Molotov informed the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U on October 30, 1932 that Ukraine's obligations were reduced by 70 million poods and a final grain procurement plan was established in the amount of 282 million poods, including 261 million for the peasant sector. , from the peasants it was required to withdraw as much as had already been prepared from June to October. The failure of the procurement was due to the lack of bread, and the struggle for bread.

Indeed, there was no struggle.

Party, Soviet and economic workers, who were almost entirely thrown into grain procurements, saw with their own eyes the tragedy of the situation. Many of them could not remain just cogs of a soulless state machine.

Stalin at the January (1933) joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU (b) directly accused the local cadres of sabotage: “Our rural communists, at least most of them ... began to fear that the peasants would not think to hold back the grain to export it then to the market through the collective farm trade and, what good, they will take and hand over all their grain to the elevators. "

A clear evidence of the regime's complete indifference to the lives of people sacrificed to its policies was a series of measures implemented in 1932.

In August, party activists were given the right to confiscate grain from private peasant farms; at the same time, the infamous "Three Spikelet" Law was passed, which provided for the death penalty for theft of "socialist property." Any adult and even a child caught with at least a handful of grain near a state barn or a collective farm field could be executed. Under extenuating circumstances, such "crimes against the state" were punishable by ten years in the camps.

To prevent peasants from leaving the collective farms in search of food, a passport system was introduced. In November, Moscow passed a law according to which the collective farm could not give grain to the peasants until the plan for the delivery of grain to the state was fulfilled. (January 1, 1933)

Propose to the Central Committee of the CP (b) U and the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR to widely inform collective farms, collective farmers and individual farmers through the village councils that:

• a) those of them who voluntarily surrender to the state previously stolen and hidden bread will not be subject to reprisals;
• b) in relation to collective farmers, collective farms and individual farmers who stubbornly continue to shelter the plundered and hidden grain from the register, the strictest penalties will be applied, provided for by the decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of August 7, 1932 (on the protection of property of state enterprises, collective farms and cooperation and strengthening public socialist property).

The Extraordinary Commission transferred Ukraine to a blockade position. On trains and at stations, GPU brigades checked passengers' luggage and confiscated food, which the peasants bought for a lot of money or exchanged for valuables in localities adjacent to Ukraine in order to bring starving families. Some villages were recorded on a "black board". In these villages, the peasants were deprived of the right to leave, and if there were no food supplies in the village, the population died out. In particular, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the large village of Gavrilovka, Mezhevsky district, has completely died out, the village of Verbki, Pavlogradsky district, by half. Under the general leadership of the Molotov Extraordinary Grain Procurement Commission, detachments of party activists in search of bread ransacked every house, broke floors, and climbed into wells.

Even those who were already swollen with hunger were not allowed to keep grain for themselves.

People who did not look hungry were suspected of stashing food.

Referring to the events of that time, one of the party activists described the motives of his actions as follows: “We believed in the wisdom of Stalin as a leader ... We were deceived, but we wanted to be deceived. We believed in communism so selflessly that we were ready for any crime, if it was even a little embellished with communist phraseology. "

Spreading throughout 1932, famine peaked in early 1933. Calculations show that at the beginning of winter, an average peasant family of five had about 80 kg of grain until the next harvest. In other words, each family member received 1.7 kg of grain per month to survive. Left without bread, the peasants ate domestic animals, rats, ate the bark and leaves of trees, and ate the waste of the well-supplied kitchens of their bosses. There have been numerous cases of cannibalism. As one Soviet writer writes

However, even before death, many went crazy, lost their human appearance. " Despite the fact that entire villages were already dying out, party activists continued to take away grain. One of them, Viktor Kravchenko, later wrote: “On the battlefield, people die quickly, they are supported by comrades and a sense of duty. Here I saw people dying alone, gradually dying terribly, aimlessly, without hope that their sacrifice was justified. They fell into a trap and remained there to die of hunger, each in his own house, according to a political decision taken somewhere in the distant capital at the tables of conferences and banquets. There was not even the consolation of the inevitability to alleviate this horror ... The most unbearable thing was the sight of small children, whose limbs, dried up like a skeleton, hung down on the sides, their belly swollen. " Hunger erased all signs of childhood from their faces, turning them into tortured nightmarish visions; only in their eyes there was a glimpse of distant childhood. " Holodomor execution theft nationalism

From November 1, 1932 to February 1, 1933, the Molotov Commission additionally "procured" in Ukraine a total of 104.6 million poods of grain. The total amount of grain withdrawn by the state from the 1932 harvest was 260.7 million. poods.

Thus. Molotov coped with the fulfillment of the grain procurement plan, although he removed almost all of the available reserves from the republic.

At the beginning of 1933, there were practically no grain reserves left in Ukraine, and it was still necessary to survive until the new harvest. Winter grain procurements actually tore off the last piece of bread from the starving.

In the archives, no documentation of the Extraordinary Grain Procurement Commission was found. Because she never existed. Molotov, and sometimes Kaganovich, carried out inspection trips across Ukraine, gave oral instructions, and all written decisions regarding the "strengthening" of grain procurements, which they considered necessary to take, were under the stamp of republican bodies signed by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U S. Kosior, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR V. Chubar and others. Even in the minutes of the meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U, which lasted for hours, only the presence of these Stalinist emissaries was recorded.

In the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR "On measures to strengthen grain procurement" dictated by Molotov, dated November 20, 1932, there was a clause on the use of "in-kind fines". It was a question of fines with meat on those collective farms that "owed" grain procurements, but did not have bread to pay off the state.

Fines were to be levied not only by the socialized cattle, but also by the cattle of the collective farmers. The sanction on them in each individual case was to be given by the regional executive committee.

Guided by this norm, the authorities began to take away all other food supplies from the peasants who did not have bread.

In all localities of Ukraine, except for the border ones, house searches with confiscation, in addition to bread, of any food supplies - crackers, potatoes, beets, lard, pickles, fruit drying, etc., harvested by the peasants before the new harvest, have spread. Confiscation was used as a punishment for "kulak sabotage" of grain procurements.

In fact, this action was deliberately aimed at the slow physical destruction of peasant families. Under the guise of a grain procurement campaign on the vast territory of Ukraine (as well as the North Caucasus, where the extraordinary commission was headed by Kaganovich), an unprecedented terror of hunger was deployed in order to teach those who survived "wisdom" (Kosior's expression), that is, conscientious work for the state public economy of collective farms.

What happened in Ukraine in 1933 is nowhere reflected in the documents of official institutions. The reason is that Stalin ordered famine to be treated as a non-existent phenomenon. Even in the verbatim records of the plenums of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U and the minutes of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U of this period, the word "hunger" is not mentioned.

There is no doubt that Stalin's cold-blooded decision to confiscate all food supplies from the Ukrainian peasants led to the death of millions of peasants, and then to envelop the starving in a veil of silence, to prohibit any assistance to them from the international or Soviet community. To prevent the unauthorized escapes of a huge mass of starving people outside the republic, defensive detachments of internal troops were deployed on its borders.

Deaths from hunger began in the first month of the Molotov Commission's activity. Since March 1933, it has become widespread. Almost everywhere the GPU authorities registered cases of cannibalism and corpse-eating. In an effort to save at least children from starvation, the peasants took them to the cities and left them in institutions, hospitals, on the streets. However, during these tragic months of the Holodomor, unprecedented in history, Stalin bothered to publicly admit only "food difficulties in a number of collective farms." In a speech at the All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers on February 19, 1933, he cynically reassuringly declared:

"In any case, compared with the difficulties that the workers experienced 10-15 years ago, your current difficulties, collective farmer comrades, seem like a child's play."

Analysis of the available data of demographic statistics of the 30s. indicates that direct losses of the population of Ukraine from the famine of 1932 amount to about 150 thousand people, and from the famine of 1933 - 3-3.5 million people. The total demographic losses, including the decrease in the birth rate under the influence of hunger, reach between 1932 and 1934. 5 million people.

