Without understanding the history of the past, it is impossible to understand the various ideological feelings and mental processes of the russian and Ukrainian people.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the former Soviet Union once created a miracle, that is, from a backward former serfdom country to the world's advanced industrialized country in just a few decades.
Behind the speed of the Soviet Union was a little-known famine
But there is little mention of the reality of his experience in these decades, and it was not until after the collapse of the former Soviet Union that some classified documents were declassified that people saw what kind of life the people of the former Soviet Union experienced in those decades, such as the little-known famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933.
In the 27 years from 1920 to 1947, grain harvest failures and severe famines spread throughout the most fertile black soils of the Soviet Union (along the Volga in Russia and along the Dnieper in Ukraine), in Siberia and in the North Caucasus. Famines of 1920-1923, 1924-1925, 1927-1928, 1932-1933, 1936-1937, 1939-1941 and 1946-1947 became a major symbol of the economic development of the Soviet Union in these 27 years.
Ukraine was the first to bear the brunt of the soviet-era grain failures and food shortages, and the serious impact on the Ukrainian economy was the comprehensive crisis of harvest failures and famines of 1920-1922, 1932-1933 and 1946-1947, and the consequent overall economic, social and political changes.
The famine of 1920-1923 was a great famine that swept across the Volga, southern Ukraine and Crimea. The famine began in the summer of 1920, when a drought of 1921 wiped out 22 percent of the grain fields and produced only 43 percent of the grain in 1921. In 1922, although a bumper harvest was harvested on the right bank of the Dnieper River in Ukraine, famine in the Volga Valley continued to develop violently until the summer of 1923. From the autumn of 1921 to the spring of 1922, the famine developed to a very severe point. The famine spread to 35 provinces with 90 million inhabitants, with the result that 40 million inhabitants were in the midst of famine.
1920 was not a famine year, but as a result of the significant increase in the number of surplus grain collections during the year, farmers in the grain-producing areas, as a means of protest, drastically reduced the area sown, thus drastically reducing food production. That is to say, the surplus grain collection system has put the countryside in a state of bankruptcy and the country is facing the brink of a deep crisis, and it is imperative to abolish the surplus grain collection system. The great famine of 1921 developed and deepened the man-made food shortages of 1920 and evolved into a catastrophe that swept through the central region of Russia.
In the face of such a serious food crisis, Lenin still adhered to his consistent policy: first, to demand grain from the peasants and second, to the rich countryside, although lenin had already decided to turn to the New Economic Policy, to impose a series of relatively free policies for rural areas, agriculture and the development of the industrial economy, such as grain taxes and concessions. With regard to asking the peasants for grain, in February 1921 Lenin said very frankly: "Do you know how much grain we got from the peasants this year?" There are nearly 300 million putts. What will the working class do without this grain? That's it, they've been starving! We know that the situation of farmers is difficult, but there is no other way to improve it... We cannot promise the peasants to lift them out of poverty immediately; to get out of poverty, they must increase production in factories by a factory by a factory by a factory. ”
Lenin's meaning is very clear: if the peasants want to live, they must first let the working class live. At this time, Lenin's basic attitude toward the peasantry was: "The peasantry , this is another class; socialism will come only if the class ceases to exist and all the means of production are owned by the toilers." Classes still exist on the mainland, it will take a long time to exterminate them, and whoever promises to do this soon is a liar. Peasants live individual lives, they are in charge of their own affairs, they run alone, they have food, they can rely on grain to exploit all the people. ”
With regard to asking for food from the rich countryside, Lenin's vision was Ukraine, Siberia and the North Caucasus. Also in February of that year, Lenin criticized the peasants of Siberia and Ukraine at the Plenary Session of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies in Moscow for not understanding "the need to distribute grain to those who need it most." "Farmers in Siberia and Ukraine ... They had and still had more surplus grain than the peasants of central Russia. They have not yet encountered such a situation in central Russia. Peasants in Ukraine, Siberia and the North Caucasus have never experienced the kind of poverty and hunger that peasants in Moscow and Petrograd governorates have endured for three years (farmers in Moscow and Petrograd governorates harvest far less food than ukrainian farmers).
