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{{short description|1986 book by Robert Conquest}} |
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{{Italic title}} |
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{{distinguish|Harvester of Sorrow}} |
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'''''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-famine''''' is a book by British historian [[Robert Conquest]], published in 1986. |
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{{Infobox book |
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| name = The Harvest of Sorrow |
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| image = Robert-Conquest-The-Harvest-of-Sorrow-cover.jpg |
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| caption = Cover of the first edition |
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| authors = [[Robert Conquest]] |
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| country = United Kingdom |
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| language = English |
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| subjects = [[Holodomor]]<br>[[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]] |
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| publisher = [[Oxford University Press]] |
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| pub_date = 9 October 1986 |
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| media_type = Print |
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| pages = 412 |
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| isbn = 9780195051803 |
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}} |
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'''''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''''' is a 1986 book by British historian [[Robert Conquest]] published by the [[Oxford University Press]]. It was written with the assistance of historian [[James Mace]], a junior fellow at the [[Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute]], who started doing research for the book following the advice of the director of the institute.<ref name="Mariya 2004">{{cite web|last=Vlad|first=Mariya|date=May 2004|url=http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20083/84|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124232826/http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20083/84|archivedate=24 November 2020|title=James Mace, a Native American with Ukrainian blood|website=Welcome to Ukraine|accessdate=30 November 2020}}</ref> Conquest wrote the book in order "to register in the public consciousness of the West a knowledge of and feeling for major events, involving millions of people and millions of deaths, which took place within living memory."<ref name="Kosiński 1987">{{cite journal|last=Kosiński|first=L. A.|year=1987|title=Reviewed Work: The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine by Robert Conquest|journal=Population and Development Review|volume=13|issue=1|pages=149–153|doi=10.2307/1972127|jstor=1972127}}</ref>{{rp|149}} |
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The book deals with the [[collectivization of agriculture]] in 1929–1931 in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union under [[Joseph Stalin]]'s direction, and the [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]] and [[Holodomor]] which resulted. Millions of peasants died due to starvation, deportation to [[labor camp]]s and execution. Conquest's thesis was characterized as "the famine was deliberately inflicted for ethnic reasons—it was done in order to undermine the Ukrainian nation", or that it constituted [[genocide]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Tauger|first=Mark|year=1991|url=http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20'The%201932%20Harvest%20and%20the%20Famine%20of%201933,%20SR%2091.pdf|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119015236/http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20'The%201932%20Harvest%20and%20the%20Famine%20of%201933,%20SR%2091.pdf|archivedate=19 January 2017|title=The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933|journal=Slavic Review|volume=50|issue=1|pages=70–89|doi=10.2307/2500600|jstor=2500600|s2cid=163767073 |quote=4. For examples of the genocide thesis, see Conquest, ''Harvest of Sorrow'', 323–330 ... .}}</ref>{{rp|70}}<ref name="Marples 2009">{{cite journal|last=Marples|first=David R.|title=Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|date=May 2009|volume=61|issue=3|pages=505–518|doi=10.1080/09668130902753325|jstor=27752256|s2cid=67783643}}</ref>{{rp|507}} |
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In 1981, the [[Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute|Ukrainian Research Institute]] approached Conquest with a major project: a book on the 1932-33 famine. The pot was sweetened by an $80,000 subside from the [[Ukrainian National Association]], a New Jersey-based group with a venerable, hard-right tradition; the [[Ukrainian National Association|UNA]]'s newspaper, [[Svoboda (newspaper)|Svoboda]], was banned by Canada during World War II for its pro-German sympathies<ref name="The Village Voice"/>. |
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''The Harvest of Sorrow'' won Conquest the [[Antonovych prize]] in 1987<ref>{{cite news|last=Nynka|first=Andrew|date=23 July 2021|url=https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/svoboda-awarded-2020-antonovych-prize/|title=Svoboda awarded 2020 Antonovych prize|work=Ukrainian Weekly|accessdate=3 August 2021}}</ref> and the [[Shevchenko National Prize]] in 1994.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/8065-shevchenko-national-prize|title=Shevchenko National Prize Winners|website=Good Reads|accessdate=3 August 2021}}</ref> |
