in the histories of both countries. From Holy Cross, I moved on to Boston College, where my MA adviser, Roberta Manning, introduced me to the topic of this book: the Soviet famine of 1946–47. This famine, which neither I nor seemingly anyone else in the field knew much about, immediately captured my attention, and I have since been working on making sense of this tragic historical crisis. At Boston College, a seminar on famine taught by Kevin O’Neill provided me with the tools to begin my project, which would not have come to fruition if not for the support and direction of my Ph.D. adviser at UNC-Chapel Hill, Don Raleigh: a consummate professional who epitomizes the qualities that every adviser should possess. I also benefited greatly from generous feedback on my work from Michael Hunt, as well as the other members of my dissertation committee: Peter Coclanis, David Griffiths, and Willis Brooks. Chris Ward, Jeff Jones, Rósa Magnusdottir, Chris Burton, Don Filtzer, James Heinzen, and Anna Kuxhausen commented on my papers at conferences and thereby helped me sharpen some of the conclusions. I would also like to acknowledge Nina Devyataykina, George Kostich, the late Raymond McNally and Father Frank Murphy, Lawrence Clifford, Jack Langer, and Marko Dumancic, who all helped me at various points along the way. I also extend my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of my manuscript, whose feedback helped tremendously with my final revisions. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their everlasting support. My parents, Jorge and Vera, not only taught me the Russian language—an indispensable tool for my research—but ignited in me a lasting interest in Russian history. My brothers, Victor and George, have been loyal friends and supporters in every way imaginable. My sons, George and

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Alex, have been a constant source of joy. My wife and better half, Michelle, has supported me throughout; embraced our time in Moscow as a wonderful journey and not as exile; and motivated me to push on when the going got tough. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to everyone mentioned above. Any errors are my own.

Introduction: Famine of Victors1

On March 17, 1946, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) boarded a plane in New York departing for Paris and embarked, in his own words, on a mission to save hundreds of millions of people across Europe and Asia from hunger.2 Hoover had undertaken a similar task in 1918, following World War I, making him an ideal candidate for this operation. The destruction of World War II and droughts in much of Europe and Asia in 1945 had brought many countries to the brink of famine. The American delegation chaired by Hoover, President Harry Truman’s Famine Emergency Committee, focused its efforts on allocating breadstuffs from surplus countries to nations that had been ravaged by the war and were in dire need of food. Initially, the Famine Emergency Committee planned to provide relief only to Europe, but after the Indian Food Delegation requested assistance from the U.S. government, the Truman administration decided to include Asia in the committee’s itinerary. As U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes wrote, neglecting Asian countries would “probably have an adverse effect upon . . .relations with those Asiatic countries facing food shortages as severe if not more severe than those of Europe.”3 The final list of needy countries was lengthy: in Europe—Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania; and in Asia—India, Ceylon, Malaya, China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.4 But, unlike after World War I, the USSR—the country most devastated by war—remained beyond the pale. In 1921–22, at the conclusion of the Russian Civil War, the newly founded Soviet Union had suffered a major famine, which resulted from wartime devastation, social dislocation, drought, and government requisitioning of grain. At that time, the American Relief Administration (ARA) headed by Hoover offered aid to the fledgling Soviet state in feeding its people. The ARA efforts managed to save millions of lives from 1920 to 1923; ironically, they also helped secure Bolshevik political

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power.5 In his memoirs, Hoover explains the Famine Emergency Committee’s failure to provide assistance to the USSR in 1946: While we could classify the Soviet satellite states, we could not classify Russia proper, for that country gave out no information. However, we knew what the Russian ration was in most cities and that the Russians had seized huge amounts of food in their invasion of Eastern Europe, Mongolia, and Manchuria. We believed that Russia proper was in no critical need, and even hoped that, in view of the gigantic amounts they had plundered, they might help out with some supplies for the hungry.6

While Soviet secrecy certainly helped keep many Western observers in the dark about the USSR’s food needs, Hoover’s supposition, whether genuine or not, was grossly inaccurate. At the time that the Famine Emergency Committee began its work, the USSR found itself in the early stages of a severe drought. People in certain locales were already dying from starvation, and the Soviet government’s grain reserves were dwindling.7 But humanitarian concerns took a backseat to politics, and such was the case on both sides of the descending iron curtain. Hoover’s memoirs suggest that the Famine Emergency Committee’s humanitarian mission was not entirely an end in itself: it was also intended to combat communism.8 Not to be outdone, the Soviet government exported grain to Europe in an effort to elevate its international political standing and to gain the sympathy of countries that could potentially turn Communist.9 In March 1946, the interests of the United States and USSR converged: the United States promised to provide ships to carry 600,000 tons of Soviet grain to France.10 The United States received assistance in meeting Europe’s food needs and the USSR enhanced its image in the eyes of the French. In the end, the countries that the Famine Emergency Committee took under its care managed to avoid famine; the Soviet Union did not. The people of the USSR, who had just played a leading role in defeating the Axis powers, were forced to endure the third major famine in approximately a quarter of a century (1921–22, 1932–33, and 1946–47). Soviet political goals had figured prominently in the unfolding of the first two famines, both of which have been studied extensively.11 In 1921, after the military victory of the Soviet Red Army over the anti-Communist White Armies, drought and aggressive Soviet grain requisitioning policies sparked a famine that took the lives of several million people.12 The Bolsheviks also capitalized on the famine by expropriating property of the Russian Orthodox Church, under the guise of famine relief, at a time when society—particularly the clergy, peasantry, and other social groups deemed reactionary by the Soviet leadership—could not


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muster much resistance.13 Only a decade later, a Soviet campaign to eliminate private ownership in the countryside and collectivize agriculture, launched as part of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928, triggered a mass famine with millions of more deaths in 1932–33.14 In 1946–47, between 1 and 2 million people perished from starvation and famine-related diseases.15 Owing to the devastation of agriculture, people in certain locales suffered from hunger following the war, but food shortages became widespread after the lack of rainfall during the late spring and early summer of 1946 and the consequent crop failure in many regions. With much of the meager harvest going to the state, people’s food supplies dwindled and large segments of the village population began to experience acute hunger in the autumn and winter. Mortality peaked in the first half of the following year and began to decline in the latter part of the year, especially after the relatively successful 1947 harvest in the fall. Starvation did not entirely disappear after 1947, but demographic figures attest that famine as a mass phenomenon had ended by the start of 1948.16 The country also achieved a degree of normalcy owing to the full cancellation of rationing at the end of December 1947. Considering the prominence of politics in the unfolding of the previous famine crises, it is not surprising that the author of the only existing monograph on the famine of 1946–47 in the USSR views the postwar crisis through a political lens. V.F. Zima characterizes the famine as manmade and even suggests that it was premeditated to bring a restless society to heel after the war.17 This interpretation of the famine is to a degree intuitive, because the late Stalin years (1945–53) have often been described by historians and political scientists alike as a period during which the Communist government reasserted control over society after the chaotic war years and, according to some scholars, placed the finishing touches on the totalitarian Stalinist political system.18 Though not void of merit, Zima’s narrow perspective prevents him from providing a complete picture of the famine and tears it from its full historical context. The famine of 1946–47 belongs not only to the field of Soviet political history, in which Zima situates it, but also to the histories of World War II, the cold war, ideology, and famine throughout time, only to name a few. Viewing the hunger crisis while considering these various contexts has at least two benefits. First, it allows for a more complete picture of the famine itself. The Soviet leadership did not make decisions in a vacuum and numerous influences converged to shape the state’s postwar policies. The farreaching ambitions of the state collided with the reality of limited resources. The outcome—the pursuit of some goals at the expense of others—offers insight into the world view of the post–World War II Soviet elite.

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Second, research on the famine can help contribute to our understanding of each of the aforementioned “histories.” World War II was one of the major causes of the meager 1946 harvest and postwar deprivation was part of the continuing price that the people of the Soviet Union had to pay for victory in what came to be known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War. Indeed, some people considered the war to be over only when rationing stopped at the end of 1947. The country did not recover economically until the 1950s and sporadic hunger plagued Soviet villages into the early 1950s.19 Mounting tensions between former allies—Britain and the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other—and the emergent cold war unquestionably influenced the outcome of the famine. But the converse is also true: the famine in some ways shaped the cold war. Ideology guided the decision-making of the Soviet leadership after the war, contributing to the hardships of the people of the USSR. An analysis of the famine in a historic and global context allows us to consider how the ideology of the Soviet state differed from those of other governments that failed to prevent famine.20 While each famine is a unique event, it also inevitably bears many similarities to famines in other settings; therefore, the 1946–47 hunger cannot be seen as entirely distinctive. As David Arnold has astutely pointed out, while famines reveal something about a given society at a specific time, they also serve as points of contact between different societies and cultures.21 For example, many social responses to drought and hunger—such as migration, the consumption of surrogates, and theft—are universal. At the same time, the illumination of certain aspects of famine in a particular context can contribute to our understanding of famine as a whole. In short, I view the Soviet famine of 1946–47 as an intersection of various influences and events. Since hunger crises are rooted in a given setting, yet impinged upon by global factors, and because their study has both local and global significance, my goal is twofold. I aim to shed light on Soviet politics and society in the aftermath of World War II and to add to our understanding of famine as such by placing the given crisis in comparative and global context. In striving toward this goal, my study addresses the following questions: What caused the famine? Did government decisions contribute to famine conditions in the USSR? What role did the devastation of war play in postwar hardships? What does the presence of famine in the USSR tell us about the origins of the cold war? Did the authorities show preferential treatment for certain segments of the population? Was the famine of 1946–47 a manmade or political famine? Might it have been used as a weapon against certain nationalities or social groups? Was the famine limited to the Soviet countryside? How were urban dwellers and workers affected by the crisis? Did people resist famine, and if so, how? What coping mechanisms did they employ? Did


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the famine increase opposition to the Soviet state? Did people outside of the USSR know about the famine? Could the famine have been prevented? Why was the Soviet government so secretive? Why was the Soviet Union continually plagued with food crises and famine? Was collectivization of agriculture a success or a failure, and why? Are large-scale famines peculiar to Stalinist or totalitarian states? In addressing these questions, this book engages scholarly literature on both the postwar Soviet Union and famine in other settings. Zima’s monograph remains the only full-length study on the Soviet famine of 1946–47; my departure from his approach has already been mentioned above. Aside from the difference in methodology, I seek to complement his findings by tapping sources that were unavailable in 1996 and those he happened to overlook. Elena Zubkova and Donald Filtzer have both produced invaluable works on the late Stalin years. Zubkova provides insight into Soviet public opinion, while Filtzer’s account describes the plight of workers during the period of reconstruction.22 While both works touch on the famine, my tighter focus allows me to test some of their assumptions and provide more accurate information on the roots and consequences of the state’s famine policy. In placing the 1946–47 crisis in the context of famine throughout history, I draw on scholars who have written about famine in other settings. In particular, I have been inspired by some of the approaches articulated by David Arnold in his Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change. I view the famine as an intersection between what he calls “event” and “structure.”23 This perspective allows for the consideration of long-term influences and currents, the longue durée, without sacrificing the particulars of a given event. Guided by my findings, I also seek to suggest fresh perspectives that might contribute to theories of famine causation. In particular, I address Amartya Sen’s “entitlement thesis,” which posits that famines can occur despite the absence of food availability decline.24 I draw heavily on recently declassified materials gathered at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow, as well as published document collections from Russian, Ukrainian, and Moldovan archives. The sources most crucial to my study are the collections of the Ministry of Health, Soviet Red Cross, Central Committee of Trade Unions of Government Trade, Ministry of State Control, Main Police Administration, Agricultural Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and Information Sector of the Organizational-Instructional Section of the Central Committee, as well as the papers of high-ranking government leaders (I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov, G.M. Malenkov, N.S. Khrushchev, A.A. Andreev, and L.M. Kaganovich). These sources allow me to view the famine at various levels of society and

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government, from peasants and workers to bureaucrats and ministers. I also make use of the published papers of the U.S. Department of State and British Foreign Office, as well as accounts written by visitors to the Soviet Union in 1946–47. While they fail to make mention of famine, articles in Pravda, the Party’s central newspaper, are helpful to a degree, because they reveal what citizens were reading and provide insight into the goals of the state. Parts I and II of the book focus on the origins of the famine, its societal impact, and state intervention. In seeking to trace the roots of the meager 1946 harvest, Chapter 1 surveys the devastation caused by the Nazi invasion (particularly with regard to manpower and mechanization in the countryside), evaluates how the Soviet elite addressed postwar problems, and determines how these measures affected society. I also question whether poor harvests free a government of responsibility for famine. Chapter 2 uncovers the heretofore undocumented efforts of the Soviet Red Cross in saving the lives of children during the famine. It likewise considers the impact of government decrees in September 1946 on the Ministry of Health’s (Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia) efforts to combat child mortality. Chapter 3 describes the food distribution system in towns and cities prior to the onset of drought and famine. Focusing on Moscow, this chapter describes the reactions of Moscow trade workers, and more generally the city’s working population, to the state’s ration reforms in September 1946. Chapter 4 grapples with the issue of resistance during the famine. I define resistance from the perspective of the Soviet government, break down the complex relationship between famine and resistance, and determine to what extent various forms of resistance exhibited during the famine can be seen as opposition to the Soviet political order. In Part III, I broaden my focus, viewing the postwar famine in the context of international politics and from a global history perspective. Chapter 5 examines the shifting climate of international food aid after World War II and considers Soviet food policies in the context of the emerging cold war. In Chapter 6, I place the famine of 1946–47 in the context of Russian history, examining the natural conditions of the Soviet landmass and the pre-Soviet legacy in agriculture, and isolate the features of Soviet policies that shaped the outcome of food crises. In the final chapter, I place the postwar famine in global context and draw parallels with other notable famine events in modern history. I also offer conclusions about what my findings might tell us about other famines, particularly in countries ruled by governments deemed totalitarian, and test the utility of categorizing famines as “totalitarian.” Every author who deals with famine must confront the issue of definitions and what exactly constitutes “famine.” Alex de Waal, in studying hunger in Africa, proposes three categories of increasing intensity to deal with the varying severity of famines: “dearth,” “famines that kill,” and “famines that


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starve.”25 We can say that the famine of 1946–47 was all three: some people experienced food shortages and malnutrition, others died from diseases and debilitation brought about by these shortages, and yet others died of starvation. As we shall see in this book, the famine meant different things for different people, but it unquestionably killed en masse. I have adopted Arnold’s definition of famine as “a collective catastrophe of such magnitude as to cause social and economic dislocation,” because it reflects both the scale and the social significance of famines, distinguishing them from localized food shortages.26 In placing the postwar Soviet famine in comparative perspective, I focus on other famine crises that similarly killed on a large scale. In providing as complete an account as possible of the Soviet famine of 1946–47, I hope that my work will bring more attention to this important topic. Nonetheless, in order to provide a broad view of a national event, a historian inevitably sacrifices some of the nuance and detail that more localized studies can provide. I anticipate that the use of local archives—something I initially set out to do but was forced to forego owing to the abundance of materials in central archives—will eventually fill some of the voids that remain. Furthermore, while many documents in former Soviet archives have been declassified, and have thus presented a wealth of opportunities to scholars, more materials will likely become available in coming years. Nor do I have any illusions that the archival record is complete. Some documents have not survived to our day and, inevitably, not all useful information made it onto paper to begin with. For this reason, I adopt a cautious approach toward documents and, where possible, seek to corroborate evidence using multiple sources. In short, in seeking to offer a record of the famine with breadth of perspective, I have striven equally to pay attention to detail and avoid unfounded assumptions. I will leave it to the reader to judge the measure of my success in this endeavor.


PART I

Origins of the Crisis


CHAPTER 1

Tracing the Roots of the Failed 1946 Harvest

It did not . . . escape our attention that the soil was parched and cracked with the fearful drought, and that the wheat had grown barely an inch above the ground, and was already turning brown with the heat and lack of rain. It was the beginning of the great tragedy of the 1946 drought, the worst drought Russia had known since 1891. The villagers were morose and disgruntled. Alexander Werth, Kiev, 19461 The Canadian agricultural expert with the UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] Mission had travelled widely and seen good and bad farms in the regions of Kiev, Odessa, Zhitomir, Poltava, Chernigov, etc. He told me that the farm which I visited at Kopilov [40 km west of Kiev] was far and away the best he had seen. In most others there was no machinery and very few cattle. Cows which should have been kept for milking purposes were drawing ploughs. One member of the Mission had seen with her own eyes four women harnessed to a plow in White Russia. Frank K. Roberts, July 19462

O

wing to the repressive nature of the USSR’s Communist regime, the role of the government has stood at the center of nearly every investigation of famine in the Soviet Union. More specifically, in seeking to isolate the causes of hunger, scholars often begin with the assumption that Soviet government policies served as the root cause of famine. From the very start, Bolshevik power depended on the ability to secure grain from the countryside, and the state’s requisitioning policies contributed to the famine in 1921–22.3 This emphasis on state responsibility for famine is most glaring in the historiography of the Soviet famine of 1932–33, the best known and most thoroughly studied Soviet-era famine. Adherents of a more publicly

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visible current of the historiography of this tragedy argue that Stalin and his entourage organized the famine to crush peasant resistance to the collectivization of agriculture and to weed out Ukrainian nationalism. Some of the advocates of this position go as far as to label the crisis “the Ukrainian famine-genocide,” asserting that the state set as its goal the destruction of the Ukrainian people.4 This view requires revision in light of new findings, but it has nonetheless shaped the popular image of the famine of 1932–33 and has been reflected in official American government documents.5 Much of the contentious debate over the causes of the 1932–33 famine, and how much of the blame rests on the shoulders of Soviet leaders for millions of deaths, has centered on harvest figures. According to the dichotomy employed by certain historians, a fairly abundant or even average harvest indicates a high degree of government responsibility, whereas meager crop yields point to the primacy of other factors, such as drought. Those who level the charge of genocide and terror against the Soviet government cite evidence, often anecdotal, of a good harvest. Conversely, those who insist on the primacy of environmental factors point to the shortcomings of agricultural production. Robert Conquest, among others, characterizes the tragedy of 1932–33 as a terror-famine, emphasizing Stalin’s willfulness in inflicting famine.6 But Mark Tauger contends that climatic and economic factors played a dominant role in the Soviet grain crises of the late 1920s, as well as the ensuing early 1930s famine, asserting that the Soviet authorities had inflated the harvest statistics.7 In fact, according to Tauger, “The harvest of 1932 essentially made a famine inevitable.”8 In a later article, R.W. Davies, Tauger, and S.G. Wheatcroft confirm this conclusion, maintaining that “the figure for grain stocks [cited by Conquest] is wrong and that Stalin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine.”9 While Davies and Wheatcroft have been consistently cautious in freeing the Soviet government from blame for the famine of 1932–33, Mark Tauger’s research on the Soviet food crises of the late 1920s and early 1930s has evolved into an apologia of sorts for Soviet agricultural policies. Tauger stresses the role of environmental factors and goes so far as to question the exploitative nature of the Soviet collectivization of agriculture.10 This inverse relationship between harvest and official accountability— which I will, for the sake of convenience, refer to as the “government culpability equation”—makes some sense. One might argue that, if harvests were abundant, the authorities certainly could have fed the population had they wanted to. Conversely, if harvests were meager, either nothing or little could be done to avert disaster. But the relationship proves to be more complex than it might seem at first glance. Studies of the 1946–47 famine have blurred the lines without directly engaging this issue. Both Russian historian V.F. Zima and British economist Michael Ellman acknowledge


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that the 1946 harvest was small, but they nonetheless believe that the Soviet leadership had at its disposal enough grain to feed the entire population of the USSR.11 Zima, the author of the only monograph on the postwar famine in the USSR, goes further: [T]he Soviet government, citing the drought and the threat of aggression on the part of former allies, accepted the famine with the goal of preserving grain stocks for the purpose of sale abroad. Furthermore, they made use of the famine as a proven method to whip up labor activity for a bowl of soup in the field camp.12

In characterizing the 1946 harvest as meager but the famine as nonetheless man-made, premeditated, and politically motivated, Zima defies the flawed logic of the government culpability equation, providing a much-needed corrective: the scarcity of grain in any given setting does not necessarily imply that people had to starve. Zima’s conclusion tends to support the findings of economist Amartya Sen, according to whom governments rather than natural disasters were generally responsible for famine in the twentieth century. In 1981, Sen— based primarily on his analysis of the Bengal famine of 1943—provided a framework that helped explain how famines could occur without food availability decline (FAD). People’s entitlements—roughly speaking, access to food—vary and depend on a person’s position within a system of exchange, production, distribution, and control. In short, “The entitlement approach views famines as economic disasters, not as just food crises.”13 But the entitlement approach and the perspective adopted by Zima in his monograph lend primary importance to the later stages of food crises, focusing on the proximate causes of famine and perhaps overlooking their more deep-rooted origins. In the case of the 1946–47 Soviet famine, one must start by tracing the roots of the poor 1946 harvest, because subsequent government actions (such as cutbacks in rationing in September 1946, various relief measures, and the prolongation of rationing until the end of 1947) were, I argue here, a reaction to poor harvest yields and the resulting scarcity of grain. Analyzing the causes of the crop failure enables one to ask not only why the state failed to avert famine once faced with an agricultural shortfall, but also why the government was unable to provide conditions for a bountiful harvest. War, Drought, and Their Effect on Soviet Agriculture The Soviet famine of 1946–47 must be examined in the shadow of the titanic social catastrophe that immediately preceded it: World War II. During the war, the German army and its Axis allies occupied Ukraine, Belorussia, the

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Crimea, the Northern Caucasus, the Baltic republics, and extensive parts of European Russia. Before the war, approximately 85 million Soviet citizens inhabited these lands. Between 12 and 15 million either fled eastward or were evacuated once hostilities began, and the invading forces destroyed over 1,700 towns and 70,000 villages. The Nazis sent millions of Soviet citizens—eastern workers or “Ostarbeiter”—to Germany as labor, many of whom were repatriated after the war.14 The conscription of approximately 20 million men and women drained industry and agriculture of workers. The authorities implemented strict labor discipline and often transferred agricultural laborers to work in the industrial sector.15 After villages were liberated, fields did not immediately become available for use: aside from the destruction of farms and the degradation of the land, the German army left behind mines and other explosives that had to be removed before agricultural work could proceed.16 Not surprisingly, the war had a profoundly negative impact on agricultural output, and the peasantry lived in virtual poverty during the war years. Owing to high free market prices and little or no compensation for their work on the collective farms, peasants relied heavily on their private plots for survival, yet these were also taxed by the government.17 Collective farms generally fell short of the central government’s grain procurement quotas during wartime as a result of a decline in mechanization, the area of land tilled, and the size of the workforce. Famine conditions surfaced in the Siberian steppe in 1941, some areas of Vologda oblast and Chita oblast in 1942–43, in the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs and various other areas in 1944, and in parts of the Uzbek SSR and Mongol ASSR in 1945. An estimated 1.5 million people died during the wartime famines.18 The wartime difficulties with agriculture, accompanied by starvation in numerous parts of the country, suggest that the peasants and consequently the Soviet population as a whole were in a precarious position in 1946. Widespread agricultural problems—lack of mechanization, shortage of manpower, meager compensation for collective farmers—had made the country even more vulnerable to climatic vagaries. In 1944 and 1945, parts of Ukraine experienced drought, leading to a poor grain harvest in Kherson, Odessa, and Nikolaev oblasts. On January 26, 1946, N.S. Khrushchev, first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, informed Stalin that over 300,000 collective farmers in Nikolaev and Odessa oblasts required immediate relief.19 Moldavia and certain areas of Krasnodar krai, the Kazakh SSR, and the Belorussian SSR also experienced sparse rainfall in 1945, necessitating them to request seeds from the government for the 1946 sowing campaign.20 In short, the widespread drought of 1946, which covered much of the European part of the Soviet Union, came hard on the heels of local droughts and resulting food shortages the previous year.


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The Soviet government called the 1946 drought the worst since 1891 and, while available data and studies on precipitation in the Soviet Union do not provide an unambiguous answer as to its severity, there is more than ample anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources corroborating the Soviet claim that much of the country experienced an extremely dry summer in 1946.21 Even the most skeptical of analysts would have difficulty disputing the claim that many of the major grain-producing regions of the Soviet Union suffered from drought in 1946. Journalist Alexander Werth observed the negative effects of the drought in Ukraine and in the Don region of Russia.22 Meanwhile, representatives of the British Foreign Office noticed the tragic consequences of the summer drought, which had followed a very dry winter, on crops in Briansk oblast and parts of Ukraine.23 Peasants in Ukraine cited a horrific drought in late spring and early summer as the cause of a tragically insufficient harvest.24 Regardless of its intensity, the drought of 1946 essentially led to a 16.3 percent decline in agricultural production; 39.6 million tons of grain were harvested in the Soviet countryside in 1946, as compared with 47.3 million the previous year, when normal climatic conditions prevailed in most of the country.25 Only in 1921 had Soviet agriculture yielded such a small grain harvest, when 36.2 million tons were harvested. But in 1921, the Soviet Union did not include the western regions gained in 1945 at Yalta and Potsdam, as a result of World War II.26 Harvest yields for all major food crops decreased from their 1945 levels (table 1.1).27 Considering that the country suffered a considerable drop in production, with the only significant variable being precipitation, one must ask why Soviet agriculture failed to absorb the blow dealt to it by the drought of 1946. As some historians have suggested, the shortage of work hands and agricultural specialists led to less than ideal preparation and carrying out of sowing and harvesting campaigns.28 Before the war, more than half of the spring sowing

Table 1.1 Harvest yields of various food crops in centners (= 100 kg) per hectare Crop

1940

1945

1946

1946 harvest as percentage of 1940 harvest

Grains Sunflower Sugar beet Potato

10.7 9.4 170 118

7.8 6.2 106 86

6.9 5.2 73 81

64 56 42 69

Source: RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 15.

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was carried out on land that had been tilled in the fall. In 1946, only onefourth of the spring sowing was carried out on land tilled in the fall; threequarters of the seed was sown on land tilled in the spring. In 1940, 38 million hectares of winter crops (ozimye) were planted on fields that had been left fallow and prepared for sowing by machine tractor stations or MTSs (stateowned organizations that rented agricultural machinery to collective farms). In 1945, only 14 million hectares of the land used for winter crops were prepared by the MTSs. The lack of proper preparation led to late planting and the consequent loss of many crops.29 On the one hand, the cause of labor shortages seems obvious; after all, the war took the lives of 26 million citizens and many others remained at the front even at its end.30 But, on the other hand, much of the Red Army had been demobilized by 1946 and more potential work hands were continuously returning from the front. Between June 1945 and the end of 1947, approximately 8.5 million soldiers came back from the front; as many as 7 million were demobilized by September 1946.31 Party documents reveal, however, that demobilized soldiers frequently chose not to return to the collective farms from which they were drafted during the war. At the beginning of 1946, peasants in Cheliabinsk and Chita oblasts wanted to know why former collective farmers demobilized from the army refused to go back to the countryside and wondered if the government could do anything to make them return.32 The veterans’ failure to go back to the villages can largely be explained by the dreadful conditions in the countryside after the war. Furthermore, contrary to the claims of Soviet propaganda, unemployment was widespread after the war, especially in early 1946.33 The economy did not immediately absorb war veterans and, as a result, available work hands were not being put to use in town and country alike. In Dnepropetrovsk oblast, Ukrainian SSR, 12,844 demobilized workers were not employed anywhere on February 15, 1946, and little attempt was made to find work for them. Many of those demobilized from the front made money peddling tobacco and vodka in black or unofficial markets.34 Approximately 7 percent (486 of 6,645) of demobilized Red Army officers were unemployed in Rostov oblast; a total of 20,770 soldiers living in the oblast did not work anywhere.35 Similar reports came from Smolensk oblast, where Communists failed to find employment upon their demobilization.36 Of the 6,000 tractor drivers and combine operators who returned home to Bashkir Autonomous SSR, only 2,150 had gone to work in the MTSs by February 1946. In other words, almost 65 percent of MTS workers demobilized from the front either decided not to return to their previous occupation or were, for other reasons, unable to do so.37 Roughly 27 percent of the 9,150 soldiers who returned to Gomel’ oblast, Belorussia, in September and


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October 1945 remained unemployed in January 1946.38 The situation was even more severe in the nearby Vitebsk oblast, where 3,062 of 8,327 (37 percent) of those demobilized failed to find employment.39 In later months, Party officials cited unemployment among demobilized soldiers as a widespread problem in Stalino, Alma-Ata, Kemerovo, and other oblasts.40 These figures should be considered incomplete because postwar record-keeping left much to be desired; actual unemployment was undoubtedly more widespread. In Belorussia, for example, some Party executive committees failed to keep track of the number of demobilized soldiers returning from the front.41 Horrid work conditions and poor compensation contributed to unemployment by motivating people to pursue illegal means of making ends meet and hurt labor output both on the farm and in the factory. The hunger began early in Shushenskii raion, Krasnoiarsk krai, where in February 1946 large numbers of collective farmers fell ill from a lack of bread; local officials recorded 800 cases of dystrophy, i.e. emaciation. Meanwhile, collective farmers and workers from Usinskii and Minusinskii raions, Tuvinskaia oblast, left their places of residence in search of bread.42 On May 17, 1946, railroad workers in Kishinev, Moldavian SSR, refused to work for over an hour in order to protest their poor diet as well as bread shortages.43 Soviet citizens from the Moldavian SSR, as well as from Odessa, Stalino, Kalinin, Rostov, and Ivanovo oblasts frequently asked Party officials if various goods, especially bread, would last until the new harvest.44 Similar problems plagued people across the USSR; in other words, economic difficulties, food shortages, and even starvation preceded the failed harvest of 1946, impeding the state’s rebuilding process by limiting labor output.45 After the war, many collective farmers received little or no compensation for their labor.46 During the war, the compensation of collective farmers per trudoden’ or earned workday had fallen drastically in many areas of the USSR (table 1.2). The major grain-producing areas seem to have experienced the sharpest decline. In Ukraine, the amount of grain handed out to collective farmers plummeted by 77 percent. Kolkhozniki, or collective farmers, in Saratov oblast received 76 percent less grain and those in Voronezh oblast collected 73 percent less grain from their collective farms. Overall, the RSFSR experienced a 62.5 percent decrease in grain distributed per trudoden’. In general, traditional grain-growing regions suffered the most substantial decreases in compensation. In 1946, on average across the Soviet Union, each peasant received only 63 kilograms of grain for all earned workdays; more than 10 percent of collective farms failed to hand out grain altogether.47 The precipitous drop in the reimbursement of farmers hindered agricultural output both directly, by undermining peasants’ interest in the product of their labor and sapping their strength, and indirectly, by limiting the

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The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective Table 1.2 Average amount of grain and money distributed to collective farmers per earned workday by region Grain (kg)

RSFSR Saratov oblast Altai krai Krasnodar krai Riazan’ oblast Kalinin oblast Voronezh oblast Ukrainian SSR Uzbek SSR Kazak SSR Georgian SSR Azerbaidzhan SSR Kirgiz SSR Tadzhik SSR Armenian SSR Turkmen SSR

Money (rubles)

1940

1945

1940

1945

1.6 2.9 0.8 1.4 1.1 1.6 1.5 2.2 0.3 1.3 1.9 2.0 1.6 1.8 1.8 0.4

0.6 0.7 0.4 0.8 0.6 1.1 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.8 2.5 2.3 0.8 1.2 2.2 0.9

0.64 0.6 0.86 1.35 0.28 0.41 0.47 1.16 2.57 0.97 1.98 2.14 1.59 3.16 1.88 3.39

0.61 0.42 0.88 1.61 0.29 0.97 0.29 0.61 2.55 1.12 4.08 1.95 1.03 2.31 2.75 2.79


manufacture of farm implements. The example of the Stalingrad tractor plant demonstrates more vividly that bread shortages, as reflected in the meager diet of workers, helped limit agricultural production, creating a vicious circle. At this plant, which was one of the five that were producing tractors after the war, approximately 3,000 workers lived in basements and zemlianki (mud huts or dugouts).48 Food shortages at the tractor plant led to an increase in the number of cases of dystrophy. At the end of February 1946, 396 workers were diagnosed with the ailment.49 This example in particular reveals the cyclical nature of the problem; for, as we shall see, the lack of mechanization, specifically tractors, contributed greatly to poor agricultural production, and the shortage of bread in turn limited labor output, thus slowing the production of mechanization for the countryside. Indeed, the dearth of mechanization served as an enormous obstacle to agricultural productivity after the war; for Soviet Minister of Agriculture A.A. Andreev, it constituted the “primary” obstacle to growth in agricultural output. In his October 1946 report to Stalin on the state of agriculture in the Soviet Union, he traced almost all agricultural difficulties to insufficient mechanization in the countryside. During World War II, Soviet tractor plants had reoriented their production toward producing tanks and other war

Tracing the Roots of the Failed 1946 Harvest Table 1.3

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Number of agricultural implements and machines in the USSR in thousands

Plows Cultivators Sowing machines Harvesters, sheaf tiers Mowers Threshing machines Combines

Beginning of 1941

Beginning of 1946

1946 as a percentage of 1940

5,011 982 819 749 504 338 182

3,123 599 505 413 308 215 147

62 61 62 55 61 64 81


materiel for the front, entirely halting the production of tractors. Meanwhile, the German army had destroyed and appropriated tractors in occupied areas.50 As a result, not only was the countryside left with fewer tractors and other agricultural machinery (table 1.3), but those that it had at its disposal demanded replacement parts and extensive repairs. By the end of 1946, only 24 percent of horse-drawn plows, 30 percent of sowing machines, and 25 percent of cultivators had been renovated in the country as a whole.51 The production of tractors recovered very slowly after the war; on February 5, 1946, the country could boast only 1,840 more tractors than in 1945.52 In order to put this figure in perspective (assuming that these tractors came from the country’s tractor plants and were not imported), each of the five plants produced, on average, approximately one tractor a day. At the beginning of 1946, the countryside had 29 percent less horsepower than in 1940 for tractors alone (table 1.4). The countryside had also lost 84 percent of its motorized vehicles, and this, according to Andreev, led to the widespread use of cattle for transport work.53 Before the war, collective farms had 107,000 trucks. At the start of 1946, they had only 5,000, constituting a decline of 95.4 percent.54 Part of the harvest was thus lost because of the lack of motorized vehicles, as harvested grain, as well as sugar beets, potatoes, and sunflowers remained in the fields for long periods of time. The inability to transport grain in a timely manner led to spoilage and sometimes theft.55 Since draught animals could provide only for shallow tilling, which according to the Soviet leadership resulted in low yields, agricultural progress would depend on tractors.56 The war similarly depleted the number of draught animals on the collective farms; acute shortages of fodder at the beginning of 1946 further exacerbated the problem. The fodder crisis stemmed primarily from an unsuccessful hay harvest in 1945. In late 1945 and early 1946, People’s Commissar of Procurements (Komissar Zagotovok)

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Table 1.4

The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective Number of tractors and other sources of horsepower in the USSR Beginning of 1941

Tractors at all machine tractor stations (MTSs) Horsepower of above Horses at collective farms Draught cattle at collective farms Automobiles at MTS and collective farms Automobiles only at collective farms

Beginning of 1946

1946 as a percentage of 1940

435,000

327,000

75

8,359,000 8,553,000

5,917,000 3,953,000

71 46

2,706,000

2,569,000

95

147,000

24,000

16

107,000

5,000

4.7


B.A. Dvinskii wrote to G.M. Malenkov, the head of the Agricultural Section of the Central Committee (Sel’skokhoziaistvennyi Otdel Tsentral’nogo Komiteta), complaining of resistance to hay procurements on the part of collective farm chairmen and raion-level Party officials. Dvinskii cited opposition to government procurements by officials in Briansk, Kemerovo, Penza, Kursk, Cheliabinsk, Aktiubinsk, and Western Kazakhstan oblasts, and the Uzbek SSR, owing to serious shortages of fodder on collective farms.57 The scarcity of hay and other forms of animal feed led to a further decrease in the already limited number of draught animals, essential for tilling, sowing, and transport in the absence of tractors. Peasants began to slaughter their livestock and, having met compulsory government deliveries for 1946, began to submit meat for the following year.58 Many of the animals that remained had become so weak that they could not be used for field work. Thus draught animals could not compensate for the shortage of mechanization. In Mariiskaia ASSR, more than 40 percent of all horses were emaciated or malnourished, with the proportion significantly higher in certain oblasts of the region.59 In Odesskii raion, Odessa oblast, Ukrainian SSR, 52 percent of cows were malnourished or emaciated. Collective farmers also had to contend with shortages of yokes and tried to make do with untrained cattle.60 By February 1946, 46 percent of all horses in Orel oblast, RSFSR, had lost the ability to work, likely due to the shortage of fodder.61 At the end of 1946, Moldavia had 47.6 percent fewer cattle and 58.4 percent fewer horses than at the beginning of the year.62 In Grodno oblast, Belorussian SSR, landless peasants declined to take land from the government because they had no horses


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or cows and thus had no way of carrying out agricultural work.63 In March 1946, Party officials reported on fodder shortages in Irkutsk, Orel, Khar’kov, Kherson, and Velikie Luki oblasts, and Kazakh SSR. In Velikie Luki oblast, 17 percent of horses died in December 1945 and January 1946; of the 1,210 remaining, 500 or 59 percent were emaciated.64 In Gomel’ oblast, Belorussian SSR, fodder had almost run out at the beginning of February. On January 1, of 28,458 horses, 6,644 were underweight and 2,700 were emaciated. In 1945, 6,616 or 19 percent of all horses died.65 During the summer of 1946, the Council of Ministers (Sovet Ministrov) took some measures to try to remedy the fodder shortage, sending collective farmers from the drought-stricken black earth region—namely Orel, Kursk, Tambov, and Voronezh oblasts—to procure hay in other parts of the country.66 These efforts, though poorly planned, were not entirely ineffective. By the end of July, collective farmers from Orel oblast had procured 3,000 tons of hay in Smolensk oblast, 2,970 tons in Briansk oblast, and 3,170 tons in Belorussia.67 By the first week of August, collective farmers from Orel oblast had exceeded government targets for hay procurements.68 These measures are worthy of note because they constitute one of the few if not the only example of the central authorities exhibiting a degree of far-sightedness in their agricultural policy in 1946. But local authorities systematically failed to meet the conditions of the government decree, leading to disorganization and chaos. Thousands of farmers returned home because they were not being fed and, in numerous cases, insufficient land was allotted for these purposes.69 Furthermore, the authorities seem to have perceived the crisis as regional when, in fact, much of the country was suffering similar shortages as a result of the drought.70 The scarcity of animal feed continued to be a problem at the end of 1946, when Ukrainian Party officials confronted the possibility of an absolute absence of fodder for farm animals in some oblasts by January 1947.71 An accounting of fodder reserves by the Ministry of Animal Breeding (Ministerstvo Zhivotnovodstva), covering 15,400 collective farms in Kiev, Chernigov, Suma, Poltava, Khar’kov, Voroshilovgrad, Stalin, Nikolaev, and Odessa oblasts, revealed that only 10 percent of farms had enough feed for the entire winter or “stable period.” Desperate efforts to collect alternative forms of animal fodder, such as acorns and hay from driftwood, produced disappointing results and could not significantly alleviate need.72 Shortages led to a sharp decline in the number of various farm animals in Ukraine, due to both malnourishment and the slaughter and sale of livestock.73 During the first ten months of 1946, 12 percent of all horses and 7 percent of all pigs perished.74 At the end of 1946, the number of livestock trailed far behind prewar levels and continued to decrease rather than recover (table 1.5).

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The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective Table 1.5 Head of livestock on collective farms in Ukraine, on November 1, 1946, as a percentage of prewar levels Horses

33

Large horned cattle Cows (among large horned cattle) Pigs Sheep and goats

69 30 27 35


Insufficient mechanization and the shortage of draught animals forced the peasantry to employ primitive agricultural methods. On July 8, 1946, the British Embassy in Moscow reported to the British Foreign Office: A Frenchman who was liberated by the Red Army somewhere in Germany or Eastern Europe and was sent in error to a camp for political prisoners in Siberia from which he has now been extricated, said that political prisoners were used to compensate the extreme shortage of draught animals. He himself had been made to drag ploughs and carts!75

Not only political prisoners, but also Soviet citizens frequently pulled plows in the absence of draught animals during and after the war.76 The government recognized outmoded means of working the land as a necessary alternative. In 1947, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers A.N. Kosygin noted with satisfaction that, in Moldavia, the authorities had compensated for the absence of draught animals where necessary by providing peasants with the appropriate quantity of shovels, so that they could manually prepare the soil for sowing.77 In Orel oblast, only 10 percent of the 1946 spring sowing was carried out using machinery; 90 percent of the seed was scattered by hand.78 The situation in Orel, though severe, was generally representative of the country as a whole.79 A very large number of collective farms had no other means of carrying out sowing other than by scattering.80 Grain and hay harvesting in Orel oblast was impeded by shortages of scythes. Secretary of the Orel Oblast Committee Afanas’ev reported that 150,000 people could take part in the manual harvesting of grain, but the farms had only 30,000 scythes at their disposal.81 The Ministry of Farming (Ministerstvo Zemledeliia) declined Afanas’ev’s request for 30,000 more scythes, citing a shortfall of 700,000 in the production of scythes in the Russian SFSR.82 In March 1946, the Oblast Committee of Poless’e oblast, Belorussian SSR, ordered that schoolchildren undergo agricultural training to increase harvest yields and to collect manure for fertilizer.83 Those who extol the virtues and


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accomplishments of Soviet communism often refer to a quote attributed to Winston Churchill to the effect that Stalin took his country from the wooden plow, or sokha, to the atom bomb.84 In reality, during the last years of Stalin’s life, when Soviet scientists were in the process of inventing the atom bomb, the peasant was working the land with shovels and other simple farm implements, trying to fend off hunger. Owing to insufficient horsepower on the farm, inadequate storage for grain, and disorganization, large amounts of the 1945 grain harvest were exposed to damaging moisture. At the end of January 1946, grain procurement officials sought to transport hundreds of thousands of tons of wet grain from oblast procurement points. The approaching warm weather threatened the harvest with mass spoilage: 111,300 tons of grain in Chkalov oblast, 86,600 in Saratov oblast, 85,300 in Bashkiria, 68,100 in Kuibyshev oblast, 63,300 in Voronezh oblast, 35,800 in Orel oblast, and 34,100 in Riazan’ oblast awaited transport.85 However, the People’s Commissariat of Infrastructure (Komissariat Putei Soobshcheniia) declined requests to speed up the transport of the grain due to a limited number of available rail wagons.86 Finally, in mid-February, three weeks after the initial request, the State Economic Planning Commission (Gosplan) allocated 2,280 wagons for the transport of wet grain—less than one-third of the amount cited by the procurement officials as necessary to avoid spoilage.87 Thus one can infer that considerable amounts of grain from the 1945 harvest simply rotted. The absence of special grain warehouses exacerbated the problem, and old churches, closed down by the government in previous years, were sometimes used to store grain.88 The Soviet emphasis on industry suggests that officials likely allocated more freight trains to industrial rather than agricultural needs, but the inadequate rail network also complicated the transport of grain. Government investment in railroads in the 1930s led to a 42 percent increase in the number of rail cars, but the demands on the network dwarfed its capabilities. During the war, the decreased reliance on the command economy for food distribution to the locales helped free up trains for military purposes.89 The war exacerbated the problem, as many trains were lost during the conflict. Once the war ended, Moscow began to take back responsibility for food distribution, but this coincided with demobilization and the enormous demands for transporting materiel of all kinds for the purpose of reconstruction. Foreign travelers to the USSR described how soldiers heading home frequently traveled on the roofs of train cars owing to the insufficient numbers of trains.90 In short, the inability to provide enough trains for the transport of grain, while partly a reflection of government priorities and poor planning, was a result of demand outstripping supply.

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To further complicate the issue, infestation of grain that might have seemed routine before the war proved ominous in 1945–46. In the 1940s, Soviet authorities used a pesticide called chloropicrin (khlorpikrin) to treat grain infested by weevils; however, during the war, the Commissariat of Chemical Industry (Komissariat Khimicheskoi Promyshlennosti) ceased to produce chloropicrin. On January 10, 1946, the warehouses of the Commissariat of Procurements held more than 120,000 tons of weevil-infested grain and the nearing of spring raised the prospect of the mass reproduction of the pests. It was thus imperative to exterminate the weevils before spring. Five or fewer weevils per kilogram of grain constituted first-degree infestation. Six to ten per kilogram was considered second-degree. Third-degree infestation meant that there were more than ten weevils per kilogram. The Agricultural Section of the Central Committee allowed the Commissariat of Procurements to process grain with second-degree infestation—something it had not done even during the war—and to use it for local consumption. The decision to resort to such a drastic measure suggests the extraordinary nature of the postwar circumstances and the extensive disruption that the war brought to the Soviet economy.91 The rotting of grain and delays in its transport had at least two significant repercussions: first, they left much of the population of the country without bread for days and sometimes weeks on end in early 1946, on the heels of a rather small harvest in 1945. On January 18, 1946, five towns and cities of Velikie Luki oblast, Ukrainian SSR—Toropets, Velikie Luki, Nalidovo, Loknia, and Zharki—were left without flour and bread.92 These breakdowns in the supply system, far from isolated, continued throughout the early months of 1946. These difficulties help explain the food shortages in the cities, as reflected in the diets of workers, and again highlight the cyclical nature of the problem.93 Spoilage and poor care for grain also prevented the government from loaning sufficient grain to oblasts that had shortages of seed stock.94 While the Commissariat of Procurements provided various oblasts with seed loans for spring sowing in 1946, the amounts granted systematically fell short of the quantity deemed necessary by local Party organs. In February, the Novosibirsk Oblast Party Committee requested 28,000 tons of seed but received only 13,000 tons of wheat and 7,000 tons of oats. Meanwhile, the Commissariat of Procurements granted Kemerovo oblast 7,300 tons of wheat as compared to the 14,000 for which the Oblast Party Committee had pleaded.95 Similarly, the Central Committee of the Moldavian SSR, citing a poor harvest in 1945, requested nearly 14,000 tons of seed for grain crops and 10,000 tons of potato seed but received only 10,800 and 4,000 tons, respectively.96


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In summary, the countryside had far from recovered from war when the drought struck. Demobilization failed to remedy the problem of manpower shortages because soldiers often failed to return to the devastated villages. Meanwhile, Soviet agriculture was faced with carrying out tillage, sowing, and harvesting with few mechanized vehicles and draught animals. Consequently, collective farmers often tilled, sowed, and harvested by hand, and this practice would have led to less than ideal harvests even in the absence of drought. The shortage of available warehouses and train cars further hurt net agricultural production, because much grain rotted due to exposure to the elements. Victory over Nazi Germany and its allies was achieved at the cost of enormous devastation on the home front, and recovery was hardly underway by 1946.

