Food crises, extreme hunger and famine in Russia and the USSR

Abstract

This chapter considers three periods of food crisis and extreme hunger in Russia and the Soviet Union: 1917–22, 1927–33 and 1941–47, which contained as many as six famines. It argues that each period began with hunger in the cities in the northern consumer region of Russia. In later stages, food supplies to these consumer regions were protected by extra-ordinary procurements in the more southerly producer regions resulting in shortages in these areas. Government policies of squeezing the producers and giving preference to the urban and military population in combination with unacknowledged poor agro-technology and natural factors caused famine to be diverted to the food producer regions. While government bias in food distribution, incompetence and denial of the existence of famine are inexcusable, they are very different from a policy of intentional starvation for political aims. It therefore argues against the growing consensus that claims Soviet famines were genocidal and denies that there were serious food crises from which the famines originated. Show more