Russian famine of 1921–1922

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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 that occurred in Bolshevik Russia. The famine, which killed an estimated 5 million, affected mostly the Volga-Ural region.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The famine resulted from the combined effect of economic disturbance, which had already started during World War I, and continued through the disturbances of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War with its policy of War Communism, especially prodrazvyorstka. One of Russia's intermittent droughts 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 to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved.

History of the famine

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.^[1]

Before the famine, all sides in the Russian Civil Wars 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 (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain in order to preserve their lives;^[4] statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies passed through the black market.^[5] The Bolsheviks believed that peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism claims 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 (ARA), which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of World War I, had offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.^[2]

Lenin was eventually convinced — by this famine, the Kronstadt rebellion, large scale peasant uprisings such as the Tambov rebellion, and the failure of a German general strike — to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy 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, relieving the Polish famine which had begun in the winter of 1919-20.

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 published an appeal to the outside world, claiming that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. At a conference in Geneva on 15 August organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies, the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR) was set up with Dr Fridtjof Nansen as its High Commissioner. The main participants were Hoover's American Relief Administration, along with other bodies such as the American Friends Service Committee and the International Save the Children Union, which had the British Save the Children Fund as the major contributor.^[6]

Nansen headed to Moscow, where he signed an agreement with Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin that left the ICRR 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 ICRR managed to feed around ten million people, with the 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, which first denied the severity of the famine, and then argued that the money would better be spent on poverty in the United Kingdom.^[3]

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.^[7]

Death toll

François Furet estimated there were 5 million deaths in the famine;^[4] for comparison, the worst crop failure of late Tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.^[8] 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".^[5] 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: 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, 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.^[9]

Footnotes

^ World's worst natural disasters since 1900
^ Hoover Institution — Hoover Digest — Food as a Weapon
^ The German Colonies on the Volga River — Famine Years
^ An exchange of letters on the BBC documentary Lenin’s Secret Files
^ Carr, E.H., 1966, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Part 2, p.233, Chase, W.J., 1987, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labour and Life in Moscow 1918-1929 pp.26-7, and Nove, A. 1982, An Economic History of the USSR, p.62, cited in Flewers, Paul. "War Communism in Retrospect".
^ Famine in Russia: the hidden horrors of 1921
^ Michael Ellman, Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited Europe-Asia Studies, Routledge. Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 663-693. PDF file; Roman Serbyn: "The Famine of 1921-22", in Famine in the Ukraine, 1932-33 (Edmonton, 1986, pp. 174-78.
^ Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919–1924, London 1994, p. 413
^ Pipes, Richard (2004). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.

Kennan, George Frost: Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston (1961) Particularly pp.^ 141-150, 168, 179-185. Default reference for the historical and aftermath sections. ^
- Kennan: The Decline Of Bismarck's European Order : Franco-Russian Relations, 1875-1890 Princeton (1979) p. 387. Harvest of 1888. ^
Fromkin, David: Peace to End All Peace (1989 hc) p. 360 (on Tsarist corruption and the closure of the Dardanelles). ^
François Furet: Passing of an Illusion. (1999 tr. of 1995 orig.) on total deaths. ^
Breen, Rodney (1994). "Saving Enemy Children: Save the Children's Russian Relief Organisation, 1921-1923". Disasters 18 (3), 221-237. On the international relief effort; entire section. ^
Black Book of Communism 92-97; 116-21 Grain seizures and terror. ^
Trotsky, Leon My Life (1930) Chapter 38 His advice to Lenin. ^
Alexander N. Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002 ISBN 0300087608 pg 155-156 ^
Richard Pipes. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0679761845 pg 352 ^

[1] World's worst natural disasters since 1900

[2] Hoover Institution — Hoover Digest — Food as a Weapon

[3] The German Colonies on the Volga River — Famine Years

[4] An exchange of letters on the BBC documentary Lenin’s Secret Files

[5] Carr, E.H., 1966, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Part 2, p.233, Chase, W.J., 1987, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labour and Life in Moscow 1918-1929 pp.26-7, and Nove, A. 1982, An Economic History of the USSR, p.62, cited in Flewers, Paul. "War Communism in Retrospect".

[6] Famine in Russia: the hidden horrors of 1921

[Ellman-7] Michael Ellman, Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited Europe-Asia Studies, Routledge. Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 663-693. PDF file; Roman Serbyn: "The Famine of 1921-22", in Famine in the Ukraine, 1932-33 (Edmonton, 1986, pp. 174-78.

[8] Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919–1924, London 1994, p. 413

[9] Pipes, Richard (2004). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.

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