A Soviet poster from 1921 (Russian: Помни о Голодающих!, lit. 'Remember Those Who Starve!')
Throughout Russian history famines and droughts
have been a common feature, often resulting in humanitarian crises
traceable to political or economic instability, poor policy,
environmental issues and war. Droughts and famines in the Russian Empire tended to occur fairly regularly, with famine occurring every 10–13 years and droughts
every five to seven years. Golubev and Dronin distinguish three types
of drought according to productive areas vulnerable to droughts: Central
(the Volgabasin, North Caucasus and the Central Chernozem Region), Southern (Volga and Volga-Vyatka area, the Ural region, and Ukraine), and Eastern (steppe and forest-steppe belts in Western and Eastern Siberia, and Kazakhstan).
Pre-1900 droughts and famines
In the 17th century, Russia experienced the famine of 1601–1603,
as a proportion of the population, believed to be its worst as it may
have killed 2 million people (1/3 of the population). Other major
famines include the Great Famine of 1315–17, which affected much of Europe including part of Russia as well as the Baltic states. The Nikonian chronicle, written between 1127 and 1303, recorded no less than eleven famine years during that period. One of the most serious crises before 1900 was the famine of 1891–1892,
which killed between 375,000 and 500,000 people, mainly due to
famine-related diseases. Causes included a large Autumn drought
resulting in crop failures. Attempts by the government to alleviate the
situation generally failed which may have contributed to a lack of faith
in the Czarist regime and later political instability. In 1899, the Volga area, especially Samara, suffered starvation, typhus and scurvy, which depleted Red Cross aid.
List of post-1900 droughts and famines
Starving man, c. 1921
Three children who are dead from starvation, 1921
Starving children in 1922
The Golubev and Dronin report gives the following table of the major droughts in Russia between 1900 and 2000.
Central: 1920, 1924, 1936, 1946, 1984.
Southern: 1901, 1906, 1921, 1939, 1948, 1995.
Eastern: 1911, 1931, 1991.
1900s
There was a famine in Russia in 1901-1902 (in which 49 gubernias were starving) and in 1906-1908 (starved from 19 to 29 gubernias)
The failed Revolution of 1905 likely distorted output and restricted food availability.
1910s
During the Russian Revolution and following civil war
there was a decline in total agricultural output. Measured in millions
of tons the 1920 grain harvest was only 46.1, compared to 80.1 in 1913.
By 1926 it had almost returned to pre-war levels reaching 76.8.
At its peak, the ARA employed 300 Americans, more than 120,000
Russians and fed 10.5 million people daily. Its Russian operations were
headed by Col. William N. Haskell. The Medical Division of the ARA functioned from November 1921 to June 1923 and helped overcome the typhus epidemic then ravaging Russia. The ARA's famine relief operations ran in parallel with much smaller Mennonite, Jewish and Quaker famine relief operations in Russia.
The ARA's operations in Russia were shut down on June 15, 1923, after it was discovered that Russia renewed the export of grain.
1930s
Areas of most disastrous Soviet famine of 1932–1933 marked with black
The second major Soviet famine happened during the initial push for collectivization during the 30s. Major causes include the 1932–33 confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities which contributed to the famine and affected more than forty million people, especially in the south on the Don and Kuban areas and in Ukraine, where by various estimates millions starved to death or died due to famine related illness (the event known as Holodomor).
The famine was perhaps most severe in Kazakhstan where the semi-nomadic
pastoralists' traditional way of life was most disturbed by Soviet
agricultural ambitions.
There is still debate over whether or not Holodomor was a massive failure of policy or a deliberate act of genocide. Robert Conquest
held the view that the famine was not intentionally inflicted by
Stalin, but "with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it,
but put “Soviet interest” other than feeding the starving first—thus
consciously abetting it".
Michael Ellman's analysis of the famine found that "there is some
evidence that in 1930-33 ... Stalin also used starvation in his war
against the peasants", which he calls a "conscious policy of
starvation", but concludes that there were several factors, primarily
focusing on the leadership's culpability in continuing to prioritize
collectivization and industrialization over preventing mass death,
due to their Leninist stance of regarding starvation "as a necessary
cost of the progressive policies of industrialisation and the building
of socialism", and thus did not "perceive the famine as a humanitarian
catastrophe requiring a major effort to relieve distress and hence made
only limited relief efforts."
Similarly, Mark Tauger concludes that the famine was not intentional genocide but the result of failed economic policy:
Although
the low 1932 harvest may have been a mitigating circumstance, the
regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the
Soviet population in the early 1930s. The data presented here provide a
more precise measure of the consequences 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. They also, however, indicate that the famine was real, the
result of a failure of economic policy, of the "revolution from above,"
rather than of a "successful" nationality policy against Ukrainians or
other ethnic groups.
One demographic retrojection suggests a figure of 2.5 million famine
deaths for Soviet Ukraine and Kuban region. This is too close to the
recorded figure of excess deaths, which is about 2.4 million. The latter
figure must be substantially low, since many deaths were not recorded.
Another demographic calculation, carried out on behalf of the
authorities of independent Ukraine, provides the figure of 3.9 million
dead. The truth is probably in between these numbers, where most of the
estimates of respectable scholars can be found. It seems reasonable to
propose a figure of approximately 3.3 million deaths by starvation and
hunger-related disease in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933.
The demographic impact of the famine of 1932–1933 was multifold. In
addition to direct and indirect deaths associated with the famine, there
were significant internal migrations of Soviet citizens, often fleeing
famine-ridden regions. A sudden decline in birthrates permanently
"scarred" the long-term population growth of the Soviet Union in a way
similar to, although not as severe, as that of World War 2.
Estimates of Soviet deaths attributable to the 1932–1933 famine vary wildly, but are typically given in the range of millions.
Vallin et al. estimated that the disasters of the decade culminated in a
dramatic fall in fertility and a rise in mortality. Their estimates
suggest that total losses can be put at about 4.6 million, 0.9 million
of which was due to forced migration, 1 million to a deficit in births,
and 2.6 million to exceptional mortality.
The long-term demographic consequences of collectivization and the
Second World War meant that the Soviet Union's 1989 population was 288
million rather than 315 million, 9% lower than it otherwise would have
been. In addition to the deaths, the famine resulted in massive population movements, as about 300,000 Kazakhnomads fled to China, Iran, Mongolia and Afghanistan during the famine.
Although famines were taking place in various parts of the USSR in 1932–1933, for example in Kazakhstan, parts of Russia and the Volga German Republic, the name Holodomor is specifically applied to the events that took place in territories populated by Ukrainians and also North Caucasian Kazakhs.
The legacy of Holodomor remains a sensitive and controversial issue in contemporary Ukraine where it is regarded as an act of genocide by the government and is generally remembered as one of the greatest tragedies in the nation's history.
The issue of Holodomor being an intentional act of genocide or not has
often been a subject of dispute between the Russian Federation and
Ukrainian government. The modern Russian government has generally
attempted to disassociate and downplay any links between itself and the
famine.