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In 1986, Conquest published the resulting book ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine'', dealing with the collectivization of agriculture in [[Ukraine]] and elsewhere in the USSR, under Stalin's direction in 1929–31, and the 1932-33 famine, in which millions of peasants died due to [[starvation]], [[deportation]] to [[labor camp]]s, and execution. In this book, Conquest supported the view that the [[Ukrainian famine|famine]] was a planned act of genocide.<ref name="Telegraph">{{cite web|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11782719/Robert-Conquest-historian-obituary.html|title=Robert Conquest – Historian – Obituary|publisher=Telegraph.uk|accessdate=4 August 2015}}</ref> |
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== |
== Background == |
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In 1981, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute approached Conquest with the project of a book on the 1932–1933 famine.<ref name="Sysyn 2015">{{cite journal|last=Sysyn|first=Frank|year=2015|url=https://holodomor.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Sysyn_Thirty_Years_of_Research_on_the_Holodomor_A_Balance_Sheet_anhl.pdf|title=Thirty Years of Research on the Holodomor: A Balance Sheet|journal=East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies|volume=II|issue=1|pages=4–16|doi=10.21226/T26P4M|issn=2292-7956|accessdate=30 November 2020|via=Holodomor Research and Education Consortium}}</ref> The [[Ukrainian National Association]], a New Jersey-based ethnic fraternal group with a [[hard-right]] tradition (its newspaper ''[[Svoboda (newspaper)|Svoboda]]'' was banned by Canada during World War II for its pro-German sympathies), sponsored the work with a $80,000 subsidy.<ref name="The Village Voice">{{cite news|last=Coplon|first=Jeff|date=12 January 1988|url=https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vv.html|title=In Search of a Soviet Holocaust|location=New York|newspaper=The Village Voice|accessdate=30 November 2020|via=Montclair State University}}</ref> The grant was earmarked for Conquest's research expenses, including the assistance of historian [[James Mace]], a junior fellow at the institute and Conquest protégé.<ref name="Mariya 2004"/><ref name="The Village Voice"/> In accepting the sponsorship, Conquest was perceived as being in the pocket of the Ukrainians.<ref name="Hillier 1986">{{cite news|last=Hillier|first=Bevis|date=19 November 1986|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-19-vw-4241-story.html|title='Harvest' of Soviet Terrorism Reaped by Historian Conquest|work=[[Los Angeles Times]]|accessdate=14 Sep 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230426004757/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-19-vw-4241-story.html |archive-date=26 Apr 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> In response to those claims, Conquest stated: "I did not do the book specifically on the Ukraine. About half the book is on the non-Ukrainian side, the rest of the Soviet peasantry—there is a whole chapter on the Kazakhs, for example. The sponsors made no attempt whatever to suggest what I should write. In fact, I'm in trouble with some of them for refusing to drop the 'the' from 'the Ukraine.'"<ref name="Hillier 1986"/> |
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The [[United States Congress]] promoted awareness of the [[Holodomor]] and set [[U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine]], which was authorized in 1985 and headed by [[James Mace]].<ref name="U.S. Commission 2006">{{cite document|author=U.S. Embassy Ukraine Kyiv|date=30 November 2006|title=The Holodomor and the Politics of Remembrance: The Legacy of Stalin's 1932–33 Famine|publisher=U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine}}</ref> The commission conducted archival and oral history research under a $382,000 congressional appropriation,<ref name="The Village Voice">{{cite news|last=Coplon|first=Jeff|date=12 January 1988|url=https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vv.html|title=In Search of a Soviet Holocaust|location=New York|newspaper=The Village Voice|accessdate=30 November 2020|via=Montclair State University}}</ref> leading to a final report conclusion in 1988 that "Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933." Mace's research formed the basis for Conquest's book.<ref name="The Village Voice"/><ref name="U.S. Commission 2006"/> For Mace's wife Nataliya Dzyubenko-Mace, the commission was instrumental in alerting the U.S. public and politicians to these horrific crimes, helping rouse U.S.society from political lethargy.<ref name="Mariya 2004"/> |
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In a controversial 1988 article in ''[[The Village Voice]]'', American investigative journalist [[Jeff Coplon]] analyzed the scholarship surrounding the [[Ukrainian famine]] of the 1930s, and argued that allegations by "mainstream academics", including Robert Conquest, of [[genocide]] against the Soviet Union were historically dubious and politically motivated as part of a campaign by the Ukrainian nationalist community. |
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<ref name="The Village Voice">{{Cite news|first=Jeff |last=Coplon |work=[[Village Voice]] |location=New York|date=January 12, 1988 |url=http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html |title=In Search of a Soviet Holocaust|publisher=villagevoice.com|accessdate=18 September 2015 }}</ref> In a letter to the editors, Robert Conquest dismissed the article as "error and absurdity".<ref>{{Cite news|first=Robert |last=Conquest |work=The Ukrainian Weekly |location=|date=February 21, 1988 |title=Letters to the editors |url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/16317836/The-Ukrainian-Weekly-198808 }} – Reprinted by the ''[[The Ukrainian Weekly]]'', February 21, 1988</ref> |
