The grain procurement policy of the communist regime and arising of the mass famine of 1921–1923 in Ukraine
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Abstract
The purpose of the study is to highlight the influence of the grain procurement policy of the Russian communist regime, and the export of Ukrainian grain to Soviet Russia on the occurence of mass famine in Ukraine in 1921–1923.
The scientific novelty. The author examines the impact of repressive harvesting on the occurrence of famine 1921–1923 in Soviet Ukraine as an unnatural element based on the principle of objectivity and historicism with the involvement of a wide range of archival documents and materials, including those introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The scale of the bolsheviks' implementation of the food layout in Ukrainian provinces and the export of grain to Russia during the product campaign of 1920/1921 in dynamics are analyzed. The connection between intensive grain seizures and prodterror in the USSR with the development of the situation in Soviet Russia is presented. The paper separates and investigates the position of military grain requisitions on the emergence of a food crisis and famine, primarily in the southern regions of the Ukrainian SSR.
Conclusions. For political survival, to strengthen their dictatorship and to build a communist system, the bolsheviks needed significant grain resources. Ukraine, especially its steppe grain-producing regions, was to become one of the main sources of their income. During the long wars on the territory of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1920), the Ukrainian food potential was gradually exhausted by bolsheviks, white guard, and polish requisitions. This, in turn, caused the destruction of the agricultural sector of Ukraine and the significant impoverishment of Ukrainian owners. Having finally mastering the territory of Ukraine, the Russian communist regime gained unlimited access to the exploitation of Ukrainian farms. They were taxed with exorbitant bread plans, the collection of which was carried out by military force, using repression and terror. The lion's share of Ukrainian grain was consumed by the Red Army units, which often engaged in unsystematic food looting.
There was an increase in the export of grain to Russia. The period of autumn 1920 – summer 1921 was marked by the strengthening of the food dictatorship, the point of which was primarily directed at the southern provinces of Soviet Ukraine. As a result, before the start of the tax in kind campaign of 1921, the grain resources of farms were exhausted to the limit. This, in combination with the subsequent repressive collection of tax in kind, the continuation of the export of bread to the RSFSR, caused a significant increase in the negative consequences of the drought and crop failure of 1921, leading to the emergence of mass famine in Ukraine.
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References
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