52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 47
Prompt – Poor Man
My maternal great grandfather's mother
is Elisabeth Barbara Doering. Her birth as stated above was in 1840. However I do not know when she died. In Mary McLaughlin's oral
history she wrote to her nephew, John Krikau; “ Your great
grandmother lived to be 81 and died of starvation due to the Russian
Revolution.” That would make her death about 1921. I kept
thinking how someone could get so poor that their last meal,
according to Mary, was a rat and die of starvation!!!
I began to ponder what the "Russian
Revolution" had to do with my two times great grandmother's death of
starvation. In reflection I realized that I knew very little of the
history of Russia after 1911 which was the time my great grandparents immigrated to
Canada. Well I knew bits and pieces such as the slaying of the Tsar
and his family.
I began to read. The more I read, the
more horrified I was and the more I needed to read. Why did I not
know about The Great Famine in Russia 1921 -1922? Russia had at least 3 major famines in
the 20th century. This is not to be confused with The Third Great Famine of 1932 and 1933.
According to The Holodomor Research and
Educational Consortium;
"The term Holodomor
(death by hunger, in Ukrainian) refers to the starvation of millions
of Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of Soviet policies. The
Holodomor can be seen as the culmination of an assault by the
Communist Party and Soviet state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who
resisted Soviet policies. This assault occurred in the context of a
campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals,
writers, artists, religious leaders, and political cadres, who were
seen as a threat to Soviet ideological and state-building
aspirations."
The 4th Saturday in November is recognized as a commemoration day of remembrance.
I want to explore the second famine also known as Povolzhye famine that started in the spring
of 1921 and through to the end of 1922. The area most heavily
affected was the Volga Region where the Germans including my ancestors had lived for over a
100 years at the invitation of Catherine the Great. This region was
the “bread basket” of Russia. The mortality of this famine
ranges from 1 1/2 to 10 million people. The number most often quoted
is 5 million. How can that many people die living in the most
fertile and productive land in Russia?
WWI was devastating to the
agriculture of the region. At it's most basic, their was a severe
lack of farm implements. The implements were no longer imported to
them due to the trade barriers between Russia and Europe and the
world. The farm animals were taken for the war effort and to feed
the military and therefore had no horses and oxen to sow or harvest. The Russian's vast lands needed many military to
defend it and thus needed food to sustain their might.
Similarly, the Revolution
of land tenure was in part responsible for the decreased output of
their crops. They took the land away from those wealthy landowners
and gave to the peasants who had little or no experience in farming.
The 1917 Revolution brought instability to their money causing it to
disable any trade within the country.
Finally the “new government” put into affect
the “requisitions and food taxes,” All food produced in excess
of the absolute minimum requirement of the peasant was considered
property of the state and thus confiscated for the army and the
industrial workers of the bigger cities. Thus the incentive to grow more than needed was
squashed.
Post WWI and The Revolution, foreign
aid was offered but Vladimir Lenin refused help stating that this was
interference in their internal affairs. Also Lenin felt that outside
help was just a way to put spies in Russia. The growing famine
convinced him to put in place a New Economic Policy on March 15, 1921
which finally allowed outside aid in the form of food, people to administer and oversee the distribution of it, and financial aid.
On top of all of this, there was a severe drought in 1921. The
resultant failing crops could not produce enough grain to feed the
peasants let alone have seed left over to use the next spring. Further, the amount of arable land in 1920 to plant crops had dropped
by 43 % of it's pre-war crop size of 1913.
WWI, Revolution, Civil Wars within
Russia left its infrastructure crippled. Bridges were demolished and
the rail system was in ruins.
Senior Reporter, Jack Phillips for The
Epoch Times wrote about this famine in February of 2017 – the 100th
anniversary of the start of the Russian Revolution. It reads in
part as follows:
"The famine was so bad that peasants
were driven to practice the unthinkable: cannibalism.
The Red
Cross quoted a 1921 Soviet police report as saying, “Right now
[the peasants] are digging up bodies in order to eat them.”
At least 5 million people died during
the Povolzhye famine, which was triggered by policies initiated by
Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin, who had been in charge of the Soviet
Union since 1917. At the time, he instructed guards to take food from
the poor. His Bolsheviks believed peasants were trying to undermine
the war effort by taking their food away from the army.
Norwegian diplomat Fridtjof Nansen called on the League of Nations
for financial support, and during a meeting on Oct. 6, 1921, there
was a hesitation to act. Nansen then traveled to the
famine-ravaged Volga region to get an idea of what was happening
on the ground. Upon his return, he stated that '19 million people
were condemned to die.'He backed his words up with photographs, showing the devastation, according to the Red Cross."
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| Dead Bodies Carried By Carts in Samara |
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| Nansen's Photo Taken October, 1921 Shows Starving Children in Samara Camp |
I left out the most shocking, horrifying and gruesome of his photographs that he took of a Russian couple selling human body parts (their own family) on the Black Market for food!
I now understand and know how my two times great grandmother and 5 million others died of starvation in Russia because of The Russian Revolution.
Wendy
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