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The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine
The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.
411 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Robert Conquest
132 books156 followersGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest was a British historian who became a well known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication, in 1968, of his account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s, The Great Terror.
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March 20, 2024
"So the Ukraine now lay crushed: its Church destroyed, its intellectuals shot or dying in labor camp, it's peasants—the mass of the nation—slaughtered and subdued...nowhere do repression, purges, subjection and all types of bureaucratic hooliganism in general assume such deadly proportions as in the Ukraine..." pg 272
This is a detailed account of Stalin and the large scale efforts to crush Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and the Ukrainian culture. Robert Conquest opened with a brief history of the region, history of the Ukrainian identity and its interactions with the larger Russian ethnic identity. The history of the Ukraine's cultural and nationalist growth was stunted with difficulty by the lack of Ukrainianization by language alienation and shunning of cultural norms, increased Russification, and the Russian dominated Marxist-Leninist presence.
The Ukraine was marred with violence and unrest during the Civil War, the revolution, and its annexation as a founding memner of the Soviet Union in December 1922 along with Russia, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasian states.
Throughout the book the author connected the points of political and cultural problems that drove Stalin and the collective thought to destroy the Ukrainian people. Grain harvest shortages added more strife to the starvation as Stalin ordered grain collection from the people. This of course was the bureaucratic top-down approach whose orders trickled from Stalin to the Ukrainian Party to the Ukrainian Central Committee to district leaders and into the villages.
The "dehumanization" and efforts of employed punished were all catapulted from the Communist Party's need to survive. "Lenin's view of an earlier famine—that of 1891-2 on the Volga, where he then lived—may serve to indicate a whole Party attitude to individual, or mass, death and suffering, when considered against the claims of the revolution." (pg 234)
Overall this was a very good and detailed account of this lesser known human tragedy. I would highly recommend this for any interest in Soviet or Ukrainian history. Thanks!
This is a detailed account of Stalin and the large scale efforts to crush Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and the Ukrainian culture. Robert Conquest opened with a brief history of the region, history of the Ukrainian identity and its interactions with the larger Russian ethnic identity. The history of the Ukraine's cultural and nationalist growth was stunted with difficulty by the lack of Ukrainianization by language alienation and shunning of cultural norms, increased Russification, and the Russian dominated Marxist-Leninist presence.
The Ukraine was marred with violence and unrest during the Civil War, the revolution, and its annexation as a founding memner of the Soviet Union in December 1922 along with Russia, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasian states.
And so we enter the epoch of dekulakization, of collectivization, and of terror-famine; of war against the Soviet peasantry, and later against the Ukrainian nation. It may be seen as one of the most significant, as well as one of the most dreadful, periods of modern times. pg 116The aftermath in the Ukraine on rural terror of 1930-33 turned into forced collectivization, dekulakization, and decimation of the population through forced labor, sytematic starvation, deportations, and execution.
Throughout the book the author connected the points of political and cultural problems that drove Stalin and the collective thought to destroy the Ukrainian people. Grain harvest shortages added more strife to the starvation as Stalin ordered grain collection from the people. This of course was the bureaucratic top-down approach whose orders trickled from Stalin to the Ukrainian Party to the Ukrainian Central Committee to district leaders and into the villages.
The "dehumanization" and efforts of employed punished were all catapulted from the Communist Party's need to survive. "Lenin's view of an earlier famine—that of 1891-2 on the Volga, where he then lived—may serve to indicate a whole Party attitude to individual, or mass, death and suffering, when considered against the claims of the revolution." (pg 234)
Overall this was a very good and detailed account of this lesser known human tragedy. I would highly recommend this for any interest in Soviet or Ukrainian history. Thanks!
May 29, 2015
Page 299 (my book) Khrushchev quote
“No one was keeping count”
This is about one of the more appalling episodes in the history of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The centerpiece is the treatment of the ethnic and farming communities in Ukraine during 1929 to 1934.
By following the dogma of Marxism-Leninism class war was declared on the so-called rich farmers of Ukraine labeled as kulaks. The definition of kulak varied – it could be a peasant farmer who owned a horse or two, a pig or two, who employed a labourer from time to time... Under Marxism private property and enterprise was to be abolished. So the kulaks needed to be eliminated; they were enemies of the people.
Page 115 Stalin quote
“We have gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of liquidating the kulak as a class”
Some were removed from their farms and sent to a remote Gulag to fend for themselves; others shot outright. More enemies had to be made when agricultural production sagged – so a class of sub-kulaks was found.
This all lead to a loss of the most productive and industrious farmers and farmland – and the grain output kept decreasing to the stage where it was less than in the time of the Czars. The remaining peasants were forced onto collectives where a major portion of the grain output was requisitioned by the state. With the best farmers gone, with the produce seized by the government, with incompetent authorities in charge of the collectives – starvation set in. Stalin also saw the Ukrainian nationality as a threat to the centralization of power in the Soviet Union. The vast Ukrainian peasantry and its cultural elite had to be eradicated. The famine was deliberate. The author estimates that over 5 million Ukrainians died in the famine and millions more disappeared in the Gulag for dekulakization. The author also emphasizes how this collectivization negatively impacted other areas of the Soviet Union.
This is a difficult book to read. There are a lot of statistics that the author uses to back up his statements. But it is the personal presentations that are most disturbing; the chapter on “children” being one of the most affecting. This has been used a source book for other volumes I have read on the Soviet Union, which is how I came to know of it. I never quite realized until reading this book just how severe and methodical this genocide was. This is what happens when ideology supersedes.
Page 233 a Soviet activist
With the rest of my generation I firmly believed that the ends justified the means. Our great goal was the universal triumph of communism, and for the sake of that goal everything was permissible – to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work or could hinder it, everyone who stood in the way. And to hesitate or doubt about all this was to give in to “intellectual squeamishness” and “stupid liberalism”...
I took part in this myself, scouring the countryside, searching for hidden grain, testing the earth with an iron rod for loose spots that might lead to buried grain. With the others, I emptied out the old folks’ storage chests, stopping my ears to children’s crying and the women’s wails. For I was convinced that I was accomplishing the great and necessary transformation of the countryside... that those who sent me – and I myself – knew better than the peasants how they should live...
