The Real Stalin Series: Famine of 1932: FAMINE DID NOT OCCUR

For two years farming was dislocated, not, as often claimed, by Moscow's enforcement of collectivization but by the fact that local people eager to be first at the promised tractors, organized collective farms three times as fast as the plan called for, setting up large-scale farming without machines even without bookkeepers. In !"#-"" the whole land went hungry$ all food everywhere was rigidly rationed. %It has been often called a famine which killed millions of people, but I visited the hungriest parts of the country and while I found a wide-spread suffering, I did not find, either in individual villages or in the total &oviet census, evidence of the serious depopulation which famine implies.' &trong, (nna ). *he &oviets +,pected It. -ew .ork, -ew .ork/ *he 0ial press, !1 , p. 2! (s far back as late (ugust, !"", the -ew 3epublic declared/ 4... the present harvest is undoubtedly the best in many years--some peasants report a heavier yield of grain than any of their forefathers had known4since 5"1. 6rain deliveries to the government are proceeding at a very satisfactory rate and the price of bread has fallen sharply in the industrial towns of the 7kraine. In view these facts, the appeal of the 8ardinal (rchbishop 9Innitzer: of ;ienna for assistance for 3ussian famine victims seems to be a political maneuver against the &oviets.4 (nd, contrary to wild stories told by 7krainian -ationalist e,iles about 43ussians4 eating plentifully while deliberately starving 4millions4 of 7krainians to death, the -ew 3epublic notes that while bread prices in 7kraine were falling, 4bread prices in Moscow have risen.4... It is a matter of some significance that 8ardinal Innitzer's allegations of famine-genocide were widely promoted throughout the !"<s, not only by =itler's chief propagandist 6oebbels, but also by (merican Fascists as well. It will be recalled that =earst kicked off his famine campaign with a radio broadcast based mainly on material from 8ardinal Innitzer's 4aid committee.4 In >rganized (nti-&emitism in (merica, the !1 book e,posing -azi groups and activities in the pre-war 7nited &tates, 0onald &trong notes that (merican fascist leader Father 8oughlin used -azi propaganda material e,tensively. *his included -azi charges of 4atrocities by ?ew 8ommunists4 and verbatim portions of a 6oebbels speech referring to Innitzer's 4appeal of ?uly !"1, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the &oviet 7nion.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 1!-C ...&ir ?ohn Maynard, a former high schoolD official in the Indian government was a renowned e,pert on famines and relief measures. >n the basis of his e,perience in 7kraine, he stated that the idea of " or 1 million dead 4has passed into legend. (ny suggestion of a calamity comparable with the famine of !# - !## is, in the opinion of the present writer, who traveled through 7kraine and -orth 8aucasus in ?une and ?uly !"", unfounded.4 +ven as conservative a scholar as Earren Ealsh wrote in defense of Maynard, his 4professional competence and personal integrity were beyond reasonable challenge.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C# 8old Ear confrontation, rather than historical truth and understanding, has motivated and characterized the famine-genocide campaign. +lements of fraud, anti-semitism, degenerate -ationalism, fascism, and pseudo- scholarship revealed in this critical e,amination of certain key evidence presented in the campaign...and historical background of the campaign's promoters underline this conclusion. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. ""

F7+&*I>-/ Is it true that during !"#-"" several million people were allowed to starve to death in the 7kraine and -orth 8aucasus because they were politically hostile to the &ovietsG (-&E+3/ -ot true. I visited several places in those regions during that period. *here was a serious grain shortage in the !"# harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines. *o this was added sabotage by dispossessed kulaks, the leaving of the farms by million workers who went to new industries, the cumulative effect of the world crisis in depressing the value of &oviet farm e,ports, and a drought in five basic grain regions in !" . *he harvest of !"# was better than that of !" but was not all gathered$ on account of overoptimistic promises from rural districts, Moscow discovered the actual situation only in 0ecember when a considerable amount of grain was under snow. &trong, (nna )ouise. H&earching >ut the &oviets.I -ew 3epublic/ (ugust B, !"C, p. "C2 >pposing the tendency of many 8ommunists to blame the peasants, &talin said/ 4Ee 8ommunists are to blame4--for not foreseeing and preventing the difficulties. &everal organizational measures were at once put into action to meet the immediate emergency and prevent its reoccurrence. Firm pressure on defaulting farms to make good the contracts they had made to sell J1 their crop to the state in return for machines the state had given them %the means of production contributed by the state was more than all the peasants' previous means' was combined with appeals to loyal, efficient farms to increase their deliveries voluntarily. &aboteurs who destroyed grain or buried it in the earth were punished. *he resultant grain reserves in state hands were rationed to bring the country through the shortage with a minimum loss of productive efficiency. *he whole country went on a decreased diet, which affected most seriously those farms that had failed to harvest their grain. +ven these, however, were given state food and seed loans for sowing. &imultaneously, a nationwide campaign was launched to organize the farms efficiently$ #<,<<< of the country's best e,perts in all fields were sent as permanent organizers to the rural districts. *he campaign was fully successful and resulted in a !"" grain crop nearly < million tons larger than was ever gathered from the same territory before. F7+&*I>-/ Is there a chance of another famine this year, as 8ardinal Innitzer assertsG (-&E+3/ +veryone in the &oviet 7nion to whom I mentioned this Kuestion Lust laughs. 3easons for the laughter are/ *wo bumper crops in !"" and !"1. ( billion bushels of grain in state hands, enough to feed the cities and non-grain farmers for two years. ( grain surplus in farmers' hands that has sufficed to increase calves !1M and pigs 5 percent in a single year. *he abolition of bread rationing because of surplus in grain. *he abolition of nearly half a billion rubles of peasant debts incurred for eKuipment during the organizing of collective farms--this as the result of an actual budget surplus in the government. *ales of continued famine are -azi propaganda on which to base a future invasion of the 7kraine 9which did occur by the way:. &trong, (nna )ouise. H&earching >ut the &oviets.I -ew 3epublic/ (ugust B, !"C, p. "CB 073(-*. &++& -> F(MI-+ I- !"" Nharkov, &eptember !""--I have Lust completed a #<< mile auto trip through the heart of the 7kraine and can say positively that the harvest is splendid and all talk of famine now is ridiculous.... *he population, from the babies to the old folks, looks healthy and well nourished. 0uranty, Ealter. 0uranty 3eports 3ussia. -ew .ork/ *he ;iking @ress, !"1, p. " 5

&*()I-O& ;I+E >F 8(7&+ >F 7N3(I-I(- 83>@ F(I)73+& 9Footnote: In &talin's view, 7krainian crop failures were caused by enemy resistance and by the poor leadership of 7krainian officials. -aumov, )ih, and Nhlevniuk, +ds. &talin's )etters to Molotov, !#C- !"2. -ew =aven/ .ale 7niversity @ress, c !!C, p. #"< 8>))+8*I;+ =(3;+&*& E+3+ ->* 6>>0 @3I>3 *> !"" >ne harvest was not enough to stabilize collectivization. In !"<, it was put over by poorly organized, ill-eKuipped peasants through force of desire. In the ne,t two years, the difficulties of organization caught up with them. Ehere to find good managersG AookkeepersG Men to handle machinesG In !" , the harvest fell off from drought in five basic grain areas. In !"#, the crop was better but poorly gathered. Farm presidents, unwilling to admit failure, claimed they were getting it in. Ehen Moscow awoke to the situation, a large amount of grain lay under the snow. 8auses were many. Fourteen million small farms had been merged into #<<,<<< big ones, without e,perienced managers or enough machines. +leven million workers had left the farms for the new industries. *he backwardness of peasants, sabotage by kulaks, stupidities of officials, all played a part. Ay ?anuary !"" it was clear that the country faced a serious food shortage, two years after it had victoriously 4conKuered wheat.4 &trong, (nna )ouise. *he &talin +ra. -ew .ork/ Mainstream, !C2, p. 1 !"" =(3;+&* E(& *=+ A+&* &I-8+ !"< E=I8= E(& ( 3+8>30 From one end of the land to the other, there was shortage and hunger--and a general increase in mortality from this. Aut the hunger was distributed--nowhere was there the panic chaos that is implied by the word 4famine.4 *he conKuest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster. *he !"" harvest surpassed that of !"<, which till then had held the record. *his time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization. ;ictory was consolidated the following year by the great fight the collective farmers made against a drought that affected all the southern half of +urope.... In each area where winter wheat failed, scientists determined what second crops were best$ these were publicized and the government shot in the seed by fast freight. *his nationwide cooperation beat the !"1 drought, securing a total crop for the 7&&3 eKual to the all-time high of !"". +ven in the worst regions, most farms came through with food for man and beast with strengthened organization. &trong, (nna )ouise. *he &talin +ra. -ew .ork/ Mainstream, !C2, p. 11-1C F(MI-+ E(& ->* 8(7&+0 A. *=+ 8>MM7-I&* )+(0+3&=I@ 8=7+;/ (mong writers, some say the famine of !"" was deliberately organized by &talin and the whole of your leadership. M>)>*>;/ +nemies of communism say thatP *hey are enemies of communismP @eople who are not politically aware, who are politically blind. ...If life does not improve, that's not socialism. Aut even if the life of the people improves year to year over a long period but the foundations of socialism are not strengthened, a crack-up will be

inevitable. 8huev, Feliks. Molotov 3emembers. 8hicago/ I. 3. 0ee, !!", p. #1" *his destruction of the productive forces had, of course, disastrous conseKuences/ in !"#, there was a great famine, caused in part by the sabotage and destruction done by the kulaks. Aut anti8ommunists blame &talin and the Qforced collectivization' for the deaths caused by the criminal actions of the kulaks. Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. B! 9p. 22 on the -+*: In !" and !"#, the &oviet 7nion was in the depth of the crisis, due to socio-economic upheavals, to desperate kulak resistance, to the little support that could be given to peasants in these crucial years of industrial investment, to the slow introduction of machines and to drought. 8harles Aettelheim. )'+conomie sovi+tiKue %@aris/ Rditions 3ecueil &irey, !C<', p. 5# Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. !" 9p. B5 on the -+*: 3ecent evidence has indicated that part of the cause of the famine was an e,ceptionally low harvest in !"#, much lower than incorrect &oviet methods of calculation had suggested. *he documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of the 7kraine. Noenker and Aachman, +ds. 3evelations from the 3ussian (rchives. Eashington/ )ibrary of 8ongress, !!B, p. 1< In view of the importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched 3ussian archives for evidence of &oviet planned and actual grain stocks in the early !"<s. >ur main sources were the @olitburo protocols, including the %4special files,4 the highest secrecy level', and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Nomzag, of the committee on commodity funds, and of &ovnarkom. *he &ovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Nuibyshev, who was head of 6osplan, head of Nomzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Nomzag at that time. Ee have not obtained access to the @olitburo working papers in the @residential (rchive, to the files of the committee on reserves or to the relevant files in military archives. Aut we have found enough information to be confident that this very a high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that &talin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain, which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine. &talin, 6rain &tocks and the Famine of !"#- !"" by 3. E. 0avies, M. A. *auger, &.6. Eheatcroft.&lavic 3eview, ;olume C1, Issue " %(utumn, !!C', pp. 21#-2CB. *his is in response to Ms. 8hernihivaka's note about the book of 6erman letters and the reference to what she termed the 47krainian Famine4 of the early !"<s. I would Lust like to point out that I and a number of other scholars have shown conclusively that the famine of !" - !"" was by no means limited to 7kraine, was not a 4man-made4 or artificial famine in the sense that she and other devotees of the 7krainian famine argument assert, and was not a genocide in any conventional sense of the term. Ee have likewise shown that Mr. 8onKuest's book on the famine is replete with errors and inconsistencies and does not deserve to be considered a classic, but rather another e,pression of the 8old Ear. I would recommend to Ms. 8hernihivaka the following publications regarding the !" - !"" famine and some other famines as well. I will begin with my own because I believe that these most

directly relate to her Kuestion. 4*he !"# =arvest and the &oviet Famine of !"#- !"",4 and the 4-atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"".4 *hese two articles show that the famine resulted directly from a famine harvest, a harvest that was much smaller than officially acknowledged, that this small harvest was in turn, the result of a comple, of natural disasters that 9with one small e,ception: no previous scholars have ever discussed or even mentioned. *he footnotes in the 8arl Aeck paper contain e,tensive citations from primary sources as well as Eestern and &oviet secondary sources, among others by @enner, Eheatcroft and 0avies that further substantiate these points, and I urge interested readers to e,amine these works as well. 7krainian Famine by Mark *auger. +-mail sent on (pril 2, #<<# I am not a specialist on the 7krainian famine but I am familiar with the recent research by several scholars on the matter, and think rather a lot of the deep and broad research that Mark *auger has conducted over many years. *hat familiarity leads me to believe that there are no simple answers to this. ( 4man-made4 famine is not the same as a deliberate or 4terror-famine4. ( famine originally caused by crop failure and aggravated by poor policies is 4man aggravated4 but only partially 4man-made4. Ehy in this field do we always insist on absolutes, especially categorical, binary and polemical onesG *rueJfalse. 6oodJevil. 8rop failureJMan made. Many Kuestions have ambiguous answers. . Ehy was the 7kraine sealed off by the &oviet authoritiesG -ot necessarily to punish 7krainians. It was also done to prevent starving people from flocking into non-famine areas, putting pressure on scarce food supplies there, and thereby turning a regional disaster into a universal one. *his was also the original reason for the internal passport system, which was adopted in the first instance to prevent the movement of hungry and desperate people and, with them, the spread of famine. #. Ehy were foreign Lournalists, even &talin apologists like 0uranty, refused access to the famine areasG For the same reason that 7& Lournalists are no longer allowed into 7& combat zones %6ulf Ear, (fghanistan' since ;ietnam. -o regime is an,ious to take the chance on bad press if they can control the situation otherwise. ". Ehy was aid from other countries refusedG >bviously to deny the 4imperialists4 a chance to trumpet the failure of socialism. 8ertainly politics triumphed over humanitarianism. Moreover, in the growing paranoia of the times %and based on e,perience in the 8ivil Ear' the regime believed that spies came along with relief administration. 1. Ehy do I read and hear stories of families who tried to take supplies from other regions to help their e,tended families through the period having all foodstuffs confiscated as they crossed back into the famine regionsG *he regime believed, reasonably I think, that speculators were trying to take advantage of the disaster by buying up food in non-famine %but nevertheless food-short' regions, moving it to 7kraine, and reselling it at a higher price. In true Aolshevik fashion, there was no nuanced approach to this, no distinguishing between families and speculators, and everybody was stopped. (s with point above,

