Encyclopedia of Russian History

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FABERGÉ, PETER CARL

(1846–1920), jeweler to the Russian imperial court;

creator of the stunning Easter eggs, holiday gifts

to Nicholas II and his family.

Peter Carl Fabergé was born in 1846 in St. Pe-

tersburg, the son of a master goldsmith. The French

surname of the future jeweler derives from his fam-

ily’s Huguenot background; they left France dur-

ing the seventeenth century, moving eastward

from Germany to the Baltic before settling in Rus-

sia. Peter Carl, also called Carl Gustavovich in keep-

ing with the Russian patronymic tradition, was

educated in the local German-language school and

later attended commercial courses at the Dresden

Handelsschule. The combination of his astonishing

craftsmanship and cosmopolitanism gave him en-

try to all European royal houses.

In 1861 young Carl set out on his requisite

Grand Tour of the continent. He developed an abid-

ing interest in renaissance and baroque designs and

was especially influenced by the French rococo of

the eighteenth century. His mastery of fine detail

and ability to work in a variety of precious metals

and jewels, including hardstone carving, con-

tributed to his unique style Fabergé. In addition to

his legendary eggs, whose matching of the delicacy

of fine jewelry with technological innovations was

epitomized by the miniature Trans-Siberian train

that chugged through one of them, his oeuvre

ranged from carved animals to icons to cigarette

cases. His clients, primarily from the pan-European

aristocracy, knew that he could be trusted not to

repeat the specific designs they requested.

Fabergé matched his exquisite style with a

finely honed business acumen. From his renowned

establishment in St. Petersburg on Bolshaya

Morskaya Street, he published catalogs of his ob-

jets d’art. Employing the finest craftsmen, he ex-

panded his enterprise to Moscow, drawing the

attention of serious art collectors from Bangkok to

Boston; special exhibitions held around the world

continue to attract by the thousands. He left Rus-

sia in 1918 and died in Lausanne, Switzerland, in

1920. Fabergé lies buried alongside his wife in

Cannes.

See also: FRENCH INFLUENCE IN RUSSIA; ST. PETERSBURG

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Von Habsburg, Géza. (2000). Fabergé: Imperial Craftsman

and his World, with contributions by Alexander Von

473

Solodkoff and Robert Bianchi. London: Booth-Clibborn

Editions.

OUISE

EYNOLDS

FAMILY CODE OF 1926

In 1926 the Soviet government affirmed a new

Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship

to replace the 1918 version. Adopted after exten-

sive and often heated nationwide debate, the new

Code addressed several social issues: the lack of pro-

tection for women after divorce; the large number

of homeless orphans (besprizorniki); the incompat-

ibility of divorce and common property within the

peasant household; and the mutual obligations of

cohabiting, unmarried partners.

The new Code promoted both individual free-

dom and greater protection for the vulnerable. It

simplified the divorce procedure in the 1918 ver-

sion even further by transferring contested divorces

from the courts to local statistical bureaus. Either

spouse could register a divorce without the part-

ner’s consent or even knowledge. This provision re-

moved the law’s last vestige of authority over the

dissolution of marriage, circumscribing both the

power of law and the marital tie. The Code recog-

nized de facto marriage (cohabitation) as the ju-

ridical equal of civil (registered) marriage, thus

undercutting the need to marry “legally.” It pro-

vided a definition of de facto “marriage” based on

cohabitation, a joint household, mutual upbring-

ing of children, and third party recognition. It es-

tablished joint property between spouses, thus

providing housewives material protection after di-

vorce. It abolished the controversial practice of “col-

lective” paternity featured in the 1918 Family Code.

If a woman had sexual relations with several men

and could not identify the father of her child, a

judge would assign paternity (and future child sup-

port payments) to one man only. The Code incor-

porated an April 1926 decree that reversed the

prohibition on adoption and encouraged peasant

families to adopt homeless orphans, who were to

be fully integrated into the peasant household and

entitled to land. It set a time limit on alimony to

one year for the disabled and provided six months

of alimony for the needy or unemployed. It also

created a wider circle of family obligations by ex-

panding the base of alimony recipients to include

children, parents, siblings, and grandparents.

See also: FAMILY CODE ON MARRIAGE, THE FAMILY, AND

GUARDIANSHIP; FAMILY EDICT OF 1944; FAMILY LAWS

OF 1936; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Farnsworth, Beatrice. (1978). “Bolshevik Alternatives

and the Soviet Family: The 1926 Marriage Law De-

bate.” In Women in Russia, eds. Dorothy Atkinson,

Alexander Dallin, Gail Warshovsky Lapidus. Sussex,

UK: Harvester Press.

Goldman, Wendy. (1984). “Freedom and Its Conse-

quences: The Debate on the Soviet Family Code of

1926.” Russian History 11(4):362–388.

