Mark B. Tauger

Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933

Most western and all Soviet studies of the Stalinist economy have ignored the role played by the stockpiling of grain in the agricultural crisis of the early 1930s. Thus in his major work on Stalinist agriculture published in 1949, Naum Jasny frankly admitted that data were insufficient to reach a conclusion, merely noting that “stocks from former years probably declined during 1932.” Baykov, Dobb, Volin and Nove said nothing about grain stocks. At the time, western commentators did pay some attention to the possibility that the stockpiling of grain exacerbated the famine. In autumn 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, and in spring 1932 British diplomats reported that Karl Radek had told them that, owing to the threat of war in the far east, enough grain had been stored to supply the army for one year.

The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933

Western and even Soviet publications have described the 1933 famine in the Soviet Union as “man-made” or “artificial.” The Stalinist leadership is presented as having imposed harsh procurement quotas on Ukraine and regions inhabited by other groups, such as Kuban’ Cossacks and Volga Germans, in order to suppress nationalism and to overcome opposition to collectivization. Proponents of this interpretation argue, using official Soviet statistics, that the 1932 grain harvest, especially in Ukraine, was not abnormally low and would have fed the population. Robert Conquest, for example, has referred to a Soviet study of drought to show that conditions were far better in 1932 than they were in 1936, a “non-famine year.” James Mace, the main author of a U.S. Congress investigation of the Ukraine famine, cites “post-Stalinist” statistics to show that this harvest was larger than those of 1931 or 1934 and refers to later Soviet historiography describing 1931 as a worse year than 1932 because of drought. On this basis he argues that the 1932 harvest would not have produced mass starvation.

Pavel Pantelimonovich Luk’ianenko and the Origins of the Soviet Green Revolution

This chapter examines the work of the Soviet plant breeder Luk’ianenko, who developed high-yielding semidwarf wheat independently and at the same time as Norman Borlaug in Mexico and while T.D. Lysenko was in power in the USSR. The article analyzes the main components of the Green Revolution of Borlaug and Nazareno Strampelli, outlines the Soviet preconditions for a green revolution in the work of Nikolai Vavilov, analyzes the limits of Lysenko’s influence, describes Luk’ianenko’s work, and examines his very limited contact with Lysenko.

The People’s Commissariat of Agriculture

This case study examines the role of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture [Narkomzem or NKZ USSR] in the planning and implementation of agricultural policy from its establishment in 1929/30 through to the end of the Second Five-Year Plan in 1937. Agricultural policy in this period centred around an attempt to expand greatly the cultivated area in order to achieve a massive and rapid increase in crop production. The chapter deals mainly with crop, especially grain, production because the regime considered that sector to be the most important. Consequently that sector most clearly reflected the main policy shifts and their consequences.