regimes facing famine typically try to contain the disaster geographically. *his is not the same as intending to punish the victims. C. If it was a harvest failure, why was the burden of that failure not simply shared across the &oviet 7nionG It was. -o region had a lot of food in !"#-"". Food was short and e,pensive everywhere. +verybody was hungry. Eith the above suggestions, I do not mean to make e,cuses or apologies for the &talinists. *heir conduct in this was erratic, incompetent, and cruel and millions of people suffered unimaginably and died as a result. Aut it is too simple to e,plain everything with a 4Aolsheviks were Lust evil people4 e,planation more suitable to children than scholars. It was more comple, than that. (lthough the situation was aggravated in some ways by Aolshevik mistakes, their attempts to contain the famine, once it started, were not entirely stupid, nor were they necessarily gratuitously cruel. *he &talinists did, by the way, eventually cut grain e,ports and did, by the way, send food relief to 7kraine and other areas. It was too little too late, but there is no evidence %aside from constantly repeated assertions by some writers' that this was a deliberately inflicted 4terror-famine.4 2. *o deny the ?ewish genocide Kuite rightly brings opprobrium. &urely to deny the terror famine of !"#-"" ought to provoke the same response. *his is a position that I personally find grotesKue, insulting and at least shallow. -obody is denying the famine or the huge scale of suffering, %as holocaust-deniers do', least of all *auger and other researchers who have spent much of their careers trying to bring this tragedy to light and give us a factual account of it. (dmittedly, what he and other scholars do is different from the work of Lournalists and polemicists who indiscriminately collect horror stories and layer them between repetitive statements about evil, piling it all up and calling it history. ( factual, careful account of horror in no way makes it less horrible. 7krainian Famine by ?. (rch 6etty, +-mail sent on May B, #<<# 4*here is no evidence, it 9 !"#-"" famine: was intentionally directed against 7krainians,4 said (le,ander 0allin of &tanford, the father of modern &ovietology. 4*hat would be totally out of keeping with what we know--it makes no sense.4 4I absolutely reLect it,4 said )ynne ;iola of &7-.-- Ainghamton, the first 7& historian to e,amine Moscow's 8entral &tate archive on collectivization. 4Ehy in god's name, would this paranoid government consciously produce a famine when they were terrified of war 9with 6ermany:G4 4=e's 98onKuest: terrible at doing research,4 said veteran &ovietologist 3oberta Manning of Aoston 8ollege. 4=e misuses sources, he twists everything.4 Ehich leaves us with a puzzle/ Eouldn't one or two or ".C million famine-related deaths be enough to make an anti-&talinist argumentG Ehy seize a wildly inflated figure that can't possibly be supportedG *he answer tells much about the 7krainian nationalist cause, and about those who abet it. 4*hey're always looking to come up with a number bigger than 2 million,4 observed +li 3osenbaum, general counsel for the Eorld ?ewish 8ongress. 4It makes the reader think/ 'My 6od, it's worse than the =olocaust'.4 I- &+(38= >F ( &>;I+* =>)>8(7&* 9( CC .ear >ld Famine Feeds the 3ight: by ?eff 8oplon.

;illage ;oice, -ew .ork 8ity, ?anuary #, !55 *he severity and geographical e,tent of the famine, the sharp decline in e,ports in !"#- !"", seed reKuirements, and the chaos in the &oviet 7nion in these years, all lead to the conclusion that even a complete cessation of e,ports would not have been enough to prevent famine. *his situation makes it difficult to accept the interpretation of the famine as the result of the !"# grain procurements and as a conscious act of genocide. *he harvest of !"# essentially made a famine inevitable. ...*he data presented here provide a more precise measure of the conseKuences of collectivization and forced industrialization than has previously been available$ if anything, these data show that the effects of those policies were worse than has been assumed. *hey also, however, indicate that the famine was real, the result of failure of economic policy, of the Hrevolution from above,I rather than of a HsuccessfulI nationality policy against the 7krainians or other ethnic groups. *auger, Mark. H*he !"# =arvest and the Famine of !"",I &lavic 3eview, ;olume C<, Issue %&pring, !! ', B<-5!. 8onKuest replies, @erhaps I might add that my own analyses and descriptions of the terror-famine first appeared in the 7&&3 in Moscow in 3ussian Lournals such as ;oprosy Istorii and -ovyi Mir, and that the long chapter printed in the latter was specifically about the famine in 7kraine and hence relied importantly on 7krainian sources. *auger replies, Mr. 8onKuest does not deal with these arguments. =e most nearly approaches in his assertion that in 7kraine and certain other areas Hthe entire crop was removed.I &ince the regime procured 1.B million tons of grain from 7kraine in !"#, much less than in any previous or subseKuent year in the !"<Os, this would imply that the harvest in 7kraine was only on that order of magnitude or even less than my low estimateP >bviously this could not have been the case or the death toll in 7kraine would have been not four million or five million but more than #< million because the entire rural population would have been left without grain.... I have yet to see any actual central directive ordering a blockade of 7kraine or the confiscation of food at the border. *he sources available are still too incomplete to reach any conclusion about this. *auger, Mark S 3obert 8onKuest. &lavic 3eview, ;olume C , Issue %&pring, !!#', pp. !#!1. *auger replies further, 3obert 8onKuestOs second reply to my article does not settle in his favor the controversy between us over the causes of the !"" famine. >n his initial points, I noted that the famine was worse in 7kraine and Nuban than elsewhere, in great part because those regionsO harvests were much smaller than previously known. I reLected his evidence not because it was not HofficialI but because my research showed that it was incorrect. 8onKuest cites the &talin decree of ?anuary !"" in an attempt to validate 7krainian memoir accounts, to discredit the archival sources I cited and to prove that the &oviet leadership focused the famine on 7kraine and Nuban. *he decreeOs sanctions, however, do not match memoir accounts, none of which described peasants being returned to their villages by >6@7 forces. *he e,periences described in those accounts instead reflect enforcement of a &eptember !"# secret >6@7 directive ordering confiscations of grain and flour to stop illegal trade. &ince this was applied throughout the country, the 7krainian memoir accounts reflect general policy and not a focus on the 7kraine. &everal new studies confirm my point that hundreds of thousands of peasants fled famine not only in 7kraine and Nuban, but also in &iberia, the 7rals, the ;olga basin, and elsewhere in !"#- !"".

3egional authorities tried to stop them and in -ovember !"# the @olitburo began to prepare the passport system that soon imposed constraints on mobility nationwide. *he ?anuary decree was thus one of several measures taken at this time to control labor mobility, in this case to retain labor in the grain regions lest the !"" harvest be even worse. Its reference to northern regions suggests that it may even have been used to send peasants from those areas south to provide labor. -either the decree itself nor the scale of its enforcement are sufficient to prove that the famine was artificially imposed on 7kraine. ...7krainian eyewitness accounts, on the other hand, are misleading because very few peasants from other regions had the opportunity to escape from the 7&&3 after Eorld Ear II. *he 3ussian historian Nondrashin interviewed 2 B famine survivors in the ;olga region and e,plicitly refuted 8onKuestOs argument regarding the famineOs nationality focus. (ccording to these eyewitnesses, the famine was most severe in wheat and rye regions, in other words, in part a result of the small harvest. ...Aoth 3ussian and western scholars such as Nondrashin...and (lec -ove...now acknowledge that the !"# harvest was much smaller than assumed and was an important factor in the famine. *auger, Mark. &lavic 3eview, ;olume C", Issue %&pring, !!1', pp. " 5-"#<. FI673+& >- F(MI-+ 0+(*=& (3+ (A&730 (-0 F(3 *>> =I6= 8=7+;/ Aut nearly # million perished of hunger in !"".... M>)>*>;/ *he figures have not been substantiated. 8=7+;/ -ot substantiatedG M>)>*>;/ -o, no, not at all. In those years I was out in the country on grain procurement trips. *hose things couldn't have Lust escaped me. *hey simply couldn't. I twice traveled to the 7kraine. I visited &ychevo in the 7rals and some places in &iberia. >f course I saw nothing of the kind there. *hose allegations are absurdP (bsurdP *rue, I did not have occasion to visit the ;olga region.... -o, these figures are an e,aggeration, though such deaths had been reported of course in some places. 8huev, Feliks. Molotov 3emembers. 8hicago/ I. 3. 0ee, !!", p. #1" Ehat can one say about 8onKuest's affirmation of 2,C<<,<<< Qmassacred' kulaks during the different phases of the collectivizationG >nly part of the 2",<<< first category counter-revolutionaries were e,ecuted. *he number of dead during deportations, largely due to famine and epidemics, was appro,imately <<,<<<. Aetween !"# and !1<, we can estimate that #<<,<<< kulaks died in the colonies of natural causes. *he e,ecutions and these deaths took place during the greatest class struggle that the 3ussian countryside ever saw, a struggle that radically transformed a backward and primitive countryside. In this giant upheaval, #< million peasants were pulled out of the Middle (ges, of illiteracy and obscurantism. It was the reactionary forces, who wanted to maintain e,ploitation and degrading and inhuman work and living conditions, who received the blows. 3epressing the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries was absolutely necessary for collectivization to take place/ only collective labor made socialist mechanization possible, thereby allowing the peasant masses to lead a free, proud and educated life. *hrough their hatred of socialism, Eestern intellectuals spread 8onKuest's absurd lies about 2,C<<,<<< Qe,terminated' kulaks. *hey took up the defence of bourgeois democracy, of imperialist democracy. Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. !5 9p. 5# on the -+*: )ies about the collectivization have always been, for the bourgeoisie, powerful weapons in the psychological war against the &oviet 7nion.

Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. !5 9p. 5C on the -+*: *he borders of the 7kraine were not even the same in !#2 and !"!. *he Nuban 8ossaks, between # and " million people, were registered as 7krainian in !#2, but were reclassified as 3ussian at the end of the twenties. *his new classification e,plains by itself #C to 1< per cent of the Qvictims of the famine-genocide' calculated by 0ushnyck--Mace. Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. <B 9p. ! on the -+*: %(lec -ove' (dditionally, the figures on famine-related deaths cannot be precise, for 4definitional4 reasons.... 7krainian statistics show a very large decline in births in !""-"1, which could be ascribed to a sharp rise in abortions and also to the non-reporting of births of those who died in infancy. 6etty and Manning. &talinist *error. 8ambridge, -./ 8ambridge 7niversity @ress, !!", p. #2! 8oncerning the scale of the famine in !"#J"", we now have much better information on its chronology and regional coverage amongst the civilian registered population. *he level of e,cess mortality registered by the civilian population was in the order of " to 1 million... which is still much lower than the figures claimed by 8onKuest and 3osefielde and Medvedev. 6etty and Manning. &talinist *error. 8ambridge, -./ 8ambridge 7niversity @ress, !!", p. #!< *he evidence presented to establish a case for deliberate genocide against 7krainians during !"#-"", remains highly partisan, often deceitful, contradictory, and conseKuently highly suspect. *he materials commonly used can almost invariably be traced to right-wing sources, anti-8ommunist 4e,perts,4 Lournalists or publications, as well as the highly partisan 7krainian -ationalist political organizations. (n important role in the thesis of genocide is assumed by the number of famine deaths-obviously it is difficult to allege genocide unless deaths are in the multi-millions. =ere, the methodology of the famine-genocide theorists can at best be described as eclectic, unscientific$ and the results, as politically manipulated guesstimates. ( 4landmark study4 in the numbers game is the article 4*he &oviet Famine of !"#- !"1,4 by 0ana 0alrymple, published in &oviet &tudies, ?anuary !21. (ccording to historian 0aniel &tone, 0alrymple's methodology consists of averaging 4guesses by #< Eestern Lournalists who visited the &oviet 7nion at the time, or spoke to &oviet emigres as much as two decades later. =e averages the #< accounts which range from a low of one million deaths %-ew .ork =erald *ribune, !""' to a high of < million deaths %-ew .ork Eorld *elegram, !"".4 (s @rofessor &tone of the 7niversity of Einnipeg suggests, 0alrymple's method as no scientific validity$ his 4method4 substitutes the art of newspaper clipping for the science of obLective evidence gathering. *his becomes apparent when one discovers the totally unacceptable use of fraudulent material built into the attempt to develop sensational mortality figures for the famine. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 1C Ehile it is not possible to establish an e,act number of casualties, we have seen that the guesstimates of famine-genocide writers have given a new meaning to the word hyperbole. *heir claims have been shown to be e,treme e,aggerations fabricated to strengthen their political allegations of genocide. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B1 *he scope of the hardships is chauvinistically restricted, distorted, and politically manipulated.

