Hunger, State Policy, and Its Perception in 1921–22 and 1932–33

The peak of the first social disaster occurred during the winter of 1921 and spring of 1922. This famine was due to a draught and the related crop failure in 1921, as well as to the consequences of the Russian Civil War and the war communism policy. As a consequence of the Civil War, Russia lost 9.5% of its population. In the South, losses amounted to 17.4% of the population (Chernopitsky Reference Chernopitsky1987, 5). A significant demographic attrition such as this led to a decrease in agricultural labour force and impaired the economy of agrarian regions. A declared transition to the New Economic Policy notwithstanding, practice of food requisitions continued into 1923.

It is not known precisely how many people were affected by famine in 1921–1922: we have only the minimum and the maximum thresholds at our disposal, with the inevitable for the period statistical margins taken into account. The Don regionhad the greatest number, 638,000 people starving—almost 50% of the population (Chernopitsky Reference Chernopitsky1987, 54). In the Kuban region, 500,000 people were starving (Krivoded Reference Krivoded2002, 43). The data from the three oblasts amounts to a total of over 1.7 million people starving. According to P.G. Tchernopitsky’s summary findings, at least 1.5 million people were starving in the Southeastern Russia in the early 1920s (Chernopitsky Reference Chernopitsky1987, 54).

Migrants from other regions started coming to Kuban, historically considered to be a rich, prosperous land (Skorik and Fedina Reference Skorik and Fedina2013). As noted at the Second Convention of Councils of Temriukskii District of the Kuban-Black Sea Oblast on December 3, 1921, “The situation with food in the Kuban region [was] disastrous due to other governorates feeding at Kuban’s expense.”Footnote ³ According to the 1922 data of the Kuban-Black Sea Oblast land administration, among those starving were stanitsas Alexandrovskaia, Beisugskaia, Bratskaia, Voronezhskaia, Vostochnaia, Vyselki, Zhuravskaia, Korenovskaia, Ladozhskaia, Nekrasovskaia, Novolabinskaia, Platnirovskaia, Razdolnaia, Ust-Labinskaia, and the Bolgov homestead.Footnote ⁴ The documents noted that, “even though Kuban was relatively devastated and economically poor, it was incomparably better off than the centre of Russia. The famished central Russia was waiting for bread, and that was why, as part of the food surplus appropriation program [prodrazvyorstka], they began requisitioning grain here.”Footnote ⁵ Despite requisitions, the situation in the Kuban region was considerably better than in the Don and Terek.

During the 1921–22 famine, the policy of the Soviet regime, intended to stabilize the country’s socioeconomic situation after the Civil War, had no anti-Cossack agenda. The authorities tried to help the hungry (Graziosi 2016, 64), but their financial and material resources were extremely limited. Consequently, emphasis was placed on measures of administrative and fiscal nature.

Attempts were undertaken to create a system of peasant mutual aid in rural areas, similar to pre-revolutionary mutual aid societies. Committees for peasant mutual aid were seen as “a means for working peasants and the Cossacks to avoid… distresses.”Footnote ⁶ Sowing committees regulated sowing and land use planning on location. For instance, 22 people were elected to sit on the stanitsa Nekrasovskaia’s sowing committee: four representatives from every quarter of the stanitsa and two from each of the three yurt homesteads. Addtionally, households sowing no fewer than then dessiatinas of winter crops became members of the sowing committee by default. Consequently, the sowing committee consisted almost exclusively of the Cossacks (Kharitonov Reference Kharitonov and Jakaev2009, 426).

The state offered grain farmers concessions and loans. The sowing loan advanced to grain growers in the Southeastern areas most affected by crop failure amounted to four million gold roubles.Footnote ⁷

In July 1921, the Central Committee for Famine Relief (TsK Pomgol) was formed, primarily to raise funds in aid of the starving population. Campaigns in support of farmers afflicted by crop failure were being launched. Under the auspices of the All-Russian Executive Committee, an All-Russian week of famine relief was held between September 15 and October 15, 1921.Footnote ⁸ On September 24, 1921, a Saturday voluntary workday took place in Donetsk district under the slogan “Let everyone fight hunger.”Footnote ⁹ In order to overcome the consequences of famine on the Don, a commission for overcoming the consequences of hunger was formed under the leadership of Bolshevik G.V. Tcherepakhin. Tcherepakhin’s memoirs report that he was granted emergency powers and a right to levy “a heavy tribute from places of recreation where new economic policy beneficiaries (nepmani) enjoyed themselves. Betting pools and lotteries were organized” (Cherepakhin Reference Cherepakhin1955, 70). In the fall of 1923, the funds went toward purchasing 101 Fordson tractors.

