Famines and Political Communication in Stalinism. Possibilities and Limits of the Sayable, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 62 (2014) 2, pp. 255-272.

Robert Kindler, Berlin

Famines and Political Communication in Stalinism. Possibilities and Limits of the Sayable*

Famines were a fundamental part of everyday life in the early Soviet Union.1 Between 1917 and 1947 dearth and real starvation were omnipresent in the “paradise of workers and peasants”.2 Aside from the major catastrophes of 1921/22, 1932/33 and 1946/47, each killing millions of lives,3 food crises recurred on a regional scale.4 These experiences had a lasting effect on society. Famines constituted periods of extraordinary civil instability: starvation questioned essential certainties one had come to trust, the future was filled with uncertainty, rumours circulated, and uprooted people crossed the country in search for food and a living. In order to endure these times of dearth, specific action and behaviour patterns evolved within the party and state apparatus, just as within the general popula-tion. Peasant strategies of survival and the interests of the Soviet state have been the main focus in research so far. The former has been analysed in relation to “resistance” or ex-plained in terms of attempts to guard one’s “livelihood”.5 With regard to the latter, how-ever, many maintain that starvation had been used for political ends. But whether these ends pertained ‘merely’ to the implementation of a new economic and social order, to the subjugation of the Soviet peasants, or even to genocidal programs of mass-extinction has been the subject of much acrimonious debate – especially in relation to the pan-Soviet

* Last updated on May 6, 2014. – The author wishes to thank Klaus Gestwa, Marc Elie, Mirjam Galley, Felix Schnell and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The paper was translated by Andreas Corcoran.

1 For famines during the Russian Empire before 1917 see KONDRASHIN Golod 1932‒1933 godov, pp. 52‒59.

2 FILTZER The Impact, p. 309.3 Ca. five million people lost their lives during the famine of 1921/22. Between 1931 and 1934

between 5.5 and seven million people died, both directly or indirectly, on account of the famine. The famine of 1946/47 accounts for about 1.5 million victims. The causes and the de-mographic and economic consequences of the Soviet famines are discussed in an immense number of publications. See for example: FIGES A People’s Tragedy, pp. 775‒782; CONQUEST Ernte des Todes; DAVIES/WHEATCROFT The Years of Hunger; GANSON The Soviet Famine; ELLMAN The 1947 Soviet Famine.

4 Starving Cities after the Revolution: FIGES A People’s Tragedy, pp. 603‒612.; For food crises during the 1920’s see: VELIKANOVA Aftermath; ORLOV Golod 1920-kh godov. For famine crises during the mid 1930’s see OSOKINA Our daily bread, pp. 155‒161. More than four million people died under German occupation (especially prisoners of war) SNYDER Bloodlands, p. 411.The So-viet hinterland too experienced continual starvation and dearth: BARBER/HARRISON The Soviet Home Front, pp. 86‒90. The situation was especially dramatic in Leningrad under siege during the winter of 1941/42; practically the entire population experienced hunger: REID Leningrad.

5 On the practices of peasant communities see e.g.: FITZPATRICK Stalin’s Peasants; KONDRASHIN Go-lod 1932‒1933 godov, pp. 193‒229. For famine in the cities, see: FALK Sowjetische Städte, pp. 293‒306.

ROBERT KINDLER: Famines and Political Communication in Stalinism. Possibilities and Limits of the Sayable, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 62 (2014), H. 2, S. 255–272 © Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart/Ger-many

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ROBERT KINDLER

famine of 1932/33.6 Much has been written about the practices employed by the Bolshev-iks to re-establish the very stability they had previously destroyed. They increased the pressure on the functionaries in charge, intensified the level of terror against actual and perceived “enemies”, and harassed those affected by starvation in multifarious ways. At the same time, they instigated mobilisation campaigns with the purpose of making the catastrophes fall into oblivion.7

This paper deals with two connected questions: how famines figured within political communication during Stalinism, and in what ways such communication could possibly contribute to the stability of the regime. Both questions have received virtually no atten-tion in research. In line with the observation that with the beginning of the Stalinist ‘re-volution from above’ it became almost impossible to address the issue of the famines, many scholars have equated this silence with concealment. Official formulations have been interpreted as a totalitarian tendency to suppress any comments in relation to the is-sue of starvation.8 The catastrophe of the Soviet famine in 1932/33, especially, is said to have been hushed up, since the Soviet regime had worked hard to ensure that no informa-tion about the severity of the situation became public.9 It was hardly possible to allude to the matter, much less address it directly. Any attempts aimed at commemorating the cata-strophe were suppressed in the decades leading up to the downfall of the Soviet Union. As CATHERINE MERRIDALE puts it, „the public concealment of the famine was a form of viol-ence, yet another Stalinist misdeed, cold and calculating and masking their naked fear.”10 One could say the same about the famine of 1946/4711 and, with some qualifications, also about the plight of the Leningrad population in the winter of 1941/42. State propaganda had spun their fate into a heroic act of sacrifice and made very little mention of the starva-tion involved.12 The only exception to this narrative is the famine of 1921/22 when the young Soviet state itself ventured to alarm the world public in a cry for help.

But was it possible to hold one’s silence at what each and everyone could see with their own eyes? Rural areas were primarily affected by the famines, but the cities and train sta-tions too were crowded with ailing people, who did not hold back information about star -vation in their places of origin.13 Considering these circumstances, did it even matter that Soviet media did not mention the famine? Who kept his silence in regard to whom and for what reasons? How and by whom could starvation be addressed? I will argue that next to silencing (doubtlessly the most important form of political communication) there existed also other forms that were employed to either conceal or address the famine issue in (seg-mented) public spheres. Both, language regimes and coerced silence seem to have been firmly grounded in Stalinist society, yet their definiteness subsides when one takes a closer look at how they figure in these crises and catastrophes. Depending on who ad-dressed whom, the limitations on what could be said differed. Any acts of speaking or keeping silent about the famines were carried out under the conditions laid out by the state

6 Good starting point: ELLMAN Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932‒33; KUROMIYA The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933; KONDRASHIN (Ed.) Sovremennaia rossiisko-ukrainskaia istoriografiia.