>ther nationalities who suffered--3ussians, *urkmen, Nazaks, 8aucasus groups-- are usually ignored, or if mentioned at all are done so almost reluctantly in passing. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. !! 0r. =ans Alumenfeld, writing in response to 7krainian -ationalist allegations of 7krainian genocide, draws on personal e,perience in describing the people who came to town in search of food/ 4*hey came not only from the 7kraine but in eKual numbers from the 3ussian areas to our east. *his disproves the 4fact4 of anti-7krainian genocide parallel to =itler's anti-semitic =olocaust. *o anyone familiar with the &oviet 7nion's desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its leaders would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd.... 7p to the !C<s the most freKuently Kuoted figure was # million 9victims:. >nly after it had been established that =itler's holocaust had claimed 2 million 9?ewish: victims, did anti-&oviet propaganda feel it necessary to top that figure by substituting the fantastic figure of B to < million....4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. << =ad the !1 population of &oviet 7kraine consisted of the remnants and survivors of a mass multi-million holocaust of a few years previous, or if they had perceived the !"#- !"" famine as genocide, deliberately aimed at 7krainians, then doubtless fascism would have met a far different reception$ &oviet 7krainians would have been as reluctant to defend the 7&&3 as ?ewish survivors would have been to defend -azi 6ermany. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. <# &*()I- =(0 *> +T@3>@3I(*+ 63(I- I- *=+ E+&* *> @3+@(3+ F>3 E(3 EI*= ?(@(Ehat happened was tragic for the 3ussian countryside. >rders were given in March, at the beginning of the spring sowing period in the 7kraine and -orth 8aucasus and )ower ;olga, that # million tons of grain must be collected within "< days because the (rmy had to have it. It had to be collected, without argument, on pain of death. *he orders about gasoline were hardly less peremptory. =ere I don't know the figures, but so many thousand tons of gasoline must be given to the (rmy. (t a time when the collective farms were relying upon tractors to plow their fields. *hat was the dreadful truth of the so-called 4man-made famine,4 of 3ussia's 4iron age,4 when &talin was accused of causing the deaths of four or C million peasants to gratify his own brutal determination that they should be socialized... or else. Ehat a misconceptionP 8ompare it with the truth, that ?apan was poised to strike and the 3ed (rmy must have reserves of food and gasoline. ... the fact remained that not only kulaks or recalcitrant peasants or middle peasants or doubtful peasants, but the collective farms themselves, were stripped of their grain for food, stripped of their grain for seed, at the season when they needed it most. *he Kuota had to be reached, that was the Nremlin's order. It was reached, but the bins were scraped too clean. -ow indeed the 3ussian peasants, kulaks, and collectives, were engulfed in common woe. *heir draft animals were dead, killed in an earlier phase of the struggle, and there was no gas for the tractors, and their last reserves of food and seed for the spring had been torn from them by the power of the Nremlin, which itself was driven by compulsion, that is by fear of ?apan.... 0uranty, Ealter. &tory of &oviet 3ussia. @hiladelphia, -. ../ ?A )ippincott 8o. !11, p. !# *heir 9peasants: living standards were so reduced that they fell easy prey to the malnutrition diseases--typhus, cholera, and scurvy, always endemic in 3ussia--and infected the urban populations.... 3ussia was wasted with misery, but the 3ed (rmy had restored its food reserves and its reserves of gasoline, and cloth and leather for uniforms and boots. (nd ?apan did not attack. In (ugust, !"#, the completion of the 0nieper 0am was celebrated in a way that echoed around the world. (nd ?apan

did not attack. Millions of 3ussian acres were deserted and untilled$ millions of 3ussian peasants were begging for bread or dying. Aut ?apan did not attack. ...*he shortages of food and commodities in 3ussia were attributed, as &talin had intended, to the tension of the Five-.ear @lan, and all that ?apanese spies could learn was that the 3ed (rmy awaited their attack without an,iety. *heir spearhead, aimed at >uter Mongolia and )ake Aaikal, were shifted, and her troops moved southwards into the 8hinese province of ?ehol, which they conKuered easily and added to 4 Manchukuo.4 &talin had won his game against terrific odds, but 3ussia had paid in lives as heavily as for war. In the light of this and other subseKuent knowledge, it is interesting for me to read my own dispatches from Moscow in the winter of !"#-"". I seem to have known what was going on, without in the least knowing why, that is without perceiving that ?apan was the real key to the &oviet problem at that time, and that the first genuine improvement in the agrarian situation coincided almost to a day with the ?apanese southward drive against ?ehol. 0uranty, Ealter. &tory of &oviet 3ussia. @hiladelphia, -. ../ ?A )ippincott 8o. !11, p. !" It meant, to say it succinctly, that &talin had won his bluff/ ?apan moved south, not north, and 3ussia could dare to use its best men.... 0uranty, Ealter. &tory of &oviet 3ussia. @hiladelphia, -. ../ ?A )ippincott 8o. !11, p. !C E=(* F(MI-+ *=+3+ E(& I- *=+ +(3). "<O& E(& 8(7&+0 A. *=+ N7)(N& *here was famine in the 7kraine in !"#- !"". Aut it was provoked mainly by the struggle to the bitter end that the 7krainian far-right was leading against socialism and the collectivization of agriculture. 0uring the thirties, the far-right, linked with the =itlerites, had already fully e,ploited the propaganda theme of Qdeliberately provoked famine to e,terminate the 7krainian people'. Aut after the &econd Eorld Ear, this propaganda was QadLusted' with the main goal of covering up the barbaric crimes committed by 6erman and 7krainian -azis, to protect fascism and to mobilise Eestern forces against 8ommunism. Martens, )udo. (nother ;iew of &talin. (ntwerp, Aelgium/ +@>, )ange @astoorstraat #C-#B #2<<, p. " 9p. !2 on the -+*: *he peasants passive resistance, the destruction of livestock, the complete disorganization of work in the kolkhozes, and the general ruin caused by continued dekulakization and deportations all lead in !"#-"" to a famine that surpassed even the famine of !# -## in its geographical e,tent and the number of its victims. -ekrich and =eller. 7topia in @ower. -ew .ork/ &ummit Aooks, c !52, p. #"5 Eas there or was there not a famine in the 7&&3 in the years !" and !"#G *hose who think this a simple Kuestion to answer will probably already have made up their minds, in accordance with nearly all the statements by persons hostile to &oviet 8ommunism, that there was, of course, a famine in the 7&&3$ and they do not hesitate to state the mortality that it caused, in precise figures--unknown to any statistician--varying from three to si, and even to < million deaths. >n the other hand, a retired high official of the 6overnment of India, speaking 3ussian, and well acKuainted with czarist 3ussia, who had himself administered famine districts in India, and who visited in !"# some of the localities in the 7&&3 in which conditions were reported to be among the worst, informed the present writers at the time that he had found no evidence of there being or having been anything like what Indian officials would describe as a famine. Footnote/ &kepticism as to statistics of total deaths from starvation, in a territory e,tending to

J2 of the +arth's landmass, would anyhow be Lustified. Aut as to the 7&&3 there seems no limit to the wildness of e,aggeration. Ee Kuote the following interesting case related by Mr. &herwood +ddy, an e,perienced (merican traveler in 3ussia/ 4>ur party, consisting of about #< persons, while passing through the villages heard rumors of the village of 6avrilovka, where all the men but one were said to have died of starvation. Ee went at once to investigate and track down this rumor. Ee divided into four parties, with four interpreters of our own choosing, and visited simultaneously the registry office of births and deaths, the village priest, the local soviet, the Ludge, the schoolmaster and every individual peasant we met. Ee found that out of << families three individuals had died of typhus. *hey had immediately closed the school and the church, inoculated the entire population and stamped out the epidemic without developing another case. Ee could not discover a single death from hunger or starvation, though many had felt the bitter pinch of want. It was another instance of the ease with which wild rumors spread concerning 3ussia.4 Eithout e,pecting to convince the preLudiced, we give, for what it may be deemed worth, the conclusion to which our visits in !"# and !"1, and subseKuent e,amination of the available evidence, now lead us. *hat in each of the years !" and !"# there was a partial failure of crops in various parts of the huge area of the 7&&3 is undoubtedly true. *hat is true also of Aritish India and of the 7nited &tates. It has been true also of the 7&&3, and of every other country at all comparable in size, in each successive year of the present century. In countries of such vast e,tent, having every kind of climate, there is always a partial failure of crops somewhere. =ow e,tensive and how serious was this partial failure of crops in the 7&&3 of !" and !"# it is impossible to ascertain with any assurance. >n the other hand, it has been asserted, by people who have seldom had any opportunity of going to the suffering districts, that throughout huge provinces there ensued a total absence of foodstuffs, so that %as in 5! and !# ' literally several millions of people died of starvation. >n the other hand, soviet officials on the spot, in one district after another, informed the present writers that, whilst there was shortage and hunger, there was, at no time, a total lack of bread, though its Kuality was impaired by using other ingredients than wheaten flower$ and that any increase in the death-rate, due to diseases accompanying defective nutrition, occurred only in a relatively small number of villages. Ehat may carry more weight than this official testimony was that of various resident Aritish and (merican Lournalists, who traveled during !"" and !"1 through the districts reputed to have been the worst sufferers, and who declared to the present writers that they had found no reason to suppose that the trouble had been more serious than was officially represented. >ur own impression, after considering all the available evidence, is that the partial failure of crops certainly e,tended to only a fraction of the 7&&3$ possibly to no more, than J < of the geographical area. Ee think it plain that this partial failure was not in itself sufficiently serious to cause actual starvation, e,cept possibly, in the worst districts, relatively small in e,tent. (ny estimate of the total number of deaths in e,cess of the normal average, based on a total population supposed to have been subLected to famine conditions of 2< millions, which would mean half the entire rural population between the Aaltic and the @acific %as some have rashly asserted', or even J < of such a population, appears to us to be fantastically e,cessive. >n the other hand, it seems to be proved that a considerable number of peasant households, both in the spring of !"# and in that of !"", found themselves unprovided with a sufficient store of cereal food, and specially short of fats. *o these cases we shall return. Aut we are at once reminded that in countries like India and the 7&&3, in 8hina, and even in the 7nited &tates, in which there is no ubiKuitous system of poor relief, a certain number of people--among these huge populations even many thousands--die each year of starvation, or of the diseases endemic under these conditions$ and that whenever there is even a partial failure of crops this number will certainly be considerably increased. It cannot be supposed to have been otherwise in parts of the southern 7kraine, the Nuban district and 0aghestan in the winters of !" and !"#. Aut before we are warranted in describing this scarcity of food in particular households of particular districts as a 4famine,4 we must inKuire how the scarcity came to e,ist. Ee notice among

the evidence the fact that the scarcity was 4patchy.4 In one and the same locality, under weather conditions apparently similar if not identical, there are collective farms which have in these years reaped harvests of more than average e,cellence, whilst others, adLoining them on the north or on the south, have e,perienced conditions of distress, and may sometimes have known actual starvation. *his is not to deny that there were whole districts in which drought or cold seriously reduced the yield. Aut there are clearly other cases, how many we cannot pretend to estimate, in which the harvest failures were caused, not by something in the sky, but by something in the collective farm itself. (nd we are soon put on the track of discovery. (s we have already mentioned, we find a leading personage in the direction of the 7krainian revolt actually claiming that 4the opposition of the 7krainian population caused the failure of the green-storing plan of !" , and still more so, that of !"#.4 =e boasts of the success of the 4passive resistance which aimed at a systematic frustration of the Aolshevik plans for the sowing and gathering of the harvest.4 =e tells us plainly that, owing to the efforts of himself and his friends, 4whole tracks were left unsown,4 and 4in addition, when the crop was being gathered last year 9 !"#:, it happened that, in many areas, especially in the south, #<, 1< and even C<M was left in the fields, and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing.4 &o far as the 7kraine is concerned, it is clearly not =eaven which is principally to blame for the failure of crops, but the misguided members of many of the collective farms. Ehat sort of 4famine4 is it that is due neither to the drought nor the rain, heat nor cold, rust nor fly, weeds nor locusts$ but to a refusal of the agriculturists to sow %4whole tracks were left unsown4'$ and to gather up the wheat when it was cut %4even C<M was left in the fields4'G Footnote/ 947krainia under Aolshevik 3ule4 by Isaac Mazepa, in &lavonic 3eview, ?anuary ", !"1, pages "1#-"1".: >ne of the 7krainian nationalists who was brought to trial is stated to have confessed to having received e,plicit instructions from the leaders of the movement abroad to the effect that 4it is essential that, in spite of the good harvest %of !"<', the position of the peasantry should become worse. For this purpose it is necessary to persuade the members of the kolkhosi to harvest the grain before it has become ripe$ to agitate among the kolkhosi members and to persuade them that, however hard they may work, their grain will be taken away from them by the &tate on one prete,t or another$ and to sabotage the proper calculation of the labor days put into harvesting by the members of the kolkhosi so that they may receive less than they are entitled to by their work4 %&peech by @ostyshev, secretary of the 7krainian 8ommunist @arty, to plenum of the 8entral 8ommittee, !""'. Footnote/ It can be definitely denied that the serious shortage of harvested grain in parts of southern 7kraine was due to climatic conditions. 4In a number of southern regions, from "< to 1<M of the crop remained on the fields. *his was not the result of the drought which was so severe in certain parts of &iberia, the 7rals, in the Middle and )ower ;olga regions that it reduced there the e,pected crops by about C<M. -o act of 6od was involved in the 7kraine. *he difficulties e,perienced in the sowing, harvesting, and grain collection campaign of !" were man-made4 %48ollectivization of (griculture in the &oviet 7nion,4 by E. )adeLinsky, @olitical &cience Fuarterly, -ew .ork, ?une !"1, page ###'. *he other district in which famine conditions are most persistently reported is that of Nuban, in the surrounding areas, chiefly inhabited by the 0on 8ossacks, who, as it is not irrelevant to remember, were the first to take up arms against the Aolshevik 6overnment in ! 5, and so begin the calamitous civil war. *hese 0on 8ossacks, as we have mentioned, had enLoyed special privileges under the tsars, the loss of which under the new regime has, even today, not been forgiven. =ere there is evidence that whole groups of peasants, under hostile influences, got into such a state of apathy and despair, on being pressed into a new system of cooperative life which they could not understand and about which they heard all sorts of evil, that they ceased to care whether their fields were tilled or not, or what would happen to them in the winter if they produced no crop at all. Ehatever the reason, there were, it seems, in the Nuban, as in the 7kraine, whole villages that sullenly abstained from sowing or harvesting, usually not completely, but on all but a minute fraction of their fields, so that, when the year ended,