Goldman, Wendy. (1991). “Working-Class Women and

the ‘Withering-Away’ of the Family: Popular Re-

sponses to Family Policy.” In Russia in the Era of NEP:

Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, eds. Sheila

Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, Richard Stites.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lapidus, Gail Warshovsky. (1978). Women in Soviet So-

ciety. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Quigley, John. (1979). “The 1926 Soviet Family Code:

Retreat from Free Love.” Soviet Union 6(2):166–74.

ENDY

OLDMAN

FAMILY CODE ON MARRIAGE, THE

FAMILY, AND GUARDIANSHIP

The Russian Central Executive Committee of Sovi-

ets ratified the Code on Marriage, the Family, and

Guardianship in October 1918, one year after the

Bolsheviks took power. Alexander Goikhbarg, the

young author of the Code, expected that family law

would soon be outmoded and “the fetters of hus-

band and wife” unnecessary. Goikhbarg and other

revolutionary jurists believed children, the elderly,

and the disabled would be supported under social-

ism by the state; housework would be socialized

and waged; and women would no longer be eco-

nomically dependent on men. The family, stripped

of its social functions, would “wither away,” re-

placed by “free unions” based on mutual love and

respect. The Code aimed to provide a transitional

legal framework for that short period in which le-

gal duties and protections were still necessary.

Prerevolutionary jurists had attempted through-

out the late nineteenth century to reform Russia’s

strict laws on marriage and divorce, but achieved

little success. Up to 1917, Russian law recognized

FAMILY CODE OF 1926

474

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the right of religious authorities to control mar-

riage and divorce. Women were accorded few rights

by either church or state. According to state law,

a wife owed her husband complete obedience. She

was compelled to live with him, take his name, and

assume his social status. Up to 1914, a woman

was unable to take a job, get an education, or ex-

ecute a bill of exchange without her husband’s con-

sent. A father held almost unconditional power

over his children. Only children from a legally rec-

ognized marriage were considered legitimate, and

illegitimate children had no legal rights or recourse.

Up to 1902, when the state enacted limited reforms,

a father could recognize an illegitimate child only

by special imperial consent. The Russian Orthodox

Church considered marriage a holy sacrament, and

divorce was almost impossible. It was permissible

only in cases of adultery (witnessed by two peo-

ple), impotence, exile, or unexplained and prolonged

absence. In cases of adultery or impotence, the re-

sponsible party was permanently forbidden to re-

marry.

The 1918 Code swept away centuries of patri-

archal and ecclesiastical power and established a

new vision based on individual rights and gender

equality. It was predated by two brief decrees en-

acted in December 1917 that substituted civil for

religious marriage and established divorce at the re-

quest of either spouse. The 1918 Code incorporated

and elaborated on these two decrees. It abolished

the inferior legal status of women and created

equality under the law. It eliminated the validity

of religious marriage and gave legal status to civil

marriage only, creating a network of local sta-

tistical bureaus (ZAGS) for the registration of

marriage, divorce, birth, and death. The Code es-

tablished no-grounds divorce at the request of ei-

ther spouse. It abolished the juridical concept of

“illegitimacy” and entitled all children to parental

support. If a woman could not identify the father

of her child, a judge assigned paternal obligations

to all the men she had sexual relations with, thus

creating a “collective of fathers.” It forbade adop-

tion of orphans by individual families in favor of

state guardianship: jurists feared adoption, in a

largely agrarian society, would allow peasants to

exploit children as unpaid labor. The Code also

sharply restricted the duties and obligations of the

marital bond. Marriage did not create community

of property between spouses: a woman retained

full control of her earnings after marriage, and nei-

ther spouse had any claim on the property of the

other. Although the Code provided an unlimited

term of alimony for either gender, support was

limited to the disabled poor. The Code presumed

that both spouses, married or divorced, would sup-

port themselves.

The 1918 Code was very advanced for its time.

Comparable legislation on equal rights and divorce

would not be passed in Europe or the United States

until the end of the twentieth century. Yet many

Soviet jurists believed that the Code was not “so-

cialist” but “transitional” legislation. Goikhbarg,

like many revolutionary jurists, expected that law,

like marriage, the family, and the state, would soon

“wither away.”

The Code had a significant effect on the popu-

lation, both rural and urban. By 1925, Soviet cit-

izens had widely adopted civil marriage and

divorce. The USSR displayed a higher divorce rate

than any European country, with fifteen divorces

for every one hundred marriages. The divorce rate

was higher in the cities than in the rural areas, and

highest in Moscow and Leningrad. In Moscow,

there was one divorce for every two marriages. So-

viet workers, women in particular, suffered high

unemployment during the 1920s, and divorce

proved a special hardship for women who were

unable to find work. Peasant families found it dif-

ficult to reconcile customary law with the au-

tonomous property provisions of the Code. After

extensive debate, Soviet jurists enacted a new Fam-

ily Code in 1926 to redress these and other prob-

lems.