In the terrible spring of 1933 I saw people dying from hunger. I saw women and children...And corpses...I saw all this and did not go out of my mind or commit suicide. Nor did I curse those who had sent me out to take away the peasants’ grain in the winter, and in the spring to persuade the barely walking...to go into the fields in order to “fulfil the Bolshevik sowing plan”.
“No one was keeping count”
This is about one of the more appalling episodes in the history of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The centerpiece is the treatment of the ethnic and farming communities in Ukraine during 1929 to 1934.
By following the dogma of Marxism-Leninism class war was declared on the so-called rich farmers of Ukraine labeled as kulaks. The definition of kulak varied – it could be a peasant farmer who owned a horse or two, a pig or two, who employed a labourer from time to time... Under Marxism private property and enterprise was to be abolished. So the kulaks needed to be eliminated; they were enemies of the people.
Page 115 Stalin quote
“We have gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of liquidating the kulak as a class”
Some were removed from their farms and sent to a remote Gulag to fend for themselves; others shot outright. More enemies had to be made when agricultural production sagged – so a class of sub-kulaks was found.
This all lead to a loss of the most productive and industrious farmers and farmland – and the grain output kept decreasing to the stage where it was less than in the time of the Czars. The remaining peasants were forced onto collectives where a major portion of the grain output was requisitioned by the state. With the best farmers gone, with the produce seized by the government, with incompetent authorities in charge of the collectives – starvation set in. Stalin also saw the Ukrainian nationality as a threat to the centralization of power in the Soviet Union. The vast Ukrainian peasantry and its cultural elite had to be eradicated. The famine was deliberate. The author estimates that over 5 million Ukrainians died in the famine and millions more disappeared in the Gulag for dekulakization. The author also emphasizes how this collectivization negatively impacted other areas of the Soviet Union.
This is a difficult book to read. There are a lot of statistics that the author uses to back up his statements. But it is the personal presentations that are most disturbing; the chapter on “children” being one of the most affecting. This has been used a source book for other volumes I have read on the Soviet Union, which is how I came to know of it. I never quite realized until reading this book just how severe and methodical this genocide was. This is what happens when ideology supersedes.
Page 233 a Soviet activist
With the rest of my generation I firmly believed that the ends justified the means. Our great goal was the universal triumph of communism, and for the sake of that goal everything was permissible – to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work or could hinder it, everyone who stood in the way. And to hesitate or doubt about all this was to give in to “intellectual squeamishness” and “stupid liberalism”...
I took part in this myself, scouring the countryside, searching for hidden grain, testing the earth with an iron rod for loose spots that might lead to buried grain. With the others, I emptied out the old folks’ storage chests, stopping my ears to children’s crying and the women’s wails. For I was convinced that I was accomplishing the great and necessary transformation of the countryside... that those who sent me – and I myself – knew better than the peasants how they should live...
In the terrible spring of 1933 I saw people dying from hunger. I saw women and children...And corpses...I saw all this and did not go out of my mind or commit suicide. Nor did I curse those who had sent me out to take away the peasants’ grain in the winter, and in the spring to persuade the barely walking...to go into the fields in order to “fulfil the Bolshevik sowing plan”.
November 12, 2022
This book’s sales 'propaganda' states: 'More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book than from the whole of the First World War. ‘The Harvest of Sorrow’ describes how millions of peasants in the USSR were dispossessed and deported as a result of the abolition of private property, and how millions in the newly established ‘collective’ farms of the Ukraine and other regions were then deliberately starved to death through impossibly high quotas, the removal of all other sources of food and their isolation from outside help.'
The author, Conquest, talks of the ’dekulaking’ in the 30s being responsible for 6.5 million deaths. A number of recognised and reputed historians, a few professors even, suggest there is gross exaggeration within these pages: the true figure, some argue, was less than half a million. That’s half a million too many, I would argue.
Just as with the Nazi system, when their crimes against humanity were answerable by only one tyrant, Hitler. However you decide to total up your figures what remains is a crime against humanity, committed by a Soviet system that answered to only one evil: Stalin.
I found this informative, disturbing and full of detail. This famine, as with the Holocaust, cannot be denied; I am, however, a little hesitant when accepting the numbers quoted here:
Conquest, during his time in the Foreign Office, 1948-56, it turns out, worked for the Information Research Department (IRD): a department set-up by the Labour government to collect and distribute information about Soviet wrongdoings: the IRD was seen, by many, as a department responsible for the creation of ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’.
I question any and all information emanating from ‘any government information research department’ and also all those who once worked for such.
The author, Conquest, talks of the ’dekulaking’ in the 30s being responsible for 6.5 million deaths. A number of recognised and reputed historians, a few professors even, suggest there is gross exaggeration within these pages: the true figure, some argue, was less than half a million. That’s half a million too many, I would argue.
Just as with the Nazi system, when their crimes against humanity were answerable by only one tyrant, Hitler. However you decide to total up your figures what remains is a crime against humanity, committed by a Soviet system that answered to only one evil: Stalin.
I found this informative, disturbing and full of detail. This famine, as with the Holocaust, cannot be denied; I am, however, a little hesitant when accepting the numbers quoted here:
Conquest, during his time in the Foreign Office, 1948-56, it turns out, worked for the Information Research Department (IRD): a department set-up by the Labour government to collect and distribute information about Soviet wrongdoings: the IRD was seen, by many, as a department responsible for the creation of ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’.
I question any and all information emanating from ‘any government information research department’ and also all those who once worked for such.
August 10, 2022
So much in the little history I've read has startled me. I'm trying to catch up: when this falls into my lap - thank you John.
I raised the subject with John's mother, after I read Mr Carlyle's work: "Collectivisation," I asked.
In this, I found the numbers, the detail, the reasoning behind this most horrid of decimations and the consequential annihilations. The years between the wars, hoovered-up the greatest number, and the idea of this fate for millions, upon, millions is difficult to read about.
Published in 1986, and as said, the author spares no detail. I applauded him for that. Understanding the fate of the masses post the revolution in 1917, is something I am striving to achieve; this book gives, what I believe is a less told, telling of that history, which cannot be excluded.
I raised the subject with John's mother, after I read Mr Carlyle's work: "Collectivisation," I asked.
In this, I found the numbers, the detail, the reasoning behind this most horrid of decimations and the consequential annihilations. The years between the wars, hoovered-up the greatest number, and the idea of this fate for millions, upon, millions is difficult to read about.
