Sergey Valerievich Sharapov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“…Well, Brother Vasya, I Have to Die Here, in Siberia”: Famine in Rural Areas of the Novosibirsk Region in the 1940s
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-4-13
The phenomenon of local famine, which had its own causality, dynamics and chronology in the 1940s, remains an understudied topic in modern historiography. This article analyzes the factors that repeatedly caused in the rural areas of the Novosibirsk Oblast the food crisis. Famine was connected, firstly, with the strengthening of mobilization pressure on the collective farm village, which began on the eve of the war and continued after its completion. Secondly, it was due to the shortcomings of the state’s agrarian policy, which was not responsive to the local conditions of agricultural production. The economic system created by the Bolsheviks did not possess its own mechanisms for timely response to local food shortages. Informing about the famine went exclusively through political channels. Without the involvement of the authorities, it was impossible to solve the problem of access to food on the ground. The authorities themselves reacted belatedly, their assistance was insufficient and was accompanied by numerous costs, including corruption. The state deliberately blocked the information channels that could have signaled food difficulties. District authorities were prohibited from collecting information on actual yields on collective farms and to compile bread and fodder balances. Rural residents were the most vulnerable category of the population from the point of view of food security. The authorities not only did not provide collective farmers with any guarantees of survival, but also tried to block individual peasant tactics to escape from hunger, fighting for strict compliance with the statute of the agricultural association.
Publishing: 28/08/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 23/04/2024
How to cite: Sharapov S.V. “…Well, Brother Vasya, I Have to Die Here, in Siberia”: Famine in Rural Areas of the Novosibirsk Region in the 1940s // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 4 (36), pp. 163–176. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-4-13.pdf]
The work was carried out on the topic of the state task “Socio-Economic Potential of the Eastern Regions of Russia in the 20th – Early 21st Centuries. Management Strategies and Practices, Dynamics, Geopolitical Ccontext” (FWZM-2024-0005).
Links: Issue 4 2024
Keywords: agrarian policy of the Soviet state; peasantry; collective farms; famine; Siberia