In this difficult situation, the Bolsheviks acknowledged famine and petitioned foreign countries and the wider public for help (Ivanova Reference Ivanova2007; Polyakov Reference Polyakov1975; Polyakov Reference Polyakov2009; Uryadova Reference Uryadova2010). In Southern Russia, the American Relief Administration (ARA) was the most well-known foreign organization to provide genuine assistance. ARA had a branch in Novorossiisk. It was through this port that food shipments arrived. Local party organizations and Soviet government structures also tried taking measures to remedy the situation by means of redistributing the few food resources they had at their disposal. As noted at the same Second Convention of the Councils of Temriukskii District, “all governmental bodies have been removed from ration lists, and the rations reserved for the army.”Footnote ¹⁰

The measures undertaken by the authorities and the public to fight hunger saved many lives. However, some Soviet officials admitted that “not enough was done as compared to what could have been done.”Footnote ¹¹ Insufficient governmental help to those starving led to agricultural stagnation and a rise in anti-Soviet sentiments. In March 1922, local population was documented as being “ill-disposed” toward the authorities.Footnote ¹²

Present-day scholars surmise that in 1932–1933, “a subjective, political factor played the decisive, dominant role over all others… Among the various factors to contribute to this famine, environmental calamities were not as important as anything else, which set this famine apart from those of 1891−1892, 1921−1922, and 1946−1947. In 1932–1933, there were no natural disasters similar to the great droughts of 1891, 1921, 1946.” Therefore, this is believed to be the first “man-made famine” (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2008, 331). Hunger was provoked by the state policy of forcible collectivization and unreasonable demands placed on grain producers. The plan for grain production in 1932 was based on preliminary data forecasting a much higher—two or three times higher—yield than was ultimately harvested. But the party authorities demanded that the plan be implemented unfailingly, and so on location, almost all the harvested crops started to be taken away from the growers.

Incomplete data shows that at the peak of the 1932–1933 famine in the North Caucasus, the mortality rate was three times higher than the birth rate (416,700 deaths versus 138,900 births). Excess mortality reached around 350,000 deaths (Skorik Reference Skorik2009, 424). During the first half of 1932, the number of deaths per month was 8,270 on average, whereas in the second half of the same year deaths per month increased to 12,247 on average. Mortality grew especially after January 1933, reaching its peak in April, May, and June with 59,242, 60,038, and 56,062 deaths, respectively (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2008, 173). After that, it started to decrease, but February 1934 still saw continued reports from diverse areas about “cases of intumescence and individual deaths of starvation due to lack of food among the kolkhoz members and self-employed farmers” (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2011).

As a rule, excess mortality caused by hunger affected mostly rural areas because self-employed farmers and kolkhoz workers surrendered their last grain supplies to the state and—unlike town residents—received no food rations. According to V.V. Kondrashin’s findings, 21 out of 34 districts were starving in Kuban, 14 out of 23 in the Don region, and 12 out of 18 in Stavropol Krai. Thus, 47 (63%) out of 75 grain-producing districts of North Caucasus were starving. Among the 20 “most disadvantaged” districts were six in Kuban, seven on the River Don, and seven in Stavropol Krai; 15 more districts, including four in Kuban, seven in the Don region, and four in Stavropol Krai, were listed as “also affected” (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2008, 172–173).

Famine reached such a scale that hushing it up entirely was impossible. Even though in January 1933 I.V. Stalin argued that only “sworn enemies of the Soviet rule” might doubt the improvement in the material well-being of the USSR’s working class (Stalin Reference Stalin1951, 200), even regional officials started speaking up about the hunger. In his speech at the first North-Caucasian regional convention of superproductive kolkhoz workers (February 24–27, 1933), head of the North-Caucasian Regional Executive Committee V.F. Larin admitted that «…“it would have been unfair, dishonest, and incorrect to deny that many kolkhoz workers [were] experiencing difficulties [that] year, incomparable to anything they lived through last year or the year before.”Footnote ¹³

In contrast to the previous famine, in 1932–1933 the Soviet authorities’ actions had an explicit anti-Cossack agenda, which is clear from the contemporaries’ memoirs. In the words of a stanitsa Starovelichkovskaia resident, I.F. Gordienko said, “I would say that in the year [19]33 it was done on purpose, in order to stamp out the Cossacks. They created committees here to keep looking for [grain] pits, in case anyone had fashioned one” (Matveyev Reference Matveyev, Bondar and Matveev2009, 22). This statement emphasizes that it was not a natural crop failure that caused famine, but rather the actions of officials from Central Russia.