Of course, Stalin and his entourage saw things differently. In 1933, Mendel Khatayevich, another of Stalin's henchmen in Ukraine, who headed the grain procurement campaign, proudly declared: “A merciless struggle is going on between our government and the peasantry. This is a life-and-death struggle. This year was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took hunger to show them who's boss. It cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system took hold. We won the war! "

Soviet statistics of that time are known for their low reliability (it is known that Stalin, dissatisfied with the results of the 1937 census, which showed an appalling mortality rate, ordered the execution of the leading organizers of the census). Therefore, it is very difficult to determine the number of victims of hunger. Calculations based on demographic extrapolation methods show that the death toll during the Holodomor in Ukraine ranged from 3 to 6 million people.

While famine was atrocious in Ukraine, especially in its southeastern regions, and in the North Caucasus (where many Ukrainians lived), most of Russia barely felt it. One of the factors helping to explain this circumstance was that, in accordance with the first five-year plan, "Ukraine was to become a colossal laboratory of new forms of socio-economic and industrial-technical reconstruction for the entire Soviet Union." The importance of Ukraine for Soviet economic projectors was emphasized, for example, in the editorial of Pravda for January 7, 1933, entitled: "Ukraine is the decisive factor in grain procurement."

Accordingly, the tasks set for the republic were prohibitively great. As Vsevolod Golubiychiy showed, Ukraine, which provided 27% of the all-Union grain harvest, should have provided 38% of the total grain procurement plan. Bohdan Kravchenko claims that Ukrainian collective farmers were also paid half as much as Russian ones.

The Ukrainians, with their tradition of private land ownership, resisted collectivization more fiercely than the Russians. That is why the regime carried out its policy in Ukraine more intensively and deeper than anywhere else, with all the dire consequences that followed. As Vasily Grossman, writer and former party activist, pointed out, “It was clear that Moscow was pinning its hopes on Ukraine.

The result was that the greatest oppression subsequently fell on Ukraine. We were told that private ownership instincts are much stronger here than in the Russian Republic. Indeed, the general state of affairs in Ukraine was much worse than in Russia. "

Some believe that the Holodomor was for Stalin a means of overcoming Ukrainian nationalism. It is clear that the relationship between the national upsurge and the peasantry did not escape the attention of the Soviet leadership. Stalin argued that “the peasant question is fundamentally the essence of the national question.

In this article we will try to find out the real causes of the famine of 1932-1933 in the USSR.

Since 1927, the Soviet leadership has taken a course towards collectivization. At first, it was planned to unite 1.1 million farms in collective farms by 1933 (about 4%). Further, the plans for collectivization changed several times and in the fall of 1929 they decided to switch to complete collectivization.

On January 5, 1930, the draft resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) on the timing of collectivization, edited by Stalin, was approved. In the main grain regions, collectivization had to take place in 1-2 years.

This decree served as the impetus for unleashing repressions against the well-to-do rural population.

The richest and most efficient peasants were dispossessed. About 2.4 million peasants were forcibly taken to remote areas of the country. Approximately 390 thousand of them died.

A huge number of the youngest and most able-bodied peasants fled to the cities. The growth of the urban population in 1929-1931 amounted to 12.4 million people, which is several times higher than the natural population growth.

One of the prerequisites for hunger was the socialization of livestock. As a result of attempts to forcibly take away livestock, the peasants began its mass slaughter.

Here are the data on the number of cattle by year:

• 1928 - 70 540;
• 1929 - 67 112;
• 1930 - 52 962;
• 1931 - 47 916;
• 1932 - 40 651;
• 1933 - 38 592.

The amount of draft power (horses), which was the main working tool, was more than halved. In 1932, the fields were overgrown with weeds. Even units of the Red Army were sent to weed. Due to the lack of labor resources and draft power, from 30% to 40% of the grain remained unharvested in the field.

Meanwhile, the grain procurement plan increased from year to year.

Causes of the famine of 1932-1933

The collective farm chairmen were instructed to hand over all available grain, which was done. The remnants of grain from the peasants were taken by force, often rolling down to the use of violence and sadism. Seeing what was happening in the village, Sholokhov wrote a letter to Stalin.

Here is an excerpt from Stalin's response to Sholokhov's letter:

“... the respected grain growers of your region (and not only your region) carried out the" Italian "(sabotage!) And were not averse to leaving the workers, the Red Army - without bread. The fact that the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (no blood) does not change the fact that respected grain growers were essentially waging a "quiet" war against the Soviet regime. War to starvation, dear comrade. Sholokhov ... It is clear as daylight that respected farmers are not such harmless people as it might seem from afar ... "

It is very clear from this letter that the famine was deliberately provoked. The peasants had to be made to work, and to work a lot, seven days a week, from morning to night. To work more than they did in their time for the landlords.

As a result of the activities carried out by the country's leadership in the villages hunger broke out... The scale of the casualties was enormous. About 8 million people died of starvation. About 4 million people have died in Ukraine. About 1 million in Kazakhstan. The rest of the victims fell on the Volga region, the North Caucasus and Siberia.

Causes of the famine of 1932-1933 obvious, they were not hidden even at that time. The famine was caused by the leadership of the USSR, which denied the natural laws of the economy, did not skillfully manage the country's agriculture. Instead of trying to stimulate the development of agriculture, an attempt was made to intimidate the peasants with hunger and make them work. Such a policy is generally characteristic of the era of Stalin's rule and is essentially anti-human.

Now, it would seem, we can put an end to our story. However ... A number of modern (non-Stalinist and non-Soviet) historians, for example Zhukov, Yulin, Pykhalov and others, who have unequivocal wide recognition in scientific circles, bring a slightly different view of the events of 1932-1933. I will try to summarize the essence of this view.

There is a well-known fact that in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a great famine occurred with a frequency of about once every ten years, periodically covering one or another provinces of the country. The most terrible hunger strikes occurred in 1891-1892 and in 1911. Comparing the average mortality rate for the five years preceding the famine of 1891-1892, with the mortality rate during the famine of 1891-1892 itself, it is easy to see that the number of deaths during the famine years increased by about 1.3 million people.

It is not a fact that these 1.3 million died from hunger, but it is clear that the death was caused by diseases caused by systematic malnutrition and the consumption of various surrogates, such as quinoa, tree leaves, etc., as well as poisoning with grain contaminated with ergot and other similar diseases.

The tsarist government systematically took measures to combat hunger, trying to feed the starving regions, but the lack of a developed infrastructure and roads often led to disastrous results. There were several reasons for systematic hunger strikes. First of all, natural conditions are much more difficult than in Western Europe and, as a result, lower yields. Land scarcity of peasants. Extensive production methods.

The years 1932-1933 were lean. Ergot and other grain diseases were widespread. Superimposed on these troubles is the sabotage of grain harvesting, which was carried out by the opponents of the Bolsheviks, inciting broad strata of peasants against the Soviet regime. Part of the grain was hidden in the pits. As you know, this method of storage led to the deterioration of the grain and its transformation into a poison for the body.

When we try to find out where they came from, for example, 4 million who died of hunger in Ukraine in 1932-1933, it turns out that this number was calculated using empirical formulas based on population censuses that took place once every 5 or even 10 years. ...

Meanwhile, there are clear data on mortality for each year, based on the registry office records. So the average death rate in Ukraine for the five years preceding the famine of 1932-1933 is 515 thousand people a year. In 1932, the death rate was 668 thousand people. In 1933, the death rate was 1 million 309 thousand people. After calculating, we come to the conclusion that the number of deaths over the two hungry years increased by 945 thousand people, this is how many deaths can be attributed to the events associated with the hunger strike. Even if we add up all the dead in Ukraine for 1932-1933, not even 2 million people are recruited, not to mention the figure of 4 million, which was given earlier.

Contrary to popular belief that during the hunger strike of 1932-1933, the USSR was very cheap and sold grain abroad in large quantities, it should be noted that, in fact, grain exports were stopped at that time. Grain procurement plans were sharply reduced. Emergency assistance was provided to the starving areas.

In this situation, much depended on the actions of local authorities. It should be recalled that people who went on a hunger strike paid for it, falling under the rink of the purges and repressions of 1937.

Such a historical view translates the events of 1932-1933 from a planned Holodomor action into a nationwide tragedy of the USSR, one of the serious problems faced by the new Soviet government.

However, in order to finally get to the bottom of the truth, you need to shovel the entire Internet, and possibly raise a bunch of historical documents.

The Kingdom of Heaven to everyone who fell victim to the tragedy of 1932-1933.

Famine in the USSR 1932-1933- mass famine in the USSR on the territory of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, the South Urals, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan.