7 KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, pp. 239‒274.8 Paradigmatic: ŠAPOVAL Lügen und Schweigen. 9 WERTH Ein Staat gegen sein Volk, p. 139.10 MERRIDALE Steinerne Nächte, p. 249.11 GANSON The Soviet Famine, p. 88.12 REID Leningrad; ZEMSKOV-ZÜGE Zwischen politischen Strukturen, pp. 150‒152.13 GANSON The Soviet Famine, p. 86. Whereas the famine of 1932/33 affected mostly peasants, the

famine of 1947 showed a far greater “equality of suffering”, see: FILTZER The Impact, p. 329.

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– the very institution that had caused them in the first place. By submitting to the rules of this discourse the people affirmed the Bolsheviks’ authority. Thus the regulation of what could be said in a fragmented public sphere14, which included the element of coerced si-lence, produced and ensured fellowship and obedience. Whilst toiling with an existential and abnormal emergency, it was only rational for the population to adhere to the norms of the Soviet state in order to survive. The Bolsheviks handed down predesigned interpreta-tions, the adoption of which was mandatory. The effects these imposed views had on soci-ety are still clearly discernible to this day.

I understand political communication here as an inclusive set of diverse practices of linguistic, as well as symbolic and visual forms of communication. Stalinist political com-munication was highly regulated and delimited by specific language regimes.15 On the one hand, we are dealing with aspects that could be articulated in different arenas of the Soviet public without provoking sanctions; on the other hand, we are dealing with issues that were left unsaid or indeed had to be left unsaid. Such actions, in this sense, accord to the ‘silent’ side of the ubiquitous “speaking Bolshevik”.16 People of all social backgrounds had to acquire these language idiosyncrasies, including the proscribed aspects of silence, if they wished to retain any form of direct communication with the authorities.17 The non-mentioning, the silencing, and the use of intricate formulations in relation to “problem-atic” conditions were integral parts of such communication processes. The silencing of un-comfortable truths lay at the very heart of Stalinist communication. ALEXEY TIKHOMIROV has coined the phrase “forced trust” to describe an elemental experience of Soviet existence. “Forced trust”, according to him, was an inevitable consequence of the regime’s continual distrust, yet it contributed towards the mutual attachment of leadership and populace; not least, because it forced the people to turn directly to the state with their concerns and problems.18 Moreover, it was absolutely crucial to appear as fully trustworthy, and, in turn, to express one’s trust in the leadership and its policies at any given opportunity.19 It is not necessary, as LORENZ ERREN points out, to differ between people as “atomized individuals”, enthusiastic “illiberal subjects” or “cynical accomplices”. Rather, it was more important “that the regime positioned itself so skilfully that it was able to garner the support of be -lievers and cynics alike”.20 Although the public display of a conformist attitude offered little in real terms, it was nonetheless the only possible way of accessing any resources. This was especially important for those people who – for whatever reason – feared dis -crimination or threatened to fall through society. They had to prove their “Soviet” identity at all costs,21 more than ever during the three famines of 1921/22, 1932/33 and 1946/47, as well as when Leningrad was under siege in the winter of 1941/42.

14 On the fragmented character of the Stalinist public: BEHRENDS/ROLF/RITTERSPORN Open Spaces, pp. 435‒440.

15 MERL Politische Kommunikation, pp. 17‒19.16 KOTKIN Magnetic Mountain, pp. 198‒237. See also JOHNSTON Being Soviet, pp. xxv‒xliii.17 See also: RITTERSPORN/BEHRENDS/ROLF Exploring Public Spaces, p. 29. 18 TIKHOMIROV The Regime of Forced Trust, pp. 80‒87 and p. 116.19 HOSKING Trust and Distrust.20 ERREN Stalinist Rule, p. 58.21 TIKHOMIROV The Regime of Forced Trust, p. 104.

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The famine of 1921/22 as a formative experience

During the famine of 1921/22, the Bolsheviks had to embrace a certain degree of open-ness, as the Soviet state failed to manage the catastrophe on its own – a catastrophe which had been essentially caused by its very own policies. Despite the extraordinary drought of 1921, the orders set out for the procurement of grain remained unaltered. This resulted in an unprecedented famine during which at least five million people lost their lives.22 Shocking images of starving children and piles of frozen corpses, not to mention the ded-icated work of such prominent personalities as Maksim Gorky and the Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, helped to stir up international awareness and action.23 The process of aperture towards foreigners was accompanied by unparalleled interior transparency. By the late summer of 1921 first newspaper reports, albeit intricately formulated initially, were followed by massive campaigns dominating the Soviet public attention in a quest to inform about the famine in the Volga region. The “Pravda” reported about the situation in the affected areas in large-size articles. They lay special emphasis on detailing the display of national and international solidarity with those affected by famine. They followed this up by calling upon the peasantry to immediately pay their taxes and duties. Reports on the various campaigns (which popped up everywhere for helping the affected regions) em-phasized that it was above all workers and peasants that showed compassion with the suf-fering people. The tone became ever more urging as the crisis reached increasingly devast-ating levels: “Can every organization and every citizen in all honesty respond to the ques-tion whether he has done absolutely everything in his power for the rescue of those that are dying of starvation?”, was the title of one typical front-page headline in the spring of 1922.24 All reports and mobilisation efforts were led by the motto “on the hunger front” (Na golodnom fronte). Famine was met with “combat” carried out in “battles”. Propa-gandists tried to utilise this “war on starvation” to forge identity. The Soviet people were expected to prove themselves as a unity while giving their support for those enduring star-vation – a supposed unity forged in recent years during the Civil War.