The Cossacks who resisted were variously prosecuted and persecuted. Fifteen Cossack stanitsas (13 on the River Kuban and two in the Don region) were “put on the blacklist” of shame.Footnote ¹⁴ In the words of P.G. Butnik, a Cossack from stanitsa Nezamaievskaia, which was among those blacklisted:

The blacklisted stanitsas were to be severely punished by restrictions placed on supplying them with staple commodities, a ban on advancing local residents any loans, removal of supplies and goods from warehouses of the local consumers’ association, a ban on any contacts with other locations, forced confiscation of personal and household property, administrative arrest, and deportation of families of the most active “saboteurs.” Local party, Soviet, and Komsomol organizations were disbanded and military administration took over, complete with a curfew, a ban on cultural events for the masses, restrictions on individual business activities, prohibited access and egress, a ban on any kind of local trade—in fact, an establishment of martial law. In 1933, a number of blacklisted stanitsas had their residents deported into remote regions of the USSR. Houses and farmsteads vacated by “saboteurs” were turned over to families of demobilized Red Army soldiers. At harvest time in 1933, the norms of grain production for the ex-Red Army kolkhozes were two times lower than those expected from the other kolkhozes in the region (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2011).

In order to erase even the memory of resisting the Soviet regime, some stanitsas were renamed: the former Urupskaia was to be known as Sovetskaia, Poltavskaia became Krasnoarmeiskaia, and Umanskaia was now Leningradskaia. These punitive measures against the Cossacks during famine were a direct continuation of the earlier policy of dekulakization and decossackization.

To justify these actions against the Cossacks, well-known party functionary B.P. SheboldaievFootnote ¹⁵ wrote about “the defeat of the kulaks’ sabotage” in late 1932–early 1933: “The enemy’s hostility reached such a pitch that, by hiding from grain procurers thousands of pounds of grain in pits, some mature kulaks from among the Cossacks brought themselves and their own children to the point of dying of hunger” (Sheboldayev Reference Sheboldayev1936, 4). An immediate organizer of punitive measures, L.M. KaganovichFootnote ¹⁶ stressed a similar sentmiment: “all Kuban Cossacks ought to know how in [19]21 the Terek Cossacks were deported for resisting the Soviet rule. The same applies now: we cannot allow the Kuban lands—the golden lands—to remain unsowed, but be defiled, be spat on, not be taken into account… we will rather move you” (Oskolkov Reference Oskolkov1993, 9–10).

Only after this did the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union resolve to give the North Caucasus seed relief in 1933, whereas no such aid was given in 1932 (Danilov, Roberta, and Lynne 2001, 288–289, 362–363, 367–368, 374–375). On May 26, 1933, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a special resolution: On Food Relief for the North Caucasus (Kondrashin Reference Kondrashin2011).

The Cossacks’ historical memory often associates forced seizures of grain and other foodstuffs with actions of other ethnic and social groups, as well as persons from other regions: those from out of town,Footnote ¹⁷ Red Army soldiers released from active duty, and others. Eyewitnesses noted that a “special committee went around: people from Leningrad, Muscovites, the majority were Jewish” (Matveyev Reference Matveyev, Bondar and Matveev2009, 22). These words bespoke not only the committee members’ ethnic belonging, but also Kuban stanitsa residents’ traditional ethnic biases.

