0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
In the early years of the Soviet Union's rise to power, one of the European visitors who had gone to witness the great Volga famine said:
"A woman refused to bury her husband, who had recently died of starvation, because by eating his flesh, she could survive a little longer."
Russia's geography was never unfamiliar with famine, but during the Volga famine, people witnessed things that few had experienced before. World War I, low rainfall, the civil war, and the iron fist of the communists in building their ideal society, regardless of the realities—such as the massacre of the kulaks (wealthy farmers or landowners, with even those owning more than one cow categorized as kulaks), the collectivization of land, and the communists' seizure of food resources for their soldiers fighting in the civil war against the White Army—together led to a great famine, which ranks among the most horrific disasters of the 20th century. 4 replies
1 recast
6 reactions
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
3/
And indeed, the following year, Russian mothers began eating their children from hunger. This was Lenin, the great leader of the revolution, whose greatness was on par with Marx, who in 1918 said:
"We must hang at least a thousand kulaks. We must hang them in full view of the people. We must seize their grain. We must take them as hostages and make sure the news reaches people thousands of miles away, so they tremble in fear."
The kulaks were, by the way, the biggest producers of grain. The government had labeled them enemies of the society and went after each one of them. Many were killed, many were imprisoned, and many fled. Hoping to find food, migration from villages to cities began. By 1921, grain production in Ukraine had fallen to half of what it had been in 1913. 1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
4/
The government forcibly purchased the little production the peasants had, at prices set by themselves. There was no motivation for planting or harvesting. The idea was that more effort wouldn't change anything in one's life. Even rain seemed uninterested in falling. For example, in the Samara region, rainfall dropped from 38.8 mm the previous decade to 0.3 mm in 1921. As a result of the famine, people resorted to anything to fill their stomachs. Instead of being planted, grains were eaten. After two years of intensifying famine, and much too late, Lenin eventually relented and, with the help of Maxim Gorky (whom I wrote about recently), wrote a plea for help, asking the world for food and medicine. It seems that cannibalism (or human flesh consumption and even the trade in human meat) was more prevalent in the Volga River basin, where the famine was felt most acutely. 1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
5/
The situation was truly dire. Famine, malnutrition, and cannibalism contributed to the spread of diseases such as typhus, dysentery, cholera, flu, smallpox, and even the plague. The signs of famine had been apparent for a long time, but the communists were uninterested in seeing them. It was during this time that Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer (discoverer of the North Pole), entered the Samara region, which had been hit hard by the famine. Upon seeing the state of the people, he was horrified. Nearly everyone was dying. He immediately raised 40 billion Swiss francs through international aid and set up 900 centers to feed the people. To show the depth of the disaster, he even printed images of the famine victims on postcards and sent them to the world. The following year, in 1922, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. The arrival of foreign aid helped alleviate the effects of the famine, though it did not resolve it. At the forefront of this aid was the American Relief Association (ARA). 1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
