1921年Povolzhye难民吃人(16图)
Povolzhye Famine
前苏联Povolzhye大饥荒(1921年)
不欢迎一些人抱着猎奇的心理看这个帖子。---mtjs
What are people's understanding of the Russian famine of 1921? Specifically, what is the historical evidence for its causes.The millions of deaths from the famine is often added the list of 'communist caused deaths,' along with assassinations and gulag related deaths, by American historians and anti-communists to 'demonstrate' the crimes and inefficiency of 'communism'. However, I am skeptical to believe the the cause was mainly gross mismanagement or agricultural production.
What does the historical record reveal? Briefly the 1921 famine was the result of the continued collapse of of the Russian economy (a process that had reached alarming proportions as early as 1917) coupled with the effects of civil war and, yes, natural drought
The Civil War (and German occupation) had been particularly harsh in the grain producing regions where Bolshevik influence was weakest. This would have repercussions in the urban centres as well but for now its safe to note that much of the bitterest fighting took place in peasant dominated 'producer regions'. This in turn generated immense internal migration, prevented the establishment of stable state bodies, and facilitated the spread of disease (the epidemics that killed millions are rarely remembered) and brigandage. As if this was not bad enough, heavy frost and drought (which always affects peasant societies terribly) in 1921 produced a poor harvest. The result was a catastrophic famine
The wars wiped out the stores and the ardent sun made fields dry. First, people sold what they could sell but very soon even the supplies ware run out of products and didn’t want to take things for food. So, people started to eat cats, dogs, rats, birds, grass and finally, human beings. The cases involving cannibalism usually were not measured as a real crime, and were considered to be just a survival thing. Anyway, those people were sent to prisons, were cannibalism was a common practice as well.
Samara region, 13 April, 1922
“… in the larder we found two pieces, in the stove there was one piece of boiled human flesh, and in the inner porch there was a pot with jellied minced flesh of the same kind, and near the porch we found a lot of bones. When we asked the woman where she had taken the flesh from, she confessed that back in February her 8-year-old son Nikita died and then her 15-year-old daughter Anna and she took his copse and cut it into pieces, and as they were starving they ate it together. When there was nothing else left, she decided to kill the daughter for meat and did it in the early April. While the girl was sleeping, she slaughtered her and cut the corpse into pieces, and started to cook it. She gave the jellied flesh and liver to her neighbors Aculina and Evdokia, saying that it was horse meat. The human flesh, Anna’s thighs and feet are taken to the police as evidence, the boiled meat and bones and the jellied meat have been consigned to the earth…”
We don’t know what exactly happened to that woman who ate her kids. Most probably, she went to Gulag or somewhere like that, and maybe was eaten by her fellows as well. To remain above suspicion people preferred killing strangers or eat those who were already dead. Psychiatrists stated that those people were mentally sound and just had been driven to the most abysmal depths of hunger.
Cemeteries also had to be protected from those who wanted to take and cook the deceased. Students were ready to sell livers and lungs from the university dissection rooms, and in prisons people could have their dead cellmates cooked in the prison kitchen for dinner.
Since food was a rear thing to find, meat sales stopped as most probably meat pies and canned stewed meat would be made of human flesh and most of citizens could become cannibals unwillingly.
Only in a year and a half people of the region could enjoy bread and soup, though, there were not many of those who managed to survive and see food again.