See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926; FAMILY EDICT OF 1944,

FAMILY LAWS OF 1936; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berman, Harold. (1963). Justice in the USSR: An Interpre-

tation of Soviet Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press.

Goldman, Wendy. (1993). Women, the State and Revolu-

tion: Soviet Family Policy, 1917–1936. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Hazard, John. (1969). Communists and Their Law.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stites, Richard. (1978). The Women’s Liberation Movement

in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism,

1860–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

Wood, Elizabeth. (1997). The Baba and the Comrade: Gen-

der and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press.

ENDY

OLDMAN

FAMILY CODE ON MARRIAGE, THE FAMILY, AND GUARDIANSHIP

475

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

FAMILY EDICT OF 1944

This decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

claimed to “protect motherhood and childhood.”

Amid deep concern for wartime manpower losses

and social dislocation, the decree sought to increase

natality and reinforce marriage.

The law’s best–known provisions rewarded

prolific mothers and made divorce more difficult to

obtain; its pro–natalism and support for marriage

reinforced prewar trends apparent in the Family

Laws of 1936. Pro–natalist measures included fam-

ily allowances paid to mothers regardless of mar-

ital status, extended maternity leave, protective

labor legislation for pregnant and nursing women,

and an ambitious plan to expand the network of

childcare services and consumer products for chil-

dren. Bearers of ten or more living children were

honored as “Mother–heroines.”

Other provisions tightened marital bonds by

making divorce more onerous. Proceedings now

took place in open court, with both parties present

and the court obligated to attempt reconciliation.

The intent to divorce was published in the

newspaper, and fines increased substantially. Re-

versing the 1926 Family Code, only registered (not

common–law) marriages were now officially rec-

ognized. The state also reestablished the notion of

illegitimacy: only children of registered marriages

could take their father’s name and receive paternal

child support.

The legislation had no significant lasting effect

on birth or divorce rates. Despite its ambitious

goals, promises of augmented childcare services and

consumer goods went unfulfilled, given postwar

economic devastation and prioritization of defense

and heavy industries. The law’s greatest signifi-

cance was perhaps as a manifestation of the ongo-

ing Soviet effort to imbue private life with public

priorities.

See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926; FAMILY CODE ON MAR-

RIAGE, THE FAMILY, AND GUARDIANSHIP; FAMILY

LAWS OF 1936

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bucher, Greta. (2000). “Struggling to Survive: Soviet

Women in the Postwar Years.” Journal of Women’s

History 12(1):137–159.

Field, Deborah. (1998). “Irreconcilable Differences: Di-

vorce and Conceptions of Private Life in the

Khrushchev Era.” Russian Review 57(4):599–613.

EBECCA

ALMAS

EARY

FAMILY FARM See KHUTOR.

FAMILY LAWS OF 1936

In 1936, the Soviet state enacted several laws that

sharply departed from previous legislation. The So-

viet Union had been the first country in the world

to legalize abortion in 1920, offering women free

abortion services in certified hospitals. In 1936,

however, the Central Executive Committee out-

lawed abortion. Anyone who performed the oper-

ation was liable to a minimum of two years in

prison, and a woman who received an abortion was

subject to high fines after the first offense. The new

law offered monetary incentives for childbearing,

providing stipends for new mothers, progressive

bonuses for women with many children, and

longer maternity leave for white-collar workers.

The criminalization of abortion reflected growing

anxiety among health workers, managers, and

state officials over the rising number of abortions,

the falling birth rate, the shortage of labor, and the

possibility of war.

The law also made divorce more difficult and

stiffened criminal penalties for men who refused to

pay alimony or child support. It required both

spouses to appear to register a divorce and increased

costs for the first divorce to fifty rubles, 150 rubles

for the second, and three hundred rubles for the

third. It set minimum levels for child support at

one–third of a defendant’s salary for one child, fifty

percent for two children, and sixty percent for three

or more, increasing the penalty for nonpayment to

two years in prison.

The law was part of a longer and larger pub-

lic campaign to promote “family responsibility”

and to reverse almost two decades of revolution-

ary juridical thinking. In April 1935, the Council

of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) granted the

courts sweeping new powers to try and sentence

children aged twelve and older as adults; this re-

sulted in mass arrests and imprisonment of

teenagers, mostly for petty theft. In May 1935 the

local Commissions on the Affairs of Minors were

abolished, and responsibility for all juvenile crime

was shifted to the courts. Punishment replaced an

earlier commitment to pedagogical correction. The

1936 laws also marked a turn in attitudes toward

law and family. Jurists condemned as “legal ni-

hilism” earlier notions that the law and the family

would “wither away.” Many legal theorists of the

FAMILY EDICT OF 1944

476

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

1920s, including Yevgeny Pashukanis and Nikolai

Krylenko, were arrested and shot.