The origins of hunger in Russia

The history of Russia represents a long series of famine years.

At the same time, as noted by the historian V.V. Kondrashin in his book dedicated to the famine of 1932-1933, “In the context of the famine years in the history of Russia, the peculiarity of the famine of 1932-1933 lies in the fact that it was the first“ organized famine ”in its history, when the subjective, political factor was decisive and dominated all others. ... In the complex of the causes that caused it, there was no natural factor, as equivalent to others, characteristic of the famines of 1891-1892, 1921-1922, 1946-1947. In 1932-1933 there were no natural disasters similar to the great droughts of 1891, 1921, 1946 ".

During the second half of the 19th century, famine years caused by poor harvests in 1873, 1880, 1883, 1891, 1892, 1897 and 1898 were particularly cruel. In the 20th century, the mass famine of 1901, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1911 and 1913 stood out. with their low absolute value and insufficient land provision for the population, which, in turn, did not give him the opportunity to accumulate cash or grain reserves in good years. The exceptional instability of Russian harvests is primarily the result of unfavorable climatic conditions. The most fertile regions are particularly uneven in precipitation. Along with low yields, one of the economic prerequisites for the mass famine in Russia was the insufficient provision of the peasants with land. The possible reason for this phenomenon was the elimination of serfdom. In addition, the topic of hunger was also covered by L. N. Tolstoy in his article "On Hunger."

The devastation, economic chaos, a crisis of power and the refusal of assistance from foreign states after the Civil War caused a new mass famine in 1921/22. This famine was the first in the nascent USSR. Regional and local problems with food and hunger among certain segments of the population, caused by various factors, periodically arose during 1923-31. The second mass famine in the USSR broke out in 1932/33. during the period of collectivization - then about 7 million people died from hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition. And finally, after the Great Patriotic War, the population of the USSR was seized by the last mass famine in the history of the Soviet Union in 1946/47.

In the future, mass hunger with starvation deaths in the USSR and Russia was not noted, however, until now the problem of hunger remains relevant: according to the food and agricultural organization of the UN in 2000-2002, 4% of the population in Russia suffered from hunger (5.2 million human).

At the same time, as the historian V.V. Kondrashin notes in his book on the famine of 1932-1933: “In the context of the famine years in the history of Russia, the peculiarity of the famine of 1932-1933 lies in the fact that it was the first in its history” organized hunger “, when the subjective, political factor was decisive and dominated over all others. ... In the complex of the causes that caused it, there was no natural factor, as equivalent to others, characteristic of the famines of 1891-1892, 1921-1922, 1946-1947. In 1932-1933 there were no natural disasters similar to the great droughts of 1891, 1921, 1946 ”.

In Ukraine

The Holodomor is a mass famine that engulfed the entire territory of the Ukrainian SSR in 1932-1933, entailing significant human casualties, the peak of which occurred in the first half of 1933 and, according to opponents of the proof of the intentional nature of the famine, which is part of the general famine in the USSR in 1932-1933.

Preconditions for the famine of 1932-1933

Collectivization

From 1927-1929 the Soviet leadership begins to develop a set of measures for the transition to the complete collectivization of agriculture. In the spring of 1928, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the Collective Farm Center of the RSFSR prepared a draft five-year plan for the collectivization of peasant farms, according to which by 1933 it was planned to unite 1.1 million farms in collective farms (about 4%). In the Resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 10, 1928, "Grain procurement policy in connection with the general economic situation" stated that "despite reaching 95% of the pre-war rate of sown area, the marketable output of grain production barely exceeds 50% of the pre-war rate." In the process of finalizing this plan, the percentage of collectivization changed upward, and the five-year plan approved in the spring of 1929 provided for collectivization of 4-4.5 million peasant farms (16-18%).

With the transition to complete collectivization in the fall of 1929, the party and state leadership of the country began to work out a new policy in the countryside. The projected high rates of collectivization, in view of the unpreparedness of both the main mass of the peasantry and the material and technical base of agriculture, assumed such methods and means of influence that would force the peasants to join collective farms. These means were: strengthening the tax press on individual farmers, mobilizing the proletarian elements of the city and the countryside, party-Komsomol and Soviet activists to carry out collectivization, strengthening administrative-coercive and repressive methods of influencing the peasantry, and primarily on its well-to-do part.

On January 3, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was presented with a draft resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction, which provided for the reduction of collectivization terms in the most important grain regions (Middle and Lower Volga, North Caucasus) to 1-2 years , for the rest of the grain regions - up to 2-3 years, for the most important regions of the consuming strip and other raw material regions - up to 3-4 years. On January 4, 1930, this draft resolution was edited by Stalin and Yakovlev. It shortened the terms of collectivization in grain-growing regions, and with regard to the well-to-do part of the peasantry, it was said that the party had moved "from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class." On January 5, 1930, the draft resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) "On the rate of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction" was approved at a meeting of the Politburo and on January 6, published in Pravda.

According to some researchers, this created all the prerequisites not only for economic, but also for political and repressive measures of influence on the peasantry.

Grain procurement

According to research by Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Kashin, in a number of regions of the RSFSR and, in particular, in the Volga region, mass famine was created artificially and arose "not because of total collectivization, but as a result of forced Stalin's grain procurements." This opinion is confirmed by eyewitnesses of the events, speaking about the causes of the tragedy: "The famine was because the bread was handed over", "all, to the grain, under the panicle of the state was taken out", "they tortured us with grain procurements", "there was surplus appropriation, all the bread was taken away." In particular, in the Volga region, in the conditions of a village weakened by dispossession and mass collectivization, deprived of thousands of individual farmers who were subjected to repressions, the Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) on grain procurement, headed by the secretary of the Central Committee of the party P.P. Postyshev, decided to confiscate grain stocks from individual farmers and the bread earned by the collective farm workers. In fact, in the face of threats of repression and blackmail, the chairmen of collective farms and heads of rural administrations were forced to transfer practically all volumes of grain produced and available in stocks within the framework of grain procurement. These measures deprived the region of food supplies and led to massive famine. Similar measures were taken by V.M. Molotov and L.M. Kaganovich in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, which caused the corresponding consequences - hunger and mass mortality among the population.

Grain procurement policy

Already in 1928-1929. grain procurements proceeded with great stress. Since the beginning of the 30s, the situation has deteriorated even more. Objective reasons that caused the need for grain procurement:

• an increase in the population of cities and industrial centers (from 1928 to 1931 the urban population increased by 12.4 million);
• the development of industry, an increase in industrial requirements for agricultural products;
• grain supplies for export in order to obtain funds for the purchase of Western engineering products.

To meet these needs at that time it was necessary to have 500 million poods of grain annually. The gross grain harvest in 1931-1932, even according to official data, was significantly lower than in previous years.

A number of foreign researchers (M. Tauger, S. Wheatcroft, R. Davis and J. Cooper), based on official data on gross grain harvests in 1931-1932, note that they should be considered overestimated. To assess the harvest in those years, it was not the actual harvest of grain that was determined, but the species (biological) yield. Such a rating system overestimated the true yield by at least 20%. Nevertheless, based on it, grain procurement plans were established, which increased annually. If in 1928 the share of grain procurements was 14.7% of the gross harvest, in 1929? 22.4%, in 1930 - 26.5%, then in 1931 - 32.9%, and in 1932 - 36.9% ( for individual regions, see Table. 1).

The grain yield was declining ( see Table. 2). If in 1927 the average for the USSR it was 53.4 poods. per hectare, then in 1931 already 38.4 poods. per hectare. Nevertheless, the procurement of bread grew from year to year ( see Table. 3).

As a result of the fact that the grain procurement plan in 1932 was drawn up on the basis of preliminary data on a higher harvest (in reality, it turned out to be two or three times lower), and the party-administrative leadership of the country demanded strict observance, virtually complete confiscation of the collected grain from the peasants.

Repression of the rural population

Resisting the complete withdrawal of grain, the peasants were subjected to various repressions. This is how Mikhail Sholokhov describes them in a letter to Stalin dated April 4, 1933.