Published in 1986, and as said, the author spares no detail. I applauded him for that. Understanding the fate of the masses post the revolution in 1917, is something I am striving to achieve; this book gives, what I believe is a less told, telling of that history, which cannot be excluded.
July 20, 2025
With The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine Robert Conquest chronicles dictator Joseph Stalin's brutal collectivisation of Soviet agriculture from 1929 to 1933 and in particular the deliberate the terror-famine of 1932 to 1933 in the Ukraine (which is now generally known as the Holodomor, which is a Ukrainian word meaning death by hunger, although in my opinion, mass murder by hunger is a much more realistic and also a much more appropriate definition).
And yes, even before Conquest penned The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine in 1986 some of the basic facts regarding the Holodomor were already becoming known to or at least suspected by many journalists, scholars and historians in the West, namely that huge numbers of Ukrainian peasants and their families died when Stalin forced them to join collective and state farms against their will, and how from 1932 to 1933 Joseph Stalin (and of course his officials, his soldiers etc.) very deliberately and with total calculation starved millions of Ukrainians to death to break their resistance to Soviet power, and with not only Soviet authorities suppressing and denying this act of genocide for much of the last fifty years but as Robert Conquest textually points out and in my opinion also totally proves in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that certain Western (and likely naively, uncritically supportive of Marxism and Stalinist collectivism) correspondents and journalists were hugely and disgustingly complicit helping Joseph Stalin and then his successors regarding suppressing and denying information on and proof of the Holodomor.
For as The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine realistically and totally believably points out, especially Walter Duranty of The New York Times adamantly and totally denying the existence of the famine, of the Holodomor in his dispatches despite very much evidence to the contrary, his intensive and personal criticism of journalist Gareth Jones for trying to bring Jospeh Stalin's atrocities in the Ukraine to light and Duranty also being awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 (and which Robert Conquest with for me absolute justification showing with and in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine as being completely undeserved), all this definitely and sadly helped to ridiculously and scarily calm especially the United States and the United Kingdom regarding Joseph Stalin and to also both during and even post WWII keep the Holodomor rather hidden and for the world in general to believe or at least tend to accept Soviet lies and propaganda that the deliberate Stalinisque famine in the Ukraine either did not happen or was something entirely natural that could not have been helped.
And albeit the thesis of The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that the Soviet state was deliberately starving millions of its citizens into submission may sound a bit incredible at first, it is actually not something that was completely novel even in 1986 (as I remember that our teacher briefly discussed the Holodomor in grade twelve social studies in the spring of 1985 and that he most definitely was totally blaming the USSR for what happened). But yes, where Robert Conquest does go beyond the generally accepted historical evidence with The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (well, at least for 1986) is Conquest with every word basically asserting (and in my opinion also absolutely and totally proving) that it was in fact Joseph Stalin himself who very much deliberately and with totally inhumane and evil calculation ordered and imposed the famine and that Stalin aimed the Holodomor mainly and especially at and against the Ukraine, against the largest Slavic, non-Russian ethnic and cultural group in the Soviet Union and the focal point of nationalistic resistance to USSR power. Thus Conquest in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine and also very much correctly charges Joseph Stalin himself, the entire Soviet administration, soldiers, lawmakers etc. and also in my opinion Western Stalin apologists like the above mentioned Walter Duranty with the crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people, something that is actually being more and more generally accepted today but was in 1986 both something pretty new and also still rather controversial (although to be sure, Holodomor denialism is still a thing in 2025 and particularly in Russia as well as amongst "scholars" and world "leaders" who are Vladimir Putin puppets, supporters and the like).
Now I certainly have no (and will also never have) any issues AT ALL with Robert Conquest's claims in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that Jospeh Stalin himself was personally responsible for and in fact did deliberately create the Ukrainian terror-famine, that the Holodomor was and needs to be considered a deliberate act of genocide against Ukrainians (just like the Holocaust specifically targeted Jews), that Stalin and Hitler basically should be seen, should be approached as equally depraved, as evil and absolutely and totally the scum of the earth (but no, I also do not blame and despise all Russians then and now for the Holodomor either, but only, but solely the main movers and shakers so to speak, Red Army soldiers who supposedly were "only" following orders, Ukrainians who collaborated and so on and so on).
And indeed, that the terror, that the starvation deaths of millions of Ukrainians which happened during the Holodomor was absolutely calculated, was deliberate has now (and in my not at all humble opinion) been pretty much proven to be the truth, proven to be correct and that Conquest's horrifying (and also as a caveat not at all comfortable and in any way easy reading) descriptions in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine of these facts are equally soundly researched (at least regarding what was available to Robert Conquest at the time and not being censored by the Soviets) and is also based on a wealth of persuasive and totally horrifying personal eyewitness accounts. And just to point out that while I appreciate having read The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine and rate Conquest's text with a solid five stars, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is an absolutely frightening, painful and infuriating reading experience.
But quite frankly, if The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine were not the latter, well, then Conquest would have failed (and that the horror, the tragedy and the utter, the complete "blame Joseph Stalin" for the Holodomor attitude means that Robert Conquest has both not failed and equally should be hailed and celebrated as a hero).
And yes, even before Conquest penned The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine in 1986 some of the basic facts regarding the Holodomor were already becoming known to or at least suspected by many journalists, scholars and historians in the West, namely that huge numbers of Ukrainian peasants and their families died when Stalin forced them to join collective and state farms against their will, and how from 1932 to 1933 Joseph Stalin (and of course his officials, his soldiers etc.) very deliberately and with total calculation starved millions of Ukrainians to death to break their resistance to Soviet power, and with not only Soviet authorities suppressing and denying this act of genocide for much of the last fifty years but as Robert Conquest textually points out and in my opinion also totally proves in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that certain Western (and likely naively, uncritically supportive of Marxism and Stalinist collectivism) correspondents and journalists were hugely and disgustingly complicit helping Joseph Stalin and then his successors regarding suppressing and denying information on and proof of the Holodomor.