See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926; FAMILY CODE ON MAR-

RIAGE, THE FAMILY, AND GUARDIANSHIP; FAMILY

EDICT OF 1944

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goldman, Wendy. (1991). “Women, Abortion, and the

State, 1917–1936.” In Russia’s Women: Accommoda-

tion, Resistance, Transformation, eds. Barbara Clements,

Barbara Engel, Christine Worobec. Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press.

Goldman, Wendy. (1993). Women, the State, and Revolu-

tion: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936.

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sharlet, Robert. (1984). “Pashukanis and the Withering-

Away of Law in the USSR.” In Cultural Revolution in

Russia, 1928–31, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick. Blooming-

ton: Indiana University Press.

ENDY

OLDMAN

FAMINE OF 1891–1892

The famine of 1891–1892 was one of the most se-

vere agricultural crises to strike Russia during the

nineteenth century. In the spring of 1891 a seri-

ous drought caused crops to fail along the Volga

and in many other grain-producing provinces. The

disaster came on the heels of a series of poor har-

vests, its impact worsened by endemic peasant

poverty and low productivity. The population of

the affected areas had few reserves of food and faced

the prospect of mass starvation.

Beginning in the summer of 1891, the imper-

ial Russian government organized an extensive re-

lief campaign. It disbursed almost 150 million

rubles to the stricken provinces, working closely

with the zemstvos, institutions of local self-

government responsible for aiding victims of food

shortages. The ministry of internal affairs estab-

lished food supply conferences to coordinate gov-

ernment and zemstvo efforts to find and distribute

available grain supplies. When massive backlogs of

grain shipments snarled the railroads and threat-

ened the timely delivery of food, the government

dispatched a special agent to remedy the situation.

The heir to the throne, the future Nicholas II,

chaired a committee designed to encourage and

focus charitable efforts. Many public-spirited

Russians—Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir

Korolenko and others—rushed into the countryside

on their own initiative, setting up a large network

of private soup kitchens and medical aid stations.

The relief campaign was remarkably success-

ful. More than 12 million people received aid,

and starvation was largely averted. Mortality for

1892 rose in the sixteen famine provinces—about

400,000 deaths above normal—much of it due to

a simultaneous cholera epidemic. But compared to

contemporary Indian and later Soviet famines, this

loss of life was minimal. Still, the famine aroused

public opinion. Many blamed the government’s

economic policies for causing the disaster, and its

relief efforts were often unfairly criticized. Conse-

quently, the famine proved to be an important

turning point in Russian history, beginning a new

wave of opposition to the tsarist regime.

See also: FAMINE OF 1921–1922; FAMINE OF 1932–1933;

FAMINE OF 1946

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robbins, Richard G., Jr. (1975). Famine in Russia,

1891–1892: The Imperial Government Responds to a

Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press.

Simms, James Y., Jr. (1977). “The Crisis of Russian Agri-

culture at the End of the Nineteenth Century: A Dif-

ferent View.” Slavic Review 36:377–398.

Wheatcroft, S.G. (1992). “The 1891–92 Famine in Rus-

sia: Toward a More Detailed Analysis of its Scale and

Demographic Significance.” In Economy and Society

in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1860–1930: Essays for

Olga Crisp, eds. Linda Edmondson and Peter Wal-

dron. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

ICHARD

G. R

OBBINS

FAMINE OF 1921–1922

This devastating famine, comparable only to that

of 1932 and 1933, most seriously affected the

Volga provinces, Ukraine, and the Urals, and to a

lesser extent several other regions, from late 1920

to mid-1923. At its peak in the summer of 1922,

some thirty million people were starving (statistics

from this period are uncertain), in towns as well

as villages. One of the largest relief efforts in his-

tory, including foreign and Soviet agencies, reached

most of these people despite enormous logistical

and ideological obstacles.

Severe droughts in 1920 and especially 1921,

as well as locusts and other natural disasters, most

FAMINE OF 1921–1922

477

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

directly caused the famine. One-fourth of the crops

failed overall, and many other areas had low yields.

Agrarian developments during World War I and the

Civil War also contributed to the crisis. The peas-

ants’ subdivision of landlord estates, the collapse of

industrial production, and massive inflation led in-

creasing numbers of peasants to orient production

toward subsistence. From 1918 to 1920, many

peasants sold or bartered food to townspeople de-

spite Bolshevik efforts against private trade, but

these sales declined because of requisitions by tsarist

and provisional governments, the German-Austrian

occupation in Ukraine, and the White armies and

Bolsheviks, which depleted peasants’ grain reserves.

With insufficient seed, draft forces, and deteriorat-

ing equipment, peasants in 1921 succeeded in

planting only two-thirds to three-fourths of the

cropland farmed prior to the wars and much less

in some regions. Yet even this would not have

caused the disaster that occurred without the

droughts of 1920 and 1921.