Next to the air of inclusivity, this „suggestion of a front“25 had a second function as well: a battle scene, by definition, entailed enemies and opponents that needed to be quashed. The famine had thus opened up new possibilities for the Bolsheviks. These were times that made it possible to engage in political ascriptions of guilt. The ruling powers in Moscow tried to pass on at least parts of the responsibility for the catastrophe. They high-lighted that the relief and support coming from the political opponents had no other func-tion but to damage Soviet Russia. People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Georgii Chi-cherin, for instance, declared in the “Pravda” that the help offered by France and other European states was merely a ploy to place spies and to collect useful information. 26 Such accusations, regularly brought forward, were but one side of the coin. No one better than Lenin had realised that this was a good time to discredit adversaries and weaken them de -cisively. Founded in the summer of 1921 by prominent scientists and intellectuals, the “All-Russian Public Committee to Aid the Hungry“ (Pomgol), for instance, was disbanded at the earliest possible opportunity. The leading Bolsheviks disapproved of the organisa-

22 PATENAUDE The Big Show, pp. 25‒27; WERTH Ein Staat, p. 96.23 FIGES A People’s Tragedy, p. 780; PATENAUDE The Big Show, p. 27.24 Pravda (21.03.1922), p. 1.25 NEUTATZ Die Suggestion der Front. 26 CHICHERIN K voprosu.

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tion’s membership structure and its formal independence. It was argued in the press that the members’ actual focus was not on the plight of the people. On the contrary, they main-tained that Pomgol’s one and only interest was to draw the attention of foreign govern-ments.27 A few days later, in the same “Pravda” issue in which Chicherin had criticised capitalist countries for their relief efforts, the Cheka announced that several members of the committee had been arrested.28 Other involved parties were expelled from the Soviet Union.29 Attacks against the Church too were unleashed under the pretext of having to mo-bilise supplies for the needy. The famine offered ideal conditions for such a procedure. The fact that one could read in the “Pravda” about the arrest of those who allegedly op-posed public relief for the hungry was supposed to deter and serve as a reminder of the consequences that any form of insubordinate behaviour would entail.

This lesson was just as defining as the experience of defeat, for the transparency in dealing with the catastrophe and the presence of relief organizations was a political de-bacle for the leaders in Moscow. The regime’s weakness had been laid bare for the world to see. Moreover, it was an opportunity for the international public to gain detailed know-ledge about the desolate conditions within the Soviet Union. The Moscow comrades had been humiliated into having to accept support from abroad, including the USA, to allevi -ate the plight of the hungry. BERTRAND PATENAUDE remarked that “the very presence of fam-ine relief workers from the world’s foremost capitalist country only aggravated the Party’s general state of anxiety. Politically speaking, it was worse than the famine itself.”30 For the Bolsheviks the famine of 1921/22 thus signified a bitter defeat, never to happen again.

Functions of Silence

Ten years later, this partial openness had truly come to an end. Nothing about the famine was to leak to the outside. On account of the collectivization of the Soviet agriculture, merciless confiscations of livestock and grain, and the dekulakization campaign, several local hunger crises began to emerge in 1928, which increasingly grew in range and intens-ity. These finally culminated in the worst ever Soviet famine: the catastrophe of 1932/33 during which 5.5 to 6.5 million people lost their lives. The population starved not only in the epicentres of the famine, in the Ukraine, in the North Caucasus, the Volga region, and Kazakhstan; people in all other regions of the Soviet Union were affected as well.31 The peasants resisted against the onslaught of the state with all kinds of means not only to pro-tect their traditional ways of life, but also because they shared a clear vision of what the Bolsheviks’ attack ultimately had in store for them: hunger and hardship. The threat of starvation had a mobilizing effect on the population.32 For this reason it was the rural areas that showed the most intensive forms of resistance in 1929/30 – at a time when the peas -ants had not yet forfeited their capacity to act in unison. When fears about the oncoming famine had turned into gruesome reality, the stability of the regime in the affected areas

27 S golodom ne igraiut.28 Soobshchenie V.Ch.K.29 WERTH Ein Staat, p. 102.30 PATENAUDE The Big Show, p. 25.31 DAVIES/WHEATCROFT Years of Hunger, p. 401. The greatest death toll caused by the famine oc-

curred in the Ukraine. Here about 3.5 million people lost their lives, in Kazakhstan about 1.5 million people.

32 VIOLA Peasant Rebels.

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was in fact less weak than one would suspect: the people were forced to put all their en-ergy into survival. They fell silent in a sense.

Why did the Bolsheviks suppress information about the famine in the early 1930s? His-torians have often resorted to answer this question by pointing to the Soviet Union’s pre-carious international standing at the beginning of the 1930’s and the looming conflict with Germany. Neighbours and opponents of the Soviet state, according to them, would have taken advantage of the political and economic weakness that accompanied this period of starvation. The leadership could have helped the suffering peasants, but only at the ex-pense of the industrialization programme; moreover, such actions would have boosted ad-ditional speculation about the state of the Soviet agricultural sector.33 Stalin had made this point as early as 1929: “We cannot import grain because we have only limited valuta. But we wouldn’t import grain in any case, even if we had valuta, since the import of grain would undermine our credit abroad and increase the state of our difficulties on the interna-tional scene.”34 In 1933, he saw no reason to amend his opinion.35 Indeed, the famine was not discussed in Soviet media and the leadership did everything to impede the dissemina-tion of information abroad.36 There is a vivid difference between this episode and the situ-ation of 1921/22. Whereas the Soviet government had to plea for international relief at the time of the latter, there were no appeals of such nature in the subsequent famines. On the contrary, the Moscow leadership was wary to register that news about the return of mass starvation in rural areas circulated increasingly beyond Soviet borders.37 For instance, when in 1933 the new Nazi government in Berlin raised the issue of the starving “brothers in need” amid great propagandistic efforts, the Bolsheviks protested energetically.38 Noth-ing should interfere with the propaganda efforts communicating the successful re-emer-gence of a powerful Soviet state. The famine of 1946/47 was dealt with in a similar fash-ion – again, the issue of starvation was left unmentioned in Soviet media. One common interpretation is that, in light of the oncoming Cold War with the former allies, the Soviet Union could not admit to the occurrence of a catastrophe, even though it had already be-come known abroad.39 The fact that the very state boasting its triumphant victory over Nazi Germany now found itself facing massive casualties amongst workers and peasants on account of starvation, threatened to crush the regime’s legitimacy.