But eviction is not the most important thing. Here is a list of the ways in which 593 tons of bread were obtained: 1. Mass beatings of collective farmers and individual farmers. 2. Planting "in the cold". "Is there a pit?" - "No". - "Go, sit in the barn!" The collective farmer is stripped to his underwear and put barefoot in a barn or shed. The time of action is January, February, often whole brigades were planted in barns. 3. In the Vaschaev collective farm, collective farmers were doused with kerosene on the legs and hem of their skirts, lit, and then extinguished: “Tell me where the pit is! I'll set it on fire again! " On the same collective farm, the person being interrogated was put in a pit, buried halfway and the interrogation continued. 4. In the Napolovo collective farm, the authorized RK, a candidate member of the Bureau of the RK, Plotkin, during interrogation, forced him to sit on a red-hot couch. The planted man shouted that he could not sit, it was hot, then water was poured from a mug under him, and then he was taken out into the frost and locked up in a barn. From the barn back to the stove and interrogated again. He (Plotkin) forced one individual peasant to shoot himself. He gave a revolver in his hands and ordered: "Shoot, but no - I'll shoot you myself!" He began to pull the trigger (not knowing that the revolver was unloaded), and when the firing pin clicked, he fainted. 5. At the Varvara collective farm, cell secretary Anikeev at a brigade meeting forced the entire brigade (men and women, smokers and nonsmokers) to smoke makhorka, and then threw a pod of red pepper (mustard) on the hot stove and did not order to leave the premises. The same Anikeev and a number of workers of the propaganda column, whose commander was a candidate for membership in the Bureau of the RK Pashinsky, during interrogations at the headquarters of the column, forced the collective farmers to drink huge quantities of water mixed with bacon, wheat and kerosene. 6. In the Lebyazhensky collective farm they were put against the wall and shot past the head of the interrogated with shotguns. 7. In the same place: rolled up in a row and trampled underfoot. 8. In the Arkhipov collective farm, two collective farmers, Fomin and Krasnov, after a night interrogation were taken out three kilometers to the steppe, stripped naked in the snow and let go, ordered to run to the farm at a trot. 9. In the Chukarinsky collective farm, the secretary of the cell, Bogomolov, picked up 8 people. demobilized Red Army men, with whom he came to the collective farmer - suspected of theft - in the yard (at night), after a short interrogation he took them to the threshing floor or to the levada, built his brigade and commanded "fire" at the tied collective farmer. If he, who was terrified by the staging of the execution, did not admit, then, beating him, they threw him into a sleigh, took him out to the steppe, beat him along the way with rifle butts and, after taking him out to the steppe, set him up again and repeated the procedure preceding the execution. 9. (Numbering was broken by Sholokhov.) In the Kruzhilinsky collective farm, the authorized RK Kovtun at a meeting of the 6th brigade asks the collective farmer: "Where did you bury the bread?" - "I didn't bury it, comrade!" - “Didn't you bury it? Oh, well, stick out your tongue! Stop like that! " Sixty adult people, Soviet citizens, by order of the commissioner, take turns sticking out their tongues and stand like this, drooling, while the commissioner delivers an incriminating speech for an hour. The same thing was done by Kovtun in the 7th and 8th brigades; with the only difference that in those brigades, in addition to sticking out his tongues, he forced him to kneel down. 10. In the Zatonsk collective farm, an agitation column worker beat the interrogated with a saber. On the same collective farm, they mocked the families of the Red Army soldiers, opening the roofs of houses, destroying the stoves, forcing women to cohabit. 11. In the Solontsovsky collective farm, a human corpse was brought into the komsode's premises, put it on the table, and in the same room the collective farmers were interrogated, threatening to be shot. 12. In the Verkhne-Chirsky collective farm, the shop assistants put the interrogated barefoot on a hot stove, and then beat and took them out, barefoot, out into the cold. 13. On the Kolundaevsky collective farm, the collective farmers were forced to run in the snow for three hours. The frostbitten ones were brought to the Bazkovsky hospital. 14. In the same place: the interrogated collective farmer was put on a stool on his head, covered with a fur coat from above, beaten and interrogated. 15. In the Bazkovsky collective farm, they were undressed during interrogation, the half-naked were released home, half-way back, and so on several times. 16. The authorized RO of the OGPU Yakovlev with the operational group held a meeting in the Verkhne-Chirsky collective farm. The school was stupefied. They were not ordered to undress. Nearby had a "cool" room, where they were taken out of the meeting for "individual treatment." Those holding the meeting took turns, there were 5 of them, but the collective farmers were the same ... The meeting lasted more than a day without interruption. These examples can be endlessly multiplied. These are not isolated cases of bends, this is a "method" of grain procurement legalized on a regional scale. I either heard about these facts from the communists, or from the collective farmers themselves, who experienced all these "methods" on themselves and then came to me with requests "to write about it in the newspaper." Do you remember, Iosif Vissarionovich, Korolenko's essay "In a calm village?" So this kind of "disappearance" was done not over three peasants suspected of stealing from the kulak, but over tens of thousands of collective farmers. Moreover, as you can see, with a richer use of technical means and with greater sophistication. A similar story took place in the Verkhne-Don region, where the same Ovchinnikov, who was the ideological inspirer of these terrible bullying that took place in our country in 1933, was a special commissioner. ... It is impossible to pass over in silence what was happening in Veshensky and Verkhne-Don districts for three months. Only hope for you. Sorry for the verbosity of the letter. I decided that it would be better to write to you than to create the last book of Virgin Soil Upturned on such material. Greetings M. Sholokhov

I. V. Stalin - M. A. Sholokhov May 6, 1933 Dear Comrade Sholokhov! Both of your letters have been received as you know. The help they demanded has already been provided. To investigate the case, Comrade Shkiryatov will come to you, in the Veshensky District, to whom - I beg you - to render assistance. This is true. But that's not all, Comrade Sholokhov. The point is that your letters make a somewhat one-sided impression. I would like to write you a few words about this. I thanked you for the letters, as they expose the sore of our party-Soviet work, reveal how sometimes our workers, wishing to bridle the enemy, accidentally hit friends and sink to sadism. But this does not mean that I agree with you on everything. You see one side, you see well. But this is only one side of the matter. In order not to be mistaken in politics (your letters are not fiction, but solid politics), you need to review, you must be able to see the other side as well. And the other side is that the respected grain growers of your region (and not only your region) carried out "Italian" (sabotage!) And were not averse to leaving the workers, the Red Army - without bread. The fact that the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (no blood) does not change the fact that respected grain growers were essentially waging a "quiet" war against the Soviet regime. War to starvation, dear comrade. Sholokhov ... Of course, this circumstance in no way can justify the outrages that were committed, as you assure us, by our workers. And those responsible for these outrages must be duly punished. But it is still clear as daylight that respected farmers are not such harmless people as it might seem from afar. Well, all the best and shake your hand. Yours I. Stalin RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 11.D. 827.L. 1-22. Script; Questions of history, 1994, No. 3. P. 14-16, 22

The repressions were directed by two extraordinary commissions, which on October 22, 1932, the Politburo sent to Ukraine and the North Caucasus in order to "accelerate grain procurements." One was headed by Molotov, the other by Lazar Kaganovich, the latter also included Genrikh Yagoda.

Socialization of livestock

Some researchers believe that one of the reasons for the emergence of hunger is the policy of forced socialization, which caused a response from the peasantry - the mass slaughter of livestock, including workers in 1928-1931 (since the fall of 1931, the number of livestock among individual farmers has significantly decreased and the decline began to occur due to the collective and state farm herds (lack of feed / living conditions and irresponsibility of collective farms).

In 1929 there were 34 637.9 / 23 368.3 thousand horses / workers in 1930? 30 767.5 / 21 524.7 in 1931 - 26 247/19 543 in 1932 19 638/16 180 in 1933 - 16 645/14 205.

Cattle began to be slaughtered a year earlier (oxen / cows / total) 1928? 6896.7 / 30741.4 / 70540; 1929 - 6086.2 / 30359.6 / 67111.9; 1930? 4336.4 / 26748.8 / 52961.7; 1931 n / a / 24413/47916; 1932 - n / a / 21028/40651; 1933-н.д / 19667/38592 (it was mainly owned by the wealthy strata of the village).

Goats, sheep and pigs were slaughtered according to the "horse" scenario - 1929-146 976.1 / 28 384.4; 1930-113.171 / 13 332.0 1931 - 77 692/14 443 1932? 52 141/11 611 1933? 50 551/12 086.