The Bolshevik government responded to the

1920 drought by ceasing requisitions from the cen-

tral provinces and, in February 1921, by forming

a commission for aiding agriculture in the affected

regions, distributing food relief and seed, and im-

porting grain. By late May 1921 it was clear that

the country was in the midst of a second drought

even more severe than that of 1920. Peasants re-

sorted to eating weeds and other food surrogates,

and cannibalism, trying to save their seed for the

fall planting. Thousands of peasants fled from

famine districts to Ukraine and other regions, of-

ten with government assistance, which sometimes

spread famine conditions.

During the summer of 1921, the Bolshevik

government distributed limited seed and food relief

to famine regions, often by curtailing rationed sup-

plies to towns, and appealed for food relief at home

and abroad. Many groups responded. The Interna-

tional Red Cross set up an International Commit-

tee for Russian Relief, under the leadership of

Fridtjof Nansen. Other agencies offering help in-

cluded the International Committee of Workers’

Aid, the American Friends Service Committee, and

the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

By far most aid came from the American Re-

lief Administration (ARA), headed by Herbert

Hoover. In the Riga agreement of August 1921, the

Bolsheviks allowed the ARA to distribute its own

relief. Investigation of the Volga region led the ARA

to attempt to aid as many people as possible until

the 1922 harvest. Hoover persuaded the U.S. Con-

gress to allocate $20 million for food supplies; these

were shipped and distributed in a “corn campaign,”

conducted from January to August of 1922, which

had to overcome the catastrophic disrepair of the

railroads and the incompetence and ideologically

motivated resistance of some local and central gov-

ernment officials. By the summer of 1921, some

eleven million people received food from foreign re-

lief agencies.

The ARA also organized medical aid and inter-

national food remittances, many sent to Ukraine.

In October ARA personnel went to Ukraine and

found famine conditions that the Moscow Bolshe-

viks had not mentioned, as well as a Ukrainian gov-

ernment that refused to accept the Riga agreement.

Only after negotiations in December was Ukraine

brought into the relief effort. The ARA and other

groups also provided medical aid that reached more

people than the food relief.

By the summer of 1922, Soviet government

food relief had reached some five million people in

the Volga, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Many ordinary

Soviet citizens also contributed to famine relief. So-

viet and foreign seed aid supported a 1922 harvest.

Although grown on an area about 20 percent

smaller than that of 1921, the 1922 harvest was

much larger than that of the previous year because

normal rainfall had returned. Still, famine condi-

tions continued in many regions and especially

among abandoned children (besprizorniki). The ARA

continued relief into mid-1923 against intrusive

Soviet efforts to limit its operations. A few small

relief programs continued, but the 1923 harvest

basically ended the famine.

Estimates of famine mortality vary, with the

most widely accepted being five million deaths,

most resulting from typhus and other epidemics

spread by refugees. So vast was the famine that the

combined relief efforts at their peak in the summer

of 1922 encompassed at most two-thirds of famine

victims, despite substantial imports. The ARA im-

ported some 740,000 tons of food; the Bolshevik

government supplied more than one million tons

of grain.

The famine weakened armed resistance to the

Bolshevik regime, and some argue that this was in-

tentionally manipulated. It also, however, delayed

national economic recovery for at least two years.

The fact that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet lead-

ers agreed (however ambivalently) to foreign relief

indicated a fundamental shift in their attitude to-

ward the peasants and their orientation toward pri-

FAMINE OF 1921–1922

478

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

vate production. This shift was reflected in the New

Economic Policy of 1921, which legalized free trade

and abolished the requisition policies of the Civil

War and in the regime’s food imports during

famines in 1924 and 1928. The 1921 famine also

convinced Soviet leaders that Soviet agriculture

needed significant modernization, which underlay

the decision to collectivize agriculture nine years

later.

See also: AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION; FAMINE OF

1891–1892; FAMINE OF 1932–1933; FAMINE OF 1946

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Edmondson, Charles M. (1977). “The Politics of Hunger:

The Soviet Response to Famine, 1921.” Soviet Stud-

ies XXIX (4):506–518.

Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2002). The Big Show in Bololand:

The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the

Famine of 1921. Stanford, CA: Stanford University

Press.

ARK

B. T

AUGER

FAMINE OF 1932–1933

The famine began in the winter of 1931 and 1932,

peaked between the fall of 1932 and the summer

of 1933, and subsided with the 1933 harvest. Mor-

tality was highest in rural areas of Ukraine, the

North Caucasus, and the central and southern

Volga Basin, but increased in most rural and even

urban areas.

The famine affected all of Soviet society. Not

only peasants, but also industrial workers and

other townspeople desperately sought to supple-

ment their inadequate food rations. Officials and

managers responsible for production, transport,

and distribution faced disastrous labor conditions

from the subsistence crisis. The OGPU (Soviet se-

curity police), grain procurement agencies, and So-

viet leaders, in their efforts to obtain grain and

other supplies from the villages at all costs, mini-

mized or ignored the pleas and starving conditions

of the peasants.