1940s
During the Siege of Leningrad
by Nazi Germany, as many as one million people died while many more
went hungry or starved but survived. Germans tried to starve out
Leningrad in order to break its resistance. Starvation was one of the
primary causes of death as the food supply was cut off and strict
rationing was enforced. Animals in the city were slaughtered and eaten.
Instances of cannibalism were reported.
The last major famine in the USSR happened mainly in 1947 as a cumulative effect of consequences of collectivization, war damage, the severe drought
in 1946 in over 50 percent of the grain-productive zone of the country
and government social policy and mismanagement of grain reserves. The
regions primarily affected were Moldova and South Eastern Ukraine. In Ukraine, between 100,000 and one million people may have perished.
In Moldova, according to Soviet officials, the famine claimed the lives
of more than 150,000 people, while historians estimate that this figure
reaches at least 250,000-300,000 people.
1947–1991
There were no famines after 1947. The drought of 1963 caused panic slaughtering of livestock, but there was no risk of famine. After that year the Soviet Union started importing feedgrains for its livestock in increasing amounts.
Post-Soviet Russia
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been occasional issues with hunger and food security in Russia. In 1992 there was a notable decline in calorie intake within the Russian Federation. Both Russia and Ukraine have been subject to a series of severe droughts from July 2010 to 2015. The 2010 drought saw wheat production fall by 20% in Russia and subsequently resulted in a temporary ban on grain exports.
The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomór, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmor]; derived from морити голодом, moryty holodom, 'to kill by starvation'), also known as the Terror-Famine and sometimes referred to as the Great Famine, was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The term Holodomor emphasises the famine's man-made
and intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation
of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement. As
part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933
which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions
of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians,
died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Current scholarship estimates a range of 4 to 7 million victims, with more precise estimates ranging from 3.3 to 7.5 million. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv
in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10
million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1
million birth deficits.
Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths. Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Others suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of Soviet industrialisation.
Etymology
The word Holodomor literally translated from Ukrainian means "death by hunger", "killing by hunger, killing by starvation", or sometimes "murder by hunger or starvation." It is a compound of the Ukrainian words holod, 'hunger'; and mor, 'plague'. The expression moryty holodom means "to inflict death by hunger." The Ukrainian verb moryty (морити) means "to poison, to drive to exhaustion, or to torment." The perfective form of moryty is zamoryty, 'kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work.' In English, the Holodomor has also been referred to as the artificial famine, famine genocide, terror famine, and terror-genocide.
The word was used in print in the 1930s in Ukrainian diaspora publications in Czechoslovakia as Haladamor and by Ukrainian immigrant organisations in the United States and Canada by 1978; in the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a constituent republic, any references to the famine were dismissed as anti-Soviet propaganda, even after de-Stalinization
in 1956, until the declassification and publication of historical
documents in the late 1980s made continued denial of the catastrophe
unsustainable.
Discussion of the Holodomor became possible as part of the glasnost policy of openness. In Ukraine, the first official use of the word was a December 1987 speech by Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on the occasion of the republic's 17th anniversary.
An early public usage in the Soviet Union was in a February 1988 speech
by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the
party organisation of the Kyiv branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in Ukraine. The term may have first appeared in print in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1988, when his article on the topic was published. Holodomor
is now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian
language, published in 2004, described as "artificial hunger, organised
on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country's population."
According to Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole and Kai Struve,
there is a competition among victims in constructing an "Ukrainian
Holocaust", stating that since the 1990s the term Holodomor has been adopted by anti-Communists due to its similarity to Holocaust in an attempt to promote the narrative that the Communists killed 10 million Ukrainians while the Nazis only killed 6 million Jews. They stated that the term Holodomor
was "introduced and popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North
America before Ukraine became independent" and that "the term
'Holocaust' is not explained at all." According to them, this has been
used to create a "victimized national narrative" and "compete with the
Jewish narrative in order to obscure the 'dark sides' of Ukraine's
national history and to counter accusations that their fathers
collaborated with the Germans."
The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (a part of the Ukrainian SSR at the time) in spring 1932 and from February to July 1933,
with the most victims recorded in spring 1933. The consequences are
evident in demographic statistics: between 1926 and 1939, the Ukrainian population increased by only 6.6%, whereas Russia and Belarus grew by 16.9% and 11.7%, respectively.
From the 1932 harvest, Soviet authorities were able to procure
only 4.3 million tons as compared with 7.2 million tons obtained from
the 1931 harvest. Rations in towns were drastically cut back, and in winter 1932–33 and spring 1933, people in many urban areas starved. Urban workers were supplied by a rationing
system and therefore could occasionally assist their starving relatives
in the countryside, but rations were gradually cut; and by spring 1933,
urban residents also faced starvation. At the same time, workers were
shown agitprop
movies depicting peasants as counterrevolutionaries who hid grain and
potatoes at a time when workers, who were constructing the "bright
future" of socialism, were starving.
The first reports of mass malnutrition and deaths from starvation emerged from two urban areas of the city of Uman, reported in January 1933 by Vinnytsia and Kyivoblasts.
By mid-January 1933, there were reports about mass "difficulties" with
food in urban areas, which had been undersupplied through the rationing
system, and deaths from starvation among people who were refused
rations, according to the December 1932 decree of the Central Committee
of the Ukrainian Communist Party. By the beginning of February 1933,
according to reports from local authorities and Ukrainian GPU (secret police), the most affected area was Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which also suffered from epidemics of typhus and malaria. Odessa
and Kyiv oblasts were second and third, respectively. By mid-March,
most of the reports of starvation originated from Kyiv Oblast.
By mid-April 1933, Kharkiv Oblast
reached the top of the most affected list, while Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk,
Odessa, Vinnytsia, and Donetsk oblasts, and Moldavian SSR were next on
the list. Reports about mass deaths from starvation, dated mid-May
through the beginning of June 1933, originated from raions in Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts. The "less affected" list noted Chernihiv Oblast
and northern parts of Kyiv and Vinnytsia oblasts. The Central Committee
of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree of 8 February 1933 said no hunger cases
should have remained untreated. Local authorities had to submit reports
about the numbers suffering from hunger, the reasons for hunger, number
of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from local sources, and
centrally provided food aid required. The GPU managed parallel reporting
and food assistance in the Ukrainian SSR. Many regional reports and
most of the central summary reports are available from present-day
central and regional Ukrainian archives. The Ukrainian Weekly, which was tracking the situation in 1933, reported the difficulties in communications and the appalling situation in Ukraine.
Cannibalism
Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor:
Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A
woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a
cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my
letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to
steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.
The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: "To eat your own children is a barbarian act." More than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.
The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political
debate. Some scholars suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence
of the economic problems associated with changes implemented during the
period of Soviet industrialisation. There are also those who blame a systematic set of policies perpetrated by the Soviet government under Stalin designed to exterminate the Ukrainians.