For as The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine realistically and totally believably points out, especially Walter Duranty of The New York Times adamantly and totally denying the existence of the famine, of the Holodomor in his dispatches despite very much evidence to the contrary, his intensive and personal criticism of journalist Gareth Jones for trying to bring Jospeh Stalin's atrocities in the Ukraine to light and Duranty also being awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 (and which Robert Conquest with for me absolute justification showing with and in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine as being completely undeserved), all this definitely and sadly helped to ridiculously and scarily calm especially the United States and the United Kingdom regarding Joseph Stalin and to also both during and even post WWII keep the Holodomor rather hidden and for the world in general to believe or at least tend to accept Soviet lies and propaganda that the deliberate Stalinisque famine in the Ukraine either did not happen or was something entirely natural that could not have been helped.
And albeit the thesis of The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that the Soviet state was deliberately starving millions of its citizens into submission may sound a bit incredible at first, it is actually not something that was completely novel even in 1986 (as I remember that our teacher briefly discussed the Holodomor in grade twelve social studies in the spring of 1985 and that he most definitely was totally blaming the USSR for what happened). But yes, where Robert Conquest does go beyond the generally accepted historical evidence with The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (well, at least for 1986) is Conquest with every word basically asserting (and in my opinion also absolutely and totally proving) that it was in fact Joseph Stalin himself who very much deliberately and with totally inhumane and evil calculation ordered and imposed the famine and that Stalin aimed the Holodomor mainly and especially at and against the Ukraine, against the largest Slavic, non-Russian ethnic and cultural group in the Soviet Union and the focal point of nationalistic resistance to USSR power. Thus Conquest in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine and also very much correctly charges Joseph Stalin himself, the entire Soviet administration, soldiers, lawmakers etc. and also in my opinion Western Stalin apologists like the above mentioned Walter Duranty with the crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people, something that is actually being more and more generally accepted today but was in 1986 both something pretty new and also still rather controversial (although to be sure, Holodomor denialism is still a thing in 2025 and particularly in Russia as well as amongst "scholars" and world "leaders" who are Vladimir Putin puppets, supporters and the like).
Now I certainly have no (and will also never have) any issues AT ALL with Robert Conquest's claims in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine that Jospeh Stalin himself was personally responsible for and in fact did deliberately create the Ukrainian terror-famine, that the Holodomor was and needs to be considered a deliberate act of genocide against Ukrainians (just like the Holocaust specifically targeted Jews), that Stalin and Hitler basically should be seen, should be approached as equally depraved, as evil and absolutely and totally the scum of the earth (but no, I also do not blame and despise all Russians then and now for the Holodomor either, but only, but solely the main movers and shakers so to speak, Red Army soldiers who supposedly were "only" following orders, Ukrainians who collaborated and so on and so on).
And indeed, that the terror, that the starvation deaths of millions of Ukrainians which happened during the Holodomor was absolutely calculated, was deliberate has now (and in my not at all humble opinion) been pretty much proven to be the truth, proven to be correct and that Conquest's horrifying (and also as a caveat not at all comfortable and in any way easy reading) descriptions in The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine of these facts are equally soundly researched (at least regarding what was available to Robert Conquest at the time and not being censored by the Soviets) and is also based on a wealth of persuasive and totally horrifying personal eyewitness accounts. And just to point out that while I appreciate having read The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine and rate Conquest's text with a solid five stars, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is an absolutely frightening, painful and infuriating reading experience.
But quite frankly, if The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine were not the latter, well, then Conquest would have failed (and that the horror, the tragedy and the utter, the complete "blame Joseph Stalin" for the Holodomor attitude means that Robert Conquest has both not failed and equally should be hailed and celebrated as a hero).
February 19, 2017
The importance of this book is that it finally silenced those who denied that there had been a man-made famine in the Ukraine betweem 1929 and 1932. Within 5 years of its publication in 1986, the overwhelming major of academic historians in the West were willing to acknowledge that there had indeed been a Ukrainian "Holocaust". From the 1930s to the early 1980s communist intellectuals and fellow travellers in the West had essentially succeeded in convincing the public that the stories of the famine were lurid lies peddled by angry, Slavic expatriates. In fact when I attended the University of Toronto in the 1980s many professors were still vigorously asserting that several years of poor weather had been blown up into a non-existent genocide.
Conquest convinced the Anglo-Saxon academic community of the reality of the state-created famine because he used the language and tools of Anglo-Saxon academics in his book. More importantly he was a professor on staff at a major American university (Stanford) which gave his book a credibility that a comparable work by an expatriate could never have achieved.
The left has had some success countering the claims of this book. While Conquest suggested a death toll of six million, his critics now assert that 3 million was probably closer to the mark. I think the debate his open. Nobody was keeping track of the numbers properly. What historians have to quantify the number of deaths are census figures for 1926 and 1937. What one finds that with the rate of natural population increase being sustained in the 1920s, there was a shortfall in the Ukrainian population of 15 million when the projected the numbers were compared to the actual. Conquests believes that 6 of the 15 million died in famine of 1929-1932 with the balance perishing in the Gulags which were created to re-educate Kulaks and bourgeois elements. The current state of the statistical debate is that 3 million is a safe estimate on the low end range of the likely number of deaths that can be attributed to the 1929-1932 famine.
Fortunately for the reader, Conquest spends only one chapter on the statistics of the affair. One major part of the book examines the process of how and why the aggressive crop seizures took place in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan took place. Here Conquest takes advantage of fairly conventional archival material to create the narrative of the famine. Finally another substantial section of the book is devoted to testimonials of those who witnessed the events in the Ukraine.
The Harvest of Death is an extremely important book that deserves the widest possible audience. It describes a phenomenon that was repeated in China during the Great Leap Forward where estimates put the death toll between 15 and 45 million and in Pol Pot's Cambodia where 3 to 6 million died of hunger in the 1970s.
Conquest convinced the Anglo-Saxon academic community of the reality of the state-created famine because he used the language and tools of Anglo-Saxon academics in his book. More importantly he was a professor on staff at a major American university (Stanford) which gave his book a credibility that a comparable work by an expatriate could never have achieved.
The left has had some success countering the claims of this book. While Conquest suggested a death toll of six million, his critics now assert that 3 million was probably closer to the mark. I think the debate his open. Nobody was keeping track of the numbers properly. What historians have to quantify the number of deaths are census figures for 1926 and 1937. What one finds that with the rate of natural population increase being sustained in the 1920s, there was a shortfall in the Ukrainian population of 15 million when the projected the numbers were compared to the actual. Conquests believes that 6 of the 15 million died in famine of 1929-1932 with the balance perishing in the Gulags which were created to re-educate Kulaks and bourgeois elements. The current state of the statistical debate is that 3 million is a safe estimate on the low end range of the likely number of deaths that can be attributed to the 1929-1932 famine.
