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A review by spacestationtrustfund
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine by Robert Conquest
4.0
Beginning in 1929 the Soviet Communist Party began their process of "dekulakisation," the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families who were deemed to be acting against the interests of the Party. The definition of a kulak varied—it could be a peasant farmer who owned livestock, who employed contract labourers, who owned property—but the result was the same: those who weren't "lucky" enough to be deported were either sent to Gulags or shot outright. This was followed by collectivisation, the abolition of private land ownership and institution of Party-controlled "collective" farms. Then came what is now known as the Holodomor, the eponymous "terror-famine," a manmade famine inflicted on primarily Ukrainian peasants by the systematic process of taking all food produced on these "collective" farms, preventing outside sources from helping, and forcing the people to work even when they were actively starving to death.
Conquest didn't spare much time for detailing the other atrocities perpetuated under Stalin, such as the Gulags (for more on that, read The Gulag Archipelago), which is probably a good thing, because this book is the kind that will make you despair. He didn't pull his punches in describing how these horrific acts were rationalised: Communism would help the people; ownership of private property was counteractive to Communism; therefore anyone who owned land was an enemy of the people and should be treated as such. The genocide was methodical and precise. It was continued even when it became obvious that the famine and collectivisation were comprehensively eradicating the population. As Conquest noted, the resulting death toll is estimated to be almost 15 million people, making this one of the worst genocides in recorded history.
This is one of the best English-language books on the horrific conditions in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule. Robert Conquest was an excellent historian, supporting his claims with extensive sources and statistics while managing to convey information in an accessible and readable way without becoming overly dry or uninteresting. Although originally published in 1986, this book holds up, a testament to Conquest's admirable scholarship. Really, this book can perhaps best be summarised by an irreverent limerick penned by Conquest himself:
Conquest didn't spare much time for detailing the other atrocities perpetuated under Stalin, such as the Gulags (for more on that, read The Gulag Archipelago), which is probably a good thing, because this book is the kind that will make you despair. He didn't pull his punches in describing how these horrific acts were rationalised: Communism would help the people; ownership of private property was counteractive to Communism; therefore anyone who owned land was an enemy of the people and should be treated as such. The genocide was methodical and precise. It was continued even when it became obvious that the famine and collectivisation were comprehensively eradicating the population. As Conquest noted, the resulting death toll is estimated to be almost 15 million people, making this one of the worst genocides in recorded history.
This is one of the best English-language books on the horrific conditions in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule. Robert Conquest was an excellent historian, supporting his claims with extensive sources and statistics while managing to convey information in an accessible and readable way without becoming overly dry or uninteresting. Although originally published in 1986, this book holds up, a testament to Conquest's admirable scholarship. Really, this book can perhaps best be summarised by an irreverent limerick penned by Conquest himself:
There was an old bastard named LeninA century on, the cycle repeats. Corruption begets itself.
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.