However, the international situation does not explain the Soviet Union’s ban on any form of public discussion of the famines sufficiently. Firstly, there was the attempt to can-cel anything that might disturb the staging of victories and triumphs by referring to cata-strophes and loss. The ruling authorities had understood that any word spoken openly would be inevitably interpreted as an admission of weakness. The main intention, how-ever, was to discipline the population and to integrate it into the Stalinist political order. Whoever abstained from addressing the issue in public thus accepted and confirmed the prepackaged interpretations “from above” in regard to Soviet reality. The large degree of speechlessness in light of the catastrophe was therefore an indication of the Bolsheviks’ successful assertion of power; this also manifested itself in the prescription of hegemonic

33 CROWL Angels in Stalins Paradise, p. 133.34 Cit. in: KONDRASHIN Golod 1932‒1933 godov, p. 282. 35 Quite the opposite: The Soviet Union exported corn abroad even while the famines were ongo-

ing. For an overview see: DAVIES/WHEATCROFT The Years of Hunger, p. 471.36 CHERFAS Reporting Stalin’s Famine. 37 KONDRASHIN Golod 1932‒1933 godov, pp. 258‒259.38 DÖNNINGHAUS Minderheiten, pp. 514‒515.39 GANSON The Soviet Famine, pp. 95‒116, ZIMA Golod v SSSR, pp. 144‒149.

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discourses with clearly indicated limits of what could be said. Official readings of a given situation were not to be countered; every transgression entailed grave sanctions.

A famine that could not be addressed, simply put, did not exist. The physician P. Blon-skii, working in a hospital in the Kiev area, got to the heart of the matter. Whilst com-plaining about the functionaries in charge of his region he observed that “this year, again, something has been done to support the ‘fight against hunger’, but this, I hastened to add, was done so unofficially. One could not under any circumstance mention the hunger, as the ‘shamefacedness’ retained the upper hand. Obviously, only little could be done in light of such ‘shamefacedness’. This year (even as late as the beginning of March) to make a mention of the famine almost amounted to a counter-revolution.”40 As the despair of the starving people was met with silence, no one could be held responsible of this misery. This played into the hands of both, the functionaries on all levels of the political machine as well as large parts of the population. Hardly anyone inquired about the whereabouts of the starving, of whom large numbers were kept isolated in remote barracks on the fringes of the cities or deported by way of major, organised “cleansings”.41

It was crucial for the Soviet state to conceal these people or get rid of them since their mere presence would caricature the official language regime and prompt questions as to the causes of the catastrophe. In her study on Soviet discourses of hygiene, TRICIA STARKS indirectly points to why this may have been the case: “Since the state, the nation, and the family would all ‘whither away’, it was the population whose transformation would signal the success of revolution. Thus, the rationalized Soviet body was more essential to the so-cialist utopia than even the state; the creation of the body Soviet was the creation of the socialist utopia.”42 Even if one might take this remark as exaggerated, its inversion reveals an important aspect: it was especially the starved and disfigured bodies of suffering work-ers, which showed the failure of the Soviet project. They visualised the final passage from utopia to suppression. The appearance of the starving undermined the regime’s rhetorical smokescreens, referring to “supply difficulties” whilst millions of people were dying. In a situation, dominated by a state-proscribed speechlessness and a far-reaching ban on im-ages, disfigured bodies, hollow faces and starved corpses along the road side were import-ant media to communicate the catastrophe. They were visible to the public and could be looked at. At the same time, the hungry had neither the strength nor the possibility to artic-ulate their needs. They had to muster all their energy for survival. In pointing to the con-sequences of the famine of 1946/47, DONALD FILTZER remarked that “by creating a mood of desperation, by forcing people to devote all their physical and emotional energies to the task of surviving, it [the famine, R.K.] helped to dampen popular expectations that some of the political relaxations of the war years would continue into the postwar years […] The political power of Stalinism always required a demoralized population, and periodic food crises were extremely effective at creating just such a mood of despair.”43

This mood of despair was a threat for those who were not (yet) affected by famine themselves. They had good reasons to marginalize starving individuals and ignore their fate. People became accustomed to the sight of starving humans and tried to ignore them.

40 Iz pis’ma vracha Zvenigorodskoi raionnoi bol’nitsy Kievskoi oblasti P. Blonskogo narkomu zdravookraneniia USSR S.I. Kantorovichu o polozhenii v raione v sviazi s golodom, in: KOND-RASHIN/TIURINA Govorit’ o golode (http://www.rusarchives.ru/publication/golod.shtml#s(35) (22.4.2014); Document from TsA FSB RF, f. 2, op. 11, d. 56, ll. 259‒261).

41 KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, pp. 254‒262.42 STARKS The Body Soviet, p. 4.43 FILTZER The Impact, p. 330.

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http://www.rusarchives.ru/publication/golod.shtml#s(35)

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The prescribed silence facilitated such behaviour for they could thus close their eyes be-fore that what was actually happening. STANLEY COHEN has described the according psy-chological process in the following way: “We are vaguely aware of choosing not to look at the facts, but not quite conscious of just what it is we are evading. We know, but at the same time we don’t know. The political echoes of these states of mind may be found in the mass denial so characteristic of repressive, racist and colonial states. Dominant groups seem uncannily able to shut out or ignore the injustice and suffering around them.”44 Who-ever was not directly affected by starvation could turn their back on those suffering from hunger without having to fear consequences and leave them to their fate. The situation was especially difficult for those belonging to groups earmarked as “socially harmful ele-ments” as they were thus barred from claiming any form of relief.45 They had no choice but to turn to a shadow economy, criminality, and begging.46 The rigorous purging of the hungry, beggars, and ‘loitering’ from public spaces, which often occurred in the bigger cit-ies,47 the periodical inspection of issued food vouchers in addition to the active exclusion of ‘superfluous’ eaters from the distribution system augmented the pressure to conform on those relying on state benefits – independent of how minimal these may have been. Given the extreme food shortages, those persons who were well integrated into the Soviet eco-nomy of distribution had the best chances for survival. Although state supply structures were frequently inefficient and badly organised, the little that came through meant a lot to those suffering from starvation.48 They became dependent on the very state that had caused the catastrophe in the first place. The majority of the people affected by famine thus adhered to the official language regime in order not to fall through the fragile net of distribution. In this sense, famines had a lasting disciplining effect on Soviet society.

