REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

240
Remembrance in Time
from the Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic (Kazakhstan): Uralsk, Orenburg, Bukeev,
Aktiubinsk, Kustanai. Through the decree of the 13 th of August 1921, there were added
on the list of hunger: the province Ufa, the regions Ciuvashia and Kalmykia, through the
one of the 29 th of August – Votiaks, in the autumn, there were added the Republic
Bashkiria and Chelyabinsk, and in April 1922 – Crimea, Perm and 3 provinces of Ukraine
(Zaporozhye, Ekaterinoslav, Donetsk) 33 . According to the final statistics of the Central
Committee of Pomgol of the year 1922, the population of the starving provinces counted
31 714 thousands persons (23 434 thousands in Russia and 8 280 thousands in Ukraine).
These data are however incomplete, not including numerous hunger-affected territories
(Azerbaijan, Daghestan, the regions Kalmyk, Don, Tersk, the provinces Voronej,
Tyumen, Tambov, Stavropol etc.) 34 .
In full famine, in the year 1922, from hunger-devastated Ukrainian regions, inclusively
from those with Romanian population 35 , cereals were removed for regions of Russia in
the same situation. From the province of Odessa, for instance, 58 thousand poods of
wheat were removed for Samara, Ural, Tsaritsin and Pugaciov. Only in the year 1922
Pomgol approved that part of its funds should be also directed towards Ukrainian RSS –
in the conditions in which, according to the data of the Commission, on the 1 st of May
1922, in 5 plains throughout the republic, approximately 3 709 556 were affected by
hunger. Throughout Ukraine, the number of those in need of help amounted to 6.6
millions. Almost 40% of the starving persons were children, and the public supplies were
only enough for 7.5% of them. Only after repeated insistence of the Republican Party
leadership, the figure of the aids was significantly increased, reaching to approximately
1.8 poods. Beside the internal assistance, 1.8 million persons benefited from the
international organizations’ assistance, which could only unfold since the autumn of
1922 36 .
Another aggravating circumstance for the State policy is exportation. The cereals from
Ukraine, for instance, were subject to negotiation with Great Britain, Italy, Turkey,
Finland, Japan. On the 13 th of September 1923, the Central Committee of RKP(b) settled
that “in the shortest time” “to be thrown” in Germany 10 million poods of bread (wheat
and rye) 37 . The official explanations, from the month of December 1922, based on the
argument that neither the State, nor the population disposed of the necessary means for
acquiring the wheat surplus from the hunger-non-affected regions, when, at the same
time, the country benefited from international support, cannot be accepted. Situations
such as the one in which two neighbouring regions (the case of Podolia and Odessa) had
different status – grain supplier for export, respectively, grain importer or help consumer
– seemed absurd for the foreign observers, unexplainable for the hungry peasants, but
acceptable for the Soviet regime. Obtaining the industrialization-necessary currency
resources was reckoned more important than supplying the starving regions 38 .
33
S. Adamets, Guerre civile et famine..., op. cit., pp. 123-124.
34
I.A. Poliakov, 1921: The Victory over the Famine (in Russian), Moscow, Politisdat Publishing,
1975, pp. 18-19.
35
See V. Serhiiciuk, How they killed us through starvation (in Ukrainian), Kyiv, Kyiv National
University “Taras Shevcenko”, 2006, p. 19.
36
V.A. Smoli, The History of the Ukrainian Peasantry…, op. cit., 2006, pp. 21, 25.
37
V. Serhiiciuk, How they killed us…, op. cit., p. 19.
38
H.H. Fisher, The famine in Soviet Russia…, op. cit., pp. 323-324.