The Soviet famine of 1931–1933 was a humanitarian crisis suffered by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which caused the deaths by hunger of about 5.7 million people distributed around the Soviet republics.[1] The famine had been caused by both human and natural factors. The natural factors included drought, flood and pests which occurred in several grain-producing regions of the USSR, ultimately a result of the industrialization efforts which affected the climate of the regions. The human factor included the kulak[a] sabotage against collectivization efforts, which manifested in the form of killing millions of cattle and horses and burning crops.[2]
Background
During the years of the New Economic Policy (NEP), while the USSR was achieving outstanding economic success,[3] it was also facing contradictions between the party policies and the peasants, especially the wealthy rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks.[4] In the mid-1920s, the socialized sector of Soviet agriculture, including the sovkhozy (state farms) and kolkhozy (collective farms) accounted to only 2.2% of gross farm production, the rest was produced by 25 million individual peasant households, mostly belonging to peasant communes (mirs).[5] Although the level of agricultural production in the USSR in the 1920s was more advanced than Asian countries such as India and China at the time, it was still far behind European countries.[6]
The buying of grain products through the tax in kind proved unstable over time. Among the nine harvests of the 1920s, only two harvests proceeded without a major revision of the economic policy.[7] For instance, the 1924 harvest was poor and the state failed to purchase grain at established prices, which prompted kulaks, well-to-do peasants and private traders to buy grain expecting to sell them at higher prices later. The state tried to enact restrictions on private trade, but eventually had to give in to buying grain at twice the previously set prices in 1925. Since 1924, the kulaks and well-to-do peasants were able to coerce the state in purchasing grain at increasingly higher prices.[8]
The claim that the Soviet government deliberately starved their people was first published in 18 August, 1933 the Völkischer Beobachter, a newspaper organ of the Nazi Party.[9] This was reproduced in a 6 August, 1934 publication in the British tabloid London Daily Express,[10] and in several articles published since 18 February, 1935 by the Statesian newspapers Chicago American and New York Evening Journal, both owned by corporate press magnate William Rudolph Hearst,[11] the founder of sensationalist yellow journalism. By the time these articles were published, there were already no longer signs of famine in the USSR. These newspapers used fabrications to illustrate their articles by using photographs from a past famine in the Soviet Union caused by the Russian Civil War.[12]
Reference
↑R.W. Davies & Stephen G. Wheatcroft (2004). The years of hunger: Soviet agriculture 1931–1933 (p. 415). ISBN 9780333311073[LG]
“Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. [...] Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.
The aftermath was the Ukraine "famine" of 1932-33 ... Lurid accounts, mostly fictional, appeared in the Nazi press in Germany and in the Hearst press in the United States, often illustrated with photographs that turned out to have been taken along the Volga in 1921. ... The "famine" was not, in its later stages, a result of a food shortage, despite the sharp reduction of seed grain and harvests flowing from special requisitions in the spring of 1932 which were apparently occasioned by fear of war with Japan. Most of the victims were kulaks who had refused to sow their fields or had destroyed their crops.”
Frederick L. Schuman (1957). Russia since 1917: four decades of Soviet politics (pp. 151-152). New York.
as cited by Douglas Tottle (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism (p. 94). Progress Books. ISBN 9780919396517[LG]
“Between 1922 and 1926, the New Economic Policy, by and large, was a brilliant success. Industrial and agricultural production regained their pre-war level more rapidly than anyone had anticipated. The production of the peasant economy in 1926 was equal to that of the whole of agriculture, including the landowners' estates, before the revolution. Grain production reached approximately the pre-war level, 9 and the production of potatoes apparently exceeded that level by as much as 45 per cent. The number of livestock, which fell drastically during the world war and the Civil War, almost regained the 1914 level by 1926, and in 1928 exceeded it by 7-10 per cent in the case of cattle and pigs, and by a considerably higher percentage in the case of sheep.”
R. W. Davies (1980). The socialist offensive: the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930: 'The peasant economy and the soviet system'. The industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol.1 (p. 4). ISBN 978-0-333-26171-2[LG]
“During the years 1923–1929 an important role was played by the contradiction which opposed—more or less sharply at different times—the peasantry to the Soviet government. In 1929 this contradiction became a decisive one, owing to the way with which it was dealt. It became interwoven with other contradictions, principally that which made the peasantry a contradictory unity, divided into kulaki (rich peasants), bednyaki (poor peasants), and serednyaki (middle peasants).”
