REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Vadim GUZUN: The Leninist Alimentary Dictatorship - The Model For Stalinist Hungers … 239
of transporting the bread towards Moscow. The solution adopted for the moment
consisted in replacing the abusive requisitions with fees and in liberalizing the market. As
a matter of fact, it was about a new economic policy 26 . In the month of March 1921,
despite recognizing the sharpening of the food situation, because of the agricultural
collections, Lenin claimed that “the peasant must starve a while; so that the overall
hunger of the companies and cities should be thereby avoided” – those that ensured the
support of the Party and Bolshevik executive 27 .
The Communist leaders were ready to do anything to save the regime, including giving
up the generalized requisition and allowing the marketing of the agricultural products.
After heated debates on the theme of the possible action options for taking the agriculture
out of the crisis, on the 15 th of March 1921, the X Congress of RKP(b) decided to replace
razverstka with the tax in nature and thus fixed the coordinates of the passage to Novaia
Ekonomiceskaia Politika (NEP). The VTsIK decree of 21 st of March 1921 as regards the
tax in nature stipulated that the new taxation should be lower than the previous one,
should cover the necessities of the army, of the urbane population and of the one not
yielding agricultural products; however, it should be so determined that, after paying the
tax, all alimentary reserves, raw material and fodder be left to the producer 28 . The
possibility of realizing agricultural products on the market was very important and with
deep connections in the peasant’s mentality – even if the change did not generate
immediate results, from political standpoint, many popular riots were stopped.
By the spring of 1921, a quarter of Soviet Russia’s rural population was starving.
Typhus and cholera epidemics were rampant. Millions of peasants tried to save
themselves, heading towards the industrial centres, without knowing that access to the
great cities was blocked, under the pretext of combating epidemics. The cannibalism
cases increased – only in Bashkiria, in Pugacev and Buzuluk, hundreds of cases were
reported, one of the investigated persons confessing that, in his village, everybody ate
human-origin meat, inclusively in catering places. The cases of scavengers were equally
common 29 . The figure of the hunger-affected population in March 1921 reached 26
million in Russia and 7.5 million in Soviet Ukraine 30 . Following the Bolshevik
agricultural and fiscal policy, the cereal agricultural surfaces reduced from 60.4 million
desiatinas in 1916 to 46.2 desiatinas in the year 1920. Moreover, in the State’s account,
only in 1920, the immense quantity of 347 million poods of cereals was confiscated from
the population 31 . In the “hunger area”, approximately 70 million people were caught –
more than 50% of the population, and in the epicentre – up to 35 millions 32 .
The TsIK decree of the 21 st of June 1921 qualified 9 territories as “starving”: Astrahan,
Tsaritsin, Saratov, Samara, Simbirsk, Viatka, the Germans’ Republic on Volga, of the
Tartars, Maroblast, and the decree from the 8 th of August recognized 5 other provinces
26 L. Fischer, Russia`s Road from Peace to War: Soviet Foreign Relations.1917-1941, New York,
Harper&Row, Publishers, 1969, pp. 53-54.
27 M. Wehner, “The Famine in Samara Gubernia in 1921-1922 and the Reaction of the Soviet
Government”, in Cahiers du monde russe, 1997, vol. 38, No. 1, p. 227.
28 I.M. Volkov et. all., Documents and Materials…, op. cit., pp. 179-180.
29 O. Figes, A people`s tragedy…, op. cit., pp. 776-777.
30 R. Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik regime…, op. cit., p. 411.
31 V.V. Kondrashin, The Famine of 1932-1933. The Tragedy of the Russian Village (in Russian),
Moscow, Rosspen Publishing, 2008, p. 319.
32 Ibidem, p. 323.