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''The Harvest of Sorrow'' had a clear moral intent, namely that if the older Soviet leaders were direct accomplices in an artificially contrived famine and the younger leaders today still justify such procedure, then it followed that they might be willing to kill tens of millions of foreigners or suffer a loss of millions of their own subjects in a war.<ref name="Hillier 1986">{{cite news|last=Hillier|first=Bevis|date=19 November 1986|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-19-vw-4241-story.html|title='Harvest' of Soviet Terrorism Reaped by Historian Conquest|work=[[Los Angeles Times]]|accessdate=14 Sep 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230426004757/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-11-19-vw-4241-story.html |archive-date=26 Apr 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> Conquest stated: "I don't think they want to blow Western populations to pieces. But if they came to America and imposed the collective farm system, then they might well organize a famine."<ref name="Hillier 1986"/> |
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In the same article Coplon accused Conquest of misusing the sources: |
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== Reception == |
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"[Conquest] weaves his terror-famine from unverifiable (and notoriously biased) èmigrè accounts. [...] ''Black Deeds of the Kremlin'', a period piece published by Ukrainian èmigrès in 1953, is footnoted no less than 145 times. |
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According to [[David R. Marples]], the book served as an indicator of divisions in Western scholarship on the subject. Marples writes that Conquest's book was "generally well received though Conquest admitted subsequently that he had lacked sources to confirm his estimates of death tolls."<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|507}} Historian [[Ronald Grigor Suny]] commented that Conquest's estimation for famine deaths was almost quadruple that of many fellow Soviet specialists.<ref>{{cite book|last=Suny|first=Ronald Grigor|year=2017|title=Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians and the Russian Revolution|location=London|publisher=Verso Books|page=95|isbn=9781784785673}}</ref> |
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Conquest can be deftly selective when it suits his purpose. He borrows heavily from Lev Kopelev's ''The Education of a True Believer'', but ignores Kopelev when the latter recalls Ukrainian villages that were relatively untouched by famine, or relief efforts by a Communist village council."<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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In a 1987 review for the ''[[Population and Development Review]]'', L. A. Kosiński describes it as a "carefully researched book based on a variety of sources—including eyewitness accounts, letters, official Soviet documents and press releases, reports and analyses of both Soviet and feorign scholars, and Soviet fiction ... ." According to Kosiński, Conquest "presents the shocking story of a 'revolution from above,' to use Stalin's words, that shook Soviet society and left a long-standing impacts." Conquest's account of the events is that of "a war declared by an arrogant, revolutionary regime on the peasantry and on certain national communities within the country (mainly Ukrainians and Kazakhs), resulting in total victory for the central power at an exorbitant cost."<ref name="Kosiński 1987"/>{{rp|149}} |
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The same article reports opinions of expert Sovietologists rejecting "Conquest's hunt for a new holocaust". The famine was a terrible thing, they agree, but it decidedly was not genocide. They point out that the 1932-33 famine was hardly confined to the Ukraine, that it reached deep into the Black Earth region of central Russia. They note that Stalin had far less control over collectivization than is widely assumed, and that radical district leaders made their own rules as they went along.<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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Conquest's thesis that the famine constituted genocide and was deliberately inflicted is controversial<ref name="Sysyn 2015">{{cite journal|last=Sysyn|first=Frank|year=2015|url=https://holodomor.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Sysyn_Thirty_Years_of_Research_on_the_Holodomor_A_Balance_Sheet_anhl.pdf|title=Thirty Years of Research on the Holodomor: A Balance Sheet|journal=East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies|volume=II|issue=1|pages=4–16|doi=10.21226/T26P4M|issn=2292-7956|accessdate=30 November 2020|via=Holodomor Research and Education Consortium}}</ref>{{rp|at=p. 9|quote=A number of reviewers questioned whether the Famine had been intentional. Others believed that it could not be seen as directed against Ukraine and Ukrainians.}} and remains part of the ongoing debates on the [[Holodomor genocide question]],<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|507}} with Vladimir N. Brovkin describing it in a 1987 review for the ''[[Harvard Ukrainian Studies]]'' as a challenge to the "revisionist school" of historians<ref name=Brovkin>{{cite journal|last=Brovkin|first=Vladimir N.|year=1987|title=Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow: A Challenge to the Revisionists|journal=Harvard Ukrainian Studies|volume=11|issue=1/2|pages=234–245|jstor=41036245}}</ref>{{rp|234}} and [[Alexander Nove]] stating "the Ukrainian countryside suffered terribly. But Conquest seems prone to accept the Ukrainian nationalist myth."<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|507}} |
