The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine

427 Pages·1987·7.58 MB·English

by  Robert Conquest

THE HARVEST
OF SORROW
Soviet Collectivization
and the Terror-Famine
ROBERT CONQUEST
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1986
By the Same Author
NONFICTION
Power and Policy in the USSR
Common Sense About Russia
Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair
Russia After Khrushchev
The Great Terror
The Nation Killers
Where Marx Went Wrong
V.I. Lenin
Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps
Present Danger: Towards a Foreign Policy
We and They: The Civic and Despotic Cultures
What To Do When the Russians Come (with Jon Manchip White)
Inside Stalin's Secret Police: NKVD Politics 1936-39
POETRY
Poems
Between Mars and Venus
Arias from a Love Opera
Coming Across
Forays
TRANSLATION
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Prussian Nights
FICTION
A World of Difference
The: Egyptologists (with Kingsley Amis)
OTHER
The Abomination of Moab
For
Elizabeth Neece Conquest
Contents
Preface 1
Introduction 3
I THE PROTAGONISTS: PARTY, PEASANTS AND NATION 11
1. The Peasants and the Party 13
2. The Ukrainian Nationality and Leninism 25
3. Revolution, Peasant War and Famine,
1917-1921 43
4. Stalemate, 1921-1927 58
II TO CRUSH THE PEASANTRY 85
5. Collision Course, 1928-1929 87
6. The Fate of the 'Kulaks' 117
7. Crash Collectivization and its Defeat,
January-March 1930 144
8. The End of the Free Peasantry, 1930-1932 164
9. Central Asia and the Kazakh Tragedy 189
10. The Churches and the People 199
Contents
III THE TERROR-FAMINE 215
11. Assault on the Ukraine/1930-32 217
I
12. The Famin~ Rages 225
13. A Land Laid Waste 260
14. Kuban, Don and Volga 274
15. Children 283
16. The Death Roll 299
17. The Record ofthe West 308
18. Responsibilities 322
Epilogue THE AFTERMATH 331
Notes 348
Select Bibliography 394
Index 398
The black earth
Was sown with bones
And watered with blood
For a harvest of sorrow
On the land ofRus~
The Armament ofI gor
The Haroest ofS orrow
Preface
The task of the historian is the notoriously difficult one of trying to
represent clearly and truly in a few hundred pages events which cover
years of time and nations of men and women. We may perhaps put this in
perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded
about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in
this book.
Heartfelt acknowledgements are therefore due to all who supported
and assisted me. In the first place to the Harvard University Ukrainian
Research Institute and the Ukrainian National Association which were
my prime sponsors; and to Professors Omeljan Pritsak, Ihor Sevcenko
and Adam Ulam (all of Harvard) who were instrumental in providing or
suggesting this sponsorship.
In the actual work, I have to acknowledge above all the major co
operation and contribution of Dr James Mace, also of Harvard, in both
massive research and detailed discussion. I am also most grateful to Dr
Mikhail Bernstam, of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
especially for his expert assistance on the demographic and economic
side; and to Helena Stone, also of Stanford, for truly invaluable help both
in the general research and in checking innumerable references. Of the
many who have, in different ways, usefully drawn my attention to
particular lines of evidence, I would thank particularly Professor Martha
Brill Olcutt, Professor Bohdan Struminsky, Professor Taras Lukach and
Dr Dana Dalrymple.
I have normally used the Ukrainian spelling of Ukrainian place and
personal names, except for Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa (though I have not
been entirely consistent with minor localities which are variously
transliterated in English language sources). On a lesser point, I write of
'the Ukraine' rather than simply 'Ukraine'. A few Ukrainians regard this
as in some way slighdy derogatory, implying a local or dependent rather
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Preface
than a national status. But I find that in almost all cases works by Western
scholars sympathetic to Ukrainian nationality, and even translations from
prominent Ukrainian writers, use 'the Ukraine', which is also
countenanced by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. It is a matter
of current English usage, and certainly no more indicative of non
independence than for example, 'The' Netherlands. I ask those readers
who may nevertheless feel irritated to forgive me, and to consider the
larger number who would feel the omission strained or unnatural.
Devoted and lengthy secretarial work, often from barely legible
manuscript, was performed with her usual cheerful efficiency by Mrs
Amy Desai. MrJ ohn Beichman is also to be thanked for helping with this,
as is my wife, who took time from her own writing to deal with some oft he
more impenetrable parts of the MS - though also, as ever, for her more
general support and encouragement.
Oft he various resources in America and Europe on which I have relied,
I would make special acknowledgement to the Hoover Institution's
incomparable Library and Archives.
Stanford, California R.C.
1985
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