On Government Responsibility for the Harvest While the origins of many of the country’s agricultural woes can be found in the devastation of World War II, it can also be said that the Soviet authorities failed to create the conditions to provide for a decent harvest in 1946. While Zima might argue that the famine was premeditated, he would certainly reject the notion that the Soviet government intentionally sabotaged a harvest in order to achieve this end.97 Furthermore, although couched in economic terms, Andreev’s October 1946 report to Stalin betrayed a desire to better the lot of the peasantry, not for humanitarian reasons, but to advance the Soviet economy as a whole.98 Andreev pleaded with Stalin: It seems to me, Comrade Stalin, though perhaps I am mistaken, that our resources allow us to take on the expenses . . . to give agriculture a large amount of tractors and agricultural machinery without sacrificing the interests of railway transport, metallurgy, and fuel. This will allow us to very quickly solve our agricultural problems, recover to prewar gross yields of both grain and technical crops in two to three years, bringing an end to shortages of produce and agricultural raw materials in the country, as well as insufficient compensation for workdays earned in collective farms, and seed shortages, and will open the path to progress in animal breeding. Otherwise, bread and produce shortages will severely limit our entire economy.99

Andreev believed that the success of the whole Soviet economy hinged on agricultural output, which, in turn, depended primarily on the mechanization of agriculture. Furthermore, Andreev seemed to have identified many of the causes of poor agricultural output at war’s end, including poor compensation for collective farmers. Stalin seems to have heeded Andreev’s advice: he

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called a Central Committee plenum for February 1947 to address agricultural problems in the postwar period. Much of the problem can be traced not to a sabotage of the harvest, but to a lack of expertise, planning, and foresight on the part of the Soviet leadership, as well as a habitual reliance on the exploitation of the peasantry, which conflicted with the interests of agricultural production. In his memoirs, N.S. Khrushchev recalled that there was no one competent to oversee and direct agricultural policy after the war. When called upon by Stalin to deliver a report on the state of agriculture in the Soviet Union at the February 1947 Central Committee plenum, Khrushchev declined, citing his ignorance of the matter. Although Malenkov headed the Agricultural Section of the Central Committee, it was well known that he had little knowledge of agriculture and was even unfamiliar with agricultural terminology; therefore, Stalin did not seriously consider asking Malenkov to speak at the plenum. In the end, A.A. Andreev delivered the keynote address, but according to Khrushchev’s account, although everything Andreev said was accurate, neither he nor Stalin was particularly impressed by its content; both of them seemingly believed that something more innovative needed to be done.100 Aside from a lack of expertise, though perhaps partly because of it, the Soviet leadership was tardy in its efforts to rebuild the countryside, undertaking a thorough examination of agriculture only in February 1947, following a failed harvest and in the midst of famine, more than a year after the end of the war. At the plenum, Andreev proclaimed, “The lessons of 1946 obligate us to take a serious approach toward the improvement of agriculture,” but had measures been taken sooner, some of the tragic consequences of the drought might have been averted.101 Further evidence points to a lack of agricultural expertise in the ranks of the Soviet leadership. Zhores Medvedev has suggested that the meagerness of the harvest, and the famine crisis in general, stemmed in part from the unrealistic goals set by the Fourth Five-Year Plan, approved by the Supreme Soviet in March 1946. In order to maximize grain production, the Gosplan called for an increase in the area of land under cultivation. But, according to Medvedev, in light of the shortages of manpower and mechanization, “it would have been more prudent to reduce the acreage and leave more land fallow.”102 Increased sowing plans consumed grain that could have been used to feed the population. They also decreased the crop density, or amount of seed sown per acre, below optimum levels, leading to the proliferation of weeds and, consequently, lower yields. In order to decrease crop density without hurting yield, fields must either first be left fallow to allow the recovery of important nutrients or the soil must be treated with herbicides, which the Soviet Union did not have in those years.103 This blunder was essentially a


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repeat of 1932–33, when the authorities similarly pressed for the expansion of the area sown to the detriment of agricultural production.104 In his memoirs, Khrushchev criticizes postwar Soviet agricultural policy for failing to make use of previously untilled or so-called virgin lands, citing Stalin’s desire to improve farming practices (kul’tura zemledeliia) as the possible cause. By implication, Stalin favored intensive farming or increasing yield by improving agricultural techniques and was not directly responsible for the postwar emphasis on extensive farming.105 But extensive farming was the reality in the postwar period: sowing acreage reached 71 percent of the prewar level in 1946, while the countryside had only half the horsepower that it had possessed before the war (11 versus 22 million horsepower).106 Farming techniques suffered correspondingly. Furthermore, as of 1939, the government set procurement quotas for collective farms per hectare of land under tillage, as opposed to the area sown, so as to encourage the expansion of farms and the development of agriculture. This policy, deemed “progressive” by the Communist leadership because it encouraged farmers to sow more, placed many larger farms in grave danger after the war, especially in the midst of seed shortages.107 They had neither the manpower, nor the machinery, nor often the seed to be able to make full use of their land and meet demands for deliveries to the government. The law also called for equal deliveries for all farms in a raion (district) without any consideration of differences between farms in terms of manpower, mechanization, and other factors.108 In 1946, the government temporarily adjusted quotas, apparently with the goal of extracting more grain from farms that had produced a decent harvest, instead of trying to squeeze grain out of farms that had produced little. At the February 1947 Central Committee plenum, Stalin proposed a more nuanced system that would take various differences into account, but the new system of setting procurement quotas was reaffirmed as progressive.109 Ideology strongly shaped the center’s response to the crisis, as the leadership blamed the drought for agricultural problems. Khrushchev and Andreev, among others, reaffirmed that the kolkhoz order had saved the country from severe hunger, parroting Stalin’s earlier proclamations.110 To have done otherwise would have been to squander the vast political capital that Stalin and his entourage had accumulated during the war. The official line shaped Soviet historiography of agriculture well into the 1960s, as historians claimed that agriculture continued to thrive and indeed progress, though at a moderate pace, throughout World War II. This version of events held full sway until the publication of Iu.V. Arutiunian’s first edition of Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (The Soviet Peasantry in the Years of the Great Patriotic War) in 1963, on the heels of Khrushchev’s official admissions of

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severe postwar hardships. Arutiunian correctly points out that agricultural production dropped significantly during the war. Victory took precedence over other considerations, and resources, both material and human, were first and foremost directed toward military production and the army.111 But for Arutiunian, too, the war proved the usefulness of the collective farm system, for it allowed the Soviet government to mobilize vast amounts of grain to feed the army and the population.112 More recently, M.A. Vyltsan, while acknowledging that the collective farm system allowed for the accumulation of sizable food reserves for the war effort, has stressed the devastation that the Soviet peasantry endured during the war. Vyltsan labels the Great Patriotic War a “pyrrhic victory” for Soviet agriculture; in fact, it suffered an unequivocal defeat during the war, as production fell below already humble prewar levels and portions of the population died of hunger.113 The divergence between the two perspectives can essentially be reduced to a difference in emphasis. On the one hand, the dependence of the peasantry on the state allowed for the rapid and nearly wholesale mobilization of resources for war purposes; on the other, it drove the peasantry to the verge of hunger. While the kolkhoz order arguably facilitated the war cause, poor nutrition, a halt to the production of agricultural machinery, military conscription, and the assignment of millions of villagers to industry all made the countryside exceedingly susceptible to the effects of the postwar drought. In short, the command system, with collective farming as one of its major facets, helped win the war by mobilizing the country’s resources, but Soviet policies were not nuanced or far-sighted enough to prevent the postwar agricultural crisis. Ideology influenced the outcome of the crisis in other ways: the high level of peasant dependence on the state stemmed in part from an entrenched Communist bias against the peasantry and, to a certain extent, from historical circumstances that shaped Bolshevik policy following the October Revolution of 1917. In his memoirs, Khrushchev admits that he and other leaders, purportedly under Stalin’s influence, perceived the peasantry as ignorant; the only means of increasing procurements was pressure, and the purpose of the procurements was to feed the cities.114 While this policy has sometimes been perceived as a trademark of the Stalinist system, it can in fact be traced to Marxist and Leninist ideology. Marx and Engels considered the peasantry reactionary and thus a negative force in the development of socialism.115 During the Russian famine of 1891–92, Lenin displayed remarkable resignation and hard-heartedness toward the peasantry because he saw their impoverishment as positive and necessary in the process of capitalist industrialization, a precursor to socialist revolution.116 Later, he viewed the famine of 1921–22 as a unique opportunity to suppress the Orthodox Church at a time when the


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peasantry could not resist such an assault.117 So the bias against the peasant worked in tandem with a general belief in the effectiveness of coercion, which had helped the Bolsheviks take power and maintain it during the Civil War.118 The use of force had also solved the food problem by allowing the government to extract sufficient grain from the villages to feed the cities.119 In short, there was both a well-established Bolshevik hostility toward the peasantry and a track record of regarding famine as an opportunity to further political goals before Stalin came to power. In 1946–47, the government elite still included many Bolsheviks who had been active during the Civil War and famine of 1921–22; the Party’s opportunism and hostility toward the peasantry would hardly have seemed remarkable to them.120 Those who might have had reservations and adopted a more moderate view suffered political defeat in the 1920s and were swept away by the purges of the 1930s.121 The lessons of the 1946 harvest varied from one Central Committee member to the other, but the 1947 plenum demonstrated that, collectively, the Soviet leadership would continue to cling stubbornly to its ideological presumptions after the war.122 Andreev believed that poor agricultural production could be remedied by mechanizing the countryside and improving organization in the villages.123 But, unlike in his earlier report to Stalin, Andreev also cited breaches of the collective farm statute and the activities of “enemies of the people” as contributing to poor compensation per earned workday on the farm.124 Khrushchev, supported by Andreev, lobbied for the more widespread planting of corn, due to its versatility, resistance to drought, and high yields.125 Stalin, as previously mentioned, proposed a more sophisticated method of establishing grain quotas for collective farms.126 But the primary legacy of the plenum is perhaps best reflected in the speeches of L.M. Kaganovich, an old associate of Stalin and Party member since 1911, who pressed for the reinvigoration of old-style Bolshevik organization and called for the need for “holy alarm” and “a mobilizing Bolshevik alarm.”127 This “alarm” in the ranks of the Party was intended to force the peasantry to obey without question government orders. Kaganovich urged that the Party fight to weed out the remnants of capitalism, such as laziness and theft, from the minds of the people and establish firm work discipline.128 While much of the Party’s analysis of postwar agriculture focused on objective problems (inadequate mechanization, insufficient seed, drought, and devastation from the war), a primary emphasis on these reasons for the postwar troubles would have required acknowledging flaws in the existing order and making corresponding changes. The government, whether by design or force of habit, settled on an expedient solution: the targeting of deviations from the kolkhoz statute. This general attitude was already embodied in the September 1946 government decree “On measures to liquidate breaches of

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the farm statute,” and the plenum reaffirmed this document.129 The chosen option allowed the Party to reestablish dominance over the countryside under the guise of rooting out bureaucratic abuses and other perceived breaches of so-called kolkhoz democracy, without an officially pronounced assault on the peasantry. The campaign called for the return of property belonging to collective farms that was used for other purposes during the war. For many peasants, this translated to a loss or a reduction in size of the individual plots that they had worked and relied on during the war.130 Since collective farms lacked the means to work all of their land, owing primarily to a dearth of mechanization, much of the land handed back to the state went to waste. Furthermore, the emphasis placed on working the common collective farm land from dusk to dawn cut into time that peasants might have spent caring for their own plots, thus limiting production from their most dependable source of food.131 These measures went hand in hand with an aggressive procurement policy that allowed the government to safeguard dwindling grain reserves but left the countryside with virtually no grain. Similar means had helped the Soviet leadership out of a similar dead end in the late 1920s and early 1930s and were apparently recycled due to their perceived effectiveness.132 The campaign to reestablish kolkhoz democracy climaxed in 1948, after the conclusion of the famine, with a new wave of dekulakization—an attack on the so-called “wealthy peasants.”133 The Soviet leadership’s solution to the postwar agricultural crisis reveals that ideology, or perhaps even the need to salvage the Party’s ideology, prevented the government from fully addressing objective causes of agricultural problems.134 Ultimately, the kolkhoz order, and more broadly Bolshevik ideology, sought to make the peasant fully dependent on the state, which from the peasant’s perspective translated to a very high degree of vulnerability. Even relief for the peasantry was largely dictated by the need to fill the state’s sowing plans.135 One collective farmer in Smolensk oblast appropriately remarked in early 1946: “They freed us—that’s good. But now they’ve driven us into the collective farms and now we’re going to have to die of hunger there. Individually I could somehow have sown my plot, but in the collective farm you have to wait.”136 The dependence on the state had profound consequences after the war, when the devastation of the country led to economic disorganization and the state provided even less than the usual paltry compensation for peasant labor. Indeed, the collective farmer had to wait for seed to sow and food to eat as his life hung in the balance. Ironically, dominance over the peasantry, motivated largely by the need to control the country’s food supply, limited the extent of this supply and restricted the USSR’s economy as a whole. In his October 1946 report to Stalin, Andreev correctly observed that, as long as peasants continued to


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receive meager compensation for workdays, bread shortages would plague the country and restrict labor productivity.137 But this realization brought forth little change in the coming years, as Soviet agriculture continued to follow the trodden path. Peasants barely managed to eke out a living and the entire Soviet economy remained subject to fluctuations in weather. Even in 1950, compensation for collective farmers failed to recover to humble prewar levels.138 Meanwhile, as Zima has pointed out, villagers, and especially young people, increasingly left for the towns and cities in search of a better living and more opportunities.139 As a result of this departure for the cities and the hardships of village life, with the consequent reluctance to procreate, the number of children per collective farm household decreased every year from 1945 to 1949.140 Poor agricultural production also continued to plague the Soviet government, which struggled to build up all-important grain reserves in the postwar years.141 Conclusion The evidence presented in this chapter points to the multi-causality of the harvest failure: it would be problematic to assign primacy to any one of the causes. We can, however, isolate four main factors: the tremendous devastation of World War II on the Soviet countryside; the tragic effects of the drought, which was arguably the worst the country had experienced since the 1890s; heavy peasant dependence on the state; and the inability (due to both lack of expertise and ideological constraints) of the Soviet government to create conditions that would allow the countryside to avoid hunger in the wake of war and lack of rainfall. As a result of the war and of the Soviet economic system, the peasantry lived barely above the subsistence level, as attested by frequent regional outbreaks of hunger from 1941 to 1946, even before the drought of 1946. In 1946–47, the Soviet leaders acknowledged many of the objective causes of poor agricultural production, but ideological constraints and limited expertise prevented them from formulating a coherent solution to the problem. In the minds of the Party elite, the collective farm order remained the ideal form of agricultural organization and all problems in the countryside could essentially be traced to departures from this ideal. In the absence of any concrete and promising solution to the country’s endless agricultural woes within this ideological context, old habits of finding scapegoats and escalating propaganda came to the fore.142 In a broader sense, one can conclude that the “government culpability equation” is too simplistic: the presence of food availability decline does not necessarily free a government from responsibility, not only because, as Michael Ellman argues, authorities might have enough resources to feed their

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population, but also because a government’s policies determine the harvest to a great degree.143 While the extent to which the harvest failure stemmed from government actions is open to debate, it is indisputable that official distrust and hostility toward the peasantry, and its policy outgrowths—such as the collective farm statute of September 1946 and even the kolkhoz order itself—negatively affected agricultural production. Had peasants been compensated more generously for their labor and granted more control over their own production, the harvest would not have been as disastrous. At the same time, the tremendous strain on the country’s resources and exceedingly difficult dilemmas facing the Soviet leadership in the postwar years prevent us from classifying the postwar hunger as classically man-made. The claim that there was enough grain to feed everyone and that the famine was, therefore, man-made, overlooks the vast devastation of the war and the limitations of the system of distribution. We must be careful not to unwittingly buy into the Stalin cult: the Soviet leader was neither all-knowing nor all-powerful and could not have halted the famine at a whim. In fact, one truly doubts that any other World War II combatant could have experienced the same devastation and ensuing drought and completely avoided famine. But, as we shall see in the following chapters, the state’s method of dealing with the crisis had an enormous impact on society and played a prominent role in the outcome of the famine.

PART II

Societal Impact and Official Policies


CHAPTER 2

Exploring the Causes of Child Mortality1

Directly behind the hotel, and in a place overlooked by our windows, there was a little garbage pile, where melon rinds, bones, potato peels, and such things were thrown out. And a few yards farther on, there was a little hummock, like the entrance to a gopher hole. And every morning, early, out of this hole a young girl crawled. She had long legs and bare feet, and her arms were thin and stringy, and her hair was [sic] matted and filthy. She was covered with years of dirt, so that she looked very brown. And when she raised her face, it was one of the most beautiful faces we have ever seen. . . . She squatted on her arms and ate watermelon rinds and sucked the bones of other people’s soup . . . John Steinbeck, Stalingrad, 19472

F

amine strikes the most vulnerable elements of society: children and the elderly. The Soviet famine of 1946–47 was no exception; the number of children who died before the age of 1 can be counted in hundreds of thousands.3 But the fate of children during the postwar hunger is yet to be told. In his monograph, V.F. Zima devotes only a handful of pages to how children endured during the famine, leaving many questions unanswered. Furthermore, while acknowledging that the government loaned grain to the countryside and provided food for tens of thousands of starving Soviet citizens, mostly in Ukraine and Moldavia, Zima nonetheless suggests that nothing substantial was done to alleviate the population’s suffering, characterizing relief as merely symbolic and, ostensibly, meant for propaganda purposes.4 Archival documents of the Soviet Ministry of Health (Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia) and Soviet Red Cross and Red Crescent (Sovetskoe Obshchestvo Krasnogo Kresta i Krasnogo Polumesiatsa) attest that, on the contrary, government officials at various levels sought to improve the plight of

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homeless, orphaned, and dystrophic children in 1946–47. This chapter seeks to determine why these measures failed to stem the tide of hunger among children of the USSR, to reveal the causes of child mortality, and to ponder the implications of these findings for understanding the postwar Stalinist system. The fate of children serves as a prism that provides insight into the societal impact of the famine and the state’s response to the crisis. Children’s Institutions After the War As mentioned in Chapter 1, World War II took a heavy toll on the people of the Soviet Union; 26 million people died, leaving millions of children without parents and many others without fathers.5 An unknown number of these children became homeless wanderers, or besprizornye, roaming the country with no reliable source of food or shelter. In Moscow alone, over 36,000 homeless children walked the city streets at the beginning of 1945.6 This concerned the government, at least in part because it contributed to the appearance that the Soviet Union was a country of beggars.7 Faced with this crisis, the government sought to place these children in families through adoption, guardianship, and paid foster care, or patronat. During the war, an estimated 600,000 children found a home through these means.8 The government also strove to expand the network of children’s institutions, namely children’s homes (detskie doma or detdoma), infant homes (doma rebenka, doma materi i rebenka, and doma maliutki), nurseries (detskie iasli), children’s clinics (detskie kliniki), and children’s wards at hospitals (detskie bol’nichnye otdeleniia).9 Owing to intense need, children’s homes proliferated during the war years, particularly in previously occupied areas.10 In the context of the famine of 1946–47, children’s homes acted as a crucial support net for the most vulnerable layers of society, serving as a refuge for besprizornye and offering hope to impoverished parents that their children might escape starvation. Other institutions, like milk kitchens and nurseries, provided supplemental nutrition, easing the burden on parents during this time of shortage; hospitals, meanwhile, provided care for the sick and undernourished. In the vast majority of cases, parents took their children to homes only because they could not support them under the harsh postwar conditions. During the last four months of 1946, food shortages intensified and the number of children entering checkpoints of the Ministry of the Interior, from which besprizornye would then be assigned to homes, increased in most of the previously occupied areas of the country, including the Ukrainian SSR, the Belorussian SSR, and several oblasts of the RSFSR (Orel, Rostov, Crimea, Smolensk, Briansk, Novgorod, and Pskov), as well as in Dagestan. During this period, the number of besprizornye admitted at the aforementioned

Exploring the Causes of Child Mortality

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checkpoints increased by more than 25 percent to 103,923. Meanwhile, the number of children discovered at railroad stations and along railways and turned into custody ballooned from 57,260 in the second quarter of 1946 to 77,291 in the third quarter, an increase of 35 percent. This contingent of besprizornye consisted of orphans who had not found a home, those who had escaped children’s homes (ostensibly due to poor treatment or horrid conditions), adolescents who had fled from factory and agricultural work assignments, and children who had been forsaken by their foster parents due to worsening material conditions.11 In October 1946, the Ministry of the Interior reported many children roaming about Ukraine and anticipated problems with children who had been under foster care, as well as an influx into children’s homes owing to the drought.12 In Kaluga oblast, collective farmers who had voluntarily taken in orphans after the war could no longer support them. Unable to continue feeding their families, caregivers and foster parents across the country attempted to enroll children in detdoma in the hope that they would not starve to death.13 The problem concerned not only foster children. When food shortages became acute in 1946–47, desperate parents began to drop young children off at homes by the thousands. These were usually infants who were very often severely malnourished.14 The need for children’s homes, more specifically infant homes, became even more crucial because of the postwar demobilization of the Red Army, which was associated with a significant spike in birthrates. Between June 1945 and the end of 1947, approximately 8.5 million Red Army soldiers returned home; most (as many as 7 million) were demobilized by September 1946.15 As a result, the birth coefficient, or number of births per 1,000 people, increased from 15.9 in 1945 to 24.9 in 1946.16 In 1946, the Central Statistical Administration (Tsentral’noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie), or TsSU, registered 4.1 million births and an additional 4.5 million in 1947.17 In contrast, approximately 2.5 million babies had been born in the Soviet Union in 1945.18 The number of births increased in every republic and oblast of the Soviet Union with the lone exception of the Lithuanian SSR, where there was a slight decline.19 The tremendous shortage of living space after the war, and the resulting competition for that which was available, meant that the expansion of the overcrowded network of children’s homes depended in large part on the availability of existing buildings. Thousands of families across previously occupied areas, having had their housing destroyed by the German invasion or appropriated by the government for wartime use, continued to live in zemlianki in 1946 and even 1947. At the beginning of 1946, tens of thousands of families in previously occupied areas inhabited such dwellings. Almost a third of these were war invalids and families caring for orphaned children.20 In Orel oblast,

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5,450 families occupied zemlianki as late as August 1947.21 Many of those who migrated during the war or were mobilized for labor purposes moved in with friends and relatives upon their return to their prewar site of residence because of damage to their old dwellings.22 In this context of severe housing shortages, on November 10, 1944, the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) issued Decree No. 1571, which ordered the return of all buildings, including those taken from children’s institutions during wartime, to their prewar use.23 One should note that children’s homes were administered by one of three ministries, which until 1946 had been called commissariats: the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Enlightenment (Ministerstvo Prosveshcheniia; also referred to as the Ministry of Education in the text), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del). While occasionally making mention of the institutions of other ministries (i.e., those of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Internal Affairs), due to the nature of my source base, the analysis in this chapter focuses on children’s institutions belonging to the Ministry of Health.24 The government, apparently understanding the proliferation of besprizornye during and after the war, even allocated housing space previously belonging to other agencies to the Ministry of Health. During the fourth quarter of 1945, the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR gained control of 292 such buildings.25 But the return of buildings to the Ministry of Health did not always go smoothly, and as late as three years after the decree, some were still serving their wartime use. The example of Ukraine helps to illustrate the complexity of the postwar situation and to reveal the failure of the bureaucracy to carry out the decree in a timely manner. As of January 1, 1946, 129 buildings in Ukraine belonging to the Ministry of Health were still occupied by other institutions.26 In Dnepropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, the city garrison continued to occupy the children’s clinical hospital as late as June 1946.27 Meanwhile, in Odessa, the head of a spare parts plant refused to vacate a building that served as a dormitory for his workers. He justified his refusal to hand the building over by pointing out that military units inhabited the house that had previously been the dormitory for the plant.28 In January 1947, the Ministry of Health wrote to the Ministry of the Armed Forces (Ministerstvo Vooruzhennykh Sil), requesting that military units occupying a children’s clinic be asked to vacate. The Ministry of the Armed Forces denied that the clinic was being used by the military. The Ministry of Health subsequently provided specific details about the units, including the name of the general major that stood at their head, but the standoff between the two ministries remained unresolved at the end of 1947.29 These examples demonstrate that the implementation of orders from the center did not magically materialize; local conditions determined,


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to a great extent, how quickly and whether or not government directives were carried out. Those who occupied buildings, in these cases the military and factories, had an upper hand over the Ministry of Health, which lacked the means to evict the illegal tenants from its property. Despite these complications, according to available data, the number of children’s institutions continued to increase during 1946 and 1947. In 1947, the RSFSR Ministry of Health added 2,103 available beds in homes for infants.30 The number of beds available in infant homes in Ukraine grew by 164 percent, with 5,901 being added during only the first four months of 1947.31 During the year, 4,639 children’s additional hospital beds were made available.32 A report of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health indicates that the number of children in detdoma grew from 74,922 to 111,483, a surge of 48 percent, in the first three months of 1947. But the fact that the Ukrainian Minister of Health failed to provide the number of new homes opened during the corresponding period, merely stating that the quantity of homes increased from the 533 in existence at the beginning of 1947, suggests that the number of children admitted during the first quarter outpaced the opening of new detdoma.33 In many areas, including Ukraine, the growth of the network could not keep pace with need. In Russia, overcrowding forced homes to turn children away in 1947.34 Many Ukrainian children’s homes, in Kherson, Zaporozh’e, Voroshilovgrad, and other oblasts, had 1–1.5 square meters (roughly 11–16 square feet) of living space per child and only 0.75 square meters (8 square feet) of sleeping space.35 In Moldavia, infants were accepted only in extraordinary cases due to overcrowding. Those who were turned back often occupied much-needed beds at both children’s and adult hospitals.36 In several raions in Moldavia, children’s homes refused to accept even those homeless children who were rounded up by Soviet Red Cross activists for the express purpose of getting them off the streets.37 In 1947, children’s homes in Ukraine, Belorussia, and Dagestan, as well as Orel, Rostov, Crimea, Smolensk, Briansk, Novgorod, and Pskov oblasts turned away besprizornye.38 While the transfer of buildings to the Ministry of Health clearly helped determine the pace at which the number of children’s institutions increased, food often served as the limiting factor. At Cheliabinsk in 1947 homes turned away children due to a lack of provisions.39 In 1946, milk kitchens in several Ukrainian provinces—Kiev, Zaporozh’e, Chernigov, and others— closed down for periods of time due to milk shortages.40 Milk kitchens in Kishinev, Moldavian SSR, received no milk from September to November 1946.41 Food shortages also forced the closing down of daytime nurseries at many collective farms in Ukraine in 1946. The number of spaces in nurseries administered by ministries other than the Ministry of Health plummeted

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from 2,354 at the beginning of the year to 1,340 by the beginning of October.42 Milk deliveries to Ukrainian children’s and infants’ homes, which had already been insufficient, fell drastically toward the end of 1946.43 During the same period, raion- and oblast-level health officials in a series of Ukrainian provinces—Chernigov, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Kamenets-Podol’skii, Kiev, and Kherson—reported that children’s institutions were no longer receiving food supplies. This situation not only stunted the growth of the network, but also threatened it with curtailment.44 During the first ten months of 1946, nurseries at collective farms in Ukraine lost over one thousand beds due to food shortages.45 This problem reached far beyond Ukraine to Riga, Frunze, Cheliabinsk, and Tallin, where children’s institutions were on the brink of closure in 1947 due to the government’s refusal to allocate sufficient provisions.46 These various food shortages, which noticeably intensified toward the end of 1946, can be traced in part to the government’s bread-conservation campaign that began in October of that year. On September 23, 1946, Minister of Procurements (Ministr Zagotovok) B.A. Dvinskii wrote to Stalin, warning him of a catastrophic shortage of grain due to the meager harvest of 1946 and urging him to take all available measures to cut down the use of bread. This letter was the second of this nature that Dvinskii had sent to Stalin. When Dvinskii had first written to him on September 7, Stalin had believed that the suggested measures were premature. Dvinskii also requested help from the Central Committee of the CPSU with the requisitioning of grain. Stressing that only Stalin could initiate action, Dvisnkii conjured up images of impending doom: Without you no one will solve the current problem of how to live further, although the situation with resources is well known. The extent of the tragedy that has stricken the country is clear, as is, consequently, the potential of the requisitioning drive. I fear that we might be too late and encounter difficulties that can be avoided or diminished.47

This second letter spurred Stalin into action. On September 24, the Politburo issued a decree calling for a maximal intensification of the requisitioning campaign.48 Decree No. 380 of September 27 demanded a series of measures for conserving bread to take effect on October 1, including a 30 percent cut in rationing expenditures and a 70 percent decrease in grain going toward feeding the countryside.49 Dependents, as well as workers at state farms, machine tractor stations (MTSs), factories and institutions of local industry, industrial cooperatives, and forest rangers in the countryside lost their right to rations. The government also removed all adult dependents in the cities from bread ration lists, excluding students and those directly involved


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in caring for children. Further, the decree reduced the amount of bread to be sold to the population at commercial markets. On October 17, 1946, Stalin approved further measures, proposed by the Council of Ministers, to cut down grain expenditures and tighten control over the Ministry of Trade (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Torgovli), leading to a Politburo decree on October 18. These further procedures would theoretically allow the government to save 520,000 tons of grain over the course of eight months. This conservation would primarily be achieved by means of decreasing the commercial sale of grain, adding corn, oats, and barley to flour and mixing it with standard flour.50 In order to slash the expenditure of grain, the government also reduced the number of employees at various children’s institutions and decreased their allotments of food. Meanwhile, the plan for the expansion of the network remained ambitious, threatening institutions with severe understaffing. Considering the 1947 plan for new nurseries to be unattainable, Ukrainian Minister of Health Polina Grigor’evna Radchenko wrote to her superior in Moscow: The plan for the opening of nurseries in 1947 set by the Ministry of Health of the U[krainian] SSR is very large. Ukraine will not be able to add 90,300 beds in the cities and more than 46,000 in the villages. I plead that you lower the nursery plan for 1947. We will not be able to handle such a large number. The situation in the locales is severe. Owing to the removal of a whole series of raions from provisioning, village nurseries will shut down and it won’t be our fault. Workers at children’s institutions in a series of raions and the city of Poltava are also being taken off [of rationing].51

Ironically, by cutting back food shipments to the countryside, the government impeded the carrying out of its own plans for the expansion of the network of children’s institutions and, indeed, necessitated the closure of some existing ones. Cutbacks continued in 1947 when, in the third quarter, Gosplan lowered the number of meals to be provided to nurseries in Ukraine from 72,000 to 61,200, forcing administrators to refuse admission to children.52 The situation with homes of the Ministerstvo Prosveshcheniia, or Ministry of Enlightenment, seems to have been analogous to that of the Ministry of Health. In October 1946, Ukrainian Minister of Enlightenment Filippov complained that, owing to the government decision to cut staff at children’s institutions, Gosplan and the Ministry of Finance were refusing to approve the admission of more children to homes.53

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The malnourished condition of the children, particularly infants, admitted to homes and hospitals in the course of 1946–47 in famine areas, suggests that a more extensive network of children’s institutions would have saved lives. An examination of the semi-annual report for Infant Home No. 1 (Dom grudnogo rebenka No. 1) in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, for the first half of 1947 provides some valuable insight into the causes of infant mortality during the famine. This particular home serves as an appropriate case study, not because Dnepropetrovsk was necessarily representative of the country as a whole— the situation there was indeed severe—but because the administration of this home submitted a detailed report to the Ministry of Health for the first half of 1947, the peak of the famine. Many administrators failed to file reports and many of those who did, provided either qualitative evaluations with no figures or meager statistics with little or no analysis. The report of Infant Home No. 1 is unique in that it provides extensive statistics on mortality and context for a thorough analysis of these figures. Furthermore, this particular example unmasks the famine in all its horror, allowing us to imagine what conditions were like in famine areas. A staggering 31 percent (or 159 of 471) of the children admitted to Infant Home No. 1 in Dnepropetrovsk during the first half of 1947 passed away; 65 percent (or 103) of them were under the age of 154 (table 2.1). The report reads: The indicated table shows that most of those who died were foundlings for whom the drop-off was severely traumatic. Aside from the winter cold, they had to face the harsh termination of breastfeeding. . . . At first, they exhibited nervousness, indicating a longing for their mother, and refused food, which had a severely detrimental effect on their weight and general condition.55

Table 2.1 Number of deaths by age group in Infant Home No. 1 during the first half of 1947 Age 0–1 month 1–3 months 3–6 months 6–9 months 9–12 months 1–2 years 2–4 years All ages

Number of fatalities

% of total

9 19 39 20 16 38 18 159

5.66 11.95 24.53 12.58 10.06 23.90 11.32 100

Source: GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob.


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But most of the infants that subsequently died came to the home in an already malnourished state, suggesting that hunger played a role in their death, regardless of their final diagnosis. The workers at the home had to classify all children as being of normal weight or exhibiting one of three degrees of dystrophy at the time of their entry, with third-degree dystrophy being the most severe. Less than 9 percent of those who died came into the home at normal weight; in other words, over 90 percent of those who died entered the home with one or another form of dystrophy. Those who entered the home with third-degree dystrophy constituted almost half of those who perished (table 2.2). Several other pieces of evidence indicate that starvation served as the primary factor in bringing about mortality. Foundlings tended to enter children’s homes in a more severe state of malnourishment than others, simply because parents whose children’s condition was so critical that they cannot afford to have them turned back are more likely to drop a child off on the doorstep of a home. Eighty-two percent of those who died were foundlings (table 2.3). Table 2.2 The physical condition at the time of admittance to Infant Home No. 1 of those children who eventually died, by month of entry Month in 1947

Normal Dystrophy weight (1st degree)

January February March April May and June Total % of fatalities

2 2 4 1 5 14 8.81

1 4 6 3 7 21 13.21

Dystrophy (2nd degree)

Dystrophy (3rd degree)

Total

% of fatalities by month

3 6 14 10 16 49 30.82

1 19 18 12 34 75 47.17

7 22 42 26 62 159

4.40 13.84 26.42 16.35 39.00 100 100

Source: GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob.

Table 2.3 The sotspolozhenie or “social position” (i.e. reason for entering) of those children who died in Infant Home No. 1 during the first half of 1947 Sotspolozhenie

Number admitted

% of total

131 3 24 1 159

82.39 1.89 15.09 0.63 100

Foundlings Orphans Children of single mothers Others All Source: GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob.

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The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective Table 2.4 Length of time spent in Infant Home No. 1 before onset of death for those that entered the home during the first half of 1947 Length of time in home

Number of fatalities

% of total

34 45 41 15 24 159

21.38 28.30 25.79 9.43 15.09 100

Up to 10 days Between 10 and 20 days Between 20 days and 1 month Between 1 and 2 months Over 2 months Total Source: GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob.

Furthermore, 50 percent of the children who died did so less than 20 days after they were admitted, suggesting that they had entered the home in a particularly enfeebled state (table 2.4).56 More direct evidence also suggests that hunger served as the primary cause of mortality among the children of Infant Home No. 1 in Dnepropetrovsk. Nearly half of those who died were diagnosed with dystrophy at the time of death. But the analysis accompanying the figures in the report indicates that many of the infectious diseases that had served as the proximate cause of death were also accompanied by dystrophy, suggesting that malnourishment made children more susceptible to measles, dysentery, and other illnesses. The prevalence of dystrophy complicated the treatment of these diseases; conventional remedies, including sulfidine therapy, hemotherapy, and penicillin therapy all proved ineffective. To make matters worse, the local children’s clinic refused to admit children with dysentery due to overcrowding and the local hospital declined admission because it was functioning as an orphanage.57 The trends in admittances suggest that famine conditions in Dnepropetrovsk oblast, and more broadly East Ukraine, began to peak in the first half of 1947. The 471 children who entered the home during the first half of 1947 constituted a 194 percent increase over the 160 admitted during first six months of 1946. During the first half of 1946, the home admitted 63 foundlings versus 321 during the corresponding period in 1947. In other words, the number of foundlings more than quadrupled between 1946 and 1947.58 Dnepropetrovsk was not an isolated case: dystrophic children entered institutions in large numbers in other parts of the USSR throughout 1947. During the first ten months of 1947, women with infants migrating from Ukraine and various oblasts of the RSFSR (Smolensk, Orel, Kursk, Voronezh), presumably searching for food or better living conditions, poured


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into children’s homes in Belorussia. Babies entered homes in a starved state; 63 percent of those who died did so less than three weeks after their admission.59 Nine out of every ten children entering children’s homes in Magnitogorsk and Simferopol’ were undernourished. Corresponding figures for others cities and oblasts suggest that the situation was only slightly better in many areas across the country.60 Meanwhile, the starved condition of children entering hospitals in Moldavia contributed to a high mortality among young patients in 1947. During the first nine months of the year, most of the children admitted had hypotrophy, a predystrophic condition, and 26 percent of them died of dystrophy, a euphemism for starvation.61 On the basis of this evidence, one can safely argue that among the children that were turned away were those who subsequently died of hunger or lack of medical attention. Furthermore, the inadequacy of the network led to overcrowding, which unquestionably contributed to increased mortality via the spread of disease among those who managed to enter homes. The conservation campaign launched by the government also led to the deterioration of children’s welfare in the countryside. The unexpected cutback in rationing in October 1946 directly affected millions of people across the Soviet Union, but it particularly worsened the plight of village workers and specialists, including foresters, agriculturalists, medical workers, and teachers. This decree did not significantly impinge on the livelihood of collective farmers because they had never received rationing from the government, but were instead paid (or in many cases not paid) per workday by the collective farm. The bookkeeper at each collective farm (kolkhoz) kept a tally of how many days each person had worked. At the end of the month, peasants received provisions from the farm according to the number of workdays marked down by the bookkeeper. Meanwhile, city dwellers continued to receive rations. Village workers, on the other hand, were subjected to a decrease in their allotted bread rations and an ambiguous and inconsistent implementation of the government decree. The officially sanctioned removal of children and dependents from rationing placed rural teachers’ families in an exceedingly vulnerable position. In 1947, the Central Committee of Primary and Secondary Schools of the RSFSR received letters documenting the precarious position of village teachers. The principal of Shemen elementary school, Podporozh’e raion, Leningrad oblast, wrote: I have four children as dependents. Three of them are in school. My husband died at the front. In October [1946] I didn’t receive bread cards for the children. What do I do? We have enough vegetables to last us a month. Commercial bread and produce are impossible to get. What do I do? Quit my job as a pedagogue having eleven years of experience? It would be sad. It’s a pity. I worked

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in the Urals for six years without a rest forging victory and now I have to die of hunger in my home village.62

Similar predicaments faced teachers across the RSFSR. In almost every raion of Ivanovo, Vladimir, Orel, and Novgorod oblasts, between 20 and 30 families lived on the verge of starvation at the beginning of 1947. A teacher in Solotchinsk raion, Riazan’ oblast, who had lost her husband in the war and was single-handedly supporting six starving children, saw no solution to her dilemma but to hang herself.63 If teachers’ families found themselves in such dire straits, one can be sure that many families of those village dwellers who officially lost their rationing privileges (agricultural specialists, workers of local industry, forest rangers) suffered an even grimmer fate. Meanwhile, the September 24, 1946, government decision on the intensification of grain requisitioning constituted a major blow to the countryside. The acceleration of the grain collection campaign would leave the countryside with little or no grain; even seed stocks were often given up in an effort to meet government demands.64 As V.F. Zima has demonstrated, this policy of confiscation of grain at any price, despite the blatancy of impending hunger in the countryside, served as the primary precipitant of mass famine among collective farmers.65 Children’s lives could sometimes depend on their parents’ ability to fulfill grain quotas. Owing to a poor harvest, the Stalin collective farm in Dzengelevskii raion, Kiev oblast, failed to submit the required quota of grain to the government; as a result, officials withheld bread intended for orphans and widows, leading to the emaciation of 20 orphans and 80 children of single mothers.66 While it can be argued that the expansion of the children’s network during and after the war saved lives, the inadequacy of the existing institutions contributed to child and especially infant mortality. A more expansive network would inevitably have limited the number of famine deaths. The central government followed a contradictory policy of favoring an ambitious plan for the expansion of the network of children’s institutions and, at the same time, impeding their growth by failing to provide resources to successfully fulfill the plan, taking workers off of rationing, and inconsistently enforcing the return of buildings to the Ministry of Health. Yet the causes of mortality cannot be reduced to government policies alone. The increase in the number of orphans, a direct consequence of World War II, and postwar demobilization and the resulting rise in birthrates placed a strain on the growing but inadequate network of children’s institutions. Furthermore, the complexity of on-the-ground conditions sometimes rendered the bureaucracy impotent in effecting the transfer of buildings to the Ministry of Health. These factors contributed to the turning away of children in need and to severe


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overcrowding, both of which unquestionably added to child mortality during the famine. I am also able to isolate a distinct shift in government policy and thus in the course of the famine in September 1946. Until late 1946, despite various problems, the network of children’s institutions continued to grow and the Ministry of Health made progress in ameliorating the situation. The government seemed to understand the extent of the crisis facing the country’s children, designing a plan that would more or less adequately meet demands. But priorities changed in late September 1946, when the central government realized the extent of the grain crisis and adopted various measures aimed at accelerating the collection of grain and conserving bread by cutting portions of the population off of rationing. The change in priorities substantially contributed to the faltering of the expansion of the network of children’s institutions. The government entered a crisis mode that placed the new campaign to build up grain reserves ahead of all other concerns. Soviet Red Cross Relief While the central government’s bread conservation campaign and aggressive requisitioning policies did much to worsen the plight of Soviet citizens during the famine, official relief efforts in 1946–47 managed to salvage lives. The Soviet Red Cross and Red Crescent, theoretically a branch of the International Red Cross but, in practice, dominated by the Soviet government, saved many young children from hunger through its various charitable activities. Despite the Soviet Red Cross’s vigorous activity after the war, no publications on the famine make any mention of its substantial famine relief efforts.67 In September 1946, the Red Cross and Red Crescent of the Soviet Union sponsored 3,593 children’s institutions and 100,331 orphaned families, a total of 600,000 orphans.68 Sponsorship involved helping find pervichnye organizatsii, or primary organizations, which would help provide for orphans, assure the proper development and upbringing of children, organize medical services, and regulate sanitary living conditions. These organizations ranged from factories to collective farms and often provided children’s homes with “surplus” goods, like clothing and provisions of varying kinds. The Red Cross also placed orphans with various ailments in sanatoriums and camps for the purpose of recovery. In September 1946, the Executive Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent of the USSR proposed the establishment of a patronage committee (shefskaia komissiia) that would organize public assistance for orphans, war invalids, and orphaned families, and assist in organizing patronage on the grassroots level.69 Various incarnations of this proposed star-studded committee included children’s writer S.Ia. Marshak,

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Marshal K.K. Rokossovskii, and composer I.O. Dunaevskii, as well as Soviet ministers, Red Cross functionaries, doctors, and journalists.70 The Red Cross believed that prominent individuals would be more effective in mobilizing public support for the campaign. The Red Cross also decreed the formation of a Committee of Assistance for Orphaned Children (Kommissiia po okazaniiu pomoshchi detiam-sirotam) based on the same principle.71 Owing to an absence of documentation, it is not entirely clear what role these committees played in the ensuing famine crisis; however, local Red Cross societies (krasnokrestnye obshchestva) managed to collect enough money from the public to help feed and care for many orphans. In Ukraine in 1947, the Red Cross collected over 4 million rubles, providing free meals to approximately 40 thousand children.72 These funds were enough to feed these children for a period of approximately three months. In Dnepropetrovsk oblast, various charity events raised over 500 thousand rubles, enabling the Red Cross to feed 3,000 children for six months. Over 400 children were sent to sanatoriums and other rehabilitation facilities.73 In Belorussia, a Red Cross fund for the benefit of orphans spent 1.5 million rubles on relief measures during the 1946–47 school year.74 The Red Cross of the RSFSR lobbied the central government for additional food for children’s homes and the establishment of special homes for oslablennye, or those in a particularly weakened condition.75 From the end of the war through mid-1947, the Red Cross had raised a total of 32 million rubles from the public, most of which went toward medical treatment, food, and clothing for orphans and invalids. In 1947, 30,000 children received free hot breakfasts as a dietary supplement.76 N.S. Khrushchev, then head of the Ukrainian Council of Ministers, instructed representatives of the Ukrainian Red Cross and other organizations to think of a way to contribute to feeding needy children. Lacking the necessary money, the Red Cross organized charity events—concerts, lectures, excursions—in order to achieve the goal of feeding 25,000 children. Funds from economic managers, or khoziaistvenniki, allowed for the feeding of many more children. Various prominent individuals also helped the cause; for example, Polish-born Communist writer Vanda Vasilevskaia, who was then living in Kiev with husband and author Aleksandr Korneichuk, fed eight orphans a day.77 On July 2, 1947, the Ukrainian Council of Ministers officially approved the collection of money from the public to complement the government funds in order to provide for orphans, parents and families of soldiers killed in the war, and families of war invalids. These measures included relief for people who suffered as a result of “natural disasters (flood, fire, drought).”78 Interestingly, the initiative for these undertakings often came from local Red Cross organizations and, by July, committees in several oblasts had already begun fund-raising activities in order to help needy


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orphans.79 Red Cross documents testify that, in Belorussia, the collection of public funds for the purpose of assisting and feeding orphans was successfully underway in 1944, two years before the launching of the broader campaign by the Red Cross Executive Committee in September 1946.80 In Moldavia, a Red Cross initiative to feed hungry children resulted in the establishment of four pitatel’nye punkty, or feeding stations, in April 1947. At the request of the Red Cross, the Moldavian Council of Ministers issued a directive decreeing the establishment of two stations in Vul’kaneshtskii raion, Kagul’skii uezd, and one each in Chimishliiskii and Benderskii raions, Benderskii uezd, for children with severe dystrophy.81 Each pitatel’nyi punkt was to feed 50 children for two months starting on April 15. At the request of the Red Cross, the Council of Ministers set aside 200 grams of bread a day for each child from commercial stocks.82 The Moldavian Red Cross also earmarked 360 kilograms of chocolate and 766,953 kilograms of canned foods provided by the Soviet Red Cross for these feeding stations.83 Pooled together, these various sources of food provided for a decent average daily ration for each child: 200 grams of bread, 25 grams of fish, 20 grams of cheese, 25 grams of sausage, 100 grams of vegetables, 10 grams of egg powder, 50 grams of sweet kasha (hot cereal), 15 grams of bacon, 15 grams of butter, 30 grams of condensed milk, 20 grams of jam, and one cracker.84 While this ration was still quite limited, it may have been more varied than that of the average Soviet citizen after the war.85 While these feeding stations may have been the best organized, they were, by far, not the only ones in Moldavia. The Moldavian Red Cross set up over 550 pitatel’nye punkty and at least an additional 222 barracks for people with dystrophy. In addition to these, there were approximately 200 feeding stations and 180 barracks administered by organizations other than the Red Cross.86 In April, Minister of Health of the Moldavian SSR M. Sukharev instructed local Red Cross organizations to organize brigades of activists to help care for those with dystrophy and to collect beds, mats, rugs, and other items from the population to make barracks more livable.87 These efforts, though seemingly well intentioned and relatively widespread, came too late and, as a rule, appear to have been poorly organized. Red Cross relief was most widespread in Ukraine, Moldavia, and Belorussia, but local organizations in other areas also managed to help needy children. The extent of the relief varied greatly from one region to another; however, even limited assistance was not insignificant in the context of severe postwar shortages. In Briansk oblast, the Red Cross had accumulated over 20 thousand rubles earmarked for orphans by the beginning of 1947.88 In Vologda oblast, funds collected for orphans from the public and from local clergy amounted to approximately 400 thousand rubles, allowing the Red Cross to

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feed four hundred children and clothe many more.89 In Kursk oblast, the Red Cross provided 92 kilograms of various grains and 2,510 kilograms of potatoes to orphans.90 These praiseworthy endeavors by Red Cross organizations, like the expansion of the network of children’s homes, did not always proceed smoothly. On September 26, 1947, M. Goizman, the head accountant of the Executive Committee of the Soviet Red Cross, proclaimed all of the charity events being organized in Ukraine illegal, according to a Soviet of People’s Commissars decree from June 1, 1935. Claiming that such collections, due to lack of sufficient central control, could lead to mass theft, he wrote to M.A. Shatalova, acting director of the Mass-Organizational Administration of the Ukrainian Red Cross: “it is essential . . . that you immediately halt these collections as illegal.” A Ukrainian Red Cross official, most likely Shatalova, wrote by hand on Goizman’s letter: “In Ukraine there is a special decree of the Council of Ministers and the executive committee has no right to cancel it.”91 This example suggests that, at least in Ukraine, republic-level Soviet authorities made an effort to help starving children, even if proscribed measures constituted a breach of government legislation. At the same time, officials at the union level, like Goizman, chose to impede relief for starving children rather than risk punishment for having turned a blind eye to Soviet statutes. The collection of donations from religious organizations was also sometimes frowned upon and forbidden, while it seems to have been overlooked in other areas. In April 1946, Kamenets-Podol’skii Oblast Party Committee in Ukraine reprimanded several officials, including a representative of the Red Cross, for requesting assistance from religious societies. Different officials had approached Bishop Maksim, both asking and demanding that he provide funds to help war veterans, invalids, and military families.92 While these parleys with religious representatives resulted in censure, collections made by clergy were later allowed in Vologda oblast.93 Events like concerts, lectures, and mass outings continued, but the Red Cross Executive Committee forbade the collection of money, even charitable donations, from individuals. Ostensibly, such collections were too elusive for the center to control and could lead to theft, extortion, and other abuses. In October 1947, owing to the immediate need for famine relief for orphans, the Zaporozh’e oblast committee of the Red Cross, with the agreement of both Party and state organs in the oblast, organized a lottery to raise funds to feed needy children. The measure, however, did not receive approval from higherlevel organs, forcing the Red Cross to discontinue the sale of lottery tickets and allocate monies already collected to a general fund.94 The Zaporozh’e Red Cross also had to return money to all those individuals who did not approve of their contributions being used for general purposes.95 In 1947, the Central


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Committee of the Soviet Red Cross reported several of its oblast committees to the procuracy for illegal fundraising and spending.96 Aside from impeding the collection of charitable donations, government policies, namely the September 19, 1946, decree “On Measures to Liquidate Breaches of the Kolkhoz Statute,” limited the ability of the Red Cross to expand its activities in the countryside.97 The September 19 statute sought to decrease the supposedly over-inflated administrative apparatus in the collective farms and strip paid workdays from those with no direct relation to farm production. By September 1947, the government whittled down the administrative apparatus by 18.1 percent and refused paid workdays to over 200,000 individuals who had previously received them.98 Many medical workers and nurses lost their right to rations, leading to the closure of first-aid stations at collective farms (kolkhoznye medpunkty).99 The situation was particularly severe in the eastern regions of Kazakhstan, where the September 1946 statute led to a decrease in the number of kolkhoznye medpunkty by approximately 90 percent.100 Realizing the importance of the nurses’ care for the well-being of the village population, including children, the Red Cross encouraged collective farms to employ nurses using public funds.101 Raion-level Red Cross workers also ceased to receive bread rations, forcing many to take on a second job in order to make ends meet.102 In Stalingrad oblast and other areas, even raion committee chairmen were taken off of bread rationing.103 This situation led to major problems with recruitment; people refused to work with no guarantee of bread, limiting the success of relief programs.104 These detrimental effects of the September 19 government statute on healthcare in the countryside help explain the impromptu nature of many of the relief efforts undertaken by the Red Cross. In some areas, collective farms provided funds for first-aid stations, realizing that the benefits of medical care for labor output would outweigh the costs of sustaining first-aid stations.105 The closing down of first-aid stations threatened the success of sowing and harvesting campaigns by prolonging the rehabilitation of sick work hands, especially in areas where epidemics were prevalent. After millions of men perished during the war, women, children, and the elderly constituted an integral part of the workforce. The catastrophic shortage of mechanization in the countryside placed an even greater premium on manpower. In 1942, the government already decreed that middle-school children study agriculture, and, by summer of that year, 3.5 million of these children were working on collective and state farms (sovkhozy) in the USSR.106 Decreased medical care would predictably lead to the debilitation of the limited agricultural workforce. In sum, Red Cross activities saved lives, but the government, as in the case of the children’s network, simultaneously enabled and impeded relief efforts.

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A special decree in Ukraine facilitated the process of collecting donations from the public, and high-level Red Cross officials pressed many local organizations to improve their work with orphans. Grain from central government reserves was not released; however, the grain made available from commercial reserves was hardly considered dispensable by the government. The tragically poor harvest in 1946 and the emerging cold war—an ideological and potentially military struggle with the capitalist West—meant that every ounce of bread was valuable. While the government depended on the Red Cross to alleviate the famine crisis, it also eroded the existing cadres of medical and other aid workers by taking away their rations. Government suspicion of aid officials, embodied in prewar legislation, also tied the hands of those who collected funds for famine relief. While less stringent regulations on fundraising could have led to abuses in some cases, they would have also allowed the Red Cross to reach more of those who needed relief during the famine. The ability of Red Cross workers, who were often in dire straits themselves, to raise substantial funds and open many feeding stations despite many obstacles speaks of their dedication and humanitarianism. Similarly, the significant sums of public monies raised reveal the generosity and kindness of ordinary citizens, who made donations despite intense dearth and want, and helped save the lives of tens of thousands of children. Conclusion The central government’s half-hearted support of the relief campaign clearly served as a major impediment to stemming the tide of the famine, and the bread conservation campaign was, in the immediate sense, the main precipitant of hunger. Although government decisions contributed to famine mortality, one must still question Zima’s conclusion that the government masterminded the famine to achieve its political ends. On the contrary, the findings in this chapter suggest a sudden and poorly planned shift in government policy in September 1946, resulting in policies that were not only contradictory but also unfavorable for the government. The decrees of September 19 (on the collective farm statute) and 27 (on the conservation of grain), which led to the closing down of establishments of the Ministry of Health and Red Cross first-aid stations on collective farms, aside from contributing to mortality, threatened labor output, especially in the already undermanned countryside.107 The central government also sought to overcome a demographic crisis caused by the war; mass mortality could do little to help in this regard. Furthermore, the aggressive requisitioning of grain would quite predictably lead to the loss of interest of the collective farmer in agricultural production. Why, after all, should the peasant work hard if he or she


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receives no benefit in return? In a broader sense, a poor standard of living (and famine even more so) could only serve to undermine the legitimacy Stalin— the great mastermind of the victory over German fascism according to Soviet propaganda—had gained during the war. These predictable outcomes of policy all point to the fact that the Soviet government failed to foresee the scale of the crisis and respond in a timely and well thought out manner. Having failed to react in time, the government sacrificed lesser goals, like the ones listed above, in order to salvage prerogatives deemed more important, such as industrial growth and prestige on the international scene.108 Had the central government responded sooner, it could likely have achieved its ends through means that would have taken a lighter toll on the people of the Soviet Union. But, in the end, owing in part to the government’s lack of foresight, war devastation, drought, demographic factors, and official callousness toward society converged on the most helpless: children and, most of all, infants. Their survival depended on the generosity and sacrifice of others, and thousands upon thousands of them became victims of famine. While the tragic fate of so many children serves as the most vivid illustration of the horrors of famine, the next chapter will demonstrate that even the proletariat—the privileged class in Soviet society—could not escape the effects of the postwar food crisis.


