Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933

Abstract

Until recently both scholarly and popular discussions of the catastrophic famine in the Soviet Union in 1931-1933 invariably have described it as an artificial or ''manmade" famine. Certain well-known scholars have dominated this discussion, expressing two main interpretations of the famine. A Ukrainian nationalist interpretation holds that the Soviet regime, and specifically losif Stalin, intentionally imposed the famine to suppress the nationalist aspirations of Ukraine and Ukrainians; revisionists argue that the leadership imposed the famine to suppress more widespread peasant resistance to collectivization. According to these views, a natural disaster that could have caused a famine did not take place in those years.

Mass Repression and Political Loyalty: Evidence from Stalin’s ‘Terror by Hunger’

“…The most common interpretation is that Holodomor was "terror by hunger" (Conquest, 1987, 224), "state aggression" (Applebaum, 2017) and "clearly premeditated mass murder" (Snyder, 2010, 42). Others view it as an unintended by-product of Stalin's economic policies (Kotkin, 2017;Naumenko, 2017), precipitated by natural factors like adverse weather and crop infestation (Davies and Wheatcroft, 1996;Tauger, 2001). For our purposes, the key question is not whether the Soviet government actually intended to starve millions of Ukrainians to death, but how the government responded to food shortages -intentionally or not -and how the population interpreted the government's motives and causes of their plight.…”

Making Famine History

“…Sixth, the authorities engaged in famine relief to a greater extent than previously thought (Tauger 2001;Davies and Wheatcroft 2004). Far too late, they adjusted planned procurements in the worst affected regions downwards, and relaxed restrictions on private trade.…”

“…27 Davies and Wheatcroft (2004) and Tauger (1998Tauger ( , 2001 find evidence for intent lacking but blame Stalin and his henchmen for prioritizing the balance of payments 28 and fast-track industrialization over preventing mass deaths. Without collectivization and excessive grain procurements, and the associated repression through the Gulag system, the famine would have been much less severe (Khlevniuk 2004).…”

“…29 Third, there was a FAD dimension: the grain harvests of both 1931 and 1932 were genuinely poor. Davies and Wheatcroft blame this mainly on collectivization and excessive procurements, while Tauger places more stress on adverse weather conditions and plant diseases (Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft 1994;Davies and Wheatcroft 2004;Tauger 1998Tauger , 2001Tauger , 2004. Grain procurements were lower in 1932-33 than in any year after 1929-30 (Davies, Harrison, and Wheatcroft 1994;Tauger 2004 28 Grain exports in 1932-33 totalled 1.6 million tons, i.e., about 9 percent of procurements and 3 percent of output.…”

TOWARDS EXPLAINING SOVIET FAMINE OF 1931–3: POLITICAL AND NATURAL FACTORS IN PERSPECTIVE1

“…23 Recent reassessments of this history by the American Mark Tauger not only does the profession a great disservice by describing the advocates of a political interpretation as the dominant academic interpretation, but further confuses the situation by arguing that the famine was largely accidental, and a result of natural factors. 24 A new rendition of the classical argument, that sees errant policy and peasant resistance to it as the main factors, has been made by D'Ann Penner. 25 Below, I will briefly consider the views of those who thought the famine was deliberately caused, i.e.…”