To compensate for the "kulak slaughter", the government increased imports of horses / large farm animals / small livestock (heads) 1929-4881 / 54790/323991; 1930-6684 / 137594/750254 1931 - 13174/141681/713434 / 1932-26691/147156/1045004; 1933- 14587/86773/853053.

To a large extent, the deepening of the crisis was facilitated by the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, adopted on July 30, 1931, "On the development of socialist animal husbandry," which provided for the creation of livestock farms on collective farms.

This decree, in particular, proposed to transfer livestock from among those received for meat procurement for collective farm farms. It was supposed to organize the purchase of young animals from collective farmers for public livestock breeding of collective farms. In practice, this led to the compulsory socialization of livestock, which led to its mass slaughter and sale. The socialized cattle perished due to the lack of feed and adapted premises. The fact that this had become a mass phenomenon and that the authorities were trying to correct such an intolerable situation is evidenced by the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 26, 1932 "On the forced socialization of livestock", which condemned this vicious practice on the ground.

By the decree (September 23, 1932) "On meat procurement", from the beginning of the next month, the delivery of obligations to the collective farms, collective farm yards and individual farms "having the force of a tax" on the supply (delivery) of meat to the state began.

According to some authors, such a policy of socializing livestock and meat procurement led to an even greater reduction in the livestock population in 1932 (compared to 1931, the number of cattle decreased by 7.2 million heads, sheep and goats - by 15.6 million , pigs - by 2.8 million and horses - by 6.6 million). In the context of identifying the causes of hunger, the most significant, according to these authors, is the removal of livestock from individual farms of individual farmers and personal "subsidiary" farms of collective farmers, which significantly reduced the "food" base, already so significantly reduced by grain procurement. This was especially significant for Kazakhstan, whose population was mainly engaged in animal husbandry.

In this regard, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) sharply issued a statement that “only the enemies of the collective farms can allow the forced socialization of cows and small livestock from individual collective farmers”, this “has nothing to do with the policy of the party”, that “the task of the party is so that each collective farmer has his own cow, small livestock, poultry. " The corresponding resolution proposed immediately: “1) to suppress all attempts to forcibly socialize cows and small livestock from collective farmers, and expel those guilty of violating the Central Committee directive from the party; 2) to organize assistance and assistance to collective farmers who do not have a cow or small ruminants in buying and raising young animals for personal needs. "

Estimates of the scale of hunger

The scale of what happened can only be estimated approximately.

The famine covered an area of ​​about 1.5 million square meters. kilometers with a population of 65.9 million. And in terms of the size of the territory and the number of people affected by hunger, it significantly exceeded the famine of 1921-1923.

The famine was most severe in areas that in pre-revolutionary times were the richest in terms of the amount of grain produced and where the percentage of collectivization of the peasant economy was the highest.

The population of the countryside was more affected by famine than in the cities, which was explained by the measures taken by the Soviet government to confiscate grain in the countryside. But even in the cities there were a significant number of hungry: workers dismissed from enterprises, cleaned up employees, who received special passports that did not give the right to food rations.

General estimates of the number of victims of the 1932-1933 famine, made by various authors, differ significantly and reach 8 million people, although the last estimate is 7 million people. By now, a clear idea of ​​the famine of 1932-1933 as one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes of the Soviet period has formed in the post-Soviet information space.

Regarding the scale of the famine "caused by forced collectivization", there is an official assessment prepared by the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the official statement issued on April 2, 2008 "In memory of the victims of the famine of the 1930s on the territory of the USSR." According to the conclusion of the Commission under the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the Volga region, the Central Black Earth Region, the North Caucasus, the Urals, Crimea, parts of Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus, about 7 million died from hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition in 1932-1933. people, the reason for which was "repressive measures to ensure grain procurement", which "significantly aggravated the grave consequences of the poor harvest in 1932."

The Electronic version of the Encyclopedia Britannica lists a range of 4 to 5 million ethnic Ukrainians who died in the USSR in 1932-1933, out of a total of 6-8 million. The Brockhaus Encyclopedia (2006) cites casualty data: four to seven million people.

Memory of the victims

On April 29, 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution commemorating those who died as a result of the 1932-1933 famine in the USSR. The document notes that the mass famine was created by "the brutal and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime."

The end of 1932 - the beginning of 1933 was one of the most difficult times for the USSR. The process of industrialization of the country proceeded rapidly with an accelerated pace. But for the industrial giants, they did not have time to create the appropriate infrastructure at the same time, problems arose with the delivery of raw materials and the sale of products. For a number of construction projects, due to the redistribution of resources, there were not enough resources, due to an emergency regime, labor safety standards were violated, because of this, people became crippled. Working conditions were still very bad, due to overcrowding and disgusting living conditions in the barracks and temporary huts, diseases began. But, despite all the difficulties, the country was transformed just before our eyes.

In agriculture, things were worse. The peasants could not immediately rebuild their psychology and work on the collective farms in the same way as for themselves, plus the meager income of the collective farmers, which did not stimulate an increase in productivity. In addition, heavy industry was a priority in the development of the national economy, so funds from the sale of timber, grain, oil, etc. went there. 1932 was a bad year.

Map of the main areas of famine in the USSR. The denser the shading, the greater the size of the disaster.

Before the “strike”, an information campaign was organized in the media: in the fall of 1932, visit the journalist Stavsky from Pravda in the Kuban, he found there a continuous “counter-revolution” from the “hidden” remnants of the Cossacks, “White Guards”, which started “organized sabotage”. He was supported by the Rostov newspaper Molot. They immediately reacted to it, three special-purpose detachments were sent from Rostov, and the detachments were formed in advance from “internationalists” (Latvians, Hungarians, Chinese. ”Yagoda and Kaganovich personally came from Moscow to direct the operation. "Civil war: there were mass arrests and executions, including public ones. So 600 people were executed in Tikhoretskaya - for three days in a row, 200 people were taken to the square and shot. The executions took place in the villages of the Kuban, Stavropol, Kuban. "The ranks of the party, excluded the party members who" connived with the saboteurs ", only in the North Caucasian Territory 45% of the communists in rural areas, 26 thousand people were expelled. Some were sent into exile, their property was confiscated. resolution for disrupting grain procurements to carry out a number of punitive measures in relation to a number of villages. ares, closed shops, all debts were withdrawn ahead of schedule. As a result, these measures were extended to other areas of the Kuban and even to the Don.

Then the operation was repeated in Ukraine, where the journalists also exposed the "kulak counter-revolution". On December 14, 1932, a joint resolution of the Central Committee and the government "On grain procurements in the Ukraine, the North Caucasus and in the Western region" was adopted, and the deadlines for completing the procurements were set for the Sami by the middle of January 1933. The Ukrainian authorities, headed by Postyshev, Kosior, Chubar, introduced measures similar to the North Caucasian Territory. Trade was prohibited, rampant searches were carried out, food was taken away, and everything was cleaned up, money and valuables on account of the "debt". If they found hidden food, fines were imposed. If there was nothing, the houses were taken away, people were driven out into the street in winter. As a result, several villages in the Kuban rebelled, naturally this was an excellent reason to further intensify the repression.

So, the so-called. "Holodomor", and it cannot be said that the plan was to deliberately destroy the population of Ukraine, Russians and other peoples of Novorossia, Central Russia, the Volga region also perished. And people could not leave those regions where there was famine, these areas were cordoned off by troops, special detachments, so that people would not scatter. Plus, in 1932, a passport system was introduced, it made it difficult to move around the USSR, and the rural population did not have passports. People gathered in cities, at stations, but the markets were also closed there, the supply was only by cards, but it was poorly organized. As a result, famine became a terrible disaster, hundreds of thousands died, and special military teams were dispatched to bury the corpses. People ate cats, dogs, caught rats, crows, dug carrion out of cattle burial grounds on the Don, there were cases of cannibalism. OGPU fighters and militiamen killed cannibals on the spot, without trial. Plague broke out in some places.

