Famines in Russia and USSR

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Remember about Those Who Starve! A Soviet poster from 1921.

Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia and USSR are known to have happened every 10-13 years, with average droughts happening every 5-7 years.

1 History
2 References and Notes
3 External links
4 See also
5 General References

[edit] History

According to the report of Golubev and Dronin, one may distinguish three types of drought according to productive areas vulnerable to droughts: Central (Volga basin, Northern Caucasus), and Central Chernozem Region), Southern (Volga and Volga-Vyatka area , Ural, Ukraine), and Eastern (steppe and forest-steppe belts Western and Eastern Siberia and Kazakhstan). This report gives the following table of the major droughts in Russia.

Central: 1920, 1924, 1936, 1946, 1972, 1979, 1981,1984.
Southern: 1901, 1906, 1921, 1939, 1948, 1951, 1957, 1975, 1995.
Eastern: 1911, 1931, 1963, 1965, 1991.

The first famine in the USSR happened in 1921-1923 and got wide international attention. It was due to the Southern type of drought, the most affected area being the Southeastern areas of European Russia (including Volga area, or Povolzhye) and Ukraine. Fridtjof Nansen was honored with the 1922 Nobel Prize for Peace, in part for his work as High Commissioner for Relief In Russia. Other organizations that helped to combat the Soviet famine were UISE (Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants, International Save the Children Union) and the International Red Cross.

The second famine happened during the collectivisation in the USSR. In 1932-1933 confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities^[2] caused a famine which affected more than 40 million people, especially in the south on the Don and Kuban areas and in Ukraine, where by various estimates from 5 to 10 million may have starved to death (the event known as Holodomor). About 200,000 Kazakh nomads fled to China, Iran, Mongolia and Afghanistan during the famine. The information about this famine was suppressed by Stalin's regime.^[1]

The last major famine in the USSR happened mainly in 1947 due to the severe drought in 1946 in over 50% of the grain-productive zone of the country and to government mismanagement of its reserves. This led to an estimated 1 to 1.5 million excess deaths as well as to secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.^[2] Partly as a result of this famine, unlike many countries in Europe and North America the Soviet Union did not experience a Post-World War II baby boom.

The drought of 1963 caused panic slaughtering of livestock, but there was no risk of famine. Since that year the Soviet Union started importing feed grains for its livestock in increasing amounts.

[edit] References and Notes

^ U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, "Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine" [1], Report to Congress, Washington, D.C., April 19, 1988
^ M. Ellman, "The 1947 Soviet famine and the entitlement approach to famines," Cambridge Journal of Economics 24 (2000): 603-630.

[edit] External links

John McCrory and Jennifer Kao, The Political Economy of a Disaster. Famine in Russia: 1921-1922.

[edit] See also

[edit] General References

Genady Golubev and Nikolai Dronin, Geography of Droughts and Food Problems in Russia (1900-2000), Report of the International Project on Global Environmental Change and Its Threat to Food and Water Security in Russia (February, 2004).