Fortunately for the reader, Conquest spends only one chapter on the statistics of the affair. One major part of the book examines the process of how and why the aggressive crop seizures took place in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan took place. Here Conquest takes advantage of fairly conventional archival material to create the narrative of the famine. Finally another substantial section of the book is devoted to testimonials of those who witnessed the events in the Ukraine.
The Harvest of Death is an extremely important book that deserves the widest possible audience. It describes a phenomenon that was repeated in China during the Great Leap Forward where estimates put the death toll between 15 and 45 million and in Pol Pot's Cambodia where 3 to 6 million died of hunger in the 1970s.
March 9, 2012
Hitler was a piker compared with Joseph Stalin. Stalin created the gulags in the 1920's, and created a man-made famine to eliminate most of the population of the Ukraine who refused get aboard his economic plan. This work is one of the pieces of evidence proving that more people on this earth were murdered in the name of State Communism than from any other single ideology. Mao, Pol Pot, and all of the other State sponsored secular tyrants learned their trade from Stalin. Stalin alone probably murdered at least 15 million of his own people. Stalin starved men, women and children--deported them, and imprisoned them without the least concern for the outcome. This campaign was completely hidden from the West by a state-orchestrated information and propaganda campaign which allowed intellectuals in the West to see only the "bright and positive" side of Soviet society while hiding the horrors of what was really happening.
American and British journalists were taken on a happy ride by "Uncle Joe" and gullibly believed the picture he presented of the "advanced civilization" of the Soviet Union. They were never allowed to see the nightmare occurring in the Ukrainian and Siberian areas. In Russia there is plenty of room for hiding what is not meant to be discovered.
Hitler learned from Stalin how to make gulags and stuff railway cars with innocent victims. This book was the first published to describe this terrible event that can no longer be concealed.
American and British journalists were taken on a happy ride by "Uncle Joe" and gullibly believed the picture he presented of the "advanced civilization" of the Soviet Union. They were never allowed to see the nightmare occurring in the Ukrainian and Siberian areas. In Russia there is plenty of room for hiding what is not meant to be discovered.
Hitler learned from Stalin how to make gulags and stuff railway cars with innocent victims. This book was the first published to describe this terrible event that can no longer be concealed.
September 7, 2009
This book was banned in Canada when it first came out. (I had to have it). It is such a gut-wrenching account of how people were forced into collectives, forced to endure famine and hardships that were hidden from the western world. The world knew one history of that time period but the reality, hidden by the Soviets, was another entirely. It isn't a book for the faint of heart and the pictures boggle the mind. With the help of Stalin approximately 14 million people died in and around the Ukraine.
November 18, 2019
An important book that exposes the atrocities committed against Ukraine in the forms of de-kulakization and grain requisitioning. Imprisonment, death, famine, and economic depravation were employed against the Ukrainian nationstate as means of political warfare by the Stalinist regime. Although unaware of what genocidal consequences these policies would have at first, Conquest's conclusions do not absolve Stalin of these crimes through ignorance or confusion. The fact that their implementation continued during the height on the famine, and similar policies to follow after the Second World War, is logical enough to hold the U.S.S.R. accountable.
What is most interesting is Conquest's perspectives on how the Ukrainian famine was not seriously acknowledged by the Soviet Union as a means of moving forward and improving their system. Such a horrible event coincides with the denial of valuable market mechanisms, agricultural science, and the idea of truth itself alongside the millions who perished during this event. This was not only the work of the Soviet misinformation apparatus, but also the negligence of Western news sources who swept much of this information under the rug.
The Harvest of Sorrow is still an important book 30 plus years after its publication because it exposes appalling political crimes in an age where truth is just as fragile as it was during the 1930s. Plus, it reminds us of what means of warfare are available to leaders who wish to channel their predecessors.
From a BBC article released on 4/18/2019:
The respected Levada Center polled Russians aged 18 and above in 137 towns and cities in March. The result: 51% respect, like or admire Stalin.
What is most interesting is Conquest's perspectives on how the Ukrainian famine was not seriously acknowledged by the Soviet Union as a means of moving forward and improving their system. Such a horrible event coincides with the denial of valuable market mechanisms, agricultural science, and the idea of truth itself alongside the millions who perished during this event. This was not only the work of the Soviet misinformation apparatus, but also the negligence of Western news sources who swept much of this information under the rug.
The Harvest of Sorrow is still an important book 30 plus years after its publication because it exposes appalling political crimes in an age where truth is just as fragile as it was during the 1930s. Plus, it reminds us of what means of warfare are available to leaders who wish to channel their predecessors.
From a BBC article released on 4/18/2019:
The respected Levada Center polled Russians aged 18 and above in 137 towns and cities in March. The result: 51% respect, like or admire Stalin.
November 29, 2025
An account of a most appalling tragedy and a happening we should all be given opportunity to consider.
I'm dubious of the facts and the figures. I'm not denying the tragedy and for all I know some of the figures are an underestimation: they are in several cases though an estimation.
I'm dubious of the facts and the figures. I'm not denying the tragedy and for all I know some of the figures are an underestimation: they are in several cases though an estimation.
April 22, 2014
A classic--- and a vital part of anyone's library on 20th-c. Russia. A horrifying account of what Stalin--- and the Party apparatus; never never never think it was all Stalin alone ---did to the Russian peasantry as part of forced industrialisation: crushing the peasantry in order to extract the surplus that would feed the cities and the workers needed for the manic industrial growth projected under the 5-Year Plans, exporting grain to pay for building up Soviet industry even while the countryside starved, shattering by main force and terror any chance the peasantry might have had to defend itself. The Russian peasantry had been squeezed before under the tsars to pay for railroads and industry, but Conquest highlights the idea of deliberate terror designed not just to feed the cities at the expense of the Russian countryside, but to wage a kind of one-sided civil war that would destroy any hint of separatism in the Ukraine or any hope of the peasantry establishing its own political rights. Stalin's plans, unlike those of, say Count Witte in the 1890s, required mobilizing the Party to wage war on the peasantry--- required creating a kind of hysteria around collectivisation and industrialisation that would give the Party control down to the smallest village. "Harvest of Sorrow" is a powerful book, and it deserves to be on the shelves of anyone who cares about Russia or about the nightmare of the last century.
