The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine

Conquest details this horror, chapter and verse, of Stalin's collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine. He shows the Communist ideal for what it is, a fraud, and this is why we don't see this event chronicled on a weekly basis. We have too many people in the media in America who are seemingly ignorant, or who wish to turn their heads to the truth, of what actually happened. We still have the "Walter Duranty types" among us who would seek to distribute misinformation to the public in order to keep the collectivist ideal alive. It makes you wonder what it takes for people to get the message?

This book points out how Duranty was given a Pulitzer Prize for his misreporting from the Soviet Union, in the early 30's, that the famine and genocide in the Ukraine were virtually non-existent. That this cur and toady of Stalin, for 14 years the voice to America from Moscow, has not had his Pulitzer prize retroactively recalled tells you something about those who award the Pulitzer prize. This prize is clearly a very bad and a very sick joke.

If the Irish think their potato famine was a tragedy, which it certainly was, and they thump their chest at the English, which they certainly do, what do they have to say about the Bolshevik's slaughter of the Kulak's? One would think that all people of all nations would band together to denounce such inhumane treatment of mankind by a concentrated number of ideological zealots as described in this book.

This is a very sad story that is very trying to read. It's like reading Valladares' book "Against All Hope" which is about Cuba under Castro. A more comprehensive book would be "The Black Book of Communism" which also includes information about this Soviet caused famine in the Ukraine. It also includes the plight of people, in all of the other countries that are or have been under the yoke of Communist dictators. Their methods of societal control are identical to those chronicled in this book; the mind reels at the numbers of the dead, ...7 million... 11 million... 14 million? It's just too much to believe. This holocaust should never be forgotten. It should be taught as a required course for college graduation. Why isn't it?


The Horror and Futility of It All   November 11, 2001
doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania)
45 out of 49 found this review helpful

In another tremendous masterpiece of Soviet history, Robert Conquest covers Stalin's manmade famines in this book. Here Conquest provides devastating evidence of the complete insanity and megalomania of communism, especially the Stalinist variety. Regardless of your political leanings, this book proves without a doubt what a cruel, deadly, and completely impossible system communism really is. Stalin and his yes-men decided to embark on an insane crash agricultural collectivization program in the 1920's and 30's, hoping to replace the "backwards" system of humble peasants on their own plots (which had been successful for millennia), with a glorious system of industrialized megafarms that would supply the state directly. The first problem was that the state usually required deliveries so impossibly high that the farmers/peasants had nothing left for themselves. This caused a complete breakdown in the agricultural economy (no incentives to produce), plus a famine in which 14 million people died.

When the system failed, Stalin and his henchmen became obsessed with finding the "enemy" who was holding everything back. The enemy became the mostly fictitious group of people called "kulaks," theoretically prosperous peasants who were holding back the masses and the glorious Soviet future. Since these people mostly didn't exist, the regime had to invent them. Therefore any peasant who had one more cow, one more acre, and was slightly less emaciated than everyone else was branded as a kulak and eliminated. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were condemned for life in this insanity. Conquest provides plenty of evidence that the Soviet agricultural program could have been slightly more successful if they weren't busy killing and deporting such huge numbers of potential farmers, and if they had gotten over their irrational search for "enemies" and faced facts instead.

Of special interest in this book is Conquest's side trip to Kazakhstan, where the Soviets attempted the same program, making nomadic peoples settle down and raise crops that couldn't possibly survive in the area. This led to a famine that killed one million people. This was an accident, but Stalin learned that famine could be used as a weapon. The book then focuses on the Ukraine, which was full of pesky nationalists who didn't want to be a part of the USSR. First, the regime decided for themselves that the "masses" in the Ukraine hated their own language, culture, and institutions (how could anyone possibly believe this?), and that the masses were being held from glory by a few backwards enemies who wanted to remain Ukrainian. Apparently the "true" workers of the Ukraine would want to be Russianized; so the Soviets executed, deported, or starved as "class enemies" every person who disagreed (that is, almost everybody). The resulting cultural chaos and failed agricultural system resulted in one of the greatest death tolls in history, taken out deliberately on the people of the Ukraine.