As a result, the situation deteriorated sharply, the supply of cities deteriorated, famine threatened to spread to other regions, circles of a "Trotskyist", "Bukharin" character were created, the sabotage was powerful, the country could be blown up again - terror and famine could cause a new peasant war, a wave of chaos. This fact is confirmed by the correspondence between the writer Sholokhov and Stalin. Thanks to Sholokhov's data, a commission headed by Shkiryatov was sent from Moscow to the Don. It is clear that Stalin was not interested in disrupting plans for industrialization, collectivization, a new war with the peasantry, this was necessary for the internal and external enemies of the USSR. In addition to Sholokhov, apparently, there were other “signals” about the organization of the “Holodomor”, so it quickly stopped. Shops opened, groceries appeared, that is, there was food, even in the same areas where there was a famine. However, the investigation of Shkiryatov and other investigators from the center did not reveal the perpetrators, the crime was hushed up, only an "exaggeration" was reported.

Only a few years later, during the “Great Purge,” a number of figures (including Yagoda) would be held accountable for the “Holodomor,” albeit under other articles. And Sholokhov in Pravda will call the leaders who arranged this "enemies of the people" - for "the fact that under the pretext of fighting sabotage ... they deprived the collective farmers of bread."

Outcomes:

- “Holodomor” was organized by “internal enemies” (the so-called “Trotskyists”) with the aim of stopping the rise of the USSR, destabilizing the state, and undermining confidence in the supreme power, returning to the “swamp” of the 1920s. Eliminate Stalin and other "statists" from power.

A terrible blow was dealt to the people of the USSR, according to various estimates, 6-8 million people died.

It is stupid to accuse Stalin personally of the "Holodomor", he was not a "cannibal", he did not need destabilization of the country, disruption of industrialization and other projects.

To believe that the Holodomor was organized with the aim of genocide of the Ukrainian people is stupid and unannounced, the first blow was struck in the Kuban, the North Caucasian Territory, then the famine was organized in other regions, including Ukraine, the Volga region, the Central Black Earth Region, the Urals, Crimea, part Western Siberia, Kazakhstan.

Sources of:
Murin Yu. Writer and leader. Correspondence between M. A. Sholokhov and I. V. Stalin. M., 1997.

Shambarov V.E. Anti-Soviet. M., 2011.
Shambarov V.E. Cossacks.

One of the most tragic pages in the history of the Volga village was the famine of 1932-1933. For a long time, this topic was taboo for researchers. When the bans were lifted, the first publications on this topic appeared. However, until now, sources unconventional for historians have not been used for its disclosure. These are the books of civil registration on death, birth and marriage for the period from 1927 to 1940 for 582 village councils stored in the archives of the registry offices of the Saratov and Penza regional executive committees and 31 archives of the registry offices of the regional executive committees of the indicated regions. In addition, in 46 villages in 28 rural areas of the Saratov and Penza regions, a survey was conducted using a specially compiled questionnaire "Witness of the famine of 1932-1933 in the village of the Volga region", a survey of those who experienced all its hardships and hardships. It contains three groups of questions: the causes of hunger, the life of the village during a famine, the consequences of hunger. A total of 277 questionnaires were received and processed.

The regions of the Saratov and Penza regions occupy about a third of the Volga region. In the early 1930s, their territory was divided between the Lower Volga and Middle Volga regions; on a significant part of the modern territory of the Saratov region, the cantons of the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans (NP ASSR) were located. Specializing in grain production and being one of the most fertile regions of the country, this part of the Volga region in 1932-1933. was in the grip of hunger. The mortality rate on the territory of all surveyed village councils in 1933 increased sharply in comparison with the next preceding and subsequent years. In 40 former districts of the Lower Volga and Middle Volga regions, on average in 1933 compared to 1927-1932 and 1934-1935. it increased 3.4 times. Such a leap could be caused by only one reason - hunger.

It is known that in starving areas, due to the lack of normal food, people were forced to eat surrogates and this led to an increase in mortality from diseases of the digestive system. Act books for 1933 show a sharp increase (2.5 times). In the column "cause of death" there were entries: "from bloody diarrhea", "from hemorrhoid bleeding due to the use of a surrogate", "from poisoning with a surrogate", "from poisoning with surrogate bread." Mortality also increased significantly due to such reasons as "intestinal inflammation", "stomach pain", "stomach disease", etc.

Another factor that caused an increase in mortality in 1933 in this region of the Volga region was infectious diseases: typhus, dysentery, malaria, etc. Records in the registration books suggest the emergence of outbreaks of typhoid and malaria epidemics here. In with. Kozhevino (Lower Volga region) in 1933, out of 228 dead, 81 died from typhus and 125 from malaria.The following figures indicate the scale of the village tragedy: in 1931, 20 people died of typhus and malaria, in 1932 - 23, and in 1933 - over 200. Acute infectious (typhoid, dysentery) and massive invasion (malaria) diseases always accompany hunger.

The act books also indicate other causes of death of the population in 1933, which were absent in the past, and now determined the increase in mortality and directly indicate hunger: many peasants died "from hunger", "from hunger strike", "from lack of bread," "from exhaustion organism on the basis of starvation "," from malnutrition of bread "," from starvation "," from hungry edema "," from complete depletion of the organism on the basis of insufficient nutrition, "etc. In p. Alekseevka out of 161 dead, 101 died of hunger.

Of the 61,861 death acts available in the surveyed act books, only 3,043 acts are noted as its immediate cause on the territory of 22 out of 40 surveyed districts. This, however, does not mean that in the rest of the regions in 1933 no one died of hunger, on the contrary, and here a sharp jump in mortality testifies to the opposite. The discrepancy between the records in the acts of death and its real cause is explained by the fact that the work of the registry office in the starving areas was influenced by the general political situation in the country. Through the lips of Stalin, it was declared to the whole country and to the whole world that in 1933 "the collective farmers forgot about ruin and hunger" and rose "to the position of wealthy people."

Under these conditions, most of the registry office workers who registered deaths simply did not enter the forbidden word "hunger" in the appropriate column. The fact that it was unlawful is evidenced by the order of the OGPU of Engels to the city registry office about the prohibition in 1932-1933. to fix the diagnosis "died of hunger". This was justified by the fact that "counterrevolutionary elements", allegedly clogging up the statistical apparatus, "tried to motivate every case of death by hunger, in order to exaggerate the colors necessary for certain anti-Soviet circles." When registering those who died of hunger, registry officials were forced to change the cause of death. According to the Sergievsky village council in 1933, 120 out of 130 deaths were registered as dead "for unknown reasons." If we consider that in 1932 only 24 people died there and the reasons for their deaths were precisely determined in the act books, and the next year the mortality rate increased more than 5 times, then the conclusion suggests itself about the onset of severe hunger, the victims of which were the dead according to “ unknown reasons. "

The fact of the onset of famine in 1932-1933. in the regions under study, it is also confirmed by such a demographic indicator, always indicative of hunger, as a drop in the birth rate. In 1933-1934. the birth rate here has dropped significantly compared to the next few years. If in 1927 148 births were registered on the territory of the Pervomaisky Village Council, in 1928 - 114, in 1929 - 108, in 1930 - 77, in 1931 - 92, in 1932 - 75, then in 1933 only 19, and in 1934 - 7 births.

In Novoburassky, Engels, Rivne, Krasnoarmeisky, Marksovsky, Dergachevsky, Ozinsky, Dukhovnitsky, Petrovsky, Baltaysky, Bazarno-Karabulaksky, Lysogorsky, Ershovsky, Rtishchevsky, Arkadaksky, Turkovsky, Romanovsky, Saratovsky, Atlovsky regions. and in Kameshkirsky, Kondolsky, Nyakolsky, Gorodishchensky and Lopatinsky districts of the Penza region. in 1933-1934 the birth rate fell 3.3 times compared to its average level for 1929-1932. The reasons for this phenomenon were the high mortality rate during the famine of potential parents; the outflow of the adult population, which has reduced the number of potential parents; a decrease in the adult population's ability to reproduce offspring due to the physical weakening of the body as a result of starvation.

Influenced the birth rate in 1933-1934. the increased mortality in 1933 of such a category of potential parents as young people is confirmed by a significant decrease in the number of registered marriages in rural areas in those years. For example, the number of marriages registered in 1927-1929. in Petrovsky, Atkarsky, Rivne, Kalininsky, Marksovsky, Balashovsky, Ershovsky, Turkovsky, Arkadaksky districts of Saratov region. decreased on average 2.5 times.