March 7, 2023
A most harrowing narrative.
I found this to be a far more expansive explanation of how far the terror of these years, 1929 - 1933, reached and came about.
This is not an easy read, but I found it informative.
I found this to be a far more expansive explanation of how far the terror of these years, 1929 - 1933, reached and came about.
This is not an easy read, but I found it informative.
August 11, 2024
Great book.
You should read this.
Holomodor.
Ukraine.
Kulaks.
USSR State run starvation of peasants who the Bolsheviks knew would not make good comrades after they were robbed, and enslaved.
Good supplemental book, and a newer and broader source on this would be Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.
Donating the extra paperback. Keeping the hardback.
You should read this.
Holomodor.
Ukraine.
Kulaks.
USSR State run starvation of peasants who the Bolsheviks knew would not make good comrades after they were robbed, and enslaved.
Good supplemental book, and a newer and broader source on this would be Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.
Donating the extra paperback. Keeping the hardback.
Read
July 23, 2022I’ll begin with an admission that I’m concerned I’ve delved too far into history’s dark corners perhaps putting my mental health in jeopardy; it’s hard to find the glass half full, after all, when reading of atrocities upon horrors following brutalities committed in the name of government, sometimes our own. Shouldn’t I let this fall like water off a rock and quickly move along to more pleasant thoughts and undertakings? No, sorry, I’m going to absorb this story and reflect for a moment on its implications. I’d like to suggest we should all do the same because I feel we owe it to ourselves to care more about these events; they carry important messages about who we are and what is possible.
The Harvest of Sorrow is exceptional research, especially considering the Berlin Wall stood when this book was written. It bears an academic tone, though, one reason the word didn’t spread and linger as far as possible. Mr. Conquest considers more than the events in Ukraine; he also discusses the Kazakh experience, another region that suffered mightily in the early 1930s under Stalin. Interestingly, the word Holodomor does not appear in these pages, which Anne Applebaum introduced me to in her fine work of recent vintage on this topic, an easier read given her talent as a journalist.
The Great Famine shares two important similarities with the Congo Free State under King Leopold: the killed and afflicted numbered more than 10 million and while the stories were reported in major news sources at the time, the events have now been largely lost to popular consciousness. Unlike the Congo Free State, Stalin’s actions had a larger motive; Mr. Conquest notes Russian policies were an attempt to suppress, if not eradicate, Ukrainian nationalism, especially among the rural peasantries. The discussion of Ukrainian history was notable in light of the current conflict with Russia and also recent political trends in America.
These years exemplified terror for terror’s sake with a healthy dose of incompetence thrown in for good measure. A thought emerged that Stalin really gave us the definitive playbook on how a despot excels. If you’re going to be a successful tyrant, you really must keep the tears and blood flowing, and just as they begin to dry, repeat. I can’t think of another ruler who died in office from natural causes, ruled as long and harmed as many as Josef Stalin. In this sense, Vladimir Putin can be thought of as a benevolent dictator; provided his career objective is to die in office, which sure appears to be the case; he has so far harmed only a small fraction of the numbers measured under Stalin’s reign – hopefully his finger will not happen upon that special button, in which case he will vault to a wholly separate league. Yet it was Stalin who mastered the art of terror more so than any ruler in the modern era, while also taking propaganda to a new level.
This book was particularly critical of those who knowingly overlooked these Soviet atrocities in their public writing, like Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Mr. Conquest reserved his harshest comments, however, for Walter Duranty a compromised reporter in the employ of none other than The New York Times. Duranty received a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for “dispassionate, interpretive reporting of the news from Russia,” another sliver of blemished history conveniently forgotten.
The Harvest of Sorrow is exceptional research, especially considering the Berlin Wall stood when this book was written. It bears an academic tone, though, one reason the word didn’t spread and linger as far as possible. Mr. Conquest considers more than the events in Ukraine; he also discusses the Kazakh experience, another region that suffered mightily in the early 1930s under Stalin. Interestingly, the word Holodomor does not appear in these pages, which Anne Applebaum introduced me to in her fine work of recent vintage on this topic, an easier read given her talent as a journalist.
The Great Famine shares two important similarities with the Congo Free State under King Leopold: the killed and afflicted numbered more than 10 million and while the stories were reported in major news sources at the time, the events have now been largely lost to popular consciousness. Unlike the Congo Free State, Stalin’s actions had a larger motive; Mr. Conquest notes Russian policies were an attempt to suppress, if not eradicate, Ukrainian nationalism, especially among the rural peasantries. The discussion of Ukrainian history was notable in light of the current conflict with Russia and also recent political trends in America.
These years exemplified terror for terror’s sake with a healthy dose of incompetence thrown in for good measure. A thought emerged that Stalin really gave us the definitive playbook on how a despot excels. If you’re going to be a successful tyrant, you really must keep the tears and blood flowing, and just as they begin to dry, repeat. I can’t think of another ruler who died in office from natural causes, ruled as long and harmed as many as Josef Stalin. In this sense, Vladimir Putin can be thought of as a benevolent dictator; provided his career objective is to die in office, which sure appears to be the case; he has so far harmed only a small fraction of the numbers measured under Stalin’s reign – hopefully his finger will not happen upon that special button, in which case he will vault to a wholly separate league. Yet it was Stalin who mastered the art of terror more so than any ruler in the modern era, while also taking propaganda to a new level.
But Stalin had a profound understanding of the possibilities of what Hitler approvingly calls the Big Lie. He knew that even though the truth may be readily available, the deceiver need not give up. He saw that flat denial on the one hand, and the injection into the pool of information of a corpus of positive falsehood on the other, were sufficient to confuse the issue for the passively uninstructed foreign audience, and to induce acceptance of the Stalinist version by those actively seeking to be deceived. The Famine was the first major instance of the exercise of this technique of influencing world opinion, but it was to be followed by a number of others such as the campaign over the Moscow Trials of 1936-8, the denial of the existence of the forced labour camp system, and so on. Indeed, it can hardly be said to be extinct even today.Mr. Conquest’s last point is unfortunately relevant to current American politics.