Articulation: Modes and Opportunities

No one described the gruesome details of the famine in more detail than the secret police in their dossiers. The Chekists did not mince words in their reports. They reported on the omnipresence of displacement caused by the famine, the sick and weak leading a miser-able life under the worst conditions imaginable, homeless children starving to death, un-buried corpses, the spread of cannibalism, which had become a menace in many places, slipping beyond the authorities’ control.49 Such openness was possible, because they ad-hered to the rules of fragmented Stalinist communication. Information was conveyed ver-tically up the ranks, so that, ultimately, only the functionaries of the highest level acquired an overview of the general situation in the land.50 The comrades surrounding Stalin were thus well informed about the different famine regions at any given time. The measures they took, however, answered to economic imperatives and did not necessarily conform to the idea of saving lives. Reasons for this rooted in the Bolsheviks’ specific rationality and order of priorities51 and not in what many believed at the time, i.e. that the leaders were

44 COHEN States of Denial, p. 5.45 SHEARER Elements near and alien. 46 FALK Sowjetische Städte, pp. 235‒240, pp. 245‒254, pp. 293‒306.47 WERTH Cannibal Island, pp. 19‒22.48 Examples in KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, pp. 300‒311.49 Exemplary: KONDRASHIN (Ed.) Golod v SSSR, vol. 2, pp. 579‒581; KOZYBAEV (Ed.) Nasil’stven-

naia kollektivizatsiia, p. 108. 50 ROSENFELDT The Special World, vol. 1, pp. 107‒108.51 BABEROWSKI Verbrannte Erde, pp. 13‒32.

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unaware of the various catastrophes throughout the land. The reports catered to the leader-ship’s expectations in so far as that, next to detailed descriptions of the state of affairs, they also included lists of individuals deemed responsible. The incessant hunt for enemies and saboteurs continued unabated even amid conditions of famine.52

Whenever the issue of famines did come up in the (party) public, the subject was raised by resorting to Stalinist rhetoric with a penchant for the imprecise, which helped blur any true description of the dramatic developments in the famine regions; this included the use of excessively bureaucratic language filled with empty notions.53 Hunger was a term hardly mentioned, in fact it was a common understanding to speak of “food difficulties” (prodovol’stvennye zatrudneniia, prodzatrudneniia).54 This may be seen as confirming the hypothesis that the leadership had tried to ignore and suppress the catastrophe and related problems.55 One has rightly pointed out that such language regimes reflect a lack of in-terest on the part of the leading comrades for the fate of the persons affected. The Bolsheviks translated the dramatic conditions into abstract terms and transformed the fate of the starving into variables for their economic calculations. Humanitarian notions only played a minor role.56 The aforementioned physician Blonskii summarised the problem in this way: “They [the starving, R.K.] are not perceived as human beings struck with mis-fortune, but as mere subjects belonging to a workforce. Their only function is thus to ef-fectuate labour. In this sense, hunger was not fought in terms of battling a catastrophe af-fecting the whole nation, but rather, because it was perceived to be a necessary measure to restore the workforce. Thereby, a horse was valued higher than a human being. One is punished for the loss of a horse, but no one is held responsible for the masses of dead people.”57

Both in 1932/33 and in 1946/47 the Soviet leadership took some measures to control the catastrophe. These entailed the dispatch of relief supplies to the affected areas, reduc-tions in production quotas, and other benefits. It is without question, though, that the re-gime could and should have done more to prevent the famines, or at least alleviate the consequences.58 But something else is more to the point here: By the very fact that the Bolsheviks had organised support – regardless of how insufficient such may have turned out – they had recognised the existence of the famines. This opened up room for commu-nication within the state and party apparatus: at least the ‘technical’ aspects of the cata-strophes could be discussed. Not only did organisational matters benefit from these func-tional discourses, they also functioned more generally as a possibility to ventilate and ar-ticulate the grave problems at hand.

All (indirect) communication about starvation was structured by the requirement to constantly pinpoint responsible parties involved. It was imperative that neither the Soviet system in general nor the leadership around Stalin was perceived as being in any way re-

52 KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, pp. 254‒257.53 FALK Sowjetische Städte, p. 113.54 See, for instance, the reports oft he OGPU and other institutions during the most intensive of

the famine at the beginning of 1933 in: KONDRASHIN Golod v SSSR, vol. 2. 55 KONDRASHIN Golod 1932‒1933 godov, p. 249.56 This is Michael Ellmann’s central point for any analysis that attempts to explain the actions of

the Soviet leadership during the famine. ELLMAN Stalin and the Soviet Famine, pp. 673‒674. 57 TsA FSB RF, f. 2, op. 11, d. 56, ll. 259‒261.58 The question if and how much relief actually reached those affected by starvation is hotly de-

bated – especially in relation to the famine of 1932/33. KONDRASHIN Golod 1932‒1933 godov, pp. 284‒303.