The causes of the famine are disputed. The con-

ventional view, that it was a human-made famine

imposed by Joseph Stalin on Ukraine and certain

other regions to suppress nationalist opposition,

has been challenged. Conclusive new evidence

shows that the harvests of 1931 and especially

1932 were much smaller than claimed by the So-

viet government or later memoir and eyewitness

accounts, that they were reduced by natural dis-

asters, and that famine mortality was not limited

to specific national regions or even to rural areas.

New sources also show that the regime had inad-

equate reserves yet provided peasants limited famine

relief, including relief from imported sources, in ad-

dition to supplying more than forty million peo-

ple in towns, the army, and others on the rationing

system in 1932-1933.

The famine developed in the wake of collec-

tivization campaigns in 1930 and 1931 that reor-

ganized most villages into collective or state farms.

By this means the regime sought to increase food

production and procurement to feed towns and in-

dustrial sites, which were growing rapidly because

of the First Five-Year Plan and were dependent on

government rationing systems, and to export in or-

der to earn hard currency for purchases of pro-

ducer goods. Collectivization allowed procurement

agencies to obtain substantially more grain from

the villages than during the 1920s, even consider-

ing what the peasants would have sold voluntar-

ily. This left many peasants short of food as early

as 1930. A drought in 1931 in the Volga region,

Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan, and else-

where reduced the harvest drastically. Yet the au-

thorities procured more from this harvest than

from that of 1930 (22.8 million tons vs. 22.1 mil-

lion tons), often taking the last reserves from many

farms. Peasants were left in desperate circum-

stances, and their mortality increased. Hundreds of

thousands fled the drought regions seeking food.

Soviet leaders acknowledged the drought and

returned grain to farms for food and seed. They in-

troduced new labor organization rules in the col-

lective farms to reduce evasion of responsibility for

farm work. Laws in May 1932 legalized private

trade in food products in an effort to increase pro-

duction and improve urban food supplies. Unfor-

tunately, 1932 was worse than 1931. Weakened

by starvation and often resentful of procurements

and collectivization, some peasants worked poorly

or not at all. The new labor system encountered

confusion and resistance and often had little effect.

Crops were planted later than in previous years

and with less seed. A complex of natural disasters—

drought, heavy rains, infestations, soil exhaustion—

drastically reduced the harvest. Yet agricultural and

statistical authorities minimized or overlooked

these problems and projected output matching or

even exceeding that of 1931.

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The harvest shortfall became evident early:

July procurements were only 470,000 tons com-

pared to 950,000 tons in July 1931. Statistical and

OGPU reports convinced Stalin and other Soviet

leaders that the 1932 harvest was normal and that

procurements collapsed because peasants withheld

grain from procurements to sell on the free mar-

ket at astronomical prices and because local offi-

cials mismanaged procurements. The leadership

changed its approach from incentives to extreme

coercion in procurements and distribution. One

part of this shift was the decree of August 7 that

imposed harsh penalties for “theft of socialist prop-

erty.” In the following year, in the Russian repub-

lic alone, more than 200,000 people were arrested

and more than 8,000 executed under this law.

Simultaneously, the authorities conducted an in-

tensive procurement campaign that lasted into the

spring of 1933 in some regions. Procurement

agents came from towns almost as famished as the

villages, and their desperation led them to irrational

actions they found difficult to explain in memoirs

written later. They dug up peasants’ yards to find

concealed hoards, though the amounts they found

were miniscule; they took prepared meals away

from peasants. Starving peasants (and to a lesser

extent townspeople) tried to survive on surrogates,

and some resorted to cannibalism.

The authorities repeatedly reduced procure-

ment quotas, ultimately obtaining fifteen percent

less grain from the 1932 harvest (18.5 million tons)

than from the 1931 harvest, but at a much greater

cost in life and disruption. Even with reduced pro-

curements, the small harvest left practically noth-

ing to be sold on the market. By January 1933,

most of the USSR was in a state of famine, and

millions of peasants and townspeople fled their

homes seeking subsistence. The Politburo attempted

to control this situation by establishing an inter-

nal passport system, by directives to prevent starv-

ing peasants from fleeing the main agricultural

regions and return to their farms those who had

fled, and by establishing political departments in

the state farms and machine-tractor stations to re-

move opposition officials and improve work orga-

nization.

The regime allocated much more food for re-

lief and seed from the 1932 harvest, 5.7 million

tons, than it had from the 1931 harvest, with ra-

tions doled out to peasants in return for their work.

Still, farm work in the spring and summer of 1933

proceeded under desperate conditions, and many

peasants died of starvation or related diseases while

working. Moreover, the regime exported more than

300,000 tons of grain during the first half of 1933

to meet contractual commitments and cover loan

payments. Purchasing countries received diplo-

matic reports about the famine but did not raise

the issue and continued imports at dumping-level

prices. Soviet officials at all levels denied the famine

publicly, refused aid from foreign organizations,

and tried to concealed the famine from foreign vis-

itors.