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<blockquote> |
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"There is no evidence it was intentionally directed against Ukrainians," said Alexander Dallin of Stanford, the father of modern Sovietology. "That would be totally out of keeping with what we know -- it makes no sense." |
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Largely accepting his thesis was Geoffrey A. Hosking,<ref name="Sysyn 2015"/>{{rp|7}} who wrote that "Conquest's research establishes beyond doubt, however, that the famine was deliberately inflicted there [in Ukraine] for ethnic reasons—it was done in order to undermine the Ukrainian nation." Peter Wiles of the [[London School of Economics]] stated that "Conquest had 'adopted the Ukraine exile view [on the origins of the famine of 1932–33], and he has persuaded this reviewer.'"<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|507}} |
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"This is crap, rubbish," said Moshe Lewin of the University of Pennsylvania, whose Russian Peasants and Soviet Power broke new ground in social history. "I am an anti-Stalinist, but I don't see how this [genocide] campaign adds to our knowledge. It's adding horrors, adding horrors, until it becomes a pathology." |
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Dissenting from his thesis was Craig Whitney, who stated in ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' that "[t]he eyewitness testimony may be reliable, but far more debatable is the thesis that the famine was specifically aimed as an instrument of genocide against the Ukraine. The clear implication of this book is that the author has taken the side of his Ukrainian sources on this issue, even though much of his evidence does not support it well."<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|508}} While generally praising the book, Nove wrote that "the majority of those who died in the famine were Ukrainian peasants is not in dispute. But did they die because they were peasants, or because they were Ukrainians? As Conquest himself points out, the largest number of victims proportionately were in fact Kazakhs, and no one has attributed this to Stalin's anti-Kazakh views."<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|508}} |
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"I absolutely reject it," said Lynne Viola of SUNY-Binghamton, the first US historian to examine Moscow's Central State Archive on collectivization. "Why in god's name would this paranoid government consciously produce a famine when they were terrified of war [with Germany]?" |
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Later scholarship has been divided on the question as well. Marples states: "Hiroaki Kuromiya notes that those who examine the famine from a general Soviet perspective downplay any specific Ukrainian factor, while specialists on Ukraine generally support the concept of a genocidal famine."<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|508}} Marples states that the most "notable work in the school of writing that maintains that the famine was not genocide" is by [[R. W. Davies]] and [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]].<ref name="Marples 2009"/>{{rp|508}} |
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"He's terrible at doing research," said veteran Sovietologist Roberta Manning of Boston College."He misuses sources, he twists everything."<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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</blockquote> |
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== Criticism == |
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Also Coplon put attention on the fact that: |
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In a 1988 article for ''[[The Village Voice]]''<ref name="Sysyn 2015"/> titled "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust", American investigative journalist Jeff Coplon accused Conquest of misusing the sources in his work ''The Harvest of Sorrow'' in which Conquest posits that the famine was [[genocide]]. Coplon writes that Conquest "weaves his terror-famine from unverifiable (and notoriously biased) émigré accounts. ... ''Black Deeds of the Kremlin'', a period piece published by Ukrainian émigrés in 1953, is footnoted no less than 145 times. Conquest can be deftly selective when it suits his purpose. He borrows heavily from [[Lev Kopelev]]'s ''The Education of a True Believer'', but ignores Kopelev when the latter recalls Ukrainian villages that were relatively untouched by famine, or relief efforts by a Communist village council." Coplon argues that Conquest fixes on seven million famine deaths, including six million Ukrainians, with no appendix to show how his numbers are derived. Sergei Maksudov, a Soviet ''[[émigré]]'' scholar much cited by Conquest, concluded that the famine caused 3.5 million premature deaths in the Ukraine—700,000 from starvation and the rest from diseases due to malnutrition.<ref name="The Village Voice"/> In a letter to the editors, Conquest dismissed the article as "error and absurdity."<ref>{{cite news|last=Conquest|first=Robert|date=21 February 1988|url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/16317836/The-Ukrainian-Weekly-198808|title=Letter to the Editors|newspaper=The Ukrainian Weekly|accessdate=20 December 2020}}</ref> |