CHAPTER 3

Food Shortages and Ration Reforms in the Towns and Cities: Moscow and Beyond

T

he effects of natural disaster on a society depend, to a great degree, on the state of that society at the time that tragedy strikes. As David Arnold points out, “famine [often] acts as a revealing commentary upon a society’s deeper and more enduring difficulties.”1 World War II brought ruin to the Soviet countryside and peasantry. The war’s legacy—the dearth of mechanization and shortage of work hands—coupled with peasant dependence on the state, led to a poor harvest. Similarly, the Soviet government’s established ideology shaped the way that it confronted the agricultural shortfall. Stalin and his associates reaffirmed the superiority of the exploitative collective farm system and forced society to carry the burden of the postwar hardships. These measures allowed them to pursue prerogatives deemed important by the state: the rebuilding of industry and prestige on the world political stage. In the immediate postwar years, the self-proclaimed proletarian state failed to provide adequately even for its privileged class: the workers. An examination of the situation in Soviet towns and cities on the eve of the famine reveals widespread shortages and breakdowns in the distribution of essential goods prior to the crop failure of 1946. In other words, the drought and resulting government measures inflicted an extreme blow to an already staggered social and economic system, placing in great doubt the livelihood of much of the Soviet population, both in town and country. Ministry of State Trade (Ministerstvo Gostorgovli) documents dealing with price changes and rationing cuts in September–October 1946, coupled with detailed official reports on people’s reactions to the changes, provide us with insight into the causes of the breakdown of the distribution system and shed light on the popular response

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to government measures. Workers, who according to ideology were at the forefront of revolution, frequently voiced displeasure with official measures. The central authorities sought to justify the blatantly harsh grain conservation campaign through a combination of intimidation and propaganda. Breakdowns in Food Distribution The urban population had not been immune to wartime hunger, not only in extreme situations, as during the siege of Leningrad (1941–44), but also in territories not occupied by German invaders, as urban centers outside of the immediate battle zones suffered from the disruption of production and trade during the war. On April 1, 1944, the NKVD, or People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, reported that there were 22,400 dystrophic patients seeking treatment in Sverdlovsk oblast; most were factory workers from urban areas. For example, 612 were from the Sverdlovsk metallurgical factory, 562 factory workers from Kamenets-Ural’sk, and 750 from the Nizhnii Tagil metallurgical factory.2 Problems with food distribution continued after war’s end. In the city of Kursk in the Russian heartland, an estimated 11,000 people went without bread during August 5–8, 1945.3 Further east, urban areas in Sverdlovsk oblast continued to experience shortages in late 1945: in the city of Sverdlovsk, newborns were not provided with age-appropriate food for a period of several months and hundreds of children failed to attend school due to clothing shortages; bread deliveries faltered in the town of Verkhniaia Salda; officials observed long bread lines in Nizhnii Tagil; and in Irbitsk, workers were not handed out their allotted bread rations.4 In Cheliabinsk oblast, workers voiced their dissatisfaction with continually poor and even declining consumption in July and August 1945. One Magnitogorsk factory worker grumbled: “The war has ended, but our diet is not improving. They feed us water, just as before. The bread isn’t fully baked, the oatmeal isn’t cleaned, we sometimes get buckwheat, but it has more stones and garbage than groats. We never even get our fill of simple food.” Other Magnitogorsk workers complained of spoiled cabbage, rotten potatoes, and small portions. Meanwhile, workers at the Miass car plant protested that they were receiving even smaller portions than they had during the war. One voiced displeasure about being given a bowl of gruel and two spoons of oats a day.5 The Party’s informatsionnye svodki (informational summaries)—which monitored popular moods, or perhaps even more broadly, social and political phenomena across the vast expanse of the Soviet Union—reveal that bread shortages persisted and plagued many of the country’s towns and cities throughout 1945–46. As is clear from an examination of the svodki, these

Food Shortages and Ration Reforms in the Towns and Cities

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breakdowns in supplying bread to the population were not minor local difficulties; they covered a large geographic area and were, to a great degree, systemic. Stoppages and disruptions in bread distribution intensified during certain months and were unquestionably complicated by the significant demographic growth triggered by the demobilization of the Red Army in 1945–46. Although the use of svodki has come under some scrutiny from certain historians because of their inherent “Stalinist” bias, this issue will be discussed in Chapter 4, since here I focus on food shortages—a concrete phenomenon corroborated by other sources.6 The first wave of major breakdowns began in December 1945 and continued into January 1946. The severity of problems varied from one area to another, ranging from poor bread quality and long lines at commercial stores to the complete failure to distribute bread to the populations of towns and cities for days at a time. In Stalinsk, Kemerovo oblast, long lines formed at bread stores and bread provisions for the population occasionally broke down. Workers at the city’s motor repair factory received insufficient nutrition because of high prices for lunch and the unavailability of breakfast at the factory cafeteria.7 In Gusevskii raion, Vladimir oblast, workers at the “Consolidation of Communism” glass factory went without bread for six days in early January 1946. In the same oblast, bread shortages plagued the city of Murom and Iur’ev-Pol’skii raion.8 At the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946, long lines formed at stores in the city of Orsk, Chkalov oblast. A nickel processing plant and several other factories experienced frequent breakdowns in bread distribution. At least one bakery regularly released poor-quality bread.9 It appears that in most cases there simply was not enough bread produced: target figures were often unrealistic given shortages of fuel, mills, and bakeries. In December 1945, in the city of Izhevsk, Udmutrian ASSR, bread factories fell horribly short of the plan for the release of bread. On individual days, factories produced between two and twenty-six fewer tons than instructed by local authorities.10 In Rostov-on-the-Don, fuel shortages caused breakdowns in bread sales; in December 1945, bread production lagged behind the plan by 150 tons, leading to long bread lines. According to Party officials, the closure of one factory for repairs threatened the city with a complete collapse in bread distribution.11 In Sambor, Drogobychi oblast, commercial stores received fewer than 500 kilograms of bread when the actual need was 4.5 tons. Most of the population received flour instead of bread.12 In the city of Zaporozh’e, Ukrainian SSR, bread distribution broke down on December 14–15, 1945.13 The failure of local officials to remedy the problem of shortages despite reprimands from above tends to confirm that the infrastructure could not realistically achieve necessary production. The Chernigov Oblast Party

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Committee determined that the inhabitants of the city of Chernigov received only 75 percent of the required quantity of bread; on December 1–3, trade authorities distributed only 40 percent of the targeted amount. Threats and censure from above did not seem to help. The committee’s criticism of those in charge of bread distribution did little to improve matters; bread factories continued to fall short of the target by between 40 and 50 percent.14 In Zhitomir, Ukrainian SSR, the City Party Committee brought attention to shortfalls in the production of bread in December 1945, but, as in Chernigov, breakdowns in bread distribution continued nonetheless.15 Similarly, in the city of Astrakhan’, the Oblast Party Committee’s criticism of the head trade administrator and bread distribution authorities failed to solve the problem of bread shortages and long lines for bread persisted.16 In January 1946, bread shortages and long lines in Kazan’, Tatar ASSR, led to the dismissal of the city’s director of Rosglavkhleb, the agency charged with the distribution of bread.17 The omnipresence of problems with bread distribution during this period is truly staggering. According to Party svodki, similar breakdowns in the distribution of bread in late 1945—early 1946 plagued Kalinin, Orel, Sverdlovsk, Alma-Ata, Saratov, Kherson, Karaganda, and Vitebsk oblasts; Altai, Primor’e, and Krasnodar krais; and the Uzbek and Lithuanian SSRs.18 In January 1946, the Central Committee of the Belorussian SSR established that a large number of cities and towns—including Borisov, Polotsk, Vitebsk, Brest, Molodechno, and Mogilev—went without bread for several days. The Central Committee of the Belorussian SSR blamed the problems on the poor work of stores, bakeries, and mills.19 It is interesting to note that even traditional grain-producing regions (Orel, Saratov, Krasnodar) were not immune to shortages.20 These difficulties were significant and likely impinged greatly on the livelihood of those cities’ inhabitants, but they pale in comparison with the situation in Velike Luki oblast, where grain stocks dwindled between January and March 1946. Representatives of the oblast’s office of the Ministry of Procurements directed several communications to G.M. Malenkov, chairman of the Central Committee’s agricultural section, warning of impending food shortages. Owing to the absence of grain processing plants, Velikie Luki oblast relied entirely on flour brought in from other regions. As early as January 1946, people living in several raions received grain instead of flour and poor-quality peas, intended for animal consumption, instead of groats. In December, the Ministry of Procurements delivered only 28 percent of the grain necessary to feed the inhabitants of the oblast and 26 percent in January. The ministry’s Velikie Luki representative warned that a breakdown in grain deliveries in February would leave the entire oblast without bread for the


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preparation of the spring sowing campaign.21 Despite these desperate pleas, on March 6, 1946, the populations of several cities failed to receive bread. A representative of the oblast’s office of the Ministry of Procurements wrote in a telegram to Malenkov: The systematic breakdown in the import of flour from other oblasts has led to the breakdown in provisioning of the populations of six cities: Velikie Luki, Toropets, Nelikhovo, Loknia, Novosokol’niki, Nevel’. . . . I ask that you provide some help in the delivery of flour, otherwise the situation is ominous.

Finally, only when the situation bordered on catastrophe, the Ministry of Transport directed the directors of the appropriate railroads to unload flour for Velikie Luki oblast according to the plan set by the Ministry of Procurements.22 The second series of severe interruptions in bread distribution, which came in March–April 1946, stemmed at least in part from a government reduction in commercial prices on various food staples beginning on February 26. One of the goals of the price reductions was apparently to snuff out speculation by bringing down prices in the unofficial market, thus diminishing the incentive to speculate. This measure would help root out widespread black market activities and encourage consumers to purchase goods through official channels. The reform seems to have achieved the desired effect: in Saratov and Ivanovo oblasts, for example, the market cost of bread fell by more than 50 percent. People seemed to welcome the change, which made various items— including bread, macaroni, wheat flour, and sugar—more accessible for many citizens.23 On the day that the reform took effect, the government opened 600 stores in 250 cities in the hopes of coping with the influx of consumers, but this number was vastly insufficient. The state’s commercial stores, bread factories, and bakeries could not meet the considerable demand. Not only city dwellers, but also people from the country flocked to the stores, leading to long bread queues in many places. As many as 600 people lined up in the city of Gor’kii and 500 waited outside stores in Molotov. Similarly long lines formed in Stalingrad, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Voronezh, Vichuga, Furmanov, Saratov, and other towns and cities. In Chita, much to the dismay of officials, swarms of people stormed a store, and in Kaluga, impatient crowds broke into stores, shattered windows, and knocked down counters. In Stalingrad, all the available bread was sold in just two hours. Owing to demand, Party officials in Voronezh oblast and Krasnoiarsk krai requested that they be allotted substantially more flour. In certain cities, including Kaluga and Kursk, many people who were owed bread rations did not receive them.24

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The shortages in March and April were a continuation of the same phenomenon: demand for bread and other products in state stores continued to dwarf the ability of the trade network to supply them. Throughout March, officials observed long bread queues in Ukraine, Moldavia, and several oblasts of the RSFSR. In Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, sometimes as many as 700 people lined up in front of commercial stores. The difficulty of obtaining bread at the state’s commercial stores prompted women in Makeevka, Stalino oblast, Ukrainian SSR, to request that 100 grams be added to the bread ration. Bakeries in several cities in Moldavia could not cope with the official bread production targets. In Kalinin oblast, the inhabitants of numerous towns complained about the low number of stores and requested that more be opened.25 On March 20, 1946, the Kalinin Oblast Party Committee reported that the population of the town of Bezhetsk was receiving bread irregularly and that the available bread was often raw. Owing to the absence of fuel, mills stood idle much of the time. In Taganrog, Rostov oblast, the two existing stores could not be fully stocked because bread factories produced insufficient bread. Bread factories and bakeries in Iaroslavl’ oblast also lacked sufficient fuel, leading to a five- to ten-day disruption in the production of bread in some areas.26 In Vladivostok, in the far east of the country, workers at Factory No. 202 received incomplete rations and endured interruptions in the distribution of bread, as well as tea, matches, and other items.27 Among the cities plagued with shortages in March were Arkhangelsk, Molotov, Kotlas, Kirovgrad, Izmail, Sambor, Drogobychi, Lipetsk, Borisoglebsk, and Ust’Kamenogorsk. Even when bread was available, it was not always edible. In Drogobych, people found wood chips, rags, metal wire, and stones in their bread.28 Nor did the problems entirely cease after March and April. The Orel Oblast Party Committee reported “significant stoppages” in the distribution of bread in May 1946. Over the course of April and May, the inhabitants of Orel received 70 fewer tons of bread than were owed them. Factories regularly produced poor-quality bread. Long lines proliferated in Saratov because, on average, between 4,000 and 7,000 people received rations from a single store. The inhabitants of Rostov similarly had to contend with long lines and frequent bread shortages.29 On July 4, 1946, for example, the Stavropol’ Party Committee reported that the city was experiencing breakdowns in bread sales; available bread was frequently of a poor quality.30 Sverdlovsk oblast continued to experience problems; in July, all of the oblast’s urban centers, with the exception of Alapaevsk, Berezovsk, and Vyshniaia Tyshma, experienced breakdowns in the sale of bread at commercial stores.31 Some Party officials turned to Moscow for help, but pleas for help hardly guaranteed an improvement in the situation. On March 31, 1946, Chairman


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of the Orel Oblast Executive Committee Plekhanov and Secretary of the Oblast Party Committee Markov reported to Malenkov that the Ministry of Procurements had failed to deliver wheat flour from Saratov and Stalingrad oblasts. The absence of flour led to stoppages in the production of some baked goods and macaroni, the commercial sale of flour, and deliveries to children’s homes and hospitals. Since the shipment for April was earmarked for the end of the month, Orel would be without flour for all of April and for the May holidays. Despite Plekhanov and Markov’s request that the deliveries be made in the coming days, the shipments were not planned until the last ten days of April.32 The overall picture of the bread distribution network leads one to support the conclusion made by the Voronezh Oblast Party Committee in June 1946: trade organizations were far from ready for the cancellation of rationing, which was to occur at the end of 1946 and was to shift the full burden of provisioning to commercial stores. Voronezh officials pointed out that the termination of rationing would require the oblast to more than triple its production. Citizens in Novokhopersk, Lipetsk, Rossosh, and Kalach continued to receive bread irregularly, and the existing bread factories had failed to reach their full production capacity.33 Figure 3.1 indicates the towns and cities where stoppages in bread distribution occurred during the last quarter of 1945 and first quarter of 1946 according to the Party’s svodki. The svodki cannot necessarily be considered exhaustive in their documentation of this phenomenon, nor have I included towns where long bread lines were cited, but the map nonetheless highlights that the system of distribution was faltering mightily prior to the 1946 drought and ensuing famine. A geographic analysis reveals that, although breakdowns in bread distribution extended south and east from the European part of the USSR, they were concentrated in areas occupied by the Germans during World War II, allowing us to make at least a tentative connection between war devastation and these problems. The presence of bread shortages in areas that depended on grain imports from other oblasts (such as the Belorussian SSR and Velikie Luki oblast) can in part be explained by transport difficulties, but the pervasiveness of similar problems in grain-producing areas (Ukraine, Voronezh, Orel, Saratov) suggests the prevalence of other factors, particularly the limited capacity of mills and bakeries. As a result of shortages, many people in towns and cities struggled to make ends meet. While lower commercial prices may have somewhat eased the burden, delays in the payment of salaries served as an obstacle to proper consumption for urban dwellers. At the beginning of 1946, the Central Committee received reports of significant breakdowns in salary payments at many places of employment in Penza, Kalinin, Kostroma, Kursk, Vladimir,


X

X X XX X X X XX X X X X X X X X X XX XX X XX X XX X X XX X X X X X XX

Bread distribution breakdowns in towns and cities, late 1945–early 1946

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Figure 3.1

Bread distribution breakdowns in towns and cities, late 1945—early 1946

Source: Compiled by the author from RGASPI documents cited in this chapter.


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Cheliabinsk, Orel, Saratov, and Chkalov oblasts, Stavropol’, Khabarovsk, and Altai krais, and Uzbek and Estonian republics.34 The Novocherkassk City Party Committee reported on April 16, 1946, that, at a series of factories, workers were receiving their earnings with great delays.35 At the end of 1945, many factory workers in Penza had not received their full salary and, at two factories, none of the workers had been paid for September, October, and November. The city government had also failed to fully compensate school, hospital, and theater workers.36 In Stavropol’, workers at a sewing factory labored without monetary compensation for the last four months of 1945 and other factories similarly failed to pay their employees.37 According to some oblast-level Party officials, a shortage of currency constituted one of the primary reasons for these breakdowns.38 Horrid work and living conditions further taxed the inhabitants of towns and cities. The dormitory of a factory in Sverdlovsk had no drinking water and nowhere to prepare food, forcing workers to boil potatoes at their workbenches (v tsekhakh na proizvodstve).39 At the dormitory of the pedagogical institute in Kazan’, students had to buy their own firewood at markets to be able to prepare meals.40 Horrid work conditions led to mass flight from some factories. The situation was especially severe in the city of Karaganda. Thirty thousand workers fled the city during an unspecified period of time because, according to their own admission, officials failed to create tolerable living conditions.41 Party representatives recognized that the hardships of postwar life had driven some to despair and even to suicide, but they tended to blame these problems on the heartlessness of local officials rather than the policies of the central government.42 In February 1946, a war invalid in Vladimir-Volynsk, Volyn’ oblast, Ukraine, committed suicide after his complaints to local Party officials about poor living conditions and lack of food fell on deaf ears.43 On July 8, 1946, a worker at the Andreev factory in the city of Taganrog, Rostov oblast, committed suicide after having been left without a ration card. But he was only one of several who, in the words of the Rostov Oblast Party Committee, found themselves “in a difficult situation for a prolonged period of time.”44 While these tragedies may have stemmed in part from the callousness of factory chairmen and local Party representatives, the central government would soon legislate and encourage pitilessness through its cruel ration cutbacks, leading to much more suffering. Reports of the Ministry of State Trade on the dispensation of provisions to individual professions and social groups corroborate the evidence in the Communist Party’s svodki, similarly suggesting breakdowns in distribution and pointing to their systemic nature. On July 8, 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the “Increase in

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government assistance to pregnant women, women with many children, and single women, and the intensification of the defense of motherhood and childhood, and the establishment of the prestigious calling of ‘Mother Heroine’ and the introduction of the order of ‘Motherhood Glory’ and the medal ‘Medal of Motherhood’.” One of the purposes of the given decree was to provide women with much-needed supplementary provisions for the purpose of proper nutrition. These measures were also intended to encourage women to have more children, for this would help make up for the demographic crisis resulting from wartime mortality. Yet, in many cities, trade organizations neglected to keep track of women who had received awards and medals and the actual dispensation of goods frequently fell short of state obligations.45 Owing to the postwar shortage of farm animals, trade organizations failed to provide sufficient milk and other dairy products for pregnant and nursing women. In Kaluga oblast, trade organizations were unable to hand out supplementary milk and butter to nursing and pregnant women during the last quarter of 1945 and first quarter of 1946. Shortages of these items led to long lines, sometimes of up to 400 people, on a daily basis.46 The Ministry of Trade regularly set plans that fell short of actual need: the plan called for 3,900 women and 4,000 women in the second and third quarters of 1945, respectively, when the contingents of nursing and pregnant women were 4,400 and 4,500.47 Owing to the absence or shortage of certain items, stores often used substitutes. In Smolensk oblast, one store distributed fish and egg powder instead of milk.48 In Kaluga oblast, stores issued cottage cheese, sourdough noodles, animal fat, vegetable oil, and poor-quality flour instead of milk.49 In Kurgan oblast, trade organizations failed to issue 864 kilograms of fats and 5,919 liters of milk owed to women. In Sverdlovsk oblast, stores almost completely failed to hand out milk until June 1946. In Cheliabinsk, stores fell 55,000 liters behind in handing out milk and often used substitutes, such as sour cream. In Shatura, Moscow oblast, no milk was handed out to women in the early months of 1946.50 In short, problems with distribution, stemming largely from the limitations of the production and trade network, preceded the failed harvest of 1946. Even before the famine, many people had to scrape to get by and hardly had a chance to recover their health after the war when the drought struck.51 While the government cited the drought as the cause of the prolongation of rationing until the end of 1947, it is unlikely that the country would have been ready for this move even in the absence of drought. In this sense, the drought gave the government a handy excuse to break its promise to cancel rationing at the end of 1946. But the state’s preparation for the termination of rationing at the end of 1947, in the midst of drought and a poor harvest, spelled disaster for Soviet citizens, as it required the accumulation of


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substantial commercial grain stocks. The people would have to suffer through 1946 and 1947 in order to be able to reap the benefits of the end of rationing in 1948. A prolongation of rationing beyond the end of 1947 would likely have spared many lives. But such a decision would have been a missed chance at scoring a propaganda victory abroad. The USSR would not have been able to boast of an early cancellation of rationing. Government Rationing Decrees: The View from Moscow The direct consequences of the drought and food shortages, apart from the “regular” difficulties experienced on an everyday basis after the war, came to be felt in September 1946. In August 1946, citing severe drought in much of the European part of the country, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR announced the extension of rationing until 1947.52 According to Soviet Commissar and subsequently Minister of Trade A.V. Liubimov (1939– 48), a decrease in the state’s food reserves “necessitated the establishment of strict order and serious economy in the expenditure of provisions—especially bread.”53 The government subsequently released a series of decrees in an effort to reduce consumption. The first decree, which was announced in Pravda and took effect on September 16, 1946, raised the ration prices on basic food items, while decreasing commercial prices. The decree also called for a modest raise in salary for low-wage workers.54 Aside from curtailing consumption, this reform would bring ration prices closer to commercial prices. Prior to the decree, the commercial prices of various food staples were ten or more times higher than ration prices.55 Rations were theoretically a guaranteed commodity that citizens obtained in exchange for currency but at cheap prices; additional products had to be purchased at the higher commercial prices. For ordinary citizens, however, the reduction in commercial prices meant little, since those remained out of reach on their humble salaries, even with the wage increase. In short, for the average worker, the decree essentially meant that he or she would have to pay more than three times as much for bread.56 Even in Moscow, the government’s unpopular changes placed many workers in dire straits. In early September, ominous news of impending price reform leaked to the public. Rumors of rising bread prices elicited concern and widespread worries among workers, especially those with many children and particularly low-paying jobs, as well as women who had lost their husbands during the war. One factory worker complained of sleepless nights, wondering how she would feed three children on 150 rubles a month. Others predicted that the changes would harm children’s health. One worker cited

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the contradiction between the state’s pronatal policies and the starving of children. Rumors in numerous factories that “Comrade Stalin” forbade the Ministry of Trade to increase prices caused some to hope in vain that things would not change for the worse.57 This sentiment reflected a belief, indeed a myth, that Stalin was unaware of the abuses and machinations of his subordinates. If he were to be informed of the true state of things, he would help the people.58 One war widow supposed that her husband would not have fought for his homeland had he known what the postwar years would bring, while another said that, faced with the prospect of having no bread for her children, she had no other escape but to hang herself. Some rank-and-file workers expressed outrage that their superiors and bureaucrats at various ministries fared much better than they.59 People tended to worry about their children’s welfare. While some reacted with anger and defiance, others responded with despair and disbelief. A factory worker in Moskvorech’e raion lamented: “I’m the lone worker in a family of nine. I have but two options left: either to suffocate three or four of my children or else watch them die of starvation.” An assembly worker in Kuibyshev raion remarked that the changes caught people off guard and that he could not fathom how he could continue to feed his children.60 Displeasure with the September 16 measure appears to have been widespread and was acknowledged to be such by officials.61 But the government called for meetings of factory workers to clarify the purpose of the measures and explain why they were necessary and even beneficial for the working population. Between September 17 and 20, 3,570 meetings were held at factories and other workplaces in the city of Moscow and in Moscow oblast. These efforts to inform and appease the population appear to have been at least moderately successful. Many workers thanked organizers for assembling them and answering their questions.62 Officials documented positive feedback from workers. A Moscow metalworker expressed the belief that “the decree of the Council of Ministers [was] aimed at achieving . . . concrete improvements in the lives of the workers.”63 But expressions of support for the government measures did not necessarily preclude criticism of existing conditions or suggestions for improvements. Some workers asked for an opportunity to work more so that they might make extra money, which would better allow them to make ends meet.64 On October 1, the government issued Decree No. 380 on the conservation of bread, heaping yet more hardships on a careworn populace.65 The decree, which took effect on October 1, 1946, reduced by 70 percent the amount of bread designated for consumption in the countryside, but it also removed all unemployed adult dependents in cities and working neighborhoods from rationing and discontinued supplementary bread, flour, and grain rations. All


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dependents were to receive 250 grams of bread a day instead of 300 grams, and children’s rations were reduced by 25 percent, from 400 to 300 grams. The decree also called for a cutback in the sale of bread and grain feed, leading to the closure of many commercial stores.66 The implementation of this decree elicited a tangible and immediate backlash from the population of Moscow. At an October 8, 1946, meeting of Moscow trade workers, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Professional Union of Government Trade (TsK Profsoiuza Gostorgovli) Gubel’man admitted that the decrees had triggered many complaints from Muscovites and that the trade representatives’ unskillful handling of questions from the populace was leading to “politically unhealthy attitudes.”67 Disgruntled Muscovites directed complaints to various government offices, including the Supreme Soviet.68 In one Moscow raion, people shattered the windows of the ration card bureau; in another, the door of an office was smashed.69 Some Bolsheviks, who had joined the Party between 1918 and 1920, having lost their rationing privileges, filed complaints.70 The ration cuts also caused an influx of village dwellers into the cities in search of bread and justice. On October 8, 1946, shortly after the ration reforms, a worker of the Moscow Oblast Ration Card Bureau described the situation: We have very many complaints. If you come in during the day, you will see an invasion of people. Everyone comes and cries, asking to be given [ration] cards. When we decided to do a review, it turned out that 95 percent of the people were from the village. We have a village contingent of 500,000, but for October, only 80,000, and I think that these facts speak for themselves.71

At the end of the meeting, Gubel’man warned: “We still have some unhappy people; they can stage all kinds of provocations.”72 After the October 1 reform, comments made by Muscovites were sometimes directed explicitly against the government, revealing a great deal of frustration. On October 2, officials who monitored popular reactions noted “blunt expressions of dissatisfaction in meetings and private conversations.”73 Even engineers and higher-level workers began to grumble. A customs controller exclaimed: “We’re being treated like the vanquished. We’ve been stifled by direct and indirect taxes. It’s becoming impossible to live.” An assembly worker blamed the collective farm system: “We should seek salvation in private land ownership rather than in the kolkhoz system. Otherwise, the people of our country will never overcome their material hardships.”74 Workers tended to focus directly on their own predicament and rarely mentioned the countryside, but this example buttresses the argument that collective farms were exceedingly unpopular among the people.75

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Rank-and-file workers continued to worry about the welfare of their children, and officials recognized that this sentiment was common. A plant worker complained: “They say that Soviet power is of the people, but what has it given the people? It’s even placed children on a starvation ration.” A calibration specialist at an auto plant said that he was almost ready to have his children walk the streets. A locksmith complained that he could not afford a cafeteria lunch and described the heart-wrenching scene as he returned home from work: “I come home and [my two children] ask: ‘Father, give us some bread,’—but where am I supposed to get bread? They cry, and I cry as I look at them.”76 Worries about the fate of children proved to be justified. The Soviet Red Cross later acknowledged high rates of child mortality in cities with large populations in 1946–47.77 Some Moscow trade workers, far from heartless automatons, seemed taken aback by the measures, considering them sudden and unfair to certain people. The state gave the Ministry of Trade no advanced notice of the measures, leading to mass disorganization, confusion, and often disbelief, especially among the rank and file. Some trade officials received word in the changes by phone on the very day that the new rations norms were to be implemented.78 Furthermore, in a matter of a few days, between September 27 and October 1, government trade officials had to reregister all dependents and confiscate ration cards from those who had already received them but no longer qualified for rations under the new regulations.79 In their speeches, some trade workers described the plight of citizens who, in their opinion, needed continued rationing and were denied that unfairly. One worker of the Moscow Oblast Card Bureau commented: “If you look carefully, it would seem that the village should get [ration cards].”80 The director of the Moscow store Bakalei argued that, when possible, trade workers must try to help people and called the ingrained reluctance to assist people, or essentially bend the rules to help those in need, “a great evil.”81 Another trade worker expressed disbelief that children of workers living beyond the city limits would no longer receive rations. Gubel’man, himself apparently unclear on the specifics of the decree, erroneously responded that the entire rural population was being taken off of rationing, after which the trade worker repeated his question. His request for more information met with silence, as was often the case when workers expressed incredulity at this particular meeting.82 In order to persuade workers to fall in line and carry out the decree, Chairman Gubel’man made clear, in an ominous tone, that they might be held responsible for negative popular attitudes toward the Soviet government: You remember that there were such moments in the 30s, when we were transitioning from one system to another. But we should not forget that at that


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time we were in a better position than now. Now we are susceptible to a blow, because we did not pass the test, because we did not mobilize people and carry out this decision in a Soviet manner. And perhaps we, to some extent, contributed to the unhealthy attitudes of the Soviet people . . . this phenomenon is already taking on mass, not individual, proportions, influencing a fairly large stratum of people, and that is exactly why this can cause a blow against the entire trade system.83

“Moments in the 30s” referred to the previous Soviet rationing period (1928– 35) and its problematic termination, but it would also have conjured up images of the widespread bloody purges of 1937–38.84 These words reveal the seriousness of the political situation as well as the use of fear as a means of motivating trade officials to swiftly carry out sweeping government directives. Furthermore, one can see how fear of reprisals from the state would cause trade officials to err on the side of caution and, when in doubt, refuse to issue rations. This phenomenon helps explain, in part, the widespread failure of officials to hand out bread and other provisions to teachers, medical providers, and other workers in the countryside who were supposed to continue receiving rations; one can only guess as to whether this effect was intended by the powers that be.85 Other superiors also threatened their subordinates. One administrator told a group of Moscow trade workers, who were responsible for distributing cards according to the dictates of the state, that “for every improperly issued card [they] would answer with [their] heads.”86 The main administrator of the city’s department of trade, or Gortorgotdel, according to Gubel’man, had already been removed because of long bread lines.87 The workers, having sinned against the government, could also be held accountable. Meanwhile, the authors of the decree remained beyond judgment. The trade workers’ job, as articulated by Gubel’man, was twofold: to prevent long bread lines and to properly answer the questions of citizens. The closing down of 40 commercial bread stores in Moscow made the first task formidable indeed.88 The decision to cut back the number of stores led to enormous mobs of disgruntled Muscovites fighting to get to the front of lines in order to be able to purchase bread.89 In addressing the questions of the public, workers were to explain that the meager harvest and inadequate provisions necessitated the government cutbacks in rationing. Furthermore, despite a shortage of work hands, many people chose not to work, according to Gubel’man, but continued to receive benefits from the state. The official line declared that there was no need to feed people who had no desire to work.90 Based on the perceived injustice of the measures among the trade workers themselves, one can assume that many were disingenuous

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in explaining the causes of the ration reductions to their crying and begging fellow citizens. They were placed in the unenviable position of either acting against their conscience or suffering the ominous consequences of disobeying the government. This decree was the first step in the launching of an enormous campaign, with all efforts and energy directed toward the goal of conserving bread. On October 18, 1946, the Ministry of Trade of the USSR issued a decree that called for additional measures for the conservation of bread, further cutting the amount of bread and cereals sold in commercial stores. The decree also called for an increase in the use of additives: up to 40 percent corn, barley, or oat flour could be used everywhere except Moscow and Leningrad, where up to 20 percent could be used. The Ministry of Trade also repeated an earlier call for the establishment of strict order in the distribution of ration cards for bread and cereal grains as part of a crackdown on theft and the illegal issuance of cards and food.91 On October 26, 1946, by order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Ministry of Trade instituted new norms for the natural loss (estestvennaia ubyl’ ) of bread during the baking and distribution process. Starting on November 1, workers in 500 stores in the RSFSR, 70 stores in Ukraine, and 30 stores in Belorussia were to cut losses of bread by 50 percent.92 Every crumb and every ounce of bread had to be treated with such care as to avoid any waste at all in the baking and distribution process. M. Pleshchitser, head of the administration of local trade organizations in Krasnodar krai, came up with logistics for the plan, which called for using additives to increase the output of bread by 3 percent and the reduction of natural loss by 50 percent during the distribution process.93 The fulfillment of this goal required frugal use of flour, the establishment of rigorous control over the production process, strictly abiding by established delivery plans, precision in the employment of the technological process, the repair of all scales, the use of sharp knives, care not to deform the bread when placing it on the shelves, and a few other similar and often vague instructions. These measures, which had been successfully tested in Krasnodar krai, were designed to save the country 100,000 tons of bread before the new harvest. Pleshchitser proposed this plan to Stalin in a telegram dated October 6, 1946, and on October 25, the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved it and instructed the Ministry of Food Industry (Ministerstvo Pishchevoi Promyshlennosti) to bring it to fruition.94 The Ministry of Trade monitored natural loss in stores in Moscow and Leningrad and a mid-November 1946 report revealed that in more than half the cases the measures had produced the desired effect.95 On October 29, 1946, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Trade of the RSFSR launched a socialist competition for


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the maximum conservation of bread.96 Officials encouraged new inventions that would help cut the natural loss of bread. While the inventiveness of some workers suggests a degree of enthusiasm for the bread conservation campaign,97 the state continued to use fear to ensure the implementation of government orders. An October 26, 1946, directive forbade the distribution of any provisions without cards or over the limits set by the Ministry of Trade. The Council of Ministers of the USSR publicly scolded Deputy Minister of Trade M.M. Denisov for allowing the allotment of food without cards and threatened him with a harsh penalty in the event of a repeat offense. The decree also instructed that trade organization officials who either ordered or carried out the distribution of food without ration cards be removed from their positions and tried as criminals.98 In the same vein, on November 7, 1946, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ministry of Trade decreed that all officials who provided inaccurate and incomplete reports on the sale of bread be tried before the courts. Deputy Minister of Trade of the Bashkir ASSR Zakharova was the first victim of this policy and used as an example, so that other officials understand what might happen to them if they breach the decree.99 The Ministry of Trade then cancelled a whole series of decrees that had been issued between 1942 and 1946 allowing the use of provisions for various conferences, meetings, and supplementary rations for a vast array of workers, quite literally repealing concessions that had been made to society during and after the war.100 But despite the continued hardships and attempts by the Soviet government to force people to fall in line, the Moscow society was not powerless to express its displeasure. In preparing for the celebration of the 29th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, the government came upon numerous stumbling blocks. Officials noted that “among certain workers and employees, including technical engineers and technical workers and those with many children, there are unhealthy moods, which are associated with shortages of food, clothing, shoes, and other basic items, as well as with the replacement and revocation of ration cards.”101 Numerous workers claimed that popular disaffection with the state had forced officials to handpick workers for the November 7 parade, an event that had traditionally been open to all Muscovites. One worker even asserted that the government feared an uprising of hungry workers at Red Square.102 Interestingly, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow picked up on this buzz as well. On November 5, 1946, U.S. chargé d’affaires Elbridge Durbrow wrote that, according to rumor, the upcoming “October Revolution Day parade” would not be a mass event as usual and would be limited to trusted Party officials, “to preclude the possibility of the happy workers suddenly setting up a cry for bread while marching through the Red Square under the eyes of their rulers.”103 These claims may not have been

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entirely unfounded, as it appears that certain workers were indeed designated to attend. Furthermore, several Party organization representatives avoided encouraging workers to go to the November 7 celebration for fear of their reaction to such a request. At a raion Party committee meeting, two officials said: “It’s a tough time. People are angry. We don’t want to bother them about attending the demonstration.”104 While one can only speculate as to the true reason for Stalin’s failure to be present at the November 7 parade—and it may have been caused by the fear that people might stage some kind of protest— the leader’s absence led to wild gossip and suppositions that his health was failing.105 In short, the ration reforms met with a fair degree of disaffection from a beleaguered populace and this was more than just a passing phenomenon. Displeasure manifested itself in different ways and persisted beyond the end of 1946, well into 1947, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter. Those who carried out the state’s policies did not always understand or support government decisions. Higher-ups sought to dampen any noncompliance through a combination of explanation, or propaganda, and fear. The official line proposed that the 1946 drought had necessitated cutbacks in consumption and, at the same time, sought to stress the benefits of the changes. While many people appeared supportive, or at least calm, many others expressed their frustration. Conclusion In sum, bread shortages and problems with the distribution of provisions to the population preceded the drought and crop failure of 1946. Two particularly intense breakdowns in bread distribution occurred in December 1945–January 1946 and March–April 1946, but these took place against the background of ongoing complications. After a less-than-stellar harvest in 1945, the state failed to establish regular provisioning of rations, and the commercial sale of bread and other products faltered mightily. The state blamed the problem on widespread waste and theft. While both of these factors likely played a role, the disrepair and shortage of mills, bread factories, bakeries, and stores appears to have been the primary cause. These problems were, in part, understandable, because the war had disrupted the economy and, more specifically, destroyed much of the network necessary for the unimpeded production and distribution of bread. The absence of a reliable source of food placed the people in an exceedingly precarious position when food shortages became intense. In Moscow, the state’s bread conservation campaign led to a great deal of disaffection among the working class: some accepted the official line on the causes of


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the continuing hardships, but many others expressed despair, frustration, and a legitimate fear for the livelihood of their children. The city’s officials overheard some of the grumbling in private conversations and documented troubling comments and questions at factory meetings and other gatherings. Muscovites also made use of the ballot box and elections to voice their dissatisfaction with postwar difficulties, as will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. In short, in 1946–47, the Stalinist state was far from immune to criticism and subtle but significant challenges to its legitimacy, even in the capital. Perhaps most notably, anger over the ration reforms forced the state to alter plans for the November 7 parade and even made officials balk at the prospect of urging hungry and disgruntled workers to attend. Some historians have been hesitant to accept the official reasons for the September 1946 price and ration reforms. Elena Zubkova writes that, when the decree on ration price increases was publicized on September 16, it said nothing of the drought and poor harvest, and “the increase in prices was itself presented as a measure carried out for the purpose of preparing for cancellation of the rationing system in 1947.”106 But it appears that, as Julie Hessler has suggested, laying the groundwork for the transition from rationing to the sale of goods at commercial prices was indeed one of the main considerations in issuing the September 16 decree.107 The government had to build up sufficient stocks to be able to effect the change to the commercial sale of bread. The measure helped slow down grain consumption by making bread less accessible for those on rationing; it also helped the state inch toward the termination of rationing by bringing down commercial prices. Furthermore, Stalin himself failed to fully realize the extent of the poor harvest until after the September 16 reform and had not resolved to take any major actions until a September 23 letter from Minister of Procurements Dvinskii predicting a major shortfall in grain collection.108 In other words, the September 27, 1946, decree calling for a 30 percent cut in rationing expenditures and a 70 percent decrease in grain going toward feeding the countryside was the major reform that addressed the drought and resulting agricultural problems.109 As Dvinskii pointed out to Stalin, the agricultural shortfall in the European part of the USSR required that grain be brought from afar. Aside from curtailing consumption, the measures advised by Dvinskii would lighten the burden on the system of transport and bread distribution, allowing for the unhindered delivery of bread to the country’s all-important industrial centers.110 While the cutbacks helped the state move toward its goal—the full cancellation of rationing—Stalin’s hesitance to employ these drastic measures implies what I have already suggested in Chapter 2: these measures forced the state to sacrifice some of its lesser priorities. One of the

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silver linings for the Soviet leadership was that it could attribute the postponement of the much-awaited cancellation of rationing to the drought. The widespread problems with the production and distribution of food items, particularly bread, following the harvest of 1945 suggests that the state would not have likely been able to achieve the cancellation of rationing at the end of 1946, even had the crop been considerably better. The evidence in this chapter supports Amartya Sen’s argument that, even when there is an adequate food supply, dearth and hunger can persist due to economic factors and inequitable distribution.111 The depletion of government grain supplies in 1945 and early 1946, regardless of shortages and privations among the masses, highlights that food was not distributed evenly among the population. At the same time, the failure of the Soviet people to receive what they legally deserved confirms the need to expand Sen’s entitlement thesis to take into consideration breakdowns in the implementation of laws, as well as extralegal means of obtaining food.112 As Zubkova notes, that one must steal to survive was a common notion after the war.113 In the case of the Soviet postwar famine, it cannot be said that the law stood “between food availability and food entitlement,” unless, under the concept of “law,” we consider the systematic breakdown in the distribution of rations and sale of bread to the population, as well as the ability to obtain food illegally.114 Aside from breakdowns, trade workers, erring on the side of caution, sometimes refused to issue provisions to those who should have received them. In other cases, confusion and a poor grasp of decrees led to the same result. Yet there were also those who were not supposed to receive rations under the law but managed to procure them nonetheless; furthermore, theft and the appropriation of goods by local officials were widespread. While a detailed analysis of the postwar campaign to root out theft is beyond the scope of this discussion, it is clear that people, especially officials, abused their power to appropriate grain and other goods. The state exaggerated this phenomenon and blamed postwar problems in the collective farms on the abuses of collective farm chairmen and raion-level officials. The Ministry of State Control carried out a revision in July-August 1946 that revealed extensive theft and other abuses, primarily by local officials. It appears that the resulting report served as the primary impetus for the September decree on the reestablishment of democracy on collective farms.115 The evidence presented here also suggests that the Soviet government acted only when shortages began to impinge, in a very direct sense, on the implementation of its policies. The state then launched a sweeping campaign to conserve bread at any cost, often using fear to force lower-level officials to carry out callous measures. The purges of the 1930s served the Soviet government well, even after World War II. At least publicly, the authorities assumed


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that shortages were caused by theft, dishonesty, and breaches of government decrees. In this sense, the government campaign to weed out corruption and pilfering in the trade network was analogous to the official policy in the villages, where almost all problems could be reduced to breaches of the collective farm statute. While this point can certainly be overstated, the prominence of the “food question” in the decrees of the central government points to the importance of this factor in shaping the political decisions of the Soviet leaders in the early postwar period. Would an abundance of grain in government storehouses have translated into less aggressive policies toward society? My findings imply that it might have, but any answer is necessarily speculative. In any case, some of the state’s policies—most notably the scaling back of rationing and ambitious grain procurement campaign—resulted from the desire to build up grain stocks and end rationing in the context of a tremendous harvest failure. This official agenda required control or even domination of society, because state prerogatives conflicted with the needs of the people. This divergence of official and popular interests constitutes the main focus of the next chapter.


CHAPTER 4

None Dare Call It Resistance? Coping, Opposition, and the Soviet State

No shepherd, real or spiritual, ever watched his flock with more solicitous, a more jealous eye than that with which the Kremlin stands guard over the souls of its human charges. George F. Kennan, 19671 Lately . . . hostile elements have been spearheading sabotage efforts, making use of produce shortages. In the city of Irkutsk, on December 29, 1946, an antiSoviet flier was discovered in a number of movie theaters and stores. It was printed with a specially prepared stamp depicting a New Year’s tree with the caption: “Long live a new year of hunger and new promises by the power of the Soviets!” Party svodka, January 19472

I

n all societies and cultures, famines and food shortages elicit a whole spectrum of popular responses. In their early stages, famines also tend to increase grievances against the existing political order, since hungry and disgruntled citizens are more likely to take issue with government policies and voice their dissatisfaction. But as famine progresses and hunger takes its toll on the body, resistance tends to wane, as people reserve their use of energy to essential tasks aimed at survival.3 For this reason, famines can be politically expedient. In 1921–22, the Bolsheviks made use of the famine to carry out unpopular antireligious measures and to essentially subordinate the peasantry.4 In 1932–33, the famine broke down resistance to collectivization, allowing for increased control and exploitation of the peasantry by the state.5

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But the idea of “resistance” as a frame of scholarly inquiry has stimulated contentious debate among historians. According to Anna Krylova, in adopting resistance as a paradigm, Western scholars have created a Stalinist man that “seems to embody and encode contemporary agendas, anxieties, and moral imperatives.”6 In the process, they have created a unified and static liberal subject removed from Soviet space and time. Krylova asserts that the liberalism of the Soviet individual is essentially a construct that must be acknowledged as such and deconstructed in order to achieve historical accuracy. Chipping further away at the idea of a liberal subject, Jochen Hellbeck views individual dissent within the framework of the “Soviet Revolution” rather than “in distinction to the ruling order.” He suggests that the cost of demonstrating open dissent was too great: it could lead to “selfmarginalization and atomization” for the individual. On the basis of a handful of diaries, Hellbeck asserts that people with grievances against the system sought to suppress them and longed “to overcome their painful separation from the collective body of the Soviet people.”7 In short, even those with dissenting thoughts were affected by the system, sometimes to the extent that they perceived themselves as bourgeois or dangerous to the collective. The nature of the available sources further complicates matters. Soviet historians have widely employed svodki, or official (Party or state) summaries of popular moods, as a window into society, often in order to analyze resistance to the Soviet government.8 While these documents, which were classified until the fall of communism, provide a wealth of information on Soviet society, some historians have claimed that the uncritical use of svodki has exaggerated the level of actual resistance in the 1930s.9 Mark Tauger applies the same criticism to OGPU reports, which he suggests exaggerate the extent of resistance because Soviet authorities uncovered the most unfavorable phenomena in society. Generalization from these documents, he insists, underestimates the degree to which people had adapted to the Soviet system.10 Though couched in novel terms, this scholarly discussion is hardly new. In 1952, a polemic in the journal Soviet Studies between A. Nove and R. Schlesinger on the topic of the collective farm system covered much of the same ground. While the two scholars argued about the extent of material benefits of the kolkhoz order for Soviet peasants, the dispute essentially came down to the question of coercion: How coercive was the collective farm system? This argument is essentially an inverse image of today’s debate, which asks not how coercive the Soviet system was but how coercive the people considered it to be (and how they reacted to it). Tauger, a critic of the resistance paradigm, points out that “harvests were larger in the years after natural disasters and crop failures (1933, 1935, 1937), indicating that many peasants

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worked under very difficult conditions, even famine, to produce more and overcome the crises.”11 But in 1952, Nove correctly pointed out that it is possible to feel oneself overworked or underpaid, and still work hard in order to earn enough to keep one’s family fed and clad. It does not follow that the kolkhoznik is satisfied with the kolkhoz system, or that he would not change it if the coercive power of the state did not prevent him from doing so.12 (emphasis in original)

Furthermore, agricultural recovery in years after natural disasters can be traced in large part to the unlikelihood of droughts in successive years and extraordinary measures taken by the authorities to avert repeated agricultural shortfall.13 In short, the productivity of the peasantry does not necessarily imply the absence or limited nature of resistance to the Soviet political order. Nor are resistance and adaptation mutually exclusive. A peasant might work hard within the collective farm system and yet oppose the established order in other ways. Lynne Viola’s notion, echoed by Tauger, that people did not only resist is intuitive: popular reactions to the Soviet experience constitute an entire spectrum of behaviors and attitudes.14 Furthermore, since people themselves are not static entities, popular attitudes toward Soviet power unquestionably changed both on the mass and individual level. For this reason, Krylova’s proposal of “an unsettled Stalinist subject in motion” offers a logical solution, or part of it, to the problem of employing “resistance” in proper historical context.15 On the basis of the findings in this chapter, one can add that alterations in official policies, which were shaped by popular attitudes during World War II, redefined people’s expectations vis-à-vis the state and their perceptions of it. In other words, constant shifts in popular moods were matched by changes in government policies; therefore, the question of what constitutes resistance and what people were resisting is far from always clear. Yet the category of resistance cannot be discarded altogether, for as Nove wrote in 1952, “The kolkhoz system was born of coercion.”16 In fact, in light of new research, we can take his statement one step further: Bolshevik power was born of coercion.17 Resistance by certain social elements began the day that the Bolsheviks took power and continued until communism fell. The peasants, considered backward by Marxism-Leninism, were particularly inconvenient for the Bolsheviks and, while the Soviet leadership accepted a temporary smychka, or union, between workers and peasants in the 1920s, this limited cooperation was accepted out of necessity. The Communist Party perceived the peasant as a relic of the past and sought to transform peasants, traditional by nature, into agricultural and later proper industrial proletarians.

