Robert Conquest - The Harvest of Sorrow

Millions of people died of starvation in Ukraine during the 1930s.  How many millions of victims is unknown.  Nikita Khrushchev said in Khrushchev Remembers “I can’t give an exact figure because no one was keeping count.  All we know is that people were dying in enormous numbers.”  What caused so many people to die?  Some said it was bad weather that caused bad harvests.  Others have said it was the fault of the kulaks [the relatively well-to-do peasants] for slaughtering animals and refusing to plant grain.  Some [most notably Walter Duranty of the New York Times] claimed this didn’t happen at all.  Historian Robert Conquest lays blame at the feet of Stalin and the Bolsheviks.  He not only said the forced collectivization of Soviet agricultural and the “de-kulakization” of the peasantry were to blame for so many deaths, he claims it was a deliberate act of genocide that killed so many Ukrainians in the 1930s.  The subtitle of his work The Harvest of Sorrow conveys the exact message he wants to impart to his readers – Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine. 

In his introduction, Conquest describes Ukraine during this time as “a vast Belsen.”  Here he equates the Holodomor [“to kill by starvation” or “extermination by hunger”] with the Holocaust.  By his estimates, Stalin’s war against the peasants killed more people in the same amount of time as those Russians who died during the First World War.  Stalin instituted two policies in his war on the peasants – collectivization and de-kulakization.  Collectivization meant the abolition of private property in land, and the concentration of individual peasant farms into larger collective farms controlled by the Communist Party.  De-kulakization meant the killing, or deportation to the Arctic Circle with their families, of millions of peasants who didn’t go along with the program. 

The Party and the Peasants - Karl Marx didn't think much of peasants; neither did Lenin.  Marx referred to the peasantry as “rural idiots.”  Neither saw the peasantry as being part of the "proletariat," i.e. city factory workers.  In Lenin's eyes they were workers, but the peasants were also landowners, so by the Marxist definition they were capitalists.  Lenin sought to modernize Russian agriculture by organizing the peasants' landholdings into collective farms that produced according to a plan.  The Bolsheviks viewed the peasants' as stupid, illiterate individualistic savages that lacked social consciousness.  Such was the Bolshevik antipathy toward the peasants.  The Bolshevik base was the industrialized workers in urban areas.  The peasants’ function was to feed the urban workers. 

Ukrainian Nationalism - Bolsheviks had no use for nationalities.  Marx and Engels wrote that the proletariat was "the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc, within present society." Lenin later defined nationhood as a "historical category marking a particular economic epoch, that of capitalism."

Conquest illustrates the existence of a unique Ukrainian state dating back to the Kievan Rus.  After it was conquered by the Mongols in 1240, this realm drifted westward, first to become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later as part of Poland.  Ukrainian was an official language of Lithuania.  Under Polish rule, Ukrainian printing presses and schools appeared in the 16th Century.  The Cossacks, who were Ukrainian freebooters who had gone east to hunt and fish, had learned to fight the Tatars.  In time they were able to establish a military Republic free from Poland.  The Hetmen who controlled this republic allied themselves with Sweden in order to limit Russian interference in the republic's affairs.  But Sweden fought the Russians in 1709 and lost, leaving the Hetmen without a protector. 

While the Russians nominally recognized the Hetmanate, they gradually tightened their control until they abolished it in 1764.  With the disappearance of the Hetmanate came the disappearance of Ukrainian statehood until after World War I.  Ukrainian peasants became serfs.  Ukrainian language and cultures came under attack.  Russians thought of the Ukrainian language as just a dialect of Russian.  Books that were 'religious and educational' were banned.  Ukrainian papers and schools were closed.  But despite Russification efforts, intellectuals and poets kept the Ukrainian national ideal alive.

When the Tsar fell in March 1917, Ukrainian parties established a Ukrainian Central Council (Rada).  At first the Rada gained some autonomy from Russia, but a week after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, the Rada proclaimed a Ukrainian People's republic that did not recognize Bolshevik authority.  Conquest details how Ukrainian alternated between Soviet and non-Soviet rule during the Russian Civil War (1918-21). The Bolsheviks eventually won and assumed control over Ukraine.  Of all the former Russian Empire’s territories to declare independence after the end of WW I [Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine], Ukraine was the only independent country to fall into Soviet control.