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Coplon reported opinions of expert [[Sovietologists]] rejecting "Conquest's hunt for a new holocaust." While these Sovietologist agree the famine was a terrible thing, they argue that it was not genocide and point out that the [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]] was hardly confined to the Ukraine, that it reached deep into the [[Central Black Earth Region]], that [[Joseph Stalin]] had far less control over [[collectivization]] than is widely assumed, and that radical district leaders made their own rules as they went along. According to [[Alexander Dallin]] of [[Stanford University]], the father of modern Sovietology, "[t]here is no evidence it was intentionally directed against Ukrainians. That would be totally out of keeping with what we know – it makes no sense." According to [[Moshe Lewin]] of the [[University of Pennsylvania]], whose ''Russian Peasants and the Soviet Power'' was groundbreaking in social history, was quoted as saying: "This is crap, rubbish. I am an anti-Stalinist, but I don't see how this [genocide] campaign adds to our knowledge. It's adding horrors, adding horrors, until it becomes a pathology." [[Lynne Viola]] of [[SUNY-Binghamton]], the first historian from the United States to examine Moscow's Central State Archive on [[Soviet collectivization]], stated to "absolutely reject it. Why in God's name would this paranoid government consciously produce a famine when they were terrified of war [with Germany]?" Roberta T. Manning of [[Boston College]], a veteran Sovietologist, argued that Conquest is "terrible at doing research. He misuses sources, he twists everything."<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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"In the latest [1988] catalogue for the [[Noontide Press]], a Liberty Lobby affiliate run by flamboyant fascist [[Willis Carto]], ''The Harvest of Sorrow'' is listed cheek-by-jowl with such revisionist tomes as ''The Auschwitz Myth'' and ''Hitler At My Side''. To hype the Conquest book and its terror-famine, the catalogue notes: "The act of genocide against the Ukrainian people has been suppressed [sic] until recently, perhaps because a real '[[Holocaust]]' might compete with a [[Holohoax]]." With the term "Holohoax" referring to the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. |
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As observed by [[Eli Rosenbaum]], who was general counsel for the [[World Jewish Congress]]: "they're always looking to come up with a number bigger than six million. It makes the reader think: `My god it's worse than the Holocaust.'" |
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<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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== Partial disavowal of terror-famine hypothesis== |
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Coplon argues that Conquest fixes on seven million famine deaths, including six million Ukrainians, with no appendix to show how his numbers are derived. |
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Sergei Maksudov, a Soviet èmigrè scholar much cited by Conquest, concluded that the famine caused 3.5 million premature deaths in the Ukraine -- 700,000 from starvation, and the rest from diseases "stimulated" by malnutrition.<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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In response to criticism from [[R. W. Davies]] and [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]] following the opening of Soviet archives Conquest responded in a 2003 letter that he did not believe "Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine. No. What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put “Soviet interest” other than feeding the starving first – thus consciously abetting it."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=R. W. |last2=Wheatcroft |first2=Stephen G. |title=The years of hunger : Soviet agriculture, 1931-1933 |date=2004 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=978-0333311073 |pages=441}}</ref> |
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Writing in [[Slavic Review]], demographers Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver maintained that limited census data make a precise famine death count impossible. Instead, they offer a probable range of 3.2 to 5.5 million "excess deaths" for the entire Soviet Union from 1926 to 1939 -- a period that covers collectivization, the civil war in the countryside, the purges of the late `30s, and major epidemics of typhus and malaria. According to these experts, and Maksudov as well, Conquest made the most primitive of errors: He overestimated fertility rates and underrated the impact of assimilation, through which many Ukrainians were "redesignated" as Russians in the 1939 census. As a result, the cold warriors confuse population deficits (which included unborn children) with excess deaths.<ref name="The Village Voice"/> |
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== |
== See also == |
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* [[Kazakh famine of 1931–1933]] |
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<references /> |
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* ''[[Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine]]'' |
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* ''[[Stalin: Breaker of Nations]]'' |
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* ''[[Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928]]'' |
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* ''[[Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941]]'' |