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For this reason, the Party perceived the peasant as resistant to its schemes. Yet the term “resistance” needs to be defined, different cases of resistance need to be placed in specific context, and the phenomenon should not be used to the exclusion of other popular reactions, such as adaptation and even active support for Soviet policies. Following these guidelines, I seek as much as possible to interpret various popular phenomena in 1946–47 in their concrete context. The best historians can ever do is to weigh carefully various pieces of evidence and avoid overly ambitious generalizations. In this chapter, I rely primarily on svodki authored by the Information Sector of the Organizational–Instructional Division of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.18 Local officials of the sector directed information to the center, where the director of the all-union agency compiled the reports for use by high-ranking Party officials.19 Reports covered a broad range of topics, including the progress of sowing and harvesting campaigns, the living conditions of workers, delays in the payment of workers, corruption among local Party officials, and various social trends. When using svodki, a few characteristics of these sources need to be kept in mind. First, since svodki were authored by the Party, they naturally address issues that it considered worthy of attention. Therefore, aside from documenting events in Soviet society, svodki help uncover Party priorities and prerogatives. Second, while these documents describe a broad spectrum of social phenomena across the wide expanse of the USSR, there exists a temporal bias. The only time people spoke for themselves, at least to some degree, was in the one to two months leading up to the February elections, when political agitators descended upon the locales in order to extol the virtues of the Party. In 1946, the state mobilized the people for elections (a ritual intended to confirm the legitimacy of the ruling elite) to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In February of the following year, citizens went to the polls to “vote for” delegates to the Supreme Soviets of the country’s republics. For this reason, we have more direct information on popular attitudes for the months of December through February than for other times of the year, when agitators came into direct contact with the people. But with these caveats in mind, svodki provide an extremely valuable resource in tracing social phenomena. The Party’s zeal for control and distrust of society translated to detailed information that cannot be found in any other sources. Here, I argue that in a highly regimented society such as the USSR, there is often a fine line between coping and protest; the fight for survival can often lead to actions that can be interpreted by authorities as dangerous or even seditious. The Soviet government perceived some forms of coping as threatening while paying little attention to others. To complicate the situation, the official definition of acceptable behavior was shifting after the war and subject


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to local variations. In general, however, the state chose to interpret popular behavior aimed at survival in the harsh realities of postwar life as politically motivated and thus perceived the masses, particularly the peasantry, as hostile. This approach shifted the blame for postwar problems from the state to the peasantry, and laid the groundwork for a new attack on the “kulaks” in 1948. The Famine and Religious Revival Wartime changes in Soviet policy aimed at mobilizing the masses for the war effort blurred the lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, thereby playing an enormous role in shaping postwar society. In April 1942, Stalin urged people to be inspired not only by the image of Lenin but also by those of pre-Soviet military heroes.20 The Soviet leadership also backpedaled on its persecution of believers, reaching a modus vivendi with the three leading hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and allowing for the opening of many churches, partly to combat Nazi policies that sought to capitalize on the Communist persecution of religious groups.21 Official concessions such as these led to fantastic expectations of change after the war among some in Soviet society; many people even expected the disbanding of the collective farms, the renewal of private ownership, and genuine revival of church life.22 Stalin’s strategic wartime compromises allowed people who could not previously reconcile themselves with the Bolsheviks’ militant atheism and denigration of all things prerevolutionary to practice a new brand of Soviet patriotism. While this brand of Soviet patriotism has persisted to this day in some circles, popular hopes for change were quickly dashed by the hardships of postwar life and the reassertion of the Communist Party’s prewar ideology. At the same time, the liberalization of Soviet policies, coupled with the inability of the center to control as many aspects of life amid wartime chaos, led to the proliferation of social practices that would have been condemned, and highly risky if not impossible, in earlier years. One of the most glaring examples of this phenomenon was the increase in religious observance, which was acceptable only within the narrow confines determined by the state. The influence of religion on intellectuals and Party members especially concerned Party organs. In July 1945, in Rostov oblast, Party officials expressed alarm that, “the influence of the Church is beginning to hold sway over not only collective farmers but also the intelligentsia and members of the Komsomol.”23 In Ukraine, some members of the Party, among them officials of the Ministry of the Interior, began to baptize their children.24 In Belorussia, a Sovetskaia Belorussiia (Soviet Belorussia) correspondent, a deputy oblast-level judge, a plenipotentiary of the MVD, and a Komsomol raion committee secretary, among others, did the same. Some

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raion Party representatives befriended and began to associate with Catholic and Orthodox priests alike.25 In Belorussia, one official sought permission from the Party to get married in church; after the Party declined his request, he did so anyway.26 In one raion of Rostov oblast, church marriages of Komsomol members no longer seemed unusual to Party functionaries.27 Such incidences, far from isolated, were largely a product of Moscow’s wartime policy, but they nonetheless posed a major challenge to the Party’s monopoly on ideology.28 While the war served as the major catalyst of the spiritual revival,29 the intense drought in the summer of 1946 resulted in a further intensification of religious practice, especially among the peasantry. Prayers for rain became a common phenomenon in drought-stricken areas in the summer of 1946. Officials reported prayer gatherings, which were sometimes attended by hundreds of peasants, in 20 raions in Penza oblast in May and June.30 According to a Party representative, most of the participants at prayer gatherings were women between the ages of 45 and 70 years of age, who in fact belonged to the predominant demographic cohort in the villages after the war. Between one and three hundred (but sometimes substantially more) peasants participated in these activities.31 Some believers sent letters to friends and relatives in neighboring oblasts to let them know that prayers brought rain, thereby encouraging the further spread of religious observance.32 Not only could rain be seen as a reward for piety, but impiety could result in divine punishment, and the revival was not limited to the Orthodox Church. In December 1945, in Dagestan ASSR, Muslims opened a mosque and held a religious service without the permission of the authorities. The organizer of the event told worshippers that they were starving because they were not practicing their religion and celebrating their holidays.33 Rain could also be seen as a sign of God’s mercy. Russian composer Boris Sukharev described an incident in his home village of Kozlovka in Voronezh oblast. Two war widows with several children passed away during the famine. Before dying, the women managed to plant some potatoes in their gardens. In the midst of horrible drought, a little cloud appeared over the gardens of the two orphaned families. Generous rain fell on the gardens and only on them; potatoes began to sprout the next day and the orphans were saved. Sukharev describes this incident as “the only proof [he needs] that God exists.”34 Party svodki also document prayers for rain in Voronezh, Moscow, Vladimir, Kirov, and Stalingrad oblasts, and in the Mordva ASSR. In three villages of Rudnianskii raion, Stalingrad oblast, nuns led processions of as many as 400 people.35 In Vladimir oblast, the congregation of large numbers of people for prayers took on a “mass character” during the drought.36 In


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Mordva ASSR, nuns and unregistered priests led prayers for rain in “almost every raion.”37 Officials in the locales adopted different approaches in attempting to weed out religious observance and not all methods were effective. In Voronezh oblast, the Party banned such gatherings, but large numbers of believers gathered for prayers despite this prohibition. In his report for the second quarter of 1946, Comrade Gostev, a plenipotentiary of the Council on the Affairs of the ROC in Voronezh oblast, wrote: The dry weather has caused a growth in religious activity among believers of both active and inactive churches; they fervently insisted to me and to the local authorities that they be allowed to pray for rain. Despite my prohibition, believers in some raions managed to receive permission for prayers from local authorities, and these took place by wells, at cemeteries, and in the fields (Zemliansk, Pavlovsk, Nikitovka, Usman’). By the way, prayers were sometimes initiated by priests (Khlevishche, Shcherbaki of Alekseevskii raion). In some settlements, where there are no active churches, prayers were organized and carried out by former clergy and nuns.38

In Gribanovskii raion, Voronezh oblast, prayer gatherings resulted in confrontations between believers and Party officials. Representatives of the Party Raion Executive Committee attempted to arrest the organizer of a procession, leading to resistance (protivodeistvie) and “even excesses,” likely a euphemism for violence, on the part of believers.39 In Penza, oblast-level officials blamed Raion Party Committees of treating church activity as unremarkable and natural. The culprits in this case were not only tserkovniki, or clergy, who had “taken advantage of the inaction of Soviet and Party organizations and had made backward collective farmers follow them,” but also Raion Executive Committee chairmen, who had provided official sanction for prayer meetings and processions to the fields.40 In order to combat religious observance, the Oblast Party Committee sought to intensify propaganda and provided material assistance to needy peasants. The authorities believed that, by eliminating the need for bread, they could root out religious observance. Following this rationale, they provided 350 tons of bread to particularly needy peasants in the hope that their religiosity would disappear.41 This example supports earlier evidence of the damaging effects of the famine, and more generally poor living conditions, from the point of view of Communist ideology and the Soviet state. Shortages and want led to discontent and disaffection with the Soviet government, as well as practices considered backward by the Party. Considering religion to be counter-scientific in the established Bolshevik tradition, Party officials

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stressed the need for more lectures on nature and science, which would help root out religious beliefs.42 Aside from clashing with Communist ideology, religious rituals often interfered with undertakings important to the Party, such as political meetings and agricultural work. In January 1946, in Stavropol’ krai, at the Khersonka farm in Levokumskii raion, the local priest went to the houses of collective farmers on the eve of a pre-election meeting and told them to prepare for the celebration of Christmas. As a result, no one from the farm attended the pre-election meeting.43 Party officials in parts of Ukraine accused religious field brigade leaders of organizing religious services and intentionally slowing down grain collection drives. This phenomenon was documented in Verkhne-Khortitsk, Chernigov, and other raions of Zaporozh’e oblast. On August 28, the Orthodox holiday of the Dormition of the Mother of God, all 300 collective farmers failed to appear for work at the Maksim Gor’kii collective farm in Chernigovskii raion.44 The reactions of certain officials to such phenomena reinforce the conclusion made in the svodki: some Party officials came to see religious observance as natural and employed a policy of cooperation rather than combat the church. An official at a L’vov Oblast Party Committee meeting in late December 1945 suggested that polling for elections to the Supreme Soviet should end before the start of liturgy at 10 am so that church did not interfere with voting. He even suggested asking priests to start church services an hour later on the day of the elections and tell their flock to vote first and then go pray.45 In late 1946, in Lezhskii raion, Vologda oblast, pre-election meetings at two collective farms were cancelled due to religious holidays. In most of the cases documented in the svodki, religious practice was an end in itself; that is, people did not partake in prayers for rain and other rituals in order to voice their opposition to Soviet policies. Not one of the examples in the Party documents suggests that people sought to turn prayer gatherings into political protests. Instead, religion helped people cope with drought, famine, and, more generally, the harsh realities of postwar life. They sought comfort and meaning in religion and, owing to the new official status of the church, religious practice no longer had to be anti-Soviet. Even some Party officials saw no reason why religion and communism could not coexist.46 But the tension between Bolshevik teachings and Soviet wartime propaganda created an uneasy tension in the Party, and some officials expressed disbelief that the state was not cracking down on religion. But sometimes the activity of religious groups posed a more overt political threat to the Soviet state. At the 1946 Party plenum in Omsk oblast, the head of the administration of the NKGB, or People’s Commissariat of State Security, announced that there had been an intensification of activity among


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“hostile elements” leading up to the February 1946 elections to the Supreme Soviet. The director of an agitation collective at the local pedagogical institute received a booklet, apparently in the mail, entitled “Light from God: The Light of the Prophets into the Satanic Darkness of This World.” This pamphlet subverted Party propaganda, suggesting that socialism would be built by Jehovah in two thousand years, and included a hymn of the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the Urals: Brothers—let’s abandon all earthly things, Tear ourselves up from the Urals, So that sorrow no longer squeezes at our hearts, Now we shall go forward, Where the angel shall lead us . . .47

In Gaivoronskii raion, Odessa oblast, a group of molchal’niki (literally “those who do not speak”), a religious group, consisting of two hundred people refused to participate in the political process. According to Party officials, they had given an oath of silence and vowed not to take anything from the hands of those not belonging to their group. In other words, they would be unable to accept ballots to take part in the voting. At the same time, svodki documented “negative moods among sectarians” among the Ukrainian settlers from Poland.48 In the city of Kerch, Crimean ASSR, “a community of evangelical sectarians,” in the words of Party officials, consisting of 300 people, encouraged workers not to vote and told the Party officials that, aside from God, they acknowledged no higher authority.49 The limited number of such cases in the svodki prevents us from making any broad generalizations, but the fact is that the religious groups cited as voicing explicit political opposition to the Soviet government were predominantly outside of the newly recognized ROC. Part of Stalin’s calculation in granting official status to the ROC in 1943 was that the state would control church activity.50 For this reason, groups not officially recognized by the government posed more of a threat because they were more elusive for the state to control. But the statements issued by these groups also appeared to be more hostile toward the government, and this, in turn, may have stemmed from nonrecognition. One man who received particular attention in the svodki was being investigated by the NKGB. A January 1946 report complained of the failure of Party and Soviet organs to take any measures to “expose a ‘holy fool’ nicknamed Iron Ivan,” who had thus been named because he had wrapped himself in barbed wire.51 Ivan allegedly spread “provocative rumors among the population about the disbanding of collective farms, the reestablishment of private farms, war with England, and so forth.” He also commented on the upcoming

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elections: “You go ahead and vote. . . . When there are no longer any collective farms, then we’ll be able to make choices. I am not going to vote”52 (emphasis added). Most of all, this evidence reveals the tension between the Party’s ideology, and the Bolshevik policy of militant atheism, and Soviet social reality in 1946–47. Having failed to weed out religious belief, the state sought to mobilize and control it to promote official interests during the war. Religious practice became particularly evident during the 1946 drought, which brought people outside of the churches and onto the fields. Clergy of the ROC took advantage of their newfound status vis-à-vis the state in an effort to wrest compromises from local representatives of Soviet power. Some officials made concessions while others turned a blind eye to religious activities, testifying to the breakdown in the indoctrination of the Communist Party cadres. Intuitively, Stalin’s tactical retreat, contrary to the hopes of the people, would have to be followed by an advance, because religious beliefs offered alternative world views to Communist ideology and, therefore, posed a challenge to the state. In 1946–47, however, rather than mounting an assault on religion, the Party sought to control and limit popular expressions of belief, and ability of people to practice their religion depended greatly on local representatives of the state and Party. Popular Grievances at Election Time, 1946 and 1947 Aside from spreading fallacious rumors, Iron Ivan seemed to have hit on one of the Party’s sore spots. The great deal of attention paid to pre-election meetings and elections in the Party svodki reveals the enormous importance of that particular ritual to the government. A small turnout at the polls could weaken the legitimacy of the government in a number of ways. By suggesting apathy or dissatisfaction for the government and the Party, it could clash with the official claim of Soviet democracy. It also had the potential of emboldening people to voice displeasure in other ways, and those who did vote could become more likely to abstain after witnessing widespread defiance of official propaganda. Furthermore, the refusal to vote, especially in light of the Party’s emphasis on having everyone vote, was a very direct political statement of non-endorsement for the ruling Communist Party.53 Unhappy citizens, aware of the importance of the elections to officials, used voter turnout as a bargaining chip for the improvement of living conditions and often bread. In January 1946, collective farmers in Nikolaev oblast, Ukrainian SSR, refused to attend pre-election meetings. A woman from T. Berezanskii raion commented: “I have no husband and I have no bread: I will neither go to the meeting nor will I vote.”54 A group of collective


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farmers in Novyi Bug raion, citing similar grievances, refused to attend political meetings: “Why should we go if we have nothing to eat?”55 In other instances, peasants voiced displeasure with collective farms, often attributing starvation and shortages of bread to the kolkhoz order. In early 1946, a farmer in the village of Rukhan’, Ershchichskii raion, Smolensk oblast, declared: “Why are you telling us [that things will improve] . . .? You’d better tell us [that things will improve] when you disband the collective farms. You have driven us into a dead end with your teaching. Now we are left with no bread.”56 In Polotsk oblast, Belorussian SSR, which had been part of Poland until 1939, after a meeting of electors of the village Malye Koski, Dunilovichskii raion, one man said to his fellow peasants: “If we vote for the Bolshevik candidates, then by the spring we will also have collective farms, which will lead us to hunger and poverty.” The svodki testify to similar pronouncements in the villages of Boreiki and Laski of the same raion; Lovtsy and Dmitrovshchina, Glubokskii raion; and Volkovshchizna, Miorskii raion. In the village of Faranova, Vetrinskii raion, a peasant told collective farmers: “Why do we need elections? It would be good if they disbanded the collective farms; then we would begin to live better. Look—in the western regions [which were incorporated into the USSR in 1939] there are no collective farms and life is better.”57 In Moscow, in 1946, some electors scribbled notes condemning the collective farm system on their ballots: “In the kolkhozes, people are dying of hunger,” “There is complete chaos in the kolkhozes—hunger and poverty,” and “Collective farmers have nothing to eat.”58 A year later, many of the grievances mimicked those of the previous year. In January 1947, Party officials documented complaints among Leningrad factory workers as evidence of mistrust of the Soviet government: “We’ve been voting for twenty years, but it’s of no use. Poverty and hunger are all around.”59 In February 1947, officials witnessed evidence of displeasure due to food shortages in several oblasts. A collective farmer in Griazovetskii raion, Vologda oblast, told an agitator: “Before inviting us to go vote, you should provide us with bread, or else we’ll all die of hunger.”60 A state farm worker in Cherepevetskii raion said: “I used to live well although I made only twenty rubles a month. I now make one thousand rubles but I’m hungry.” A collective farmer in the same raion, who had been a German prisoner of war, said that he lived well in Germany and added, “Here, with our system, you’ll die of hunger.”61 Representatives of the Information Sector testified to the dissatisfaction with postwar hardships expressed by some of the population in Crimea oblast. These particular declarations of discontent reveal that there was no clear line drawn between behavior considered “anti-Soviet” and other actions. One

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woman cursed a secretary of an MTS Party organization, saying she would not attend a pre-election meeting because she did not receive enough bread. In Simferopol’, a peasant commented: “We vote but things don’t get better; just the opposite—they get worse.” A collective farmer in Alushtinskii raion told officials that her children were starving and that she could no longer support them.62 We do not know for certain how the powers that be interpreted these grievances, but these complaints about material hardships were not explicitly called anti-Soviet. Yet, the svodki cite the following similar declaration, made by a woman in Yalta, as anti-Soviet: “What are these elections for? The people are hungry and angry. I’ll be first in line to vote against the bloc of Communists and independents.”63 The definition of “anti-Soviet” behavior also differed from one Party official to another. The director of the Information Sector believed that officials needed to focus their efforts on improving the lot of people rather than labeling them as enemies for voicing displeasure: “. . .[I]n certain cases, the directors of Party and Soviet organizations, rather than eliminating shortcomings in everyday material provisions for the toilers, interpret legal complaints about the poor provisioning of the population, as an expression of hostile moods.”64 Complaints, then, did not necessarily cause one to be considered anti-Soviet or hostile to the state, but the official reaction very much depended on each official’s characterization of “anti-Soviet.” The refusal to vote seemed to have been a geographically dispersed if not necessarily common phenomenon in 1946–47. In December 1946, a villager in Leningrad oblast told agitators: “I am an old woman, but I don’t get any bread. If they give me some, I’ll go vote and, if not, I won’t go. In the constitution it says that the elderly are honored, but we don’t even get any bread.” In certain cases, electors refused to allow agitators into their homes, saying: “You don’t give us any bread, so there’s no reason for you to enter our homes.”65 Discontent was not limited to peasants. In Struninskii raion, Vladimir oblast, workers of one factory greeted an agitator with: “Finally, after a year’s break, you have come to us again. It must be that the elections are approaching and you’re going to make promises again. We’re sick of listening to your promises. It would be better if you spent more time caring for the welfare of the workers.”66 A worker at an aviation plant in the Mongol ASSR accused the government of keeping people hungry on ration cards, adding: “The people will change the government for this, because they simply cannot live like this any longer.” A homemaker in the same region reportedly proclaimed: “Let them go to hell with their voting.” During a meeting with the raion Party Committee representatives, she said: “My children have gotten so hungry that I might as well kill or hang them. I would be happy if my children were to die. Well, it’s okay, maybe something will happen soon—uprisings or strikes.”67


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At a peasant meeting in the Latvian SSR, one “kulak” urged people not to vote for a government that takes away the peasants’ last remaining bread.68 Quite often, officials considered unhealthy attitudes to be the result of poor propaganda and a popular misunderstanding of the temporary nature of the postwar hardships.69 In certain areas, officials, cognizant of the relationship between living conditions and voter turnout, sought to make available more bread for the local population and took other measures aimed at improving the lot of citizens and making them more likely to vote.70 Local officials, likely fearing the wrath of higher-ups if they failed to produce enough of a voter turnout, were willing accept the villagers’ terms and, in doing so, helped some people survive as a result. In other words, at least in some instances, voting could be an effective bargaining chip for bread. Expressions of discontent and displeasure with the collective farms did not entirely subside in 1947, when the famine reached its peak. Early in the year, talk of disbanding collective farms spread among peasants in Kanashskii raion, Chuvash ASSR. A female collective farmer from the village of Ianglichi said to kolkhozniki: “The collective farms aren’t giving any bread to the collective farmers, and that’s why we’ve been left hungry and in rags. My husband Aleksei fought for nothing in the war. He thought that, after the war, the collective farms would be disbanded, but that didn’t work out.” A kolkhoznik and war veteran said: The collective farms send all the bread to the government, leaving the population hungry. Before, under tsarism, people reveled at this time of year. They ate bread and meat. Now we live only on potatoes. No matter how much you work in the collective farm, you won’t get a gram of bread. Soviet laws teach people to live in hunger. (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 99)

At a lecture given at a village soviet in Vladimir oblast, some female collective farmers declared: “Why are you agitating? We know how to vote. We’ll vote for whoever will not take bread away from us.” Party officials documented the following clever ditty (chastushka) at a collective farm in Novgorod oblast in January 1947, labeling it “anti-Soviet”: Part of the wheat—abroad All of the potatoes—for vodka And to the hungry farmers they say: Go to the movies.71

Some statements were surprisingly bold. A worker at an industrial artel said in front of an agitator: “Many people here are expressing displeasure at the

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fact that collective farms are not being disbanded. Our Soviet legislation, for the sake of [salvaging] these collective farms, will leave us hungry.”72 Popular condemnations of the collective farm system clashed with the official proclamations of the time. Articles in Pravda trumpeted the merits of the kolkhozes, which had “forever placed the peasantry under the banner of socialism and led it onto the wide road of material abundance and a cultured life.” The press stressed that the plan for reconstruction was ambitious, and the state’s track record suggested that these lofty achievements would be attained at the expense of the peasantry rather than to their benefit.73 Official optimism about the 1946 harvest clashed with popular pessimism.74 The famine merely confirmed the expectations of many peasants, who equated collective farming with hunger and poverty. The Party’s emphasis on liquidating breaches of the collective farm statute in late 1946, along with the tactics of fear and intimidation used in the press, corroborates the evidence in the svodki, further testifying to the unpopularity of the kolkhoz system.75 Having failed to convince people to fall in line, the state turned to coercion, and this approach became all the more necessary in the context of grain shortages.76 Complaints to Party agitators, like prayers for rain, helped people cope with famine and other postwar difficulties. It appears that at times of intense need, or at least in 1946–47, the potential cost of voicing displeasure was sometimes worth the risk. People in dire straits had little to lose and occasionally something to gain, as officials, at least in some cases, sought to appease the populace out of self-interest, either to weed out religious practice or get people to the polls. It is unlikely, however, that officials reacted until discontent became widespread. Furthermore, not all Party functionaries, aware of the pathetic postwar conditions, took complaints of hardships to be hostile to the Soviet government. Much like religious practices, postwar grievances often reflected the wartime change in Soviet policies. People genuinely hoped that the collective farms might be disbanded. These expectations collided with the harsh realities of postwar life in the kolkhoz, and some people may have simply been unable to keep quiet, despite their better judgment. While the pervasiveness of anti-kolkhoz and antigovernment sentiments proves difficult to pinpoint, one can say with full assurance that society was not fully united around the Party after the war. Nor did all veterans of war and labor believe in the system. Beyond Svodki: Popular Reactions from Other Sources One of the drawbacks of svodki in characterizing popular response is their selectivity; actions that were considered insignificant or fell outside of the Party’s competency eluded documentation. Additional sources, such as


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the papers of the Ministry of State Security (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti) and other state agencies, as well as memoirs, help provide a more complete picture of how people reacted to the drought and famine. These various materials suggest that a wide spectrum of coping mechanisms could potentially be seen by the government as threatening; as a result, government regulations sometimes limited people’s chances of surviving the famine. In other words, a wide array of behaviors can be termed “unintended resistance.” But despite government obstacles, people often managed to find ways of coping with the postwar hardships. The widespread want of the immediate postwar years clashed with the proclaimed goals of Communist doctrine; partly for this reason, the external appearance of poverty constituted a potential threat to the Soviet state. The emerging cold war further contributed to the Soviet desire to conceal weakness and vulnerability. While the Soviet leadership paid little attention to the welfare of the countryside except as to support agricultural production, scarcity in urban areas, particularly Moscow, could serve as a major source of embarrassment. Foreign officials and travelers could, after all, use this information to undermine Soviet power. Furthermore, the cities, for the purpose of both internal and external propaganda, could be cited as being in the vanguard of socialist development in contrast with the less advanced countryside. Nevertheless, after the war, the government appeared unable to sweep poverty under the rug, even in the cities. The livelihood of villagers often depended on their access to urban areas. After the war, peasants came to the cities to peddle their wares and beg for money. Ironically, Moscow, the seat of Soviet power and the most modern city in the USSR, provided some medieval-like scenes, as peasants hoped to catch the proverbial crumbs that fell from Muscovites’ tables. In July 1947, a sergeant in the Red Army described the scene in a letter to A.A. Zhdanov, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Agitation and Propaganda: As if they came from all over Rus’, poor invalids and holy fools have flooded Moscow and its suburbs. Every person who rides the train on the outskirts of Moscow must have a pocket full of coins to be able to give at least one coin to each beggar. You sit down in the train car and, one by one, a whole line of prostrate [beggars] asks for alms. They enter the train car and sing psalms, “Save, O Lord, Thy People,” “Where, Where are You, Brown Eyes,” “Blue Eyes,” and one can hear all kinds of sermons, prayers, and songs.77

British Major-General Richard Hilton’s memoirs of his stint as military attaché in Moscow in 1947–48 corroborate this evidence of widespread panhandling.

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[O]utside every functioning church there is always to be seen a huge crowd of aged and decrepit beggars, whose continued existence on this earth depends entirely on the charity of a congregation almost as destitute as themselves, the poor non-official peasant community. Outside the great monastery of the Novo D¯evitchie on the outskirts of Moscow on one Sunday morning I counted two hundred and forty seven of these poor old creatures huddled round the main entrance.78

Hilton also claimed that the Kursk railway station in Moscow was “usually swarming with country people” and described in detail one occasion when an elderly peasant woman managed to escape two police officers who tried to confiscate her wares. The police stopped the peasant woman in a square across from the Kursk station and, having inspected her bundle and apparently found something wrong with it, sought to take her away. But the woman’s verbal and physical resistance to the arrest, along with the moral support of a “muttering crowd” of country people who barred the way, foiled the policemen’s plans. To the pleasure of the crowd, the two policemen walked off sheepishly and the woman picked up her bundle and quickly left. Hilton claimed that “[t]here was simply a passive hostility, masquerading perhaps as peasant stupidity, but none the less strong enough to make itself felt.” He cited this incident as but one example of the people’s “latent hostility toward the police,” which as a rule “never got further than black looks and grumbles.” This example also illustrates that the police did “not always get the better of things, even in police-infested Moscow”79 and that people had a whole spectrum of weapons at their disposal to combat police tyranny. The woman’s physical resistance to arrest reveals that people sometimes defended their livelihood with vigor in defiance of officialdom. Meanwhile, by passively obstructing the police, the crowd achieved its end while technically preserving its innocence in the eyes of the law. The influx of villagers into urban areas was not limited to Moscow. In the Moldavian SSR, rural dwellers flowed into the city of Kishinev from surrounding areas in 1946. Moldavia suffered consecutive droughts in 1945 and 1946, so the situation there was particularly severe. A December 19, 1946, report written by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Moldavian SSR Tutushkin, which reached Stalin on December 25, testifies that, during the latter half of 1946, police picked up approximately ten corpses a month, mostly those of peasants, in Kishinev. Large numbers of orphans also flocked into the city in the hopes of finding bread. Parents sometimes abandoned their children in the cities or dropped them off at the steps of children’s homes.80 Others sought to leave the USSR altogether: during the first 11 months of 1946, 209 residents of Moldavia attempted to cross the


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Pruth River into Romania, but only 20 of them succeeded. The others were detained by Soviet border guards.81 The presence of large numbers of peasants in the cities after the war reveals that the authorities sometimes failed in their effort to restrict the movement of the population. Furthermore, aside from this daytime mobility between the village and the city, the drought and famine caused spontaneous migrations resulting in permanent resettlement. In the summer of 1946, when the extent of the drought was already becoming evident, young people began to travel south to escape hunger. In Nal’chik, Kabardinian ASSR, Alexander Werth found that most of the workers were “Russian working-lads and workinggirls;” they had come to grab up newly available jobs but also to escape the coming famine. Werth describes this population movement from Russia to the southern areas as a mass phenomenon: . . .[T]alking to some of these people, I heard the word golod; the Volga country was threatened with golod, and these people were part of the extensive migration of 1946 from the north and east to the Caucasus—a migration from the drought-stricken part of the country to the happier south.82

In Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Werth witnessed the same trend. When visiting a tea-growing state farm, he met Russian and Ukrainian workers, primarily from Rostov and Odessa, who had fled the drought. Their new jobs paid much better than had their previous ones at state farms in Russia and Ukraine. The workers “were finding life here much easier, and food more plentiful.”83 While some people traveled south, others fled westward, possibly with the hope of finding relief or perhaps with the naive hope of fleeing abroad. In 1947, Belorussian children’s homes admitted severely malnourished infants of women migrating from Ukraine and various oblasts of the RSFSR (Smolensk, Orel, Kursk, Voronezh).84 This movement may have been caused partly by the overcrowding of homes in famine areas. Groups of men carrying sacks (meshochniki), mostly from Briansk, Kaluga, Orel, Gomel’ oblasts, flooded into Rovno oblast, BSSR, starting in February 1946. According to Party documents, these people, traveling on the roofs of freight trains, and many of them demobilized Red Army soldiers and war invalids, had “documents from Soviet organs about ‘the drought which struck’ and ‘the purchase of bread for personal use’ and saying that they ‘are being allowed to travel to find bread’ and so forth.”85 While some of these documents may have been forgeries, it suggests that local officials sanctioned this travel, much to the displeasure of police organs. Official Soviet documents support Werth’s characterization of migrations as mass phenomena. At first, individual family members traveled to the

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closest markets in search of food, but as conditions declined, peasants began to leave their villages en masse. In June 1946, the secretary of the Oblast Party Committee in L’vov, Ukraine, reported that thousands of collective farm workers had crossed into the oblast in order to buy grain and other products.86 In Kalinin oblast, people dismantled their houses, sold them as firewood and migrated to Eastern Prussia; some even left for Turkmenistan. Villagers from Kursk oblast moved to the Kuban’ region, while others found work in the cities. During the first few months of 1947, the Ministry of State Security intercepted 537 letters from Kalinin, Velikie Luki, Kursk, and Kostroma oblasts sent to soldiers in the Red Army indicating that people were leaving the collective farms.87 By March 1946, farmers were abandoning kolkhozes in Primor’e krai.88 While some of these migrants returned home, the famine also accelerated a general exodus from the countryside, and this process continued in the years that followed.89 These population movements threatened the state because they spread word of the famine and provided an added basis for resistance to the collectivization of agricultural in the newly incorporated regions, as well as re-collectivization in lands previously occupied by the Nazis. In early January 1946, Comrade Zemtsov, a Pravda correspondent in Belorussia, complained that a flood of people from the most devastated eastern regions (including Smolensk, Kursk, Orel, and Velikie Luki oblasts) flowed into the villages of Brest, Grodno, Baranovichi, and Molodechneno oblasts, BSSR, traveling by rail, by foot, and even on cows. They came for bread; some had money but others sought to trade personal possessions. “Here, they call them ‘zhebraki’, which in Belorussian means ‘the poor’,” wrote Zemtsov. He complained that the circumstances served as “fertile ground for the criminal activity of counterrevolutionary kulak elements seeking to discredit the collective farm order.” Enemy elements had already launched “a wild campaign of slander against collective farms.” This campaign apparently achieved some success, as Zemtsov argued that the Party needed to combat the hostile groups by explaining the causes of the horrid postwar conditions to the people.90 Thus migration, a coping mechanism, and means of survival sometimes took on political significance and posed a threat to government goals by fueling what can unequivocally be regarded as hostility toward the Soviet government. This was especially the case in Ukraine where, after the war, large groups of nationalists continued to fight in the ranks of the UPA, or Ukrainian Insurgent Army, against the Soviet authorities. Soviet West Ukraine was annexed in 1939 through Stalin’s pact with Hitler, and resistance resulted partly from the imposition of collectivized agriculture, as well as forced resettlements of Poles to Ukraine and Ukrainians to Poland.


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General opposition to Soviet policies among the population in the region bolstered support for the UPA, which made use of the famine in its antiSoviet activities. UPA propaganda was meant both for domestic and foreign consumption; couriers delivered materials, including a pamphlet entitled “New Famine Catastrophe in Ukraine,” to US military officials in Warsaw, after which these were passed on to American Intelligence.91 The UPA also took advantage of popular opposition to the establishment of collective farms and grain procurements, encouraging resistance and inciting violence. The Ukrainian resistance frequently sabotaged government grain drives and killed Soviet officials; the Soviet secret police sometimes retaliated ruthlessly against entire villages.92 In this context, official efforts to prevent population movement were aimed at controlling information flow and avoiding undesirable political consequences and not intended to starve the country’s citizens to death, though they could potentially have had that effect. V.F. Zima writes that people who simply read the central press and listened to the radio thought that only they were starving and that others lived wonderfully.93 But this propaganda approach could only be effective if society was to be atomized, and this demanded state control over population movement. Such control was elusive in 1946–47 and news of famine unquestionably spread by word of mouth.94 Although some violent crimes against the government resulted from nationalist resistance movements in the western borderlands, especially Ukraine, the postwar rise in criminal activity can primarily be traced to famine, widespread want, and the government’s grain procurement policies. Criminal activity (ugolovnaia prestupnost’) rose by 6.6 percent in the first quarter of 1947, due primarily to an increase in theft in the villages.95 Figures for the second quarter of 1947 are lacking, and were possibly excluded from the Main Police Administration papers, since famine began to peak during these months and crime rates probably rose sharply.96 This interpretation is supported by the figures for the third quarter of 1947, when criminal activity fell by 27.6 percent. Crime diminished particularly dramatically in the worst famine areas: Moldavia (61.4 percent), Krasnodar krai (54.6 percent), Crimea oblast (50.1 percent), and Ukraine (49.1 percent).97 These crimes decreased by another 27.7 percent in the last three months of 1947. This time, the decline was greatest in other areas: Ul’ianovsk, Moscow, Chita, Orel, and Ivanovo oblasts, and in Mordova.98 The available evidence allows one to suppose that crime rates climbed through the early spring and then began to subside in late spring and early summer, as conditions deteriorated to the extent that people no longer had the energy to resist hunger. The deterioration in conditions, coupled with the government’s aggressive grain procurement drive, also provoked resistance to government measures

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in the countryside. On April 17, 1946, a group of 45 women in the village of Ialpuzheny, Chimishliiskii raion, Moldavian SSR, broke into a grain warehouse after local officials refused to give them bread. In the end, the women’s efforts were thwarted, but news of their actions spawned similar incidents in nearby villages. In Derkautsy, Zguritskii raion, 25 women succeeded in appropriating 650 kilograms of grain.99 On October 12, 1946, in Krasnoarmeiskii raion, Cheliabinsk oblast, Russian SSR, 15–20 kolkhoz workers revolted against officials who had arrived to requisition grain. Using shovels and other tools, they killed three Party workers.100 While this case was an exception rather than the rule, various sources testify to opposition to the procurement campaign, even among officials. In early 1946, kolkhoz chairmen and raion-level officials in a number of areas (Briansk, Kemerovo, Omsk, Penza, Rostov, Riazan’, Saratov, Stalingrad, Ul’ianovsk, Chkalov, and Kurgan oblasts; Stavropol’, Krasnoiarsk, Primor’e, and Khabarovsk krais; Tatar ASSR; Uzbek and Kazakh SSRs; and others), owing to shortages, resisted hay procurements.101 In its decrees in 1946–47, the government characterized crime, or departures from Soviet legality, to be widespread; in September, it launched a campaign to root out theft in collective farms with the decree on the liquidation of breaches of the kolkhoz statute. But the actual amount of crime is difficult to gauge, and it is tempting to interpret this campaign as part of an attempt to provide an explanation for postwar hardships that would simultaneously justify a return to prewar policies and deflect criticism from the government. Carrying out a survey of the agricultural sector in the summer of 1946, the Ministry of State Control (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennogo Kontrolia) discovered rampant corruption, theft, and other breaches of the collective farm statute. The controllers directed the sharpest criticisms at local representatives of Soviet power, who had robbed the collective farms of their produce, cattle, and monetary funds. This phenomenon, according to the survey, was nearly universal. While Pravda failed to acknowledge the postwar food crisis, it did launch a propaganda assault on low-level officials who allegedly stole from the collective farms and, in general, failed to carry out their responsibilities before the state.102 The implication was obvious: local representatives of state power, and not the Soviet leadership, were responsible for the poverty of the peasantry.103 This tack was also somewhat palatable for many peasants, who often blamed their troubles on local officialdom.104 While conclusive evidence is lacking, the central government was likely disingenuous and self-serving in characterizing events in this way, especially since officials widely believed that crime had stemmed from want. In a report forwarded to Stalin, Moldavian Minister of Internal Affairs Tutushkin


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directly attributed the rise in crime in 1946 to shortages of provisions, indicating that more than half of those accused of committing crimes were peasants. Only 3.2 percent had been cited for a previous offense.105 Moldavian Minister of State Security Mordovets wrote in the same vein to his superior in Moscow, V.S. Abakumov: “As a result of complications with produce among the population, there have been cases of anti-Soviet defeatism and traitorous migratory moods.”106 As previously mentioned, some local officials provided bread for villagers before elections to encourage them to vote, realizing that discontent resulted from shortages. Yet, rather than seeking to improve the plight of the peasantry, the government increased the punishments for theft, particularly that of grain. Soviet citizens could be imprisoned for seven to ten years for petty pilfering.107 Again, this legislation highlights the one-track mind of the Soviet leadership: bread had to be conserved at any cost in order to build up grain stocks and end rationing. The means did not much matter. The February 1947 Central Committee plenum further tightened the vise on the peasantry by treating state needs as paramount, even when they directly threatened the livelihood of collective farmers. L.M. Kaganovich stressed that the farms must be made to plant what the state needs them to plant. Peasants tended to plant barley instead of spring wheat because it was more dependable, but the government needed spring wheat for commercial purposes, as well as sugar beets, vegetables “first and foremost for the cities,” and potatoes for cattle feed and alcohol.108 As the center reasserted its control over the countryside, farmers had less and less room to maneuver. In short, Soviet policies disrupted and inhibited peasant coping strategies that served them well in times of food shortage and hunger. Left without grain and other sources of food, people turned to surrogates and sometimes even committed murder for the purpose of eating human flesh. Those who lived through the famine in Ukraine recall that people ate acorns, leaves, weeds, zhmykh (oil cake), and grass.109 A man who survived famine in Voronezh oblast remembers people eating bark.110 Khrushchev recalled that, in Ukraine, there had been cases of cannibalism in various locales.111 On March 1, 1947, Stalin, Beria, and Molotov received a report from Minister of State Security S. Kruglov also testifying to cases of cannibalism in Ukraine due to catastrophic food shortages.112 But even in these cases, authorities sometimes ignored the obvious: that these were direct consequences of the famine. People accused of cannibalism were sometimes prosecuted or admitted to mental wards at hospitals, and representatives of the central authorities urged local officials to explain to people that surrogates, such as acorns, can cause illness and death, as if people had chosen to eat surrogates.113

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Conclusion Several conclusions can be made from the findings in this chapter. Most notably, resistance is not a static category. Owing to changes in Soviet policies during the war and selective reversals and adjustments after the war, the notion of “anti-Soviet behavior” was imprecise and far from static. Had the authorities truly intended to disband the collective farms, anti-kolkhoz statements would hardly have been considered anti-Soviet. Similarly, if religious practice had become fully legitimized, as some had anticipated, participation in various rites and prayers would not have caught the eye of the Party’s watchdogs. In this shifting climate, some of the phenomena cited by officials as dangerous to the government, or even anti-Soviet, were not necessarily intended to be such. In other words, people who were considered a threat to the state or Party did not always intend to oppose or resist the government. Furthermore, as shortages became acute, survival took precedence over obedience to the state, and various actions stemmed from necessity as much as from political opposition. Yet this is not to imply that opposition to the state was negligible: available sources reveal widespread disaffection. In 1946–47, the contours of the state’s postwar policy became increasingly clear to the population, and those citizens whose newfound patriotism was based on Soviet wartime concessions unquestionably felt more and more estranged. In the context of the famine, Soviet legislation automatically pitted officialdom against society, because coping mechanisms necessary for survival could be and often were interpreted as anti-Soviet, or at least contrary to government interest. In viewing breaches of Soviet laws as willful rather than necessitated by horrid postwar conditions, the authorities not only freed themselves from blame for famine and other hardships; they also politicized popular actions, and laid the groundwork for another wave of dekulakization, which would follow in 1948.114 As a result of the leadership’s policies, the peasantry returned to its previous role vis-à-vis the government as suspect and recalcitrant. Resistance became more frequent in 1946–47, as the goals of the center and society diverged. The people strove to survive while the leadership sought to organize society to meet its own requirements. These findings support the conclusions of other scholars that the state reasserted control over society in the immediate postwar years. The state moved to increase regimentation and control over the people, essential for the fulfillment of the government’s ambitious plans for reconstruction. But the reestablishment of control was not only practical, but also had an ideological basis, and these two worked hand in hand. The Party sought to weed out what Kaganovich described as “the remnants of capitalism in the minds of people,” leading to enhanced work discipline and labor output.115 Despite the “Great


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Socialist Revolution” of October 1917, elements of capitalism remained, and any problems could conveniently be labeled as remnants of the old system. Similarly, the continued subordination and exploitation of the peasantry had the practical benefit of allowing the state to impose its schemes on society, as well as ideological underpinnings stemming back to the very inception of Bolshevik power. The Soviet Union was, after all, a proletarian society: peasants had to either perish or become proletarians. One cannot help but wonder what would have happened had the authorities sacrificed ideological control for the sake of allying themselves with the people, or if Soviet power could have survived such a change; but it does not appear that Stalin and his entourage considered that option. But as the next chapter demonstrates, the Soviet leadership was not operating in a vacuum: both external and internal political considerations influenced its course of action.


PART III

The Crisis in Broader Perspective


CHAPTER 5

The Famine, the Dawn of the Cold War, and the Politics of Food

The President mentioned the reports in the morning’s newspaper of the deficiencies in the grain crop in Russia, the Ukraine, and that there were rumors of unrest within Russia because of short rations. He said he believed this accounted, to a large extent, for the Russian attitude of intransigence on many questions; that they had taken note of the irritation and dissatisfaction manifested in this country on UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration], particularly the congressional attitude, and that it must have become clear to them by now that they, as well as others, would have to look to the United States as the sole source of relief on the question of food . . . James Forrestal, December 19461 . . . Stalin said that the primary thing is the first commandment, and the first commandment was to turn in everything to the government according to the plan. . . . N.S. Khrushchev, 19712

A

s the cold war dawned, the Soviet Union was starving. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Hardly anyone across the vast expanse of the USSR remained unaffected by this crisis. Yet the famine has continued to escape the attention of experts in the field of cold war history, even after the publication of V.F. Zima’s monograph in 1996.3 My goal in this chapter is to explain what the famine of 1946–47 adds to our understanding of the early cold war and what it meant to those who plotted the course of international politics in the postwar world, leading to a standoff between the two superpowers: the United States and the USSR.

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Aside from offering insights into the origins of the cold war, the “discovery” of the famine provides fresh perspectives on Soviet internal policies and prerogatives after the war, as well as on some of Stalin’s foreign policy proclamations. I seek to characterize the Soviet “politics of food” by examining the leadership’s food priorities as it sought to achieve reconstruction but was suddenly forced to confront drought and a resulting agricultural shortfall. Placing Relief on Cold War Footing During World War II, the United States and the USSR experienced a period of mutual goodwill. American benevolence toward the USSR was accompanied by a campaign of assistance to the Soviet war cause, even before American entry into the military struggle. American assistance to the Soviet Union took on the form of both private and official aid. The most prominent private organization was Russian War Relief (often abbreviated as RWR or Russian Relief ), founded in September 1941 by a group of eminent Americans as Hitler’s armies marched through the western regions of the Soviet Union.4 Extolling the virtues of nonpolitical and nonsectarian humanitarian relief, this association shipped 75 million dollars worth of supplies, including clothing, food, seed, and drugs, to the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1946. Many prominent Americans took part in Russian Relief. Actress Helen Hayes headed a milk campaign under the slogan “Russia needs milk for her children.” Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who subsequently became director-general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, opened the Russian Relief campaign in New York schools. Actress Katharine Hepburn modeled scarves, the profit from the sale of which went to Russian Relief.5 Russian Relief was, in the words of its president Edward C. Carter, “an act of faith, without any strings attached.” Russian Relief left the task of distribution fully to the Soviet authorities, and RWR representatives who traveled to the Soviet Union expressed satisfaction that all supplies were reaching the needy. In 1944, Carter stated: I found that our “act of faith” had been completely justified by its end results. I found our supplies meticulously accounted for, judiciously distributed and profoundly appreciated. These gifts, with their source clearly identified by labels bearing the stars and stripes, and messages “to the heroic people of the Soviet Union from the people of the United States of America” have, in my opinion, done more to cement friendly relations between the two nations than any other single factor on the non-military level.6

As the organization wrapped up its activities in 1946, it again stressed the cooperation of the Soviet government, “which provided free transportation


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for supplies and gave constant reports on the receipt and distribution of goods.”7 Humanitarian aid also came from official sources. The American government channeled the most substantial relief for the people of the Soviet Union through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which came into existence in Washington, D.C., by means of an international treaty on November 9, 1943.8 From 1945 to 1947, UNRRA provided extensive relief to Ukraine and Belorussia, two of the regions of the USSR most devastated by the war. The 112 million dollars in food products shipped to these two republics unquestionably helped some of the population stave off hunger.9 Unlike RWR, UNRRA appointed its representatives to oversee the distribution of goods, but even so, in the early going, the operation proceeded smoothly and without major incident. Unfortunately, UNRRA did not remain immune from the rising political tensions between the United States and USSR, as the goodwill of the war years quickly began to dissipate and morph into confrontation. Proponents of UNRRA and other forms of nonpolitical relief fought an uphill battle. Some American officials, including director-general of UNRRA and former New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, favored the continuation of international aid in the form of a food fund until the 1947 harvest.10 LaGuardia’s predecessor as director-general and fellow former mayor of New York, Herbert Lehman, believed that UNRRA needed at least another two or three years to accomplish its goal of rehabilitating the war-ravaged countries of Europe.11 But the Truman administration appeared determined to put an end to UNRRA; in 1946, the State Department expressed its opposition to the continuation of relief through an international organization.12 During the summer of 1946, Richard Brown Scandrett, the head of the UNRRA mission in Belorussia, told Alexander Werth: These guys [i.e. Soviet officials in Belorussia] know that Fiorello LaGuardia (the head of UNRRA) is doing his damndest to help us in every way. But he’s dealing with a good deal of obstruction back home. And they also know that the President is not at all keen on keeping UNRRA going—least of all in the Soviet Union. LaGuardia is having a lot of difficulty getting us supplied with tractors and agricultural machinery. The Belorussians appreciate the food that’s added to their miserable rations, and we are doing our best to feed the kids, most of whom lived through the war here and are in a very poor physical state. . . . But we’ve got to pack up in 1947, though this country will be short of food for years yet. . . .13

Clearly, Truman did not calculate relief on the basis of need. Scandrett’s comments also suggest that the attitude of the Truman administration, and

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the president himself, had made the cancellation of UNRRA a foregone conclusion by the summer of 1946, and that assistance to the Soviet Union was particularly unacceptable. In its quest to alter the American politics of relief, the Truman administration advanced a number of reasons for the cessation of UNRRA. Representatives of the State Department backed the discontinuation of UNRRA in part because of the impression that American contributions were not eliciting goodwill from the Soviet people. This opinion not only clashed with the recent pronouncements by representatives of RWR but was also challenged by Scandrett and other representatives of UNRRA. According to John Fischer, one of the four American UNRRA supervisors in Ukraine, “the United States got more than its fair share of credit for UNRRA supplies,” and “most Russians thought UNRRA was a purely American organization.”14 American humanitarian efforts appear to have had a profound impact on at least some Soviet citizens: even after the fall of communism, some people who benefited from American aid remained thankful to the United States for saving their lives.15 Much to LaGuardia’s chagrin, criticism of the Soviet distribution of UNRRA goods began to mount, and critics claimed that Soviet security and police organs had infiltrated the UNRRA operation in the Soviet Union.16 Furthermore, the Soviet press provided scant coverage of UNRRA operations, and this likely caused significant irritation among American officials. Perhaps most significantly, as Herbert Hoover—who was the head of both the Combined Food Board (United States, Canada, and Britain) and the chairman of Truman’s Famine Emergency Committee—observed, UNRRA “was concentrating its efforts on Communist-dominated nations in Eastern Europe.”17 In other words, American food was being shipped to needy but unfriendly nations, or more precisely those with unfriendly governments. The belief that relief was not reaching the people, which conflicted with the recent pronouncements by representatives of RWR and certain representatives of UNRRA, heightened this concern. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and Under Secretary Dean Acheson, among others, believed that the Soviet Union was exploiting and misappropriating UNRRA resources.18 In 1946, in Yugoslavia, there appeared sensational evidence both that goods were misappropriated and that, as in the USSR, the United States failed to receive due credit for its contributions. American embassy officials reported that cloth provided by UNRRA had gone toward making uniforms for Tito’s Communist army. The Soviet authorities also allegedly took credit for UNRRA food supplies, 90 percent of which were American. Consequently, the United States promptly terminated UNRRA operations in Yugoslavia.19 News of such scandals appeared in the American press and unquestionably served to turn public opinion against the continuation of aid to the Soviet Union.


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These developments provided the Truman administration with cause to justify increased control over its resources as it sought to put its relief to more effective use in its political confrontation with the Soviet Union. In December 1946, Acting Secretary of State Acheson stated that post-UNRRA relief requests should be made to the U.S. government, “which would clear the requests through the United Nations.”20 With this new approach, the U.S. government could monitor the distribution of relief by foreign governments. It also appears that the Truman administration expected that the new system would provide it with direct leverage vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. On December 16, 1946, Truman, having heard of agricultural problems in Ukraine, assumed that the USSR would turn to the United States for food relief.21 By that time, the U.S. State Department had received a number of reports of significant agricultural problems and resulting food shortages in the Soviet Union. Some Moscow embassy telegrams reported that shortages had led to food riots and widespread discontent among the population. Some telegrams even compared the situation to 1933, when poor harvests and the state’s collectivization campaign had converged to cause mass famine with millions of deaths. Knowledge of internal problems tended to confirm the belief of embassy officials that the USSR did not pose an imminent military threat.22 This evidence tends to bolster the argument of historians who propose that the Truman administration sought to take advantage of Soviet internal vulnerability in the early stages of the cold war.23 Despite knowledge of Soviet agricultural problems, Western powers made efforts to extract grain from the Soviet Union in 1946, apparently seeking to lessen the burden on the United States, which was the main contributor to the UNRRA effort. In April, when people in Ukraine were already swelling and dying from hunger,24 UNRRA administrators asked the Soviet representative on the UNRRA Central Committee if the USSR could contribute bread grains to the world effort. Subsequently, the Combined Food Board requested that President Truman send a personal message to Stalin suggesting that the USSR contribute as much grain as possible to UNRRA.25 Upon conferring with the British and Canadian embassies and Glen Craig, U.S. executive officer on the Combined Food Board and Department of Agriculture staff member, a draft was drawn up by the State Department and forwarded to Truman by Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson.26 Truman approved the draft on May 6, 1946. The message stated that Truman had ordered drastic cuts in bread grain consumption in the United States in order to provide relief to famine areas of the world, mentioned the enquiry that had been made by the UNRRA Central Committee, and expressed the hope that Stalin would make available large amounts of bread grains for UNRRA as soon as possible.27 But it appears that Stalin’s prompt rejection of the UNRRA Central Committee

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request preempted Hoover’s memo: by May 16, Hoover had already heard from Truman that the Soviet leader had declined to contribute to UNRRA.28 Despite resistance to the idea from the Truman administration, a glimmer of hope for internationally based relief for the Soviet Union remained. On August 29, 1946, Fiorello LaGuardia met with Stalin in Moscow. According to LaGuardia, the purpose of the visit was to determine the extent of need for UNRRA assistance to the Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs. On the following day, Frank Roberts wrote to the British Foreign Office: “Soviet authorities have not hitherto been reluctant to paint a blacker picture of [the] Soviet food situation for the benefit of UNRRA and the outside world than the facts probably warrant.”29 Roberts anticipated that Stalin would play up Soviet need for relief. In reality, it appears that, quite the opposite, Stalin failed to relay the full extent of the Soviet grain crisis to LaGuardia.30 Elbridge Durbrow, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, even reported that “Stalin in talking to La Guardia expressed optimism about [the] grain crop. . . .”31 A proponent of aid to the Soviet Union, LaGuardia had actively supported the RWR effort and desperately tried to extend international aid operations. It is reasonable to suppose that a frank admission from Stalin on the extent of the 1946 grain crisis would have been exploited by the boisterous and strong-willed LaGuardia to bolster the cause of continuing relief operations in the USSR and pushing for the extension of nonpolitical relief, which he had championed. While we may never know for sure why Stalin did not capitalize on this potential opportunity to continue much needed relief, a number of reasons likely came into play. First, Stalin was always hesitant to show weakness, and this tendency may have been even more pronounced as postwar tensions between the United States and Great Britain and the Soviet Union escalated.32 If Stalin truly considered the possibility of an Anglo-American invasion, concealing vulnerability certainly made sense.33 Second, although the central government had just announced the prolongation of rationing to the end of 1947, Stalin appears not to have fully grasped the extent of the agricultural shortfall.34 But even short of Stalin’s full realization of the scope of the calamity, the situation was dire enough to merit continued relief. Third, Stalin may have believed that the internal propaganda damage of UNRRA relief (i.e. sympathy for the United States) outweighed the benefits of the relief measures. In 1947, when UNRRA aid was ended, the Soviet government began to rely increasingly on the Soviet Red Cross to administer relief efforts in Ukraine and Belorussia. Ultimately, the Truman Administration succeeded in aligning postwar relief with its political interests and, in 1947, at the second session of the U.N. General Assembly, UNRRA was officially shut down. Tragically, UNRRA


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aid was discontinued near the height of the postwar famine. The people of Ukraine and Belorussia now had one fewer resource in their struggle for survival amid postwar destruction and drought. In the words of Senator Claude Pepper, LaGuardia—an ally of the exploited and “the little people” in the whole world—“had succeeded in persuading all countries to continue UNRRA on a ‘no-politics in relief basis’ except his own and Britain.”35 If we are to adopt this framework, the cessation of UNRRA constituted a defeat of “the little people” behind the iron curtain. Soviet Red Cross activities in Ukraine and Belorussia could not meet the food needs of the population, and mortality peaked during the first half of 1947, in the six months following the termination of UNRRA shipments. While the end of UNRRA reflected a definite change in the politics of relief, it would not be entirely accurate to characterize the termination of UNRRA as equivalent to the politicization of food aid. Despite lofty slogans, one tends to doubt that relief to the USSR would have been carried out with the same vigor, if at all, had the United States had no stake in the outcome of the war against the Axis powers. Even the relatively apolitical relief of the RWR was intended to assist the Soviet people in achieving a common cause: victory over Nazi Germany.36 Furthermore, the Truman administration had begun to place American food relief on cold war footing before the cessation of UNRRA. Despite Herbert Hoover’s assurances to the contrary, the Truman administration’s Famine Emergency Committee, which started its work in March 1946 and unquestionably saved many lives in Europe and Asia, also had political motives. A demonstration of American goodwill in Europe could serve as an obstacle to the spread of communism.37 Hoover may have been unaware of Soviet food shortages, but the same cannot be said of the U.S. State Department and, more broadly, the Truman administration. A more acceptable alternative to UNRRA had already been put in place. On June 20, 1946, the International Emergency Food Council (IEFC), under the aegis of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, took over the role of international food relief. The council extended an invitation for the Soviet Union to join, but the Kremlin declined: participation in the IEFC demanded disclosure of economic statistics, and the United States sponsored the council and nominated candidates for the position of director-general. The Soviet leadership had already displayed an unwillingness to accept similar terms when, in 1944, it declined the Bretton Woods agreements, which founded the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, perceiving them to be a threat to its sovereignty.38 While counterfactual history is often frowned upon, one would be remiss not to point out that the failure to reveal the extent of the Soviet food crisis—both on the part of Stalin and the Truman administration—was a

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missed opportunity. Such a revelation, aside from saving the lives of thousands in the USSR from famine, could have changed the trajectory of world history in the postwar era. It is not likely that the cold war could have escalated as quickly as it did had the American public and the people of the world known of the Soviet food crisis. At the same time, public knowledge of the famine would have served as a potential source of embarrassment for Stalin and could have led to doubts, even among sympathizers in Europe, about the viability of Soviet communism. It was as if the two sides conspired to be silent so that both might gain. The Truman administration built up the Soviet Union as a military threat, despite the knowledge that it was not and would not be at least for a few years to come. Starting in 1947, the Truman administration began to advance the image of an imposing Soviet military menace, while privately acknowledging that the USSR posed no immediate military danger. After the war, analysts made clear that the Soviet government would avoid conflict against a superior U.S. force with vast economic resources, the strongest navy in the world, and a monopoly on the atomic bomb.39 In November 1945, the Joint Intelligence Staff concluded that, due to losses of manpower, the destruction of industry, and a variety of other factors, the USSR would not risk a major war for at least 15 years. As late as 1949, CIA estimates supported this conclusion.40 The image of a starving USSR, of an enfeebled country incapable of military aggression, would have mightily undermined the idea of an ominous Soviet Union and done little to rally support for the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and American military build-up. One cannot help but wonder if this calculation played into the Truman administration’s decision to keep the Soviet food crisis a secret. Postwar hostility, along with the concomitant termination of food relief, amounted to a huge misfortune for the people of the Soviet Union, but it in some ways benefited the Soviet state. The aggressive stance of the United States and Great Britain convinced the people of the USSR of the potential threat of war with these countries, and this made them more likely to accept postwar deprivation, thus helping the Soviet leadership to solidify political control and impose its draconian policies (the so-called liquidation of the breaches of the kolkhoz statute, aggressive procurements, rationing cuts). After Churchill’s iron curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, many Soviet citizens began to expect war. While postwar sacrifices were unquestionably unpopular, many believed that they were necessary so that the country might rebuild its industry and recover its strength for the sake of defense against a hostile Anglo-American coalition. The day after Churchill’s speech was published in Pravda, a worker at a Moscow car plant exclaimed: “We will respond to the imperialistic designs of the provocateur


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Churchill by keeping the gunpowder dry.” A mechanic at the same plant said, “We must tirelessly work at strengthening the defenses of our Homeland.” Others simply wondered how the war scare or an impending conflict would affect their lives.41 The anticipation of war was widespread and continued after March 1946.42 Initially, Stalin sought to capitalize on Churchill’s comments and contributed to fears of military conflict. On March 14, in a Pravda interview, Stalin referred to Churchill’s speech as “a sermon for war against the USSR.”43 Based on the reactions of Muscovites, one can conclude that the interview convinced many people that war was imminent. For instance, police overheard a locksmith comment, “Comrade Stalin said that we are strong and will defeat the capitalists. From this we can draw the conclusion that we must prepare for war and again endure hardship.”44 While some believed that the “peace-loving people” of capitalist countries would resist the designs of their warmongering leaders, others began to believe in the inevitability of war and bemoan the fact that they would never be able to live happily and peacefully.45 By September 1946, as the extent of the food crisis became more evident, it appears that Stalin decided that trumpeting the threat of imminent war could do more harm than good.46 In a September 17 interview with Sunday Times journalist Alexander Werth, he unequivocally expressed the view that there was no threat of war. Stalin claimed that military and political spies in capitalist countries sought to play up the specter of war to wrest compromises from naïve politicians, keep military budgets afloat, and slow down demobilization in order to avoid mounting unemployment.47 Stalin’s growing recognition of the extent of the 1946 harvest failure and need for additional sacrifices from society must have figured into his new slant. Hostile statements could cause people’s frustration to boil over into unrest; they could also cause people to resort to hoarding at a time when the Soviet leadership needed to conserve bread at any expense.