Improved agricultural conditions and desperate

work by all concerned led to a substantially greater

harvest in 1933 that ended the famine in most ar-

eas by the fall of 1933. Estimates of mortality range

from five million to eight million lives, mostly

peasants but also townspeople and others, yet gov-

ernment aid in supplies, equipment, and organiza-

tional measures helped agriculture to recover and

produce large harvests soon after the famine. This

tragedy could have been substantially mitigated

had Soviet leaders been less distrustful of and hos-

tile toward the peasants, more skeptical of their

own personnel and knowledge, and more open to

outside aid.

See also: AGRICULTURE; FAMINE OF 1891–1892; FAMINE

OF 1921–1922

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conquest, Robert. (1986). Harvest of Sorrow. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Osokina, Elena. (2000). Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distri-

bution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia. Ar-

monk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Tauger, Mark. (2001). “Natural Disaster and Human Ac-

tions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933.” The Carl

Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no.

1506. Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East Eu-

ropean Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

ARK

B. T

AUGER

FAMINE OF 1946

In 1946, the devastation of World War II and a se-

vere drought that engulfed most of the major grain

producing areas of the country, including Ukraine,

Moldavia, the lower and middle Volga, Rostov

oblast, and the central black earth zone, resulted in

a poor harvest in the Soviet Union. Shortage of

workforce, machinery, and livestock exacerbated

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the situation. Despite food shortages and malnu-

trition in the countryside in the spring of 1946, the

Soviet government enforced unrealistic procure-

ment quotas while exporting grain to Eastern Eu-

rope and France. Toward the end of 1946, the

government lowered procurement plans in drought

areas but raised quotas in other parts of the coun-

try in order to compensate for the shortfall. The

authorities provided grain loans to collective farms

and opened kitchens and children’s houses, but the

relief was administered inconsistently and belat-

edly. As a result, approximately two million peo-

ple died from famine and related diseases in 1946

and 1947. The mortality rate peaked in the sum-

mer of 1947. The famine contributed to mass flight

from the countryside to the cities and was followed

by the arbitrary purging of peasants labeled “ku-

laks” from the countryside.

Despite its major political and social implica-

tions, this famine had not been studied until the

1990s, largely because the Soviet government ig-

nored its existence. Even in confidential government

documents, officials avoided mention of hunger or

starvation, employing euphemisms suggesting dif-

ficulties with provisions. The central authorities ad-

vanced the image of a heroic postwar rebuilding

process and a smooth transition to peacetime.

See also: FAMINE OF 1891–1892; FAMINE OF 1921–1922;

FAMINE OF 1932–1933

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ellman, Michael. (2000). “The 1947 Soviet Famine and

the Entitlement Approach to Famines.” Cambridge

Journal of Economics 24:603–630.

Volkov, Ivan Mefodievich. (1992). “The Drought and

Famine of 1946–47.” Russian Studies in History

31:31–60.

ICHOLAS

ANSON

FAR EASTERN REGION

The easternmost extremity of the Russian Federa-

tion is a vast territory with a sparse and declining

population. It comprises 6.2 million square kilo-

meters (2,394,000 square miles), or more than 36

percent of the country, but holds barely seven mil-

lion residents, or less than 5 percent of the popu-

lation. Given the inclement climate and poor

transportation infrastructure in the north, resi-

dents are concentrated near the southern border

with China, many living along the Amur River and

the Pacific coast. Russians reached the coast during

the seventeenth century; only in 1861 did they es-

tablish the city of Vladivostok after securing con-

trol over the southeastern maritime zone through

a treaty with China. Construction of the Trans-

Siberian railroad from the 1890s onward brought

increased settlement. The Soviet state continued to

rely on prison labor and exiles as well as military

garrisons to develop the region, although at times

it succeeded in drawing young settlers and work-

ers with material incentives. During the 1990s in-

centives were ended, and many began to leave the

region.

The Russian Far East is rich in natural re-

sources, but fear of neighboring countries has af-

fected their development and use. After accepting

migrants and welcoming trade during the 1930s

and 1940s, the Kremlin, led by Josef Stalin, expelled

the Chinese and deported the Koreans to Central

Asia. At great cost, the Far East sent marine prod-

ucts to European Russia in return for industrial

goods. A brief rise in Sino-Soviet trade during the

1950s was followed by a massive military buildup

that forced Moscow to spend much more on the

area. Plans for exporting vast quantities of coal and

lumber to Japan in return for investment in infra-

structure were only partly realized before bilateral

relations deteriorated at the end of the 1970s. Huge

cost overruns meant that during the early 1980s,

when authorities announced the completion of the

Baikal-Amur Mainline railroad to extend develop-

ment northward, even funds for maintenance could

not be found. During the 1990s local elites diverted

marine and lumber products to exports without

paying taxes to Moscow. None of these approaches

to the use of natural resources proved efficient for

sustained development. During the early twenty-

first century, Russians hoped that oil and gas pro-

jects, especially offshore by Sakhalin Island, would

fuel the region’s prosperity, yet fear of foreign con-

trol continued to leave investors uncertain of their

prospects.