This book was particularly critical of those who knowingly overlooked these Soviet atrocities in their public writing, like Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Mr. Conquest reserved his harshest comments, however, for Walter Duranty a compromised reporter in the employ of none other than The New York Times. Duranty received a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for “dispassionate, interpretive reporting of the news from Russia,” another sliver of blemished history conveniently forgotten.
July 26, 2008
A most engaging and horrifying book. It conveys the circumstances and the means by which the Soviet government put to death at least 10 million peasants. Most of these people, the adults at least, opposed collectivation to some degree. Many others were members of national minorities, such as the Ukranians, who may not have opposed 'Soviet power,' i.e. collectivation, at all, but who were members of national minorities, Ukranians, for example, devoted to their national language, culture, traditions, etc., and who resisted assimilation into a homogeneous Soviet identity, behavior and culture.
I read this book shortly after reading Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tzar, a very illuminating sequence. Montefiore's book describes the everyday life of Stalin's ruling elite who carried out the genocidal policies toward the rural population the effects of which Conquest describes in his book. And they all knew that millions, as many as ten million, were dying, but continued to pursue their realization of 'historical necessity' nonetheless with a clear conscience and a full stomach.
I read this book shortly after reading Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tzar, a very illuminating sequence. Montefiore's book describes the everyday life of Stalin's ruling elite who carried out the genocidal policies toward the rural population the effects of which Conquest describes in his book. And they all knew that millions, as many as ten million, were dying, but continued to pursue their realization of 'historical necessity' nonetheless with a clear conscience and a full stomach.
August 17, 2013
I'm a person of Ukrainian descent on both parents' sides of the family. I first learned about this horrific event in 2nd year university when I took a course on Poland and Ukraine. As much as people blame Stalin and he is to blame for most things, but this didn't just happen in Ukraine (and be careful not to say the Ukraine. It isn't a province, it's a country) but it happened in Russia itself. There wasn't just dekulakization in Ukraine. It happened in the farm lands in Russia as well. Conquest has since retracted his opinions in this book and said it was purely based on economics of the day. I do think that Stalin was attacking Ukrainian nationalism, but he was also attacking Russian peasants nationalism as well. Stalin only cared about feeding the people in Moscow. The memorial of this tragic event is known as the Holodomor and is recognized by 13 states as an act of genocide.
February 28, 2024
This is a sad story.
I'm glad I read it. To think that a way of life that had existed for centuries can be destroyed by such a callous mind is painful.
I'm glad I read it. To think that a way of life that had existed for centuries can be destroyed by such a callous mind is painful.
March 16, 2013
It is a curious thing, but the public schools do not teach anything about this subject in their history classes. This book should be required reading!
It is not an easy read any way you look at it, but it is an important book. Please pick it up and give it a read.
It is not an easy read any way you look at it, but it is an important book. Please pick it up and give it a read.
June 27, 2013
The best description of Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture -- arguably the most monstrous crime of a monstrous century.
February 8, 2017
**The Harvest of Sorrow**is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, **The Harvest of Sorrow** is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, **The Harvest of Sorrow** is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.
April 23, 2011
I feel a bit bad marking this low, as at the time when it was written it was probably quite brave and necessary, but while Conquest (awesome author name, by the way) lays out an unapologetic indictment of the Soviet government for its intentional infliction of famine on the Ukraine, and its damnable stubbornness in insisting on ideologically-motivated reforms even in the teeth of overwhelming evidence that they were failures, the writing is weak, the organization is scattered (alternating chronological chapters with thematic ones with no rhyme or reason), and he relies so much on endless statistics and atomistic anecdotes that none of the important people, save Stalin, come across with any sort of personality. An important story, but poorly told, at least to the lay reader.
July 22, 2018
Conquest clearly explains the precursors to famine, the tragedy itself, and its aftermath. Many first-hand accounts are quoted, often at length, from both victims and government "activists," allowing for an intimate understanding of specific people's experiences in context. Conquest also writes of the West's knowledge of and reaction to the famine, including a description of Stalin's tactics of obfuscation. Statistics are offered frequently. Harvest of Sorrow reads as a relatively objective account of the relevant event and its context. It is accessible to readers with limited background knowledge of Soviet history, though many names of officials, which go unintroduced in the book, will be unfamiliar.
July 13, 2009
A must read for anyone who believes communism is good. It isnt.
September 24, 2021
A damning and thoroughly researched early indictment of Stalin’s genocidal attack on the Ukraine. Of course, the Bolshevik is experiment as a whole is also to blame.
July 13, 2014
I was reading Conquest's book on The Great Terror, about Stalin's show trials in the late thirties, but then thought I should go back a few years and learn about Stalin's terror famines. I'd also read Hungry Ghosts about China's terror famine in the mid-fifties and wanted to see how it played out in Russia. Like Hungry Ghosts, this was an incredibly eye-opening and shocking book. We were never taught about any of this in school. The stupidity and sheer evil of Stalin is really highlighted here in meticulous detail through statistics, anecdotes, citations, and a good narrative (I confess, I skipped over some of the more densely statistical pages, not being a real number freak). For anyone who is following the current crisis in the Ukraine, this should absolutely be on their reading list (I was going to say bedside table, but this book should perhaps be read during the day so you don't get nightmares!). It left me feeling that our government is not doing enough to stop the spread of Russian imperialism in the Ukraine. Putin seems to want to resuscitate some of Stalin's methods (be aggressive, then pull back, more aggression, then denials, etc. etc.), and if we don't act decisively (I don't mean start a war) then the Ukraine is bound to be swallowed up in due time. Some people may say: ''well, it's really a part of Russia, anyway,'' but IT ISN'T. It's its own vibrant culture with a strong sense of nationalism that has been tested over and over again throughout history. Anyway, back to the book: it was heartbreaking to see the people in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other regions of the former USSR get murdered, exiled, imprisoned, and starved, just so that Stalin could subdue their ''colonies'' sense of nationalism, and force peasants out of their centuries-old agricultural practices (which worked) into forced collectivization (which didn't work). Also, Conquest spends a lot of time at the beginning of the book detailing the ''dekulakization'' of the countryside (a kulak being a prosperous peasant), where anyone could be called a ''kulak'' and have all his possessions taken away, forced into exile, or shot, as part of the ''class struggle.'' I've read Darkness at Noon, Animal Farm, and other fictional treatments of the Soviet Terror, but this book really hits you on the head with how ''theory'' (in this case Marxism) can be valued more highly than simple human values and virtues. How many hundreds of millions of people in the history of the world have been killed because of ''theory'' (including religious ''theory'')? And at the end of the book, Conquest writes about how so many in the West were duped, including one guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that there was no famine! Malcolm Muggeridge, who I used to watch on the Jack Paar Show (and maybe Carson), was one of the few journalists to report the truth in the West, and he was castigated for his ''distortions'' especially by the Left in the West. Now, I'm on the left politically, but this sort of thing shows me some of the glaring flaws of leftist politics (e.g. being blind to gross violations of human justice in the name of some left-wing ideal). For those attracted to any policy of any sort, this book rang screamed out to me: Caveat emptor!