they had no stock of seed, and in many cases actually no grain on which to live. *here are many other instances in which individual peasants made a practice, out of spite, of surreptitiously 4barbering4 the ripening wheat$ that is, rubbing out the grain from the ear, or even cutting off the whole ear, and carrying off for individual hoarding this shameless theft of community property. 7nfortunately it was not only in such notoriously disaffected areas as the 7kraine and Nuban that these peculiar 4failures of crops4 occurred. *o any generally successful cultivation, he 9Naganovich: declared, 4the anti-soviet elements of the village are offering fierce opposition. +conomically ruined, but not yet having lost their influence entirely, the kulaks, former white officers, former priests, their sons, former ruling landlords and sugarmill owners, former 8ossacks and other anti-soviet elements of the bourgeois-nationalist and also of the social-revolutionary and @etlura-supporting intelligentsia settled in the villages, are trying in every way to corrupt the collective farms, are trying to foil the measures of the @arty and the 6overnment in the realm of farming, and for these ends are making use of the backwardness of part of the collective farm members against the interests of the socialized collective farm, against the interests of the collective farm peasantry. @enetrating into collective farms as accountants, managers, warehouse keepers, brigadiers and so on, and freKuently as leading workers on the boards of collective farms, the anti-soviet elements strive to organize sabotage, spoil machines, sow without the proper measures, steal collective farm goods, undermine labor discipline, organize the thieving of seed and secret granaries, sabotage grain collections--and sometimes they succeed in disorganizing kolkhosi. =owever much we may discount such highly colored denunciations, we cannot avoid noticing how e,actly the statements as to sabotage of the harvest, made on the one hand by the &oviet 6overnment, and on the other by the nationalist leaders of the 7krainian recalcitrants, corroborate each other. *o Kuote again the 7krainian leader, it was 4the opposition of the 7krainian population4 that 4caused the failure of the grain-storing plan of !" , and still more so, that of !"#.4 Ehat on one side is made a matter for boasting is, on the other side, a ground for denunciation. >ur own inference is merely that, whilst both sides probably e,aggerate, the sabotage referred to actually took place, to a greater or less e,tent, in various parts of the 7&&3, in which collective farms had been established under pressure. *he partial failure of the crops due to climatic conditions, which is to be annually e,pected in one locality or another, was thus aggravated, to a degree that we find no means of estimating, and rendered far more e,tensive in its area, not only by 4barbering4 the growing wheat, and stealing from the common stock, but also by deliberate failure to sow, failure to weed, failure to thresh, and failure to warehouse even all the grain that was threshed. Aut that is not what it is usually called a famine. Ehat the &oviet 6overnment was faced with, from !#! onward, was, in fact, not a famine but a widespread general strike of the peasantry, in resistance to the policy of collectivization, fomented and encouraged by the disloyal elements of the population, not without incitement from the e,iles at @aris and @rague. Aeginning with the calamitous slaughter of live-stock in many areas in !#!- !"<, the recalcitrant peasants defeated, during the years !" and !"#, all the efforts of the &oviet 6overnment to get the land adeKuately cultivated. It was in this way, much more than by the partial failure of the crops due to drought or cold, that was produced in an uncounted host of villages in many parts of the 7&&3 a state of things in the winter of !" - !"#, and again in that of !"#- !"", in which many of the peasants found themselves with inadeKuate supplies of food. Aut this did not always lead to starvation. In innumerable cases, in which there was no actual lack of rubles, notably in the 7kraine, the men Lourneyed off to the nearest big market, and %as there was no deficiency in the country as a whole' returned after many days with the reKuisite sacks of flour. In other cases, especially among the independent peasantry, the destitute family itself moved away to the cities, in search of work at wages, leaving its rude dwelling empty and desolate, to be Kuoted by some incautious observer as proof of death by starvation. In an unknown number of other cases--as it seems, to be

counted by the hundred thousand--the families were forcibly taken from the holding which they had failed to cultivate, and removed to distant places where they could be provided with work by which they could earn their substance. *he &oviet 6overnment has been severely blamed for these deportations, which inevitably caused great hardships. *he irresponsible criticism loses, however, much of its force by the inaccuracy with which the case is stated. It is, for instance, almost invariably taken for granted that the &oviet 6overnment heartlessly refused to afford any relief to the starving districts. ;ery little investigation shows that relief was repeatedly afforded where there was reason to suppose that the shortage was not due to sabotage or deliberate failure to cultivate. *here were, to begin with, e,tensive remissions of payments in-kind due to the government. Aut there was also a whole series of transfers of grain from the government stocks to villages found to be destitute, sometimes actually for consumption, and in other cases to replace the seed funds which had been used for food. Footnote/ *hus/ 4>n February B, !"#, almost si, months before the harvesting of the new crop the 8ouncil of @eopleOs 8ommissars of the 7&&3 and the 8entral 8ommittee of the 8ommunist @arty, directed that the collective farms in the eastern part of the country, which had suffered from the drought, be loaned over 2 million Kuintals of grain for the establishment of both seed and food funds.4 %48ollectivization of (griculture in the &oviet 7nion,4 by E. )adeLinsky, @olitical &cience Fuarterly, -ew .ork, ?une !"1, page ##!'. Eebb, &. &oviet 8ommunism/ ( -ew 8ivilisation. )ondon, -./ )ongmans, 6reen, !1B, p. !!-#<C 7N3(I-I(- @(3*. >30+3& 8(7&+& >F F(MI-+ A+ +T@>&+0 (-0 @+>@)+ A+ =+)@+0

9&upplement to minutes of the 7krainian @arty Niev bureau, Feb. ##, !"", instructing that the famine be alleviated and that 4all who have become completely disabled because of emaciation must be put back on their feet4 by March C: ... <. In view of the continued attempts by our enemies to use these facts against the creation of collective farms, the 3aion @arty 8ommittees are to conduct systematic clarification work bringing to light the real causes of the e,isting famine %abuses in the collective farms, laziness, decline in labor discipline, etc.'. Noenker and Aachman, +ds. 3evelations from the 3ussian (rchives. Eashington/ )ibrary of 8ongress, !!B, p. 1 5

F(MI-+ )I+& A+6(- EI*= =+(3&* (6+-* E()N+3 In the fall of !"1, an (merican using the name *homas Ealker entered the &oviet 7nion. (fter tarrying less than a week in Moscow, he spent the remainder of his "-day Lourney in transit to the Manchurian border, at which point he left the 7&&3 never to return. *his seemingly uneventful Lourney was the prete,t for one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated in the history of #<th century Lournalism. &ome four months later, on Feb. 5, !"C, a series of articles began in the =earst press by *homas Ealker, 4noted Lournalist, traveller and student of 3ussian affairs who has spent several years touring the 7nion of &oviet 3ussia.4 *he articles, appearing in the 8hicago (merican and the -ew .ork +vening ?ournal for e,ample, described in hair-raising prose a mammoth famine in the 7kraine

which, it was alleged, had claimed 42 million4 lives the previous year. (ccompanying the stories were photographs portraying the devastation of the famine, for which it was claimed Ealker had smuggled in a camera under the 4most adverse and dangerous possible circumstances.4 In themselves, Ealker's stories in the =earst press were not particularly outstanding e,amples of fraud concerning the &oviet 7nion. -or were they the greatest masterpieces of yellow Lournalism ever produced by the right-wing corporate press. )ies and distortions had been written about the &oviet 7nion since the days of the >ctober 3evolution in ! B. *he anti-&oviet press campaigns heated up in the late #<s and '"<s, directed by those, like =earst, who wanted to keep the 7&&3 out of the )eague of -ations and isolated in all respects. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C =owever, the Ealker famine photographs are truly remarkable in that, having been e,posed as utter hoa,es over fifty years ago, they continue to be used by 7krainian nationalists and university propaganda institutes as evidence of alleged genocide. *he e,tent of Ealker's fraud can only be measured by the magnitude and longevity of the lie they have been used to portray. =orror stories about 3ussia were common in the Eestern press, particularly among papers and Lournalist of conservative or fascist orientation. For e,ample, *he )ondon 0aily *elegraph of -ovember #5, !"<, printed an interview with a Frank Eoodhead who had 4Lust returned from 3ussia after a visit lasting seven months.4 Eoodhead reported witnessing bloody massacres that -ovember, a slaughter which left 4rows of ghastly corpses.4 )ouis Fisher, an (merican writer for the -ew 3epublic and *he -ation, who was in Moscow at the time of the alleged atrocities, discovered that not only had such events never occurred, but that Eoodhead had left the country almost 5 months before the scenes he claimed to have witnessed. Fisher challenged Eoodhead and the )ondon 0aily *elegraph on the matter$ both responded with embarrassed silence. Ehen *homas Ealker's articles appeared in the =earst press, Fisher became suspicious--he had never heard of Ealker and could find no one who had. *he results of his investigation were published in the March ", !"C issue of *he -ation/ 4Mr. Ealker, we are informed, 'entered 3ussia last spring.' that is the spring of !"1. =e saw famine. =e photographed its victims. =e got heartrending, first-hand accounts of hunger's ravages. -ow famine in 3ussia is 'hot' news. Ehy did Mr. =earst keep these sensational articles for ten months before printing themG My suspicions grew deeper.... I felt more and more sure that he was Lust another Eoodhead, another absentee Lournalist. (nd so I consulted &oviet authorities who had official information from Moscow. *homas Ealker was in the &oviet 7nion once. =e received a transit visa from the &oviet 8onsul in )ondon on &ept. #!, !"1. =e entered the 7&&3 from @oland by train on >ctober #, !"1, %not the spring of !"1 as he says'. =e was in Moscow on the "th. =e remained in Moscow from &aturday, the "th, to *hursday, the 5th, and then boarded a trans-&iberian train which brought him to the &oviet-Manchurian border on >ct. #C, !"1, his last day on &oviet territory. =is train did not pass within several hundred miles of the black soil and 7krainian districts which he 'toured' and 'saw' and 'walked over' and 'photographed.' It would have been physically impossible for Mr. Ealker, in the five days between >ct. " and >ct. 5, to cover one-third of the points he 'describes' from personal e,perience. My hypothesis is that he stayed long enough in Moscow to gather from embittered foreigners the 7krainian 'local color' he needed to give his articles the fake verisimilitude they possess. Mr. Ealker's photographs could easily date back to the ;olga famine in !# . Many of them might have been taken outside the &oviet 7nion. *hey were taken at different seasons of the year.... >ne picture includes trees or shrubs with large leaves. &uch leaves could not have grown by the 'late sprang' of Mr. Ealker's alleged visit. >ther photographs show winter and early fall backgrounds. =ere is the ?ournal of the #Bth. ( starving, bloated boy of C calmly poses naked for Mr. Ealker. *he ne,t

moment, in the same village, Mr. Ealker photographs a man who is obviously suffering from the cold despite his sheepskin overcoat. *he weather that sprang must have been as unreliable as Mr. Ealker to allow nude poses one moment and reKuire furs the ne,t. It would be easy to riddle Mr. Ealker's stories. *hey do not deserve the effort. *he truth is that the &oviet harvest of !"", including the &oviet 7kraine's harvest, in contrast to that of !"#, was e,cellent$ the grain-ta, collections were moderate$ and therefore conditions even remotely resembling those Mr. Ealker portrays could not have arisen in the spring of !"1, and did not arise.4 Fisher challenged the motives of the =earst press in hiring a fraud like Ealker to concoct such fabrications/ 4...Mr. =earst, naturally does not obLect if his papers spoil &oviet-(merican relations and encourage foreign nations with hostile military designs upon the 7&&3. Aut his real target is the (merican radical movement. *hese Ealker articles are part of =earst's anti-red campaign. =e knows that the great economic progress registered by the &oviet 7nion since !#!, when the capitalist world dropped into depression, provides )eft groups with spiritual encouragement and faith. Mr. =earst wants to deprive them of that encouragement and faith by painting a picture of ruin and death in the 7&&3. *he attempt is too transparent, and the hands are too unclean to succeed.4 In a post-script, Fisher added that a )indsay @arrott had visited the 7kraine and had written that nowhere in any city or town he visited 4did I meet any signs of the effects of the famine of which foreign correspondents take delight in writing.4 @arrott, says Fisher, wrote of the 4e,cellent harvest4 in !""$ the progress, he declared, 4is indisputable.4 Fisher ends/ 4*he =earst organizations and the -azis are beginning to work more and more closely together. Aut I have not noticed that the =earst press printed Mr. @arrott's stories about a prosperous &oviet 7kraine. Mr. @arrott is Mr. =earst's correspondent in Moscow.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B-5 E()N+3 3>7*I-+). )I+0 (-0 E(& ( 83IMI-() In any event, it will be recalled that Ealker was never in the 7kraine in !"#- !"". *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. -ot only were the photographs a fraud, the trip to 7kraine a fraud, and =earst's faminegenocide series a fraud, *homas Ealker himself was a fraud. 0eported from +ngland and arrested on his return to the 7nited &tates Lust a few months after the =earst series, it turned out that *homas Ealker was in fact escaped convict 3obert 6reene. *he -ew .ork *imes reported/ 43obert 6reene, a writer of syndicated articles about conditions in 7kraine, who was indicted last Friday by a Federal grand Lury on a charge of passport fraud, pleaded guilty yesterday before Federal ?udge Francis 8affey. *he Ludge learned that 6reen was a fugitive from 8olorado &tate @rison, where he escaped after having served two years of an 5-year term for forgery.4 3obert 6reene, it was revealed, had run-up an impressive criminal record spanning three decades. =is trail of crime led through five 7.&. states and four +uropean countries, and included convictions on charges of violating the Mann Ehite &lave (ct in *e,as, forgery, and 4marriage swindle.4 +vidence at Ealker's trial revealed that he had made a previous visit to the &oviet 7nion in !"< under the name *homas Aurke. =aving worked briefly for an engineering firm in the 7&&3, he was--by his own admission--e,pelled for attempting to smuggle a 4a whiteguard4 out of the country. ( reporter covering the trial noted that Ealker 4admitted that the 'famine' pictures published with his series in the =earst newspapers were fakes and they were not taken in 7kraine as advertised.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p.