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sponsible for the catastrophic conditions.59 When the economic crisis began to reach dra-matic dimensions at the end of 1932/33, the leading Bolsheviks reacted by purging re-gional apparatuses. Such actions were explained by referring to their alleged failure to comply with quotas and seeding plans.60 In this sense, for a limited time the difficulties and challenges could be discussed relatively openly amongst a limited public by way of newspapers and especially journals addressing specific audiences.61 The situation was similar during the famine of 1946/47. Whereas the “Pravda” made no mention of the fam-ine at all, a campaign was instigated against the cadres in the affected areas. The tenor in the articles relating to these events was that the emergence of “economic difficulties” was entirely due to shortcomings of certain comrades.62 The Soviet leadership thus tried to di-vert their own responsibilities and dump the blame on the shoulders of the local function-aries. These reports could have potentially dramatic effects; less so for the starving who in any case had little to hope for, but certainly for the Bolsheviks to whom all the responsib-ility was shifted. This even applied to high-level functionaries. Nikita Khrushchev, for in-stance, wrote in his memoirs how he had come under pressure when he tried to inform Stalin in 1947 about the real situation in the Ukrainian famine regions. Stalin, however, pushed aside his briefing as unbelievable, began to mistrust him increasingly, and started to survey his work.63 By obscuring the issues and concealing them, the functionaries, not least, tried to protect themselves as well. Making reference to the starving population could destroy entire careers; for nothing entailed more disastrous consequences than pointing out that peasants and workers were suffering hardship and their needs were being ignored. Wherever the issue of famine was raised, the pressure on the comrades grew; not so much because one cared about the starving amongst the higher echelons, but because the systemic scandal had to be contained by explaining it away as a regionally delimited phenomenon with inherently clearly defined responsibilities. Many among them were thus (not least for the end of self-preservation) less interested in the fate of the starving per se. Rather, they were concerned with the political ramifications that these might entail. These tensions would at times come to the fore at (partly) public assemblies, which had an im-portant function for the mediation of official language regimes. Not only did these occa-sions demonstrate what could be said; in turn, they also gave the participants a chance to show that they had learned their lesson – essentially, serving as manifestations of loyalty and obedience.64 It was thereby irrelevant whether the individual was seen as participating in an active manner; mere attendance and the fact that the individual did not protest openly sufficed to affirm the legitimacy of the ruling powers.65 LORENZ ERREN has argued that the Stalinist public only came into being at the various assemblies and meetings. They bore a distinct “double character”: “On the one hand, they [the meetings, R.K.] were hi-jacked as political election bodies; on the other hand, they were pedagogical institutions.”66 Precisely because assemblies were places of instruction and learning it was tantamount to strictly adhere to reigning rules of discourse. Even the slightest deviation

59 LEWIN The Soviet Century, p. 95.60 See: Informatsionnoe soobshchenie; Opportunicheskaia bezdeiatel’nost’. 61 BOGDANOV Chistka partii.62 GANSON The Soviet Famine, p. 88. See also: TIKHOMIROV The Regime of Forced Trust, pp. 101‒

102.63 Chruschtschow erinnert sich, pp. 234‒239.64 ROLF Das sowjetische Massenfest, pp. 166‒167.65 On the functions of assemblies see: MERL Politische Kommunikation, pp. 65‒68.66 ERREN „Selbstkritik“ und Schuldbekenntnis, pp. 179‒180.

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from the norm was sanctioned instantly. This is, for instance, what the vice-chairman of the Kazakh planning commission Khasen Nurmukhamedov67 experienced when, at an as-sembly of leading party functionaries in Alma-Ata in June 1933, he raised the point that 80,000 orphans in Kazakhstan were living in pitiful conditions. With this remark, he had transgressed the confines of what could be said. The party secretary of the region Uralsk called across the hall: “Comrade Nurmukhamedov tells us that animal breeding is not the most important issue. The most important thing in his eyes is that here in Kazakhstan there are 80,000 homeless children, that people look ill, that their faces are of a kind that make it terrible to look at them. I consider that it is wrong for this Plenary Session to ad -opt such a medical viewpoint. We are politicians and cannot embark on a bourgeois-phil-anthropic path of that kind.” Nurmukhamedov had no other option but to admit to his “mistake”: “I provided too much detail, when I described the calamitous situation of the decamped nomads (otkochevniki). This led my comrades to conclude that I was taking a philanthropic view of the situation.“68 Here the forum of the party assembly served to identify taboos. Nurmukhamedov was reprimanded for everyone to see and in this way all the other functionaries received a lesson to be repeated and disseminated at regional events. Wherever the comrades transgressed the rules of what could be said, they were im-mediately called to order. When, for instance, six Kazakh mid-level functionaries penned a letter to Stalin in February 1933 referring to the catastrophic economic situation in Kazakhstan, outlined the extent of the refugee problem, and questioned the abilities of the Kazakh party organization to regain control over the situation, they were cited to the Cent-ral Committee, heavily reprimanded, and transferred to lower posts in the province.69 The men had been disciplined because they, for one, had intended to restore a (party) public and, secondly, because they had acted collectively.

The Chekists’ greatest cause for concern was not the party functionaries, though, who more or less willingly endured the consequences of their actions, but the unfathomable number of Soviet citizens who dared to talk about the famine without paying much heed to the regimented rules of discourse. Spurred by the famine they lamented about the So-viet state amid many an accusation that the Soviet leadership was responsible for their dire fate.70 In factories, institutions, and state agencies more and more information and ru-mours in relation to the conditions in the famine-areas circulated.71 The observance of a language regime proved to be useless when all provisions had been shipped away and no more food was to be found. In those places where famine ceased to be seen as a potential hazard and instead had become a life-threatening reality, the limits of what could or should not be said lost its relevance. The starving demanded food and at times took what they needed by resorting to violent means.72 Where the self-disciplining of the subjects failed (or in fact had never functioned) the security agencies stepped in. The Chekists made diligent note of remarks about the famines, categorised them as “counter-revolution-ary” or “anti-Soviet” and identified the ringleaders as “Kulaks” and “enemies.” 73 The main issue here was not that criticism and accusations were articulated aloud, but that they would become public and thus uncontrollable. This threatened to destabilise the façade

67 For his biography see ZHAKYPOV Narkomy Kazakhstana, pp. 259‒260.68 Shestoi plenum, pp. 184, 209; MIKHAILOV Khronika, p. 298.69 AIBASOV Odin iz pervykh, p. 5, pp. 66‒67.70 Numerous examples in OSOKINA Our daily bread, pp. 54‒55. 71 FALK Sowjetische Städte, p. 110. 72 KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, p. 245. 73 For instance KONDRASHIN (Ed.) Golod v SSSR 1929‒1934, vol. 2, p. 580.

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erected by Stalinist propaganda, which, after all, founded on the fictitious notion that these “food-provision difficulties” were merely regionally delimited, isolated incidences. This accounted also for why the Soviet leaders closed off several famine regions from the out-side world in early 1933 and hindered the starving population from leaving the affected areas.