They usually had a few hundred punctus of surplus grain, and they always thought that if they wanted to take out the surplus grain, they would have to give them commodities immediately. To get a factory to work, it takes time, it takes preparation, it takes workers. We endure unprecedented sacrifices not in desperate circumstances but in constantly victorious struggles. This difference determines everything. What these words reveal is a Bolshevik truth: the peasants and the countryside of Soviet Russia are divided into second class, the Great Russian regions (Moscow And Petrograd provinces) waiting for others to have to provide food, and the other small Russia and Siberia and the North Caucasus, which must provide food unconditionally.
Five months later, on July 9, Lenin's decision to ask Ukraine for grain was made firmer and more detailed. He made the following recommendation to the Central Committee: "If the population of the areas of poor harvest and famine reaches 25 million, should the most revolutionary measures be taken to recruit about 500,000 (or even 1 million) young people from the region into the army?" The aim is to provide relief to the population to a certain extent, because in doing so we feed a part of the hungry, and sending food home may also provide some relief to the hungry to a certain extent, which is the first point. Second, to resettle these 500,000 people to Ukraine to strengthen the food work, they have a close interest in the food work, and they will deeply realize and feel how unreasonable it is for the rich peasants of Ukraine to eat and drink.
Lenin based this conclusion on the lie of the Ukrainian leader Rakovsky: "The harvest in Ukraine (Rakovsky) is statistically about 55,000-65,000 putts. Excluding 150 million putrefs and 30,000 puts (15 x 20,000 = 30,000,000) as rations and feed, there is an average of about 150 million puts left (550 million to 45,000 = 100 million; 650 million to 450 million = 200 million). If troops recruited from the famine provinces were sent to Ukraine, this surplus could be collected in its entirety (food tax + commodity exchange + relief grain levied exclusively from wealthy peasants). ”
Here Lenin clearly defined the grain to be expropriated from Ukraine and the specific methods, so that Ukraine had to face a new grain delivery campaign under the banner of "helping the inhabitants of the Volga Valley" after the surplus grain collection system, under the influence of the rural grain shortage and famine. On August 2, Lenin signed the Letter to the Ukrainian Peasants: "This year the Ukrainian region on the right bank of the Dnieper River has achieved a great harvest. But there was a famine in the Volga Valley, where workers and peasants were suffering no worse than the great famine of 1891. They must be helped vigorously. Hopefully, every peasant will be able to distribute his surplus grain to the affected farmers in the Volga Valley, who have nothing to plant. ”
Lenin's precise calculations and appeals to the Ukrainian peasants apparently did not serve as he had expected. The famine in southern Ukraine and Crimea has not stopped, while the famine along the Volga River has provoked civil unrest. The Soviet government had to make an appeal to the countries for assistance. On the same day that the Letter to the Ukrainian Peasants was published, the Soviet Government sent a note to the international community: "The Government of Russia will receive any aid, wherever it comes from, and will not associate it with existing political relations".
The famine of 1921-1923 and the consequent epidemic of disease and plague caused the death toll reached as many as 5.2 million. For Ukraine, for the part, there are no precise statistics on the number of victims, but the food deprivation, economic recession, and social unrest it experienced during the famine years were no different from those in the Volga River Basin.
After Lenin's death, Stalin tightened the New Economic Policy, instead emphasizing the theory that "the more socialism develops, the sharper the class struggle in society", and implemented a policy of the total elimination of the bourgeoisie throughout the country. Especially in the rural areas, rich peasants who are believed to have surplus grain in storage have become the targets of the crackdown. In 1924, there was a major drought, and 11% of the grain fields were harvested. According to the Central Statistical Office of the USSR, the number of people affected by the disaster reached more than 8 million. At this time, Ukraine was not severely affected by the great drought, but it became the main region for the central government to strengthen grain procurement and increase the volume of grain.
Grain in Ukraine became an important weight in Stalin's decision-making to address the famine, and the famine of 1924 was difficult to overcome through high-intensity and high-pressure procurement, as well as the suppression of peasant upheavals and uprisings across the country that were dissatisfied with the famine and the government's food policy. In 1927, Stalin himself acknowledged the severity and horror of the famine: "The country has not yet fully recovered from the aftermath of the famine of 1924. ”
But from 1926 onwards, disasters began in the Ukrainian countryside and continued into 1928, when they swept through the grain-rich southern regions of Ukraine: Kremenchuk, Zaporizhia, Mariupol, Odessa, Krivorog and Podorisk. By the autumn of 1929, the situation in Donbass, a major industrial and mining region that had received national priority, had seriously deteriorated. A report by the All-Soviet Coal Mining Union described this dilemma: "No meat, no potatoes, and if there were, it wouldn't be possible, because there were queues everywhere."