War Communism – This was a simple policy, the goal of which was to keep the Red Army stocked with weapons and the urban workers stocked with food.  This policy was in place during the Russian Civil War [1918-21].  But the term “War Communism” is a misnomer.  The grain requisition policy had been in place before hostilities began during the Russian Civil War.  Industries were nationalized and placed under a centralized management [management by the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party].  The “dictatorship of the proletariat” outlawed strikes by the workers they claimed to represent.  Private enterprise was banned.  The Red Army controlled the railways.  The most odious part of War Communism was the prodrazvyorstka, the “requisition” of surplus grain from the peasants to feed the urban workers.  Armed units were sent to villages to confiscate surplus grain.  When they didn’t find any, they beat and tortured peasants until the quota was met.  Over time the government didn’t make any distinction between what was indeed a surplus or the last stocks of food and seed.  Peasants had no incentive to plant, and food production fell.  There were hundreds of peasant uprisings against this policy. The ruble collapsed and was replaced by a barter system.  For the most part, wages were paid in goods rather than with money.  Industrial production sank to one-fifth of the pre-WW I years. 

The Kronstadt Rebellion – The sailors who garrisoned the Kronstadt fortress in the Baltic were among the strongest supporters of the Bolsheviks.  They had heard of workers strikes in Petrograd.  A committee of Kronstadt sailors went to Petrograd to investigate, and learned of the heavy-handed Bolshevik repression of those strikes.  Crews from the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting and made a list of fifteen demands to the Bolsheviks.  These demands included free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organization to workers, peasants, anarchists and left-socialists.  The sailors also revived the slogan from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution [“All power to the Soviets”] and added “and not to parties.”  There were problems aplenty throughout the land, and the Kronstadt sailors pointed the finger directly at the Bolsheviks.  The Bolsheviks responded by blaming the rebellion on French counterintelligence and ex-Tsarist officers.  They delivered a simple ultimatum to Kronstadt – come to your senses or face the consequences.  The sailors would have none of that, and so what started as a non-violent rebellion in late February 1921 turned bloody as the Bolsheviks aimed to crush the rebellion without mercy.  The violent phase of the rebellion lasted ten days.  The Bolsheviks suffered 10,000 killed to re-take the fortress, and thousands who defended the fortress were either shot or deported to Siberia.  But the Kronstadt sailors made their point, and Lenin recognized it as such.

New Economic Policy (NEP) – When the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, the peasantry made up eighty percent of the Russian population.  The Bolsheviks’ hold on power at the end of the civil war was tenuous.  The Kronstadt Rebellion was the Bolsheviks’ “wake-up call.”  Lenin and others in the collective Soviet leadership had put down the rebellion, but they also realized the sailors involved in the rebellion represented part of their base as a party, so they had better do something to avoid more episodes like Kronstadt.  The result was the New Economic Policy [NEP].  War Communism was abolished, and a sort of free enterprise system was re-introduced.  Peasants were allowed to sell their grain, and instead of forced grain requisitioning, the peasants were to pay a tax in the form of raw agricultural products.  Since the peasants were allowed to keep some of their products and sell whatever they wanted, they had more incentive to produce.  People were allowed to own small enterprises, while the state maintained control over heavy industry, trade, and the banking system.  The leftists of the party [most especially Kamenev and Zinoviev] saw the NEP as a sellout to capitalism, but Lenin was willing to bite this bullet in order to get Russia on a more-solid economic footing.

Ukrainization – Lenin attempted to pacify their minorities by granting them certain national and civil rights.  These actions included the increased usage of the Ukrainian language in schools, books, radio programs, and movies.  Representation of Ukrainians in local government increased.  A national Ukrainian Orthodox Church was created.  Between 1920-30, Ukrainian communists refused to follow Moscow’s lead.  By the late 1920s they had exceeded the limits of Ukrainization set by Moscow.  Thus, Ukraine posed a serious threat to the Soviet Union.  Stalin saw the loyalty to a Ukrainian national ideal was in direct competition with loyalty to the Soviet state.  Stalin saw the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine as a means to “correct” the “incorrect implementation” of Ukrainization.  After Stalin consolidated his power in the late 1920’s he instituted the first Five Year Plan.  The priority of the plan was the growing of a large Soviet heavy industrial base.  To achieve that end, the Soviet Union would abolish private industry for good and nationalize all commerce.  To pay for the industrialization, the Soviet Union would export as much grain from its “breadbasket” [Ukraine] in return for foreign capital.  Collectivization would be the way for the Soviets to maximize their grain exports to support the plan.

De-kulakization - There was a grain crisis at the beginning of 1928, or so the Soviet leadership thought.   Stalin falsely claimed that grain production was only half of what it was before World War I, and for this he blamed the kulaks. His solution was the transition from individual peasant farming to collective, socialized conduct of agriculture, and in the process declared war against the capitalist elements of the peasants - the kulaks.  The problem with that was the Soviets had a hard time in what defined a kulak.  When Lenin himself was asked to define a kulak, he pretty much said "you'll know one when you see one."  A kulak could be one who rents out farm machinery, tools, or draft animals, or trades in grain.  A kulak could also be defined as a well-off peasant who lends money to others (with interest, of course).  The kulak was an invention of the Bolsheviks.  Originally meant to classify rich peasant farmers who employed other farmers, the term “kulak” eventually came to mean whatever the Bolsheviks wanted it to mean.  In Soviet Russia, anybody could be accused of being a kulak.

