The famine of 1924 – 1925 in the USSR
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Abstract
Abstract. The goal is to investigate the nature of the famine of 1924–1925 in the Ukrainian SSR, its scale, course, and
overcoming its consequences.
Scientific novelty. The article examines for the first time the issue of the famine of 1924–1925 in the Ukrainian SSR,
highlights the role of the communist regime in the disaster’s occurrence, and describes the measures taken to overcome its
consequences.
Conclusions. Certain regions of Ukraine were hit by a drought in 1924, which led to crop failures. The lack of a grain
insurance fund and the export of grain, and continued export to the RSFSR, also caused a regional famine and exacerbated
the food crisis. Moscow was unwilling to acknowledge the famine in the USSR and did not redistribute food resources within
Ukraine. Among its priorities is the stabilization of the grain market in Russian regions. This has contributed to the inflation
of a disaster.
Starving regions received support from Kharkiv, but it was regulated and financed from Moscow. Centralized assistance
was mainly provided in cash loans to save the sown areas. However, the union center regularly created organizational and
financial obstacles to this. As a result, the food crop wedge decreased, and corn crops increased.
Food aid to the population was secondary, minimized, and selective. The focus was on feeding hungry children, whose
support was not sustainable due to unstable funding. Starving adults were provided with few alternative ways of earning a
living. The survival of most depended on themselves. The local famine of the summer of 1924 in the Slobozhanshchyna and the
Azov region spread in the spring of 1925 to most Ukrainian provinces, especially affecting Podillia. About 2 million people
were starving.
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References
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