The epicenter of hunger, characterized by the highest mortality rate and lowest birth rate, was apparently located in the Saratov region, on the Right Bank and in the left-bank cantons of the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans. In 1933, the mortality rate of the rural population on the Right Bank compared with the average mortality rate in 1927-1932 and 1934-1935. increased 4.5 times, on the Left Bank - 2.6 times, on the territory of the investigated regions of the NP ASSR - 4.1 times. Birth rate in 1933-1934 compared with its average level in 1929-1932. fell on the Right Bank 4 times, on the Left Bank - 3.8 times, in the regions of the NP ASSR - 7.2 times. As a result of the famine, the vitality of the Volga village was significantly undermined. This is evidenced by the sharp drop in the birth rate in many Saratov and Penza villages: judging by the records in the assembly books, in many villages, as many weddings were no longer played and as many children were born as in the years preceding collectivization and famine.

Famine 1932-1933 left a deep mark in the people's memory. “In the thirty-third year they ate the whole quinoa. Hands and feet swelled up and died on the move, ”old residents of Saratov and Penza villages recalled the ditty, which reflected the popular assessment of this tragedy. In the course of a questionnaire survey, 99.9% confirmed the presence of hunger in 1932-1933, and confirm that it was weaker than the famine of 1921-1922, but stronger than the famine of 1946-1947. In many areas, the scale of the famine was very high. Such villages as Ivlevka, Atkarsky district, Starye Grivki, Turkovsky district, collective farm named after Sverdlov Fyodorovsky canton of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, almost completely died out. “During the war, not as many died in these villages as died during the famine,” eyewitnesses recalled.

In many villages, there were common graves (pits), in which, often without coffins, sometimes whole families buried those who died of hunger. 80 out of more than 300 respondents had close relatives who died during the famine. Eyewitnesses witnessed the facts of cannibalism in such villages as Simonovka, Novaya Ivanovka, Balandinsky district, Ivlevka - Atkarsky, Zaletovka - Petrovsky, Ogarevka, Novye Burasy - Novoburassky, Novo-Repnoe - Ershovsky, Kalmantai - Volsky districts, Shumeika Semen - Engels and - Fedorovsky cantons of NP ASSR, Kozlovka - Lopatinsky district.

The American historian R. Conquest stated that famine broke out on the Volga "in areas partially inhabited by Russians and Ukrainians, but German settlements were most affected by it." On this basis, he concludes that the NP of the ASSR, "apparently, was the main target of terror by famine." Indeed, in 1933 the mortality rate of the rural population in the studied regions of this republic was very high, and the birth rate in this and subsequent years fell sharply. In a special letter to Stalin, a team of writers headed by B. Pilnyak, who probably visited there in 1933, reported about severe hunger and the facts of mass mortality of the population. Facts of cannibalism were recorded in the starving cantons. Memories of the famine of both Germans and representatives of other nationalities who lived at that time on the territory of the republic speak of the mass famine that occurred there in 1932-1933.

Comparative analysis of personal data obtained as a result of interviewing witnesses to the famine in the Mordovian village. Osanovka Baltaisky district, Mordovian-Chuvash s. Eremkino, Khvalynsky district, Chuvash village Kalmantai, Volsky district, Tatar village Osinovy ​​Gai and Lithuanian s. Chernaya Padina, Ershovsky district, in the Ukrainian villages of Shumeyka, Engelsky and Semenovka, Fedorovsky cantons and in 40 Russian villages, showed that the severity of hunger was very strong not only in the regions of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, but also in many Saratov and Penza villages located outside its borders ...

"What was it: organized famine or drought?" - This question sounded in a letter to the editorial office of the journal "Voprosy istorii" A. A. Orlova. The onset of famine in the Volga region, including in the studied areas, was usually (in 1921 and 1946) associated with droughts and crop failures. Drought is a natural phenomenon here. 75% of the respondents denied the presence of a severe drought in 1932-1933; the rest indicated that the drought was in 1931 and 1932, but not as severe as in 1921 and 1946, when it led to poor income and hunger. Special literature mainly confirms the assessment of the climatic conditions of 1931-1933, given by the witnesses of the famine. In publications on this topic, when listing a long series of dry years in the Volga region in 1932 and 1933. fall out. Drought, average according to the accepted classification and weaker than the droughts of 1921, 1924, 1927, 1946, scientists note only in 1931. Spring and summer of 1932 were usual for the Volga region: hot, places with dry winds, not ideal for crops, especially in the Trans-Volga region, but in general the weather is assessed by experts as favorable for the harvest of all field crops. The weather, of course, influenced the decrease in grain yield, but there was no massive crop failure in 1932.

The interviewed old-timers of Saratov and Penza villages testified that, despite all the costs of collectivization (dispossession, which deprived the village of thousands of experienced grain growers; a sharp decline in the number of livestock as a result of its mass slaughter, etc.), in 1932 it was still possible to grow the harvest, quite sufficient to feed the population and prevent mass starvation. “There was bread in the village in 1932,” they recalled. In 1932, the gross harvest of grain crops in all sectors of agriculture in the Lower Volga region amounted to 32 388.9 thousand centners, only 11.6% less than in 1929; in the Middle Volga region -45 331.4 thousand centners, even 7.5% more than in 1929. On the whole, the 1932 harvest was average in recent years. It was quite enough not only to prevent mass starvation, but also to hand over a certain part to the state.

Collectivization, which significantly worsened the material situation of the peasantry and led to a general decline in agriculture, however, did not cause mass famine in this region of the Volga region. In 1932-1933. it did not come about as a result of drought and crop failure, as it was before in the Volga region, and not because of total collectivization, but as a result of forced Stalin's grain procurements. This was the first artificial famine in the history of the Volga village.

Only 5 out of more than 300 interviewed eyewitnesses of the events of 1932-1933. did not recognize the connection between grain procurements and the onset of famine. Others either named them as the main cause of the tragedy, or did not deny their negative impact on the food situation in the village. "The famine was because the bread was handed over," "they took out all the grain, to the grain, under the panicle of the state," "they tortured us with grain procurements," "there was food appropriation, all the bread was taken away," the peasants said.

By the beginning of 1932, the village was weakened by collectivization, grain procurements in 1931, not entirely favorable weather conditions of the past year, which caused crop failures in some areas. Many peasants were already starving at that time. The main agricultural work was very difficult. An intensive departure of peasants to cities and other regions of the country began, reminiscent of an escape. And in this situation, the country's leadership, which was aware of the situation in the Volga region, approved in 1932 clearly overestimated grain procurement plans for the Lower and Middle Volga. At the same time, the difficulties of the organizational and economic formation of the newly created collective farms were not taken into account, as was eloquently evidenced by the mass protests of the chairmen of collective farms and village councils, regional party and Soviet bodies directed to the regional leadership.

Despite the energetic efforts of the party-economic leadership, which practiced in September-November the dismissal from work and expulsion from the party of the leaders of the districts who "thwarted the plan"; entering on the "black boards" collective farms, settlements, and districts that do not fulfill the plan; the announcement of an economic boycott to them and other measures, grain procurement plans were not carried out. The situation changed in December 1932, when a commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on grain procurement, headed by the secretary of the Central Committee of the party P.P. Postyshev, arrived in the region on Stalin's instructions. It seems that the assessment of the work of this commission and its chairman, which is available in the literature, requires clarification, if not revision.

The commission and Postyshev personally (as well as VM Molotov, who visited Ukraine, and LM Kaganovich - in Ukraine and the North Caucasus) are responsible for the artificially organized famine in the considered region of the Volga region. It was under pressure from the commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) (which included Zykov, Goldin and Shklyar, in addition to Postyshev) that the local leadership, fearing reprisals for disrupting grain procurements, in order to fulfill the plan, went to confiscate grain earned by collective farmers for workdays and available from individual farmers. This ultimately led to a massive famine in the village.