According to some scholars collectivization policies of the Soviet Union
and lack of favored industries were primary contributors to famine
mortality (52% of excess deaths), and some evidence shows there was
discrimination against ethnic Ukrainians and Germans. The collectivisation policy
was enforced, entailing extreme crisis and contributing to the famine.
In 1929–30, peasants were induced to transfer land and livestock to
state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-labourers for payment
in kind. Collectivization in the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian SSR, was not popular among the peasantry and forced collectivisation led to numerous peasant revolts. The first five-year plan changed the output expected from Ukrainian farms, from the familiar crop of grain to unfamiliar crops like sugar beets and cotton.
In addition, the situation was exacerbated by poor administration of
the plan and the lack of relevant general management. Significant
amounts of grain remained unharvested, and—even when harvested—a
significant percentage was lost during processing, transportation, or
storage.
In the summer of 1930, the government instituted a program of
food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. Food theft
was made punishable by death or 10 years imprisonment. Food exports continued during the famine, albeit at a reduced rate.
It has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the man-made famine to attack Ukrainian nationalism, and thus it could fall under the legal definition of genocide.
For example, special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in
and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933.
According to Snyder, "each of them may seem like an anodyne administrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill."
Under the collectivism policy, for example, farmers were not only
deprived of their properties but a large swath of these were also exiled
in Siberia with no means of survival.
Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine
were ordered shot. There were foreign individuals who witnessed this
atrocity or its effects. For example, there was the account of Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British journalist, which described the peak years of Holodomor in these words:
At
every [train] station there was a crowd of peasants in rags, offering
icons and linen in exchange for a loaf of bread. The women were lifting
up their infants to the compartment windows—infants pitiful and
terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads
lolling on thin necks.
Aftermath and immediate reception
Despite attempts by the Soviet authorities to hide the scale of the
disaster, it became known abroad thanks to the publications of
journalists Gareth Jones, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ewald Ammende, Rhea Clyman, photographs made by engineer Alexander Wienerberger, etc. In response, the Soviet Union launched a counter-propaganda campaign, whereby celebrities such as Bernard Shaw, Edouard Herriot, and several others traveled to the USSR, and then made statements that they had not seen hunger.
During the German occupation of Ukraine,
the occupation authorities allowed the publication of articles in local
newspapers about Holodomor and other communist crimes, but they also
did not want to pay too much attention to this issue in order to avoid
stirring national sentiment. In 1942, Stepan Sosnovy, an agronomist in Kharkiv, published a comprehensive statistical research on the number of Holodomor casualties, based on documents from Soviet archives.
In the post-war period, the Ukrainian diaspora
disseminated information about the Holodomor in Europe and North
America. At first, the public attitude was rather cautious, as the
information came from people who had lived in the occupied territories,
but it gradually changed in the 1950s. Scientific study of the
Holodomor, based on the growing number of memoirs published by
survivors, began in the 1950s.
Map
of depopulation of Ukraine and southern Russia from 1929 to 1933, with
territories which were not part of the Soviet state during the famine in
white
The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had taken place. The NKVD (and later KGB)
controlled the archives for the Holodomor period and made relevant
records available very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains
unknown and is probably impossible to estimate, even within a margin of
error of a hundred thousand.
However, by the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or
otherwise died unnaturally in the Soviet republics. In 2001, based on a
range of official demographic data, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft
noted that official death statistics for this period were
systematically repressed and showed that that many deaths were
un-registered.
Estimates vary in their coverage, with some using the 1933 Ukraine
borders, some of the current borders, and some counting ethnic
Ukrainians. Some extrapolate
on the basis of deaths in a given area, while others use archival data.
Some historians question the accuracy of Soviet censuses, as they may
reflect Soviet propaganda. Other estimates come from recorded discussions between world leaders. In an August 1942 conversation, Stalin gave Winston Churchill his estimates of the number of "kulaks" who were repressed for resisting collectivisation
as 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather than only in Ukraine.
When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only those
who lost their lives but also those who were forcibly deported. Additionally, there are variations in opinion as to whether deaths in Gulag labour camps
should be counted or only those who starved to death at home. Estimates
before archival opening varied widely such as: 2.5 million (Volodymyr Kubiyovych); 4.8 million (Vasyl Hryshko); and 5 million (Robert Conquest).
In the 1980s, dissident demographer and historian Alexander P. Babyonyshev (writing as Sergei Maksudov) estimated officially non-accounted child mortality in 1933 by 150,000,
leading to a calculation that the number of births for 1933 should be
increased from 471,000 to 621,000 (down from 1,184,000 in 1927).
Given the decreasing birth rates and assuming the natural mortality
rates in 1933 to be equal to the average annual mortality rate in
1927–1930 (524,000 per year), a natural population growth for 1933 would
have been 97,000 (as opposed to the recorded decrease of 1,379,000).
This was five times less than the growth in the previous three years
(1927–1930). Straight-line extrapolation of population (continuation of
the previous net change) between census takings in 1927 and 1936 would
have been +4.043 million, which compares to a recorded -538,000 change.
Overall change in birth and death amounts to 4.581 million fewer people
but whether through factors of choice, disease or starvation will never
be fully known.
In the 2000s, there were debates among historians and in civil
society about the number of deaths as Soviet files were released and
tension built between Russia and the Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko. Yushchenko and other Ukrainian politicians described fatalities as in the region of seven to ten million. Yushchenko stated in a speech to the United States Congress that the Holodomor "took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians," while former Canadian Prime MinisterStephen Harper issued a public statement giving the death toll at about 10 million. Some Ukrainian and Western historians use similar figures. Historian David R. Marples gave a figure of 7.5 million in 2007. During an international conference held in Ukraine in 2016, Holodomor 1932–1933 loss of the Ukrainian nation, at the National University of KyivTaras Shevchenko,
it was claimed that during the Holodomor 7 million Ukrainians were
killed, and in total, 10 million people died of starvation across the
USSR.
However, the use of the 7 to 20 million figures has been criticized by historians Timothy D. Snyder and Stephen G. Wheatcroft.
Snyder wrote: "President Viktor Yushchenko does his country a grave
disservice by claiming ten million deaths, thus exaggerating the number
of Ukrainians killed by a factor of three; but it is true that the
famine in Ukraine of 1932–1933 was a result of purposeful political
decisions, and killed about three million people." In an email to Postmedia News,
Wheatcroft wrote: "I find it regrettable that Stephen Harper and other
leading Western politicians are continuing to use such exaggerated
figures for Ukrainian famine mortality" and "[t]here is absolutely no
basis for accepting a figure of 10 million Ukrainians dying as a result
of the famine of 1932–33."In 2001, Wheatfcroft had calculated total population loss (including stillbirth)
across the Union at 10 million and possibly up to 15 million between
1931 and 1934, including 2.8 million (and possibly up to 4.8 million
excess deaths) and 3.7 million (up to 6.7 million) population losses
including birth losses in Ukraine.