A disastrous day finally came for the Soviet government: Ukraine was also severely short of food, and food shortages spread throughout ukraine. The food shortage in Ukraine forced the Soviet government to intensify the process of armed grain collection in the Ural-Siberian region. In January 1931, the Ussch Commissariat of Supply of the Usschland of the USSR, in accordance with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee, introduced a national voucher supply system for the main food and non-grain commodities, and the decree also made a special guarantee: "When the all-Soviet voucher supply system was implemented in 1931, the government promised to give the population a relatively high supply target. As for the indicators of bread, meat and sugar, they will exceed the indicators set by many countries for their citizens during the Second World War. ”
Stalin, however, believed that the grain shortage was caused by the destruction of the kulaks and that the solution was to speed up the class struggle against the countryside, especially in the Ukrainian countryside. In fact, from 1928 onwards, the expropriation and repression of the rural kulaks evolved into a model of class struggle with a distinctive Stalinist character – "the abolition of the kulaks as a class", which was done in the form of a "total collectivization movement of agriculture". In Ukraine, the process of collectivization of agriculture has been accompanied by increased procurement of food. However, the strong procurement of rural Ukraine did not collect the food expected by the Government.
By 1932, when the national famine was a foregone conclusion, there was not only no food supply, but even the seeds sown in the spring. Ukraine finally objected, and Chubal, then chairman of the Ukrainian People's Committee, called the central authorities to request food for relief to the disaster-stricken areas of Ukraine. Ukraine's request infuriated Stalin and his then-key assistants Molotov and Kaganovich. At a meeting on 28 June to discuss grain procurement, the decision was made to send Molotov and Kaganovich to Ukraine to supervise the collection of grain on the spot.
On 2 July 1932, Kaganovich wrote of the meeting in a letter to Gubyshev, who was in charge of the planning of the national economy: "At the meeting it was compelled to criticize the local authorities, especially the Ukrainians, whose mood, especially of Chubal, was very bad, with which they not only failed to complete the plan, but in general could not acquire grain."
Stalin
Stalin sent Molotov and Kaganovich to Ukraine for the purpose of requisitioning more grain. Stalin made this decision on the basis of his immutable belief that Ukraine had grain, and that the two "Chincha ministers" would be able to requisition it. One of the main motivating factors for the total collectivization of agriculture is that the "direct industrialization" of the country requires more and more food. Industrialization is a high-index, constantly higher-index, so the demand for food procurement should also be high-index, constantly higher-indexed. On 12 September 1933, Stalin emphasized this high target in a letter to Molotov: "I also agree that 698 million quintals of grain should be levied on the basis of the total grain production of 1932. Must not be less than this number. ”
Molotov and Kaganovich came to the same conclusion in Ukraine: Ukraine has grain. "The crops are not bad, all the problems are harvesting and sourcing." So, what they do is do everything they can to requisition more food. But both Molotov and Kaganovich encountered great resistance to their grain grabs in Ukraine and in the Kuban region of the Don River —peasant discontent and resistance. On September 12, 1933, Molotov mentioned the situation in Crimea in a letter to Kubyshev: "I was approached by a Crimean who wanted to lower the yield per unit area of the two districts (the crops had recently been frosted). It should be checked and a decision made as soon as possible, as this would delay their completion of their annual grain procurement plan. ”
At that time, there were only a few people who dared to say that there was no grain, who dared to speak to Stalin himself about the reality of the dissatisfaction and resistance of the peasantry in the countryside, and demanded the cessation of this violent requisition and the allocation of additional relief grain to their hometown (in the case of Sholokhov, Vyschensk), and Sholokhov, the author of "The Quiet Don", was almost the only one. Stalin was annoyed by this, but did not want to offend the celebrity and expose the real situation of grain requisition in Ukraine and the Don region, so he came up with a "appeasement" plan. On 23 April 1933, he instructed Molotov: "I think that Sholokhov's request should be fully fulfilled, that is, an additional 80,000 puts for the Vyschensk and 40,000 putts for the Upper Don people." This matter seems to have become known to the 'whole people', and after all the misdeeds in those places, we must salvage the influence politically. It doesn't matter to us to give an extra four or five thousand putts, but for the inhabitants of these two regions, it is decisive for the time being. ”