This book is slightly weaker than Conquest's all time classic "The Great Terror," especially in the tendency toward statistical overload. He also assumes that you have read his other works, and keep many things under-explained in this book. Most of the officials and politicians in the book are only identified by their last names and have little or no introductions, plus Conquest assumes that you would know the meanings of esoteric terms like "Borotbist" or "Petliuraist." This can make the book difficult for the layman.


History writing at its very best   October 17, 1999
Andreas Muenchow (andreas@ahab.rutgers.edu) (New Brunswick, New Jersey)
39 out of 45 found this review helpful

I did not believe Eastern European friends and dissidents who told me 20 years ago about the mass murder by starvation, deportation, and shooting of the Ukrainian peasantry in the 1930ies. This thoroughly researched and exceptionally well written book removes all doubts. The book exposes both the extensive scale of the genocide (many million dead) and western complacency. It surprises that this major event in European affairs is largely absent from past and present western consciousness.

This book is hard to put down as it combines excellent writing with a gripping if true and gruesome story. Conquest gives the men, women, and children that vanished a loud and clear voice without loosing sight of the larger political context. He demonstrates the deadly consequences of individual actions and individual inactions that killed the farmers of the Ukrainian "bread basket." The story has a chilling echo in more recent events in Rwanda, Kosovo, China, and North-Korea.


A must read for students of the SU- but be wary   July 20, 2002
Virgil (Chapel Hill, NC)
31 out of 55 found this review helpful

To those who follow the field, all historians agree that the Ukrainian famine of the early '30s was responsible for a great tragedy. But, there has always been a question about the numbers involved. Before the fall of the Soviet Union information was scarce and limited to secondhand accounts and what the Soviets would allow to be released. Harvest of Sorrow is based on this type of documentation.

Unfortunately there are many with a political motivation or whose understanding of history is limited to what they purchase in bookstores who tend to believe that any criticism of Conquest is "revisionism" of some sort. Absolutely false. (As an aside, my own background is US military. During the late 80's and early 90's I focused on the Warsaw Pact. I also speak Russian, work in a field that deals with the former Soviet Union and have visited there several times.)

Historians of the left AND the right have criticised the numbers in Harvest of Sorrow NOT because of ideological reasons but because the numbers don't add up with the data. Even conservative historians (Figes) have recently held that the numbers in Harvest are greatly exaggerated. Generally the old numbers agreed upon ranged from 3 to 13 million (interestingly anti-Stalinist marxist historians insist millions died).

Recent research since 1990 when archives of the Soviet government was opened shows the numbers to have probably been around 1 million, or several million less than Harvest of Sorrow contends. The archives consist of census data, requistions for supplies, personel, arrests, etc, etc.

That and the amount of intentional planning involved is what criticisms from historians to this book consist of, NOT whether the Soviets committed atrocities or used the famine for their ends. Increasingly the archival data shows that it was incompetance and the organizational stupidity of the party that aggravated the famine rather than any centrally directed program from Stalin.

Conquest uses second and third hand personal accounts to arrive at numbers (At the time that is all that was there to work with). The data now shows that he has made serious errors.

Unfortunately many don't seem to understand this and any criticism or comments against this work are deemed as "left wing" or communist. Most of this comes from those with only a passing interest in objective history.

By all means read Harvest of Sorrow. There is much to commend it in terms of the stories of survivors. But be wary of the numbers and of the scholarship. Many with some sort of axe to grind and a less-than-stellar knowledge of history will always think those who don't agree are revisionists or marxists.

I am neither a revisionist or marxist but I do think that the job of historians is to get to the truth.


Disturbing   October 26, 1999
Stephen Wotton (London United Kingdom)
29 out of 34 found this review helpful

Robert Conquest at his best, chronicling a deeply harrowing tragedy. What I find most disturbing about the Terror-Famine is that the gruesome details are still relatively unknown. There are literally only a hand-full of books on the subject, notably Moshe Lewin, Miron Dolot, and Conquest himself. Compare this to the copious writings on the Two Wars and the Holocaust. I Stongly recommend this book, and Conquest's other masterpiece 'The Great Terror', as not only superbly researched history but also a warning against the dangerous fallacy of the Utopian State.