Tribulations 1891- 1922

(by J. Kao and J. McCrory - Modified *)

Preface:
In the spring of 1921, in the Volga river valley of Russia´s Chernozem belt, peasant farmers who worked the famously rich "Black Earth" carried on their labor under clear skies. When light winter snows retreated, hot weather arrived close behind. By the time they went to the fields for plowing and sowing, they could read the cracks in the dry mud but they plowed and sowed anyway.

The Russian Famine that began in 1921 and ended in the summer of 1923 was one of the worst disasters in the country's history. It is estimated that anywhere from 2 to 10 million Russians perished from starvation and disease during this period – many more than the 400,000 excess deaths of the previous major famine of 1891-1892. The droughts of 1921 and 1922 extended over a larger area of Russia than those of the previous event, yet that alone does not explain this famine´s ferociousness. A combination of internal conflicts in the ecological, economic, and political environments exacerbated the effects of a two-year drought.

Black Earth (Chernozem) Region:
The country's growing regions were known as the "granary of Europe." The "black earth," or Chernozem region, was famous for being so fertile it did not require fertilizing. The soil generally contains a very high percentage of humus – 3% to 13% – at depths sometimes exceeding 40 inches. Indeed, there is only one place with finer soil in the world, a similar "Chernozem belt" in the province of Manitoba, Canada.

Stretching from Northeast Ukraine in a gentle northeasterly path across Southern Russia and into Siberia, the Chernozem belt varies in width between 100 miles and 500 miles. Despite its soil´s fertility, the Chernozem region is typically dry and prone to drought. No other part of Russia is more liable to failures of crops and famines than this belt.

The extraordinary fertility of the chernozem results from a long buildup of "decayed roots and feather grass foliage, sedges, and other lowering herbs" that produces humus. Because rainfall is light, nutrients are not leached out of the soil, and the precipitation that does occur evaporates quickly in the hot, dry winds known as sukhoveis.

Weight and Measure

Russian	Metric	English
1 pood	16.4 kg	36.1 lbs
62 poods	907.2 kg	1 ton
1 centner	50 kg	112 lbs
1 desyatina	1.1 hectares	2.7 acres

Famine In Russia 1891:
The Big Hunger of 1891-1892 also centered on the Volga River Valley, it was smaller in geographical size, but 15 to 30 million people were affected. The initial response of the Czar was to continue tax collections and grain exports and to suppress news of the famine in the cities by forbidding newspapers to use the word. However, newspapers published reports of peasants eating "hunger bread" made of substitutes such as straw, leaves, bark, goosefoot weed, and ground acorns. The Russian drought-famine of 1891-1892 resulted in about 400,000 "excess deaths.

Under both the Czar and the Communists, Russia´s push for industrialization placed the burden almost entirely on the shoulders of the agrarian sector. Beginning with the "Revolution of 1905" poor peasants began seizing the lands of the more prosperous farmers. These takings escalated sharply in 1917 and were endorsed and encouraged by the Communists following the October Revolution. Yet, despite redistribution of land, from 1905 to 1918, subsistence levels persisted.

Communist Agrarian Revolution, 1917 to 1918
The majority of the agricultural population worked on plots of land which provided them only with a very low standard of living, and considerable numbers of them (the poor peasants) did not even receive sufficient income from their lands to provide their families with basic necessities.

Violence had been in the air ever since the spring of 1917, and the peasants proceeded with increasing frequency to sequester the property of those who did not belong to the village community. This property comprised various categories of land, forest, pasture and meadow, livestock, crops in the field and finally all manner of household and personal possessions.

Throughout the country land is being seized. The private proprietors are first placed in a situation that makes it impossible for them to carry on farming, and then the land communities, referring to the general interests of the state, ordain that these lands should be transferred to the peasants.

World War I and the Civil War:
After the revolution, and affected by the world war, farming in the country deteriorated even more. The army requisitioned millions of horses thereby reducing the number of horses available for farming, while requisitions and excess slaughtering also took a high toll on cattle. By 1921, the number of horses was reduced to 46 percent, while the number of cows to 30 percent. Together, these caused a decline in the amount of land sown, which, by 1921, was reduced to 37 percent of its pre-war levels.

Drought and Famine of 1921-1922:
Such were the conditions in the Russian rural economy when the terrible blow of the drought and the subsequent crop failure followed, the rains did not come. In 1921, the country harvested half the amount of grain it had harvested in 1913. It was the custom for the peasantry to insure against the variations of nature by hoarding at least a year´s supply of grain. The absence of any reserves transformed extensive droughts into unprecedented mass famine covering vast areas of the country.

Impacts of the Famine:
As happens in most famines, the rural population deserted famine-ridden districts and migrated elsewhere to seek food. By June of 1921, peasants were flooding the cities, taking up residence in the railway stations.

The situation was most desperate in the villages where as many as half the houses were boarded up. The few survivors subsisted by mixing grain with chaff or ground weeds and acorns. Those with no grain made poisonous concoctions of weeds, treebark, and even clay and manure. The most desperate dug up the dead animals that had died early in the famine. The diet itself killed many who hadn´t succumbed to starvation, particularly children.

Estimates of deaths from starvation varied between 1 and 3 million, yet, starvation is usually less deadly than the diseases that spread in its wake. In 1921, demobilized soldiers and famine refugees cris-crossing the country made epidemic conditions worse. Under this reasoning, the death toll was probably much higher approaching 10 million perished souls. The diseases, typhus and relapsing fever, with scurvy, along with cholera, were the chief agents of destruction.

Epidemic Outbreaks:
The chief culprit was typhus. The great pandemic started toward the end of 1918 and invaded the country from three centers: Petrograd, the Roumanian front, and the Volga region. It reached its climax in 1920, declined in 1921, and flared up again in 1922, chiefly in the Volga region which was the center of the famine district. After 1923, however, the incidence of typhus steadily decreased.

It's assumed that during the four years from 1918 to 1922, 30 million cases of typhus occurred. Epidemics of cholera also broke out and reached its peak in the lower Volga region, resulting in 204,228 cases that year.

Conclusion:
The circumstances of the Russian Famine of 1921-1922 seem destined to produce catastrophe. While not as deadly as the Famine of 1933 (which resulted not from drought but state requisitions of grain depriving peasants of seeds) – this famine demonstrates the manner in which political and economic forces can combine with ecological phenomena to exacerbate the devastation.

The economic and political events in the years leading up to the 1921-22 famine destroyed any chance the Russian people may have had to withstand a multi-year drought. Years of war had drained the country to fight the crop failures of 1921-22.

The Communists relied on a political ideology that did not take into account the natural ecology of the country. They failed to recognize how the climatic conditions had influenced the social relations of its people. In their push for industrialization, they overlooked the ecological limits of the land and its people which contradicted the ability of Russia to produce great quantities of crops for export and for urban consumption.

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