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.

The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human and social tragedies of our century.

As Robert Conquest shows in heart-rending detail, Stalin's plan to collectivize Soviet agriculture amounted to an unparalleled assault on the Soviet peasantry and Unkrainian nation, resulting in a death toll higher than that suffered in World War I by all the belligerent nations combined. Millions of men, women, and children died in Arctic exile, while millions more perished in the terror-famine of 1932-33. Then it was all over, the survivors had been forced into the new collective farms and were at last, with the products of their labors, under strict party and state control. In the Ukraine all centers of independent national feeling had been crushed.

Conquest meticulously reconstructs the background of the tragic events: the lives and aspirations of the peasants, the Ukrainian national struggle, the motives and methods of the Communist leadership. He carefully details the fate of villages and individuals and seeks a true accounting of the death toll, suppressed in official Societ statistics but deducible from other sources. He describes the desperate condition of children who were left homeless and recounts the various cruelties and agonies of the man-made famine. He also shows how the West was, to a large degree, deceived about what was happening.

Like The Great Terror, Conquest's classic account of the Soviet mass purges of the late 1930s, The Harvest of Sorrow is a powerful and moving story that is also a work of authoritative scholarship.

About the Author:

Robert Conquest is a Senior Research Fellow and Scholar-Curator of the East European Collection at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, University. He has authored numerous books on Soviet studies and foreign policy.

The acclaimed author of The Great Terror ducments a human tragedy of epic proportions

·A long-neglected chapter in the history of the twentieth century

·A heart-rending chronicle of the fate of villages and individuals under Stalin's collectivization program

·Seeks a true account of the death toll and shows how the West was deceived

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. The first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century, The Harvest of Sorrow examines the atrocities inflicted on the Russian peasantry by the Soviet Communist Party between 1929 and 1933. Robert Conquest specifically focuses on dekulakization, collectivization, and the imposition of a "terror-famine" between 1932 and 1933 on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas. More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book--an estimated 14.5 million--than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I. Conquest's ambitious and clearly written book presents 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 Chronicles the events of 1929 to 1933 in the Ukraine when Stalin's Soviet Communist Party killed or deported millions of peasants; abolished privately held land and forced the remaining peasantry into "collective" farms; and inflicted impossible grain quotas on the peasants that resulted in mass starvation At the beginning of 1927, the Soviet peasant, whether Russian, Ukrainian, or of other nationality, had good reason to look forward to a tolerable future.