August 11, 2014
This is a well written book with no wasted words, even if not an absolute masterpiece of style.
And though history books are to me generally not 5-star, it seems inescapable that this is indeed a 5-star book because the story is so damned important.
I admit to starting off through the first third in the frame of mind of collecting the material into my mind; to just absorb it as history. Now, at completion, I've come to realize that this is something different.
Statistical figures, Soviet reports, letters, Khrushchev's memoirs, hearsay, eye-witness accounts from both peasants and "activists", declarative sentences that are never laced with adjectives overtly meant to generate sensational emotionalism - that approach becomes something the reader can visualize, can ponder, and can imagine happening.
The net effect of writing this way is actually much more powerful than trying to force the conclusion or the reaction.
I am fully aware that there are several well-read people in the world who have commented that this book is anti-Marxist or anti-Soviet propaganda and largely difficult to prove. Let's for a moment grant that point; that only a fraction is proven true, maybe 25% true.
That 25% is enough to leave a very serious impression, no matter how much history you've read.
For follow-up, I'd like to note that it was worth taking 15 minutes or so to read the summary background of Mr. Conquest.
Lastly, I'd like to spend some time on this topic of collectivization and the famine from the "other side", if there even is such a thing.
And though history books are to me generally not 5-star, it seems inescapable that this is indeed a 5-star book because the story is so damned important.
I admit to starting off through the first third in the frame of mind of collecting the material into my mind; to just absorb it as history. Now, at completion, I've come to realize that this is something different.
Statistical figures, Soviet reports, letters, Khrushchev's memoirs, hearsay, eye-witness accounts from both peasants and "activists", declarative sentences that are never laced with adjectives overtly meant to generate sensational emotionalism - that approach becomes something the reader can visualize, can ponder, and can imagine happening.
The net effect of writing this way is actually much more powerful than trying to force the conclusion or the reaction.
I am fully aware that there are several well-read people in the world who have commented that this book is anti-Marxist or anti-Soviet propaganda and largely difficult to prove. Let's for a moment grant that point; that only a fraction is proven true, maybe 25% true.
That 25% is enough to leave a very serious impression, no matter how much history you've read.
For follow-up, I'd like to note that it was worth taking 15 minutes or so to read the summary background of Mr. Conquest.
Lastly, I'd like to spend some time on this topic of collectivization and the famine from the "other side", if there even is such a thing.
October 18, 2020
The author, who wrote many of Margaret Thatcher's (worst) speeches, admits that this book is based on hearsay and rumor, not on proper research. So his figures are ridiculous exaggerations. Far too many writers on the subject have relied not on the archives, but on Conquest's estimates.
However, a proper historian, Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, has explained how Conquest reached his figures. He writes: "Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine (New York, 1986) argues that the ”dekulakization” of the early 1930s led to the deaths of 6,500,000 people. But this estimate is arrived at by extremely dubious methods, ranging from reliance on hearsay evidence through double counting to the consistent employment of the highest possible figures in estimates made by other historians."
The true figure for the 1930s is about 300,000 deaths.
Another decent historian, Professor R. W. Davies, wrote, "The archival data are entirely incompatible with such very high figures, which continue to be cited as firm fact in both the Russian and the Western media." (Soviet history in the Yeltsin era, Macmillan, 1997, page 172.)
So it's high time that Conquest's book was thrown into the dustbin of history. Read Douglas Tottle's book, "Fraud, Famine and Fascism" instead, for an exposure of the US/British propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union.
However, a proper historian, Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, has explained how Conquest reached his figures. He writes: "Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine (New York, 1986) argues that the ”dekulakization” of the early 1930s led to the deaths of 6,500,000 people. But this estimate is arrived at by extremely dubious methods, ranging from reliance on hearsay evidence through double counting to the consistent employment of the highest possible figures in estimates made by other historians."
The true figure for the 1930s is about 300,000 deaths.
Another decent historian, Professor R. W. Davies, wrote, "The archival data are entirely incompatible with such very high figures, which continue to be cited as firm fact in both the Russian and the Western media." (Soviet history in the Yeltsin era, Macmillan, 1997, page 172.)
So it's high time that Conquest's book was thrown into the dustbin of history. Read Douglas Tottle's book, "Fraud, Famine and Fascism" instead, for an exposure of the US/British propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union.
April 21, 2014
Anyone who thinks socialism is a good idea needs to read this book. If socialism is so wonderful, why does it have to be forced on people? If it the best system ever, why does it drive a mother to kill and eat her own children? Millions of people were killed outright, deported to labor camps, or simply left to starve to death...because these things would create a perfect world. Didn't happen. That world never appeared. This book was published in 1986, and the author noted that the average citizen in the USSR was much worse off than before the revolution. The book details, with plenty of statistics and primary sources, the collectivization and dekulakization of the Russian peasant farms and the deliberate starvation of Ukraine. It is a very powerful denunciation of the Soviet system - which is still a failure.
November 2, 2012
This is a history of the famine in the Ukraine brought about by Stalin's collectivization program and enforced by terror. It is a horrible story and that is both depressing and still little known today. Conquest is a superb writer and the book is captivating to read even as it is difficult. There are other treatments of this series of events, such as Bloodlands, that place it in context with other atrocities of the time. There is even an emerging genre of these events, such as histories of the Irish potato famine or the WWII famine in Bengal. This is one of the first that I read and it is still one of the best.
November 11, 2014
Excellent piece of historical research and writing. Most Americans don't know anything about the frightful events that are detailed in this book. Conquest does an excellent job piecing together the facts to give the reader a complete picture of what happened. A must read.
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