' &-YW a. THE RUSSIAN FAMINES 1922-1923 Excerpts from the Official Report of the Investigating Commission sent to Russia by the National Information Bureau, at the request of the major American relief organizations, to discover the facts about the Russian famine and American relief. Issued by National Headquarters RUSSIAN FAMINE FUND 15 PARK ROW NEW YORK Excerpts from the Official Report of the National Information Bureau ON THE RUSSIAN FAMINES A FAIR estimate of the number of people in Russia who will starve before August, 1923, if not fed by Russian or foreign relief, is 8,000,000. At the peak of the need next summer ten million people may perhaps be involved. * * * Put in the briefest possible way, the situation which we found in Russia is this: The greater part of the twenty-two million who were hungry in 1921-22 either sowed for the 1922 harvest much less than the year before or sowed no crops at all, so that at best, for Russia as a whole, a considerable shortage as compared with a normal crop was to be expected this year. Then a series of local disasters— drought and a variety of pests—cut so deeply into this year’s harvest that over a considerable part of last year’s hunger area a new famine is undeniably the result. * * * We found many indications of this new famine. The flight of hungry peasants from their farms to seek food in the cities had begun again in eastern Russia and southern Ukraine as early as October, two months after the harvest. Ten deaths from starvation in the space of a few days in October were reported in a single volost. At the other end of the famine belt, the people we talked with seemed more concerned about the lack of weeds than the lack of real food. They ate the weeds so closely last year that too few were left to make a crop. Relief workers themselves, in November, 1922, were eating bread made of pigweed seed, and little else. * * * We have taken the early crop reports into careful consideration, but after inspecting the famine areas and analyzing later crop figures we have been forced to the conclusion that the outlook for the present Winter and coming Spring is far worse than it appeared in early Summer. * * * Everywhere we went in Russia we found an effort being made to care for homeless children, but everywhere the problem was too much for local resources. In the city of Ekaterinburg over 10,000 orphans were already under care, and the Commissar of Health told us in November that never a day passed without his finding a baby or child or two left behind the door or in the hallway of his office by starving mothers who knew they could not keep their children alive. Fuel and clothing were lacking in every receiving home which we saw. The children had no more than a single cotton garment apiece. They huddled around the fire except at meal-times, when they were hurried into the coldest of the rooms, where half the windows had no panes. They were apparently too miserable even to cry. Since children were fed long before adults in the starvation dis¬ tricts, and child-feeding has been more consistently done, children have been kept alive while their parents have died, and the number of orphans has thus increased. There can be no doubt that the policy of feeding children only, in districts where starvation is general, adds heavily to the number of orphans and—in view of the present deficiencies of institutional care—is a doubtful service to the children who survive. * * * In Russia as in any other country with a demoralized economic life and a depreciated currency the professional classes and students are in serious plight. We found the universities and schools crowded, but everywhere there was evidence that at least 70 per cent of the teaching staffs and 60 to 80 per cent of the students were so seriously undernourished and insufficiently clothed as to jeopardize their health. In the face of great hardship—students in rags are sleeping on the floors of entirely unfurnished buildings set aside for their use in Moscow, with barely enough food and fuel to keep alive—the attend¬ ance at Russian universities increased from 134,000 in 1921 to 170,000 in 1922. So many were without food last Fall that those being fed voluntarily reduced their single meal from 1,600 to 1,200 calories so that a thousand more might share the smaller ration. If Russia’s best potential leadership is to be conserved the students and professional classes will need help for a considerable time to come. * * * It is impossible to find any single cause which fully explains the famines of 1921-22 and 1922-23. Russian agriculture has been slow to develop. For half a century after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 the cultivated area hardly increased, though the population multiplied two and a half times. Peasant farming was generally of a low order. Wasteful methods were common. Particularly in the region of the Volga, the abundance of land suitable for cultivation and the large profits in favorable years encouraged a very unstable and inefficient type of cultivation. It was customary in some parts of the valley to hold reserves for at least two years against the possi¬ bility of crop failure. Such failures have been frequent; they gave rise to serious famines in 1891, 1892, 1898, and 1911. * * * From the Great War onward a number of factors contributed to an increasing disorganization and curtailment of production. Seven¬ teen million men and two million horses were mobilized