%(ctually, one must recall, Ealker never set foot in 7kraine, and entered the 3ussian Federation in the fall of !"1.' *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C! Mace and his =arvard colleagues have the further audacity to state, in their introduction to Ealker's material/ 4(merican newspapermen... *homas Ealker... wrote plainspoken and graphic accounts of the Famine based on what he had witnessed in 7kraine in !"".4 Ignoring the fraudulent nature of the Ealker series e,posed over C< years ago, the =arvard scholars conveniently backdate Ealker's stated !"1 trip to !"".... -ot only is this 4scholarship4 riddled with inaccuracies, e,aggeration, distortion, and fraud, it resorts uncritically to -azi sources without informing the reader of the spurious nature of the sources. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 2 =+33I>* *3(;+)+0 *=+ 7N3(I-+ (-0 &(I0 =+ &(E -> F(MI-+ It was following =earst's trip to -azi 6ermany that the =earst press began to promote the theme of 4famine-genocide in 7kraine.4 @rior to this, his papers had at times reflected a different perspective. For e,ample, the >ctober , !"1 =erald and +,aminer, carried an article about the former French @remier, =erriot, who had recently returned from traveling around 7kraine. =erriot noted/ 4... the whole campaign on the subLect of famine in the 7kraine is currently being waged. Ehile wandering around the 7kraine, I saw nothing of the sort.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C F(N+ @=>*>& >F +(3). #<O& F(MI-+ E+3+ (@@)I+0 *> +(3). "<O& Indeed, a wide assortment of photos and documentary film footage was taken in 3ussia, 7kraine, +astern +urope and (rmenia during the period of Eorld Ear I, the 3ussian 3evolution, 8ivil Ear, and foreign intervention, events which contributed to the 3ussian famine of !# -##. *hese photos--taken by Lournalists, relief agencies, medical workers, soldiers and individuals--were freKuently published in the newspapers and brochures of the period. &uch photos were the most likely source for the famine-genocide photographic 4evidence4/ they could be easily culled from archives, collections, and newspaper morgues and grafted onto accounts of the !"<s. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. " >verall, the film's 9=arvest of 0espair: producers, -owytsky and )uhovy, have managed to slap together a patchwork of material. Film reviewer )eonard Nlady noted that co-producer )uhovy 4admits most of his income comes from editing feature films of dubious Kuality. =e has a reputation as a good 'doctor'--someone who's brought in to salvage a movie which is deemed unreleasable by film e,hibitors and distributors.4 In =arvest of 0espair it appears that the doctor delivered one of the great cinema miscarriages of all time. >bLectivity and scientific presentation are sacrificed on the altar of 8old Ear psychological warfare. (ccording to the Einnipeg Free @ress, )uhovy 4personally viewed more than one million feet of historic stock footage to find roughly #< minutes %B#< feet' of appropriate material for the film.4 *his says less about his research than about the total lack of photographic evidence of famine-genocide. Indeed, not one documented piece of evidence is presented in the film to back up the genocide thesis. Instead, in a montage of undocumented stills, the viewer is subLected to EalkerJ0itloff forgeries$ numerous scenes stolen from the bi-now familiar publications covering the !# - !## 3ussian famine, (mmende photos %with all their contradictions noted earlier'$ !#<s photos used in the -azi organ ;olkischer Aeobachter in !"". 8ertain =arvest of 0espair photos can also be traced to

)aubenheimer's -azi propaganda books, as well as to a 7krainian-language publication published in Aerlin in !##. >ther scenes both borrow from the past and from the future. For e,ample, footage of marching soldiers has 3ed (rmy men wearing uniforms from the days of the 3ussian 8ivil Ear. Footage of impoverished women cooking is also of 8ivil Ear vintage. >ther scenes display peasant costumes from the ;olga 3ussian area of the immediate post-Eorld Ear period, not 7krainians in !"". Footage of miners pulling coal sledges on their hands and knees is actually of 8zarist-era origins. &cenes of peasants at meetings wearing peculiar tall peaked caps date from earlier periods$ further, their clothing is not consistent with 7krainian costume. Material filched from &oviet films of the !#<s can be identified, including seKuences from 8zar =unger % !# - !##' and (rsenal % !#!', and even from pre-revolutionary newsreels. Flipping forward to the future, the film shows scenes of military manufacturing of tank models not produced until later in the !"<s. (s well/ 4the episode of bread distribution in -azi besieged )eningrad %taken from '*he &iege of )eningrad,' one film of the epic '(n 7nknown Ear'' was used by the authors of the videofraud as 'filmed evidence' of food shortage... in 7kraine in the !"<s.4 (nd so on, and so on. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B5 It seems that like others before them, the producers of =arvest of 0espair scrounged through the archives looking for bits and pieces of old war-and-starvation shots that might be spiced into the film to great subliminal effect--bound together with narrative and interspersed partisan interviews. (s much has been admitted, as we will see. In -ovember !52, 7krainian -ationalists in alliance with right-wing school board officials, made an attempt to place their famine-genocide propaganda in the *oronto high school curriculum. *oward this end, a film showing of =arvest of 0espair was arranged at the +ducation 8enter. @anelists advertised for the event included then vice-chairman of the *oronto Aoard >f +ducation -ola 8rewe, 0r. .ury Aoshyk, 3esearch Fellow at =arvard's 7krainian 3esearch Institute and Marco 8arynnyk, writer and researcher associated with =arvest of 0espair in its research stage. 8onfronted by this author in the discussion portion of the meeting, that the stills and footage used in the film were fraudulent, the panelists were forced to admit openly that this author's charges were true. *hough reluctant to acknowledge the full e,tent of the fraud, deliberate deceit was confirmed. (s the *oronto &tar reported/ 43esearcher Marco 8arynnyk, who says he originated the idea of the film, says his concerns about Kuestionable photographs were ignored. 8arynnyk said that none of the archival film footage is of the 7krainian famine and that very few photos from !"#- !"" appear that can be traced as authentic. ( dramatic shot at the film's end of an emaciated girl, which has also been used in the film's promotional material, is not from the !"#- !"" famine, 8arynnyk said. 4I made the point that this sort of inaccuracy cannot be allowed,4 he said in an interview. 4I was ignored.4 @erhaps this is why, to use the term of A.&. >nyschuk, vice-chairman of the 7krainian Famine 3esearch 8ommittee, 8arynnyk was 4let go4 from the film before its completion. In light of the above, one wonders why 8arynnyk waited several years before coming forward publicly with the truth, and even then only after a public challenge and e,posure by this author. In a Kuite incredible admission from an academic, >rest &ubtelny, a history professor at .ork 7niversity, Lustified the use of frauds. -oting that there e,ist very few pictures of the !"" famine, &ubtelny defended the actions of the film's producers/ 4.ou have to have visual impact. .ou want to show what children dying from a famine look like. &tarving children are starving children.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B!

0r. 0itloff, it will be recalled, was 0irector of the 6erman government's agricultural concession in the -orth 8aucasus under an agreement between the 6erman government and the &oviets. Ehen =itler took power in early !"", 0itloff did not resign in protest. =e remained as 0irector for the proLect's duration, indicating that the -azis did not consider him inimical to their interests. Following his return to -azi 6ermany later that year, 0itloff gathered or fronted for a spurious assortment of famine photographs. *hese, as has been shown, included photos stolen from !# - !## famine sources. In addition, at least #C of the 0itloff photos can be shown to have been released by the -azis, many of which were passed to or picked up by various anti-&oviet and pro-fascist publishers abroad. &ome of 0itloff's photos were published in the -azi party organ ;olkischer Aeobachter %(ug. 5, !""'. Ehatever the actual mechanics of the distribution of the 0itloff-Ealker photographs, their fraudulence is well-established. *hose intent on propagating the famine-genocide myth for politicalJpurposes have not hesitated to use these photographs repeatedly to this day--without adding a shred of authenticating evidence to this Kuestionable material. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. "1-"C -(UI& *3. *> A)(M+ &>;I+* F>3 M(&& +T+87*I>-& I- *=+ 7N3(I-+ Included in ;olume of *he Alack 0eeds of the Nremlin is a special section devoted to -ationalist allegations of &oviet mass e,ecutions...in ;ynnitsya. 7nearthed in !1" during the -azi occupation, the graves were 4e,amined4 by a -azi-appointed 48ommission4 and were featured in -azi propaganda films.... @ost-war testimony of 6erman soldiers, however, e,poses the unearthing of mass graves at ;ynnitsya as a -azi propaganda deception. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. "B (ccording to Israel's authoritative .ad Eashem &tudies, >berleutnant +rwin Aingel testified that on &ept. ##, !1 , he witnessed the mass e,ecution of ?ews by the && and 7krainian militia. *his included a slaughter carried out by 7krainian au,iliaries in ;ynnitsya @ark, where Aingel witnessed 4layer upon layer4 of corpses buried. 3eturning to ;ynnitsya later in the war, Aingel read of the e,perts brought in by the -azis to e,amine the e,humed graves of 4&oviet4 e,ecution victims in the same @ark. 7pon personal verification, Aingel concluded that the 4discovery4 had been staged for -azi propaganda purposes and that the number of corpses he saw corresponded to those slaughtered by 7krainian Fascists in !1 . *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 1< -.* 8>33+&@>-0+-* 0+--. &(.& =+ &++& -> F(MI-+ I- *=+ 7N3(I-+ Ay all credible accounts, the crops of !"" and !"1 were successful. (s a tribute to this fact, very few, if any famine-genocide hustlers today support claims of a !"1 famine. =owever, both (mmende 9(uthor in !"2 of the famine-genocide book entitled =uman )ife in 3ussia:, and following him 0alrymple, seemed to have been determined to starve 7kraine to death in !"1 as well. In fact, 0alrymple's (mmende source for the list of #< is (mmende's letter to the -ew .ork *imes published on ?uly , !"1 under the heading 4Eide &tarvation in 3ussia Feared.4 In a follow-up letter the following month, (mmende wrote that people were dying on the streets of Niev. Eithin days, -ew .ork *imes correspondent =arold 0enny cabled a refutation of (mmende's allegations. 0atelined (ugust #"rd, !"1, 0enny charged/ 4*his statement certainly has no foundation.... .our correspondent

was in Niev for several days last ?uly about the time people were supposed to be dying there, and neither in the city, nor in the surrounding countryside was their hunger.4 &everal weeks later, 0enny reported/ 4-owhere was famine found. -owhere even the fear of it. *here is food, including bread, in the local open markets. *he peasants were smiling too, and generous with their foodstuffs. In short, there was no air of trouble or of impending trouble.4 >bviously, nobody had informed the peasants that they were supposed to be falling prostrate with hunger that year. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C< Aefore departing 0alrymple's list, let it be noted that a significant number of the sources have been shown to be either complete frauds, hearsay based on 4foreign residents4 %an interesting Lournalistic term' or hearsay altogether, former -azis and 7krainian collaborators, while at least three of the estimates are cited from the anti-&oviet campaigns of the neo-fascist =earst--&cripps-=oward style press and another five from books published in the 8old Ear years of !1!-C", save one which was printed in -azi 6ermany. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C In the hands of 0alrymple and others, the dead seem to multiply at a most phenomenal rate. =earsay, gossip, political testimonies, confessions of defectors, yellow Lournalism, -azi and 7krainian 3ightists, all interconnect in an incestuous embrace throughout the famine-genocide campaigns. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C# (lmost all the collective farms established in !" and !"# were shockingly mismanaged. Ehat else could be e,pected when every village in 3ussia had been the scene of bitter internal strife, when animals had been slaughtered or allowed to die through incompetence, and grain had been buried, and barns and houses burnedG It has been estimated that livestock dropped by C<M during those tragic years and there were large areas, as I saw with my own eyes in the -orth 8aucasus in !"", where miles of weeds and desolation replaced the former grainfields.... In that summer I drove nearly #<< miles across country between 3ostov and Nrasnodar through land that was lost to the weeds and through villages that were empty, yet even there I found a striking contrast. *here was one communal farm in the south which had been established not long after the 8ivil Ear and remained under much the same management. It was an oasis of happiness and plenty in a stricken land. *he people and their animals were plump and contented. +very family had two or three rooms. *here was a day-nursery with screened windows and beds for the children, a communal restaurant which served e,cellent food neatly and cheaply, a fish pond, a pig and poultry farm, even a novel and profitable cultivation of castor-oil plants as lubricant for airplanes. *his little community compared favorably with any farming outfit in the Eest. *hey weren't, of course, so wealthy as (merican farmers, but they had overcome the age-old enemies of the 3ussian peasant--hunger, insecurity, ignorance, and disease, and were all busy as beavers, eager and full of hope. 0uranty, Ealter. &talin S 8o. -ew .ork/ E. &loane (ssociates, !1!, p. BB

