Oleg Nikolaevich Argunov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, State Archive of the Kursk Region, Kursk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Grain Collection in 1946 in the Kursk Region: Was it Possible to Prevent Starvation?
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-4-6
The research of the causes of the starvation in 1946–1947 occupies a special place in Russian historiography. In recent years historians have been placing more and more attention on the regional component of this issue, pointing out two key factors which led to the disaster: a large-scale drought in most grain-producing areas of the country and the grain collection campaign organized by the state in 1946, which withdrew almost all of the harvested grain from the village, including seed material. Being based on the analysis of a wide regional documentary base, this work investigates the sequence, scale, and methods of grain confiscation by the government. As well as in the previous years, the campaign of 1946 was of a directive, planned nature, which had the force of law, and various methods were used to perform it, primarily of an administrative nature. The data of the Kursk region illustrates that even despite the rigor and significance of the achievement of grain gathering goals, the collective farms could not handle the obligations imposed on them owing to the fact that they collected significantly less grain than it was expected from them to procure. At the same time, a substantial part of the grain was “returned” to the collective farms by means of the government food accommodation – “Stalin’s Aid”, which enables to postpone the peak of starvation by several months, limiting it to February, March and April of 1947. The archival research led to conclusion that the chief reason for the hunger of 1946–1947 in the Kursk region was the unfavorable natural and climatic conditions that did not allow harvesting from the personal plots of collective farmers, which served them as the main source of food. According to these empirical data the author concludes that there was no possibility to avoid the starvation of 1946–1947 in the Kursk collective farms even it the grain collection campaign had not been started at all. Consequently, the assumption about the artificial man-provoked nature of the starvation of 1946–1947, which was put forward in Russian historiography back in the 1990s and which still remains a predominant perspective, is not substantiated when applied to the historical realities of the post-war Kursk region.
Publishing: 28/08/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 19.05.2021
How to cite: Argunov O.N. Grain Collection in 1946 in the Kursk Region: Was it Possible to Prevent Starvation? // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 4 (18), pp. 67–77. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-4-06.pdf
Links: Issue 4 2021
Keywords: agricultural policy; collective farm; starvation; collection of grain for State; Kursk region