Since it was impossible to speak about the famine in public without provoking punish-ment, numerous people turned directly to the leaders. In letters, motions and reports So-viet citizens of all social levels wrote to the state and party leadership, as well as newspa -pers. They submitted accounts about the desolate situation and called for the government to intervene. By writing “letters to the powerful” they resorted to a medium which had steadily gained significance throughout the 1920s. To appeal directly to the leaders during the famine years was often the last hope for these desperate people.74 There were no other addressees left in the wake of collectivisation and dekulakization, which had destroyed traditional rural structures and had eroded the peasants’ solidarity networks. The only help available would have to come from the state – which had literally wrested the “trust” from its people.75 This form of political communication thus intensified during the famines. Un-til now, these letters have been interpreted as indicators of the “social mood” in Soviet so-ciety.76 What has not been considered sufficiently, though, is the extent to which these (in parts extremely critical) texts contributed to the stabilization of the regime. STEFAN MERL has pointed to the illusion under which subjects believed to have entered into a direct dia -logue with the rulers and thus could effectively improve their situation. The authors of such letters often refrained from contacting the local authorities, whom they deemed re-sponsible for the problems incurred. In effect, it was irrelevant whether the people turned to the state-powers out of conviction, fear, envy, or material interests.77

In a letter to the formal Soviet Head of State, Mikhail Kalinin, someone wrote that the people in the city of Pavlodar were collapsing on the streets while searching for just a little piece of bread. Diseases spread. Homeless children were locked into houses and left there without supervision and food.78 The Kazakh woman Nurgaliia Duisenbinova com-plained that the local functionaries never ceased to “steal” from people while purporting that the numerous fatalities were not caused by starvation but by an outbreak of cholera. She pleaded to the leading functionaries for the harsh punishment of the persons respons-ible.79 In the appeal submitted by the Ukrainian peasant I.V. Kolmiits, the topos of the “good Tsar” who has no notion of what is going on in his country, surfaces. Kolmiits im-plored Stalin “not to believe everything your subordinates tell you, the situation is dire.” Riots amongst the starving were inevitable, should no changes come about; and even he himself, the faithful follower of Lenin and Stalin, would be unable “to take up arms to de-fend [the state, R.K.] should it come to it.”80 It was not only the common people who took to pen and paper, prominent followers of the regime too approached the leader. The best known example is possibly the writer Mikhail Sholokhov, who wrote to Stalin about the situation in the North Caucasus. He makes note of the way starving peasants were being treated by the chief administrator responsible for the sourcing of grain supplies. In con-

74 ALEXOPOULOS Victim Talk.75 TIKHOMIROV The Regime of Forced Trust.76 LIVSHIN (Ed.) Pis’ma vo vlast’, p. 6.77 More detailed in: BABEROWSKI Die Verfasser.78 ABDIRAINYMOV (Ed.) Golod v kazakhskoj stepi, pp. 117‒119.79 ABDIRAINYMOV (Ed.) Golod v kazakhskoj stepi, pp. 122‒124.80 KOZYBAEV (Ed.) Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizaciia, pp. 139‒144.

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trast to hundred thousands of people who had written similar texts, Sholokhov received an answer. Stalin informed him of the fact that “honoured” peasants were engaged in a “secret” war against the Soviet state with the result that the Red Army remained without grain.81 At the same time, however, he ordered an inquest into the matter, arranged for the shipment of grain to the area, and commanded that those responsible would be brought to justice.82 The fact that in all the letters and pleas it was always the state being called to provide solutions to the problems, buttressed its claim to power. The letters thus played directly into the hands of the party leadership as they provided for infinite numbers of po-tential scapegoats – just what the comrades in Moscow and in the provinces required so vehemently. Every instance of punishment thus served both the interests of the state as it did the authors of letters. This form of “appeal-communication” fulfilled the purpose of stabilizing the regime’s power. It contributed to the identification of alleged criminals and, at the same time, prevented people from making their concerns public.83

The conditions in Leningrad during the winter famine of 1941/42 were different, how-ever. The rules of political communication under Stalin, normally so strictly enforced, seemed to have been relaxed for this extreme period, in which hundred thousands of people died of hunger, disease and cold.84 During these dramatic months people within the besieged city experienced a hitherto unknown openness in dealing with starvation and death, quite foreign to Stalinism. Closed in and surrounded by immediate starvation, the entire city population found itself in a state of emergency within the shortest time. No one had to, nor could, keep silent about what almost everyone was experiencing at first hand anyway. And in difference to other ‘Soviet’ famines, details about the situation could travel beyond city limits because the war context made it possible to shift all responsibil -ity to the aggressors. Death caused by starvation was elevated to a form of heroic courage and execution of duty. The starving died in a manner similar to soldiers. A “Pravda” article of the year 1943 maintained that “when the workers in the winter famine were dying of starvation in their factories, they died grasping the turning lathe and giving it their final push, just like the dying soldier who grasps his weapon and fights to his last drop of blood.”85 Such interpretations of the famine geared towards the general Soviet context, made it possible for the people of Leningrad to be inducted into the community of the vic-tors during and especially after the “Great Patriotic War”. Their hardship acquired sense in the context of victory over the German invaders. This offer of integration by the Soviet state was tied to conditions, however: After the end of the siege in 1944, famine could only be described in form of a challenge, executed with a large degree of solidarity and heroism – a narrative that carried on for decades. The catastrophe of the winter 1941/42 played only a minor role in the fashioning of Leningrad as a city of heroes. The cata-strophe was explained in terms of a perfidious threat by the Nazis – with little regard for the actual experience.86 The history of the famine is still incorporated into histories of the siege as part of a challenge that had been overcome in a joint effort.87 Adding to this are the traumata caused by the famine: it was hardly possible to shed light on the dimensions of what the famine had done to Leningrad inhabitants. Merciless advantaging of the

81 Cited after WERTH Ein Staat, p. 143.82 LIH (Ed.) Stalin’s Letters, p. 232.83 MERL Politische Kommunikation, pp. 87‒92, p. 99. 84 REID Leningrad, pp. 158‒292.85 TIKHONOV Leningrad. See also MAKHANOV Vospitanie muzhestva. 86 ZEMSKOV-ZÜGE Zwischen politischen Strukturen, pp. 150‒151. 87 REID Leningrad, pp. 406‒416.