The 1946 Grain Procurement Campaign and the Soviet Politics of Food Truman’s hopes for using food for leverage vis-à-vis the USSR turned out to have been in vain: Stalin, as far as is known, did not look to the United States for food during the famine. Instead, the Soviet people were forced to carry the burden. The Soviet government believed that increased grain stocks, by means of procurements from the impoverished peasantry, would give it more economic independence and influence on the international scene. In July 1947, the Council of Ministers and Central Committee of

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the Moldavian SSR wrote: “It has been proven that the more grain we have in our government reserves, the stronger our country is in the international arena and the more we are taken seriously.”48 Indeed, it appears that such was the case: the Truman administration perceived Soviet food shortages as a weakness to be exploited. But the Soviet government sought to minimize the ill effects of the agricultural crisis on its international prestige, political goals, and industrial recovery, all of which took precedence over the prospect of saving some of the Soviet population from hunger. The preceding chapters have provided some insight into the Soviet politics of food in 1946–47. Local Party officials sometimes made use of food to punish people who failed to meet certain government demands and, at other times, to motivate their subordinates to conform. Meanwhile, the approach of providing food relief as a means of assuring the effective implementation of sowing and harvesting campaigns seemed to be a policy sanctioned by the highest powers. The expeditious termination of rationing was a major priority—a propaganda coup of sorts that displayed the superiority of communism vis-à-vis capitalist states—that forced sacrifices on the whole population, but in lowering the quality of flour for the sake of conserving grain, Moscow and Leningrad received preferential treatment. Perhaps most importantly, the Soviet leadership sought to bring the country back in line with its proscribed ideology, pushing for the reestablishment of what it called “kolkhoz democracy”—a prerequisite for the all-important reconstruction and development of industry. The reestablishment and growth of industry largely dictated, along with foreign policy considerations, the Soviet course of action in the countryside. In 1946–47, the Soviet leadership, like the Truman administration, sought to put agricultural production to political use, but in contrast to the United States, the USSR had extremely limited resources with which to maneuver. Soviet citizens were keen to notice that, while they were struggling to put food on the table, the government was exporting grain to Europe.49 The government shipped 900,000 tons of grain to Poland in 1946–47, 600,000 tons to Czechoslovakia in 1947, and 500,000 tons to France between April and June of 1947. In all, the authorities exported 1.7 million tons, or 10 percent of all the grain procured in 1946.50 Stalin’s unwillingness to contribute to the UNRRA effort in 1946, at a time that the USSR was sending grain to Europe under its own flag, highlights that in giving up bread, he expected political profit.51 The support of UNRRA relief would not have paid significant political dividends, especially since the operation was dominated by the United States and any offerings made by the Soviet Union would have constituted a small fraction of the total program. In contrast, direct shipments could elicit sympathy and gratitude to the USSR, as well as the false impression that the


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Communist state was quickly and painlessly overcoming the damage brought to it by the war. The export of grain during the famine, like no other fact, underscores the Soviet leadership’s disregard for the well-being of its own people; however, thus far, historians have alluded to this fact with disregard for its context. V.P. Popov, the author of a handful of Russian-language articles on the famine, proposes that the government of the USSR possessed enough grain to feed the countryside had it not exported substantial amounts to Europe.52 This point can be overstated: some people would have died as a consequence of war devastation and drought, even had the exported grain been shipped to the villages, but mortality would not have been nearly as widespread. Regional famines took the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people during the Nazi assault on the USSR, and mortality from hunger in certain locales persisted after the war.53 In terms of subsistence, many people were barely keeping their heads above water, and the drought would have contributed to mortality regardless of short-term government actions. The willingness of the Soviet authorities to ship grain abroad during the famine can similarly be exaggerated. The agricultural downturn in 1946 forced the Soviet government to curtail its exports, even as the cold war was dawning. As Michael Ellman has pointed out, exports of grain dropped sharply during the famine, from 1,200,000 tons in 1946 to 600,000 in 1947.54 Furthermore, it appears that at least some of the grain sent abroad had already been committed by mid-May 1946, prior to the drought and months before Stalin had grasped the full scale of the harvest crisis. By May, the Soviet government had already committed 700,000 tons of grain to Finland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France.55 In other words, in making some of the shipments in 1946 and perhaps 1947, the Soviet authorities were honoring existing commitments. Reneging on these would have revealed the extent of the Soviet Union’s internal problems—something Stalin, as has been argued, was not willing to do. In shipping grain abroad, the Soviet leadership sought more than to gain the loyalty or sympathy of European nations, or than to support fledgling Communist states.56 The postwar emphasis on the rebuilding and expansion of heavy industry also dictated such a policy. In the 1930s, the sale of grain had allowed the Soviet Union to secure currency that allowed for the purchase of industrial machinery abroad. As Khrushchev recalled in the early 1970s, the inferiority of Soviet industrial equipment necessitated that the government dump grain on the European market for currency, which in turn would allow it to make necessary purchases for the industrial sector.57 This consideration also likely contributed to the government’s adoption of measures to secure and conserve grain reserves in September 1946, which in turn led to

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a precipitous drop in consumption and the resulting mass mortality among the Soviet population. Security concerns may have also played into the Kremlin’s desire to build up grain stocks, because reserves would be necessary to feed the armed forces in the event of war. Stalin had already grossly miscalculated Hitler’s intentions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and was likely cautious not to repeat his mistake. Furthermore, in early 1946, Soviet security officials in Ukraine began to uncover evidence of hostile British and American intentions. Both the United States and Britain had covert ties with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, and both offered encouragement to the OUN’s military resistance against the Soviet state by perpetuating the rumor of an imminent Anglo-American invasion.58 In this sense, outside hostility might have contributed to the urgency and ruthlessness of the Soviet procurement drive in 1946. For the state, the above-mentioned factors added up to the need to carry out Stalin’s so-called first commandment: all of the grain determined by the government plan had to be delivered without exception.59 The needs of the state were to take precedence over the interests of individual republics, oblasts, raions, farms, or people. An abundance of archival documents on the 1946 grain procurement campaign in Ukraine allows us to reconstruct the sequence of events and characterize the food politics of the central government in the countryside. In July 1946, when evidence of drought in parts of the Central Black Earth Zone and Ukraine became evident, the Council of Ministers of the USSR lowered the overall procurement plan for the USSR. In Ukraine, it established the plan at 340 million poods, or approximately 5.6 million tons, and allowed local officials to lower procurement targets for farms with poor harvests, as long as this shortfall was made up by those collective farms with more abundant harvests. The overall plan was to stay the same. In order to encourage the Ukrainian SSR to reach the state’s target procurement figures, the Council of Ministers and Central Committee promised 10 million poods (0.164 million tons) of bread if it were to meet the demands of the plan. In the event that Ukraine fell short of the plan but managed to produce 330 million poods, or approximately 5.4 million tons, it would be given 5 million poods (0.082 million tons) of grain. If the republic fell short of 330 million poods, it would receive no supplementary bread grains. This system of rewards likely provided particular incentive for members of oblast executive committees to aggressively carry out the procurement campaign, since half of the amount of the conditional grain grant would be given to them.60 Aside from the relatively meager “reward,” the demand to give up all of the grain according to the plan in the midst of poor weather conditions required from the peasants an inordinate amount of trust in both the Soviet


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leadership and the local bureaucracy that handed out the food. The government had established a horrific track record, allowing and, indeed, in many cases causing, millions to die in 1921–22 and 1932–33. In Ukraine, peasants anticipated famine and frequently compared 1946–47 to 1932–33, clearly not expecting the state to save them. On April 14, 1946, a collective farmer in Cherniakhovskii raion, Zhitomir oblast, wrote that “1933 is coming.”61 In July, peasants in other oblasts of Ukraine echoed this sentiment. Collective farmers in different raions of Kiev oblast wrote: “We see the coming of 1933 . . .”; “It will be as it was in 1933 . . .”; and “. . . 1933 has come. . . .”62 On July 27, 1946, a collective farmer from Chernigov oblast similarly stated: “. . . we’re expecting 1933.”63 It is important to note that the excerpts from many of these letters placed an emphasis on the drought and poor harvest rather than on government actions. One cannot say for sure how much blame the peasants placed on the state for prevailing conditions, since the authors of these letters might have avoided criticizing the government out of fear. Furthermore, choosing which excerpts to pass on to superiors required a high degree of selectivity and we do not know to what extent the passages taken from the letters are representative of the letters as a whole. Collective farmers had other reasons not to trust the state: the peasantry, aside from being left out of the Soviet rationing scheme, failed to receive food owed to it per earned workday in 1945–46. The small government grain payment for fulfilling the plan would hardly have saved many people from hunger, considering that collective farmers received little or no compensation per earned workday. Intercepted letters and other sources testify that many peasants received very little or no bread at all in exchange for their labor on the collective farms in 1946. In April 1946, a collective farmer in KamenetsPodol’skii oblast, Ukrainian SSR, wrote to her brother: “I have earned 250 days, but I got nothing in exchange for them.” Other kolkhozniki, in April and May 1946, complained of working hard all year only to receive little or no bread and being on the verge of starvation.64 While the state realized that poor compensation led to less than desirable work efficiency, it failed to produce enough to adequately compensate collective farmers, particularly because peasants were at the bottom of the food chain. The state sensed this lack of trust and responded with similar mistrust toward the people: the Ukrainian Council of Ministers and Central Committee frequently accused peasants of withholding grain, sometimes labeling the alleged culprits as “kulaks” and “saboteurs.” On August 2, 1946, Ukrainian Minister of State Security Savchenko reported to D.S. Korotchenko, the chairman of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, that in several raions of L’vov oblast, peasants were concealing part of the land they had sown so as to submit less grain to the state.65 On August 29, 1946, the

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Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR reprimanded officials in Dnepropetrovsk oblast for the slow pace of grain procurements, blaming them for failing to expose sabotage of the state’s grain collection drive in certain unnamed raions. The Central Committee demanded that officials punish those who did a poor job of harvesting and milling grain and that they prosecute those accused of theft.66 After the Central Committee of the USSR issued a decree on October 8, 1946, complaining of the slow tempo of grain collection in several Ukrainian oblasts, the Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR accused oblast-level officials of displaying indifference toward “the anti-government practices of some administrators of raions, collective farms, and state farms, who are sabotaging the state procurement plan and concealing grain that is supposed to be given to the state.” Interestingly, the Ukrainian Central Committee placed added pressure on some oblasts in East Ukraine not mentioned in the decree, accusing officials in Zaporozh’e, Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kherson oblasts of failing to combat sabotage of the grain drive.67 On October 24, 1946, the Central Committee of the USSR began to place direct pressure on the Ukrainian Central Committee, accusing it of condoning the failure of officials in several oblasts to combat disorganization and the sabotage of procurements.68 The Ukrainian Central Committee promptly applied pressure on oblast officials to accelerate the collection of grain and threatened them with harsh punishments, urging “a Bolshevik battle for bread.” Sabotage was noted to have become a “mass phenomenon” in Kherson oblast, and officials in several other oblasts were accused of overlooking antigovernment practices.69 Pressure by means of such charges continued into November, but these soon gave way to reports from locales reporting rapidly developing famine conditions.70 While it is difficult to ascertain if the Soviet leadership realized how little grain actually remained in the countryside, mistrust of the peasantry likely contributed to the overzealousness of the procurement campaign.71 The fact that the state provided substantial food relief also suggests that the Soviet leadership overestimated the amount of grain concealed.72 Soviet procurement policies in Ukraine generally reflected those in other grain-producing parts of the USSR that suffered from drought. In his monograph, V.F. Zima has effectively outlined the state’s grain collection campaign in the Soviet Union as a whole. In order to compensate for the shortfall in drought-stricken regions, the state raised grain collection targets in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. Local officials were charged with taking supplementary grain (up to 50 percent over the target) from farms, raions, and oblasts with good harvests. In the RSFSR, the most significant supplements of this kind were extracted from Krasnodar krai; Rostov, Gor’kii,


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Stalingrad, Kurgan, and Novosibirsk oblasts; the Tatar ASSR; and Altai krai. On the republic level, the state drew the most grain in this manner from Kazakhstan.73 As in Ukraine, the lag in procurements led to charges of sabotage and antigovernment actions for allegedly covering up grain across the USSR. In October, the administrative organs of almost three dozen oblasts and krais received threats of forthcoming exaction if they fail to root out such practices.74 To squeeze as much grain as possible out of the countryside, in November, the Council of Ministers and Central Committee of the USSR decreed a compulsory state purchase of grain from all regions excluding Voronezh, Kursk, Orel, and Tambov oblasts; Moldavia; and the Karelo-Finnish SSR. The largest compulsory purchases were demanded of Altai and Primor’e krais; Astrakhan’, Kaluga, Pskov, and Cheliabinsk oblasts; Tuvinskaia autonomous oblast; and the Turkmen and Kazakh SSRs. Experienced Central Committee and Politburo representatives were sent to the different regions to oversee and ensure the utmost intensification of grain procurement: Mikoian to the Kazakh SSR; Malenkov to Altai krai; Beriia and Mekhlis to Krasnodar krai; Kaganovich to Kurgan oblast; and Patolichev and again Kaganovich to assist Khrushchev in Ukraine.75 The grain procurement campaign essentially demonstrated that the needs of the state were supreme, even if that meant taking away the peasantry’s last remaining bread. The central authorities felt that labeling the procurement of grain an all-important goal of the state to be justification enough for these policies.76 In 1971, Khrushchev recalled: Stalin demanded that everything be done to meet the plan, and everything was done, but the plan was not met. It was impossible to meet it. But all the bread was taken away. It was all taken away according to, as they say, the first commandment, Stalin’s commandment . . . the father and benefactor of the people.77

When all of the bread was taken away, at the end of November and in the beginning of December, reports of people swelling and dying from hunger began to reach the desks of Khrushchev, Malenkov, and other Soviet leaders.78 Recognizing that the peasantry had insufficient food to work productively, the government provided food loans (prodovol’stvennye ssudy) at the most crucial times of the agricultural year. On September 5, 1946, Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture G. Butenko requested from Khrushchev, the head of the Ukrainian Council of Ministers, such food loans for Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Suma, Khar’kov, and Voroshilovgrad oblasts, to give them the opportunity to finish reaping the harvest in 1946 and to be able to carry out tilling and sowing for the 1947 harvest.79 In March 1947, Kosygin reported to

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Stalin on the administration of relief in Moldavia: “All questions of food aid to the population are carried out in such a way as to provide for the fulfillment of the plan for the spring sowing.”80 In requesting food loans for Ukraine in early 1947, Kaganovich and other officials made clear that the goal of this relief was to sustain peasants involved in the sowing campaign.81 This approach demonstrates another advantage provided by government grain stocks: the provisioning of the population at times crucial for the effective carrying out of agricultural work. The resolution of the February 1947 Central Committee plenum reveals that these temporary fixes reflected a broader official belief that Soviet agriculture could not be successful without improved compensation for collective farmers. Stalin’s “first commandment” would remain in force; however, according to the Party’s plans, better payment of collective farmers would both boost output and eradicate the causes of material hardships.82 For this reason, the government stressed that postwar sacrifices were temporary and both Party and Soviet officials, per order of the state, sought to convince people of the passing nature of postwar difficulties.83 But the extraordinary measures aimed at assuring a good harvest in 1947 were not limited to food loans. The government also sent people from urban areas to work on the collective farms. In July 4, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a decree calling for the mobilization of workers for the collection of the harvest in the countryside.84 In August 1947, in Novosibirsk oblast, the authorities recruited 18,460 inhabitants from towns and cities to help with the harvest. Over 700 cars were sent to facilitate the transport of grain from the farms to the warehouses of the Ministry of Procurements. The responsibilities of some of this urban workforce included operating combines and driving grain to procurement checkpoints.85 In Kazakhstan, perhaps owing to recruitment problems, officials paid mobilized workers more than the amount designated by the July decree.86 In September, Amur oblast officials dispatched an additional 4,500 inhabitants of cities and towns to assist with the collection of the harvest in raions that were lagging behind the plan.87 From a human perspective, the great tragedy of 1946–47 was the famine and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. But the Soviet state regarded it as a crisis of a different kind. The dependence of Soviet agriculture, and, in turn, of the entire economy, on climatic conditions limited the state. In this context, raising the peasantry’s standard of living meant increasing work output and providing the raw material for the further industrialization of the country. In the immediate postwar years, improving agricultural productivity was seen as one of the most important government tasks, as indicated by the resolution of the February 1947 plenum:


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The plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks affords primary importance to the rapid reestablishment and recovery of agriculture as a necessary condition for the successful development of the entire economy of the USSR and the future improvement in the material wellbeing of the people. The carrying out of this all-important government task should be at the center of attention of Party and Soviet organs, collective farmers, state farm and MTS workers, agricultural specialists, and technical engineering workers of light industry who fill agricultural orders.88

While one might hesitate to take this pronouncement at face value, it followed from Andreev’s recommendations to Stalin in October 1946: Andreev had argued that agricultural backwardness limited the whole Soviet economy. The mechanization of collective farming would play a crucial role in propelling agricultural production.89 The adoption of the “Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature” in 1948 further suggests that the Soviet leadership believed in the need for an agricultural revolution of sorts; it sought to conquer nature by constructing dams, hydroelectric stations, canals, and irrigation systems across the USSR.90 In short, after the effects of the drought became evident to the Soviet leadership, it decided to cut its losses and salvage as many of its prerogatives as possible, while sacrificing the livelihood of a good deal of the country’s citizenry. This approach forced nearly the entire population of the USSR to accept deprivation, but the heaviest burden fell on the peasantry, who had the commodity that the state needed to feed the rest of the country. While grain stocks certainly allowed the USSR to gain political capital in Europe, they were also necessary for the rebuilding of industry, cancellation of rationing, provisioning of the country’s population (especially industrial centers), and strategic use of grain to avoid another catastrophic harvest in 1947. Grain also provided a much-needed resource in the unlikely but nonetheless possible event of war amid rising international tensions. Food as a Weapon against Nationalist Resistance? In 1946–47, people inhabiting newly incorporated areas of the Soviet Union sometimes expressed the belief that the government sought to destroy the people by confiscating all their grain. One peasant in the village of Brezoai, Benderskii uezd, Moldavian SSR—labeled a kulak by officials—said: “Soon we will all die of hunger. The Soviet government has robbed us. If they hadn’t taken the bread in 1945, we’d all have enough. The Soviet government did all of this intentionally, with the goal of destroying the people.”91 In a sense, this perspective echoes the claims of some historians who have argued that

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the Soviet famine of 1932–33 constituted genocide against the Ukrainian people, as discussed in Chapter 1. On the other hand, the existence of this sentiment outside of Ukraine suggests that this perception of Soviet actions was not a phenomenon limited to the territory. The heartless procurement campaign and the resulting predicament of people in individual locales could understandably create the impression that the Soviet state targeted certain national groups or geographical areas, but these notions alone do not constitute adequate verification of Soviet intentions. Nevertheless, the fact that the 1946–47 famine was particularly severe in Moldavia and parts of Ukraine merits a discussion of the possibility of famine as a weapon against certain nationalities. In looking at the geography of the food crisis and ensuing famine, the universal nature of the problem in the USSR after World War II becomes strikingly apparent. Food shortages and breakdowns in the distribution of bread plagued both east and west and both town and country. These problems with provisions stretched from Ukraine to central Russia to the Urals and further eastward. By contrast, the highest mortality was registered in areas that experienced drought in 1946: the Moldavian SSR, the southern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR, and the central oblasts of the European part of the RSFSR. Famine mortality in Ukraine and Moldavia, though truly staggering, was comparable to death rates in the regions of the RSFSR that had been under German occupation.92 In 1946, food shortages extended beyond the boundaries of the USSR to other areas under Soviet control. On May 6, 1946, Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov complained to Stalin of poor provisioning of the German population in eastern Prussia. Those who worked in industry received less than 50 percent owed to them according to their ration cards. In March and April, those employed in local industry and communal works did not receive ration cards at all. The nonworking population, ostensibly dependents, received on average 200 grams of bread a day. Kruglov cited a series of negative consequences of these conditions, including poor labor production, a rise in mortality, and an increase in crime. Two Germans were arrested for selling human flesh to the population—something Kruglov considered to be a consequence of poor Soviet provisioning.93 Furthermore, if we were to consider famine as a weapon against nationalist resistance, we would expect famine to be most widespread in areas where the nationalist movements were most influential. In the case of Ukraine, it appears that, on the contrary, conditions in western regions, the hotbed of the Ukrainian nationalist resistance, were at least in the early going better than in the eastern oblasts. In the first half of 1946, people from the east traveled to the west in order to buy bread.94 The state rewarded the western


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Ukrainian oblasts for meeting official demands for grain deliveries in 1944– 45 by allowing both collective and private farmers to sell bread on the market. This measure led to tens of thousands of peasants from other parts of the country—Briansk, Kaluga, Orel, Odessa, Poltava, Kiev, Kamenets-Podol’skii, Vinnitsa, and other oblasts—to flock to West Ukraine beginning in February 1946. The police apprehended over 62,000 individuals who traveled westward on freight trains in June and nearly another 98,000 during the last 20 days of July.95 In June 1946, the secretary of the L’vov Oblast Party Committee reported an influx of collective farmers from Khar’kov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kherson, Poltava, Vinnitsa, Tambov, Orel, Kursk, Briansk, Kalinin, and other oblasts, as well as the Belorussian SSR. These peasants, according to this official, came to L’vov oblast to purchase bread and other food items.96 If we were to interpret the detainment of migrants as a conscious effort to starve them, the alleged victims would then have been not just Ukrainians, but also Russians, Belorussians, and other nationalities that sought to enter West Ukraine for the sake of obtaining bread. Documents also suggest that food shortages and famine in 1946–47 created more problems than they solved for Soviet officials. Famine and hardship convinced people, especially in newly incorporated areas, of the disadvantages of the collective farm system and of Soviet communism. Hunger and deprivation encouraged resistance to the state and provided fertile ground for the propaganda of anti-Soviet nationalist causes. In Moldavia, for example, one official reported: . . .[H]ostile kulak-nationalist elements, making use of the complications with produce of a significant part of the republic’s population, is [sic] carrying out anti-Soviet and agitation aimed at undermining measures being taken by the state and Party, particularly the upcoming elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR.97

Similarly, in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, sought to make use of the famine to bolster its cause by depicting the famine as a political tool of the Soviet state and spreading news of the resistance movement via migrants from the eastern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR.98 The Soviet authorities wanted to convince people in newly incorporated areas of the superiority of the collective farm system, and famine only confirmed the claims of insurgents.99 In this context, the apprehension of migrants may have been a means of limiting word of famine from spreading to western borderlands. Soviet policies in Ukraine and Moldavia, and the tragic mortality that followed, can be traced most accurately to the more general campaign to bring

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Soviet society in line with the leadership’s ideological prerogatives, as well as the vicious struggle for bread in 1946–47. Moldavia, made up of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, was relinquished to the USSR by Romania in 1940. As a result of the war, the Soviet authorities had not had an opportunity to impose collectivization in Moldavia until 1944–45. The imposition of the Soviet agricultural system coincided with crop failure, and collectivization prevented the peasantry from employing traditional coping mechanisms that had helped it survive drought in previous years.100 Even in the absence of the devastation of war, collectivization would have inevitably served to disrupt agriculture in the region. Peasants sought to sell their cattle, seed, and farm implements to prevent them from being collectivized.101 In the short term, this strategy provided people with more money to obtain goods, but it also set back agricultural production. Similarly, the western oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR had been incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939, and, in 1946, the Soviet state had yet to fully install its administration or collectivize agriculture. The German invasion wiped out any progress that had been made in these regions before the war. After the war, these areas, along with the recently absorbed Baltic republics and newly incorporated parts of Belorussia, had to experience something akin to what the rest of the USSR endured during the First Five-Year Plan in the late 1920s and early 1930s.102 Conclusion The findings in this chapter allow us to situate the famine more firmly in the context of the early cold war and Soviet priorities after World War II. The food situation in the USSR in 1946–47 placed it in a position of relative weakness vis-à-vis the United States—its newfound rival. The Truman administration recognized this facet of Soviet weakness and sought to exploit it to gain concessions from the Soviet leadership. Aside from signifying that the United States took a more aggressive stance than often suggested, this evidence highlights that the Truman administration did not make it easy for the Soviet leadership to follow a path of international cooperation. It appears that, in order to do so, the Kremlin would have had to make what it perceived to be significant sacrifices that may have threatened its sovereignty and security. While the Soviet Union may have been able to receive continued food aid by admitting severe internal problems, Stalin instead chose to save face and rely on meager internal resources. In order to weather the drought of 1946, and to minimize the effects of agricultural shortfall on its priorities, the Soviet leadership forced the people to make sacrifices, which were embodied primarily in rationing cuts and aggressive grain procurements, both of which


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led to hunger and deaths from starvation. The state perceived deprivation as temporary and, in the long run, desired to raise the standard of living of the population. Yet the Soviet leadership perceived these severe measures as necessary and justified by its greater goals—industrialization, defense needs in the event of war, the success of the 1947 harvest, and the reputation of Soviet communism outside the borders of the USSR. The findings here also reveal that agricultural production served as the most important limiting factor in the growth of the Soviet economy and in its rivalry with the United States as the cold war emerged. Contrary to the claims of V.F. Zima, the Soviet leadership did not believe that famine would make people work harder.103 On the contrary, the state saved up grain and released it at crucial times of the year in order to maximize the effect of food—a scarce resource—on agricultural production.104 Poor harvests limited the amount of grain that the government could sell abroad, which in turn slowed the pace of reconstruction and further industrialization. The decisions of the 1947 plenum, along with Andreev’s report to Stalin in October 1946, confirm that the Soviet leadership acknowledged this problem and recognized that it would need to raise the standard of living of the peasantry in order to achieve agricultural success. While Stalin approved the conclusions in Andreev’s report, it remains unclear whether he personally desired an improvement in the lot of the peasantry or simply perceived the state’s proclamations as rhetoric. All we know for sure is that, in his mind, the interests of the state were supreme and no human cost was too great in pursuing these goals. This stance did not necessarily preclude him from believing in the future improvement in the living standards of the peasantry, which was to become a village proletariat. There is no reason not to take Andreev’s opinions at face value, since they were expressed in internal documents and not intended for public consumption. Other Soviet leaders, namely Mikoian and Molotov, also believed in easing the burden on the peasantry, favoring an increase in grain procurement prices during the winter of 1946–47.105 But the planned improvement in the compensation of the peasantry notwithstanding, Stalin’s “first commandment” remained in force. In other words, while the Soviet leadership sought to improve the plight of the peasantry, and saw this as a precursor to better production, it also seemed to believe that an agricultural revolution would have to precede any such improvement in living standards. This contradiction constitutes one of the central problems of postwar Stalinism.


CHAPTER 6

The Famine of 1946–47 in the Context of Russian History The land is exhausted; the climate is changed; the existing agricultural system is a hopeless failure.1 E.A. Brayley Hodgetts, 1892 . . . [A]griculture depends too much, as the peasants used to say, on the Lord God.2 N.S. Khrushchev, 1971

H

istorians of the Soviet famine of 1932–33 have spilled much ink in the ongoing debate over Stalin’s role in that crisis.3 While the study on human actions in the unfolding of famine is unquestionably worthwhile, it also tends to highlight narrow and short-term issues at the expense of broad and long-term factors. In this chapter, I make a modest effort to place a largely distinct event—the Soviet famine of 1946–47—at the crossroads of what David Arnold calls “event and structure.” Famine signifies an exceptional (if periodically recurring) event, a collective catastrophe of such magnitude as to cause social and economic dislocation. . . . And yet, at the same time, famine is rarely a bolt from the blue, a wholly random and unpredictable occurrence that can be meaningfully considered in isolation from the economic, social, and political structures of a specific society.4

The idea of “structure” can be extended even further, as has been done by adherents of the Annales school, to include the longue durée: “underlying structures and recurrent patterns” that may be hardly perceptible in the short term.5 While an overzealous application of the Annales approach can relegate

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major human catastrophes to mere “surface disturbances,” a careful consideration of the undercurrents of history can add to our understanding of the famine of 1946–47. In examining Russian and Soviet famine in historical perspective, we are faced with an inescapable fact: even the most disastrous of nineteenth-century tsarist-era famines cannot compare with those of the Soviet era in terms of demographic losses. The increase in the death rate in 1947 in the USSR, “including non-famine areas,” was nearly three times greater than the corresponding figure for the regions affected by famine in 1892: 2.85 versus 1.05.6 The total number of famine victims in 1946–47 (between 1 and 2 million) was roughly triple the deaths in 1891–92 (between 375,000 and 400,000).7 The corresponding figures for 1921–22 (approximately 5 million) and 1932–33 (between 5.7 and 8.1 million) even further highlight the dramatic jump in famine mortality under the Bolsheviks.8 This chapter explores why death tolls under the Bolsheviks were so staggering, focusing on late tsarist agriculture as a reference point. After surveying the natural conditions of the Russian landmass, we will turn our attention to the tsarist agricultural legacy, the transition from tsarist to Soviet policies (which profoundly affected society’s ability to cope with subsistence crises), and Soviet agricultural production in comparison with late imperial Russia. This chapter concludes with an effort to identify the elements of Communist ideology that led the Soviet leadership to launch its disastrous social experiments. Geography, Climate, and Famine in Russian History By virtue of its geographic location, Russia has from its inception been susceptible to climatic vagaries. Much of the inhabitable part of the former Soviet Union is covered with forest and soil called podzol, which is short in natural nutrients and therefore less than ideal for farming. In other regions, namely the mixed forest and steppe, the predominant soil is chernozem, or fertile black earth. Tragically, owing to intense cold in eastern regions, namely Siberia, some of the chernozem cannot be tilled, and thus this particular reservoir of agricultural production essentially goes to waste. To further complicate the situation, precipitation falls most generously on soil ill suited for farming, whereas the areas with the most productive soil frequently experience drought. The early summer tends to be dry, with the most rain falling in July and August. Drought in the spring and early summer sometimes gives way to devastating downpours during the harvest.9 While drought rarely if ever afflicts all grain-producing areas at the same time, excessive moisture in eastern regions frequently accompanies sparse precipitation in western regions, so there are no substantial grain surpluses in the east to make up

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for deficits in the west.10 The short growing season in the grain-producing parts of Russia, ranging from 110 to 200 days, further impedes agricultural production.11 Owing in large part to natural conditions, harvests in prerevolutionary Russia were predictably unreliable, and frequent regional outbreaks of hunger occasionally gave way to more large-scale famines. A comparison of the 1946–47 famine with the historically distant hunger crisis that struck Russia in 1601–03 provides insight into the Soviet famine experience by suggesting both continuity and change from the Muscovite period. In 1601, constant rains followed by intense frost killed much of the country’s harvest on the root, leading to widespread hunger. In 1602, the harvest failed again, signaling the beginning of a horrible famine. People ate grass, straw, and even human flesh. Murder and theft proliferated. Tsar Boris Godunov (1598– 1605) handed out bread and money, but according to Russian historian O.F. Platonov, this move did more harm than good: huge crowds of needy people flocked to Moscow for free food, but there were not enough handouts for everyone, so many of them died. Those on whom the government relied to hand out the food pocketed some of it and gave it to their families; therefore, the population received much less food than it was supposed to. Malnutrition led to outbreaks of various diseases and more than 127,000 people perished in Moscow alone. Aside from government offerings of bread, Boris Godunov ordered the purchase of grain from areas with good harvests and distributed it to areas in need and gave work to the hungry in Moscow. The famine ended with the harvest of 1604, but the government’s problems continued. Bands of criminals—peasants, or kholopy, released by their masters—formed during the famine posed a formidable challenge to Boris’s military.12 At this time, the western regions, which housed social elements considered dangerous by the state, became a particular problem spot, helping pave the way for Polish invasion in the name of False Dimitrii I, the first in a line of three Dimitriis—all pretenders to the Russian throne.13 Thus began what came to be known as the “time of troubles.” A comparison between the famine of 1601–03 and that of 1946–47 proves useful in that it reveals a degree of continuity and, at the same time, helps uncover discontinuity. Undesirable climatic conditions—a major undercurrent in Russian and Soviet history—contributed to poor harvests, setting off both tragedies. Theft, murder, the appropriation of goods by those distributing food, and other forms of crime, which are universal trademarks of famine, accompanied both crises. In both instances, people looked to the state for help and in both cases the state provided relief that proved insufficient to stem the tide of famine mortality. The peasantry found itself in a particularly unenviable position in 1601–03 and again in 1946–47. Finally, resistance to central authority in western regions and the threat of aggression from the

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West accompanied both crises. Above all, however, the problem with food production as a result of poor weather demonstrates that nature has long plagued the inhabitants of the Russian, and subsequently Soviet, landmass. The differences between the two famines help us isolate one of the distinctive features of modern governments and particularly ones that adopt a command-administrative model. While the famine led to the undermining of state power in both cases, military invasion from the West was averted in 1946–47. While some might argue that invasion from the West was not a real possibility after World War II (and others might vehemently argue to the contrary), Stalin unquestionably managed to prevent widespread disaffection with the prevailing order and armed resistance in Ukraine from progressing to the destabilization of state power. His very ability to impose order, though certainly not “totalitarian” in the full sense of the term, reveals a degree of social control that was unattainable in the time of Boris Godunov. In this sense, the stability attained after the famine can be attributed in part to modernity and the concomitant increase in social control. During the Soviet period, this higher level of social control played a significant role in the outcome of famines, but mostly for ill and not good. The “Agricultural Crisis” in Late Imperial Russia Distant famines in Russian history certainly help demonstrate that famine preceded the Soviet project and that, by virtue of climate, the country is rather susceptible to subsistence breakdowns. But the immediate pre-Soviet context deserves particular attention, because it can help determine the role of Soviet policies in such crises by addressing the issue of continuity and change. The comparison of pre-1917 and Soviet agricultural policies also serves as a fair measure of Soviet success, because the Bolsheviks came to power partly on the promise of revolutionizing the countryside, which they considered to be backward.14 In order to evaluate Soviet performance, we must start with the imperial legacy and the state of agriculture during the last decades that the tsars ruled the country. Until the last few decades, scholars tended to accept the notion that Russian agriculture was in crisis leading up to the February Revolution of 1917.15 This view echoed the claims of the critics of the imperial government, including socialists of all stripes, who held to a pessimistic view of Russia’s prospects under autocratic rule. Historians of this orientation trace this unstable and even declining state of agriculture to the emancipation of the serfs, enacted by Emperor Alexander II in 1861. For almost a century, the idea of how to emancipate the serfs vexed the rulers of Russia, because they increasingly accepted the need for it, but serfdom was so deeply ingrained in Russian


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society and economy that they feared tinkering with it. The government of Alexander II inherited the unenviable task of freeing the serfs without excessively displeasing the gentry, who provided cadres for the administration of the state and whose status and, to a large degree, livelihood stemmed from serf ownership. Educated Russian society supported the initiative and the nobility even played a direct role in the reform; however, when Alexander II took the decisive step and abolished serfdom, critics began to point to the reform’s shortcomings, and this criticism increased toward the end of the nineteenth century. Adherents of the pessimistic view suggest that the conditions of the emancipation—particularly the meager land that the serfs received and onerous redemption payments for this land—led to a growing impoverishment of the peasantry. According to Richard Robbins, “The legacy of the emancipation trapped the peasant in an almost unbreakable cycle of poverty. Each year he skirted the edge of disaster, his lot determined by the weather and the uncertain harvest.”16 Furthermore, the decision to preserve the peasant commune, or mir, impeded technological progress and limited the independence of individual peasants. Market pressures encouraged peasants to sell grain when they could not afford to do so, as well as to put land that should have been left fallow under cultivation, thereby exhausting the soil and diminishing grain yields. The deterioration of the soil was particularly ominous given the rapid growth of the peasant population of European Russia and the resulting land hunger in the region.17 Prerevolutionary critics of the autocracy, including such prominent socialists as G.V. Plekhanov, the founder of the Social-Democratic movement, saw the famine of 1891–92 as a symptom of the mounting agricultural crisis.18 Many historians have embraced this received wisdom. According to this view, the peasants, having long lived at the edges of subsistence, finally succumbed to famine. While acknowledging the adverse climatic conditions that served as the immediate cause of the crop failure in 1891, these historians stress the flawed agricultural policies of the state and, again, the legacy of the botched emancipation of 1861.19 Regional outbreaks of hunger in 1906 and 1911 are sometimes presented as full-blown famines and, regardless of the limited scale of these crises, further evidence that agriculture continued to struggle into the twentieth century and that the lot of the peasantry did not improve.20 While many of the problems plaguing pre-1917 agriculture are irrefutable—for example, land hunger certainly increased because of explosive population growth in European Russia21 –the critical view fails to explain the absence of large-scale famine after 1892. During the last quarter century of monarchical rule, Russia experienced four more crop failures—in 1897, 1901, 1906, and 1911—but none of these ended in famine.22 In focusing on

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the flaws of pre-1917 agricultural policy in Russia, the works of the traditional or critical orientation also fail to provide us with reference points from which to compare tsarist and Soviet agriculture. We are left looking at “bad” tsarist policies with “bad” Soviet ones, and wondering why the outcome differed when the two systems were challenged by crop failure. Over the last few decades, historians have begun to question the downward trajectory of Russian agriculture after the emancipation of 1861, largely owing to the emergence of peasant studies as a field and, consequently, a closer examination of the lives of Russia’s peasants. This revisionist position, supported by local studies and new archival data, challenges the notion that Russian countryside was in crisis. These more positive evaluations of Russian pre-1917 agriculture provide an insight into why Russia succeeded in staving off famine after 1892. Cumulatively, the more recent studies suggest that the peasantry was not as impoverished as previously claimed; that the peasant commune was in some ways adaptive; and even that peasant farming techniques were not as backward as often portrayed.23 Some evidence suggests that peasant standard of living improved in Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Steven Hoch, adopting a demographic perspective, frames the rapid population growth in late imperial Russia not in terms of a Malthusian danger, with production failing to keep pace with the growing number of mouths to feed, but in the context of improving life expectancy, which resulted from improved nutrition and the decline of certain epidemic diseases.24 On the basis of a study of the parish of Borshevka, located near Tambov, in Russia’s most depressed European region, he concludes that rampancy of disease and infant mortality “were more closely related to fertility levels, household size, housing conditions, and weaning practices than to annual or seasonal food availability and the nutritional status of the population.”25 When demographic crises arose in Borshevka, they came in summer and autumn, while subsistence crises tended to emerge in spring.26 Furthermore, the prices of the principal foodstuffs—oats and rye— remained stable, and they did not correlate with mortality.27 In short, the peasant diet was actually moderately improving, and disease, not diet, holds the key to understanding high peasant mortality in the late imperial village. A case study based on Voronezh province produces findings consistent with Hoch’s thesis. The leasing of land, a practice traditionally associated with the desperation of poorer peasants and seen as evidence of land hunger, was primarily carried out by wealthier peasants to increase their income. This “opportunity leasing” allowed peasants to produce surplus grain and sell it on the market. Furthermore, the reduction of land left fallow, also regarded as evidence of peasant want as well as the source of soil exhaustion, happened less frequently than usually suggested, even among the poorest peasants.


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Better-off peasants often decreased the area of fallow to increase production for the market.28 Furthermore, in some regards, the much maligned peasant commune and, more broadly, the traditional peasant way of life provided stability and even some economic benefits. High fertility and mean household size, which were the prime culprits of high mortality from infectious disease, also provided labor stability. In the meantime, the periodic redistribution of land, which according to the traditional orientation took away peasant incentive to take good care of their plots, assured that land would not go unused. These features of peasant life, though deficient in some respects, helped insulate the village from subsistence crises.29 This evidence prompts us to look more closely at the famine of 1891–92, which serves as a centerpiece of the traditional argument that Russian agriculture and peasant standard of living were declining in the final decades of imperial rule. Three features of the 1891–92 crop failure and famine warrant particular attention: first, a high percentage of those who died in 1891–92 succumbed to cholera and typhus; second, in that year, the Central Black Earth region suffered its worst drought in modern history; and third, the 1891 crop failure came on the heels of a poor harvest in 1889. The spread of disease figured prominently into the outcome of the 1891–92 famine. According to Robbins, “very few cases of actual starvation were documented,” and approximately 25 percent of the c. 400,000 excess deaths in 1892 were from cholera.30 Stephen Wheatcroft goes as far as to suggest that mortality in 1891–92 might have been less than usual if not for the cholera epidemic of 1892.31 The other major killer in 1892 was typhus, which was endemic to central Russia and is, therefore, difficult to link exclusively to the famine. Malnutrition unquestionably made the population more susceptible to disease; however, given the disease-friendly environment of the Russian village—crowded quarters, early weaning from breastfeeding, poor sanitation, and increasing mobility—subsistence-based explanations are insufficient. In 1891, Russia suffered from one of the worst droughts in its meteorologically recorded history—a fact confirmed by post–World War II Soviet authorities.32 In a recent survey of modern Russian agriculture, Dronin and Bellinger point out that “the drought of 1891 was much more severe than any other in the pre-war period” and “an unprecedented and severe climatic phenomenon . . . affected a vast territory.”33 All 16 provinces in the European part of Russia were affected, causing a 26 percent drop in the grain harvest.34 The drought had a leveling effect: the lands of gentry, rich peasants, and poor peasants all failed to yield the usual harvests. Estate owners testified that their crops failed despite the use of fertilizer and deep-tilling methods.35 This

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leveling makes less compelling the claims that the 1891 crop failure resulted from the backwardness of peasant agricultural implements and techniques and brings climate to the fore. The cumulative effect of successive years of meager agricultural production placed the population in a precarious position. Russia had produced a poor harvest in 1889 and a moderate one in 1890 prior to the crop failure of 1891.36 For the period 1883–1900, per capita grain production in 1889 was second lowest only to 1891.37 Given, however, the unusual severity of the two crop failures, the subsistence situation in 1891–92 can hardly be considered typical of the imperial countryside. Given the extraordinary circumstances, one can surmise that had the peasantry been as impoverished as the critical orientation suggests, the 1891–92 famine would have been much worse. After 1892, the imperial authorities succeeded in preventing the recurrence of famine, despite numerous incidences of drought and regional food shortages.38 If the imperial agricultural crisis was not as severe as previously thought, how do we account for the perceptions of contemporaries? While the conclusion is necessarily tentative, and more research needs to be done, it appears that the perceived crisis was a function of social and cultural changes. The penetration of the village by outsiders exposed to the eyes of educated society the supposed ignorance of the peasantry, as official efforts to modernize the countryside were often frustrated by the traditional views of the peasants; this penetration also altered the traditional way of life in the village, thereby leading to a social and cultural crisis from the perspective of the peasantry.39 Furthermore, improving living standards led to increasing expectations, which as David Kerans suggests, help square “the agrarian disturbances [of the late imperial period] with the reassessment of the agrarian economy.”40 In short, growing distress in the countryside does not necessarily imply a decline in Russian agriculture or a decrease in the peasant standard of living. Evidence tends to point in the other direction: moderately successful modernization contributed to frequently unwelcome and sometimes alarming changes in the countryside. That was the crux of the crisis. This characterization of the crisis becomes yet more persuasive when we compare tsarist and Soviet agricultural production later in this chapter. From Commune to Kolkhoz Socialists and other critics of pre-1917 agriculture were too harsh in their judgments. But the belief in a severe and deepening crisis fueled opposition to the autocracy and bolstered the revolutionary movement.41 As we shall see, the Bolsheviks dismissed not only the accumulated tsarist experience but also


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that of the peasants. Partly for this reason, Soviet policies in 1917 and beyond had the cumulative effect of disrupting traditional coping mechanisms that had helped stave off famine in the late imperial period. The tsarist and Soviet authorities had in common that they sought to modernize the countryside under unfavorable climatic conditions and varying degrees of peasant resistance. But the prescribed solutions differed dramatically. The Soviet approach proved much more aggressive and, consequently, socially disruptive. In 1906, Prime Minister P.A. Stolypin launched his agrarian reform, which allowed peasants to become private landowners and thus break ties with the commune. This reform addressed many of the criticisms of tsarist agriculture policies: it allowed for the consolidation of scattered strips of land, encouraged migration eastward to reduce land hunger in European Russia, and provided measures for the intensification of peasant farming. While this agrarian reform provided for a transition from the commune to private landholding, acceptance of the terms was voluntary and, therefore, change was gradual. Furthermore, the reforms allowed for the continued existence of the peasant commune: “. . . Stolypin frequently noted that where the commune was strong and vital, there it could (even should) continue to exist.”42 In other words, while tsarist officials regarded the peasant commune as outdated, they did not seek to eradicate it, at least in the short run. The authorities encouraged peasants to abandon the commune in favor of private ownership through incentives, not force. The success of Stolypin’s program cannot be fully evaluated, because World War I interrupted the agrarian reforms in 1914 and the monarchy fell in February 1917. While the Bolsheviks were forced to deal with the spontaneous proliferation of communes after taking power in October 1917, their theoretical framework provided no room for peasant agency. Lenin, the chief Bolshevik ideologue, considered the commune backward and deemed peasant ruin a necessary step in the development of communism in the Russian countryside. According to the Bolshevik view, capitalism would lead to economic differentiation in the village and, more specifically, to the creation of two antagonistic groups of peasants: one poor and the other rich. The downtrodden poor peasants would eventually become class-conscious proletarians; but the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 came “prematurely” for the Bolsheviks. The majority of the peasantry did not fit the Marxist-Leninist categories: the peasantry as a class was obsolete from the Bolsheviks standpoint but still made up the majority of the population. The Bolsheviks were left with two options if they were to pursue their program: coercion and manipulation.43 This theoretical marginalization of the peasantry quickly became embodied in the economic policy of war communism (1918–20) during the Civil War. The Soviet authorities ordered the compulsory delivery of grain and

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other foodstuffs to the state to feed the soldiers and workers; peasants received little or nothing in return. Free trade was made illegal, though an active black market remained. In the countryside, Soviet representatives carried out requisitioning arbitrarily, though it was theoretically dictated by regional quotas set by the state.44 The Bolsheviks also sought to undermine the peasant commune and replace it with various forms of socialist farms (state farms, collective farms, and Soviet-style communes), but the unpopularity of the measures and the Bolsheviks’ tenuous grip on the countryside combined to thwart these efforts.45 By the time that drought struck in 1921, the peasantry found itself in a tremendously precarious position, not only because of Soviet requisitioning, but also because of the breakdown of the old system caused by World War I, the revolutions of 1917, and the Civil War. The collapse of the prerevolutionary public health infrastructure, which had helped prevent famine and epidemics during lean years earlier in the century, allowed the virtually unfettered spread of cholera and typhus.46 The Soviet authorities nationalized and dissolved most tsarist-era charitable and philanthropic institutions and organizations, which had been highly active during World War I, but were associated with symbols of the older order: the monarchy, the Orthodox Church, and the upper classes.47 Meanwhile, the casualties from war, rampant disease, and the Family Code of 1918 (which made divorce much easier than before) all contributed to the disintegration of families and the proliferation of orphans and single-parent homes. These developments made society more vulnerable when the crisis came.48 When we factor in crop failure and aggressive Bolshevik requisitioning practices, the shocking mortality of the famine of 1921–22 should not seem all too surprising. In fact, the suffering could have been much worse if not for the extensive relief efforts of the American Relief Administration and other outside relief organizations.49 In 1921, in the midst of peasant disturbances, a mounting food crisis, and fuel shortages, the Soviet government launched the NEP, allowing for some free market activity and replacing requisitioning with a more moderate food tax; but the Bolsheviks also took advantage of the famine crisis to consolidate political power by establishing the one-party state and tightening their grip on society. Beginning in 1923, the Soviet government created a number of relief agencies, many of them aimed at dealing with the problem of childhood homelessness in the wake of famine; these filled the void left by the dissolution of prerevolutionary organizations. The agencies relied on volunteer efforts and private donations but remained under the control of the state. With the exception of occasional almsgiving, private philanthropy and charity were stamped out.50 Once the famine passed, the NEP offered somewhat of a respite for the peasantry and allowed for considerable


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economic recovery between 1922 and 1928. But agricultural production and, more specifically, the amount of grain that the peasants sold to the state, failed to provide the basis for the rapid industrialization desired by the Bolsheviks.51 This situation prompted the Soviet government to institute policies that led to yet greater social control and domination of the peasantry. In 1928, Stalin launched the First Five-Year Plan; in the villages, this program entailed the forced collectivization of agriculture and deportation of so-called rich peasants. The state also set highly ambitious grain procurement quotas, endangering the livelihood of those left in the villages. Those who most needed relief from the state—the supposed class enemies in the countryside— of course did not receive it: they were the enemies in a class war. Aside from directly hurting peasant livelihood, the First Five-Year Plan dismantled the peasant commune once and for all; illegalized free trade, which had served as a major component of peasant income, particularly in tsarist times; further broke down families through the deportation and execution of “kulaks” and other socially undesirable elements; and restricted mobility by instituting an internal passport system in 1932.52 These measures all served to disrupt traditional or tried-and-true coping mechanisms, making the peasantry highly dependent on the whims of the state and climatic fluctuations. The stage was set for the disastrous famine of 1932–33.53 These changes were detrimental to society as a whole, and even the politically significant workers who inhabited the cities and towns of the USSR lived on the edges of subsistence during crisis years, both in the early 1930s and immediately following World War II.54 The state placed the primary emphasis on feeding the urban centers, but workers were vulnerable in their own way. Their separation from the land made them heavily dependent on wages, which were paid irregularly, and the unreliable and inefficient system of distribution. City- and town-dwellers, removed from agricultural production, relied heavily on state distribution of goods. This reliance on the state became particularly ominous when crops failed, and, consequently, the margin for error in the distribution network was slim.55 While the system established during the First Five-Year Plan remained intact and largely determined state policies during the famine of 1946–47, the war clearly had an impact on the spectrum of coping strategies available to Soviet citizens. The devastation from Nazi invasion has been documented in earlier chapters. Ironically, the war also made available new strategies. The legalization of private plots and localization of distribution during the war provided a degree of peasant independence and supplemented diets in the countryside. The disorder resulting from the war clearly made social control more elusive for the state, and when drought struck in 1946, Soviet

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citizens managed to migrate in search of jobs, food, and medical help. Taking advantage of postwar chaos, multitudes of beggars and elderly women selling wares flooded Moscow. These were all weapons in the people’s arsenal of survival.56 If not for this social “disorder,” the death toll in 1946–47 would have been higher. In short, Soviet social and economic policies impeded the people’s ability to cope and struggle for survival when food was scarce. The state’s approach stemmed largely from its ideology, which relegated the autocracy and peasantry to the dustbin of history. In tandem, social disruption and social control help explain the high levels of mortality in 1921–22, 1932–33, and 1946–47. While these factors turned out to be central to the famine experience in the Soviet Union, they might not have had the Bolsheviks figured out how to produce abundant harvests. Agricultural Production and the Export of Grain While both the tsarist government of the 1890s and the Soviet leadership sought to export grain to expand their industrial base—a perceived requisite for the nation’s strength—the official responses to the famines differed. Initiating policies that placed pressure on the peasantry to sell more grain, Minister of Finance I.A. Vyshnegradskii, in 1887, began to export grain in order to balance Russia’s budget, stabilize the ruble, and convert Russia to the gold standard.57 But in 1891, as the crop failure became evident, the Russian government placed a temporary ban on the export of rye and wheat grains.58 The government also began to keep more wheat at home in the next few years. Having exported 57.8, 49.5, and 60.6 percent of the wheat crop in 1889, 1890, and 1891, respectively, the state exported 18.6, 26.4, and 33 percent in the next three years.59 Minister of Finance S. Iu. Witte, who succeeded Vyshnegradskii in 1893, embarked on an ambitious industrialization campaign and periodic food shortages owing to drought continued to surface.60 But the tsarist government’s interventions, along with progress in the struggle against epidemic diseases, which had in fact been the main source of mortality in 1891–92, helped prevent the return of full-scale famine afterward and allowed for sizeable wheat exports.61 While grain exports fluctuated throughout the 1890s and 1900s, the tsarist government increased exports while keeping steady the percentage of wheat crop going abroad; in other words, production more than kept pace. In 1913, the tsarist state exported 10.5 million tons of wheat, and this amount constituted only 24.3 percent of Russia’s wheat crop. In the 1900s and 1910s, despite an increase in the amount of wheat shipped abroad, production began to outstrip exports, allowing the government to divert more wheat for the internal market and


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to raise the standard of living.62 This progress occurred in spite of recurring droughts: in 1897, 1901, 1906, and 1911.63 In response to the crop failure of 1946, the Soviet leadership significantly cut back the export of grain (figure 6.1). According to figures obtained by Michael Ellman, having exported 1,200,000 tons of grain in 1946, the government shipped 600,000 tons abroad in 1947. In 1948, after mass mortality subsided, grain exports quickly jumped to 2,600,000. The state exported 1,200,000 tons of grain from the 1945–46 harvest, only 400,000 from the 1946–47 harvest, and 2,400,000 million from that of 1947–48.64 While the percentage of grain shipped abroad was small, a direct comparison with prerevolutionary figures is not possible. The available numbers for tsarist exports are for wheat, while the Soviet statistics indicate grain shipments, with no indication of how much of this sum was wheat. We do, however, know that the wheat harvest was meager in 1946 and that white bread was rarely available for purchase until after the end of rationing. This simply means that it is conceivable, but hardly conclusive, that much of the wheat harvest was Postwar Soviet grain exports 3

Millions of tons

2.5

2

1.5

1

0.5

0 1945–46

1946–47

1947–48

Soviet grain exports in millions of tons

Figure 6.1

Postwar Soviet grain exports per harvest year (millions of tons)

Source: Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine,” 606.

