The HARVEST OF SORROW
Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine
Robert Conquest
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986
412 pp., $19.95
Ever since Peter the Great dragged his reluctant and resisting subjects out of their medieval backwardness and into the modern era, Russia has stood as a formidable presence among the great powers of the West. From the beginning of the eighteenth century until now, the West has never been allowed to lose sight of Russia's vast military might, and that alone has assured her of great power (now superpower) status among the most advanced nations of the world community. To be sure, there have been brief periods when this colossus has been perceived to be weakening, and Russia's single claim to great power status faded quickly when that occurred. But brutal reminders of Russia's strength have always followed quickly upon such moments. Napoleon and Hitler both learned that lesson at ruinous cost.
Despite the awesome military power that Russia displayed in her struggles against the armies of Napoleon and Hitler, her agricultural experience in modern times has resembled far more that of China, India, and parts of Africa than it has that of Western Europe and North America. Aside from the tragedy that struck Ireland in 1846-1847, the West has suffered no major famine for more than three hundred years. Famines thus have long remained in western eyes a part of the burden destined to be borne by those who live in nations with undeveloped (or underdeveloped) economies. By contrast, Russia has known famine all too often, far more frequently, in fact, than her image as a great military power would lead anyone to expect.
Famine, that relentless scourge of ancient and medieval societies, has been a tragic part of modern Russia's history. Parts of Russia suffered famine during no fewer than thirty-four years of the eighteenth century, and serious hunger darkened nearly half of the years of the century that followed. Just during the quarter-century before the revolutions of 1917, famine struck parts of Russia in 1891-1892, 1897-1898, 1901, 1905-1908, and 1911-1912. In some cases, as few as a tenth of Russia's provinces reported substantial deaths from starvation. In other years, many of them did so.
According to a study prepared by Andrei Shingarev (1869-1918), a country physician who, before the Bolsheviks murdered him in his hospital bed, rose to become Minister of Agriculture in Russia's first provisional government, only about one peasant household in ten had enough grain to last from harvest to harvest in almost any year before 1900. For most rural Russians, "famine bread," an unpalatable and indigestible mixture of such weeds as goosefoot and nettles ground together with rye husks, dried potato peelings, bark, and any other material that might be found, became a staple on their tables before spring. During the famines of 1840 and 1848, government physicians had seriously recommended "famine bread" as a viable bread substitute, but, in later years, more knowledgeable scientists condemned it. If consumed regularly, "famine bread" produced serious protein deficiency and caused diarrhea, vomiting, and a variety of even more serious gastrointestinal disorders that quickly added to any famine's total of dead and
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