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== References == |
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{{reflist}} |
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== Bibliography == |
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* {{cite book|last=Conquest|first=Robert|year=1987|title=The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine|edition=reprint, paperback|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195051803}} |
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== Further reading == |
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* {{cite journal|last=Moore|first=Rebekah|date=September 2012|title='A Crime Against Humanity Arguably Without Parallel in European History': Genocide and the 'Politics' of Victimhood in Western Narratives of the Ukrainian Holodomor|journal=Australian Journal of Politics & History|volume=58|issue=3|pages=367–379|doi=10.1111/j.1467-8497.2012.01641.x|issn=1467-8497}} |
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== External links == |
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* {{cite web|url=https://www.rferl.org/a/RFERL_Interview_Robert_Conquest_Genocide_Famine/1357449.html|title=RFE/RL Interview: Robert Conquest On 'Genocide' And Famine|publisher=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty|website=RFERL|date=8 December 2008|accessdate=3 August 2021|quote=But in my book on the famine, 'The Harvest of Sorrow,' I go into the question of genocide and note that by the definition of genocide at the time it was put to the United Nations, it covered a much broader field than the Jewish one.}} |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Harvest of Sorrow}} |
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harvest of Sorrow}} |
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[[Category:1986 books]] |
[[Category:1986 non-fiction books]] |
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[[Category:Books about Joseph Stalin]] |
[[Category:Books about Joseph Stalin]] |
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[[Category:Books about Soviet repression]] |
[[Category:Books about Soviet repression]] |
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[[Category:Non-fiction books about the Holodomor]] |
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[[Category:Books critical of communism]] |
Latest revision as of 07:00, 18 May 2024
![]() Cover of the first edition | |
Authors | Robert Conquest |
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Original title | The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine |
Language | English |
Subjects | Holodomor Soviet famine of 1932–1933 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 9 October 1986 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | |
Pages | 412 |
ISBN | 9780195051803 |
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a 1986 book by British historian Robert Conquest published by the Oxford University Press. It was written with the assistance of historian James Mace, a junior fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, who started doing research for the book following the advice of the director of the institute.[1] Conquest wrote the book in order "to register in the public consciousness of the West a knowledge of and feeling for major events, involving millions of people and millions of deaths, which took place within living memory."[2]: 149
The book deals with the collectivization of agriculture in 1929–1931 in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin's direction, and the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and Holodomor which resulted. Millions of peasants died due to starvation, deportation to labor camps and execution. Conquest's thesis was characterized as "the famine was deliberately inflicted for ethnic reasons—it was done in order to undermine the Ukrainian nation", or that it constituted genocide.[3]: 70 [4]: 507
The Harvest of Sorrow won Conquest the Antonovych prize in 1987[5] and the Shevchenko National Prize in 1994.[6]
Background
In 1981, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute approached Conquest with the project of a book on the 1932–1933 famine.[7] The Ukrainian National Association, a New Jersey-based ethnic fraternal group with a hard-right tradition (its newspaper Svoboda was banned by Canada during World War II for its pro-German sympathies), sponsored the work with a $80,000 subsidy.[8] The grant was earmarked for Conquest's research expenses, including the assistance of historian James Mace, a junior fellow at the institute and Conquest protégé.[1][8] In accepting the sponsorship, Conquest was perceived as being in the pocket of the Ukrainians.[9] In response to those claims, Conquest stated: "I did not do the book specifically on the Ukraine. About half the book is on the non-Ukrainian side, the rest of the Soviet peasantry—there is a whole chapter on the Kazakhs, for example. The sponsors made no attempt whatever to suggest what I should write. In fact, I'm in trouble with some of them for refusing to drop the 'the' from 'the Ukraine.'"[9]
The United States Congress promoted awareness of the Holodomor and set U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, which was authorized in 1985 and headed by James Mace.[10] The commission conducted archival and oral history research under a $382,000 congressional appropriation,[8] leading to a final report conclusion in 1988 that "Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933." Mace's research formed the basis for Conquest's book.[8][10] For Mace's wife Nataliya Dzyubenko-Mace, the commission was instrumental in alerting the U.S. public and politicians to these horrific crimes, helping rouse U.S.society from political lethargy.[1]