Declassified Soviet statistics (in thousands)
Year
Births
Deaths
Natural change
1927
1,184
523
661
1928
1,139
496
643
1929
1,081
539
542
1930
1,023
536
487
1931
975
515
460
1932
782
668
114
1933
471
1,850
−1,379
1934
571
483
88
1935
759
342
417
1936
895
361
534
In 2002, Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky,
using demographic data including those recently unclassified, narrowed
the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of precise
data, 3 million to 3.5 million.
The number of recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death
statistics from Soviet archives is contradictory. The data fail to add
up to the differences between the results of the 1926 Census and the 1937 Census.
Kulchytsky summarized the declassified Soviet statistics as showing a
decrease of 538,000 people in the population of Soviet Ukraine between
1926 census (28,926,000) and 1937 census (28,388,000).
Similarly, Wheatcroft's work from Soviet archives showed that excess
deaths in Ukraine in 1932–1933 numbered a minimum of 1.8 million (2.7
including birth losses): "Depending upon the estimations made concerning
unregistered mortality and natality, these figures could be increased
to a level of 2.8 million to a maximum of 4.8 million excess deaths and
to 3.7 million to a maximum of 6.7 million population losses (including
birth losses)".
A 2002 study by French demographer Jacques Vallin and colleagues utilising some similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, and performing an
analysis with more sophisticated demographic tools with forward
projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward
projection from the 1939 census estimates the number of direct deaths
for 1933 as 2.582 million. This number of deaths does not reflect the
total demographic loss for Ukraine from these events as the fall of the
birth rate during the crisis and the out-migration contribute to the
latter as well. The total population shortfall from the expected value
between 1926 and 1939 estimated by Vallin amounted to 4.566 million. Of
this number, 1.057 million is attributed to the birth deficit, 930,000
to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to the combination of excess
mortality and voluntary out-migration. With the latter assumed to be
negligible, this estimate gives the number of deaths as the result of
the 1933 famine about 2.2 million. According to this study the life expectancy
for those born in 1933 sharply fell to 10.8 years for females and to
7.3 years for males and remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as
commonly expected for the post-crisis peaked in 1935–36.
According to historian Snyder in 2010, the recorded figure of
excess deaths was 2.4 million. However, Snyder claims that this figure
is "substantially low" due to many deaths going unrecorded. Snyder
states that demographic calculations carried out by the Ukrainian
government provide a figure of 3.89 million dead, and opined that the
actual figure is likely between these two figures, approximately 3.3
million deaths to starvation and disease related to the starvation in
Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. Snyder also estimates that of the million
people who died in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
from famine at the same time, approximately 200,000 were ethnic
Ukrainians due to Ukrainian-inhabited regions being particularly hard
hit in Russia. As a child, Mikhail Gorbachev, born into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family, experienced the famine in Stavropol, Russia. He recalled in a memoir that "In that terrible year [in 1933] nearly half the population of my native village, Privolnoye, starved to death, including two sisters and one brother of my father."
Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies
concluded that disease was the cause of a large number of deaths: in
1932–1933, there were 1.2 million cases of typhus and 500,000 cases of typhoid fever. Malnourishment increases fatality rates from many diseases, and are not counted by some historians. From 1932 to 1934, the largest rate of increase was recorded for typhus, commonly spread by lice.
In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely
to increase. Gathering numerous refugees at railway stations, on trains
and elsewhere facilitates the spread. In 1933, the number of recorded
cases was 20 times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of
population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher
than in the USSR as a whole. By June 1933, the incidence in Ukraine had
increased to nearly 10 times the January level, and it was much higher
than in the rest of the USSR.
Holodomor, 1933, photograph by Alexander Wienerberger
A
"Red Train" of carts from the "Wave of Proletarian Revolution"
collective farm in the village of Oleksiyivka, Kharkiv oblast in 1932.
"Red Trains" took the first harvest of the season's crop to the
government depots. During the Holodomor, these brigades were part of the
Soviet Government's policy of taking away food from the peasants.
Estimates of the human losses due to famine must account for the numbers involved in migration (including forced resettlement).
According to Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the
population in Ukraine for 1927–1936 period was a loss of 1.343 million
people. Even when the data were collected, the Soviet statistical
institutions acknowledged that the precision was less than for the data
of the natural population change. The total number of deaths in Ukraine
due to unnatural causes for the given ten years was 3.238 million;
accounting for the lack of precision, estimates of the human toll range
from 2.2 million to 3.5 million deaths.
According to Babyonyshev's 1981 estimate, about 81.3% of the famine victims in the Ukrainian SSR were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% Russians, 1.4% Jews and 1.1% were Poles. Many Belarusians, Volga Germans
and other nationalities became victims as well. The Ukrainian rural
population was the hardest hit by the Holodomor. Since the peasantry
constituted a demographic backbone of the Ukrainian nation,
the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years. In an
October 2013 opinion poll (in Ukraine) 38.7% of those polled stated "my
families had people affected by the famine", 39.2% stated they did not
have such relatives, and 22.1% did not know.
There was also migration in to Ukraine as a response to the
famine: in response to the demographic collapse, the Soviet authorities
ordered large-scale resettlements, with over 117,000 peasants from
remote regions of the Soviet Union taking over the deserted farms.
Scholars continue to debate "whether the man-made Soviet famine was a
central act in a campaign of genocide, or whether it was designed to
simply cow Ukrainian peasants into submission, drive them into the
collectives and ensure a steady supply of grain for Soviet
industrialization." Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics and there is no international consensus on whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide.
Scholarly positions are diverse. Raphael Lemkin, James Mace, Norman Naimark, Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum considered the Holodomor a genocide and the intentional result of Stalinist policies. Michael Ellman considers the Holodomor a crime against humanity, but does not use the term genocide. Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde consider the deaths to be primarily due to intentional state policy, not poor harvests.Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen Wheatcroft
reject the notion that Stalin intentionally wanted to kill the
Ukrainians, but exacerbated the situation by enacting bad policies and
ignorance of the problem. In 1991, American historian Mark Tauger considered the Holodomor primarily the result of natural conditions and failed economic policy, not intentional state policy. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn opined on 2 April 2008 in Izvestia that the 1930s famine in the Ukraine was similar to the Russian famine of 1921–22 as both were caused by the ruthless robbery of peasants by Bolshevik grain procurements.
Holodomor denial is the assertion that the 1932–1933 genocide in Soviet Ukraine either did not occur or did occur but was not a premeditated act. Denying the existence of the famine was the Soviet state's position and reflected in both Soviet propaganda and the work of some Western journalists and intellectuals including George Bernard Shaw, Walter Duranty, and Louis Fischer.In the Soviet Union, authorities all but banned discussion of the
famine, and Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky stated the Soviet
government ordered him to falsify his findings and depict the famine as
an unavoidable natural disaster, to absolve the Communist Party and
uphold the legacy of Stalin.
One of the interpretations of The Running Man painting by Kazimir Malevich, also known as Peasant Between a Cross and a Sword, is the artist's indictment of the Great Famine.