The Great Famine of 1932-1933 swept across the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was just one of them. For the whole of the Soviet Union, the characteristics of this great famine were: First, all the areas that produced grain were not spared, and the central black soil area also became a famine area. Second, the tragic scenes caused by the famine are panoramas without exception. In the internal reports of the "Ogbo" institutions at that time, the central authorities repeatedly reported to the central government the description of the "internal secret reports" quoted here: "Famine is everywhere, and with famine comes begging, suicide, the spread of disease, eating livestock, selling property, moving to areas where there is no famine, and fleeing to the cities. ”
For Ukraine, the famine meant that its historical productive position and self-sufficiency had been completely destroyed and that it had been drawn into a tide of famine; and since Ukraine's population density was higher than in other affected areas of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was a region where state industry, especially heavy industry, was concentrated, the movement of people, that is, the emigration of the population, was less likely than in other regions, and therefore the number of starving people was higher. Finally, the "kulaks who eat and drink" are either grain- or grain-eating, and the idea and decision to save the whole Soviet Union from Ukraine has intensified and deepened the famine in Ukraine and the consequent general social upheaval.
Therefore, in the panorama of the disaster and famine of the whole Soviet Union, this puzzle of Ukraine is particularly glaring. Khrushchev, who was transferred to Moscow in 1929 and had previously experienced the Ukrainian famine, recorded in his memoirs the great famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933: "Later, the news of the famine in Ukraine spread. I can't believe it. When I left Ukraine in 1929, life there had risen back to pre-war levels, and food was plentiful and cheap. Now, after only three years of quarantine, it is unbelievable to say that the people there are starving.
It wasn't until many years later, when Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan told me the following, that I figured out how bad things were in Ukraine in the early 30s. Mikoyan told me that Jemchenko, who was then the first secretary of the Party Committee of Kiev Province, came to him in Moscow and said to him: 'Does Anastasia Ivanovich, Comrade Stalin, or anyone in the Politburo know what is happening in Ukraine at the moment?' If you don't already know, I can give you a rough idea. A new train had recently entered Kiev, filled with the bodies of the starving dead. The train kept collecting bodies along the way from Poltava to Kiev. I think it would be nice if someone could tell Stalin about this. ’”
Molotov and Stalin
However, the Soviet government kept the famine of 1932-1933 a secret, and continued to implement the policy of high targets and high limits for grain requisitions, and was pleased with the policy of requisitioning high targets. On September 4, 1935, Kaganovich was so excited about the results of his grain conquests in Ukraine and elsewhere that he revealed this joy in a letter to Ordzhonikidze, who was in charge of grain requisitions in the North Caucasus: "This year the grain requisitions have progressed — this is our unprecedented and very astonishing victory, this is a victory for Stalinism. We have requisitioned 1 billion puts of grain, plus 370 million puts of last year's surplus grain. Ukraine has concluded its requisitions, as have some territories. ”
But stalin was the one who knew best about the food situation and social unrest. On September 26, 1935, Stalin instructed Molotov on the grain question: "As for the grain purchase, the plan must be lowered slightly. Everyone complained that the plan was set high. If Ukraine were to reduce 10 million pts, the North Caucasus by 7 million pts, the Azov-Black Sea Krai by 5 million or 6 million pts to other regions, and the downward revision plan to set aside another 250-30 million pts, then we would only be able to maintain the plan of 250 million to 340 million pents. This downward revision was Stalin's bottom-line concession to the famine of 1932-1933, and it was indeed a last resort. However, this downward revision did not prevent the subsequent famines of 1936-1937 and 1939-1941.
The number of people starving to death in Ukraine during the catastrophic famine of 1932-1933 has been debated for years between Soviet and Ukrainian scholars. Now, when a large number of archives have been declassified, it seems that a generally agreeable figure has been obtained: in Ukraine, 144,000 people starved to death in 1932 and 3.238 million people starved to death in 1933.