0(I3.M@)+ &(.& F(MI-+ 0+-I+3& (3+ ).I-6 A7* >FF+3& -> @3>>F =aving categorized the Eebb's 9&ydney and Aeatrice:, =erriot and Maynard as 4dupes,4 0alrymple claims that Ealter 0uranty and 4some other newsman4 %whom he chooses not to name', 4knew of the famine but avoided referring to it e,plicitly because of government pressure.4 0alrymple offers no proof of this allegation, but doubtless true to form, some hearsay or off-the-record gossip can

be dredged up. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. C" 7&I-6 0+M>63(@=I8& *> @3>;+ F(MI-+ I& A>67& (nother contribution to the recent revival of the famine-genocide campaign is Ealter 0ushnyck's C< .ears (go/ *he Famine =olocaust in 7kraine. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 22 (ttempting to shore up his thesis of famine-genocide, 0ushnyck turns to an 4e,amination4 of the number of famine deaths. 3ather than averaging hearsay estimates a la 0alrymple, 0ushnyck's 4method4 consists of proLecting an anticipated population growth rate, based on the !#2 census, onto the listed population of the !"! census for 7kraine. *he difference between the hypothetical estimate and the !"! census listing is then pronounced to be 4famine victims.4 For e,ample, 0ushnyck states/ 4taking the data according to the !#2 census... and the ?anuary B, !"! census... and the average increase before the collectivization... %#."2M per year', it can be calculated that 7kraine... lost B J#-million people between the two censuses.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. 2! *hough this 4method4 of calculating famine deaths is widely employed by famine-genocide theorists, the freKuency of its use does not make it any more scientifically valid. 7.&. sociologist (lbert &zymanski, in criticizing an estimate of " million deaths, has noted/ 4*his estimate assumes/ % ' that even in the conditions of e,treme famine, instability and virtual 8ivil Ear, peasants would conceive at the same rate as in less precarious periods$ %#' that abortion or infanticide %intentional or not' did not significantly increase$ %"' that there were as many women of ma,imum reproductive age in !"#- !"" as before or after. (ll of these assumptions are erroneous. (ll peasants have traditional techniKues of birth control and are thus able to limit their reproduction to a significant degree$ it is the economic benefit attendant upon having large families which is operative... %Further' legal abortion was so widely practiced in this period that, in !"2, the state banned it as part of the campaign to increase the population.4 ( decline in the birth rate could thus have been e,pected, and not only due to the reasons outlined by &zymanski. In e,amining the demographics of the famine era, Eheatcroft states/ 4(s is well known, the First Eorld Ear, 8ivil Ear and the early years of the !#<s caused a great gap in births in these years. *he age cohort born in ! 1 would have been 2 in !"< and so would have been Lust entering the period of maLor reproduction. 8onseKuently, )orimer and other scholars have concluded that the age structure of the population would have led to a decline in births throughout the early !"<s and until the missing populations born into the ! 1- !## age cohorts have passed on well into the future.I 9Following in the footsteps of 0ushnyck: =arvard's ?ames Mace states/ 4If we subtract our estimate of the post-famine population from the pre-famine population, the difference is B,!C1,<<<, which can be taken as an estimate of the number of 7krainians who died before their time.4 Aut, as respected demographers Aarbara (nderson and Arian &ilver have pointed out, Mace is confusing population deficits with e,cess mortality. Ay making no allowance for a decline in the birth rate, Mace eKuates those who were never borne with those who 4died before their time.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B *he Mace -0ushnyck methodology also ignores other factors/ change of declared nationality,

intermarriage, assimilation, migration, etc., all of which have an impact on census figures. For e,ample, Ei,man has pointed out that in the late !#<s--between the two censuses in Kuestion--the Nuban 8ossacks were reclassified from 7krainian to 3ussian %they live in 3ussia'. (nderson and &ilver note/ 4If the reclassified 7krainians numbered #-" million suggested by Ea,man, then between #C-1<M of Mace's estimated deficit of 7krainians could be accounted for in this way.4 *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. B# Aut Medvedev himself lends credence to the less wild estimates by citing an estimate, made on the basis of gaps in the age structure and demographic proLections, of as many as " million infant deaths owing to the !"#-"" famine. *his 9false: estimate assumes/ %a' that even in conditions of e,treme famine, instability, and virtual civil war, peasants would conceive and give birth at the same rate as in less precarious periods$ %#' that abortion or infanticide %intentional or not' did not significantly increase$ and %"' that there were as many women of ma,imum reproductive age in !"#"" as before or after. (ll of these assumptions are erroneous. (ll peasants have traditional techniKues of birth control and are thus able to limit their reproduction to a significant degree$ it is the economic benefit attendant upon having large families which is operative--a factor not applicable during famines--not ignorance of birth control. )egal abortion was so widely practiced in this period that, in !"2, the state banned it as part of the campaign to increase the population. >ther e,aggerated estimates of the number who died during these periods are based on apparent discrepancies between the !#2 and !"! %or !C!' census figures, and the number of people who should have been in the census categories assuming earlier rates of population growth or, alternatively, the actual rate of growth of other populations at the same time. &uch estimates assume that a decline in the reported population, or its failure to grow at its 'normal' rate, is largely a reflection of deaths from famine, abuse, or e,ecution. -ot only are fewer live births to be e,pected during times of famine and trouble--as well as disproportionately high infant mortality--many people emigrate from areas of famine in search of food, work, or refuge. In the &oviet 7nion in the !"<-"" period millions of destitute peasants migrated to the cities to take up Lobs in the industrializing urban economy, others left the regions of greatest destitution to settle elsewhere$ some left the &oviet 7nion altogether.... &zymanski, (lbert. =uman 3ights in the &oviet 7nion. )ondon/ Ued Aooks, !51, p. ##C-##2 9In his report to the Bth @arty 8ongress in ?anuary !"1 &talin stated: Ee had an increase in the population of the &oviet 7nion from 2<,C<<,<<< at the end of !"< to 25 million at the end of !"". &talin, ?oseph. Eorks. Moscow/ Foreign )anguages @ub. =ouse, !C#, ;ol. ", p. "1" 3+() -(*73() 8(7&+& >F *=+ F(MI-+ (3+ I6->3+0 A. 83I*I8& 4+vidence4 prominently featured in the famine-genocide campaign has been shown to be fraudulent or suspect. Fake photographs, unscientific statistics-Luggling and politically motivated hearsay and testimony are among the many devices employed to embellish allegations of faminegenocide. &ubLect to similar manipulation are the 9actual: causes of the famine/ drought, sabotage, soviet amateurish planning, e,cesses and mistakes in history's first mass socialization of agriculture in the conte,t of a hostile international environment. *hroughout the history of the famine-genocide campaign, the factors of drought and sabotage have been ignored, denied, downplayed or distorted. &oviet e,cesses and mistakes, in contrast, are emphasized, given an 4anti-7krainian4 motivation, described as deliberately and consciously planned, and the results e,aggerated in depictions of starvation deaths in the multi-millions. *he central event-the collectivization of agriculture as part of socialist development--is never given anything but a classically anti-8ommunist interpretation....

For some promoters of 4famine-genocide,4 anything other than man-made causes are ignored or denied. -atural causes, such as drought, are alleged never to have taken place$ claims that drought was a contributing factor are denounced as &oviet inventions. >ne might then e,pect that no non-&oviet source could be cited to substantiate drought. =owever, ( =istory of 7kraine by Mikhail =rushevsky--described by the -ationalists themselves as 47kraine's leading historian4--states/ 4(gain a year of drought coincided with chaotic agricultural conditions$ and during the winter of !"#-"" a great famine, like that of !# - !## swept across &oviet 7kraine....4 Indeed, nowhere does =istory of 7kraine claim a deliberate, man-made famine against 7krainians, and more space is actually devoted to the famine of !# - !##. More recent histories can also be cited on the subLect of drought. -icolas 3iasnovsky, former visiting professor at =arvard 7niversity's 3ussian 3esearch 8enter, notes in his =istory of 3ussia that drought occurred in both !" and !"#. Michael Florinsky, immediately following a description of the mass destruction wrought by kulak resistance to collectivization, states/ 4&evere droughts in !"< and !" , especially in the 7kraine, aggravated the plight of farming and created near famine conditions.4 @rofessor +meritus at 8olumbia and a prolific writer on the 7&&3, Florinsky can hardly be accused of leftist sympathies/ born in Niev, 7kraine, he fought against the Aolsheviks in the 8ivil Ear. Ehile drought was a contributing factor, the main cause of the famine was the struggle around the collectivization of agriculture which raged in the countryside in this period. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. ! -!# -onetheless, two studies discuss the harvests in those years. 3obert 0avies and &tephen Eheatcroft argue that the !" and !"# harvests were small due to drought and difficulties in labor and capital, especially the decline in draft animals.... In this essay I re-e,amine the harvests of !" and especially !"# on the basis of newly available archival documents and published sources, including some that scholars have never utilized. I show that the environmental conte,t of these famines deserves much greater emphasis than it has previously received/ environmental disasters reduced the &oviet grain harvest in !"# substantially and have to be considered among the primary causes of the famine. I argue that capital and labor difficulties were significant but were not as important as these environmental factors, and were in part a result of them. I also demonstrate that the &oviet leadership did not fully understand the crisis and out of ignorance acted inconsistently in response to it. I conclude that it is thus inaccurate to describe the &oviet famine of !"#- !"" as simply an artificial or man-made famine, or otherwise to reduce it to a single cause. >verall, the low harvest, and hence the famine, resulted from a comple, of human and environmental factors, an interaction of man and nature, much as most previous famines in history. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 2 &oviet agronomic literature and other published and archival sources from the !"<s, however, which no previous scholarship on the famine has discussed, indicate that in !"# &oviet crops suffered from an e,traordinarily severe combination of infestations from crop diseases and pests. *he most important infestation in !"# came from several varieties of rust, a category of fungi that can infest grains and many other plants. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. " Ehile rust infestations were not a new problem in 3ussia, the e,treme outbreak in !"# took agronomists by surprise, and they did not fully understand it.

*auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 2 ...losses from rust and smut in !"# reached appro,imately ! million tons, "M of the official harvest figure and nearly #<M of the lowest archival harvest estimate. It should also be noted that while these estimates are appro,imate, they are also the only concrete estimates, based on any even remotely scientific evidence, of overall !"# grain harvest losses from any environmental or human factors available in any published or archival sources that I have been able to find. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. B *he warm, humid weather in !"# also led to severe insect infestations, including locusts, field moths, and other insects on grain and sugar beets. (n agronomic Lournal reported that in !"# a 4mass multiplication4 of (sian locusts took place in all the important breeding grounds of the desert zone, including 0aghestan, the )ower ;olga, the 7ral 3iver delta, the -orth 8aucasus, and the Nalmyk >blast. >6@7 reports during the spring of !"# noted infestations of locusts, meadow moths, hessian flies, beet weevils, and other insects. ( report of #5 May noted that beet weevils had infested nearly <<,<<< hectares of beets in 7kraine$ in one district the weevils destroyed almost C<< hectares in three hours. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 5 (s will be seen below, these natural disasters were only part of a comple, of factors that made !" - !"# disastrous agricultural years. -onetheless, drought, rain, and infestations destroyed at least #<M of the harvest, and this would have been sufficient on its own to have caused serious food shortages or even famine. If these factors had not been in evidence in !" and !"# agricultural production would have been considerably larger, and while procurements could have caused shortages in specific regions, they would not have caused a famine like that of !"".... *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. #< My research on &oviet farm labor policies and actual peasant practices and my reading of this literature, however, has made me skeptical of the argument for labor resistance as the e,clusive or even dominant cause of the low harvests and famine in the early !"<s. First, while some peasants were so resentful of collectivization and procurements that they attempted to sabotage the farms, for peasant resistance to have been sufficient to cause the low !"# harvest an e,tremely large number of peasants would have had to act this way, that is, to have avoided work and attempted to destroy the harvest. In other words, the argument asserts that the maLority of peasants attempted to deprive their families and fellow villagers of sufficient food to last until the ne,t harvest. *his interpretation, therefore, reKuires us to believe that most peasants acted against their own and their neighbors' self-interest. *his viewpoint is difficult to accept both on general human terms and particularly when applied to peasants in 3ussia and 7kraine. *he great maLority of these peasants had lived for centuries in corporate villages that had instilled certain basic cooperative values, and the kolkhosi perpetuated basic features of these villages. &econd, the argument is reductionist because it attempts to e,plain everything that happened in this crisis by human actions, specifically by the conflict between the &oviet government and the peasants, with an emphasis on peasant resistance as a kind of heroic struggle against the oppressive regime. &uch reductionism is problematic because it does not account for actions that do not fit the pattern of resistance, that took place outside the ne,us of resistance. If the situation had been as

