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In the early spring of 1921, true famine came to Russia: a hunger so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten. At one point, relief agencies had to give grain to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved. Russia was experiencing one of her intermittent droughts, but there had been droughts before.

George F. Kennan attributes responsibility for the famine to the doctrinaire mismanagement of the Bolsheviks, and to the six and a half years of war Russia had suffered without break.

The last phases of the First World War in the East were fought inside Imperial Russia. Modern war strains any economy; but for much of the period, Russia had been cut off, not only from trade with the Central Powers, but, with the closing of the Dardanelles, from the rest of the world. The end of grain export would at least have meant full granaries, if it were not for the peculation and corruption of Imperial Russia.

All sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918-20 - the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities - provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik efficiency at this is confirmed by their recently uncovered records; it doubtless contributed to their victory. The American Relief Association, which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of WWI, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all; Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.

This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. In retaliation, Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain.

This famine, the Kronstadt rebellion, and the failure of a German [[general strike convinced Lenin to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy on March 15, 1921; it also helped produce an opening to the West. Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time, but later had most of the Russian members organizing the aid liquidated. The famine continued through 1922; the A.R.A fed ten million people, and presumably was what kept most of them alive.

The Bolsheviks permitted the relief agencies to continue distributing free food in 1923, while they sold grain abroad. The net effect, since grain is fungible, was that they received money for nothing from capitalist philanthropy. When this was discovered, foreign relief organizations suspended aid. Lenin's first heart attack was in the fall of 1922; and the extent of his responsibility for the grain sales is therefore unclear, but it is likely he would have been pleased.

Three million deaths have been estimated; for comparison, the worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths . Of course, that was in a time of peace and order; there had not been war throughout Russia before.

References

Kennan, George Frost: Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston (1961) Particularly pp.141-150, 168, 179-185.

• Famines
• History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia