[Maxim Litvinov]

Further to recent reopening of discussion on the 32-33 Famine in the USSR, I just started reading Nina Lugovskaya's Diary from 1932-37 [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 1088568358 ] yesterday, and came across the following passages:

"21 August 1933
A kilo of white bread costs 60 kopecks! A liter of kerosene costs 50! Moscow is grumbling. Angry, hungry, tired people standing in lines berate the government and curse life. Not a word do you hear anywhere in defense of the hated Bolsheviks. Market prices are shooting up because of the rise in the price of bread and other essentials. What's going to happen now that bread costs twice as much it did, and potatoes at the market cost five rubles a bucket, while in state stores there are none at all? What will the workers eat this winter? Even now there aren't any vegetables or anything else in the stores...

31 August 1933
Strange things are going on in Russia. Hunger, cannibalism... People from the provinces say there isn't time to remove the corpses from the streets, that provincial towns are full of starving, ragged peasants. Everywhere there's terrible thieving and banditry..."

It's interesting reading. The girl was unsurprisingly anti-Bolshevik, considering her parents were SRs, and her father was hounded by the authorities.

[Gothmog]

-Well, as most historians argue, the troubles were not confined to Ukraine. This also points to a major crop failure in 1932-33, as the official data didn´t show a significant decrease in the harvest and, according to the very data placed by our friend from Ukraine (no sarcasm here, he has a quite good behaviour in this forum), exports were only about 3% of the official harvest. Any comments?

[Maxim Litvinov]

Actually, I obviously haven't followed the famine as closely as others (especially you, Gothmog), because it doesn't really interest me. But I am interested in the reason for the grain exports. I know they were somewhat minor as a percentage, but were they done:
- for capital, because it was the one thing the USSR could export
- as part of some long-standing agreement or treaty (eg: maybe some provision in the Rapallo treaty if I just make up a possibility)
- on a short term basis or contractual basis?

I am assuming that the USSR was exporting about the same amount of grain from the mid 1920s onwards, and there was no particular 'spike' in the 1930s. But I should like to know for sure, because you are often met with the implication that the USSR knew it couldn't feed the population, but deliberately exported a reckless amount of grain - possibly on a one-off basis - in 1932-33.

I agree with you on UkrainianNationalist. Whereas he seemed to be a bit too confrontational in his initial posts, he seems much more reserved and reasonable now. Although, I notice - for better or for worse - that he hasn't followed up on initial posts about the 'Ukrainian' famine.

[Gothmog]

-Maxim, I think you made some excellent points. I would like to add that I reviewed data from that Ukranian site and they don´t help too much to understand what happened. Look to that statistic of 1,7million tons of grain exported during the famine years. If this data covers one year, than it is about 3% of Soviet grain production, however, if this data is reffering to the full famine period (1932-33), this is only 1,5% of Soviet production, which would have pointed to an abrupt cut in exports. I think the Soviets needed desperately hard currency for their industrial projects (which were being built using foreign technology) and they had few things to export (not to mention the external market was suffering from a deep contraction, it were the years of Depression). Your question about how the grain was being sold it also important. For a centralized economy like the USSR, I can´t see other way to sell grain that not in a contractual basis. This would have made more difficult to cut exports. I also considered that lack of information was important. In a authoritarian system it´s hard to get real time information, because the censorship and the self protection instincts of the bureaucrats are powerful barriers to information flows. In the GLF, the Chinese kept exporting grain during the famine, not due to an evil conspiracy, but because they overestimated the harvest. It´s possible something like this happened in Ukraine. Add to this the deep distrust of peasants by Soviet authorities to explain how they take months to believe in the reports of famine (but eventually they took steps to deal with the famine, but it was too late). You can argue that all these troubles point to the intrinsic incompetence of the Soviet system, or, maybe, to the fact that Stalian was willing to sacrifice many of Soviet citizens to achieve the objectives of the Five Year plan, who knows? What we agree is that there is no evidence of a deliberate famine.

[Sapper]

Wasn't the famine a result of the peasants killing their live stock, so they could barely hit their quotas, and Stalin took their food because it was more important that the cities have food than the country because of industrialization?

I seem to remember reading that he lowered quotas around this time, as well.

It appears to me that a "disaster" in the countryside was also necessary to motivate people to leave and go work as an industrial laborer in the city.

[Ixa]

Stalin took their food because it was more important that the cities have food than the country because of industrialization?

No, food was only denied to three Kulak villages in total.

[Gothmog]

Wasn't the famine a result of the peasants killing their live stock, so they could barely hit their quotas

-To some extent. Grain and not meat was the main food of Russian peasants. But if the livestock had not been slaughtered before, it would have been possible to alleviate the famine, but not to eliminate it.

, and Stalin took their food because it was more important that the cities have food than the country because of industrialization?

-Add to this a poor harvest that seems to have been overestimated by the authorities and you have a recipe for disaster

I seem to remember reading that he lowered quotas around this time, as well.

-He did, but it was too late....

It appears to me that a "disaster" in the countryside was also necessary to motivate people to leave and go work as an industrial laborer in the city.

-Hmm.....I see no meaning in killing 4-5 million people to force the others to exit. The famine was largely an unintended consequence of poorly designed policies, not an evil conspiracy.