Translation: Help!

Artist: Dmitry Moor (true surname is Orlov) 1883 - 1946.

Year: 1921

The Russian famine of 1921, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia. The famine, which killed an estimated 5 million, affected mostly the Volga - Ural region.

The famine resulted from the combined effect of the disruption to agricultural production, caused by World War I, the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Civil War and one of Russia's intermittent droughts that happened in 1921 resulting in this national catastrophe. In many cases recklessness of local administration, which recognized the problems only too late, contributed to the problem. Hunger was so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten. Peasants often had to resort to eating weeds, food substitutes and even cannibalism trying to save the seeds for planting. At one point relief agencies had to give grain to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved.
Russia had suffered six and a half years of the First World War and then the Civil Wars of 1918-20 before the famine began. Before the famine, all sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918-20 - the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities — had provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land" - they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik government requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. According to the official Bolshevik position, which is still maintained by some modern Marxists, the rich peasants (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain in order to preserve their profits - but statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies were sold on the black market. The Bolsheviks believed that the peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism states that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for this "sabotage", leading to widespread peasant revolts. In 1920 Lenin ordered increased emphasis on the food requisitioning from the peasantry. The American Relief Administration (formed by Herbert Hoover to help the starvation of World War I) had offered assistance to Lenin in 1919 on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused the aid as foreign interference in Russian internal affairs. This famine, along with the Kronstadt rebellion, large scale peasant uprisings such as the Tambov rebellion, and the failure of a German general strike convinced Lenin to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He announced the New Economic Policy on March 15, 1921. The famine also helped produce an opening to the West. Lenin allowed relief organisations to bring aid, this time fortunately war relief was no longer required in Western Europe, and the ARA already had an organisation set up in Poland, relieving the 1919-1920 Polish winter famine.