in the three years 1914-17. The loss of workers and horses tended directly to reduce the crops; the break-down of the Russian railways under the strain of war transportation contributed indirectly to the same result, because it became difficult to market the surplus. The peasants be¬ gan to sow less land, and the large estates worked by hired labor suffered still more severely. If grain could not be shipped out, neither could agricultural machinery be brought in; imports of this sort fell from 95,200 metric tons in 1914 to only 4,100 in 1915. The supply within Russia fell gradually into disrepair. * * * Then came the years of civil war. The Kerensky government turned to the herds of the Volga Valley, as the Tsar had done, to supply the army. The Bolsheviks made further drains. The Czecho¬ slovaks drove them out, and requisitioned for themselves. Back swept the Bolsheviks, only to be driven out once more by Kolchak. Finally the Red Army, battling successively against Denikin, Wrangel, Yudenitch and the Poles, turned once more to the Volga for supplies. It was a Sherman’s march to the sea spread over seven years. Of the 23 districts listed by the government as famine areas in 1921, at least 15 had been at some time or other the scene of military operations. * * * To the effects of war must be added sweeping economic changes. Very generally the large land holdings were broken up and divided among the peasants. Since the large estates had always been more productive, proportionately, than the peasant farms, this in itself tended to reduce production. The Soviet government assumed a monopoly of internal and external trade in grain, forbade the use of hired labor, and made the entire cropoftheindividual farmer state property, subject to requisition in full, except for an allowance fixed by the government for his own food and seed requirements. In some cases the reserves accumulated from former harvests, and held as insurance against bad years, were confiscated outright. These requisitions were a great discouragement to production. Meanwhile it became impossible for the peasant to buy in the cities the goods for which he was accustomed to exchange his grain. His markets, both domestic and foreign, had disappeared. He could not even barter his surplus for tools. He gained nothing by raising more than he needed for his family, his livestock, and seed¬ ing; and there he drew the line. Presently there was no surplus. By 1920 these processes had reached the point where local short¬ ages produced actual starvation. * * * Then came the drought of 1921. Instead of the normal 14 inches of rain between October and July the middle and lower Volga had 2 inches. The rains of May and June, on which the crop depends, failed altogether. In twenty provinces the total yield was barely more than one seventh of its pre-war amount. An important element in this situation was the practical extinction of work animals in parts of the famine area and heavy losses through¬ out it. Lacking fodder to feed them the peasants killed and ate them, or sold them to buy food. The decrease led to a further reduction in the area sown. Almost everywhere plowing was superficial; much was done by hand. While in some cases there were too few animals to permit of sowing the available seed, in others the lack of seed at the normal time of planting, the attempt to sow seed from other parts of Russia which was not adapted to the local climate, and the late arrival of seed supplied through foreign or governmental efforts, accounted for a diminishing crop in 1922. * * * In round numbers, 14,000,000 people were fed by Russian or foreign relief agencies at some time between the harvest of 1921 and that of 1922. The relief thus given affected many more than those actually fed, for if part of a starving population is fed, large numbers in addition will be kept alive by the local stocks thus released for their sole use. The original plan was to feed a supplementary ration to 1,000,000 children. American workers found the need so great that adult feeding was agreed upon. Both child and adult programs were rapidly expanded until at their peak 4,171,441 children and 6,257,958 adults were being fed in twenty-four provinces, the entire Ukraine and the cities of Petrograd and Moscow. The entire distribution was supported by approximately the following funds, subsequently increased to carry relief operations into 1923: A. R. A. funds. $7,000,000 Congressional Authorization. 19,300,000 Congressional Authorization of Army Medical Supplies. 4,000,000 American Red Cross Medical Supplies. 3,600,000 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. 4,325,000 Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. 500,000 A. R. A. Food Remittances. 6,000,000 Volga Relief Society. 200,000 Mennonite Central Committee. 252,000 National Catholic Welfare Council. 100,000 Southern Baptists. 120,000 International Committee of Y. M. C. A. ' 50,000 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America .. 90,000 Soviet Gold and credits. 11,43 3,000 National Lutheran Council. 300,000 Food purchased by American Friends (Quakers) for its own distribution. 