According to a resident of stanitsa Grigoripolisskaia (presently of Novoalexandrovskii district of Stavropol Krai), V.I. Dronov, the relief committee (komsod) included “both our people and those from out town” (Golod na Kubani 2009, 438). As stanitsa Mingrelskaia (presently of Abinskii district of Krasnodar Krai) resident S.Ye. Damnitskii asserted:

This account contradicts documentary evidence and studies based on this evidence, according to which it was the demobilized Red Army soldiers from the military districts of Moscow, Belorussia, and Volga to settle in this stanitsa. No one from North Caucasus or even from the Ukraine was involved in resettlement (Tarkhova Reference Tarkhova1997, 38–42). But N.G. Butnik also recalled that “the elders told me later that there had been no trials here with a court and the jury. There was a troika. Footnote ¹⁸ Most of them weren’t Russian, but primarily “black,” Caucasian. For even I have heard them speak. This nation seemed to have been very antagonistic toward the Kubans” (Golod na Kubani 2009, 388). Many memoirs feature stories of family members finding respite from famine in the Adyghe villages, the Black Sea coast, or South Caucasus. They imply that famine did no harm to other, non-Cossack lands, including national autonomies of the North Caucasus (Matveyev Reference Matveyev, Bondar and Matveev2009, 23–25).

Survival Strategies: Similarities and Differences

While the authorities’ policies in 1921–1922 and 1932–1933 were radically different, the Cossacks’ actions in response to either famine had a lot in common. Hunger compelled people to modify their everyday eating habits: the Cossacks had to resort to eating nettle, sorrel, other plants, wild fruit, and berries. As М.V. Sementsov states based on folkloric evidence, “during lean years,” people in Kuban “consumed purslane, spurges, salsify, mallow, the henbanes, crambe, barbarea, lattuce, sickleweed, salvia, shepherd’s purse, crocus and tulip bulbs, cattail, chokeberry, burdock roots. To substitute for flour, beech nuts were ground alongside mais, acorns were also used” (Sementsov Reference Sementsov and Sementsov2007, 147). Tree bark was also widely used, as testified to by archival documents.Footnote ¹⁹ To assuage hunger, tree bark was first pounded in the mortar, then used to bake unleavened cakes. Long-term residents of the Don stanitsa Melikhovskaia recalled how, during the famine of 1921–1922, in order to survive they used to grind tree bark, pound chaff (the husks left over after threshing grains), and dry weeds, mostly tumbleweed. They washed, dried, and ate roots of reeds and cattail, and baked surrogate cakes (Shevchenko Reference Shevchenko2005, 31).

Those living near rivers or lakes were relatively lucky. In the spring of 1921, the despairing population of the Lower Don took to fishing out in the open, and even though this violated not just the law, but also a traditionally established moratorium on fishing during spawning season. The authorities were unable to do anything about it (Berelovich Reference Berelovich and Danilov2000, 412). When the catch was good, local residents felt almost no impact of the famine and could even sell some products of their customary trade on the side. Apart from fish, local bodies of water supplied hungry people with snails, shellfish, crawfish, and other aquatic animal life. This occurred even more often than fishing, for many simply had no strength left for fishing (Golod na Kubani Reference Bondar and Matveev2009, 356). As one of the Don Cossacks recorded in 1930, “we will have to recall the tricks of the foodless 1920s and dive into the Don the Sustainer for shellfish” (Sidorov Reference Sidorov1994, 176). In August 1933, up to 30 Cossack households among the kolkhoz workers and individual farmers left stanitsa Starotitarovskaia of Temriukskii district of North Caucasus Krai for the floodplains on the Kuban River. They declared that the authorities “had been extorting from them their last bits of grain, whereas here the Kuban river would keep them fed, however poorly.”Footnote ²⁰

One more salient survival strategy was the slaughtering of domestic livestock. A conscious decimation of the beasts of burden necessary for agricultural work would inevitably lead to reduced yields and food shortages in the future. Hence, the cattle were to be saved at all costs. The animals were switched to emergency fodder made of hay and reeds from the rooftops of outbuildings and even residential housing. Consequently, villages acquired a rather exotic appearance by spring, with their roofless houses and uncovered beams sticking out for all to see. The composition of the livestock changed, too: individual farmers would hold first and foremost onto dairy cows whose milk became a strategic means of survival in the time of famine.