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exported. In any case, gross exports of wheat were much smaller than in the late tsarist period. Nonetheless, a comparison with prerevolutionary exports highlights how anemic Soviet agricultural production was after World War II. While some of the difference can be explained by the Soviet’s leadership’s allocation of large quantities of grain to state reserves,65 a direct comparison of agricultural production further supports this point. During the Fourth Five-Year Plan (1946–50), the Soviet countryside produced an average of 64.8 million tons of grain a year, while Russia had produced 72.5 million tons annually between 1909 and 1913. With the exception of potatoes, the harvest of which was almost twice greater in 1946 than in 1913, Soviet production of other food products also lagged mightily. In 1946, the USSR produced 60 percent fewer sugar beets, almost 20 percent less meat, 1 million tons less milk, and less than half the eggs that Russia had averaged between 1909 and 1913.66 Meanwhile, the population of the USSR in 1946 was considerably greater than that of Russia in 1913: 169 million versus 140 million.67 While the Soviet government may have theoretically been capable of adequately feeding its citizens, grain production per head of the population suggests that the situation was more serious than Zima has suggested (figure 6.2).68 Between 1909 and 1913, on average, Russia produced 518 kilograms of grain per capita, while in 1946, the USSR’s production amounted to only 235 kilograms per capita.69 The increase in potato production likely helped matters, even if one were to account for vodka production; nonetheless, the Soviet distribution system, which was fraught with problems, did not have much room for error. The comparison between prerevolutionary and Soviet grain production figures serves as a damning indictment of collectivized agriculture and, more broadly, Bolshevik agricultural policy. The numbers attest that, in terms of production, the much vaunted mechanization in the countryside in the 1930s did not compensate for the outflow of peasants from the villages. Even in 1940, when climatic conditions were beneficial and the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR virtually complete, per capita grain production failed to reach prerevolutionary levels. In 1946, with the technological improvements made during the 1930s seriously jeopardized by the war, Soviet agriculture was again forced to rely on extensive farming. Realizing that yields would be low, the state encouraged peasants to sow large areas of land. Allowing for a less centralized distribution of food and a reliance on local food resources, an approach the government had employed during the war, would have cut down on waste and may have been the only means of avoiding famine in the countryside, but it would also have placed urban dwellers in a highly precarious position.70 Many inhabitants of the USSR— the intelligentsia, bureaucracy, growing proletariat, and the inhabitants of


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Per capita grain production in the Russian Empire and the USSR

700 600

Kilograms

500 400 300 200 100 0

1909–13

1913

1940

1945

1946

1947

Grain per capita

Figure 6.2

Per capita grain production in the Russian Empire and the USSR71

Source: Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 47, 206, 221, 225; Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 272.

consumption or non-grain-producing regions—could not feed themselves and relied on imports from other parts of the country. It appears, therefore, that any Soviet foreign-policy aspirations and immoderate reconstruction plans would inevitably lead to sacrifices from society. Owing to unreliable harvest statistics for 1921–22 and 1932–33, any concrete comparisons on production and export prove elusive; however, the Bolsheviks consistently demonstrated a propensity for shipping grain abroad during famines. In 1922, the state chose to increase taxes on the peasantry and renew grain exports to Western Europe despite the fact that millions were still starving.72 After the launching of collectivization, the state began to send significant amounts of grain abroad: 5,832,000 tons in 1930–31 and another 4,786,000 in 1931–32. In 1932–33, during the peak of the famine, the Soviet government decreased its shipments, but exports still amounted to 1,607,000 tons that could have gone toward feeding the starving countryside.73 In all three cases, these exports were made possible by an aggressive requisitioning of grain—euphemistically renamed “procurement”—in the countryside, leading to famine deaths. But the fact remains that the Soviet leadership, owing to weak agricultural output, did not have at its disposal vast amounts of grain.

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The Soviet “High Modernist” Project One might wonder why the Bolsheviks pursued their goals so vigorously in spite of repeated failure. I suggest that they were driven by a deep conviction in the correctness of their world view. According to James Scott, disastrous social engineering projects have four requisite elements: an administrative ordering of society and nature; a “high modernist” ideology driven by an unwavering faith in the necessity of imposing a particular social order; a coercive state willing to fully support these designs; and a prostrate civil society.74 All of these criteria were present in the Soviet Union and it is confidence in the validity of the Communist experiment that justified draconian policies in the eyes of the leadership.75 Soviet high modernism, based on Marxist-Leninist principles, set out to revolutionize agriculture by means of imposing large-scale, highly mechanized farms. Lenin believed not only in their superiority vis-à-vis family-based farms but also in the historical inevitability of the victory of this system of agricultural organization.76 Collectivization would allow for the mass implementation of technology and mechanization and provide for agricultural surpluses that would feed the proletariat and fuel industrialization. This unwavering conviction persisted among the Soviet leadership into the post– World War II years: for the Party and state, the most justifiable excuse for diverting grain from industry to the countryside was to guarantee sufficient agricultural production, which would in turn sustain industrial growth. For this reason, when officials directed pleas for food relief to the Soviet leadership in 1946–47, they framed their requests in terms of productivity and the completion of sowing and harvesting campaigns.77 Aside from introducing collectivization, the Soviet state sought to overcome disadvantageous agricultural conditions by means of sweeping projects to transform the country’s natural landscape. The Bolsheviks’ rise to power against all odds reinforced the conviction that they could overcome anything, including nature. In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks’ confidence in their ability to revolutionize the country’s agriculture led to utopian visions and unrealistic expectations. In the late 1920s, the Bolsheviks believed that the collective farms would serve as the vehicle for the application of science to farming on a mass scale, and the utopian visions would thus be achieved.78 Ongoing difficulties with agricultural production in the late 1920s and early 1930s, coupled with the need to bring up yields rapidly for the sake of developing heavy industry, made simple solutions and panaceas exceedingly attractive. This situation led the state to adopt what most scholars now consider to be pseudoscientific principles in its agricultural policies: a belief in the inheritability of acquired traits and in the absence of interspecies competition.


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These principles, which were based on the experiments of Soviet plant breeder I.V. Michurin, came to be known as Michurinism.79 Under Stalin, T.D. Lysenko, president of the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences and an adherent of Michurinism, won out over his opposition and became the mouthpiece of Soviet agricultural science.80 Between 1931 and 1941, the Soviet government ordered the planting of trees, or shelterbelts, in the southern steppe (Ukraine, North Kazakhstan, lower Don, middle and lower Volga, North Caucasus, southwestern Siberia). By 1941, shelterbelts covered 259,000 hectares of land in Ukraine.81 These trees were intended to break up wind eddies, providing for an even distribution of snow over land surfaces and thus leading to greater moisture in the soil.82 These measures yielded questionable results because trees were planted densely, based on the assumption of no intraspecies competition. Total agricultural production peaked before the war, in 1940, despite ongoing crises and shortages throughout the 1930s. The agricultural crisis of 1946–47 temporarily weakened official confidence in Lysenko and his scientific teachings; however, the Party continued to firmly believe in its ability to transform nature.83 In 1948, following the catastrophic drought and crop failure of 1946, the state redoubled its efforts and launched “The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature,” which called for the construction of dams, hydroelectric stations, canals, and irrigation systems across the USSR.84 In a 1949 propaganda poster, artist V.I. Govorkov depicted Stalin standing over a map outlining this grand scheme, with the heading, “We will defeat drought as well!”85 Today, this image seems more tragicomic than inspiring. These measures did not bring the expected results, at least in the short term: agricultural production failed to exceed the 1913 grain harvest (86 million tons) until 1952, and the 1940 landmark (95.6 million tons) was surpassed only after Stalin’s death, in 1955.86 The vast gulf between Soviet resources and ambitions, something confirmed by a comparison between prerevolutionary and post–World War II agricultural statistics, led the Soviet leadership continue to seek quick fixes to its agricultural problems. In order to avoid the diversion of capital from industry, the state adopted a series of unsuccessful agricultural measures, including a grass rotation system (travopol’e) developed by agronomist V.R. Williams that was supposed to help recover nutrients in the soil. Williams believed that this measure alone could radically alter the nature of the soil and trigger an enormous upsurge in grain yields. Except for a brief hiatus from 1928 to 1933, this conviction held sway from the 1920s to the early 1950s and led to reliance on grass rotation to the detriment of other necessary measures.87 Furthermore, the state imposed blanket policies, such as deep tilling, that ignored local conditions, much to the detriment of agricultural production.88

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In short, the lofty and abstract Soviet imagination clashed with the harsh reality of poor agricultural production, which stemmed both from natural conditions and the state’s policies themselves. The Soviet leadership undertook industrialization in the absence of sufficient grain surpluses, thus placing an enormous strain on the peasantry, especially in grain-producing areas, which had to provide enough grain to feed nonproducers and to allow the government to export. The extent of the devastation during World War II, particularly the decline of mechanization in the countryside, meant that the state had to start the process of aligning the countryside with its ideologically driven vision nearly from scratch; this led to further privations for most Soviet citizens. In the Soviet Union, agriculture was highly dependent on climatic conditions. Thirty years after the October Revolution, the state had yet to overcome the challenges posed by nature, and as the cold war dawned, the chasm between Soviet aspirations and agricultural production had never been greater. Conclusion Khrushchev’s words, uttered in 1971, that “agriculture depends too much, as the peasants used to say, on the Lord God,” serve as an appropriate admission of the Bolsheviks’ failure to overcome nature.89 The Soviet Union finally escaped the specter of famine only when Khrushchev, faced with crop failure and a mounting food crisis in 1963, decided to import wheat from the West, thus setting a precedent for the remainder of the Soviet period.90 To add a further irony to importing grain from the capitalist West in the midst of the cold war, the peasantry—the class fated to perish because of its supposed backwardness—got something right. Soviet modernization failed to eliminate climate as a major factor in agricultural production. While Soviet policies served as the primary factor in the tragic outcome of the 1946–47 crisis, conditions ill-suited for agriculture—poor soil, frequent drought, and a short growing season—had plagued Russia for centuries before the Bolsheviks came to power. Upon its accession, the Soviet leadership’s unwavering belief in the tenets of Marxism–Leninism drove it to reshape society and overcome what it considered Russian agricultural backwardness. This perspective handicapped the Bolsheviks from the outset, because it caused them to exaggerate flaws in tsarist agrarian policies and dismiss the historical experience of the peasantry. In the countryside, the government sought to establish large-scale highly mechanized farms that would turn the peasantry into a village proletariat and then a proper urban one. Agriculture would provide the raw material for industry and feed the towns and cities. While the Soviet state managed


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to collectivize agriculture, this project never achieved the success the leadership expected, and this was in part owing to inability to overcome natural impediments. The need for industrial implements from abroad spurred the Bolsheviks to export the little surplus that the countryside managed to produce, and the heavy emphasis on industry led to the impoverishment of the peasantry. Living at the edge of subsistence, and with their interests subordinated to those of the state, peasants were highly vulnerable to climatic vagaries, which were frequent in the Soviet Union. Prewar agricultural production under the Bolsheviks peaked in 1940, but per capita production remained modest. After the vast destruction of the war, the Soviet leadership had to bring the countryside back in line with its ideology and replace lost resources. The vast abyss that lay between Soviet ambitions and agricultural resources was greatest in 1946–47, when the emergent superpower, on the heels of a drought, managed to produce less than 40 million tons of grain. The leadership’s refusal to sacrifice its political goals for the benefit of the people turned out to be the decisive factor in the unfolding of the famine.


CHAPTER 7

Placing the Famine of 1946–47 in Global Context

S

ince Amartya Sen advanced his entitlement thesis in 1981, many researchers have tended to assign secondary importance to natural factors in the causation of famine. Sen treats famines as crises of entitlement: those who perish are the ones who lack the means to obtain food in a given system of exchange.1 Instead of attributing hunger to drought or other forms of natural disaster, scholars tend to emphasize manmade mechanisms—whether social, economic, or political—by which people come to starve. In this sense, Sen has absolved nature of the responsibility for deaths from hunger, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of humans, who shape society, devise economic systems, and establish political structures. The focus on human responsibility provides the basis for a fair and even systematic measure of the state’s role in causing famine, but it does not provide a solution to famine. Sen, in attempting to find a solution, has claimed that democracy or, more specifically, a free press, serves as a guarantee against famine.2 This argument, while largely valid in the contemporary context, threatens to promote unwarranted triumphalism and complacency, as well as gross oversimplification of the causes of famine. One scholar has concluded, on the basis of Sen’s claim, that “the only solution to famine, whether in time of peace or of war, is indeed democracy.”3 This oversimplification of the issue, I believe, compromises our analysis of famine causation rather than fostering it. The research in this work reveals that a vast multitude of factors converges to bring about famine crises. I wholly agree with Stephen Wheatcroft that the imposition of a single classification on a famine proves unhelpful.4 I would go further and say that, while democracies have avoided large-scale subsistence crises, to believe that a certain political system is immune to famine is pure folly.

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In this chapter, I look beyond Russian and Soviet history to explore the usefulness of the classification of “totalitarian” in characterizing famines and their causes. In doing so, I seek to situate the Soviet post–World War II famine among other hunger crises in modern history. Based on the resulting findings, as well as the experience of famine in the USSR, I draw some broader conclusions about famine causation and prevention. Exploring “Totalitarian Famine” as a Classification In his book on the North Korean famine of the 1990s, Andrew S. Natsios identifies five “totalitarian famines” in the twentieth century: the erroneously labeled “Ukrainian famine” of the early 1930s; the famine of 1959–61 during the Great Leap Forward in China; the Ethiopian famine of 1984–85; the 1976–79 famine under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; and the North Korean famine.5 Had he known of the Soviet famine of 1946–47, it probably would have made the list. All the governments in question can loosely be classified as socialist or Communist. The not-so-subtle implication of Natsios’s categorization is that totalitarian governments, in contrast with ones he would consider nontotalitarian, create famines. This suggestion, though not entirely unsustainable, provides a monolithic and overly simplified view of famine. In all the above-mentioned countries, frequent weather anomalies and other natural conditions have historically had, and continue to have, a strong influence on agricultural yields. Owing to drought, Russia suffered from famine in 1891–92 and localized food shortages thereafter. According to Dronin and Bellinger, “It is difficult to imagine a situation in which Russian agriculture will be entirely free of problems. Anomalies in the climate are likely to increase, making it difficult to regulate production and yields with as much certainty as currently exists in many Western countries.”6 Recurrent hunger crises, stemming in part from both droughts and floods, prompted some Western observers to label China the “land of famine” long before the Communists took power.7 In Ethiopia, a famine in the early 1970s helped bring the Dergue (“the Committee”), its socialist government, to power just over ten years before the famine of 1984–85.8 Despite the fall of the Khmer Rouge and installation of a democratic government, owing to flood, Cambodia has failed to eradicate food shortages.9 North Korea had experienced famine in 1862, localized hunger in the 1930s, and periodic food shortages owing to natural disasters throughout its history.10 The policies of the governments in question undoubtedly contributed to famine mortality in each of these cases. The belief in Communist doctrine, or some variation on it, coupled with the desire to overcome the limitations


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imposed by nature, spurred these states to employ measures that exhibited some of the traits of Scott’s high modernism. In China, under Mao Zedong, grain shortages, the collectivization of agriculture, an uneven distribution of food favoring the cities over the countryside, and the Chinese Communist Party’s emphasis on rapid industrial development contributed to millions of deaths between 1958 and 1961, during the Great Leap Forward.11 The Dergue in Ethiopia, having nationalized the country’s land in 1975, sought to impose collectivization and introduced forced resettlement, burdensome taxes, labor obligations, and the mandatory sale of grain at low government prices. According to refugees who fled Ethiopia for the Sudan, these measures served as a significant precipitant of famine, though drought was also a major factor.12 The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, having taken power in 1975, launched a violent anticolonial, antieducation, and antiurban campaign, which included driving people from the cities into the countryside and collectivizing agriculture. An unknown number of people died of starvation, while many others died of exhaustion and from execution.13 In North Korea, a succession of natural disasters—both droughts and floods—began in 1995, following the loss of economic support from the newly defunct Soviet Union, and led to a major economic crisis. The Communist government of Kim Jong Il, after following a policy of secrecy for three years and stressing military readiness, requested foreign food aid only in 1998.14 In most of these cases, with the lone exception of Cambodia,15 we see a confluence of at least two factors: climatic vagaries resulting in food availability decline, and policies that might be considered “high modernist.” The famine in China provides the closest parallel to the Soviet famine of 1946–47. The Chinese Communist Party had adopted a collectivization plan based largely on the Soviet model and chose to pursue rapid industrialization, which necessitated ambitious grain procurements. In 1959, the grain procurement drive left the countryside with precious little grain. The following year, due in part to droughts and floods in different regions, the country experienced a crop failure. Chinese per capita grain production in 1960 (217 kg) was nearly identical to the corresponding figure in the USSR in 1946 (235 kg).16 Despite agricultural shortfall, the government shipped a substantial percentage of the harvest abroad. According to its State Statistical Bureau, China exported nearly 4,200,000 tons of grain in 1959 and another 2,700,000 in 1960. Like the Soviet leadership, the Chinese government cut down exports in response to the crop failure but did not halt shipments.17 While a rough classification of “totalitarian famines” can be established, a broader view of famine complicates matters. The condemnable implementation of policies to the detriment of impoverished populations, though particularly egregious in twentieth-century Communist states, has not been

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exclusive to governments considered totalitarian. Critics of British policy during the Great Irish Famine of second half of the 1840s would be quick to note that the official confidence in the free market justified official inaction as hundreds of thousands of people perished. Irish nationalist scorn for UnderSecretary of the Treasury Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of day-to-day relief, approaches the contempt Ukrainian nationalists reserve for Stalin, and perhaps with good reason. As Cormac Ó’Grada, who adopts a moderate stance on the issue of British culpability, writes: “[T]he Under-Secretary, a deeply religious man, fully believed throughout that the Famine had been ordained by God to teach the Irish a lesson, and therefore should not be too much interfered with.” Meanwhile, the leading Whigs and Radicals in government believed in the inevitability of the outcome of the famine and regarded public charity as an evil.18 A comparison between the Soviet famine of 1946–47 and the Indian famine of 1876–79 also reveals a great degree of similarity in official attitudes toward the suffering of the people. Lord Lytton, the British viceroy in Calcutta, viewed the people of India through a Malthusian lens, believing that the population “has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil.”19 Secretary of State Salisbury opposed all measures that would give the Indian population the impression that it was entitled to relief in times of famine, as this prospect posed a threat to the raising of revenue, and like Lytton, he favored a pure laissez-faire approach.20 In August 1877, Lytton, who received reports on famine, descended from his headquarters in the Himalayas to inspect conditions at Madras, but he saw no evidence of famine and instead complained about the inefficiency of the “demoralized masses,” wondering how they might be made to work.21 Though the ideologies differ, the blind belief in the power of the market and the attitude toward the people of India among British administrators closely parallels Stalin’s unwavering Communist convictions and his aversion toward the Soviet peasantry.22 In both cases, superiors had the ability to impose their approaches on their underlings. Khrushchev recalled that A.N. Kosygin, having gone to Moldavia during the postwar famine, reported to Stalin that he had witnessed rampant malnutrition and dystrophy. Stalin chewed out Kosygin and thereafter mockingly addressed him as “Brother Dystrophic” (brat distrofik).23 Khrushchev’s own pleas for relief for the people of Ukraine elicited a sharp reprimand from Stalin.24 At the end of 1945, Khrushchev had told his subordinates not to be too zealous in labeling peasants kulaks: “What’s a kulak? Sometimes you need explanation rather than arrest.”25 But having been accused of being too soft by Stalin and briefly removed from his Party post in Ukraine in 1947, Khrushchev fell in line and vigorously implemented the state’s dekulakization campaign in 1948.26 Quite similarly, Sir Richard Temple, who had prevented


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widespread famine in Bengal and Bihar following a crop failure in 1873–74, earned criticism from London for extravagance. In an attempt to salvage his reputation, he made sure not to repeat his mistake in 1877, when Lytton appointed him to reduce expenditures in Madras. This time, Temple cut 500,000 people from relief work and increased the physical demands on the needy by imposing the so-called “distance test,” which forced people to travel to dormitory camps outside of their locales of residence to receive aid.27 Ideology influenced relief policies both in India and the USSR. British officialdom’s extreme interpretation of laissez faire resulted in the erection of obstacles to relief, mirroring the 1930s Soviet legislation that forbade personal donations discussed in Chapter 2. In 1877, the British government issued the Anti-charitable Contributions Act, which forbade under penalty of imprisonment private donations that interfered with market-fixing of grain prices.28 Based on his study on famine in western India in 1977–78, David Hall-Matthews concludes that, in conducting famine relief, “the state was expenditure-averse . . .but not risk-averse in trying to anticipate or avert the horrors of famine and its consequences.” Officials in India avoided generous relief so as not to distract the population from other work. When the highly unfavorable terms of relief caused many people to turn it down, British officials “castigated [them] as lazy and undeserving.”29 The relative indifference of the two states—the USSR and Britain—to widespread hunger can largely be traced to ideologies that regarded human suffering as necessary for the sake of progress. In India, the British considered themselves to be on a civilizing mission to a backward land. Officials were guided by Malthusian principles: the land, they believed, could not sustain the population. They attributed fault to the natives, who according to the British could not keep reproduction in check. Embracing a form of social Darwinism, the British administrators felt that famine would help civilize India by weeding out the most destitute and lazy of the natives. The Soviet leaders, guided by dialectical materialism, believed in the inevitability of class conflict as part of historical development and, therefore, had no doubt that entire social classes would cease to exist. In both the Soviet and British cases, ideology dictated that some people are simply not historically viable. This perspective enabled both states to act in their own selfish interests without any pangs of conscience, despite omnipresent destitution and suffering among the people. Unlike in the Soviet Union, starvation in India persisted in overall boom years, particularly during the “wheat boom” of the 1890s. Mike Davis traces this phenomenon to the commercialization of agriculture, which forced the peasantry to plant wheat and other marketable grains instead of subsistence crops. Here, too, we find a parallel: in 1947, the Communist Party of the

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Soviet Union emphasized the need to plant wheat rather than more droughtresistant grains.30 The wheat could then be sold abroad, allowing the USSR to purchase machinery that would advance the reconstruction of industry.31 The development of modern infrastructures in both India and the USSR benefited the state, since it allowed the extraction of necessary goods from the countryside, but it did little to improve and may have in fact decreased the living standard of the millions who lived in the countryside.32 The export of grain from northwestern India for the purpose of stabilizing prices in Britain contributed to 1.25 million famine deaths in 1878–79.33 Estimates of the number of deaths in India during the two major famine crises in 1876–79 and 1896–1902 vary, but the ranges suggest that the number of people who perished in Britain’s colonies, at the least, rivals the total excess deaths during the three major Soviet famines (table 7.1). Between 12.2 million and 29.3 million died in British India in these two famines,34 whereas the range for the Soviet famines of 1921–22, 1932–33, and 1946–47 is 7.7– 15.1 million.35 In any case, hunger mortality under the Soviet regime was not unprecedented. If we were to include in our calculation the Irish Potato Famine (1 million) and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 (approximately 2.1

Table 7.1 Mortality estimates for famines in late Victorian-era India and famines in the USSR India

USSR

1876–79

10.3 million 8.2 million 6.1 million

Digby Maharatna Seavoy

1896–1902

19.0 million 8.4 million 6.1 million

The Lancet Maharatna/Seavoy Cambridge

Total:

12.2–29.3 million

1921–22

5.1 million 1.0 million

Central Statistical Administration Poliakov

1932–33

7.2–8.1 million 5.7 million

Ellman Davies and Wheatcroft

1946–47

1–2 million 1 million

Zima Isupov

Total:

7.7–15.2 million

Source: Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 7; Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 67, 226; Ellman, “A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims”; Wheatcroft, “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931–33,” and Zima, Golod v SSSR, 179.


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million), the number of dead from famine under British rule would surely exceed the number of hunger victims in the USSR.36 The Bengal famine in 1943 demonstrates that catastrophic hunger in the British colonies cannot be chalked up to the antiquated politics of a distant era. Unlike the wartime famines in the USSR, Greece, and the Netherlands, which resulted in large part from German occupation, the famine in Bengal was a consequence of market fluctuations followed by British neglect.37 Most historians have endorsed Sen’s characterization of the 1943 Bengali crisis as a “boom famine,” in which millions died because they could not afford to buy rice.38 The Bengali provincial administration informed the British government of the crisis, but London limited its response to expressing sympathy and, as critics point out, chose to direct its resources to advance its military and imperial interests.39 In short, while a rough classification of “totalitarian famine” can be established, it does not shed much light on the causes of famine. The broadranging parallels between Soviet and British famine policies, as well as the resulting mortality, suggest that a division between “totalitarian” and other famines is not particularly useful. In fact, such a classification is misleading, since it suggests that certain political systems create famine and, others, by implication, do not. The confluence of ambitious policies, removed from onthe-ground realities, and poor natural conditions can, however, be seen as a major trigger for famine. India had historically been famine-prone owing to climatic vagaries. The British state, in practicing coercion and ignoring local conditions, amplified the vulnerability of the people of India, and this led to epic suffering and mortality. Lessons to Learn from Famine in the Soviet Union In his Development as Freedom, Sen summarizes his arguments on famine causation, reiterating his thesis that famines happen not because of declines in food production but because of crises of entitlement. Effective distribution on a national basis, without foreign aid, is almost always capable of preventing famine. The findings in the present study support the idea that entitlements hold the key to understanding famine: the Soviet state limited the entitlements of the peasantry by controlling the produce, and various measures, including the elimination of the free market, served to disrupt the people’s ability to cope in times of shortage. Sen also argues that autocratic and dictatorial states fail to prevent famines, not because they are not able to, but because they lack the political incentive to do so. Democracies, on the other hand, possess institutions, including a free press, that assure the spread of information and that relief will be granted to the needy. This second set of

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claims needs to be subjected to greater scrutiny given the evidence on Soviet famine. I would contend that a hierarchy of values and priorities, not the absence of institutional levers, determines the extent to which a government strives to prevent or alleviate famine. This hierarchy only becomes a factor when there is a dearth of resources. The Soviet “high modernist” project and mission to conquer nature testifies to the Bolshevik desire to create abundance. The failure to provide adequate relief in 1946–47, while partly rooted in the Bolshevik bias against the peasantry, resulted from a real shortage of resources. The Soviet leadership understandably sought to build up grain stocks given the possibility of war with escalating rhetoric from Britain and the United States. Furthermore, Stalin did not possess the prophetic gift of determining the next harvest: he could not risk having no stocks in the event of drought in 1947. In addition to these needs, the state needed to feed the cities and the countryside. It could not accomplish all of these goals without importing grain, which the Soviet leadership clearly believed would undermine its integrity. One can imagine that in a democratic state, a catastrophe of epic proportions could expose a similar hierarchy of values and priorities, with the leadership having to decide between elites and masses, citizens and noncitizens, human lives and territorial integrity. Furthermore, both the Russian autocracy and the post-Stalin Soviet leadership managed to prevent famine through active intervention in the absence of democratic institutions. Richard Robbins documents the immense relief effort launched by the tsarist authorities to limit mortality in the face of severe drought and harvest failure in 1891–92. While the system of relief was not perfect, the presence of such a system and its rather intricate structure—consisting of local, regional, and central grain stocks—suggest that the monarchy placed considerable meaning in preventing subsistence crises.40 Thereafter, Russia avoided famine largely as a product of state intervention until the fall of the monarchy in February 1917.41 During a food crisis and the possibility of famine in the early 1960s, Khrushchev imported grain from the West, alleviating need and preventing starvation.42 The leadership of the USSR continued to import grain and managed to avoid famine for the remainder of the country’s existence, despite not having a free press or other democratic institutions. The evidence brings into focus the link between immoderate or revolutionary change and famine. In looking at the whole span of the Soviet period, Moshe Lewin rightly identifies two distinct periods. The first, which started with World War I and ended with Stalin’s death, was marked by instability. This volatility consisted of coercion, dislocation, and destruction, as well as rapid construction. Lewin characterizes the second period, which ended


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with the fall of the Soviet state, as “reasonably peaceful, stable and gradual on all fronts.”43 While war played a prominent role in creating the conditions for famine in both 1921–22 and 1946–47, the worst of the three mass famines came in peacetime, in the early 1930s. This fact tends to highlight the disruption in entitlements and coping strategies caused by the transition to collectivized agriculture and revolutionary change in general. As discussed in Chapter 6, the drastic nature of the changes stemmed from Bolshevik hostility to the old order and the belief that the peasantry lacked historical agency, as well as the Soviet “high modernist” vision. More broadly, we can conclude that revolutionaries and overzealous modernizers cause disruption by overlooking the merits of the past. But political causes are not the only source of social dislocation and instability: the virtually unprecedented devastation in the USSR during World War II reveals the extent to which military conflict can set societies back. Until humankind eradicates war, it will remain susceptible to famine. Soviet agriculture struggled through the 1930s and, at a high cost to the peasantry, managed to reach pre-1917 levels in gross production by 1940.44 Then came the invasion. As discussed in Chapter 1, hunger began in the Soviet Union in some locales during the war and did not end until the late 1940s.45 In this sense, the Axis invaders were also responsible for famine deaths. War can also serve as an equalizer between different economic and political systems, because the policies of occupiers, not those of the native leadership, shape the outcome. The invading German army, not the Soviet authorities, inflicted hunger on Leningrad in 1942–43 during a 900-day siege, killing roughly 1 million of the city’s inhabitants.46 Widespread mortality during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944–45 resulted from meager civilian rations in the Western Netherlands under Nazi occupation.47 Meanwhile, widespread confiscation of rice from peasants by Japanese occupying forces in Vietnam contributed to a mass famine there, with roughly 2 million deaths in 1944–45.48 Nor can we dismiss the role of climate. The major famines in Russia and the Soviet Union, starting with 1891–92, occurred on the heels of undesirable climatic events. A country might be able to withstand one drought and crop failure, but successive droughts and crop failures take their toll.49 Climatic vagaries comparable to those that Russia and the Soviet Union suffered are not likely to cause famine in today’s Western democracies, largely because of economic development and institutions that safeguard against such an eventuality; however, a confluence of factors, with climate among them, could potentially lead to food shortages and even famine. War, drought, and crop failure could conceivably bring about famine if these factors cause enough cumulative disruption to food production and, more importantly,

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distribution. Countries where the bulk of the population is removed from land and from direct agricultural production could be particularly susceptible. I wholeheartedly agree with Sen that “democracy can be a very positive influence in the prevention of famines in the contemporary world,”50 but it would be folly to think that democracy guarantees against famine. The long-term famine experience of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and Communist China, which suffered its last famine in 1959–61, suggests that nondemocratic states can adapt to climate and effectively combat famine. The prevention of famine requires only two conditions: first, the will or desire on the part of the state to prevent famine, and second, the ability or means to do so. In the case of the famine of 1946–47, the Soviet leadership lacked the sufficient resolve to sacrifice its perceived political imperatives to save lives. Given the vast devastation of the war and the severity of the drought and crop failure of 1946, one can confidently say that Stalin and his associates lacked the ability to prevent famine altogether; however, they could have prevented “mass” famine. Conclusion While the Soviet famine experience bears some resemblance to hunger crises in other countries deemed totalitarian, a “totalitarian classification” of famine proves elusive. Countries in which “totalitarian famines” occurred have been historically susceptible to extreme climatic vagaries. Furthermore, some other governments in the modern era have been equally unable or unwilling to prevent mass mortality following natural disasters, as British colonial famines vividly demonstrate. The many similarities between Soviet and British policies further challenge the utility of a “totalitarian” classification of famine. Both forced people to live barely above subsistence levels, made use of modern infrastructures to extract goods from the countryside, hesitated to acknowledge famine, offered relief begrudgingly and with economic gain in mind, and, perhaps most importantly, refused to waver from their ideologies despite the obvious human suffering that resulted from them. While secrecy, the key aspect of “totalitarian famine” pointed out by Natsios, was indeed greater under Soviet rule, this point can also be overstated. British officialdom also sought to limit information about the famine and, in the case of the Soviet famine of 1946–47, the United States chose not to acknowledge obvious signs of food crisis for political reasons.51 Nor did widespread knowledge of the developing famine in 1877–78 prove sufficient to avert mass mortality in India. British officials inflicted poverty, suffering, and famine on people in lands they considered foreign, influenced by an economic ideology and racism.


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Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks meted out draconian measures to their own countrymen, particularly a peasantry they considered backward, and also in a sense “foreign” in the workers’ paradise. The distinction between the two attitudes can be explained by the difference between the capitalism and imperialism of the British and the communism of the Soviet state. Yet each treated the respective lands not only as vast plantations but as laboratories for its ideologies and considered famine as a necessary growing pain along the way to a brighter future. This striking parallel prevents us from regarding Soviet famine and “totalitarian famine” as distinct phenomena. Finally, the complexity of famine causation suggests that no political system can guarantee victory over famine. While a free press, elections, and civil liberties help safeguard individual economic and political rights, and thereby force governments to be responsive under normal conditions, we can never rule out the possibility of social disruption from war, climatic catastrophe, or other sources. Such factors can have a cumulative effect and threaten countries with famine, irrespective of the classification of a state as one or another type. The two conditions for famine prevention—the will and ability to stop hunger—can never fully be guaranteed. Nor do we know the challenges that might await us. Our best defense is the recognition of this fact.


Conclusion

Theories that attribute famine to sinister leaders in distant lands can be attractive. They are part of a ritual of self-affirmation, because they confirm the superiority of our civilization or political system vis-à-vis “the other.” They paint things in black and white. For this reason, they are also politically expedient, and this perspective goes beyond famine. Deaths we attribute to the murderous policies of other regimes can be chalked up to “collateral damage” when they are inflicted by us. These theories, though convenient and exceedingly digestible, are rarely if ever entirely accurate. From the perspective of the Soviet state, the mass mortality precipitated by its policies in 1946–47 was in a very direct sense collateral damage. The extreme measures taken in September 1946 resulted from Stalin’s late recognition of the developing grain crisis. Widespread death and want—the consequences of official measures— were undesirable: they made people lose faith in communism, hindered labor output, and undermined the Soviet leadership in the eyes of the people. The actions of some leaders, particularly Khrushchev, even reveal a degree of sympathy for the suffering peasantry. With the help of society, members of the Soviet Red Cross and Ministry of Health made efforts to provide relief to the needy. But for those in the upper echelons of Soviet power, the goals of preserving and later building up grain stocks dwarfed the value of human life. Hundreds of thousands of deaths in 1946–47 were collateral damage in what the Bolsheviks referred to as the “struggle for the harvest” (bor’ba za urozhai). In the scenario drawn up by Soviet leaders, this struggle, or battle, constituted different things for the peasantry and the state. For the peasantry, the battle for the harvest was supposed to translate to an unquestioning implementation of the dictates of the state. For their part, the state and the Party constantly agitated and pressured their subordinates in the command structure and, in turn, the peasants, to vigorously carry out grain procurements. This military-like struggle can be seen as the product of at least two influences: the natural conditions of the Soviet landmass and the forging of the Party during the Russian Civil War. A short growing season and climatic vagaries demanded the timely carrying out of agricultural work. In the absence of a proverbial carrot, the Bolsheviks turned to the stick in an effort to assure adequate procurements. This approach stemmed from the Party’s policies during the Civil War, when the struggle for bread was, quite literally, a battle for power.

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Conclusion

Successful procurement campaigns would provide the state with the resources necessary to feed the towns and cities and enable it to ship grain abroad. But after World War II, the utter impotence of agricultural production clashed with the lofty needs and ambitions of the Soviet state. Therein lay the major cause of the people’s tragedy. The government essentially victimized grain-producing regions in an effort to assure the unimpeded procurement of food to the urban population and especially urban centers. The lack of production in the countryside, though partly attributable to drought, also resulted from the Soviet collectivization of agriculture; this fact becomes particularly obvious when we compare prerevolutionary grain harvests to those of the Soviet period. Owing to the destruction of the war, the Soviet leadership faced the need for the monumental reconstruction of the countryside. The state chose to return to unpopular policies, much to the dismay and detriment of the village population. The return to the old was all the more agonizing because it came on the heels of liberalization. The battle for the harvest and for the reestablishment of the Soviet status quo followed a tactical retreat: one necessitated by the war but inconsistent with the ideology of the Communist state. This brief recoil can be understood, not only as a Stalinist tactic but also a Bolshevik one, if we consider Stalin’s February 1946 explanation of Lenin’s approach toward politics: “retreat under certain unfavorable conditions is as legitimate a form of war as the offensive.”1 The alliance between the people and the state quickly degenerated after the war, and the Soviet struggle for the reassertion of Communist ideology alienated citizens who might have partly reconciled their differences with the state during the Great Patriotic War. Perhaps most strikingly, the mood of the peasantry after the war reveals that many people recognized collectivization as a monumental failure and associated the collective farm with starvation. A return to prewar prerogatives signaled an alienation of the people who, far from passive, lost the struggle in the short term. The consolidation of Soviet power in 1946–47 was to a degree facilitated by the hostility of the United States and Britain. The hostility of wartime allies made clear the need to rebuild industry, support the state, and accept postwar deprivation as a necessity. Meanwhile, the termination of UNRRA assistance to the USSR, aside from hurting the inhabitants of Belorussia and Ukraine, may have been seen by Stalin as an attempt by the West to capitalize on Soviet vulnerability. Either way, the evidence suggests that the Truman administration chose to ignore the food crisis in the Soviet Union in order to advance the end of UNRRA and, more broadly, pursue its political prerogatives. This episode in particular suggests that the secrecy of governments deemed totalitarian can be overstated: in some instances, it is more expedient to ignore evidence of starvation so as to justify nonintervention. James Scott’s concept of “high modernism” helps us isolate some of the features of the Soviet state that contributed to famine. The findings in this study support the idea that the Soviet leadership felt justified by its ideology to impose its schemes on the whole country. The Soviet leadership was even less apologetic than some have assumed. In canceling rationing, the state admitted to the need for sacrifices. The Soviet government pursued its prerogatives to the detriment of the population and sought to convince people through propaganda that its policies were justified.

Conclusion

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Although the state recognized the need to improve the plight of the peasantry in order to advance the economy, this stated goal took a backseat to immediate needs. An improvement in the people’s welfare required surpluses and the poor compensation for labor restricted production. A glance at famine in historical and global perspective suggests that large-scale famines often result from a confluence of natural factors and ideologies that ignore local conditions. While Soviet policies vis-à-vis the peasantry were unquestionably ruthless, from a global perspective, the famines of the last two centuries demonstrate that blind adherence to political and economic ideologies—whether Communist, capitalist or otherwise—that unbendingly place means at the service of the end generate suffering and misery and cannot be morally justified. Political systems are immune neither to famine nor to the subjugation of human life to ideology. The ideological slope, it appears, is more slippery than most think.


Notes

Introduction: Famine of Victors 1. Research for this study was conducted on funding provided by a Fulbright—Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. The writing was assisted by a grant from the Eurasia Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the U.S. Department of State under the Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII). 2. Herbert H. Hoover, An American Epic: The Guns Cease Killing and the Saving of Life from Famine Begins, 1939–1963, vol. 4 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), 124. 3. “James F. Byrnes to Truman,” March 12, 1946, (February 26, 2006). 4. Hoover, An American Epic, 118. 5. See Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921–1923 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1974) and Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 6. Hoover, An American Epic, 119. 7. P.P. Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: M.P. Kots, 1992) and Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii, hereafter, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 694, l. 15. On dwindling grain reserves, see Andrea Graziosi and Oleg Khlevniuk, eds., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 221–22. 8. Hoover, An American Epic, 291. 9. See V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 149. 10. “U.S. Ships to Carry Russian Wheat,” The Times (London), March 18, 1946, p. 3. 11. The most prominent works on the 1921–22 famine are H.H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919–1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927); Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia; and Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand. On the famine of 1932–33, see Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet

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12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

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Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) and R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). While I refer to the post— Civil War famine as that of 1921–22, mortality associated with food shortages continued into 1923 and even 1924. Similarly, the famine of 1932–33 did not trail off until 1934, and postwar hunger lingered into 1948 and beyond. The two-year timeframes refer to the most intense time of crisis. The number of deaths is disputed. According to the Soviet Central Statistical Administration, over 5 million died. See Markus Wehner, “Golod 1921–1922 gg. v Samarskoi gubernii i reaktsii Sovetskogo pravitel’stva,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 38, nos 1–2 (1997): 223. See “Letter from Lenin,” March 19, 1922, (February 26, 2006). While the extent to which the famine of 1932–33 was premeditated remains a contentious issue, it is unquestionable that collectivization and the concomitant purging of successful peasants, labeled kulaks, from the countryside caused many deaths. For contrasting views on the causes of the famine, see Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow versus Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger. To this day, there is no consensus on the number of those who died, and contentious debate on the topic persists. As many as 7 or 8 million may have perished only in 1932–33. See James Mace, “Soviet Man-Made Famine in Ukraine” in Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, ed. Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 87–88. Wheatcroft places the number of famine deaths between 4 and 5 million. See his “More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s,” Soviet Studies 42, no. 2 (April 1990): 355–67. For the upper limit, see Zima, Golod v SSSR, 179. Michael Ellman believes that the number of deaths from famine was near 1 million. See his “The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24, no. 5 (2000): 603–30. V.A. Isupov provides an estimate of 1 million. See his Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), 227. Zima and V.P. Popov both correctly point out that some people continued to starve after 1947. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 179 and V.P. Popov, “Eshche raz o poslevoennom golode,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 4 (1994): 82. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 10–11. The term “high Stalinism” has been applied to the 1930s as well. See Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History Of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994) and Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Recent works have added nuance to the late Stalin years, but they have also generally supported the idea that the Soviet leadership quashed opposition after the war and reestablished dominance over society. See E.Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost’, 1945–1953

Notes

19. 20.

21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

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(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000) and Donald A. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See, for example, V.P. Popov, Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny (iiun’ 1945–mart 1953): Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Prometei, 1993), 68. Some scholars have adopted a comparative perspective in seeking to evaluate famine relief policies and the ideological underpinnings of these policies. See, for example, Peter Gray, “Famine Relief Policy in Comparative Perspective: Ireland, Scotland, and Northwestern Europe, 1845–1849,” Éire-Ireland 32, no. 1 (1997): 86–108. David Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), ix–x. See also Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001). Davis uses a similar paradigm to see how famines can play out under markets. See Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo and Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism. Zubkova also has an English edition of her work. See Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, trans. and ed. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998). See Arnold, Famine, 6–7. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Alex de Waal, “Famine and Human Rights,” Development in Practice 1, no. 2 (1991): 77. Arnold, Famine, 6–7.

1 Tracing the Roots of the Failed 1946 Harvest 1. Alexander Werth, Russia: The Postwar Years, epilogue by Harrison E. Salisbury (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1971), 151–52. Werth was a wartime correspondent for the BBC and The Sunday Times and subsequently Moscow correspondent for The Guardian (1946–49). 2. British Foreign Office, Russia Correspondence, 1946–1948 (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981), microfilm, 1946, reel 5 (part 1), p. 115. At the time, Roberts was British chargé d’affaires in Moscow. 3. Wehner, “Golod 1921–1922 gg. v Samarskoi gubernii i reaktsii Sovetskogo pravitel’stva,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 38, nos 1–2 (1997): 223–42. 4. See, for example, Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) and Wsevolod W. Isajiw, ed., Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, 1932–1933: Western Archives, Testimonies, and New Research (Toronto: Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, 2003). 5. Most recently, House Resolution 356 of October 20, 2003, asserted that, by means of famine, the Soviet regime sought to destroy “Ukraine’s national identity” and that “foodstocks throughout the country remained sufficient to

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6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

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prevent the famine.” Moreover, the resolution concludes that “this man-made famine was designed and implemented by the Soviet regime as a deliberate act of terror and mass murder against the Ukrainian people.” See “House Concurrent Resolution 356,” (February 26, 2006). For a critique of the genocide interpretation, see Shtefan Merl’, “Golod 1932–1933 godov—Genotsid ukraintsev dlia osushchestvleniia politiki rusifikatsii?”, Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (1995): 49–61. See Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, 322–30. Conquest has since clarified his view in response to Wheatcroft. See Robert Conquest, “Comment on Wheatcroft,” Europe—Asia Studies 51, no. 8 (1999): 1479–83. See Mark B. Tauger, “Statistical Falsification in the Soviet Union: A Comparative Case Study of Projections, Biases, and Trust,” The Donald Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, no. 34, University of Washington, 2001; Mark B. Tauger, “Natural Disaster and Human Action in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1506, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001; and Mark B. Tauger, “The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933,” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 70–89. Tauger, “The 1932 Harvest,” 82. R.W. Davies, S.G. Wheatcroft, and M.B. Tauger, “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” Slavic Review 54, no. 3 (1995): 643. See Mark B. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–1939: Resistance and Adaptation,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, nos 3–4 (2004): 427–56 and Mark B. Tauger, “Entitlement, Shortage and the 1943 Bengal Famine: Another Look,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, no. 1 (2003): 45–72. Michael Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24, no. 5 (2000): 603–630. V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 10–11. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 162. Recently, Mark Tauger has challenged Sen’s analysis of the Bengal famine, claiming that it was brought on by natural disaster. See Tauger, “Entitlement, Shortage, and the 1943 Bengal Famine”: 45–72. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy’, 1945– 1953,” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, ed. Susan J. Linz (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanhead, 1985), 130–31. Ibid., 131–32. See, for example, Svetlana Aleksievich, U voiny—ne zhenskoe litso (Moscow: Pal’mira, 2004), 311–12. Removing mines from overgrown fields was a perilous undertaking, and people sometimes died in the process. Alec Nove, “Soviet Peasantry in World War II,” in The Impact of World War II, ed. Linz, 84–85.