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weaker parties, the disintegration of social structures, cannibalism, necrophagy; all this could not be talked about.88 Shortly after surviving the worst months, many of the surviv-ors could not stomach the aspect of those still suffering from starvation. It reminded them of their own recent state: “The still-starving acted as fearful reminders of mortality, ob-jects of scornful mockery as much as of compassion.“89 To face the consequences of ex-treme starvation was almost impossible even for those who had survived,90 and this is part of the reason why they quite readily adopted the communication regime offered by the So-viet state. In fact this may be the best explanation for why the implementation of silencing and intricate formulating had been so successful: it rid them of the necessity to describe in their own words the horrors they had witnessed. This applies to the Leningrad of 1943 just as it does to the Kiev of 1933. The limits as to what could be said were not merely restrict-ive, they could also offer support.

Consequences

Following their experience with foreign relief organisations at the beginning of the 1920s the state monopolised food resources. Thus, it could control and monitor the distribution. This benefited especially those who fashioned themselves as loyal and productive Soviet citizens. Functional ties between rulers and subjects emerged even in times of famines; survival was subject to state conditions.91 Deviant behaviour could prove to be potentially fatal under these circumstances. Considering the ubiquity of famine and its dramatic con-sequences, this was quite an efficient threat. The overwhelming majority of Soviet society adhered to the rule not to publicly address starvation; or only within the limits of regulated Stalinist rhetoric using approximate language. Silence or intricate formulations in relation to famines dominated the practices of communication within the (semi-)public space. There is no contradiction between the fact that those who were condemned to silence in public addressed the issue of starvation in numerous letters and appeals to the leaders of state and party – including those that did not shy away from making acrimonious accusa-tions. The authors confirmed the authority of the rulers with these writings. Letters to the mighty expressed a basic acceptance of the existing power relations. This too contributed to the system’s stability during the years of crisis and beyond. The agreement that had come into being, forged by existential crises and catastrophes, had evolved over the course of time into a taboo that no one dared to question. Several factors were responsible for this: firstly, there was no doubt that any transgression of the rule would be penalized. The language regimes would have had no basis without this permanent threat. But it was not only this disciplining pressure that made people adapt to these standards: obeying the offi-cial language regimes gave people the opportunity to rationalize their traumatic past. Thus, keeping silent about the catastrophes effectively stabilized the communities of the survivors and, in consequence, Soviet society in general.

In the middle of the 1980s more information, especially about the Ukrainian famine of 1932/33, was released which in turn triggered a wave of remembrance. At the same time, however, new politically motivated master narratives were forged above all in those post-

88 On these practices see REID Leningrad, pp. 280‒292.89 REID Leningrad, p. 354.90 How impossible it is to watch humans that are enduring extreme stages of starvation and to find

adequate articulations see: AGAMBEN Remnants, pp. 41‒86.91 KINDLER Stalins Nomaden, pp. 263‒274.

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Soviet republics where the experience of famine had become integrated into discourses of public commemoration, at least to some degree. What all these narratives share, independ-ently of their concrete form, is the fact that those (amongst their own) affected by starva-tion are portrayed as innocent victims and that responsibility was externalized to ‘others’.92 The delinquents can be chosen from a list comprising of Stalin, local party lead-ers, ‘the’ Bolsheviks, ‘the’ Russians, blow-in party functionaries, or, in the case of Lenin-grad, the German Wehrmacht – leaving thus hardly any room for alternative narratives concerning the famines. Just as it was the case in the Soviet Union, there is but little room to articulate the individual experiences of the famine years within its successor states. To this date there is still a tradition of keeping silent or sticking to a normed way of speaking about famine, terror, war and violence.93 Commemoration must be definite and cannot be ambiguous. Such a situation bears traumatic consequences for those who were affected and their descendants – a fact that has been repeatedly addressed in recent years.94 But one aspect in these debates is still not being sufficiently discussed: whoever kept silent did not only do so out of fear, but also, in parts, out of shame. The survival of the fittest reigned during the famines and whoever survived often did so on account of someone else’s de-mise, someone less fortunate. During the famines, it was hardly possible to differentiate between “victims” and “perpetrators”.95 In light of such ambiguities and unsettling insec-urities, the continuation of established communication patterns offered assurance and se-curity. This may explain why the limits and possibilities of the sayable, as they evolved during the famine years, are still in use today.

AbbreviationsTsA FSB RF Tsentral’nyi arkhiv Federal’noi sluzhby besopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Central

Archive of the Federal Security Service)

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Summary

Famines and Political Communication in Stalinism. Possibilities and Limits of the Sayable

Famines were a common occurrence in the early Soviet Union. While dealing with the famines of 1921/22, 1932/33, and 1946/47, as well as the somewhat different catastrophe in the besieged city of Leningrad during the winter of 1941/42, this article investigates forms and functions of political communication processes during and after famines. How did the Stalinist state try to monopolize public discourse on hunger? And why did most people – at least publicly – accept these official in-terpretations? It is argued here that both the act of keeping silent about hunger as well as formulaic communication in relation to the catastrophes played an important role in the stabilization of Soviet society: it affirmed the apparent correctness of official narratives. To some degree, the same was even true for many deviant statements, like written complaints to the authorities. Being increasingly dependent on the Soviet state or fearing the threat of repression, people had to submit to the re-gime’s linguistic coercive measures. During the famines, the population had to rely on the very same state that had caused them. At the same time, however, the official rules of discourse offered a way to repress hunger and all it entailed – the consequences of which are still discernible today.

Dr. Robert Kindler ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Geschichte Osteuropas, In-stitut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin. ([email protected]).

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Famines and Political Communication in Stalinism. Possibilities and Limits of the Sayable, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 62 (2014) 2, pp. 255-272.

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