"Kasimir Malevich's haunting 'The Running Man' (1933–34), showing a
peasant fleeing across a deserted landscape, is eloquent testimony to
the disaster."
Lazar Kaganovich (left) played a role in enforcing Stalin's policies that led to the Holodomor.
Whether the Holodomor was a genocide or ethnicity-blind, was man-made
or natural, and was intentional or unintentional are issues of
significant modern debate. The event is considered a genocide by Ukraine, a crime against humanity by the European Parliament, and the lower house of parliament of Russia condemned the Soviet regime's "disregard for the lives of people".
On 10 November 2003 at the United Nations,
25 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, and United States signed a
joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the
following preamble:
In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and
children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the
totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine
(Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became
a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard, we note
activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine,
in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.
Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus,
Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result
of civil war and forced collectivisation, leaving deep scars in the
consciousness of future generations.
The Holodomor has been compared to the Irish Famine of 1845-1849 that took place in Ireland under British rule, which has been the subject of similar controversy and debate.
Remembrance
To honour those who perished in the Holodomor, monuments have been
dedicated and public events held annually in Ukraine and worldwide.
Ukraine
Candles and wheat as a symbol of remembrance during the Holodomor Remembrance Day 2013 in Lviv
Since 2006, Ukraine has officially observed a Holodomor Remembrance Day on the fourth Saturday of November.
In 2006, the Holodomor Remembrance Day took place on 25 November.
Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko directed, in Decree No. 868/2006,
that a minute of silence should be observed at 4 o'clock in the
afternoon on that Saturday. The document specified that flags in Ukraine should fly at half-staff
as a sign of mourning. In addition, the decree directed that
entertainment events are to be restricted and television and radio
programming adjusted accordingly.
In 2007, the 74th anniversary of the Holodomor was commemorated in Kyiv for three days on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
As part of the three-day event, from 23 to 25 November, video
testimonies of the communist regime's crimes in Ukraine, and
documentaries by famous domestic and foreign film directors were shown.
In addition, experts and scholars gave lectures on the topic. As well, on 23 November 2007, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a set of two commemorative coins remembering the Holodomor.
As of 2009, Ukrainian schoolchildren take a more extensive course of the history of the Holodomor.
The National Museum "Memorial to Holodomor victims" was erected on the slopes of the Dnieper river in 2008, welcoming its first visitors on 22 November 2008. The ceremony of the memorial's opening was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor.
In an October 2013 opinion poll, 33.7% of Ukrainians fully agreed
and 30.4% rather agreed with the statement "The Holodomor was the
result of actions committed by the Soviet authorities, along with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and was the result of human actions".
In the same poll, 22.9% of those polled fully or partially agreed with
the view that the famine was caused by natural circumstances, but 50.5%
disagreed with that.
Furthermore, 45.4% of respondents believed that the Holodomor was "a
deliberate attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation" and 26.2% rather or
completely disagreed with this.
Canada
The first public monument to the Holodomor was erected and dedicated in 1983 outside City Hall in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada, to mark the 50th anniversary of the famine-genocide. Since
then, the fourth Saturday in November has in many jurisdictions been
marked as the official day of remembrance for people who died as a
result of the 1932–33 Holodomor and political repression.
On 22 November 2008, Ukrainian Canadians marked the beginning of National Holodomor Awareness Week. Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney attended a vigil in Kyiv.
In November 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Holodomor
memorial in Kyiv, although Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did not
join him.
Saskatchewan became the first jurisdiction in North America and
the first province in Canada to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. The Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day Act was introduced in the Saskatchewan Legislature on 6 May 2008, and received royal assent on 14 May 2008.
On 9 April 2009, the Province of Ontario
unanimously passed bill 147, "The Holodomor Memorial Day Act", which
calls for the fourth Saturday in November to be a day of remembrance.
This was the first piece of legislation in the Province's history to be
introduced with Tri-Partisan sponsorship: the joint initiators of the
bill were Dave Levac, MPP for Brant (Liberal Party); Cheri DiNovo, MPP for Parkdale–High Park (NDP); and Frank Klees, MPP for Newmarket–Aurora (PC). MPP Levac was made a chevalier of Ukraine's Order of Merit.
On 2 June 2010, the Province of Quebec unanimously passed bill 390, "Memorial Day Act on the great Ukrainian famine and genocide (the Holodomor)".
On 25 September 2010, a new Holodomor monument was unveiled at St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church, Mississauga,
Ontario, Canada, bearing the inscription "Holodomor: Genocide By Famine
in Ukraine 1932–1933" and a section in Ukrainian bearing mention of the
10 million victims.
On 21 September 2014, a statue entitled "Bitter Memories of Childhood" was unveiled outside the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg to memorialize the Holodomor.
A monument to the Holodomor has been erected on Calgary's Memorial Drive, itself originally designated to honour Canadian servicemen of the First World War. The monument is located in the district of Renfrew near Ukrainian Pioneer Park, which pays tribute to the contributions of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.
On 21 October 2018, a memorial statue was unveiled on Canada Boulevard in Exhibition Place of Toronto. The site provides a place for an annual memorial on the fourth Saturday of November.
Poland
On 16 March 2006, the Senate of the Republic of Poland paid tribute to the victims of the Great Famine and declared it an act of genocide, expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian nation and its efforts to commemorate this crime.
On 22 January 2015, a Holodomor monument was erected in the city of Lublin.
United States
The Ukrainian Weekly reported a meeting taking place on 27 February 1982 in the parish center of the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Great Famine caused by the Soviet authorities. On 20 March 1982, the Ukrainian Weekly also reported a multi-ethnic community meeting that was held on 15 February on the North Shore Drive at the Ukrainian Village
in Chicago to commemorate the famine which took the lives of seven
million Ukrainians. Other events in commemoration were held in other
places around the United States as well.
On 29 May 2008, the city of Baltimore
held a candlelight commemoration for the Holodomor at the War Memorial
Plaza in front of City Hall. This ceremony was part of the larger
international journey of the "International Holodomor Remembrance
Torch", which began in Kyiv and made its way through thirty-three
countries. Twenty-two other US cities were also visited during the tour.
Then-Mayor Sheila Dixon
presided over the ceremony and declared 29 May to be "Ukrainian
Genocide Remembrance Day in Baltimore". She referred to the Holodomor
"among the worst cases of man's inhumanity towards man".
On 2 December 2008, a ceremony was held in Washington, D.C., for the Holodomor Memorial. On 13 November 2009, U.S. PresidentBarack Obama
released a statement on Ukrainian Holodomor Remembrance Day. In this,
he said that "remembering the victims of the man-made catastrophe of
Holodomor provides us an opportunity to reflect upon the plight of all
those who have suffered the consequences of extremism and tyranny around
the world". NSC Spokesman Mike Hammer released a similar statement on 20 November 2010.
In 2011, the American day of remembrance of Holodomor was held on
19 November. The statement released by the White House Press Secretary
reflects on the significance of this date, stating that "in the wake of
this brutal and deliberate attempt to break the will of the people of
Ukraine, Ukrainians showed great courage and resilience. The
establishment of a proud and independent Ukraine twenty years ago shows
the remarkable depth of the Ukrainian people's love of freedom and
independence".
