Russian famine of 1921 - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

that occurred in Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. The famine, which killed an estimated 10 million, affected mostly

1921-1922 Famine in Tatarstan

The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a result of war communism policy, realized in Tatar ASSR as well as elsewhere in the USSR. It started in autumn 1921. More than 2,000,000 peasants starved, particularly in Arsk, Sviyazhsk, Mamadysh, Menzelinsk, Spassk, Tetyushi and Chelny kantons.At the end of...

the Volga-Ural region.

The famine resulted from the combined effect of economic disturbance, which already started during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

and continued through the disturbances of the Russian Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

and Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

with its policy of War Communism

War communism

War communism or military communism was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War, from 1918 to 1921...

, especially prodrazvyorstka

Prodrazvyorstka

Prodrazvyorstka , translated as food apportionment or surplus appropriation system, was a governmental program in Russia which obliged peasantry to surrender the surpluses of almost any kind of agricultural produce for a fixed price...

. One of Russia's intermittent droughts

Famines in Russia and USSR

Droughts and famines in Russia and the USSR tended to occur on a fairly regular basis, with famine occurring every 10–13 years and droughts every 5–7 years...

that occurred in 1921 aggravated the situation to the level of the national catastrophe. Hunger was so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten. At one point, relief agencies had to give grain

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved.

Origins of the catastrophe

Before the famine began, Russia had suffered six and a half years of the First World War and the Civil Wars of 1918-20, many of the conflicts fought inside Russia.

Before the famine, all sides in the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

s of 1918-20 — the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities — had provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. According to the official Bolshevik position, which is still maintained by some modern Marxists, the rich peasants (kulak

Kulak

Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...

s) withheld their surplus grain in order to preserve their lives; statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies passed through the black market. The Bolsheviks believed that peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism

The Black Book of Communism

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...

states that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for this "sabotage," leading to widespread peasant revolts. In 1920, Lenin had ordered increased emphasis on food requisitioning from the peasantry.

Aid from outside Russia was rejected. The American Relief Administration

American Relief Administration

American Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....

(ARA), which Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

had formed to help the starvation of World War I

World War I

, had offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n railway network and hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.

Lenin was eventually convinced — by this famine, the Kronstadt rebellion

Kronstadt rebellion

The Kronstadt rebellion was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War...

, large scale peasant uprisings such as the Tambov rebellion

Tambov Rebellion

The Tambov Rebellion which occurred between 1920 and 1921 was one of the largest and best-organized peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War. The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and part of the Voronezh Oblast, less than...

, and the failure of a German general strike

General strike

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

— to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy

New Economic Policy

The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...

on March 15, 1921. The famine also helped produce an opening to the West: Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time; fortunately, war relief was no longer required in Western Europe, and the ARA had an organization set up in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, relieving the Polish famine which had begun in the winter of 1919-20.

The international relief effort

Although no official request for aid was issued, a committee of well-known people without obvious party affiliations was allowed to set up an appeal for assistance. In July 1921 the writer Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

published an appeal to the outside world, claiming that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. At a conference in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

on 15 August organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross

International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...

and the League of Red Cross Societies, the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICCR) was set up with Dr Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...

as its High Commissioner. The main participants were Hoover's American Relief Administration

American Relief Administration

American Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....

, along with other bodies such as the American Friends Service Committee

American Friends Service Committee

The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...

and the International Save the Children Union

International Save the Children Union

The International Save the Children Union was a Geneva-based international organisation of children's welfare organisations founded in 1920 by Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton, who had earlier founded Save the Children in the UK...

, which had the British Save the Children Fund

Save the Children

Save the Children is an internationally active non-governmental organization that enforces children's rights, provides relief and helps support children in developing countries...

as the major contributor.

Nansen headed to Moscow, where he signed an agreement with Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin

Georgy Chicherin

Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin was a Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from March 1918 to 1930.-Childhood and early career:...

that left the ICCR in full control of its operations. At the same time, fundraising for the famine relief operation began in earnest in Britain, with all the elements of a modern emergency relief operation — full-page newspaper advertisements, local collections, and a fundraising film shot in the famine area. By September, a ship had been despatched from London carrying 600 tons of supplies. The first feeding centre was opened in October in Saratov.

The ICCR managed to feed around ten million people, with the overwhelming bulk coming from the ARA, funded by the US Congress; the International Save the Children Union, by comparison, managed to feed 375,000 at the height of the operation. The operation was hazardous — several workers died of cholera — and was not without its critics, including the London Daily Express

Daily Express

The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...

, which first denied the severity of the famine, and then argued that the money would better be spent on poverty in the United Kingdom.

Throughout 1922 and 1923, as famine was still widespread and the ARA was still providing relief supplies, grain was exported by the Soviet government to raise funds for the revival of industry; this seriously endangered Western support for relief, and was one instance of a long-standing Soviet policy of valuing development above the lives of the peasantry. The new Soviet government insisted that if the AYA suspended relief, the ARA arrange a foreign loan for them of about $10,000,000 1923 dollars; the ARA was unable to do this, and continued to ship in food past the grain being sold abroad.

Death toll

François Furet

-Biography:Born in Paris on 27 March 1927, into a wealthy family, François Furet was a brilliant student who graduated from the Sorbonne with the highest honors and soon decided on a life of research, teaching and writing. He received his education at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and at the faculty...

estimated there were 5 million deaths in the famine; for comparison, the worst crop failure of late Tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. That failure followed years of normal and bumper harvests, with the resulting buildup of reserves; the harvest of 1888 had been "excellent beyond even the more optimistic hopes". Also, that was in a time of peace, international commerce, and good order; there had not been war throughout Russia as there was from 1914 to 1920.

Political uses

The Russian famine of 1921 came at the end of six and a half years of unrest and violence (first World War I, then the two Russian revolutions of 1917, then the Russian Civil War). Many different political and military factions were involved in those events, and most of them have been accused by their enemies of having contributed to, or even bearing sole responsibility for, the famine.

The Communist government also mounted an attack against a resistant Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

: churches were stripped to provide for the relief of the famine victims, after a refusal by Patriarch Tikhon to sell off church valuables to raise needed funds to feed famine victims. It has, however, been argued by some historians, including Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes

Richard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...

, that the famine was only used as an excuse for the Bolshevik leadership to go after the Orthodox Church, which held significant sway over much of the peasant populace.

Origins of the catastrophe

The international relief effort

Death toll

Political uses

See also

Footnotes