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18. See M.A. Vyltsan, Krest’ianstvo Rossii v gody Bol’shoi Voiny, 1941–1945: Pirrova pobeda (Moscow: Rossiiskii nauchnyi fond, 1995), 25–43. 19. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 608, ll. 44–47. 20. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 515, ll. 21, 38. 21. See A.V. Mescherskaya and V.G. Blazhevich, “The Drought and Excessive Moisture Indices in Historical Perspective in the Principal Grain-Producing Regions of the Former Soviet Union,” Journal of Climate 10, no. 10 (1997): 2670–82. According to the data provided, the warm period (May–July) of 1946 was the ninth driest since 1891 in the European part of the Soviet Union. In order of intensity, the country experienced worse droughts in those months in 1936, 1891, 1920, 1897, 1939, 1931, 1906, and 1921. Also see G.F. Prikhot’ko, ed., Klimaticheskii atlas Ukrainskoi SSR (Leningrad: Gidrometereologicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1968), 26, 216, 218. Ukraine had very little precipitation in 1946, especially from April to October or during the “vegetation period.” The northeast of left-bank Ukraine and the Crimean steppe suffered most. Khrushchev’s memoirs confirm that there was a drought in Ukraine and suggest that southern regions suffered most. See RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 8. A winter with little snowfall was followed by a dry and uncharacteristically hot summer. According to official accounts, some areas of Orel oblast had no rainfall from the beginning of spring until at least July. See RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 6. Minister of Agriculture Andreev reported that some areas received only 10–15 percent of their average rainfall in May and June. According to Andreev, these were the worst drought conditions in at least five to seven years. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 15. 22. Werth, Russia: The Postwar Years, 151–52, 153. 23. British Foreign Office, Russia Correspondence, 1946–1948, 1946, reel 5 (part 1), pp. 93, 115, 128. For more eyewitness accounts, see V.P. Danilov, M.P. Kim, and N.V. Tropkina, eds, Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo: Kratkii ocherk istorii (1917–1969) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1970), 340–41. 24. See, for example, P.P. Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: M.P. Kots’, 1996), 54–55. 25. Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine”: 605. That some grain was not harvested at all, a fact documented by Zima, would not substantially alter this figure, since mechanization and manpower posed as much if not more of a problem in 1945, and a good deal of the harvest was also likely lost. On the failure to gather the harvest before the snows came, see Zima, Golod v SSSR, 19. 26. Zhores A. Medvedev, Soviet Agriculture (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 132. 27. These figures, taken from A.A. Andreev’s papers, are higher than the figures cited by Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina in their 1970 history of the Soviet peasantry. They claim that only 4.6 centners per hectare were harvested on average. Grain yields were 2.3 centners per hectare in Moldavia and 2.3–2.9 centners per hectare in Odessa, Khar’kov, and Lugansk oblasts. See Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina, eds, Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo, 341.

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28. See, for example, I.M. Volkov, “The Drought and Famine of 1946–47,” Russian Studies in History 31, no. 2 (1992): 31–60. See also RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 16. 29. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 16. 30. E.M. Andreev, et al., “Population Dynamics: Consequences of Regular and Irregular Changes,” in Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991, eds W. Lutz, S. Scherbov, and A. Volkov (London: Routledge, 1994), 436. 31. V.A. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), 217. 32. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, ll. 54, 81. 33. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 147, l. 26. Stalin himself wrote after the war: “There never has been nor is there now any unemployment in the Soviet Union. After the end of the Great Fatherland War, all those demobilized from the Soviet Army and from the naval fleet were fully provided with work according to their qualifications and specialization.” 34. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 5. The number of unemployed soldiers for certain areas of the oblast were as follows: Dnepropetrovsk—5,000; Dzerzhinsk— 1,400; Krivoi Rog—1,200; Dnepropetrovskii raion—600; Vasil’kovka—500; Sinel’nikovo—400. 35. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 9. 36. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, ll. 97–99. 37. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 150. 38. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 194. 39. Ibid. In Mogilev oblast, Belorussian SSR, 1,541 soldiers remained unemployed in January 1946. 40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 99; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 696, l. 16; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 52. In April 1946, 3,000 Communist Party members (apparently among demobilized soldiers) in Novgorod oblast were unemployed. The corresponding figures for other areas were as follows: Kirov oblast—1,550; Rostov oblast—1,198; Tomsk oblast—900; Smolensk oblast—500; Tula—308; Iokshar-Ola—209; Pskov oblast—283; Velikie Luki oblast—286; Mtsensk raion, Orel oblast—79. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 148. 41. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 194. 42. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 15. Migration will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. 43. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 696, l. 22. 44. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 105. 45. In four raions of Leningrad (Volgogradskii, Krasnogvardeiskii, Moskovskii, and Oktiabr’skii), there were 30,000 desertions (dezertirstva) and skipped days (progulov) in 1945 and the first five months of 1946. At some factories, as many as 11 percent of the workers were found guilty of skipping work. The Party blamed the lack of work discipline not only on poor propaganda but also on poor material conditions. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 25. The

Notes

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

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situation was no better in the countryside. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 35. This problem was widespread and was acknowledged by Soviet officials. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 397, op. 2, d. 19, ll. 30, 31. Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina, eds, Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo, 341. There were five tractor plants in the USSR at the time: Altai, Stalingrad, Khar’kov, Vladimir, and Cheliabinsk. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 42. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 17. At the end of 1946, renovation was proceeding most slowly in Tadzhik SSR; Vologda, Arkhangel, Kostroma, Molotov, Novosibirsk, Kurgan, Cheliabinsk, Ul’ianovsk, Kirov, Kemerovo, Tomsk, and Sverdlovsk oblasts; Primor’e, Khabarovsk, and Altai krais; and in the Komi, Chuvash, and Bashkir ASSRs. None of these regions managed to repair 20 percent of their plows, 30 percent of their sowing machines, or 30 percent of their cultivators by the end of 1946. Some regions did not even remotely approach these figures. In Vologda oblast, only one out of twenty sowing machines and one of every two-hundred cultivators were repaired. This problem was likely compounded by the failure of many MTS workers, among them mechanics, to return to the villages. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 78. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 25. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 23. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 32. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, ll. 32–33. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 23. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, ll. 3, 6, 11. I.M. Makoviichuk and Iu.M. Pyliavets’, “Holod na Ukraini u 1946–1947 rr.,” Ukrains’kyi Istorychnyi Zhurnal, no. 8 (1990): 26. Morinskii raion—66 percent, Zvenogovskii raion—63 percent, Volzhskii raion—56 percent, Iurinskii raion—54 percent, and Kazanskii raion—53 percent. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 87. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, ll. 95–97. RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 965, l. 109. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, ll. 100–101. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 83 and RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, ll. 63–65. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 83. More than 15,000 Tambov oblast farmers were sent to Pskov and Novgorod oblasts and to the Karelo-Finnish SSR; over 10,000 collective farmers from Kursk oblast were sent to Briansk and Velikie Luki oblasts and to Belorussian SSR; approximately 7,000 Voronezh oblast farmers were sent to Chkalov oblast; and as many as 3,000 Orel oblast farmers were sent to Gomel’, Briansk, and Smolensk oblasts. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, ll. 110–11. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, ll. 35–38.

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68. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 57. 69. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, ll. 35–38, 111. 70. At approximately the same time, the Council of Ministers provided assistance to Izmail oblast, Ukrainian SSR, in the form of seed loans, fodder, the sale of hay, the establishment of stores for the sale of bread to collective farmers at commercial prices, and agricultural machinery. The grain procurement plan for peasant households was also reduced. See Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 44–45. 71. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, ll. 12–14. 72. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 13. Just over 14 percent of the collective farms had 40 percent or less of the necessary fodder. Approximately 25 percent had between 40 and 60 percent to last through the winter months. 73. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, ll. 14–15. 74. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, ll. 15. 75. British Foreign Office, Russia Correspondence, 1946–1948, 1946, reel 5 (part 1), p. 34. 76. See, for example, ibid., 115 and Vyltsan, Rossiiskoe krest’ianstvo, 23–24. 77. RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 965, l. 110. 78. See RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 7. 79. See RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 16. Owing to shortages of sowing machines, only 21 million hectares were sown using sowing machines in 1946, as compared to 41 million hectares in 1940. 80. A Soviet-era history of the Soviet peasantry acknowledged that, “Not infrequently, significant areas of collective farm land were tilled and sown by hand and with shovels.” In Velikie Luki oblast’, 10,000 hectares of land were tilled by hand. See Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina, eds., Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo, 340. 81. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 572, l. 66. 82. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 572, l. 67. 83. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, ll. 91–92. 84. This argumentation appears to have originated from Isaac Deutscher’s obituary for Stalin, published in The Manchester Guardian on March 6, 1953. The obituary was later published in Isaac Deutscher, Ironies of History: Essays on Contemporary Communism (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 181–86. 85. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, ll. 55–56. 86. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 58. 87. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 60. 88. See Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, hereafter GARF, f. 6991, op. 2, d. 52, l. 30. In 1946, Senior Inspector I.L. Iakovlenko urged P.S. Khodchenko, a plenipotentiary of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, to decline the requests of believers in Belovodsk, Ukraine, to return to them the town’s large Holy Trinity Church, arguing that it was being used to store over 100,000 centners (10 million kilograms) of grain per year. In describing the church building, and explaining that it was unfit for religious purposes in its current state, Iakovlenko wrote: “Owing to the military operations near

Notes

89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94.

95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103.

104.

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the town and in the town itself, the building’s walls and corners were damaged by explosives; there is no roof in many places; there are also no windows. Therefore, it is in need of major renovation of more than 250,000 rubles by my determination.” Based on this description of the church building, one might wonder how many of the 10 million kilograms of grain were exposed to the elements and lost to spoilage in the course of a year. See William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR During World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 10–11. See, for example, Richard E. Lauterbach, Through Russia’s Back Door (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing, 1947), 133–34. Lauterbach also includes a picture that, in the background, shows demobilized soldiers on the tops of train cars. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, ll. 22–24. See also ibid., l. 44. On February 12, 1946, Deputy People’s Commissar of Chemical Industry B. Mel’nik informed Malenkov that no chloropicrin could be produced until, at the earliest, May 1946. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 81. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 83. Andreev acknowledged seed shortages in his October 1946 report to Stalin on the postwar state of agriculture. See RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 28. The practice of submitting seed stock to the government in order to fill grain quotas seems to have been quite common after the war. When the time came for sowing, farms requested seed loans from the government. According to Khrushchev, the government would give the farms simple low-quality grain rather than carefully selected seed stock. See RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 8. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, ll. 110, 112. The Commissariat of Procurements repeatedly declined requests for additional seed. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 515, l. 21. The seed was provided in the form of a loan with 10 percent interest on potato seed, with the loan to be returned in full the following year. See ibid., l. 22. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 10–11. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 28. Ibid. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 20–22. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, l. 70. Medvedev, Soviet Agriculture, 131. For the plan of the Commissariat of Procurements for the recovery of agricultural production, devised in the fall of 1945, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 521. Medvedev, Soviet Agriculture, 131. See also Makoviichuk and Pyliavets’, “Holod na Ukraini u 1946–1947 rr.”: 15. The authors point out that the emphasis on expanding the area of land sown contributed to the employment of poor agricultural methods in Ukraine in 1945. R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 436–37.

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105. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 25. 106. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 18. 107. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, ll. 191–93. Demands for milk, meat, and other deliveries of animal products were based on the amount of land owned by a given collective farm. In the eyes of the government, the new method was proven effective by agricultural successes in 1940, after the new law took effect. The area of land sown grew by 3 million hectares and collective farms delivered 400 million more poods of grain (approximately 6.6 million tons) to the state. 108. Entire areas were classified as mnogozemel’nye or having much land and were accordingly assigned larger procurement quotas. 109. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, l. 193. 110. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, l. 204; RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 110, l. 117. See also A.V. Liubimov, Torgovlia i snabzhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Ekonomika, 1968), 201. Liubimov, the Soviet trade commissar (and subsequently minister) from 1939 to 1948 writes: “One can say without exaggeration that if not for Soviet power, if not for the socialist economic system, if not for the kolkhoz order, the drought of 1946 would have led to a cruel famine.” This also seems to have been the line fed to lower-level Communists immediately following the famine. For example, in March 1947, the first secretary of the Nikolaev Oblast Party Committee told his subordinates that the kolkhoz order and Soviet power allowed the country to avoid famine. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 884, l. 4. 111. See Iu. V. Arutiun’ian, Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka,” 1970), 11. 112. Ibid., 385–86. 113. See Vyltsan, Krest’ianstvo Rossii, especially 23–24. 114. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 30. Khrushchev uses the term bydlo, which translates roughly as “ignorant masses.” 115. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 231. Marx also referred to the peasantry as a “force that represents barbarism in civilization.” Quoted in David Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 56. 116. See Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 87–88. Even before the revolution, Lenin very much believed that the proletariat would need to employ violence and coercion to force other social classes to work toward socialism. See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 161. 117. The Bolsheviks used hunger as an excuse to plunder churches and seize valuables. Any resistance on the part of the Church would justify the Bolshevik view of the Church as exploitative and reactionary. See “Letter from Lenin,” March 19, 1922, (February 26, 2006). On March 19, 1922, Lenin wrote:

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Now and only now, when people are being eaten in famine-stricken areas, and hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses lie on the roads, we can (and therefore must) pursue the removal of church property with the most frenzied and ruthless energy and not hesitate to put down the least opposition. Now and only now, the vast majority of peasants will either be on our side, or at least will not be in a position to support to any decisive degree this handful of Black Hundreds clergy and reactionary urban petty bourgeoisie, who are willing and able to attempt to oppose this Soviet decree with a policy of force. 118. See Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 414. On the basis of his exhaustive study of the Civil War, Raleigh concludes: “The Bolsheviks later drew on the Civil War experience as a formative one not with lessons to avoid, but with lessons to emulate, in part because coercion had kept them in power.” See also ibid., 310. While continuity is difficult to establish, my findings in this and other chapters reveal significant parallels between Bolshevik policies and attitudes during the Civil War, particularly during the famine, and 1946–47. In the immediate postwar period, there is some reason to believe that Stalin resorted to old patterns and policies for lack of a viable and ideologically acceptable alternative. 119. See H.H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919–1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), 33–38, 486–90. 120. For brief biographies of Stalin, Kaganovich, Andreev, Malenkov, Molotov, Khrushchev, and other prominent Soviet leaders, see V.N. Pavlenko, ed., Politbiuro, Orgbiuro, Sekretariat TsK RKP (b)-VKP (b)-KPSS: Spravochnik (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1990). 121. The most prominent of these Bolsheviks was N.I. Bukhrain, who favored a more moderate approach toward the peasantry, as embodied in the New Economic Policy, or NEP, of 1921–28. On Bukharin, see Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 122. For the text of the resolution of the Central Committee plenum, see V.N. Malin and A.V. Korobov, eds, Direktivy KPSS i sovetskogo pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam: Sbornik dokumentov, vol. 3 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958), 147–93. 123. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, ll. 69–70. 124. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 168, ll. 17–22. 125. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, l. 206. 126. Economist Alec Nove is critical of this reform, claiming that it simply “legalized local arbitrariness in making delivery demands on kolkhozes.” See Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991 (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 305.

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127. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, l. 50. Kaganovich stressed that organization helped bring the Bolsheviks to power: How did our Bolshevik Party come to power? We had nothing. We had no weapons, no industrial plants, no factories, no apartments. We loitered in basements. Isn’t it true? And we won. How did we win? We won because of our art of organization, our work with the masses, our people. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, l. 63. 128. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, ll. 56–58, 63. Kaganovich also pressed for the planting more spring wheat at the expense of the more reliable winter wheat, which peasants preferred to plant in order to combat climatic fluctuations. See Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), 48–50. 129. See Nove, An Economic History, 304–05. For the text of the statute, see Malin and Korobov, eds., Direktivy KPSS, 91–97. 130. This policy placed the greatest strain on families with many children, since the area of the allotted land was the same for each household, regardless of the number of family members. See V.P. Popov, Krest’ianstvo i gosudarstvo (1945– 1953) (Paris: YMCA Press, 1992), 267–70. 131. See Makoviichuk and Pyliavets’, “Holod na Ukraini u 1946–1947 rr.”: 19. 132. On September 23, 1946, Minister of Procurements Dvinskii asked Stalin that the Central Committee take part in grain procurements, “as it had done in the past.” See Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Soviet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 222. 133. On dekulakization, see Zima, Golod v SSSR, 180–204. 134. Similarly, at the Ukrainian Central Committee plenum in 1946, officials, rather than focusing on objective problems in agriculture and finding solutions, pressed for the intensification of the procurement campaign. See Makoviichuk and Pyliavets’, “Holod na Ukraini u 1946–1947 rr.”: 18. 135. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 965, l. 109. 136. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 132. 137. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 28. Andreev reiterated this general thought at the February 1947 Central Committee plenum, saying that poor agricultural production would restrict the growth of industry. He therefore characterized the “agricultural question” as the most pressing problem for the Party and for the country as a whole (RGASPI, f. 73, op. 1, d. 171, l. 69). This idea was reflected in the resolution of the plenum. 138. See Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina, eds, Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo, 361. In 1950, 40 percent of collective farms distributed less than 60 kopecks per earned workday and 50 percent handed out less than 1 kilogram of grain per workday. Some collective farmers continued to receive no compensation for their labor.

Notes

139.

140.

141.

142. 143.

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Kolkhozniki in Central Asia were significantly better compensated than farmers in Russia and Ukraine. See ibid., 362. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 205–08. See also Danilov, Kim, and Tropkina, eds., Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo, 345 and Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (Berkley: University of California Press, 1988), 34. Between 1939 and 1959, 24 million peasants migrated to the cities. R. Belousov, Ekonomicheskaia istoriia Rossii: XX vek, vol. 4, Ekonomika Rossii v usloviiakh “goriachei” i “kholodnoi” voin (Moscow: IzdAT, 2004), 350. The number of children per kolkhoz family decreased from 1.76 at the end of 1945 to 1.34 at the end of 1949. See RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 22. In his memoirs, Khrushchev criticizes Stalin for exporting grain in 1946–47, but admits that the government failed to build up sufficient grain reserves. While this goal was elusive in the immediate postwar years, government grain stocks grew in 1947–48. The importance of grain reserves, from the perspective of the state, is discussed in Chapter 3. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 180–201. Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine”: 603–30.

2 Exploring the Causes of Child Mortality 1. A version of this chapter was published as “Caught in the Throes of History: The Causes of Child Mortality During the Soviet Postwar Famine, 1946–1947,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 31, no. 2 (2004): 153–72. 2. John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal (New York: Viking Press, 1948), 121–22. 3. V.A. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), 225. Estimates are elusive, since the demographic situation was unstable. Five hundred and fourteen thousand died before the age of 1 in 1947, while 299,000 died in 1946. Child mortality rose from 16.7 percent in 1946 to 19 percent in 1947. 4. V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 129–53. 5. Judith Harwin, Children of the Russian State, 1917–95 (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1996), 20. On orphans in the postwar period, see M.R. Zezina, “Sotsial’naia zashchita detei-sirot v poslevoennye gody (1945–1955),” Voprosy istorii, January 31, 1999, (May 4, 2005). Zezina estimates that in 1948 there were approximately 3 million children in the USSR who were no longer cared for by their birth parents. 6. Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), 19. 7. Ibid., 36–37. See the letter of Sergeant Sergeev and the resulting action taken by Andrei Zhdanov, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Agitation and Propaganda.

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8. Harwin, Children, 22. 9. I sometimes use the terms “children’s homes” and detdoma to include both children’s and infant homes. Such was also seemingly the practice among health officials. 10. Harwin, Children, 23. 11. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 168, l. 69. 12. GARF, f. 5462, op. 20, d. 230, l. 2 ob. 13. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 82 and GARF f. 9401, op. 2, d. 168, l. 69. See also GARF, f. 5462, op. 20, d. 228, l. 10. 14. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, l. 8. For the sake of understanding the scale of this phenomenon in famine regions, one might consider that of the 159 children entering one children’s home in Dnepropetrvosk, Ukrainian SSR, during the first half of 1947, 131 were foundlings. See GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob. This particular home will be discussed in more detail later on in this chapter. 15. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii, 217. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 169, l. 219. 19. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 169, l. 220. 20. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 884, l. 195; GARF, f. 9401, op. 8, d. 693, ll. 57–59; f. 17, op. 123, d. 812, l. 114. 21. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 182. 22. See, for example, G.M. Pludovskaia (Egorova), “Sessiia sozidaniia,” in V.A. Ezhov et al., Vozrozhdenie: Vopominaniia, ocherki i dokumnety o vosstanovlenii Leningrada (Moscow: Leniizdat, 1977), 61–62. 23. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 49. 24. Although hard statistics are lacking, the Ministry of Health and its Department of Medical-Preventative Assistance to Children (Lechprofpom detiam) took on the main responsibility for the well-being of ailing young children after the war. Overall, the Ministry of Enlightenment (sometimes called the Ministry of Education), or Ministerstvo Prosveshcheniia, still oversaw more homes. 25. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 87. 26. Ibid. 27. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, ll. 49–50. 28. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, ll. 52–53. 29. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 254, ll. 4–18. 30. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, ll. 7–8. 31. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 185, l. 18. 32. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 2. 33. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 185, l. 42. 34. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, l. 12. 35. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 185, l. 45. In 1947, infant homes in the city of Kirov also had 1–1.5 square meters of living space per child. See GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, 101ob. There was also overcrowding in Russian cities in 1947

Notes

36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

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due to the mass admission of foundlings. See GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, ll. 8, 12. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 251, l. 12. GARF, f. 9501, op.2, d. 970, l. 227. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 168, l. 71. It is no coincidence that the shortage of children’s homes, as implied by the turning away of children, was acute in famine areas and adjacent locales. GARF, f. 8009, op. 23, d. 257, l. 7. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 185, ll. 11–12. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 251, l. 12. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 3. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 185, l. 16. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 4. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, l. 3. GARF, f. 8009, op. 23, d. 257, ll. 5–8. Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Soviet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 222. Ibid., 223–24. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 68–69. Ibid. See also ibid., 225 and GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 114. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 210, note between l. 14 and 1. 15. GARF, f. 8009, op. 23, d. 257, l. 14. GARF, f. 5462, op. 20, d. 228, ll. 7–7 ob. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob. Ibid. Ibid. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 74. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 221, l. 73 ob. A comparison of mortality rates reveals that the course of the famine in East Ukraine was similar to that of Moldavia. See Mihai Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia: Basarabia During Stalinism, 1944–1950, trans. Narcisa Cimpoca and Oana Teodorescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1996), 80–81. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, l. 3. The percentage of infants admitted with normal weight in various regions was as follows: Novosibirsk—24, Kemerovo oblast—21.6, Altai krai—40, Omsk— 37, Kirov oblast—50, Gor’kii oblast—24, Krasnodar—15, Simferopol’—9.2, Magnitogorsk—10, and in the western oblasts—30. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, l. 14. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 251, l. 16. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 87. See also ibid., l. 241. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 87. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 29. Ibid. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 972, l. 251.

168

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67. In his section on famine relief, Zima focuses on governmental aid, particularly grain loans, and on contributions made by foreign bodies. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 129–53. 68. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2. d. 875, l. 8. 69. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2. d. 875, ll. 8–9. 70. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2. d. 875, ll. 10, 12, 14. 71. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2. d. 875, l. 14. 72. GARF, f. 9501, op.2, d. 945, l. 13. 73. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 945, l. 14. 74. Ibid. 75. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 945, l. 60. 76. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 945, l. 110. 77. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 950, l. 10. 78. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 950, l. 73. 79. See, for example, GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 950, ll. 207–08. 80. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2. d. 875, ll. 30–31. 81. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, ll. 289–91, 293. These documents are accompanied by two photographs of emaciated children sitting at tables at these feeding stations. 82. Ibid. The funds for the purchase of this bread came from the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) by order of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR. 83. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, ll. 289–91. 84. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, l. 295. This is an average and, thus, does not reflect the actual daily ration. For sample daily rations, see GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, l. 298. 85. See the figures on worker consumption during the famine in Donald A. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 53–57. 86. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, l. 311. There were feeding stations in the following locales (from most to least stations): Orgeevskii, Kagul’skii, Benderskii , Kishinevskii, Sorokskii uezds; Kishinev city; Dubossary, Tiraspol’skii, Rybnitskii, Solobdveiskii, and Grigoriopol’ raions. 87. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 970, l. 309. 88. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 951, l. 63. 89. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 951, l. 76. 90. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 1006, l. 369. 91. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 972, l. 67. 92. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 92. For more examples, see Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 644. 93. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 951, l. 76. 94. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 972, l. 84. 95. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 972, l. 83. 96. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 950, l. 30.

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97. See GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 949, ll. 52, 64. For a brief description of the statute, see Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991 (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 304. 98. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 812, l. 59. 99. Based on the example of Vladimir oblast, it appears that the decree on the conservation of bread led to the loss of rationing privileges for junior medical workers, but pharmacists and even some physicians lost their rights to rations as well. The measures led some medical workers to quit their jobs. See GARF, f. 5465, op. 21, d. 312, ll. 13–13 ob. 100. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 949, l. 40. 101. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 972, l. 227. See also GARF, f. 9501, d. 950, l. 141. 102. See GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 952, l. 43. 103. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 952, ll. 105, 117. 104. See GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 952, ll. 110, 115. Officials in the city of Cheliabinsk and in the Crimean ASSR complained of this problem at a late June—early July meeting of city and oblast Red Cross officials. 105. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 949, l. 64. 106. V.P. Danilov, M.P. Kim, and N.V. Tropkin, eds., Sovetskoe krest’ianstvo: Kratkii ocherk istorii (1917–1969) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1970), 335. 107. Aside from leading to the closing down of first aid stations, the competition for food in the villages led to a decrease in the number of nurseries and preschools. In 1945, 1.3 million children attended these institutions, whereas only 700,000 did so in 1946. Furthermore, some of these opened only for the collection of the harvest. Naturally, peasants had less time to devote to fieldwork if they had no one to watch their children. See GARF, f. 5462, op. 20, d. 228, l. 2. 108. For a detailed discussion of Soviet goals after the war, see Chapter 3.

3 Food Shortages and Ration Reforms in the Towns and Cities: Moscow and Beyond 1. David Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 7. 2. M.A. Vyltsan, Krest’ianstvo Rossii v gody Bol’shoi Voiny, 1941–1945: Pirrova pobeda (Moscow: Rossiiskii nauchnyi fond, 1995), 31–32. 3. Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds., Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), 69. 4. Ibid., 72. 5. Ibid., 70. 6. There may have been a tendency to underreport breakdowns in food distribution, but this “corrective” would further strengthen my argument that these problems were widespread. 7. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, eds., Sovetskaia zhizn’, 69. 8. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, ll. 174–75.

170 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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Notes

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 7. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 8. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, ll. 6–7. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 8. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 12. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, ll. 8–9. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 9. Ibid. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, ll. 81, 145. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 9. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 15. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 9. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, ll. 80, 81–81 ob. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 84. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 504–05. In other areas, the drop in market prices was more modest. In Moldavia, the cost of wheat bread, rye flour, butter, and other products fell by 15–45 percent. Ibid., 504–05. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 105. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 24. In late February, the Rostov City Party Committee secretary complained that around the twentieth of each month, the City Party Committee and the City Party Executive Committee begin devoting all of their time to problems with bread provisions. He considered the situation to be nerve-racking and unacceptable, as it put the population in a horrible predicament. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 142. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 55. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, ll. 24–25. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 696, l. 25. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 56. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 26. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 572, ll. 63–63 ob. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 696, l. 67. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 140. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 75. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 140. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 141. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 142. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 150. Ibid. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 76. The Party often blamed postwar hardships on “heartlessly bureaucratic treatment” (bezdushno-biurokraticheskoe otnoshenie) of the population. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, ll. 137–38. See also V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 76.

Notes

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171

44. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 54. See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, ll. 151–52. 45. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1216, l. 15. 46. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1216, ll. 8, 12. 47. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1216, l. 9. 48. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1216, l. 12. 49. Ibid. 50. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1216, l. 13. These problems, clearly evident long before, received particular attention in 1947. On May 21, Minister of Trade A.V. Liubimov sent a letter to the ministers of trade of all the republics scolding them for failing to properly issue rations. Ibid., l. 28. 51. A report of the American Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, released toward the war’s end concluded that 30 million Russians were undernourished. Malnutrition was severe and prolonged: “its effects in undermining general health and contributing to an increase in disease must thus be seen as more than a temporary or isolated problem.” See Office of Strategic Services Research and Analysis Branch, “Civilian Health in the USSR, Part II: Civilian Living and Working Conditions in the USSR,” May 1, 1945, microfilm, reel 4, Document 12 in O.S.S./State Department Intelligence Reports: Part IV, The Soviet Union (Washington, DC: University Publications of America). 52. A.V. Liubimov, Torgovlia i snabzhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Ekonomika, 1968), 202. In Moscow, rumors of drought across much of the USSR were already widespread by July 1946. See A.S. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 1945–1947: Arkhivnye dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 2000), 162. 53. Liubimov, Torgovlia i snabzhenie, 202. 54. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 182. Those who had received less than 300 rubles a month would receive 110 extra rubles; those who received between 300 and 500 would receive 100 more; and so forth. 55. See Donald A. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 49. Before the reform, for example, a kilogram of rye bread costed 1.10 rubles at ration prices but 10 rubles at commercial prices. 56. See Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 183 and Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, 49. The cost of milk, meat, and macaroni also increased approximately two- to threefold. 57. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 180–81. 58. This sentiment was reflected in letters written to various representatives of the central government, including Stalin himself. See E.Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 171–81. It is, however, difficult to what extent this faith in Stalin might have been feigned in order to achieve a desired effect. 59. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 181–82. 60. Ibid., 183.

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61. See, for example, Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 183. According to officials, “many” voiced displeasure with the price increases. Intuition suggests that there were also those who, despite keeping quiet, also opposed the decree. 62. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 186–91. 63. Ibid., 188. 64. Ibid. 65. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 68–69. 66. Ibid. 67. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 47. 68. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 51. 69. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 52, 63. 70. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 66. 71. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 58. 72. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 67. 73. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 193. 74. Ibid., 194. 75. The unpopularity of the kolkhozes is suggested by the widespread hope that they would be disbanded after the war. See Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 61–68. People often equated the collective farms with poverty and hunger and Andreev’s analysis in October 1946 (Chapter 1) supports this conclusion. 76. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 194. 77. GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 951, l. 143. 78. See, for example, GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 56, 63. 79. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 69. 80. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 58. 81. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 63. 82. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 66. 83. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 50. 84. On the ill-preparedness of the trade network for the termination of rationing at the start of 1935, see, for example, Vasilii Alekseev, “Eshche raz o khlebe,” Iakutiia, January 22, 2003, (February 26, 2006). 85. See, for example, GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 83–84. 86. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 52. 87. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 47. Having recognized the ominous situation with the state’s grain reserves, Stalin quickly found those responsible: Minister of Trade Liubimov and Minister of Provisioning A.I. Mikoian. According to D.V. Pavlov, Stalin appointed a commission to find out who was responsible for increase in the state’s grain expenditures. The commission found Liubimov and his subordinates responsible and recommended that Liubimov be removed. The Supreme Soviet rebuked Liubimov, stopping short from relieving him of his post, but these events set the stage for his removal in 1948. See Dmitrii Vasil’evich Pavlov, Stoikost’ (Moscow: Politizdat, 1983), 194–95,

Notes

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114.

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(February 26, 2006). But it appears that Stalin reserved the harshest criticism for Mikoian, who “owing to a lack in character surrounded himself with thieves.” See Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds., Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Soviet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 224–25. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 47. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 63. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 49. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 114. For the earlier decree, see GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, l. 111–12. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 92. As much as 40 percent of the bread could be made of corn flour or barley flour and still meet the officially established bread specifications. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, ll. 45–46, 47, 48, 50, 51–52. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, ll. 122–30. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 98. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 18. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 117. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 89. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1213, l. 119. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 199. Ibid. Paul Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files: The Soviet Union Internal Affairs, 1945–1949 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, Inc., 1984), microfilm, reel 1, 982–83. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 199. Ibid., 200–01. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 74. See Julie Hessler, “Postwar Normalisation and Its Limits in the USSR: The Case of Trade,” Europe—Asia Studies 53, no. 3 (2001): 450. See Graziosi and Khlevniuk, eds., Politbiuro TsK, 221–23. Stalin’s failure to react to warnings from officials tends to be characteristic of a general belief that people tend to be alarmist and is consistent with his earlier failure to believe reports of an impending German invasion. GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, ll. 68–69. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, eds, Politbiuro TsK, 222. See Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Sen documents cases of famine with no FAD, or food availability decline, in order to suggest that a breakdown of entitlement can cause famine in overall boom conditions. Arnold, Famine, 83. Zubkova, Posleveoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 78. Sen, Poverty and Famines, 166. This observation is not a criticism of Sen, who himself acknowledges that his entitlement paradigm addresses only legal forms of exchange. See ibid., 48–50. Owing to the abundance of extralegal factors in

174

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the Soviet case, the entitlement approach is not particularly useful unless it is adjusted to include the other variables. 115. See GARF, f. 8300, op. 24, d. 99 and GARF, f. 5452, op. 28, d. 1212, which contain numerous examples of people getting around the system to receive rations.

4 None Dare Call It Resistance? Coping, Opposition, and the Soviet State 1. George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 510. 2. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 48. 3. Robert Dirks, “Social Responses during Severe Food Shortages and Famine,” Current Anthropology 21, no. 1 (1980): 26–32. 4. See “Letter from Lenin.” On the role of the famine in the consolidation of Bolshevik power, see Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 5. See Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the TerrorFamine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Some of Conquest’s arguments are dubious, but this general argument is sound. 6. Anna Krylova, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies,” in The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History, ed. Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Marshall Poe (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2003), 205. 7. See Jochen Hellbeck, “Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent,” in The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History, ed. Michael DavidFox, Peter Holquist, and Marshall Poe (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2003), 109, 136–37. 8. See, for example, Sarah Davies, Public Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) on the 1930s, and E. Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000) on the postwar period. 9. See Hellbech, “Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent,” 103–37. 10. See Mark B. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–1939: Resistance and Adaptation,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, no. 3–4 (2004) 427–56. 11. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization”, 440. 12. A. Nove, “The Kolkhoz System—A Rejoinder,” Soviet Studies 4, no. 1 (1952): 48. 13. In 1947, for example, the Soviet government sent workers from the cities for sowing and harvesting campaigns to make up for the shortage of work hands in the villages—something it had not done in 1946.

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14. See Lynne Viola, “Popular Resistance in the Stalinist 1930s: Soliloquy of a Devil’s Advocate,” in The Resistance Debate, ed. David-Fox, Holquist, and Poe, 69–102. 15. Krylova, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies”, 206–07. 16. Nove, “The Kolkhoz System”, 48. 17. See Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War. Historians have long asserted that Bolshevik power was coercive from the start, but until Raleigh’s study, this argument focused almost exclusively on political histories. The charge could thus be made that political historians overlooked the broad appeal of Bolshevism among the masses. Raleigh’s book on the Civil War has demonstrated that, along with co-optation and compromise, the Bolsheviks widely practiced coercion to achieve their political ends. 18. In Russian: Sektor informatsii organizatsionno-instruktorskogo otdela TsK VKP (b). 19. In 1946–47, there were two directors of the sector: Brovarskii and Slepov. 20. Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (New York: Avon Books, 1964), 245. There is some evidence that Stalin even considered bringing back the Russian tricolor flag. See Iu. Tsiurganov, “Zachem Stalinu trekhtsvetnoe znamia,” Posev, no. 4 (2000): 36. The article cites a telegram from Molotov to Litvinov intercepted by the Germans. It also suggests that the Politburo considered renaming the Red Army “the Russian Army” and enlisting clergy to serve in its ranks. For the original telegram, see GARF, f. 5761, op. 1, d. 9, l. 207. 21. See Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 102–03. For the reasons for Stalin’s about-face, see Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years, ed. and trans. Edward E. Roslof (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002). The number of churches proliferated during the war. For example, in Kursk oblast, there were three churches before the war but more than 300 in 1946. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 23. 22. See Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 61–68. On the wartime revival of the church, including popular expectations, see Daniel Peris, “ ‘God Is Now on Our Side’: The Religious Revival on Unoccupied Soviet Territory during World War II,” in The Resistance Debate, ed. David-Fox, Holquist, and Poe, 138–67. Officials in Moscow documented an upsurge in religious observance after the government proclaimed the beginning of an era of cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1945. This new course, seemingly meant for external politics, had the undesired effect of encouraging religious Soviet citizens to practice their faith. See A.S. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 1945–1947: Arkhivnye dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 2000), 495–504. 23. Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), 639. Komsomol’tsy were members of the Komsomol, or Communist Youth League. 24. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 58. The baptism of children of Party members was also reported in Kirgiz SSR. See Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 657. For Novosibirsk oblast, see ibid., 660.

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25. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 59. 26. Ibid. Such practices often resulted in censure and dismissal from the Party. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 694, l. 149. Owing to a change in Soviet propaganda, some priests felt a renewed sense of entitlement and couched their appeals to the authorities in a manner consistent with the new propaganda course. For example, in Kizliarskii raion, Groznyi oblast, a priest went to the Oblast Party Executive Committee offices and demanded that he, as well as the deacon and choir director at his church, receive ration cards, since they are also, roughly speaking, “intellectuals.” See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, l. 695, l. 140. 27. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 639. 28. For an abundance of examples of the growth in religious observance in the postwar years, see Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 639–73. 29. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, 103–04. 30. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 642. See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 1. 31. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 1. 32. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 2. During my 2003 visit to the village of Shipulino, near Klin, Moscow oblast, locals recounted similar incidences of rainfall as a product of the piety of villagers. 33. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 136. 34. Aleksandr Degtiarev, “Potomu chto est’ Bog . . .,” Bereg, August 30, 2002, (February 25, 2006). 35. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 653. 36. Ibid., 654. 37. Ibid., 659. 38. Ibid., 654. 39. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 23. 40. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 1. 41. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 2. 42. Ibid. In Dnepropetrovsk oblast, officials similarly called for the need for more propaganda to root out religious practice. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 697, l. 3. 43. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 13. 44. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 812, l. 71. 45. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 16. 46. For additional evidence of this phenomenon, see Peris, “God Is Now on Our Side.” 47. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, ll. 28–29. 48. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 35. 49. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 179. 50. See Peris, “God Is Now on Our Side.” 51. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, holy fools were extremely pious eccentrics. 52. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 2.

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53. It is revealing that agitators even labeled those who vowed not to vote izbirateli, or electors. 54. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 5. 55. Ibid. 56. A similar statement was documented in the village of Gory, Temkinsk raion. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 132. 57. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 42. 58. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 147. 59. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 101. 60. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 121. 61. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 122. 62. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, ll. 3–4. 63. Ibid. 64. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 85. 65. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 47. 66. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 4. 67. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 122. 68. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 54. 69. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 122 and op. 88, d. 693, l. 1. 70. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 44. This seemed to have been Party policy: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 4. 71. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 99. 72. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 18. 73. “Velikaia programma vosstanovleniia i dal’neishego razvitiia sel’skogo khoziaistva,” Pravda, March 25, 1946, p. 1. 74. See, for example, “Obraztsovo podgotovimsia k sevu, zavoiuiem vysokii urozhai,” Pravda, March 3, 1946, p. 1. 75. See, for example, “Kolkhoznoe dostoianie neprikosnovenno,” Pravda, September 22, 1946, p. 1; N. Prokhorov, “V storone ot bor’by s narushiteliami kolkhoznogo ustava,” Pravda, December 23, 1946, p. 2; and A. Rostkov, “Narushiteli Ustava sel’khozarteli i ikh pokroviteli,” Pravda, December 29, 1946, p. 2. 76. See, for example, K. Nikolaev, “Porochnaia praktika odnogo raikoma,” Pravda, September 27, 1946, p. 2 and A. Dubrovin, “Ne oslabliat’, a usilivat’ bor’bu za khleb,” Pravda, September 27, 1946, p. 2. 77. Graziosi and Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia zhizn’, 36. 78. Richard Hilton, Military Attaché in Moscow (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), 162. 79. Ibid., 116–18. 80. V.I. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy, 1940–1950-e gg. (Moscow: Terra, 1994), 242. 81. Ibid., 243. 82. Alexander Werth, Russia: The Postwar Years, epilogue by Harrison E. Salisbury (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1971), 159.

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83. Ibid., 171. 84. GARF, f. 8009, op. 21, d. 222, l. 3. 85. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 608, ll. 172–72 ob. See also P.P. Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: M.P. Kots, 1996), 231, 312. Traveling on the tops of trains seems to have been a common practice after the war, but it was a practice that involved a high degree of risk. See, for example, Richard E. Lauterbach, Through Russia’s Back Door (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947), 140–41. 86. Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 51–52. See also ibid., 29, 311–13. 87. V.P. Popov, “Golod i gosudarstvennaia politika (1946–1947 gg.),” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 6 (1992): 55–56. 88. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 695, l. 76. 89. V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 234–35. 90. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, l. 38. 91. See Petro J. Potichnyj, ed., Litopys UPA: English Language Publications of the Ukrainian Underground, vol. 17 (Toronto: Litopys UPA, 1988), 12–13, 72. The files are located in the National Archives of the United States under Record Group 319, ID File #371742 and 356391 and are part of the collection of the Assistant Chief of Staff of Intelligence (G-2). 92. On UPA activities see, for example, V.A. Matrosov, ed., Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, mai 1945–1950: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 326–27. On Soviet retaliation, see Nicholas D. Chubaty, “The Ukrainian Underground,” in UPA in Western Europe, 2nd ed. (New York: Ukrainian Press Service, 1948), 50–51. 93. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 68–69. Also to control the spread of knowledge of famine, the Ministry of Government Security intercepted letters to soldiers, as it had done during the war. See ibid., 71. For the same practice during the war, see M.A. Vyltsan, Krest’ianstvo Rossii v gody Bol’shoi Voiny, 1941–1945: Pirrova pobeda (Moscow: Rossiiskii nauchnyi fond, 1995), 25–43. 94. During his travels, Alexander Werth heard people mention famine numerous times. See Werth, The Postwar Years, 156, 159. 95. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 385, l. 2. 96. Such is the general trend during famine and severe food shortage. In the subsequent stage, people try to conserve their energy and crime rates drop. See Dirks, “Social Responses”, 21–44. 97. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 385, l. 20. 98. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 385, l. 41. 99. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy, 226–29. 100. V.P. Popov, Krest’ianstvo i gosudarstvo (1945–1953) (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1992), 139–42. 101. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 520, l. 6. 102. See, for example, V. Serzhantov, “Neispol’zovannye rezervy,” Pravda, September 23, 1946, p. 2; G. Vovk, “Vyshe tempy khlebozagotovok! Pochemu otstaet

Notes

103. 104.

105. 106.

107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112.

113. 114.

115.

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Kievskaia oblast’,” Pravda, September 25, 1946, p. 2; K. Nikolaev, “Porochnaia praktika odnogo raikoma,” Pravda, September 27, 1946, p. 2; N Prokhorov, “V storone ot bor’by s narushiteliami kolkhoznogo ustava,” Pravda, December 23, 1946, p. 2; and N. Karasev, “Vol’gotno zhivetsia v Kazakhstane narushiteliam kolkhoznogo Ustava,” Pravda, January 25, 1947, p. 2. GARF, f. 8300, op. 24, d. 99. Complaints often fingered raion-level officials, but in rare cases people took aim at higher authorities. For example, in December 1945, two sick army officers shot dead Georgian Minister of Health Gurgenashvili for atrocious conditions in a local hospital. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 693, l. 50. Svodki suggest that many people yearned for more order and complained of crime and chaos. See, for example, Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 146–47. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy, 243. This report is also located in Stalin’s special file. See RGASPI, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 138, ll. 545–54. “Svidetel’stvuiut dokumenty. ‘. . .Oshchushchaetsia ostryi nedostatok khleba’,” Krasnaia Zvezda, January 6, 1996, (February 25, 2006). Zima, Golod v SSSR, 99–101. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, ll. 26, 35. Stanislav Prokopchuk, “Korrespondent ‘Truda’ vstretilsia s ukrainskimi kolkhoznitsami izobrazhennymi na nekogda znamenitoi kartine Iablonskoi,” Trud, July 5, 2001, (February 26, 2006) and Vladimir Shirochenko, “Holodomorov v Ukraini,” Pravda Ukrainy, March 31, 2005 (February 25, 2006). See Degtiarev, “Potomu chto est’ Bog . . . .” RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 19. RGASPI, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 168, l. 386. According to this report, there were 448,000 people suffering from dystrophy in the southern regions of Ukraine; 150,000 needed immediate hospitalization. For specific cases of cannibalism, see Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 229–31. See Shirochenko, “Holodomorov v Ukraini.” On dekulakization, see Zima, Golod v SSSR, 180–204. The new wave of dekulakization, unlike the initial one in the early 1930s, did not only target so-called rich peasants; it took aim at everyone who could in any way be seen as threatening to the collective farm order. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, l. 56.

5 The Famine, the Dawn of the Cold War, and the Politics of Food 1. Walter Millis, ed., with the collaboration of E.S. Duffield, The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 234. 2. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 8.

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3. See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), which makes no mention at all of the famine; Ralph B. Levering, The Cold War: A Post—Cold War History, 2nd ed. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2005); and Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, Origins of the Cold War: An International History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2005). 4. This organization was later renamed the American Society for Russian Relief. 5. See USA—USSR: A Story of Friendship and Aid (New York: American Society for Russian Relief, 1947). 6. See Edward C. Carter, “Russian War Relief,” Slavonic and East European Review, American Series 3, no. 2 (1944): 62. Upon conclusion of its activities, the organization reiterated that “Americans, travelling through the USSR of behalf of Russian Relief, found Russians in every walk of life well-aware of the voluntary aid coming to them and grateful not only for the aid but the friendly spirit which prompted it.” See USA—USSR. Other sources also support that Russian War Relief elicited gratitude from the people. See, for example, Richard E. Lauterbach, Through Russia’s Back Door (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1947), 130. 7. See USA—USSR. 8. Herbert W. Briggs, “The UNRRA Agreement and Congress,” The American Journal of International Law 38, no. 4 (1944): 653. 9. The figure is taken from Alexander Werth, Russia: The Postwar Years, With an epilogue by Harrison E. Salisbury (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1971), 149. In all, 250 million dollars of relief were sent to Ukraine and Belorussia: 189 million to Ukraine and 61 million to Belorussia. See V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 145. 10. “The General Assembly,” International Organization 1, no. 1 (1947): 59–60. 11. Herbert H. Lehman, The Reminiscences of Herbert H. Lehman (Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1972), microform, 759. 12. Jack N. Behrman, “Political Factors in U.S. International Financial Cooperation, 1945–1950,” The American Political Science Review 47, no. 2 (1953): 443. 13. Werth, Russia: The Postwar Years, 149. 14. John Fischer, Why They Behave Like Russians (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), 54. Herbert Lehman, UNRRA director-general before LaGuardia, echoed this sentiment with regard to Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Lehman, Reminiscences, 761–62. 15. See, for example, Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 246. 16. See “Song & Dance,” Time, September 2, 1946. 17. Herbert Hoover, An American Epic: The Guns Cease Killing and the Saving of Life from Famine Begins, 1939–1963 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), 101.

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18. See “George L. Warren Oral History Interview,” November 10, 1972, (February 27, 2006) and “C. Tyler Wood Oral History Interview,” June 18, 1971, (February 27, 2006). 19. Hoover, An American Epic, 170. According to Hoover, there were comparable incidences in other countries. For example, in Czechoslovakia, “trains carrying North American food had been dressed with Russian signs.” Ibid., 141. 20. Behrman, “Political Factors in U.S. International Financial Cooperation,” 443. 21. Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries, 234. Officially, the UNRRA mission to Ukraine and Belorussia ended on July 1, 1947, but shipments were officially terminated on March 31, 1947, and most shipments were in fact made by the end of December 1946. See “Relief and Rehabilitation Organizations,” International Organization 1, no. 1 (1947): 178–83. 22. See Nicholas Ganson, “What’s in a Famine? Implications for Understanding the Origins of the Cold War” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies, 28 March 2003). George Kennan, American chargé d’affaires in Moscow, and his successor Elbridge Durbrow reported evidence of agricultural crisis and food problems in the USSR throughout 1946. Durbrow characterized Stalin’s statements about capitalist encirclement as a means of manipulating public opinion at home rather than reflective of aggressive intentions vis-à-vis the United States. The evidence in the paper comes primarily from Paul Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files: The Soviet Union Internal Affairs, 1945–1949 (Frederick, Maryland: University Publications of America, Inc., 1984), microfilm. Western efforts to extract grain from the USSR did not end after this UNRRA request. On the basis of A.I. Mikoian’s memoirs, Michael Ellman reports that, in 1947, “British Minister Harold Wilson made repeated trips to Moscow to negotiate, inter alia, for substantial grain exports from the USSR to Britain!” See Michael Ellman, “The Road from Il’ich to Il’ich: The Life and Times of Anastas Ivanovich Mikoian,” review of Tak bylo: Razmyshleniia o minuvshem, by A.I. Mikoian, Slavic Review 60, no. 1 (2001): 145. This evidence is corroborated by a telegram from American Ambassador to the Soviet Union Walter Bedell Smith to Secretary of State Acheson in March 1947. According to Smith, Stalin offered “to furnish grain to [the] British provided no further drought.” See Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files, reel 29, 819. 23. Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). 24. See P.P. Tolochko, ed., Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: M. P. Kots, 1996), 27–30. 25. Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files, reel 26, 123. 26. Ibid., 119. 27. Ibid., reel 26, 121–22. Eric Roll, a British official on the Combined Food Board, states that “the United States Government had considered the possibility of making a direct appeal to Russia for the supply of breadgrains but, in the end,

182

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34.

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Notes

had decided against the course.” See Eric Roll, The Combined Food Board: A Study in Wartime International Planning (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956), 283. In the published State Department files, there is nothing to indicate that Truman’s memo was not sent; however, Stalin’s prompt rejection of the UNRRA request may have preempted the sending of Truman’s telegram, which was likely intended to add weight to the plea of the UNRRA Central Committee. Hoover testifies in his memoirs that Stalin declined a request to contribute to UNRRA, but it is not clear whether he has in mind the UNRRA request or a personal one from Truman. In short, either Truman’s memo was delivered and declined or it was not sent because of Stalin’s quick rejection of the UNRRA enquiry. In light of Truman’s statements to Hoover, it appears that the latter occurred. See “Hoover Notes of Meeting with Truman,” May 16, 1946, (February 27, 2006). “Hoover Notes of Meeting with Truman,” (February 27, 2006). British Foreign Office, Russia Correspondence, 1946–1948 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981), microfilm, 1946, reel 5 (part 2), 134. The visit was somewhat mysterious, as it appears that neither the State Department nor the Foreign Office knew about the purpose of the visit. LaGuardia’s aide, Joe Lilly, recalled that he had gone to see Lenin lying in state while LaGuardia met with Stalin. Having emerged from his meeting with Stalin onto Red Square, LaGuardia said to Lilly: “I got from Stalin . . . what you got from Lenin! Nothing!” See Ernest Cuneo, Life with Fiorello: A Memoir (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955), 204. This evidence, though anecdotal, suggests that LaGuardia might have been hoping to receive ammunition (i.e. evidence of Soviet need) in his fight to continue UNRRA shipments to the USSR. Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files, reel 26, 133. Restrictions placed on foreign travelers to the Soviet Union betrayed an official desire to conceal Soviet reality, which was clearly grim after the war, from foreigners and especially foreign governments. See, for example, Steinbeck’s difficulties in obtaining permission to travel and the confiscation of some of Robert Kapa’s photographs before departure from the USSR. John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal (New York: Viking Press, 1948). Some observers trace this tendency to the secrecy of Russian officialdom in prerevolutionary times. Some evidence received by Soviet intelligence supported the idea of an impending Anglo-American invasion. See Jeffrey Burds, “The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), no. 1505. The government’s response to the agricultural shortfall came only on September 27, 1946. The Soviet government may have also perceived the prolongation of rationing as indication enough of ongoing food problems. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Soviet censors allowed news of food shortages in Ukraine and Belorussia to be printed in the American press in later months.