conflictual as this interpretation implies, if the great maLority of peasants did little or no farm work and performed the work they did do neglectfully and poorly out of spite, then the harvest in !"# would not have been even C<,<<<,<<< tons but practically nothing. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. #2 >n the basis of the above discussion, I contend that an understanding of the &oviet famine of !"#- !"" must start from the background of chronic agricultural crises in the early &oviet years, the harvest failures of !" and !"#, and the interaction of environmental and human factors that caused them. In !"#, e,tremely dry weather reduced crops in some regions, and unusually wet and human weather in most others fostered unprecedented infestations. *hese conditions from the start reduced the potential yield that year, as drought hadDin !" . (t the same time, the regime's procurements from the !" harvest left peasants and work livestock starving and weakened. 8rop failures, procurements that reduced fodder resources, peasant neglect, overuse of the limited number of tractors, and shortages of spare parts and fuel all combined to reduce available draft power. Farm work conseKuently was performed poorly in many kolkhosi and sovkhozy, often even when peasants were willing to put in the effort. Finally, farming activities combined with other environmental problems-soil e,haustion, weeds, and mice--to further reduce the !"# harvest to famine levels. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 1C (ny study that asserts that the harvest was not e,traordinarily low and that the famine was a political measure intentionally imposed through e,cessive procurements is clearly based on an insufficient source base and an uncritical approach to the official sources. *he evidence cited above demonstrates that the !"#- !"" famine was the result of a genuine shortage, a substantial decline in the availability of food caused by a comple, of factors, each of which decreased the harvest greatly and which in combination must have decreased the harvest well below subsistence. *his famine therefore resembled the Irish famine of 51C- 515, but resulted from a litany of natural disasters that combined to the same effect as the potato blight had !< years before, and in a similar conte,t of substantial food e,ports. *he &oviet famine resembles the Irish case in another way as well/ in both, government leaders were ignorant of and minimized the environmental factors and blamed the famines on human actions %in Ireland, overpopulation, in the 7&&3, peasant resistance' much more than was warranted.... If we are to believe that the regime starved the peasants to induce labor discipline in the farms, are we to interpret starvation in the towns as the regime's tool to discipline blue and white-collar workers and their wives and childrenG Ehile &oviet food distribution policies are beyond the scope of this article, it is clear that the small harvests of !" - !"# created shortages that affected virtually everyone in the country and that the &oviet regime did not have the internal resources to alleviate the crisis. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 12 *he evidence and analysis I have presented here show that the &oviet famine was more serious and more important an event than most previous studies claim, including those adhering to the 7krainian nationalist interpretation, and that it resulted from a highly abnormal combination of environmental and agricultural circumstances. *auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. 1B ...the famine resulted directly from a famine harvest, a harvest that was much smaller than

officially acknowledged, and that this small harvest was in turn the result of a comple, of natural disasters that 9with one small e,ception: no previous scholars have ever discussed or even mentioned. *he foot notes in the 8arl Aeck @aper contain e,tensive citations from primary sources as well as Eestern and &oviet secondary works, among others by 0'(nn @enner and &tephen Eheatcroft and 3. E. 0avies that further substantiate these points and I urge interested readers to e,amine those works as well. *auger, Mark. =is comments at random. *=+3+ E(& ( F(MI-+ F>3 M(-. 3+(&>-& &oviet mistakes and e,cesses, drought and the organized campaign of sabotage and resistance resulted in the famine of !"#- !"". *here was no plan to wipe out 7krainians as a people$ the mistakes--even when accompanied by tragic and unforgivable e,cesses-- do not constitute 4pre-planned genocide.4 *he famine was compounded by typhus epidemics. Internationally acclaimed urban planner and recipient of the >rder of 8anada, 0r. =ans Alumenfeld worked as an architect in the 7krainian city of Makeyevka at the time the famine. =e writes/ 4*here was indeed a famine in !"", not Lust in 7kraine, but also in... the lower ;olga and the -orth 8aucasus$... *here is no doubt that the famine claimed many victims. I have no basis on which to estimate their number... @robably most deaths in !"" were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Eaterborne diseases were freKuent in Makeyevka$ I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever. 0r. =ans Alumenfeld offers a useful personal summary of the period/ ... 9*he famine was caused by: a conLunction of a number of factors. First, the hot dry summer of !"#, which I had e,perienced in northern ;yatka, had resulted in crop failure in the semiarid regions of the south. &econd, the struggle for collectivization had disrupted agriculture. 8ollectivization was not an orderly process following bureaucratic rules. It consisted of actions by the poor peasants, encouraged by the @arty. *he poor peasants were eager to e,propriate the 4kulaks,4 but less eager to organize a co-operative economy. Ay !"< the @arty had already sent out cadres to stem and correct e,cesses.... (fter having e,ercised restraint in !"<, the @arty put on a drive again in !"#. (s a result, in that year the kulak economy ceased to produce, and the new collective economy did not yet produce fully. First claim on the inadeKuate product went to urban industry and to the armed forces$ as the future of the entire nation, including the peasants, depended on them, it can hardly be otherwise.... In !"" rainfall was adeKuate. *he @arty sent its best cadres to help organize work in the kolkhozes. *hey succeeded$ after the harvest of !"" the situation improved radically and with amazing speed. I had the feeling that we had been pulling a heavy cart uphill, uncertain if we would succeed$ but in the fall of !"" we had gone over the top and from then on we could move forward at an accelerating pace. *ottle, 0ouglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. *oronto/ @rogress Aooks, !5B, p. !2-!B 7nder these conditions there was little reason for anti-3ussian or separatist tendencies among the 7krainians, and I never encountered them. I was therefore rather surprised to read recently in the respected French paper )e Monde, on the occasion of the C<th anniversary of the starvation of !"", that was due to a planned 4genocide4 of the 7krainian nation. 6iven the dire shortage of labor in the &oviet 7nion at the time, this hypothesis is rather absurd. It is eKually absurd to assume that any government could be so stupid as to believe that starvation could be an effective means to break national resistance--in the face of the e,perience of the Irish famine of the 51<s and many others.... *here was indeed a famine in !"", not Lust in the 7kraine, but also in other semiarid regions of

the 7&&3, the )ower ;olga and the -orth 8aucasus$ and Makeyevka, located near the Lunction of these three regions, felt the full impact of it. Many peasants from there came to the city$ the steelworks tried to employ some of them but most left, finding the work too hard. &ome were already too far gone, with swollen limbs. *here were also many lost children, which were either taken into children's institutions or, very freKuently, adopted by urban families$ two of my old friends, building workers from ;ienna who at the time worked in Makeyevka, each adopted one such child. >nly once did I see a child with spindly legs and a swollen belly$ it was in the garden of a nursery school at the hand of a nurse waiting for the doctor. -or did I ever see a corpse lying in a street.... *here is no doubt that the famine claimed many victims. I have no basis on which to estimate the number, and I doubt if anybody has. Ehat were the reasons and what could have been done to avoid this terrible calamityG *here was a conLunction of a number of factors. First, the hot dry summer of !"#, which I had e,perienced in northern ;yatka, had resulted in crop failure in the semiarid regions of the &outh. &econd, the struggle for collectivization had disrupted agriculture. 8ollectivization was not an orderly process following bureaucratic rules. It consisted of actions by the poor peasants, encouraged by the @arty. *he poor peasants were eager to e,propriate the 4kulaks,4 but less eager to organize a cooperative economy. Ay !"< the @arty and already sent out cadres to stem and correct e,cesses. >ne of the cadres engaged in this work later reported his e,perience/ the local 8ommunists had told him, 4Ee are building socialism in the village, and you and your &talin are stabbing us in the back.4 (fter having e,ercised restraint in !"<, the @arty put on a drive again in !"#. (s a result, in that year the kulak economy ceased to produce, and the new collective economy did not yet produce fully. First claim on the inadeKuate product went to urban industry and to the armed forces$ as the future of the entire nation, including the peasants, depended on them, it could hardly be otherwise. In addition, the depression in the Eest destroyed the market for oil and timber, with which the &oviets had hoped to pay the debts incurred during the First Five-.ear @lan. &o, instead of being able to import grain, the &oviet 7nion actually e,ported some. Ehat alternatives did they haveG I can see only two/ use their gold reserve, or get a loan in the Eest. *hey tried to do the latter, but obtained it only in !"1 when they no longer needed it. If blame for the terrible suffering of !"# has to be assigned, it falls in eKual parts on the &oviet 6overnment for refusing to part with their gold reserve, and on the Eest for refusing to loan when it was needed. ...@robably most deaths in !"" were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Eaterborne diseases were freKuent in Makeyevka$ I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever.... In !"" rainfall was adeKuate. *he @arty sent its best cadres to help organize work in the kolkhozes. *hey succeeded$ after the harvest of !"" the situation improved radically and with amazing speed. I had the feeling that we had been pulling a heavy cart uphill, uncertain if we would succeed$ but in the fall of !"" we had gone over the top and from then on we could move forward at an accelerating pace. 8ertainly, stupidity and callousness inflicted much avoidable suffering during the process of collectivization, and many &oviet kolkhozes continued to suffer from the fact that they started on the wrong foot--in contrast to those in other countries such as +ast 6ermany and =ungary, which have learned from the mistakes made in the &oviet 7nion. Aut &oviet agriculture is not the monumental failure which it is often regarded as in the Eest. Alumenfeld, =ans. )ife Aegins at 2C. Montreal, 8anada/ =arvest =ouse, c !5B, p. C#- C1 *he &oviet government did have small reserves of grain, but continually drew these down to allocate food to the population. &ince virtually the entire country e,perienced shortages of food, indicating that the procurement and distribution data are reasonably accurate, clearly the &oviet 7nion faced a severe shortage, and the most important cause of that shortage has to have been small harvests in !" and !"#.

*auger, Mark. -atural 0isaster and =uman (ctions in the &oviet Famine of !" - !"" @ittsburgh/ 7niversity of @ittsburgh, #<< , p. C 0+&*378*I>- A. *=+ N7)(N& ()>-6 EI*= 03>76=* 8(7&+0 *=+I3 >E&*(3;(*I>+ven in the winter of !" - !"#, with the great scarcity of grain, we somehow managed to survive because of our vegetables. Aut the year of !"# had not been normal. *hat sprIng we had a massive famine during which the people consumed even the seeds for planting, so there was nothing left with which to plant the vegetable gardens. Most gardens remained overgrown with weeds. *he meager allotment of food received from the collective farm as advance payment was soon consumed. Eith no additional help forthcoming starvation set in. 0olot, Miron. +,ecution by =unger. -ew .ork/ E.E. -orton, c !5C, p. 21 ... the slaughter of cattle and the feasting went on--there was no way of stopping it. (nimals were killed because no fodder was left or because they had become diseased from neglect$ and even the bednyaks who, having Loined the kolkhozes, had every interest in preserving their wealth, went on dissipating it and stuffing their own long-starved stomachs. *hen followed the long and dreadful fast/ the farms were left without horses and without seed for the sowing$ the kolkhozniki of the 7kraine and of +uropean 3ussia rushed to central (sia to buy horses, and, having returned empty-handed, harnessed the few remaining cows and o,en to the ploughs$ and in !" and !"# vast tracts of land remained untilled and the furrows were strewn with the bodies of starved muzhiks. *he smallholder perished as he had lived, in pathetic helplessness and barbarism$ and his final defeat was moral as well as economic and political. 0eutscher, Isaac. *he @rophet >utcast. )ondon, -ew .ork/ >,ford 7niv. @ress, !2", p. ! MI&M(-(6+M+-* A. &>;I+* >FFI8I()& E(& ( M(?>3 8(7&+ >F *=+ F(MI-+ =ow far this famine was 4man-made4 in the sense that &talin and his government deliberately provoked it by wholesale collectivization is another story. +vidence gathered on the spot showed that the lack of efficiency of the peasants themselves was partly to blame, that in some regions crop prospects were bright enough before the harvest but that harvesting was shockingly mismanaged$ vast Kuantities of grain were hidden or simply wasted, because collection and distribution of foodstuffs disintegrated in the prevailing chaos. >n the other hand, it can fairly be argued that the authorities were responsible because they had not foreseen the muddle and mess and taken steps beforehand to correct it. *he proof of this is that things took a marked turn for the better in the following year, when the 8ommunist @arty set its hand, almost literally, to the plow.... .et it is interesting to note that &talin did directly and specifically assume responsibility for what had occurred. In a speech of ?anuary , !"", to the 8entral 8ommittee of the 8ommunist @arty, he said/ 4.... Ehy blame the peasantsG... For we are at the helm$ we are in command of the instruments of the state$ it is our mission to lead the collective farms$ and we must bear the whole of the responsibility for the work in the rural districts.4 0uranty, Ealter. &talin S 8o. -ew .ork/ E. &loane (ssociates, !1!, p. B5-B! F(MI-+ E(& 8(7&+0 A. 03>76=*, I-F+&*(*I>-&, E+(*=+3 (-0 F7-67&+& 0espite this, and despite the anecdotal evidence that resistance scholars present, however, clear and substantial evidence shows that harvests varied in the !"<s primarily and mostly from environmental factors. &erious droughts reduced the harvest in !" and !"2 drastically...and those of

