The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-famineOxford University Press, 1986 - 412 pages The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I. Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history. |
Table des matières
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
| 58 | |
| 85 | |
The Fate of the Kulaks | 117 |
Crash Collectivization and its Defeat | 144 |
The End of the Free Peasantry 19301932 | 164 |
Central Asia and the Kazakh Tragedy | 189 |
A Land Laid Waste | 260 |
Kuban Don and Volga | 274 |
Children | 283 |
The Death Roll | 299 |
The Record of the West | 308 |
Responsibilities | 322 |
Epilogue THE AFTERMATH | 331 |
Notes | 348 |
The Churches and the People | 199 |
THE TERRORFAMINE | 215 |
Assault on the Ukraine193032 | 217 |
The Famine Rages | 225 |
Select Bibliography | 394 |
Index | 397 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-famine Robert Conquest Affichage d'extraits - 1986 |
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-famine Robert Conquest Affichage d'extraits - 1986 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
activists actually agricultural already areas arrested attacked authorities became Bolshevik bread called camps Central church clear collective farm collectivization Committee Communism Communist countryside course cultural death December decree dekulakization described died district economic effect elements enemy estimated example fact families famine February figures five followed force former give given grain half hand head households Ibid individual industrial January Kiev kolkhoz kulak labour land later leading least Lenin less major March Marxism mass measures methods middle million Moscow nationalist North noted November official organization Party peasantry peasants period Pidhainy political poor population Pravda production Province quoted reasons regime remained reported result Russian sent social Soviet Stalin struggle taken tells told took turned Ukraine Ukrainian USSR village whole workers York
Fréquemment cités
Page 21 - ... 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan 8.
Page 18 - The Government has placed its wager, not on the needy and the drunken, but on the sturdy and the strong - on the sturdy individual proprietor who is called upon to play a part in the reconstruction of our Tsardom on strong monarchical foundations'.
Page 261 - A ruthless struggle is going on between the peasantry and our regime. It's a struggle to the death. This year was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took a famine to show them who is master here. It has cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay. We've won the war.
Page 320 - At a banquet at the Waldorf Astoria to celebrate the recognition of the USSR by the United States, a list of names was read, each politely applauded by the guests until Walter Duranty's was reached; then, Alexander Woollcott wrote in the New Yorker, ‘the one really prolonged pandemonium was evoked. . . Indeed, one got the impression that America, in a spasm of discernment, was recognizing both Russia and Walter Duranty'.
Page 343 - But he was even more concerned at the "deep changes in the psychological outlook of those Communists who participated in this campaign and, instead of going mad, became professional bureaucrats for whom terror was henceforth a normal method of administration, and obedience to any order from above a high virtue.
Page 46 - We must place before ourselves most seriously the problem of dividing the village by classes. Of creating in it two opposite hostile camps, setting the poorest layers of the population against the kulak elements. Only if we are able to split the village into two camps, to arouse there the same class war as in the cities, only then will we achieve in the villages what we have achieved in the cities.
Page 199 - Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness . . . vileness of the most dangerous kind, "contagion
Page 46 - War Communism" was that we actually took from the peasant all the surplus grain — and sometimes even not only surplus grain, but part of the grain the peasant required for food — to meet the requirements of the army and sustain the workers.