On the brink of famine: Odesa Province in the food policy of the communist regime in the early 1920s
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Abstract
The study aims to provide a systemic analysis of the implementation of the food dictatorship policy by the
Communist (Bolshevik) regime in the Odesa Province in the early 1920s (on the eve of the mass famine): identifying regional specifics of its implementation, the reaction of the local population, and its role in the formation of a food crisis as a key precondition for the famine catastrophe in the region.
Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the systemic analysis of the Bolshevik food policy in the
Odesa Province on the eve of the mass famine as a holistic regional phenomenon. The study examines local specifics and concrete mechanisms of its implementation. The scale of grain seizures is clarified, and their destructive effect on the grain-fodder balance and the level of food supply for the region’s inhabitants is analyzed. A direct link is established between the aforementioned policy and the outbreak of mass famine in the region in 1921. A significant array of new and little-known archival documents and contemporary periodical materials has been introduced into scientific circulation.
Conclusions. The Odesa Governorate, as an integral part of the grain-producing South of Ukraine, held a strategic position in the implementation of Bolshevik food policy in the early 1920s. This policy was distinctly requisitionary and repressive in nature, carried out without regard for the actual economic potential of the region’s agricultural sector.
The extraction of excessive prodrazverstka (surplus appropriation quotas), coupled with the disregard for the exhaustion
of peasant resources, the reduction of sown areas, and the consequences of the Spring-Summer 1920 drought, led to a chronic deficit of grain supplies. Despite active peasant resistance and the factual inability to meet procurement norms in the first half of 1920, the Soviet leadership did not adjust its course. On the contrary, during the 1920/21 procurement campaign, the intensity of grain seizure increased: significant volumes of grain were diverted outside the governorate – to the industrial centers of the RSFSR and for export. This resulted in the critical depletion and degradation of peasant households in the Odesa region and had a catastrophic impact on the urban population, who were left in a state of starvation. Ultimately, the shortage and, in some cases, total absence of grain reserves as of the summer of 1921, combined with continued forced grain seizures (already under the guise of prodtax) amidst a repeated crop failure, became the direct factor behind the outbreak of mass famine in the region.
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