In the 115th Congress, both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives
adopted resolutions commemorating the 85th anniversary of the
Holodomor, "the Soviet Union's manmade famine that it committed against
the people of Ukraine in 1932 and 1933." The Senate Resolution, S. Res. 435 (115th Congress)
was adopted on 3 October 2018 and stated that the U.S. Senate "solemnly
remembers the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and
extends its deepest sympathies to the victims, survivors, and families
of this tragedy." On 11 December 2018, the United States House of
Representatives adopted H. Res. 931 (115th Congress),
a resolution extending the House's "deepest sympathies to the victims
and survivors of the Holodomor of 1932–1933, and their families" and
condemned "the systematic violations of human rights, including the
freedom of self-determination and freedom of speech, of the Ukrainian
people by the Soviet Government."
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: Agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective,
and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized
government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries (including the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries, China and Vietnam), there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy (cooperative-run farms) and sovkhozy (state-run farms).
A small group of farming or herding families living together on a
jointly managed piece of land is one of the most common living
arrangements in all of human history as this has co-existed and competed
with more individualistic forms of ownership as well as state ownership
since the beginnings of agriculture. Private ownership came to
predominate in much of the Western world and is therefore better
studied. The process by which Western Europe's communal land and other
property became private is a fundamental question behind views of
property: namely is it the legacy of historical injustices and crimes? Karl Marx believed that what he called primitive communism (joint ownership) was ended by exploitative means he called primitive accumulation. By contrast, capitalist thinkers say that by the homestead principle whoever is first to work on the land is the rightful owner.
Case studies
Mexico
During the Aztec rule of central Mexico, the country was divided into small territories called calpulli,
which were units of local administration concerned with farming as well
as education and religion. A calpulli consisted of a number of large extended families with a presumed common ancestor, themselves each composed of a number of nuclear families. Each calpulli
owned the land and granted the individual families the right to farm
parts of it each day . When the Spanish conquered Mexico they replaced
this with a system of estates granted by the Spanish crown to Spanish
colonists, as well as the encomienda, a feudal-like right of overlordship colonists were given in particular villages, and the repartimiento or system of indigenous forced labor.
Following the Mexican Revolution,
a new constitution in 1917 abolished any remnant of feudal-like rights
hacienda owners had over common lands and offered the development of ejidos: communal farms formed on land purchased from the large estates by the Mexican government.
Iroquois and Huron of North America
Latter-day Iroquois longhouse housing several hundred people
The Huron had an essentially communal system of land ownership. The French Catholic missionary Gabriel Sagard described the fundamentals. The Huron had "as much land as they need[ed]."
As a result, the Huron could give families their own land and still
have a large amount of excess land owned communally. Any Huron was free
to clear the land and farm on the basis of usufruct.
He maintained possession of the land as long as he continued to
actively cultivate and tend the fields. Once he abandoned the land, it
reverted to communal ownership, and anyone could take it up for
themselves.
While the Huron did seem to have lands designated for the individual,
the significance of this possession may be of little relevance; the
placement of corn storage vessels in the longhouses,
which contained multiple families in one kinship group, suggests the
occupants of a given longhouse held all production in common.
The Iroquois had a similar communal system of land distribution.
The tribe owned all lands but gave out tracts to the different clans
for further distribution among households for cultivation. The land
would be redistributed among the households every few years, and a clan
could request a redistribution of tracts when the Clan Mothers' Council gathered.
Those clans that abused their allocated land or otherwise did not take
care of it would be warned and eventually punished by the Clan Mothers'
Council by having the land redistributed to another clan. Land property was really only the concern of the women, since it was the women's job to cultivate food and not the men's.
The Clan Mothers' Council also reserved certain areas of land to
be worked by the women of all the different clans. Food from such
lands, called kěndiǔ"gwǎ'ge' hodi'yěn'tho, would be used at festivals and large council gatherings.
Russian Empire
The obshchina (Russian: общи́на, IPA: [ɐpˈɕːinə], literally: "commune") or mir (Russian: мир, literally: "society" (one of the meanings)) or Selskoye obshestvo (Russian: сельское общество
("Rural community", official term in the 19th and 20th century) were
peasant communities, as opposed to individual farmsteads, or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word о́бщий, obshchiy (common).
The vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in communal ownership
within a mir community, which acted as a village government and a
cooperative. Arable land was divided into sections based on soil quality
and distance from the village. Each household had the right to claim
one or more strips from each section depending on the number of adults
in the household. The purpose of this allocation was not so much social
(to each according to his needs) as it was practical (that each person
pay his taxes). Strips were periodically re-allocated on the basis of a
census, to ensure equitable share of the land. This was enforced by
the state, which had an interest in the ability of households to pay
their taxes.
As part of the first five-year plan, collectivization was introduced in the Soviet Union by general secretaryJoseph Stalin
in the late 1920s as a way, according to the policies of socialist
leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of
land and labor into large-scale collective farms (kolkhozy). At the same time, Joseph Stalin argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks (farmland owners).
The Soviet government resorted to the execution and mass deportation of defiant kulaks to Siberia in order to implement the plan (see: Dekulakization). The centuries-old system of farming was destroyed in Ukraine.
Some historians believe that forced collectivization was one of the causes of the major famines
throughout the USSR during 1932 and 1933. In 1932–1933, an estimated 11
million people, 3–7 million in Ukraine alone, died from famine after Stalin forced the peasants into collectives (see: Holodomor). It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-collectivization levels.
Collectivization throughout Moldova was not aggressively pursued
until the early 1960s because of the Soviet leadership's focus on a
policy of Russification of Moldavians into the Russian way of life. Much of the collectivization in Moldova had undergone in Transnistria, in Chişinău,
the present-day capital city of Moldova. Most of the directors who
regulated and conducted the process of collectivization were placed by
officials from Moscow.
The efficiency of collective farms in the USSR is debatable. A
Soviet article in March 1975 found that 27% of Soviet agricultural
produce was produced by private farms despite the fact that they only
consisted of less than 1% of arable land (approximately 20 million
acres), making them roughly 40 times more efficient than collective
farms.
Romania
1962 stamp commemorating the "completion" of land collectivization.
In Romania, land collectivization began in 1948 and continued for over more than a decade until its virtual eradication in 1962.
In Romania, force sometimes had to be used to enforce collective
agricultural practices. Collective farming in Romania was an attempt to
implement the USSR's communist blueprint. Unfortunately, these attempts
often fell short. By strictly adhering to this Soviet blueprint, the
implementation of communism in Romania inevitably created dilemmas and
contributions that led to violence. Kligman and Verdery state "The
violence collectivization, emerges, then, less, as an abhoration than as
a product of sociocultural shaping and of deep problems with how the
soviet blueprint came to be implemented... instead of a gradual and
integrated process of moving from one form of society to another,
Romanian society in the Soviet orbit was being completely rearticulated,
a process in which violence was inevitable."