Notes

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

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See Drew Middleton, “2 Soviet Republics Face Wheat Crisis,” New York Times, February 12, 1947, p. 17. Speech—December 14, 1947, Created by Claude Pepper, Series 203B, Box 9, Folder 10, Document 001, Claude Pepper Library, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. See Edward C. Carter, “Russian War Relief,” 62–63. The impetus for the creation of UNRRA was not purely humanitarian either. Several countries, including the United States, sought to unload their agricultural surpluses during the war. See Lehman, Reminiscences, 743. Herbert H. Hoover, An American Epic: The Guns Cease Killing and the Saving of Life from Famine Begins, 1939–1963, vol. 4 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), 291. Hoover writes: “While our major interest was relief of the famine, all on our staff were concerned about the forces moving in the world and their impact upon our country—and especially with the spread of Communism.” In its meetings with foreign leaders, the Famine Emergency Committee was accompanied by American ambassadors and frequently discussed the issue of growing Communist influence. For a brief account on the formation of the International Emergency Food Council, see S. McKee Rosen, The Combined Food Boards of the Second World War: An Experiment in International Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 252–56. The terms for entry into the IEFC were analogous to the terms of the Bretton Woods agreements. The ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements would have forced the USSR to disclose economic information and subordinate certain domestic policies to the dictates of two American-dominated institutions. See Harold and Marzenna James, “The Origins of the Cold War: Some New Documents,” The Historical Journal 37, no. 3 (1994): 617–22 and Jack N. Behrman, “Political Factors in U.S. International Financial Cooperation, 1945–1950,” The American Political Science Review 47, no. 2 (1953): 431–60. For a brief analysis of American postwar position of dominance in relation to the Soviet Union, see Geir Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952,” Journal of Peace Research 23, no. 3 (1986): 264. Also see Melvyn P. Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48,” The American Historical Review 89, no. 2 (1984): 346–81. After studying pertinent economic statistics, former Director of the Army—Navy Munitions Board Ferdinand Eberstadt reported to Navy Secretary James Forrestal: “None but mad men . . . would undertake war against us.” Quoted in Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 149. Leffler argues persuasively that Washington did not see the USSR as a military threat after the war. See ibid., 3–10. In 1946, a diplomat whom journalist Richard Lauterbach did not name but described as “a confidante of Byrnes and Bevin” said that the USSR did not want war:

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Notes They carry that chip because they are afraid that appeasing us will give them a black eye at home and in the satellite states. We might take it as a sign of weakness and ask for more and more concessions. We could, too, you know. They are weak in the military sense and strong in that they have public opinion solidly behind them. . . .

See Lauterbach, Through Russia’s Back Door, 155–56. 40. Matthew A. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised,” International Security 7 (winter 1982/83): 133–34. 41. A.S. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 1945–1947: Arkhivnye dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 2000), 152. 42. See, for example, Lauterbach, Through Russia’s Back Door, 85, 151, 153. 43. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 152–54. 44. Ibid., 155. 45. Ibid., 155–56. 46. Soviet Minister of Procurements Dvinskii wrote to Stalin on September 7, informing him of the dim prospects of the procurement campaign and suggested a series of extreme measures to speed up procurements. Stalin did not accept these measures until a second plea on September 23. See Andrea Graziosi and O.V. Khlevniuk, eds, Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 222. 47. Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 191. 48. V.I. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy: 1940–1950 (Moscow: Terra, 1994), 280. 49. See, for example, E.Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 72 and RGASPI, f. 17, op. 123, d. 810, l. 69. The question about exports was one of those most frequently posed to agitators and other Party officials by Soviet citizens in 1946–47. 50. I.M. Volkov, “Zasukha, golod 1946–1947 godov,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1991): 11. 51. “Hoover Notes of Meeting with Truman,” (February 27, 2006). 52. V.P. Popov, “Golod i gosudarstvennaia politika (1946–1947gg.),” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 6 (1992): 39. 53. See M.A. Vyltsan, Krest’ianstvo Rossii v gody Bol’shoi Voiny, 1941–1945: Pirrova pobeda (Moscow: Rossiiskii nauchnyi fond, 1995), 25–43 and “Arkhiv. Golodnaia vesna 45-go,” Kommersant-Vlast’, May 4, 2001, (February 26, 2006). Famine plagued almost all of Chita oblast in 1944–45. People resorted to consuming dead animals and even to cannibalism. In 1945, the Uzbek SSR, Tadzhik SSR, Buriat-Mongol ASSR, and Kabardinian SSR also experienced extreme bread shortages that led to deaths from starvation. 54. See Michael Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24, no. 5 (2000): 606–7. The

Notes

55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

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drought and harvest clearly played a role in Stalin’s export policy. In 1947, he made a promise to export grain to Britain contingent upon favorable climatic conditions. In March 1947, American Ambassador to the Soviet Union Walter Bedell Smith wrote to Secretary of State Acheson that Stalin offered “to furnish grain to [the] British provided no further drought.” See Kesaris, ed., Confidential State Department Central Files, reel 29, 819. “Hoover Notes of Meeting with Truman,” (February 27, 2006). Other authors have stressed the political effect of grain export in Soviet decisionmaking on this issue. See the summary of a Ukrainian Insurgent Army pamphlet, written in 1946: Peter J. Potichnyj, “The 1946–47 Famine in Ukraine: A Comment on the Archives of the Underground,” in Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, 1932–1933: Western Archives, Testimonies and New Research, ed. Wsevolod W. Isajiw (Toronto: Basilian Press, 2003), 187–88. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 17. On American ties with the Ukrainian insurgency, see Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine and Petro J. Potichnyj, ed., Litopys UPA: English Language Publications of the Ukrainian Underground, vol. 17 (Toronto: Litopys UPA, 1988), 12–13 and ibid., vol. 16, 565–68. On British ties, see GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 136, ll. 425–26. Representatives of resistance movements and their Western contacts are likely the “spies” that Stalin referred to in his interview with Alexander Werth on September 17, 1946. See Kiselev, ed., Moskva poslevoennaia, 191. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 8. Tolochko, ed., Holod, 32–35, 38–39. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 82. See also, ibid., 54. Ibid., 83. Ibid., 30. For specific figures on compensation per earned workday, see Chapter 1. Ibid., 45–46. Ibid., 55–57. Ibid., 90–93. The oblasts accused of lagging were Kiev, Stalin, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Zhitomir, Kamenets-Podol’skii, Vinnitsa, Kirovgrad, and Rovno. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 105, 106–8. Ibid., 126–28, 132–33, 133–50. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 30–31. GARF, f. 8009, op. 23, d. 257, ll. 23–24. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 22. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 26–27. See, for example, Zima, Golod v SSSR, 23 and Tolochko, ed., Holod, 93. This is the main justification used both in the press and in decrees.

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77. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 9. 78. Tolochko, ed., Holod, 133–50. 79. Ibid., 59–60. It appears that officials in Moldavia used the same approach. See Mihai Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia: Basarabia during Stalinism, 1944–1950 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1996), 74. 80. RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 965, l. 109. 81. Tolochko, ed., Holod, 237–38, 239. 82. On the reaffirmation of the importance of grain deliveries according to the state’s plan in 1947, see V.N. Malin and A.V. Korobov, eds., Direktivy KPSS i sovetskogo pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958), 192. On the improvement in compensation see p. 150. It appears that, in essence, Stalin and the Central Committee accepted Andreev’s analysis of the agricultural situation, as well as most of his solutions. See the discussion of Andreev’s report to Stalin in October 1946 in Chapter 1. 83. See, for example, Tolochko, ed., Holod, 155. The wording “temporary difficulties” or “temporary difficulties as a result of drought” often cropped up in documents of various ministries and organization, including the Red Cross. See, for example, GARF, f. 9501, op. 2, d. 945, l. 13 and d. 972, l. 84. 84. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 812, l. 76. 85. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 811, l. 70. 86. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 812, l. 76. 87. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 812, l. 111. 88. Malin and Korobov, eds, Direktivy KPSS, 193. The state budget reflected an increased emphasis on agriculture. The Supreme Soviet allocated 16 billion 200 million more rubles to the development of agriculture in 1947 than in 1946. GARF, f. 5465, op. 21, d. 428, l. 5. 89. RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 28. 90. See Klaus Gestwa, “Technik als kultur der zukunft: Der kult um die ‘Stalinshchen grossbauten des kommunismus,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 30, no. 1 (2004): 37–73 and Nikolai M. Dronin and Edward G. Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900–1990 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 160. 91. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy, 252. 92. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 165–67. 93. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 136, ll. 185–86. 94. Tolochko, ed., Holod, 29, 53. 95. Ibid., 53. 96. Ibid., 31. Letters intercepted by the Ministry of State Security and interviews corroborate this evidence. See ibid., 231, 312. 97. Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy, 252. See also footnote 1 in ibid., 223. 98. Peter J. Potichnyj, “The 1946–47 Famine in Ukraine: A Comment on the Archives of the Underground,” in Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, 1932– 1933: Western Archives, Testimonies and New Research, ed. Wsevolod W. Isajiw (Toronto: Basilian Press, 2003), 185–86.

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99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

Pasat, ed., Trudnye stranitsy, 233–35. See Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia, 75–76. Ibid., 108. Zima, Golod v SSSR, 33–34. Ibid., 10–11. For this reason, Tauger’s suggestion that peasants worked harder in years following bad harvests and thus avoided repeated crop failures is unconvincing. The case of 1946–47 suggests that the outcome had more to do with the state’s measures (such as the timing of food relief, increased seed loans, and mobilization of urban dwellers for work in the countryside) and climatic conditions. While the situation may have been different in the 1930s, it appears that the relief schemes were a tried and true method of avoiding repeat harvest failures, and these measures were likely employed before the war. This oversight causes Tauger to overestimate the degree of adaptation to the collective farm system. See Mark B. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–1939: Resistance and Adaptation,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, no. 3–4 (2004): 440. 105. See Ellman, “ ”The Road from Il’ich to Il’ich”, 145–46. An increase in grain procurement prices might have helped at least part of the peasantry, because the extra money could have been used to purchase bread.

6 The Famine of 1946–47 in the Context of Russian History 1. E.A. Brayley Hodgetts, In the Track of the Russian Famine: The Personal Narrative of a Journey Through the Famine Districts of Russia (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892), 236. 2. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 5. 3. See Michael Ellman, “The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1934,” Europe—Asia Studies 57, no. 6 (September 2005): 823–41; R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33: A Reply to Ellman,” Europe—Asia Studies 58, no. 4 (June 2006): 625–33; Michael Ellman, “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited,” Europe—Asia Studies 59, no. 4 (June 2007): 663–93; and Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered,” Europe—Asia Studies 60, no. 4 (June 2008): 663–75. 4. David Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 6–7. 5. Ibid., 9. 6. See V.A. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), 225 and Richard G. Robbins, Jr, Famine in Russia, 1891–1892: The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 188. For 1947, I use the figure Isupov considers more accurate. 7. Estimates for the death toll in 1946–47 vary. Zima believes that as many as 2 million died across the USSR, while Isupov approximates that no more than 800,000 perished in 1947 and, therefore, places the entire demographic loss for 1946–47

188

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

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Notes

at 1 million. Figures for mortality in the Ukrainian SSR range from 100,000 to 1 million. Popov proposes that 1 million people died as a direct consequence of famine only in the RSFSR. At least 70,000–80,000 died in Moldavia. This should be considered a conservative estimate, since the deaths of people over 60 years of age were often automatically attributed to natural causes. In my opinion, the actual number of dead can be approximated at 1.5–2 million, since lower estimates treat 1946 as a regular year, when in fact, people perished from hunger throughout 1946 in Ukraine and Moldavia and during the latter months of 1946 in the RSFSR. Nor were other areas entirely immune to famine. See Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 226; V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 166–68, 179; and P.P. Tolochko., ed., Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: M.P. Kots, 1996), 13. On famine conditions in Polotsk oblast, Belorussia, at the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 8, d. 692, ll. 59–60. On 1921–22, see Markus Wehner, “Golod 1921–1922 gg. v Samarskoi gubernii i reaktsii sovetskogo pravitel’stva,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 38, nos 1–2 (1997): 223–42. On 1932–33, see Michael Ellman, “A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims,” Soviet Studies 43, no. 2 (1991): 375–79 and S.G. Wheatcroft, “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931–3: Political and Natural Factors in Perspective,” Food and Foodways 12 (2004): 131. The number of dead in 1921– 22 appears particularly shocking considering the enormous amount of relief that came from the American Relief Administration and other foreign organizations. Richard Pipes, “The Environment and Its Consequences” in Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia, ed. James Cracraft (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 4–20. See M.V. Mescherskaya and V.G. Blazhevich, “The Drought and Excessive Moisture Indices in Historical Perspective in the Principal Grain-Producing Regions of the Former Soviet Union,” Journal of Climate 10, no. 10 (1997): 2670–82. Nikolai M. Dronin and Edward G. Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900–1990 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 2. By contrast, Western Europe had a growing season of 260–300 days. S.F. Platonov, Polnyi kurs lektsii po russkoi istorii (Saint Petersburg: Litera, 1999), 263–64. S.G. Pushkarev, Obzor russkoi istorii (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 197–98. This was true not only of the Bolsheviks but of all types of modernizers in late imperial Russia. Marxists were particularly dismissive of the possible adaptive aspects of peasant life. See Esther Kingston-Mann, “Marxism and Russian Rural Development: Problems of Evidence, Experience, and Culture,” American Historical Review 86, no. 4 (October 1981): 731–52. For an extensive list of contemporary and pre-1977 Western and Soviet works that articulate this view, see footnote 1 in James Y. Simms, Jr, “The Crisis in Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century: A Different View,”

Notes

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

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Slavic Review 36, no. 3 (September 1977): 377. To these, we might add Alexander Gerschenkron, “Russian Agrarian Policies and Industrialization, 1861–1917,” in Continuity in History and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 140–256; G. T. Robinson, Rural Russian under the Old Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Lazar Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture: From Alexander II to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); and Richard Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891–92: The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891–92, 6. For an example of this line of argumentation, see H.H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919–1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), 471–73. G.V. Plekhanov, O zadachakh sotsialistov v bor’be s golodom v Rossii (Geneva: Sotsial Demokrat, 1892). Robbins holds to this general interpretation in Famine in Russia, 1891–92. See, for example, Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia, 476–80. David Kerans, summarizing statistics available in other works, writes: “The rural population of European Russia more than doubled in the half-century following the emancipation of 1861, rising from about 55 million in 1858 to 81 million in 1897, and 110 million in 1914.” See footnote 11 of his “Toward a Wider View of the Agrarian Problem in Russia, 1861–1930,” Kritika 1, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 660. Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 61. On peasants and their purchase of newer implements, see Leonard G. Friesen, “Bukkers, Plows and lobogreikas: Peasant Acquisition of Agricultural Implements in Russia before 1900,” Russian Review 53, no. 3 (1994): 399–418. Steven L. Hoch, “On Good Numbers and Bad: Malthus, Population Trends and Peasant Standard of Living in Late Imperial Russia,” Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 41–75. Stephen L. Hoch, “Famine, Disease, and Mortality Patterns in the Parish of Borshevka, Russia, 1830–1912,” Population Studies 52, no. 3 (November 1998): 358. Ibid., 360–61. Hoch also shows that mortality crises were relatively rare: in Borshevka, there were 8.6 crises per 100 years (in which mortality exceeded the moving average by more than 50 percent). Ibid., 359–61. Elvira M. Wilbur, “Was Russian Peasant Agriculture Really That Impoverished? New Evidence from a Case Study from the ‘Impoverished Center’ at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 43, no. 1 (March 1983): 137–44. Hoch, “Famine, Disease, and Mortality Patterns.” Also see David Kerans, “Toward a Wider View of the Agrarian Problem in Russia”: 661–62. Ibid., 170–71. See S.G. Wheatcroft, “The 1891–92 Famine in Russia: Towards a More Detailed Analysis of its Scale and Demographic Significance,” in Economy and Society in

190

32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

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Notes

Russia and the Soviet Union, 1860–1930, ed. L. Edmondson and P. Waldron (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 58–59. According to Mescherskaya and Blazhevich, “The Drought and Excessive Moisture Indices in Historical Perspective in the Principal Grain-Producing Regions of the Former Soviet Union,” 1891 was the second worst drought in the European part of Russia for the period 1891–1947. Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 54. To add to this, the winter of 1890–91 was the most severe in Europe in the nineteenth century. Ibid., 55. Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891–92, 170–71. James Y. Simms, Jr, “The Crop Failure of 1891: Soil Exhaustion, Technological Backwardness, and Russia’s ‘Agrarian Crisis’,” Slavic Review 41, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 240–41. Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 54–57. Ibid., 57. Ibid. The drought of 1906 was the most severe. On the cultural and indeed ethical crisis in the Russian countryside, see Leonid Heretz, Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture Under the Last Tsars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 130–44. On the strains that migration placed on village life, see Jeffrey Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), especially 28–39. Kerans, “Toward a Wider View of the Agrarian Problem in Russia”, 658. See Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (New York: Penguin, 1997). For this reason, 1891 serves as one of the author’s bookends. David A.J. Macey, “Reflections on Peasant Adaptation in Rural Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Stolypin Agrarian Reforms,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, nos 3–4 (April/July 2004): 408. This argument is made in Esther Kingston-Mann, “Marxism and Russian Rural Development.” For a summary of Soviet policies under war communism, see R.W. Davies, Mark Harrison, and S.G. Wheatcroft, eds, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 5–8. See, for example, Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 327–29. On the role of tsarist intervention in preventing famine, see Serguei Adamets, “Famine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia: Mortality by Age, Cause, and Gender,” in Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present, ed. Tim Dyson and Cormac Ó Gráda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),” 166. On the spread of cholera and typhus, see Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 401–02. Typhus was so widespread that it was considered the primary threat to American Relief Administration workers, and cholera had reached epidemic

Notes

47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

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proportions by the summer of 1922. See Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 236. Warren F. Ilchman, Stanley N. Katz, and Edward L. Queen, II, eds, Philanthropy in the World’s Traditions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 316. On charity in imperial times, see Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). There were 7 million homeless children in the Soviet Union in 1922. See ibid., 1. The extensive relief activities of the American Relief Administration are documented in Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia; Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand; and Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921–1923 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1974). Ilchman et al., Philanthropy in the World’s Traditions, 317–18. Davies et al., The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 8–13. On internal passports, see David Shearer, “Elements Near and Alien: Passportization, Policing, and Identity in the Stalinist State, 1932–1952,” Journal of Modern History 76, no. 4 (2004): 835–81. Aside from this regulation of migration, the Bolsheviks carried out mass deportations and forced the sedentarization of nomads in Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia. See Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 192–98. Though the topic has received little scholarly attention, the Bolsheviks had practiced forced resettlement much earlier, during and immediately following the Civil War. See Pavel Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR (New York: Central European University Press, 2004), 59–69. In tsarist times, after cultivating and sowing, peasant men often left their native villages in May and came back at the end of August for harvesting. Peasants practiced both seasonal and more long-term migration to supplement family income and take advantage of opportunities for trade and other lucrative ventures outside the village. This mobility increased after the emancipation of 1861. See Boris B. Gorshkov, “Serfs on the Move: Peasant Seasonal Migration in Pre-reform Russia, 1800–61,” Kritika 1, no. 4 (2000): 627–56. See Donald A. Filtzer, “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers in the Immediate Postwar Period, 1945–1948”, Europe-Asia Studies 51 (September 1999), 1013–39.” On the standard of living of Soviet workers leading up to the early 1930s crisis, see Iu.M. Ivanov, “Polozhenie rabochikh Rossii v 20-kh— nachale 30-kh godov,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 5 (1998): 28–43. Elena Osokina, among others, has documented the precariousness of the workers’ position. See Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001). See Chapter 4 of this work.

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57. Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891–1892, 1–13. 58. Ibid., 57. The initial decree, penned in July, was a partial ban on the export of rye. By November, the government had completely banned the export of both rye and wheat. 59. M.E. Falkus, “Russia and the International Wheat Trade, 1861–1914,” Economica 33, no. 132 (1966): 420. On droughts in the early 1900s, see Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 44–53. 60. See ibid., 180–81. 61. Serguei Adamets, “Famine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia: Mortality by Age, Cause, and Gender,” in Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present, ed. Tim Dyson and Cormac Ó Gráda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 159–80. 62. Falkus, “Russia and the International Wheat Trade”, 424. For the percentage of the wheat crop exported during these years, see footnote 1. 63. See Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 44–53. The drought of 1906 was the most severe. 64. Michael Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24, no. 5 (2000): 607. Zima’s figures differ from Ellman’s, but he gives one sum for 1946–47, making a differentiation between pre-famine exports and those made during the famine impossible. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 149–50. 65. Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine”, 606–08. 66. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 60 let: Iubileinyi statisticheskii ezhegodnik (Moscow: Statistika, 1977), 272. The Soviet figures cannot be taken at face value, since it was in the USSR’s interest to stress progress by providing lower figures for prerevolutionary production. I have used these numbers here because there are no universally accepted statistics for Russian agricultural production during the Imperial period and, even with the Soviet-era statistics, the absence of progress in agricultural output is clear. 67. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 47, 206. 68. See Zima, Golod v SSSR, 150. 69. I have derived these figures from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 272 and Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 47, 206. In 1913, Russia produced 615 kg of grain per capita. The corresponding figures for 1940, 1945, 1946, and 1947 are as follows: 486 kg, 273 kg, 235 kg, and 386 kg. These statistics highlight that the food situation was already rather precarious in 1945 and that the 1947 harvest was much better than in 1946 but hardly spectacular. 70. On Soviet food policy during World War II, see William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 71. My estimates of the 1909–13 figures are conservative, since I used the January 1, 1914, population of the Russian Empire to calculate the per capita grain production for the entire period. For 1945–47, I used population figures for the beginning of each year. The population figure for the start of 1947 was derived

Notes

72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

84.

85. 86. 87.

88.

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by subtracting the number of deaths from the number of births in 1946 and adding the remainder to the January 1, 1946, figure provided by Isupov. For 1940, I have used the population of the USSR on January 1, 1941. For population figures, see Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 47, 206, 221, 225. For grain production, see Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 272. Charles M. Edmonson, “An Inquiry into the Termination of Soviet Famine Relief Programmes and the Renewal of Grain Export, 1922–23,” Soviet Studies 33, no. 3 (1981): 370–85. R.W. Davies, S.G. Wheatcroft, and M.B. Tauger, “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” Slavic Review 54, no. 3 (1995): 645. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 4–5. Ibid., 147–79, 193–222. Ibid., 164. See, for example, RGASPI, f. 73, op. 2, d. 23, l. 28; f. 82, op. 2, d. 965, l. 109; and Tolochko, ed., Holod, 59–60, 237–38, 239. David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 26–33. Ibid., 39–54. On Lysenko, see Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair and Valery N. Soyfer, translated from the Russian by Leo Gruliow and Rebecca Gruliow, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994). A.A. Grigoryev, “Soviet Plans for Irrigation and Power: A Geographical Assessment,” The Geographical Journal 118, no. 2 (1952): 168–79. Ibid., 176–77. In a lecture at Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum in April 1948, Zhdanov harshly criticized Lysenko but proclaimed, “We Communists . . . are in accord with the doctrine that affirms the possibility of transforming and reorganizing the organic world. . . .” See Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science, 171. See Klaus Gestwa, “Technik als kultur der zukunft: Der kult um die ‘Stalinshchen grossbauten des kommunismus,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 30, no. 1 (2004): 37–73 and Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 160. V.I. Govorkov, “I zasukhu pobedim,” 1949, (February 10, 2008). Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, 272. Even then, per capita grain production still failed to reach the 1913 level. See Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 160– 61 and RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 5. For the specifics of the proscribed grass rotation, see John Russell, “Collective Farming in Russia and the Ukraine,” Science 96, no. 2481 (1942): 49. On Williams’ brief fall from grace, see Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair, 65. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 5. Khrushchev recounts that shallow tilling, which was practiced in Ukraine, was condemned and a Saratov professor shot

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for his stance on the matter. The description appears to match N.I. Vavilov, who opposed Lysenko and was condemned as a result, except that by other accounts he died in prison and was not shot. The traditional planting of winter wheat in Ukraine was also condemned. See Dronin and Bellinger, Climatic Dependence, 161. 89. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, l. 5. 90. Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 211, 213.

7 Placing the Famine of 1946–47 in Global Context 1. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Many historians have reevaluated the causes of various famines in light of Sen’s theory and employed his model in the analysis of famine. See, for example: Malabika Chakrabarti, “The Famine of 1896– 97 in the Bengal Presidency: Food Availability Decline or ‘Exchange’ Crisis?,” Calcutta Historical Journal 16, no. 1 (1994): 1–37; Christopher G. Locke and Fredoun Z. Ahmadi-Esfahani, “Famine Analysis: A Study of Entitlements in Sudan, 1984–1985,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 41, no. 2 (1993): 363– 76; and Lance Brennan, Les Heathecote, and Anton Lucas, “The Causation of Famine: A Comparative Analysis of Lombok and Bengal, 1891–1974,” South Asia 7, no. 1 (1984): 1–26. An exception is Mark B. Tauger, “Entitlement, Shortage and the 1943 Bengal Famine: Another Look,” Journal of Peasant Studies 31, no. 1 (2003): 45–72, who advocates the primacy of natural factors. 2. See, for example, Amartya Sen, “Liberty and Poverty: Political Rights and Economics,” The New Republic 210, no. 10 (1994): 31–37 and “Democracy as a Universal Value,” Journal of Democracy 10, no. 3 (1999): 3–17. 3. See Frances D’Souza, “Democracy as a Cure for Famine,” Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 4 (1994): 369–73. Sen’s analysis does not justify such a simple solution as this claim implies. See his Development as Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 160–88. 4. S.G. Wheatcroft, “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931–3: Political and Natural Factors in Perspective,” Food and Foodways 12, nos 2–3 (2004): 109. 5. Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 49–54. Regardless of one’s interpretation of the events leading up to the Soviet famine of 1932–33, the fact that famine plagued areas of the USSR outside of Ukraine is undeniable. To label the famine “Ukrainian” is to devalue the many lives that were lost outside of Ukraine and of inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR who where not of Ukrainian nationality. 6. Nikolai M. Dronin and Edward G. Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900–1990 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 339.

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7. Walter H. Mallory, China: Land of Famine (New York: American Geographic Society, 1927). 8. Sen, Poverty and Famines, 86–112. 9. Irene V. Langran, “Cambodia in 2000: New Hopes Are Challenged,” Asian Survey 41, no. 1 (2001): 157–58. 10. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine, 8–10. 11. James Kai-sing Kung and Justin Yifu Lin, “The Causes of China’s Great Leap Famine, 1959–1961,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 52, no. 1 (2003): 51–73. Estimates of mortality vary but some are as high as 16.5–30 million. 12. Jason W. Clay and Bonnie K. Holcomb, Politics and the Ethiopian Famine, 1984– 1985 (Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival, Inc., 1986), 114–15. 13. For insight into the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, see Alexander Laban Hinton, “Why Did You Kill? The Cambodian Genocide and the Dark Side of Face and Honor,” Journal of Asian Studies 57, no. 1 (1998): 93–122. The number of dead from starvation is difficult to determine. In total, approximately 1.5 million people died under the Khmer Rouge. See Patrick Heuveline, “ ‘Between One and Three Million’: Towards the Demographic Reconstruction of a Decade of Cambodian History (1970–1979),” Population Studies 52, no. 1 (1998): 49–65. 14. See Don Oberdorfer, “North Korea’s Famine and Economic Crisis,” in North Korea, ed. Debra A. Miller (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 36–43. 15. I have found no evidence that climate played a factor in starvation under the Khmer Rouge, and the regime’s policies cannot be by any stretch be characterized as modernist. 16. Penny Kane, Famine in China, 1959–61: Demographic and Social Implications (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 54–55, 59. 17. Ibid., 63. 18. Cormac Ó’Grada, The Great Irish Famine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 44–45. For a critical view of the British role, see Christine Kinealy, “The Famine, 1945–52: How England Failed Ireland,” Modern History Review 7, no. 1 (1995): 18–21. For an apologia for Trevelyan, see Robin F. Haines, Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004). 19. Quoted in Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001), 32. 20. Ibid., 32–34, 48. 21. Ibid., 47–48. 22. On Stalin’s attitude toward the peasantry, see f. 397, op. 1, d. 19, l. 30. 23. Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the TerrorFamine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 325. 24. RGASPI, f. 397, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 8–9. 25. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 692, ll. 5–9. 26. V.F. Zima, Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 181–82. 27. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 36–38.

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28. Ibid., 39–40. 29. David Hall-Matthews, Peasants, Famine, and the State in Colonial Western India (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 208–09. 30. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, ll. 26, 35. 31. See RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 109, l. 26. 32. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 317–40. 33. Ibid., 51. 34. Ibid., 7. 35. For 1921–22, see Markus Wehner, “Golod 1921–1922gg. v Samarskoi gubernii i reaktsii Sovetskogo pravitel’stva,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 38, nos 1–2 (1997): 223–42 and V.A. Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), 67. For 1932–33, see Michael Ellman, “A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims” Soviet Studies 43, no. 2 (1991): 375–79. For 1946–47, see Zima, Golod v SSSR, 166–68, 179, and Isupov, Demograficheskie katastrofy, 226. 36. Estimates on the number of “excess deaths” vary. One million is a moderate estimate. See Phelim P. Boyle and Cormac Ó’Grada, “Fertility Trends, Excess Mortality, and the Great Irish Famine,” Demography 23, no. 4 (1986): 543–62. For an analysis of the number of excess deaths during the Bengal famine, see Arup Maharatna, “The Demography of the Bengal Famine of 1943–44: A Detailed Study,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 31, no. 2 (1992): 169–215. 37. On the Greek famine, see Violetta Hionidou, “ ‘Send Us either Food or Coffins’: The 1941–2 Famine on the Aegean Island of Syros,” in Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present, ed. Tim Dyson and Cormac Ó Gráda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 181–203. On the Dutch famine, see Henri A. van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–5 (London: Hill Norman & Hobhouse, 1982), 304. 38. See Sen, Poverty and Famines, 52–85. See also Sugata Bose, “Starvation amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal, Honan, and Tonkin, 1942–45,” Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 4 (1990): 699–727. 39. See Mattin utin Ahmed, “Bengal Famine of 1943: British Responsibility and Social Consequences,” Dacca University Studies Part A 28 (1978): 68–80. 40. Richard G. Robbins Jr, Famine in Russia, 1891–1892: The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975). 41. See Serguei Adamets, “Famine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia: Mortality by Age, Cause, and Gender,” in Famine Demography, ed. Dyson and Ó Gráda. 42. Dronin and Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 211–13. 43. Moshe Lewin, “Russia/USSR in Historical Motion: An Essay in Interpretation,” Russian Review 50, no. 3 (1991): 249–66. 44. See Chapter 6 of this book. 45. Interview with V. Matsemura, 20 July 2008. This famine survivor attests that hunger in certain villages of Tver’ oblast started during the war and continued until 1950.

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46. See John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich, eds, Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 47. See Nicky Hart, “Famine, Maternal Nutrition and Infant Mortality: A Reexamination of the Dutch Hunger Winter,” Population Studies 47, no. 1 (1993): 27–46 and van der Zee, The Hunger Winter. 48. See Bùi Minh D˜ung, “Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–45,” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (1995): 573–618. 49. Wheatcroft, “Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931–3.” On 1891–92, see Chapter 6 of the current work. On 1946–47, see Chapter 1. 50. Sen, Development as Freedom, 184. 51. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 34.

Conclusion 1. J. Stalin, “Stalin’s Reply,” Military Affairs 13, no. 2 (1949): 77.


Bibliography Archives Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation) Fond 5452, Central Committee of Trade Unions of Government Trade F. 6991, Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church F. 8009, Ministry of Health F. 8300, Ministry of State Control F. 9401, Stalin’s “Special File” F. 9415, Main Police Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs F. 9501, Society of the Red Cross and Red Crescent of the USSR

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Matrosov, V.A., ed. Pogranichnye voiska SSSR, mai 1945–1950: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Moscow: Nauka, 1975. Pasat, V.I., ed. Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy: 1940–1950. Moscow: Terra, 1994. Popov, V.P. Rossiiskaia derevnia posle voiny (iiun’ 1945-mart 1953): Sbornik dokumentov. Moscow: Prometei, 1993. ———. Krest’ianstvo i gosudarstvo (1945–1953). Paris: YMCA-Press, 1992. Potichnyj, Petro J., ed. Litopys UPA: English Language Publications of the Ukrainian Underground, Vols 16 and 17. Toronto: Litopys UPA, 1988. Tolochko, P.P., ed. Holod v Ukraini, 1946–1947: Dokumenty i materialy. Kiev: M.P. Kots, 1996.

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Index

Abakumov, V. S., 89 abandonment of children, 28–9, 84 Acheson, Dean (Under Secretary, U.S. Department of State), 98–9 affordability of food, 57 agricultural conditions, see climate; soil conditions agricultural development, 111 agricultural production, 19–20 attempts to maximize, 11–12, 18–19 and famine, 4–5, 7–8, 15 politics of, 104, 110–11 rates of, 124, 130–1 agriculture commercialization of, 141–2 government control of, 89 inattention to, 17–18 see also collective farming aid efforts, see philanthropy; relief efforts Alexander II, Emperor, 120–1 alternate food sources, 89, 119 American Relief Administration (ARA), xiii–xiv, 126 Andreev, Andrei A., 10, 11, 17–18, 19, 21–3, 111, 115 animals, 12–14 Annales school, 117–18 Anti-charitable Contributions Act, 141 Arnold, David, xvi–xvii, 47, 117 Arutiunian, Iu. V., 19–20 begging, 83–4, 128 see also homelessness; orphans Bellinger, Edward G., 123, 138 Bengal famine (1943), 5, 143

besprizornye, 28–9 bias in historical sources, 48–9, 70, 72, 82–3, 107 birth rates, 29, 56 Bishop Maksim Bachinskii (of Kamenets-Podol’sk), 42 black market, 51 see also crime Bolshevik Revolution, 63 Bolsheviks policy of, 126, 130–1, 149 rise to power, 20–1, 71, 132 views of, 21, 73–6, 124–6, 132–3, 144–5, 150 see also government boom famine, 141, 143 bread ingredients in, 62 sales of, 113 shortages of, 51–3 bread-conservation campaign (1946), 32–3, 37, 44, 58–63, 89 breastfeeding, 34 Butenko, G. (Minister of Agriculture, Ukrainian SSR), 109 Byrnes, James F. (U.S. Secretary of State), xiii, 98 Cambodia, 138–9 cannibalism, 89, 112, 119 capitalism, 21 Carter, Edward C., 96 Cecil, Lord Robert, see Salisbury, Secretary of State

212

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Index

Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, 108 central press, 87 children causes of death of, 35–7 and collective farming, 31–2, 39, 43 welfare of, 14, 28–9, 60, 84 see also orphans children’s institutions, 28–36, 39–44 China, 138–9, 146 cholera, 123, 126 churches, see religion Churchill, Winston, 15, 102–3 cities, see urban areas Civil War, 125–6 climate, 118–19, 132–3, 138–9, 145–6 cold war, xvi, 98–103 collective farming, 132 abandonment of, 86 children and, 31–2, 39, 43 compensation from, 9–10, 17, 37–8, 107, 110 criticisms of, 4, 6, 22, 59, 66, 79–82, 113, 130 justifications for, 20, 71, 82 reforms of, 19, 21–2, 44, 132 relief efforts and, 43 religion and, 75–7 resistance and, 77–8, 88–9 resources for, 11–14, 43, 111 role of in famine, 6–9 studies of, 70–1 see also farmers command-administrative model, 120 commercialization of agriculture, 141–2 commercial pricing, 51, 57 communes, 125–7 Communist Party opinions about, 71–3, 150 and United States aid, 98–101 viability of, xv, 73 views held by, 20–1, 75–6 compensation of farmers, 9–10, 107, 110 Conquest, Robert, 4

coping mechanisms, see resistance to famine corruption in aid efforts, 119 countryside, 83, 127 see also peasantry Cranborne, Viscount, see Salisbury, Secretary of State crime, 51, 86–9, 113, 119 crop yields, see agricultural production currency shortages, 55 cutbacks to grain exports, 129 to medical personnel, 43 to rations, 5, 33, 37, 55, 59–62 Davies, Robert W., 4 Davis, Mike, 141 death, causes of, 35–7, 123 death rates, see mortality rates decentralized food distribution, 130 Decree No. 380, see bread-conservation campaign (1946) dekulakization campaign, 140 demobilized soldiers, 8 democracy, 137, 145–6 Denisov, M. M. (Deputy Minister of Trade), 63 Dergue (Ethiopia), 139 detdoma, see children’s institutions development, agricultural, 111 de Waal, Alex, xviii–xix dialectical materialism, 141 Dimitrii I, False, 119 disease, 119, 123, 126 distribution of food, see food donations, see philanthropy Dronin, Nikolai M., 123, 138 drought of 1891, 123–4, 138 of 1921, 125–6 of 1946, 3, 7 attempts to combat, 133 as excuse for policy, 56–7, 66 frequency of, 118 as precursor to famine, 6–8 and religious observance, 74–5

Index Dunaevskii, Isaak O., 40 Durbrow, Elbridge (chargé d’affaires, U.S. Embassy), 63, 100 Dvinskii, B. A. (Minister of Procurements), 12, 32 dystrophy, 9–10, 35, 37, 41, 48, 140 economic policy, 125–6 elections, 72, 76, 78, 81 Ellman, Michael, 4–5, 23–4, 105, 129 Engels, Friedrich, 20 entitlement approach, 5 Ethiopia, 138–9 exports, grain, 99, 104–5, 128–9, 131 factories, working conditions in, 55 factory workers, 57–8 fallowness, importance of, 18 False Dimitrii I, 119 families, 126–7 see also children Family Code of 1918, 126 famine definition of, xix, 117 versus disease, 123 geographical aspects of, 112, 118, 145–6 in historical context, xv, 118, 119, 142 and infrastructure shortages, 11–13 personal aspects of, 28–9, 75 political aspects of, xiii–xvi, 4–6, 8–9, 13, 21, 27, 137–8, 143–5 Famine Emergency Committee, xiii–xiv famines, historic Bengal (1943), 5, 143 Great Irish Famine, 140 Indian (1876–79), 140, 142 Russian (1601–02), 119 Russian (1891–92), 20, 121, 123–4 Soviet (1921–22), 20–1, 69 Soviet (1932–33), 3–4, 69, 107, 112, 117, 127

●

213

farmers compensation of, 9–10, 17, 37–8, 107, 110 concerns of, 106–7 displacement of, 13, 86 independent, 140 responses to lack of machinery, 14 see also collective farming farming, collective, see collective farming fear as tactic for compliance, 63, 66 fear of military conflict, 102–3, 106 feeding stations, 41 fertility, 29, 56 field maintenance, 18–19 Filippov, Minister of Enlightenment, 33 Filtzer, Donald A., xvii First Five-Year Plan, 127 Fischer, John, 98 flour shortages, 53 fodder shortage, 11–13 food affordability of, 57 alternates to, 89, 119 conservation, 32–3 distribution patterns, 48–57, 119, 127, 143 loans, 16, 109–10 quality of, 52, 62, 104 shortages of, 31–2, 48–51, 61–2, 101–2 foreign aid, 96–7 Forrestal, James, 95 Fourth Five-Year Plan, 18, 130 free press, 137 free trade, illegalization of, 127 fuel shortages, 52 fundraising, 40 see also philanthropy; relief efforts German army, 5–6, 73, 145 see also World War II Godunov, Boris (Tsar), 119, 120 Goizman, M. (Soviet Red Cross), 42 Gostev, Comrade (Council on the Affairs of the ROC), 75

214

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Index

government abuses of power by, 63, 66 lack of assistance from, 42, 52–5, 119 motivations of, 56–7, 58, 66, 83, 88, 100–1, 104–5 opinions about, 28, 63–4, 78, 86–7, 107 perceptions of peasantry, 20–1, 71–2, 140, 145 and religious observance, 76, 77 resistance to, 71–3, 78–81, 90, 113 role of in famine, 3, 89, 138–43 see also Bolsheviks; policy; state versus individual government culpability equation, 4–5 Govorkov, Viktor I., 133 grain export of, 99, 104–5, 128–9, 131 import of, 134, 144 loaning of, 16, 109–10 processing of, 16 procurement campaign, 106, 108–9, 127, 131, 150 quotas, 38 requisition and sale of, 121, 131 see also agricultural production grass rotation system, 133 Great Britain, 106, 141, 143, 150 see also Indian famine (1876-79) Great Irish Famine, 140 Great Leap Forward, 139 Great Patriotic War, see World War II Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature, 133 Gubel’man, Moisei I. (Professional Union of Government Trade), 59–61 Hall-Matthews, David, 141 harvest, assistance with, 110 see also agricultural production harvest yields, see agricultural production Hayes, Helen, 96 hay shortage (1945), 11–12 health conditions, 122–3

Hellbeck, Jochen, 70 Hepburn, Katharine, 96 Hessler, Julie, 65 high modernist project, 132–4, 139, 144, 145, 150 Hilton, Richard (Major-General), 83–4 historical sources, bias in, 48–9, 70, 72, 82–3, 107 Hitler, Adolf, 86–7 see also German army Hoch, Steven, 122 Hodgetts, E. A. Brayley, 117 homelessness, 28–9 Hoover, Herbert (Famine Emergency Committee), xiii–xiv, 98, 100–1 housing, shortages of, 29–30 humanitarian relief, see philanthropy; relief efforts hunger versus famine, 121 indifference to, 141 physical effects of, 87 preceding famine, 9, 105 see also dystrophy; famine import of grain, 134, 144 incentives for grain procurement, 106 income, 53–5, 57 Indian famine (1876-79), 140, 142 individual versus state needs, 89, 106–9, 126, 140, 150 industrialization, 128, 142 inequitable distribution, 66 Infant Home No. 1 (Ukraine), 34–6 infant mortality, 34–7 instability, 144–5 international aid, 97–101 International Emergency Food Council (IEFC), 101 intimidation, 63, 66 Ireland, 140 Iron Ivan, 77–8 irrigation systems, 133 Islam, 74 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 77

Index Kaganovich, Lazar’ M., 21, 89–90, 110 Kennan, George F., 69 Kerans, David, 124 Khmer Rouge (Cambodia), 139 Khrushchev, Nikita S., 6, 18–21, 40, 95, 105, 109, 117, 134, 140, 144, 149 Kim Jong II, 139 kolkhoz, see collective farming Korneichuk, Aleksandr, 40 Korotchenko, D. S. (Central Committee, Ukrainian SSR), 107 Kosygin, A. N. (Council of Ministers), 14, 140 Kruglov, S. (Minister of Internal Affairs), 89, 112 Krylova, Anna, 70, 71 kulak, 140 labor shortages, 6–8, 19 LaGuardia, Fiorello (Mayor, New York City), 96–8, 100 land, government appropriation of, 22 land leases, 122 land mines, 6 Lehman, Herbert H., 97 Lenin, Vladimir, 20, 125, 132, 150 Lewin, Moshe, 144–5 liberalization, 150 life expectancy, 122 Liubimov, A. V. (Minister of Trade), 57 livestock shortages, 12–14 loss conservation, 62–3 lotteries, 42 Lysenko, T. D. (President, V. I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences), 133 Lytton, Lord Edward Robert, 140–1 Maksim Bachinskii, Bishop (of Kamenets-Podol’skii), 42 Malenkov, Georgii M., 12, 18, 50–1, 109 malnutrition, see dystrophy Malthusian principles, 141 manufacturing, 11–12 Mao Zedong, 139

●

215

Markov, G. M. (Orel Oblast Party Committee), 53 Marshak, S. Ia., 39–40 Marx, Karl, 20, 132 mechanization of agriculture dearth of, 10–11, 19 farmer responses to, 14 need for, 17–18, 105–6 results of, 130–2 media, 82, 87, 137 medical personnel, 43 Medvedev, Zhores, 18 methodology, xix Michurin, Ivan V., 133 Michurinism, 133 migration, 23, 84–7, 125, 128 Mikoian, A. I. (Minister of Provisioning), 115 military conflict, 102–3, 106, 145 see also World War I; World War II milk substitutes, 56 Ministry of Health, 30–1 modernization, 124 see also mechanization of agriculture Molotov, Viacheslav M., 115 Mordovets, Iosif L. (Minister of State Security, Moldavian SSR), 89 mortality, causes of, 35–7, 123 mortality rates at children’s homes, 34–7 famine-related, xv, 6, 118, 142 regional trends, 112 responses to, 56 Moscow conditions in, 28, 57–8, 83–4, 119 peasantry in, 84 perceptions of people in, 59–60, 63, 79, 103 political importance of, 83 mothers, rationing to, 56 Muscovites, see Moscow Muslims, 74 nationalist resistance, 112 Natsios, Andrew S., 138, 146

216

●

Index

natural disasters, 138–9 see also drought natural loss of bread, 62–3 Nazis, 5–6, 73, 145 New Economic Policy (NEP), 126 North Korea, 138–9 Nove, Alec, 70–1 Ó’Grada, Cormac, 140 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), 106 orphans, 28, 39–44, 84 see also children; children’s institutions Orthodox Church, see Russian Orthodox Church overcrowding, 29–31 patriotism, 73, 90 peasant communes, 125, 127 peasantry conditions of, 121–2 coping mechanisms of, 83–7, 122–5 independence of, 22, 127–8 opinions about, 20–1, 71–2, 107–8, 140, 141, 145 opinions held by, 79–80, 86–7, 107, 124 and religious observance, 74–5 and World War II, 6, 20 see also resistance to famine Pepper, Claude (Senator), 101 pesticides, 16 philanthropy, 40, 42, 126, 141 see also fundraising; relief efforts Platonov, O. F., 119 Plekhanov, Georgi V., 53, 121 Pleshchitser, M., 62 podzol, 118 police tyranny, 84 policy agricultural, 19–22, 37–8, 44, 71, 106–11, 125, 127, 130–4, 138–43 conservation, 58–64 grain export, 105–6, 128–31 infrastructure, 30

migration, 85–7, 125 penal, 89 pricing, 51, 57–8, 65 public health, 31–3, 56, 126 rationing, 32–3, 37–8, 53, 56–65, 104, 150 relief, 39–44, 109, 126, 141–3 political participation as resistance, 78–81 politics of aid, 97–101, 141 Popov, V. P., 105 popular opinion, measures of, 72 poverty, government explanations of, 88 prayers, 74–5 pregnancy, 56 press, 82, 87, 137 pricing of food, 51, 57 private donations, 141 private land ownership, 125, 127 propaganda, 75, 82, 87, 88, 102, 150 Prussia, 112 public health, 122–3, 126 punitive system, 89 quotas, 6, 12, 19, 38, 127 Radchenko, Polina G. (Minister of Health, Ukrainian SSR), 33 rail network, inadequacy of, 15 rain, prayers for, 74–5 rationing, see bread-conservation campaign (1946); policy Red Cross, Soviet, 39–44 reform, agrarian, 125 relief efforts fundraising for, 40 government sponsored, 39–44, 42, 109, 126, 141–3 international, 96–101, 146 obstacles to, 42, 97–101, 119, 141 regional variations in, 41–2 under tsarist rule, 144 see also philanthropy religion, 42, 73–7 reputation, importance of, 83, 100–1, 104–5

Index resistance to famine agricultural approaches to, 122–3 complexity of, 70–2, 90 effects of World War II on, 127–8 personal approaches to, 83–9 political approaches to, 78–82 religious approaches to, 73–8 resistance to government, 71–3, 78–81, 90, 113 Robbins, Richard G., 121, 144 Roberts, Frank K. (British chargé d’affaires), 3, 100 Rokossovskii, K. K. (Marshal), 40 rural areas, 83, 127 see also peasantry Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), 20–1, 73, 77, 126 Russian War Relief (RWR), 96–7 salaries, 53–5, 57 Salisbury, Secretary of State, 140 Savchenko, Sergei R. (Minister of State Security, Ukrainian SSR), 107 Scandrett, Richard B. (UNRRA), 97–8 Schlesinger, Rudolf, 70–1 Scott, James C., 132, 139, 150 Sen, Amartya, xvii, 5, 66, 137, 143 serfs, emancipation of, 120–1 Shatalova, M. A. (Red Cross, Ukrainian SSR), 42 shelterbelts, 133 shortages of currency, 55 of fodder, 11–13 of food, 31–2, 49–53, 56, 61–2 of housing, 29–30 of livestock, 12–14 of medical personnel, 43 see also famine social control, increase in, 120 social Darwinism, 141 socialist farms, 126 see also collective farming soil conditions, 118, 121 soldiers, demobilized, 8

●

217

sources, archival, xvii, 48–9, 70, 72, 82–3, 107 Soviet Red Cross and Red Crescent, 39–44 Soviet Studies, 70–1 space shortages, 29–30 stability of peasantry, 122–3 Stalin, Josef agricultural policy of, 15, 18, 19, 33, 106, 109, 127 communications to, 6, 10, 17, 21–3, 32, 84–5, 88–9, 99, 111, 112 and famine, 4, 65, 100, 140, 149, 150 political ideology of, 47, 77, 115 and popular sentiment, 58, 64, 73, 103, 120 see also government starvation, see dystrophy state versus individual, 89, 106–9, 126, 140, 150 Steinbeck, John, 27 Stolypin, Petr A. (Prime Minister), 125 struggle for the harvest, 149 suicide, 38, 55, 58 Sukharev, Boris (composer), 74 Sukharev, M. (Minister of Health, Moldavian SSR), 41 svodki, informatsionnye, 48–9, 53, 70, 72 Tauger, Mark, 4, 70–1 teachers, effects of bread rationing on, 37–8 Temple, Sir Richard, 140–1 theft of food, 88–9 time of troubles, 119 totalitarian famine, 138, 143, 146 tractors, manufacture of, 10–11 trade workers, 61–2, 66 trees, value of in agriculture, 133 Trevelyan, Charles (Under-Secretary of the Treasury), 140 Truman, Harry S., xiii–xiv, 97–101, 104, 150 Truman administration, 97–102, 104, 150

218

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Index

tsarist policy, 120–2, 128, 144 Tutushkin, F. Ia. (Minister of Internal Affairs, Moldavian SSR), 88–9 typhus, 123, 126 Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), 86–7, 113 Ukrainians, persecution of, 4 unemployment rates, 8–9 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 97–101, 104, 150 United States degree of assistance from, xiii–xiv, 96–101, 146 hostility from, 102, 150 perspective on Soviet famine, 4, 87 urban areas, 83–7, 104, 127 urban dwellers as farm workers, 110 Vasilevskaia, Vanda, 40 veterans, 8 Vietnam, 145 Viola, Lynne, 71 voice of people, 79, 80 voting, 72, 76, 78, 81 Vyltsan, Mikhail. A., 20 Vyshnegradskii, I. A. (Minister of Finance), 128

war, see military conflict; World War I; World War II waste, control for, 62–3, 130 weakness, efforts to conceal, 83 weather, see climate; drought weevil infestation, 16 Werth, Alexander, 3, 7, 85–6, 97, 103 Wheatcroft, Stephen G., 4, 123, 137 Williams, V. R., 133 Witte, S. Iu. (Minister of Finance), 128 women, 74 workers, factory, 57–8 working conditions, 53–5 World War I, 11–12, 125–6 World War II Communist policy during, 73–4 effects of, 6, 8, 15, 20, 28–30, 48, 73–4, 105, 114, 127–8 German occupation during, 53–4 priority placed on, 20 and United States, 96–7 Zakharova (Deputy Minister of Trade, Bashkir ASSR), 63 zemlianki, 29–30 Zemtsov, Comrade, 86 Zhdanov, Andrei. A. (Department of Agitation and Propaganda), 83 Zima, V. F., xv, xvii, 4–5, 17, 23, 27, 38, 87, 95, 108, 115, 130 Zubkova, Elena, xvii, 65–6

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