415,000 Total. $57,685,000 The Soviet government appropriated the gold and credits above mentioned for the purchase of seed corn in the United States for use in its seed loan program. * * * The American Friends Service Committee, which had previously been maintaining a small local work in Moscow, participated with the American Relief Administration in the agreement with the Soviet government and recommenced relief in the eastern section of Buzuluk county in Samara, where it had done refugee work during the war. Here it fed up to a maximum of 65,086 children and 76,605 adults. In addition it gave 15,000 children in Minsk milk rations. * * * a The famines of 1921-22 and 1922-23 can be explained roughly as the result of serious crop failures occurring on a sown area too small for a margin of safety, at a time when the peasants were without reserves. The immediate problem is therefore to enable the peasant to sow a sufficient area, properly tilled, to provide a safe surplus against local shortages. Beyond this problem lies a greater one— to increase the surplus to a point where it affords a firm foundation for the economic life of Russia, and to provide adequate facilities for crop distribution. We cannot pass over in silence the enormous achievement of these American organizations and their workers in Russia, who sur¬ mounted difficulties of which the reader can have no conception, and carried through a task of organization, transportation and distribution quite without precedent in the history of relief. The devotion of these Americans in the discharge of their difficult duties, amid scenes much more terrible and depressing even than the gruesome sights of war—as many who lived through both have testified—is a page in the history of service of which this country may well be proud. We found evidences everywhere that these efforts have made a deep and lasting impression upon the Russian people as a whole, and have aroused a gratitude which will not die. * * * The most important step in removing the causes of famine has already been taken by the Soviet Government. The adoption of the new economic policy in 1921 did away with the wholesale requisitions which were a powerful deterrent to production. So far as we ob¬ served, the grain tax of 1922 permitted the peasants to accumulate a surplus for the market and to dispose of it as they pleased. Normal economic motives may now be expected to increase the crop area substantially. But without draft animals the peasant cannot increase the sown area even if he wishes to. At the outside there are not more than 25 per cent of the normal number in the famine districts. There is a vicious circle here: without animals the peasants cannot sow adequate crops; without crop surpluses they cannot buy animals. * * * The announced intention of the Soviet Government to export grain is a further complication in the foreign relief situation. Though making frequent inquiries while in Russia we learned of no exporta¬ tion up to the time of our departure. Our only knowledge of actual exports is from reports since our return indicating that small amounts have been sent into Finland and that considerable quantities have been stored at Petrograd and in the south, presumably for shipment. Our information is that only a small part of these stocks is actually Soviet property and so available to the government, without purchase, for feeding the hungry. The wisdom of shipping grain out of the country, for any reason, while foreign generosity sends other grain in to keep Russians alive is certainly debatable. We have no means of knowing whether there will actually be any considerable amounts available for export. The estimates vary from fifteen to fifty million dollars. The position of the Soviet Government regarding exports is that they are imperatively necessary to break the vicious circle already re¬ ferred to—underproduction because of the lack of horses and plows, new shortages, famine, further killing and eating of horses, continued underproduction. Quite frankly the authorities state that even at the cost of many deaths from starvation this year, exporting grain is the only way to secure the work animals and implements needed to pre¬ vent many more deaths in the future. * * * a The emergency in Russia is not over. To the extent that peasants who were kept alive last year through American aid are left to die in 1923, America’s effort is inadequate. Emergency aid and the restora¬ tion of agriculture are both necessary. The Soviet Government has proved its incapacity to provide both. Relief agencies cannot rebuild Russian agriculture; the Russian Government has begun to do so, and for the reasons already stated we believe the outlook for recovery to be promising. If the government really undertook to exchange grain for tools and horses, and thereby contributed to the rebuilding of peasant farms, we are not prepared to say that the policy would be unsound. The logic of the situation points to continued aid from outside Russia until the emergency is over. In any case, American aid has not hitherto been conditioned on approval of the Soviet’s economic or political policies. It has been given, in fact, in the face of almost universal disapproval of Soviet policy, because of the wish to meet a demonstrated human need. * * * In our judgment the facts we observed in Russia point inescapably to the conclusion that if widespread suffering and death from star¬ vation this year are to be prevented, American help must be con¬ tinued on a large scale. Commission on Russian Relief ALLEN WARDWELL, Formerly American Red Cross Commissioner to Russia, 1917. GRAHAM R. TAYLOR, Formerly Assistant to American Ambassador to Russia, 1917. ALLEN T. BURNS, Director, National Information Bureau .