464. Kolpakidi and Seriakov, Shchit i mech, 357–61 (Sept. 9, 1933). Back on Nov. 5, 1924, the politburo had formed a commission for political crimes; the commission forbade local organs from issuing sentences without Central Committee authorization. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 130–31 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 73, l. 9, 23, 37, 112, 123–4, 128–9; d. 60, l. 11).
465. Katzenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 9.
466. Robbins, Famine in Russia; Simms, “Crop Failure of 1891”; Simms, “Economic Impact of the Russian Famine”; Miller, Economic Development, 49; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 158.
467. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 412–5; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 67–77.
468. At least half a million Kazakhs resettled permanently outside the republic, including 200,000 beyond Soviet frontiers. Ohayon, La sedentarisation des Kazakhs, 264–8; Maksudov, “Migratsii v SSSR”; Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 463–6; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 408 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 329, d. 143: Jan. 14, 1937); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 420–7 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1449, l. 106–18: July 20, 1932); Cameron, “Hungry Steppe.” See also Jasny, Socialized Agriculture, 323. The Soviet census of 1926 gave a Kazakh ASSR population of 6.2 million, of whom 3.6 million were ethnic Kazakh, some 2 million were Slavs, some 230,000 Uzbeks and 62,000 Uighurs. The 1939 census gave a figure of 1.321 million fewer ethnic Kazakhs. On this basis, one scholar estimated the catastrophe at 2 million lives lost. The local ethnic Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan declined from 859,000 to 658,000. Tatimov, Sotsial’naia obuslovlennost’ demograficheskikh protsessov, 122–4; Abylkhozhin et al., “Kazakhstanskaia tragediia,” 67. In the neighboring Kyrgyz autonomous republic, the catastrophe was less pronounced. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 377–81.
469. Sel’skoe khoiziastvo SSSR, 517; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 321–2; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 289. Even the data supplied to Kazakh party bosses severely underestimated the losses of human and animal life, partly because of fear of reporting the truth, and partly from logistical difficulties of surveying such a vast and sparsely populated territory. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 468.
470. The regime managed to begin to rebuild Kazkah herds by allowing (in Sept. 1932) artel collective farms to be replaced by so-called TOZ (“association for the joint cultivation of land”), in which only some land was worked in common, and most implements and all animals, including even draft animals, were held by households. Aitiev and Ishmukhamedov, Torzhestvo leninskogo kooperativnogo plana, 36–7. On March 29, 1933, Mirzoyan asked Stalin to purchase more livestock from western China and release more food aid (16,500 tons) for the region, to allow him to sell significant nationalized livestock back to the Kazakh herders, and to stop Uzbekistan, Siberia, and the Volga from returning Kazakhs who fled. Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 220–3 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5287, l. 33–8); Ăbdīraĭymūly et al., Golod v kazakhskoi stepi, 196–200 (at 199). The livestock losses were still hurting agricultural productivity in 1940. In the USSR as a whole, the cattle and sheep population did not recover to the 1914 level until the late 1950s. Hunter, “Soviet Agriculture”; Millar and Nove, “Debate on Collectivization.”
471. Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 424; Chamberlain, Russia’s Iron Age, 88–9; Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, 257. See also Bright-Holmes, Like It Was; Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 118. Thomas Walker, in a series of five articles in 1935, asserted that not crop failure but “a planned process of extermination by Moscow, is what caused the terrific loss of life in this district in the past year.” Walker, “Children Starve.” Walker offered no evidence; he purported to be an eyewitness, but visited in 1934, after the mass famine had subsided. Fischer, “Heart’s Russian ‘Famine’”; Tottle, Fraud, Famine, and Fascism, 9. See also Mace, “Man-made Famine,” 86–90.
