Kazakhstan Sets Up Commission to Study 1916-1918 and 1921-1922 Famines

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 16 – In recent years, Kazakhs have devoted increasing attention to Stalin’s terror famine in the late 1920s and early 1930s that led to massive deaths and the destruction of much of the nomadic nature of Kazakh society. Now, that country has set up a commission to consider the impact of two earlier Soviet-era famines.

            The commission is to address three issues: the number of dead in 1916-1918 and 1921-1922, the number of emigres and in-migrants in both periods, and the role of the Kazakh intelligentsia, both pro- and anti-Soviet in countering these plagues (caa-network.org/archives/22477/golod-i-dzhuty-v-kazahskih-stepyah-v-nachale-hh-veka).

            One of the experts involved in this effort is Kazakh historian Svetlana Smagulova who has just released a book on the famines of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Kazakhstan. Using archival materials, she says they happened about every 12 years over this period and were the result of both changes in the weather and incompetent state policies.

            “The 1916-1918 famine in essence destroyed the Turkestan region both socially and economically,” she says. It arose largely because of the decision of the tsar in June 1916 to mobilize Kazakhs to serve in rear units of the Russian army. That disordered the economy so much that people began to starve.

            The Provisional Government compounded all this by confiscating what food there was for redistribution not among the Kazakhs but in Russian regions to the north. More than a million Kazakhs died, possibly as many as two, Smagulova says. And the losses were greatest among the young.

            Both the Soviet authorities and Kazakh nationalists struggled more effectively against the famine, often working together on this when they could agree on nothing else. But the most fundamental assistance came from foreign relief groups like the American Relief Administration whose role in Kazakhstan has remained underrated, the historian continues.

            The possibilities for studying the two earlier famines are much greater than investigating the 1931-1933 one because they were treated far more extensively in the periodical press of the Kazakh lands. And it is important to do so, Smagulova suggests, to trace the real costs of these famines on Kazakh society.

            Her 5,000-word interview provides a significant amount of data on these famines and their impact. It and her book (in Kazakh) are thus a serious beginning for the investigation of these tragedies, which were a combination of weather and poor decision making by those in power.