The Harvest of Sorrow had a clear moral intent, namely that if the older Soviet leaders were direct accomplices in an artificially contrived famine and the younger leaders today still justify such procedure, then it followed that they might be willing to kill tens of millions of foreigners or suffer a loss of millions of their own subjects in a war.[9] Conquest stated: "I don't think they want to blow Western populations to pieces. But if they came to America and imposed the collective farm system, then they might well organize a famine."[9]
Reception
According to David R. Marples, the book served as an indicator of divisions in Western scholarship on the subject. Marples writes that Conquest's book was "generally well received though Conquest admitted subsequently that he had lacked sources to confirm his estimates of death tolls."[4]: 507 Historian Ronald Grigor Suny commented that Conquest's estimation for famine deaths was almost quadruple that of many fellow Soviet specialists.[11]
In a 1987 review for the Population and Development Review, L. A. Kosiński describes it as a "carefully researched book based on a variety of sources—including eyewitness accounts, letters, official Soviet documents and press releases, reports and analyses of both Soviet and feorign scholars, and Soviet fiction ... ." According to Kosiński, Conquest "presents the shocking story of a 'revolution from above,' to use Stalin's words, that shook Soviet society and left a long-standing impacts." Conquest's account of the events is that of "a war declared by an arrogant, revolutionary regime on the peasantry and on certain national communities within the country (mainly Ukrainians and Kazakhs), resulting in total victory for the central power at an exorbitant cost."[2]: 149
Conquest's thesis that the famine constituted genocide and was deliberately inflicted is controversial[7]: p. 9 and remains part of the ongoing debates on the Holodomor genocide question,[4]: 507 with Vladimir N. Brovkin describing it in a 1987 review for the Harvard Ukrainian Studies as a challenge to the "revisionist school" of historians[12]: 234 and Alexander Nove stating "the Ukrainian countryside suffered terribly. But Conquest seems prone to accept the Ukrainian nationalist myth."[4]: 507
Largely accepting his thesis was Geoffrey A. Hosking,[7]: 7 who wrote that "Conquest's research establishes beyond doubt, however, that the famine was deliberately inflicted there [in Ukraine] for ethnic reasons—it was done in order to undermine the Ukrainian nation." Peter Wiles of the London School of Economics stated that "Conquest had 'adopted the Ukraine exile view [on the origins of the famine of 1932–33], and he has persuaded this reviewer.'"[4]: 507
Dissenting from his thesis was Craig Whitney, who stated in The New York Times Book Review that "[t]he eyewitness testimony may be reliable, but far more debatable is the thesis that the famine was specifically aimed as an instrument of genocide against the Ukraine. The clear implication of this book is that the author has taken the side of his Ukrainian sources on this issue, even though much of his evidence does not support it well."[4]: 508 While generally praising the book, Nove wrote that "the majority of those who died in the famine were Ukrainian peasants is not in dispute. But did they die because they were peasants, or because they were Ukrainians? As Conquest himself points out, the largest number of victims proportionately were in fact Kazakhs, and no one has attributed this to Stalin's anti-Kazakh views."[4]: 508
Later scholarship has been divided on the question as well. Marples states: "Hiroaki Kuromiya notes that those who examine the famine from a general Soviet perspective downplay any specific Ukrainian factor, while specialists on Ukraine generally support the concept of a genocidal famine."[4]: 508 Marples states that the most "notable work in the school of writing that maintains that the famine was not genocide" is by R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft.[4]: 508
Criticism
In a 1988 article for The Village Voice[7] titled "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust", American investigative journalist Jeff Coplon accused Conquest of misusing the sources in his work The Harvest of Sorrow in which Conquest posits that the famine was genocide. Coplon writes that Conquest "weaves his terror-famine from unverifiable (and notoriously biased) émigré accounts. ... Black Deeds of the Kremlin, a period piece published by Ukrainian émigrés in 1953, is footnoted no less than 145 times. Conquest can be deftly selective when it suits his purpose. He borrows heavily from Lev Kopelev's The Education of a True Believer, but ignores Kopelev when the latter recalls Ukrainian villages that were relatively untouched by famine, or relief efforts by a Communist village council." Coplon argues that Conquest fixes on seven million famine deaths, including six million Ukrainians, with no appendix to show how his numbers are derived. Sergei Maksudov, a Soviet émigré scholar much cited by Conquest, concluded that the famine caused 3.5 million premature deaths in the Ukraine—700,000 from starvation and the rest from diseases due to malnutrition.[8] In a letter to the editors, Conquest dismissed the article as "error and absurdity."[13]