On the other hand, as Kligman and Verdery explain,
"Collectivization brought undeniable benefits to some rural inhabitants,
especially those who had owned little or no land. It freed them from
laboring on the fields of others, and it increased their control over
wages, lending to their daily existence a stability previously unknown
to them."
Bulgaria
Трудово кооперативно земеделско стопанство was the name of collective farms in Bulgaria.
In Hungary,
agricultural collectivization was attempted a number of times between
1948 and 1956 (with disastrous results), until it was finally successful
in the early 1960s under János Kádár. The first serious attempt at collectivization based on Stalinist agricultural policy was undertaken in July 1948. Both economic and direct police pressure were used to coerce peasants to join cooperatives,
but large numbers opted instead to leave their villages. By the early
1950s, only one-quarter of peasants had agreed to join cooperatives.
In the spring of 1955 the drive for collectivization was renewed,
again using physical force to encourage membership, but this second
wave also ended in dismal failure. After the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
the Hungarian regime opted for a more gradual collectivization drive.
The main wave of collectivization occurred between 1959 and 1961, and at
the end of this period more than 95% of agricultural land in Hungary
had become the property of collective farms. In February 1961, the
Central Committee declared that collectivization had been completed.
Czechoslovakia
In Czechoslovakia,
centralized land reforms after World War I allowed for the distribution
of most of the land to peasants and the poor, and created large groups
of relatively well-to-do farmers (though village poor still existed).
These groups showed no support for communist ideals. In 1945,
immediately after World War II, new land reform started with the new socialist government.
The first phase involved a confiscation of properties of Germans,
Hungarians, and collaborators with the Nazi regime in accordance with
the so-called Beneš decrees. The second phase, promulgated by so-called Ďuriš's laws
(after the Communist Minister of Agriculture), in fact meant a complete
revision of the pre-war land reform and tried to reduce maximal private
property to 150 hectares (370 acres) of agricultural land and 250
hectares (620 acres) of any land.
The third and final phase forbade possession of land above 50
hectares (120 acres) for one family. This phase was carried out in April
1948, two months after the Communists took power by force.
Farms started to be collectivized, mostly under the threat of
sanctions. The most obstinate farmers were persecuted and imprisoned.
The most common form of collectivization was agricultural cooperative (in Czech Jednotné zemědělské družstvo, JZD; in Slovak Jednotné roľnícke družstvo,
JRD). The collectivization was implemented in three stages (1949–1952,
1953–1956, 1956–1969) and officially ended with the 1960 implementation
of the constitution establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which made private ownership illegal.
Many early cooperatives collapsed and were recreated again. Their
productivity was low since they provided tiny salaries and no pensions,
and they failed to create a sense of collective ownership; small-scale
pilfering was common, and food became scarce. Seeing the massive outflow
of people from agriculture into cities, the government started to
massively subsidize the cooperatives in order to make the standard of
living of farmers equal to that of city inhabitants; this was the
long-term official policy of the government. Funds, machinery, and
fertilizers were provided; young people from villages were forced to
study agriculture; and students were regularly sent (involuntarily) to
help in cooperatives.
Subsidies and constant pressure destroyed the remaining private
farmers; only a handful of them remained after the 1960s. The lifestyle
of villagers had eventually reached the level of cities, and village
poverty was eliminated. Czechoslovakia was again able to produce enough
food for its citizens. The price of this success was a huge waste of
resources because the cooperatives had no incentive to improve
efficiency. Every piece of land was cultivated regardless of the expense
involved, and the soil became heavily polluted with chemicals. Also,
the intensive use of heavy machinery damaged topsoil. Furthermore, the
cooperatives were infamous for over-employment.
In the late 1970s, the economy of Czechoslovakia entered into stagnation,
and the state-owned companies were unable to deal with advent of modern
technologies. A few agricultural companies (where the rules were less
strict than in state companies) used this situation to start providing
high-tech products. For example, the only way to buy a PC-compatible
computer in the late 1980s was to get it (for an extremely high price)
from one agricultural company acting as a reseller.
After the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia
in 1989 subsidies to agriculture were halted with devastating effect.
Most of the cooperatives had problems competing with technologically
advanced foreign competition and were unable to obtain investment to
improve their situation. Quite a large percentage of them collapsed. The
others that remained were typically insufficiently funded, lacking
competent management, without new machinery and living from day to day.
Employment in the agricultural sector dropped significantly (from
approximately 25% of the population to approximately 1%).
The Polish name of a collective farm was Rolnicza spółdzielnia produkcyjna. Collectivisation in Poland was stopped in 1956, later nationalisation was supported.
Collective farming was introduced as government policy throughout Yugoslavia
after World War II, by taking away land from wealthy pre-war owners and
limiting possessions in private ownership first to 25, and later to 10
hectares. The large, state-owned farms were known as "Agricultural
cooperatives" ("Zemljoradničke zadruge"
in Serbo-Croatian) and farmers working on them had to meet production
quotas in order to satisfy the needs of the populace. This system was
largely abolished in the 1950s. See: Law of 23 August 1945 with amendments until 1 December 1948.
Under the leadership of Mao Zedong (1949–1976), the People's Republic of China
experienced an era of collectivization. Similar to Stalin's ideals, Mao
tried to rapidly convert the Chinese economy to a socialist society
through industrialization and collectivization, in a period known as, "The Great Leap Forward." Later, the country was hit by massive floods and droughts. This, combined with the usage of severely flawed policies of Lysenkoism and the Four Pests Campaign, caused "The Great Chinese Famine
of 1959," where nearly 30 million people died of hunger. The party
officially blamed floods and droughts for the famine; however, it was
clear to the party members at the party meetings that famine was caused
mostly by their own policies.
Recent studies also demonstrate that it was career incentives within
the politburo system as well as political radicalism that led to the
great famine.
After the death of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping
reformed the collective farming method. From this time, nearly all
Chinese crops began to blossom, not just grain. The reform included the
removal of land from rich land owners for use of agricultural land for
peasants, but not ownership. This policy increased production and helped
reverse the effects of The Great Leap Forward. The two main reasons
why China succeeded was because 1) the government chose to make gradual
changes, which kept the monopoly of the Communist Party and 2) because
the reform process began from the bottom and later expanded to the top.
Throughout the reform process, the Communist Party reacted positively
to the bottom-up reform initiatives that emerged from the rural
population. Deng Xiaoping described the reform process as, "fording the
river by feeling for the stones." This statement refers to the Chinese
people who called for the reforms they wanted, by "placing the stones at
his feet" and he would then just approve the reforms the people wanted.
The peasants started their own "household responsibility system" apart
from the government. After Chinese trade was privately deemed
successful, all Deng had to do was approve its legalization. This
increased competition between farmers domestically and internationally,
meaning the low wage working class began to be known worldwide,
increasing the Chinese FDI.