!"1 and !"5 moderately, and a comple, of natural disasters made the !"# harvest the lowest of the decade and a primary cause of the famine of !"#-"". Ehile peasant resistance did take place in the !"<s, it is e,tremely difficult to document its effect on production. In !" , for e,ample, peasants sowed a record area$ although some was sown too late, under better weather conditions the crop would have been much larger. Ay the same token, the improved harvest of !"", and the good harvest of !"C and !"B, resulted first of all from favorable weather. >ther scholars have emphasized the primary importance of environmental factors in the !"<s, showing for e,ample that soil e,haustion, drought and other circumstances reduced harvests in !" -"#. ( 3ussian scholar showed in a recent study of kolkhozy in the 7rals that the most important influence on kolkhoz labor productivity was climate. *auger, Mark. H&oviet @easants and 8ollectivization, !"<-"!/ 3esistance and (daptation.I In 3ural (daptation in 3ussia by &tephen Eegren, 3outledge, -ew .ork, -., #<<C, 8hapter ", p. BB. Nolkhozy in !"# faced e,tremely difficult conditions. *he !" harvest was e,tremely low, despite a large sown area, primarily because of drought, but also because of organizational and supply problems. *he low harvest and grain procurements left many farms with little or no food by early !"#, especially in the drought regions of the ;olga, Nazakhstan, the 7rals and 7kraine. *his led many peasants to flee their villages seeking food. 3eforms in February !"# tied remuneration more closely to work and prohibited eKualizing income distribution, but many farms misunderstood or ignored them, or implemented them incorrectly, and famine conditions encouraged eKualizing distribution. *he regime issued food aid and seed loans, but these were often delayed and insufficient.... 0uring the !"# harvest season &oviet agriculture e,perienced a crisis. -atural disasters, especially plant diseases spread and intensified by wet weather in mid- !"#, drastically reduced crop yields. >6@7 reports, anecdotal as they are, indicate widespread peasant opposition to the kolkhoz system. *hese documents contain numerous reports of kolkhozniki, faced with starvation, mismanagement and abuse by kolkhoz officials and others, and desperate conditions/ dying horses, idle tractors, infested crops, and incitement by itinerant people. @easants' responses varied/ some applied to withdraw from their farms, some left for paid work outside, some worked sloppily, intentionally leaving grain on the fields while harvesting to glean later for themselves. *auger, Mark. H&oviet @easants and 8ollectivization, !"<-"!/ 3esistance and (daptation.I In 3ural (daptation in 3ussia by &tephen Eegren, 3outledge, -ew .ork, -., #<<C, 8hapter ", p. 5 . My study of the 7krainian famine of !#5-#! shows, first, that the grain crisis had a substantial material basis in severe regional crop failures, especially in 7kraine, caused by an array of natural disasters. Ehether the &oviet 7nion had an absolute shortage of food in !#5-#! is impossible to say because the harvest statistics are suspect, but the country certainly had much less food available in !#5-#! than in the good years of -+@, !#2-#B. -o shift in price policies %to which the grain crisis is often attributed' could have prevented the harsh weather conditions of these years. *he agricultural measures introduced in response to the !#1 crop failure and famine had not protected 7kraine from this disaster. (s 3ykov, stated in &eptember !#5 while in 7kraine e,amining relief efforts, 4For over four years we have been fighting drought in 7kraine. *he effectiveness of our e,penditures obviously cannot be considered sufficient.4 6iven the thin margin of surplus that &oviet agriculture produced in these years, a regional natural disaster of this sort could cause a famine and have disastrous repercussions throughout the economy. *auger, Mark. 46rain 8risis or FamineG4 in @rovincial )andscapes, )ocal 0imensions of &oviet @ower, ! B- !C" by 0on 3aleigh, 7niv. of @ittsburgh @ress, @ittsburgh, @enn., #<< , 8hapter B, p. 2B.

@+(&(-*& E>3N+0 +;+- =(30+3 (-0 @3>078+0 M>3+ (F*+3 *=+ !"# F(MI-+ @easants in the famine regions were weak, and estimates are that between four and B million people died of the famine in villages and towns. .et, somehow, on the whole peasants worked harder in !"" than in !"#. Ay ?une !"", the farms had sown a larger area than by that date in the previous three years % !"<-"#'. *he 6erman agricultural attach+ >tto &chiller drove 2<<< miles through the main agricultural regions in the summer of !"" and described a greatly strengthened and consolidated kolkhoz system. =e attributed this both to administrative pressure and hunger as a motivating force, and also to effective management and labor organization. 3eports from all over the 7&&3 indicated that peasants who had avoided working in the kolkhoz now competed with each other to work, and had a 'better attitude' towards work in the kolkhoz than before. (nd the result, as documented in *able #, was a dramatic increase in the harvest in !"".... *hus there can be no doubt that the general pattern of intensified work, improved conditions and higher output evident from the statistics was in fact representative of conditions throughout the country. *auger, Mark. H&oviet @easants and 8ollectivization, !"<-"!/ 3esistance and (daptation.I In 3ural (daptation in 3ussia by &tephen Eegren, 3outledge, -ew .ork, -., #<<C, 8hapter ", p. 5". &tudies conducted in the mid- !"<s found that kolkhozniki actually worked harder than noncollectivized peasants had worked in the !#<s, clear evidence of significant adaptation to new system. *auger, Mark. H&oviet @easants and 8ollectivization, !"<-"!/ 3esistance and (daptation.I In 3ural (daptation in 3ussia by &tephen Eegren, 3outledge, -ew .ork, -., #<<C, 8hapter ", p. 5B &>;I+* 6>;* *3I+0 *> (I0 F(MI-+ ;I8*IM& *hat year % !" ' was one of severe drought in the ;olga, Eestern &iberia, parts of 7kraine, and other regions. (cknowledging this, the regime publicly sent procured grain back to drought regions as food relief and seed, organized a conference of specialists to discuss measures against drought, and began implementation of some of the measures proposed. *auger, Mark. 4&tatistical Falsification in the &oviet 7nion/ a 8omparative 8ase &tudy of @roLections, Aiases, and *rust.4 *he =enry M. ?ackson &chool of International &tudies, 7niversity of Eashington, #<< , p. 11.

+pisode <. Eho >rganised the Famine in the 7&&3 in !"#- !""G
*he +pisodes ! ORIENTA" RE#IE$ *he theory of the =olodomor is reactivated in the media every time 7kraine is about to take a step back to 3ussia. ?ust to remind those who are not aware of the tragedy, in !"#- !"" there was a severe famine throughout the 7&&3 that claimed an unprecedented number of lives %up to B million victims, according to some debatable estimates'. @arado,ically the famine mostly affected fertile areas in the -orth 8aucasus, the ;olga basin, the &outh 7rals, Eestern &iberia, 7kraine, Aelorussia and Nazakhstan. 0uring the last decade several Eestern historians were recruited to elaborate on the theory that the famine tragedy was a deliberate act of genocide against 7krainians carried out by &talinOs government. )etOs consider the historical facts and try to get closer to the truth regarding the

issue of the sources and circumstances of that horrible famine in the 7&&3. First of all we have to recall something about the 6old, which surprisingly not always is a mean of paymentD In early !#<s the recently proclaimed &oviet 7nion was an,ious about restoration of its industry totally destroyed after EEI and 8ivil Ear in 3ussia % ! 5- !# '. *he &oviets desperately needed modern machinery and industrial eKuipment. =ow could they pay itG &oviet government was able to offer to the international market three items/ %rain& minerals an' %ol'(

&oviet 6olden 8hervonets, !#" >n 6enoa 8onference in !## the new 6old +,change &tandard was introduced. &ince the end of !## the &oviet 7nion was issuing the golden chervonets V a new &oviet currency fully covered by the golden reserves and convertible to gold. In !#" the Soviet chervonets was one of the most stable and secured currencies of the world. It represented a clear and present danger for emerging financial epicentre V the 7nited &tates of (merica *he economic and financial weight of the 7nited &tates boomed astonishingly as the result of global war. *hat country was one of few beneficiaries of the manslaughtering house in +urope of ! <s. Aut an une,pected rival from the Aolshevik stated emerged vigorouslyD In !#1 the Soviet chervonets was replaced by a softer rouble )itho*t %ol'en e+*i,alent. *he menace to the 7& dollar and Aritish pound was diminished. In return &oviet 7nion was recognized by the 7N, France, -orway, (ustria, 6reece, &weden, 0enmark, 8hina, ?apan, Me,ico and other countries. *he 7nited &tates possessed 12M of golden reserves of the capitalist world. In !#C the &oviet leadership decided to accelerate industrialization of the country. Fuite surprisingly despite enormous economic gains promised by such policies, the Eestern countries refused to accept gold as payment when trading with Soviet Union! *his amazing behaviour of is known in history as the Hgold blockadeI. *he 7&&3 could pay for machinery and eKuipment only by oil, timber and grains. %Interestingly, they still accepted pre-revolution Imperial 3ussian golden coins V the currency of a none,istent state was not dangerousP' In !#! the 7& bankers initiate the 6reat 0epression. *he short period of international currency e,change stability was over. In !" 6ermany and (ustria failed to repay the foreign debt and stop e,changing marks into gold, thus abolishing 6old +,change &tandard. Ay the autumn !" the 7N suspends the gold e,change as well. (s you see, it would be a logical and natural move to lift the golden blockade of &oviet 7nion at that time, thus allowing &oviet gold to relieve the suffocating Eestern economies. *t the 'e-ision the! )as ta.en at that -ir-*mstan-es )as sho-.in% in its a/s*r'it!( The! not onl! left the %ol' /lo-.a'e of the USSR in for-e& /*t also im0ose' a se,ere tra'e em/ar%o on the ma1or 0art of So,iet e20ort3 It was done despite acute economic crisis in the Eest where most producers were

interested in any kind of demand, especially paid by gold, timber, oil and other raw material from the &oviet 7nion. +.g. in !"# 5<M of Aritish machinery e,port was being supplied to the 7&&3. -evertheless, on (pril B, !"" the Aritish government introduced embargo/ 3ussian 6oods %Import @rohibition' (ct !""P Ehat was the logicG It was a politically motivated decision to pressure the tenacious &oviet government powered by the antagonistic ideology and economic structure. Eas the traded between the Eest and the 7&&3 totally cut downG (bsolutely not. &oviet demand for Eestern technologies and machinery was even higher than ever/ the industrialization was full-pelt. Aut now the Eest was e,pecting only one mean of payment/ the &oviet grainsP %*he curiosity of this claim is emphasized by the fact that by that time the currencies of the most agrarian countries were significantly devaluated and the demand for grains on world market was cut C<-B<MP' *he &talinOs government was faced with a choice/ either to give up restoring industry, so capitulating to the Eest, or continue industrialising, leading to a dreadful internal crisis. If the Aolsheviks took grain away from the peasants, there was the very great probability of a famine which, in turn, might lead to internal unrest and removal from power. &o no matter what &talin chose, the Eest would remain victorious. &talin and his entourage decided to force their way through and stop at nothing. The %o,ernment -olle-te' %rain an' sent it to the $est& /*t not to star,e 0art of a -o*ntr!4s 0o0*lation to 'eath& /*t /e-a*se there )as no other )a! it -o*l' 0a! for the s*00l! of e+*i0ment( (ll of &talinOs hopes were on a new harvest. It turned out to be a small one, however, since the country was struck by a drought. *he 7&&3 was unable to buy food in e,change for gold %the gold blockade' or currency %as a result of the embargo there was none'. (ttempts were urgently made to get supplies of grain from @ersia, where they had agreed to accept gold. *he authorities did not have time, however, as a catastrophe was already underway.

Famine ;ictims, Nuban, !"# et)een 1932 an' 1933& tho*san's an' tho*san's of 0eo0le 'ie' an' it )as onl! after this that the $est )as on-e a%ain rene)e' to a--e0t oil& tim/er an' 0re-io*s metals from the So,iets( In >ctober #<<5, the +uropean @arliament recognised the =olodomor in the 7kraine as a crime against humanity. *he guilty was put on the W&talinist 7&&3O. =owever, the report by the +uropean @arliament did not provide answers to two Kuestions/ X why did the capitalists behave so HstrangelyI, refusing to accept &talinOs goldG X why did they only want to receive grain from the 7&&3 as paymentG *here is neither truth nor logic in the +uropean @arliamentOs reports. *he truth is that in !"1, grain e,ports from the 7&&3 completely stopped. Ay order of the &oviet governmentD

The famine of 1932533& )hi-h )as -aref*ll! or%ani6e' /! the $est& 'i' not ha,e the 'esire' effe-t: the olshe,i.s remaine' in 0o)er( *hey continued industrializing. +conomic measures had no effect V &talin was restoring the country at any price. >nly military measures remained. (nd e,actly in !"" (dolf =itler, who had openly written about his e,pansionist aims in the vast 3ussian plains, came to power in 6ermanyD 7RE#IOUS E7ISODES +pisode !. =ow the Aritish H)iberatedI 6reece +pisode 5. *he 6reat >dd Ear +pisode B. Aritain and France @lanned to (ssault &oviet 7nion in !1< +pisode 2. )eon *rotsky, Father of 6erman -azism +pisode C. Eho paid for Eorld Ear IIG +pisode 1. Eho ignited First Eorld EarG +pisode ". (ssassination in &araLevo +pisode #. *he 7& Federal 3eserve +pisode . Aank of +ngland