Stalin declared that 'de-kulakization' was the essential element in forming and developing collective farms.  In getting rid of the kulaks the state divided them into three categories - the first should be arrested and shot or imprisoned while their families were exiled. The second would be merely exiled.  The third 'non-violent' category would be put on some sort of probation and admitted to the collective farms.  Removal of the kulak from the rest of the peasantry was intended to decapitate peasant resistance.  Stalin wanted to liquidate the kulaks as a class.  Conquest deals with population figures [census data taken before and after] and many individual stories of deportations to mines, camps, and other settlements.  In the mass movement of peasants away from what used to be their lands, many died en route to their destinations.

Collectivization – When Lenin returned to Russia from exile in 1917, he promised the people three things if he was to assume power – peace, bread and land.  The peasants mostly held their land in the form of large numbers of strips scattered throughout the fields of the village community.  The NEP was seen as that promise fulfilled.  But when the Soviets began to collectivize agriculture, the peasants saw that as the breaking of a promise.  The purpose of collectivization was to establish party control over grain supply.  The Bolsheviks would evict the peasants from their plots of land, which they would then “collectivize” into large, state-owned farms.  These giant collective farms would be the factories of the countryside: they would turn independent peasants into rural proletarians and facilitate the mechanization of agriculture-as well as party control.  Joining the collective farms [kolkhozy] was mandatory.  The peasants opposed collectivization.  They would not reap the benefits they had during the NEP, and they felt that collectivization was little more than a return to serfdom.  They protested peacefully at collectivization meetings, but when that didn’t work they resorted to other, less-passive means.  They’d burn their crops [including their seed grain] and slaughter their animals.  With collectivization came the closing of churches, destruction of religious icons, and the arresting of priests.  The Bolshevik attack on churches angered the peasants and gave them more incentive to resist.  Because of the high grain quotas for grain, the peasants received less for their labor than before.  The Bolsheviks sent thousands of industrial workers to the countryside to enforce collectivization.  These activists were sent in to remove all foodstuffs from the homes of the villagers.  They also introduced internal passports that required the peasants to have permission to leave the kolkhozy, so they couldn’t leave to go search for food elsewhere.

The kolkhozy and all that they held [land, grain, livestock] were declared “state property.”  Stalin himself wrote the law that was a Draconian measure against theft/damage against Soviet state property.  This law [the law on five ears of grain’] was directed at the starving Ukrainian peasants who cut off ears of grain to save their own lives.  Children who were caught picking a handful of ears of grain from fields that until collectivization had belonged to their parents were also convicted.  This law resulted in mass arrests and executions.

Famine and mass starvation was not restricted to Ukraine.  Conquest also highlights the effects of the famine on Kazakhstan, the Don region and the Kuban.  Because the famine affected these regions in addition to Ukraine, other Soviet scholars resist the classification of the terror-famine as genocide.  What they don’t recognize is that Ukraine was the only region where the border was sealed so that no one could leave, and famine relief couldn’t get into the region.  He argues that this act of isolating the Ukrainians from the rest of the country and starving them to death fits the definition of genocide.

The cost – The famine was centered in the fertile Ukraine.  Stored grain in the region was not released to the peasants.  Nobody could get out of Ukraine, and nobody could get into Ukraine to deliver food to the starving masses.  Ukrainian grain was exported to other parts of the Soviet Union – workers had to be fed, after all.  Stalin had inflated the grain procurement quotas in Ukraine, leaving the Ukrainians little if anything to eat.  Stalin had the Ukrainian borders sealed, where small bread rations existed, and from crossing into Russia, where there was no hunger. With the best statistics available to him, Conquest concluded 14.5 million people either died in 1930-37 of unnatural causes or were sent to camps where they perished not much later.  Of these, about 6.5 million died during the anti-kulak campaign, and about seven million during the famine of 1932-33.  These figures cited by Conquest are all estimates.  Those who disagree with Conquest quibble about the number – was it 14.5 million, was it 10 million, or was it just 3.5 million?   I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Stalin – “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic!”  Critics of Conquest’s work quibble about the numbers but they don’t deny that a lot of people died.  

Ukrainian farmers weren’t staved in order to force them into the collective farms.  They were starved because the peasants were the nucleus of Ukrainian nationalism.  The Ukrainian peasants were the keepers of the old traditions of independent farming, and other aspects of the Ukrainian national ideal.  They were the last bulwark against totalitarian Soviet control.  Stalin tipped his hand when he said “the peasantry constitutes the main army of the national movement; there is no powerful national movement without the peasant army.”   Given what Conquest presented in his book, it is not by accident that the final word he uses in his book in “genocide.”