Charles Bettelheim (1978). Class struggles in the USSR, second period: 1923–1930 (p. 33). New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN 085345437X[LG]
↑R. W. Davies (1980). The socialist offensive: the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930: 'The peasant economy and the soviet system'. The industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol.1 (p. 6). ISBN 978-0-333-26171-2[LG]
↑R. W. Davies (1980). The socialist offensive: the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930: 'The peasant economy and the soviet system'. The industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol.1 (pp. 9-11). ISBN 978-0-333-26171-2[LG]
“The New Economic Policy presumed that the link between the state and the peasantry through the market would provide a stable basis for the development of both state industry and the peasant economy. In practice, stability on the market was extremely difficult to achieve. Only two of the nine harvests of the 1920s – those of 1922 and 1926 – proceeded without a major crisis in economic policy.”
R. W. Davies (1980). The socialist offensive: the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930: 'The peasant economy and the soviet system'. The industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol.1 (p. 28). ISBN 978-0-333-26171-2[LG]
“After the 1924 harvest, the relation between industry and the peasant was reversed. The harvest was poor, attempts by the state to purchase grain at relatively low 'maximum prices (limitnye tseny)' failed, and the private market in grain expanded (kulaks, well-to-do peasants and private traders purchased grain at free market prices in the autumn of 1924 in the expectation of price increases in the following spring and summer). Some restrictions on grain sales were introduced, primarily directed against private traders. Eventually the crisis was resolved only by abandoning the maximum prices; in May 1925 the prices offered by the state for grain were double those of December 1924. While the state had managed to bring down the prices of industrial goods after the 1923 harvest, after the 1924 harvest the peasants, particularly the well-to-do and kulak peasants in the grain-surplus areas, proved able to insist on a higher price for grain than the state was willing to pay.”
R. W. Davies (1980). The socialist offensive: the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930: 'The peasant economy and the soviet system'. The industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol.1 (pp. 29-30). ISBN 978-0-333-26171-2[LG]
“Featured in the Nazi press in 1933, the famine-genocide campaign moved to Britain in 1934, and to the United States the year after. In Germany, a country with a history of strong communist, socialist and trade union movements, the Nazis created the first organized propaganda campaign (1933-1935) as part of their consolidation of power. In Britain and the United States, on the other hand, the campaign was advanced as part of right-wing efforts to keep the Soviet Union isolated and out of the League of Nations. It also served to discourage growing working class militancy in the Great Depression.”
Douglas Tottle (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard (p. 2). Progress Books. ISBN 9780919396517[LG]
“Portions of the 1935 Hearst-Walker series, including some of the photos, had in fact appeared the year previous in the August 6, 1934 London Daily Express. Attributed to an anonymous young English "tourist,” the story includes a virtually identical account of Walker’s "frog child” fabrication. However, this earlier version of the hoax locates the tale in Belgorod — which is in Russia proper. Subsequent versions of the hoax over the decades politically relocate the story to Kharkov, which is of course in Ukraine.”
Douglas Tottle (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard (p. 11). Progress Books. ISBN 9780919396517[LG]
“In the fall of 1934, an American using the name Thomas Walker entered the Soviet Union. After tarrying less than a week in Moscow, he spent the remainder of his thirteen-day journey in transit to the Manchurian border, at which point he left the USSR never to return. This seemingly uneventful journey was the pretext for one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated in the history of 20th century journalism.
Some four months later, on February 18, 1935, a series of articles began in the Hearst press by Thom as Walker, "noted journalist, traveller and student of Russian affairs who has spent several years touring the Union of Soviet Russia.” The articles, appearing in the Chicago American and New York Evening Journal for example, described in hair-raising prose a mammoth famine in the Ukraine which, it was alleged, had claimed "six million” lives the previous year. Accompanying the stories were photographs portraying the devastation of the famine, for which it was claimed Walker had smuggled in a camera under the "most adverse and dangerous possible circumstances." [...]”
Douglas Tottle (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard (p. 5). Progress Books. ISBN 9780919396517[LG]
“Dr. Ditloff [...] was Director of the German government’s agricultural concession in the North Caucasus under an agreement between the German government and the Soviets. When Hitler took power in early 1933, Ditloff [...] did not resign in protest. He remained as Director for the project’s duration, indicating that the Nazis did not consider him inimical to their interests. Following his return to Nazi Germany later that year, Ditloff gathered or fronted for a spurious assortment of famine photographs. These, as has been shown, included photos stolen from 1921-1922 famine sources. In addition, at least 25 of the Ditloff photos can be shown to have been released by the Nazis, many of which were passed to or picked up by various anti-Soviet and pro-fascist publishers abroad.”
Douglas Tottle (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: the Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard (p. 34). Progress Books. ISBN 9780919396517[LG]
Notes
↑The kulaks were the rural bourgeoisie that grew from the petty-bourgeois production under the Soviet NEP