A 2017 study found that Chinese peasants slaughtered massive
numbers of draft animals as a response to collectivization, as this
would allow them to keep the meat and hide, and not transfer the draft
animals to the collectives.
The study estimates that "the animal loss during the movement was 12 to
15 percent, or 7.4-9.5 million dead. Grain output dropped by 7 percent
due to lower animal inputs and lower productivity."
In the late 1990s, the collective farming system collapsed under a strain of droughts.
Estimates of deaths due to starvation ranged into the millions,
although the government did not allow outside observers to survey the
extent of the famine. Aggravating the severity of the famine, the
government was accused of diverting international relief supplies to its
armed forces. Agriculture in North Korea has suffered tremendously from
natural disasters, a lack of fertile land, and government
mismanagement, often causing the nation to rely on foreign aid as its
primary source of food.
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam implemented collective farming although de jure
private ownership existed. Starting in 1958 collective farming was
pushed such that by 1960, 85% of farmers and 70% of farmlands were
collectivized including those seized by force. Collectivization however was seen by the communist leadership as a half-measure when compared to full state ownership.
Following the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, South Vietnam briefly came under the authority of a Provisional Revolutionary Government, a puppet state under military occupation by North Vietnam, before being officially reunified with the North under Communist rule as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
on 2 July 1976. Upon taking control, the Vietnamese communists banned
other political parties, arrested suspects believed to have collaborated
with the United States and embarked on a mass campaign of collectivization of farms and factories. Private land ownership was "transformed" to subsume under State and collective ownership.
Reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was slow and serious
humanitarian and economic problems confronted the communist regime.
In an historic shift in 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam implemented free-market reforms known as Đổi Mới (Renovation).
With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private
enterprise, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged. Land
ownership nonetheless is the sole prerogative of the state. The economy of Vietnam
has achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production,
construction and housing, exports and foreign investment. However, the
power of the Communist Party of Vietnam
over all organs of government remains firm, preventing full land
ownership. Conflicts between the state and private farmers over land
rights have grown with the potential to spark social and political
instability.
Despite the reforms however, over 50% of all farms in Vietnam
remain collective cooperatives (over 15,000 farming cooperatives in
Vietnam), and almost all farmers being members of some kind of
cooperative. The state also heavily encourages collective cooperative farming over private farming.
In the initial years that followed the Cuban Revolution,
government authorities experimented with agricultural and farming
production cooperatives. Between 1977 and 1983, farmers began to
collectivize into CPAs – Cooperativa de Producción Agropecuaria
(Agricultural Production Cooperatives). Farmers were encouraged to sell
their land to the state for the establishment of a cooperative farm,
receiving payments for a period of 20 years while also sharing in the
fruits of the CPA. Joining a CPA allowed individuals who were previously
dispersed throughout the countryside to move to a centralized location
with increased access to electricity, medical care, housing, and
schools. Democratic practice tends to be limited to business decisions
and is constrained by the centralized economic planning of the Cuban
system.
Another type of agricultural production cooperative in Cuba is UBPC – Unidad Básica de Producción Cooperativa
(Basic Unit of Cooperative Production). The law authorizing the
creation of UBPCs was passed on 20 September 1993. It has been used to
transform many state farms into UBPCs, similar to the transformation of
Russian sovkhozes (state farms) into kolkhozes (collective farms) since 1992. The law granted indefinite usufruct
to the workers of the UBPC in line with its goal of linking the workers
to the land. It established material incentives for increased
production by tying workers' earnings to the overall production of the
UBPC, and increased managerial autonomy and workers' participation in
the management of the workplace.
Tanzania
The move to a collective farming method in Tanzania was based on the Soviet model for rural development. In 1967, President Julius Nyerere
issued "Socialism and Rural Development" which proposed the creation of
Ujamaa Villages. Since the majority of the rural population was spread
out, and agriculture was traditionally undertaken individually, the
rural population had to be forced to move together, to farm communally.
Following forced migration, incentive to participate in communal farming
activities was encouraged by government recognition.
These incentives, in addition to encouraging a degree of
participation, also lured those whose primary interests were not the
common good to the Ujamaa villages. This, in addition to the Order of
1973 dictating that all people had to live in villages (Operation Vijiji)
eroded the sustainability of communal projects. In order for the
communal farms to be successful, each member of the village would have
to contribute to the best of their ability. Due to lack of sufficient
foreign exchange, mechanization of the labour was impossible, therefore
it was essential that every villager contributed to manual labour.
In the European Union, collective farming is fairly common and agricultural cooperatives hold a 40% market share among the 27 member states. In the Netherlands, cooperative agriculture holds a market share of approximately 70%, second only to Finland. In France,
cooperative agriculture represents 40% of the national food industry's
production and nearly 90 Billion € in gross revenue, covering one out of
three food brands in the country.
There are also intentional communities which practice collective agriculture. There is a growing number of community supported agriculture initiatives, some of which operate under consumer/worker governance, that could be considered collective farms.
India
In Indian
villages a single field (normally a plot of three to five acres) may be
farmed collectively by the villagers, who each offer labour as a
devotional offering, possibly for one or two days per cropping season.
The resulting crop belongs to no one individual, and is used as an
offering. The labour input is the offering of the peasant in their role
as priests. The wealth generated by the sale of the produce belongs to
the Gods and hence is Apaurusheya or impersonal. Shrambhakti
(labour contributed as devotional offering) is the key instrument for
generation of internal resources. The benefits of the harvest are most
often redistributed in the village for common good as well as individual
need – not as loan or charity, but as divine grace (prasad). The recipient is under no obligation to repay it and no interest need be paid on such gifts.
Israel
Collective farming was also implemented in kibbutzim in Israel, which began in 1909 as a unique combination of Zionism and socialism – known as Labor Zionism. The concept has faced occasional criticism as economically inefficient and over-reliant on subsidized credit.
A lesser-known type of collective farm in Israel is moshav shitufi (lit. collective settlement),
where production and services are managed collectively, as in a
kibbutz, but consumption decisions are left to individual households. In
terms of cooperative organization, moshav shitufi is distinct from the
much more common moshav (or moshav ovdim), essentially a village-level service cooperative, not a collective farm.
In 2006 there were 40 moshavim shitufi'im in Israel, compared with 267 kibbutzim.
Collective farming in Israel differs from collectivism in
communist states in that it is voluntary. However, including moshavim,
various forms of collective farming have traditionally been and remain
the primary agricultural model, as there are only a small number of
completely private farms in Israel outside of the moshavim.
Mexico
In Mexico the Ejido system provided poor farmers with collective use rights to agricultural land.
Canada and United States
The AnabaptistHutterites have farmed communally since the 16th century. Most of them now live on the prairies of Canada and the northern Great Plains of the United States, as well as in Southern Ontario in Canada.
Until recently Western Canada had a centralised wheat board where
farmers were usually obligated to sell their wheat to the province
which sold the product at a high collective price. Ontario currently has
a milk board which obliges most milk producers to sell their milk to
the province at a regulated quality and price.