The Russian Far East has the potential to be-

come part of the emerging Northeast Asian region,

drawing together China, Japan, South Korea, and

eventually North Korea. First, it would need to re-

solve tensions between the ten regional adminis-

trations, which pressed local agendas during the

1990s, and Moscow, which made efforts at recen-

tralization. While there was a brief fear of the local

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481

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

governments banding together to restore the Far

Eastern Republic of the early 1920s and gain sub-

stantial autonomy, the pendulum tilted toward

Moscow; a presidential representative resided in

Khabarovsk. Second, territorial disputes with China

and Japan must be further resolved, stabilizing ten-

sions over the border. Third, Russia must become

confident of the balance of power in the region,

overcoming fear that China or another country will

dominate. Finally, plans for economic development

need firm backing in Moscow, which must recog-

nize that only by opening its eastern border to the

outside world can it secure its future as a country

facing both the developed European Union and the

dynamic Asia-Pacific.

See also: BAIKAL-AMUR MAGISTRAL RAILWAY; CHINA, RE-

LATIONS WITH; GEOGRAPHY; TRANS-SIBERIAN RAIL-

WAY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradshaw, Michael J., ed. (2001). The Russian Far East

and Pacific Asia: Unfulfilled Potential. Richmond, UK:

Curzon.

Minakir, Pavel A., and Freeze, Gregory L., eds. (1994).

The Russian Far East: An Economic Handbook. Ar-

monk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Stephan, John J. (1994). The Russian Far East: A History.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

ILBERT

OZMAN

FATHERLAND-ALL RUSSIA

“Fatherland-All Russia” (Otechestvo–Vsya Rossiya, or

OVR) was an alternative “ruling party,” a bloc

formed in the summer of 1999 in order to seize

power from the weakening Kremlin. The first step

towards organization was the formation of the bloc

called Fatherland, a political structure created by

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who had presiden-

tial ambitions. Established and registered on De-

cember 19, 1998, a full year before Duma elections,

Fatherland brought together a number of orga-

nizations that appealed to patriotism or paternal-

ism. These included the Congress of Russian

Communities (which later left it) and the “Power”

movement, as well as the political wing of the re-

formist trade unions (profsoyuzy), “Union of Labor”

and Women of Russia. It also included a handful

of influential heads of Luzhkov-oriented regions:

Karelia, Komi, Mordvinia, Udmurtia, and the

Arkhangelsk, Moscow, Murmansk, Nizhegorod,

Novosibirsk, and Yaroslavl oblasts. Prospective

politicians, often the mayors of centers, headed the

ubiquitous regional branches. This often led to con-

flict, when two or three local organizations simul-

taneously claimed to be the area’s regional branch.

The material base of “Fatherland” was provided by

a powerful consortium of of financial and indus-

trial groups known as the “Moscow clan.”

Established three months later, the “All Russia”

bloc became an alternative gubernatorial political

project. The bloc included another dozen influen-

tial regional heads, including the leaders of Tatar-

stan, Bashkortostan, Petersburg, Irkutsk oblast,

among others, as well as a few regional speakers.

The mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev,

became chair of the bloc. Four and a half months

before the elections, despite the opposition of the

Kremlin, the two powerful gubernatorial blocs

were able to unite, advancing the recently retired

prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, as their leader.

Soon after their formation, they were joined by a

large contingent of the Agrarian Party of Russia,

which did not see a future in continuing its asso-

ciation with Zyuganov’s Communist Party.

Fatherland–All Russia, united not so much by

ideology as by a foretaste of full assumption of

power, announced an eclectic program. Its main

slogan, “Trust only deeds,” drew the voter’s atten-

tion to powerful politicians united under the bloc’s

banners and to authoritarian governors. The over-

all agenda of the bloc, including the continuity of

ruling power, social peace, and rejection of revolu-

tionary shocks, were combined with concrete pro-

grammatic elaborations concerning key questions

of economy, politics, and social development. These

elaborations went through a series of discussions

and were summarized in the form “Notices for the

president.” At the core of OVR’s propaganda cam-

paign was the juxtaposition of its candidates with

the ruling Kremlin command, along with criticism

of Yeltsin and his entourage, an identification of

the “family” as the locus of corruption, and alle-

gations of the government’s secrecy and incompe-

tence.

A crucial moment in the campaign, and the be-

ginning of the end of OVR as a “party of future

power,” was a series of explosions in residential ar-

eas of Moscow and other cities, and the beginning

of a new war in the northern Caucasus. People no

longer wanted the economic and social improve-

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