The following facts speak about the methods of work of Postyshev and his commission, which demanded at any cost to fulfill the grain procurement plan. Only in December 1932, 9 secretaries of regional committees and 3 chairmen of regional executive committees were dismissed from work for failure to fulfill the grain procurement plan by decisions of the Bureau of the Nizhne-Volzhsky Regional Party Committee, at the meetings of which were attended by members of the Central Committee commission and Postyshev himself; many were subsequently expelled from the party and put on trial. During meetings with the local party and economic activists on grain procurement issues (the participants of such meetings in the town of Balashov, I.A.Nikulin and P.M. of the grain procurement plan, the secretaries of the district party committees were removed from work and the OGPU workers arrested the chairmen of the collective farms. In words, in the press, Postyshev opposed the confiscation of grain from the collective farms that fulfilled the plan, against the violation of the law during grain procurement, in fact, he took a tough position, which pushed the local leadership to illegal measures against those who did not fulfill the plan.

In late December 1932 - early January 1933, a real war broke out against collective farms and individual farms that did not fulfill the plan. The decision of the bureau of the Nizhne-Volzhsky regional party committee of January 3 stated: “The regional executive committee and the regional executive committee demand from the regional executive committees and regional committees of regions that thwarted the plan, unconditional fulfillment of the grain procurement plan by January 5, without stopping at additional procurements in collective farms that have fulfilled the plan, allowing a partial return collective farmers advances ". The district Soviet authorities were allowed to begin checking the "plundered grain" by collective farmers and individual farmers.

Numerous eyewitness accounts show how these directives were implemented in the Saratov and Penza villages. The peasants were deprived of the grain earned for their work days, including those left over from previous years; bread was not given out for workdays; exported seed grain. Violence was often used against peasants in the course of grain procurements. In with. Botsmanovo, Turkovsky district, authorized for grain procurement from Balashov Shevchenko, in order to "beat out" bread, locked up almost the entire village in a barn (testified by M. Ye. Dubrovin, who lives in the working village of Turki, Saratov region). “They came, took the bread by force and took it away,” “gave it, and then took it away,” “went home, took away bread and potatoes; those who resisted were put in a barn for the night, ”“ they pulled [bread] out of the oven, ”recalled old residents of Saratov and Penza villages.

To fulfill the plan, bread was taken out not only by horses, but also by cows. The chairman of the Studeno-Ivanovsky collective farm of the Turkovsky district, M.A. The horses made two runs, covered over 100 km; the chairman did not agree to send them on the third voyage: "Let's kill the horses!" He was forced to obey, and soon 24 horses fell. The chairman was put on trial for refusing to find the kolkhoz grooms guilty of the death of the horses (they say, they were poorly fed), as the commissioner advised him. Violence was also used in the implementation of the plan for filling seeds in public barns. Local activists often walked around the courtyards looking for bread; everything they found was taken away.

The organizers of the procurement explained to the peasants that the grain would go to the working class and the Red Army, but there were persistent rumors in the countryside that in fact the grain was being taken away in order to export it abroad. It was then that sad ditties appeared in the village, sayings: "Rye, wheat were sent abroad, and the gypsy quinoa was sent to collective farmers for food", "Shingles, bard, corn were sent to the Soviet Union, and rye, wheat were sent abroad" grain - gave bread, she herself is hungry ”. Many peasants associated grain procurements and the onset of famine with the names of Stalin and Kalinin. “In 1932, Stalin fell asleep, and that is why famine came,” they said in the villages. In the ditties, for the singing of which there was a threat of imprisonment, the words sounded: “When Lenin was alive, we were fed. When Stalin entered, we were starved to death. "

In 1933, rumors circulated in the Volga village that a "Stalinist pumping out of gold" was being carried out: a hunger strike was made in order to take away gold, silver and other valuables from the population through Torgsin's shops for a pittance, in exchange for food. The peasants explained the organization of hunger with the help of grain procurements by Kalinin's desire to punish them for their unwillingness to work conscientiously on collective farms, to accustom the peasants to collective farms. In the Saratov and Penza villages in 1933 there was a rumor that, like the famous trainer Durov, who taught animals to obedience by hunger, Kalinin decided to accustom the peasants to kolkhozes by hunger: they will endure hunger, which means they will get used to kolkhozes, they will work better and value kolkhoz life.

During the grain procurements of 1932, which doomed the village to starvation, there was no open mass resistance from the peasants. Most of the respondents explained this by fear of the authorities and the belief that the state will help the village. Still, there were exceptions. In the village. The Krasny Klyuch of the Rtishchevsky district, testifies SN Fedotov (lives in the town of Rtishchevo, Saratov region), having learned about the decision to take out seed grain, almost the entire village gathered at the barn where it was stored; the peasants tore down the lock and divided the grain among themselves. In with. In the darkness of the same area (told by IT Artyushin, who lives in Rtischevo), there was a mass demonstration of the peasants, which was suppressed by the police.

The main forms of protest by peasants against forced grain procurement were covert actions: attacks on the "red carts" that took out grain from the villages, theft of grain from these carts, dismantling of bridges. Some peasants openly expressed dissatisfaction with the organizers of grain procurements; repressive measures were applied to them (testimonies of M.A.Fedotov from the working village of Novye Burasy, S.M.Berdenkov from the village of Trubechino, Turkovsky district, A.G. Semikin from the working village of Turki, Saratov region).

Thus, the data of archival documents and interviews with eyewitnesses of the events testify: the forced grain procurement of 1932 left the Volga village without bread and became the main cause of the tragedy that broke out there in 1933. Caused by the grain procurements carried out in violation of the law and morals, the mass famine, which claimed tens of thousands of peasant lives and undermined the health of the survivors, is one of the gravest crimes of Stalinism, its organized inhuman action.

Read also on this topic:

Notes (edit)

1. See, for example, IE ZELENIN About some "white spots" of the final stage of complete collectivization. - History of the USSR, 1989, No. 2, p. 16-17; Problems of oral history in the USSR (theses of the scientific conference on November 28-29, 1989 in Kirov). Kirov. 1990, p. 18-22.

2. Archive of the registry office of the Petrovsky district executive committee of the Saratov region, the act books about the death of the Kozhevinsky village council for 1931-1933.

3. Archive of the registry office of the Novoburask district executive committee of the Saratov region, the act book about the death of the Novo-Alekseevsk village council for 1933.

4. Lenin and Stalin on labor. M. 1941, p. 547, 548, 554, 555.

5. Central State Archives of the National Economy (TSGANKH) of the USSR, f. 8040, op. 8, d.5, ll. 479, 486.

6. Archive of the registry office of the Arkadak regional executive committee of the Saratov region, the act books about the death of the Sergievsky village council for 1932-1933.

7. Archive of the registry office of the Rtishchevsky district executive committee of the Saratov region, the books of records of acts of civil status on birth according to the Pervomaisky village council for 1927-1934.

8. CONQUEST R. Harvest of Sorrow. Soviet collectivization and terror by famine. London. 1988, p. 409, 410.

9. TSGANKH USSR, f. 8040, op. 8, d.5, ll. 479-481, 483, 485, 486, 488.

10. Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU (CPA IML), f. 112, op. 34, d.19, l. twenty.

11. Questions of history, 1988, no. 12, p. 176-177.

12. Dry winds, their origin and struggle with them. M. 1957, p. 33; Droughts in the USSR, their origin, frequency and impact on the harvest. L. 1958, p. 38.45,50,166-169; P. G. KABANOV Droughts in the Saratov Region. Saratov. 1958, p. 2; The climate of the southeast of the European part of the USSR. Saratov. 1961, p. 125; P. G. KABANOV, V. G. KASGROV Droughts in the Volga region. In the book: Scientific works of the Research Institute of Agriculture of the South-East. Issue 31. [Saratov]. 1972, p. 137; Agriculture of the USSR. Yearbook. 1935. M. 1936, p. 270-271.

13. Agriculture of the USSR. Yearbook. 1935, p. 270-271.

14. CPA IML, f. 17, op. 21, d.2550, ll. 29 vol., 305; d. 3757, l. 161; d. 3767, l. 184; d. 3768, ll. 70, 92; d. 3781, l. 150; d. 3782, l. eleven; Volga commune, 12-14. XI. 1932; Volga Pravda, 15.29. X. 1932; Saratov worker, 2.1. 1933; Struggle, 30. XI. 1932.

15. See History of the USSR, 1989, No. 2, p. 16-17.

16. CPA IML, f. 17, op. 21, d. 3769, l. nine; d. 3768, ll. 139.153.

17. Ibid., No. 3768, ll. 118 vol., 129.130 vol., 148.153.

18. Ibid., No. 3769, l. nine.

19. Ibid., No. 3768, ll. 139.153.