Everday diet included small rodents and other wildlife, as well as one’s own pets or those stolen from the neighbours. Growing up in the country children would, from an early age, learn to catch and eat critters, but in the face of famine traditional childhood sports, such as pouring water down ground squirrels’ holes in order to catch them when they tried to escape, acquired vital importance as a means to stave off hunger. In 1922, contemporaries remarked on the “total extermination of dogs and cats,” when neighbours everywhere were “stealing and eating each other’s pets,” when starving people would catch rats, and “cats, dogs, and carrion [were] considered to be the tastiest treat” (Shadrina and Tabunshchikova Reference Shadrina and Tabunshchikova2013, 185). The spring 1922 report by the Donetsk Circuit Committee of the Communist Party contains a shocking descrption of the situation: “A fallen horse and other dead animals attract [the starving people’s] attention from several miles away. The starvelings who gather at the scene share the carrion among themselves.”Footnote ²¹

One other traditional way to survive was by obtaining food in exchange for clothes, shoes, and other valuables preserved since pre-Revolutionary times: “antique mother’s and father’s belongings, good quality, valuable blankets, shawls, skirts, and tablecloths—all of those we took for trading to Panteleimonovka. They had good crops. We would gather up kerchiefs and shawls. We traded a shawl for a pail of potatoes—a knitted woollen shawl. We peeled it, planted the skins, and then there were crops” (Golod na Kubani Reference Bondar and Matveev2009, 435). Potatoes were immediately eaten, and potato peelings were planted to grow new crops.

But there were differences between survival strategies used in the first famine, in 1921–1922, and in the second famine, in 1932–1933. This applies particularly to economic self-regulation in the Cossack stanitsas and homesteads. After the Civil War, the authorities encouraged people to form mutual aid societies, whereas in the early 1930s any initiative of this sort would bring about grave consequences. As an example, the tragic story of the secretary of the Communist party branch of stanitsa Otradnaia in Tikhoretskii distict of North Caucasus Krai, N.V. Kotov, comes to mind. In adherence to the agricultural co-op’s regulations, he gave the malnourished kolkhoz workers around 1 kg of grain per day instead of the 491 g, as the Krai authorities insisted he should have (Oskolkov Reference Oskolkov1991, 47–51). This saved many lives, but the party secretary and his supporters were executed by firing squad.

In 1921–1922, the Cossack population of the Don and Kuban regions attempted to survive famine by refusing to surrender grain to the state and taking up arms to resist the authorities in direct continuation of the recent civil war. “The Cossaks were reluctant to surrender grain, [the Soviet rule] had to resort to arms, frequent skirmishes between food requisition detachmentsFootnote ²² and Cossacks took place. These skirmishes necessitated sending military divisions to quash the resistance, but upon their approach the Cossacks fled into the woods and floodplains.”Footnote ²³ Local party and Soviet authorities stood on the positions of “war communism” and prevented the New Economic Policy from being introduced on the Cossack homesteads and in stanitsas.

In the early 1920s, anti-Soviet miltants continued to be active in Cossack areas. Red Army divisions proved to be unable, at these early stages of the insurgency, to suppress individual insurrections on homesteads and in stanitsas. Detachments of 120–350 rebels started coming together, forming sizeable armies willing to seize and control substantial territories. Between the armed resistance to the Soviet regime trying to take their food and their own internal food requisitions, some of the Cossack farmers managed to live through the 1921–1922 famine, coming out relatively unscathed.

By the early 1930, the Cossacks’ morale had been broken and they could no longer stand for themselves. This was further exacerbated by dekulakization and decossackization, which stripped the Don and Kuban stanitsas of a considerable number of their most active inhabitants or made them resort to passive resistance.

Suicide was a type of asocial behavioural strategy during famine. However, voluntarily taking of one’s own life was rarely able to ensure the survival of remaining family members. Nevertheless, some stanitsa residents would hang themselves, drown themselves, or set themselves on fire in a locked-up building. Another asocial survival strategy reflecting the highest degree of hunger was necrophagy. Such cases were recorded in stanitsa Yermakovskaia and other communities.Footnote ²⁴

Open cannibalism, meaning the killing and eating of fellow humans, was the most exceptional strategy. In February 1922, the town-wide meeting of the women of Novocherkassk made note of “a series of horrifying occurrences of cannibalism” (Shadrina and Tabunshchikova Reference Shadrina and Tabunshchikova2013, 150). Such cases took place in the famished Kuban stanitsas in 1932–1933 as well. They were reflected not only in eyewitnesses’ memoirs but also in the documents produced by the party and governmental organizations (Golod na Kubani Reference Bondar and Matveev2009, 23, 132).