Coplon reported opinions of expert Sovietologists rejecting "Conquest's hunt for a new holocaust." While these Sovietologist agree the famine was a terrible thing, they argue that it was not genocide and point out that the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 was hardly confined to the Ukraine, that it reached deep into the Central Black Earth Region, that Joseph Stalin had far less control over collectivization than is widely assumed, and that radical district leaders made their own rules as they went along. According to Alexander Dallin of Stanford University, the father of modern Sovietology, "[t]here is no evidence it was intentionally directed against Ukrainians. That would be totally out of keeping with what we know – it makes no sense." According to Moshe Lewin of the University of Pennsylvania, whose Russian Peasants and the Soviet Power was groundbreaking in social history, was quoted as saying: "This is crap, rubbish. I am an anti-Stalinist, but I don't see how this [genocide] campaign adds to our knowledge. It's adding horrors, adding horrors, until it becomes a pathology." Lynne Viola of SUNY-Binghamton, the first historian from the United States to examine Moscow's Central State Archive on Soviet collectivization, stated to "absolutely reject it. Why in God's name would this paranoid government consciously produce a famine when they were terrified of war [with Germany]?" Roberta T. Manning of Boston College, a veteran Sovietologist, argued that Conquest is "terrible at doing research. He misuses sources, he twists everything."[8]
Partial disavowal of terror-famine hypothesis
In response to criticism from R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft following the opening of Soviet archives Conquest responded in a 2003 letter that he did not believe "Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine. No. What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put “Soviet interest” other than feeding the starving first – thus consciously abetting it."[14]
See also
- Kazakh famine of 1931–1933
- Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
- Stalin: Breaker of Nations
- Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
- Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941
References
- ^ a b c Vlad, Mariya (May 2004). "James Mace, a Native American with Ukrainian blood". Welcome to Ukraine. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
- ^ a b Kosiński, L. A. (1987). "Reviewed Work: The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine by Robert Conquest". Population and Development Review. 13 (1): 149–153. doi:10.2307/1972127. JSTOR 1972127.
- ^ Tauger, Mark (1991). "The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933" (PDF). Slavic Review. 50 (1): 70–89. doi:10.2307/2500600. JSTOR 2500600. S2CID 163767073. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 January 2017.
4. For examples of the genocide thesis, see Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, 323–330 ... .
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Marples, David R. (May 2009). "Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine". Europe-Asia Studies. 61 (3): 505–518. doi:10.1080/09668130902753325. JSTOR 27752256. S2CID 67783643.
- ^ Nynka, Andrew (23 July 2021). "Svoboda awarded 2020 Antonovych prize". Ukrainian Weekly. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
- ^ "Shevchenko National Prize Winners". Good Reads. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
- ^ a b c d Sysyn, Frank (2015). "Thirty Years of Research on the Holodomor: A Balance Sheet" (PDF). East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. II (1): 4–16. doi:10.21226/T26P4M. ISSN 2292-7956. Retrieved 30 November 2020 – via Holodomor Research and Education Consortium.
- ^ a b c d e f Coplon, Jeff (12 January 1988). "In Search of a Soviet Holocaust". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved 30 November 2020 – via Montclair State University.
- ^ a b c d Hillier, Bevis (19 November 1986). "'Harvest' of Soviet Terrorism Reaped by Historian Conquest". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 26 Apr 2023. Retrieved 14 Sep 2023.
- ^ a b U.S. Embassy Ukraine Kyiv (30 November 2006). "The Holodomor and the Politics of Remembrance: The Legacy of Stalin's 1932–33 Famine" (Document). U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine.
- ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (2017). Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians and the Russian Revolution. London: Verso Books. p. 95. ISBN 9781784785673.
- ^ Brovkin, Vladimir N. (1987). "Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow: A Challenge to the Revisionists". Harvard Ukrainian Studies. 11 (1/2): 234–245. JSTOR 41036245.
- ^ Conquest, Robert (21 February 1988). "Letter to the Editors". The Ukrainian Weekly. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
- ^ Davies, R. W.; Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2004). The years of hunger : Soviet agriculture, 1931-1933. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 441. ISBN 978-0333311073.
Bibliography
- Conquest, Robert (1987). The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (reprint, paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195051803.
Further reading
- Moore, Rebekah (September 2012). "'A Crime Against Humanity Arguably Without Parallel in European History': Genocide and the 'Politics' of Victimhood in Western Narratives of the Ukrainian Holodomor". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 58 (3): 367–379. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.2012.01641.x. ISSN 1467-8497.
External links
- "RFE/RL Interview: Robert Conquest On 'Genocide' And Famine". RFERL. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 8 December 2008. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
But in my book on the famine, 'The Harvest of Sorrow,' I go into the question of genocide and note that by the definition of genocide at the time it was put to the United Nations, it covered a much broader field than the Jewish one.