A peculiar survival strategy was adopted by the local Soviet functionaries after having lost their entitlement to food rations during the 1920s famine. They started quitting their governmental positions in favour of employment in a co-op or in the private sector. A massive resignation of Soviet officials was observed, for example, in Morozovskii district in 1922 (Skorik Reference Skorik2015, 474). This worked during the transition to the New Economic Policy, but it was no longer feasible in the early 1930s, especially after restrictions were placed on migration.

The Role of the Church in the Context of Hunger

In keeping with the tradition of giving charitable succor to those affected by natural disasters, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church—His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin)—volunteered to help the Soviet state raise funds in support of the hungry in July 1921. Later, he offered up eccelesiastical valuables that were not used for liturgical purposes. In August 1921, the Patriarch addressed the patriarchs of the Eastern orthodox churches, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishop of New York with a request to help the hunger victims of the Volga relion. This was also when he petitioned the authorities in writing to let him organize an All-Russian Ecclesiastical Relief Committee (Gubonin Reference Gubonin1994). In his address to state officials on August 22, 1921, Patriarch Tikhon once again emphasized the Church’s willingness to help the hungry and collect donations of money, clothing, and food (Russkaja Pravoslavnaja Cerkov’ 1995, 146–147). The Patriarch’s initiative caused an ambivalent and mostly negative reaction of the Communist Party leadership (Krivova Reference Krivova1999). However, in view of the country’s difficult economic situation, permission was granted for the Church to raise funds for the hungry (Krivova Reference Krivova1999).

After the Patriarch’s written request to organize an All-Russian Ecclesiastical Committee for famine relief in the Volga region, a meeting of the clergy and laymen took place in Novocherkassk on August 16, 1921, to discuss establishing a local branch of the committee.Footnote ²⁵ In contrast to the central All-Russian Ecclesiastical Committee, the Novocherkassk initiative received not only permission from the local Extraordinary Committee for volunteering to help but also praise.Footnote ²⁶ Staring from August 1921, collection began also in churches of Rostov-on-Don (Shadrina and Tabunshchikova Reference Shadrina and Tabunshchikova2013, 111). In the summer of 1921, clergy of the Don region collected and distributed 100,000 rubles among the hungry.Footnote ²⁷

But the Soviet state decided to turn Patriarch Tikhon’s initiative against the Church. On December 27, 1921, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee published the decree On Valuables in Churches and Monasteries. On January 2, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the resolution On Liquidation of Ecclesiastical Property, entailing a partial confiscation of valuables. A decree from February 23, 1922, stipulated a total expropriation of ecclesiastical valuables and placed a ban on substituting liturgical objects. The Church was basically excluded from choosing what to surrender. Already on February 19, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon addressed the Orthodox believers with a request to intensify their efforts to help the hungry, thereby giving the public permission to donate ecclesiastical objects not used in liturgical services to famine relief (Gubonin Reference Gubonin1994, 187). However, on February 28, in his epistle regarding aid to the hungry and the expropriation of ecclesiastical valuables, the patriarch condemned the Executive Committee’s decree of February 23, calling it “an act of blasphemy” and expressing his displeasure at the confiscation of holy objects (Acts of the Holy Patriarch Tikhon 1994, 190). However, in many cases, the hierarchs chose to compromise with the authorities. For instance, Metropolitan Mitrofan (Simashkevich), head of the Don and Novocherkassk bishopric, authorized his vicar to state that, from the canonical viewpoint, expropriation of ecclesiastical valuables was possible and necessary.Footnote ²⁸ He addressed the clergy and the laymen with a pastoral intended to soften Patriarch Tikhon’s position as much as possible, suggesting turning liturgical vessels into scrap before surrendering to avoid their desecration.Footnote ²⁹ Arsenii Smolenets, the bishop of Rostov and Taganrog, was a vocal opponent of expropriations. This resulted in public unrest in Rostov-on-Don and in stanitsa Morozovskaia. In the latter, demonstrations against expropriations of ecclesiastical valuables were simultaneous with an alleged execution by firing squad of 24 cannibals.Footnote ³⁰ Whereas at first the Cossacks had protested “looting” the churches, by this time, with expropriation of valuables purposely timed to coincide with the sowing season, they had lost any interest in this action.

According to incomplete preliminary data, by May 1922 the authorities had removed from the churches of the Don Oblast over 25 lbs (or approximately 12 kg) of gold, over 505 pud (over 8 tonnes) of silver ecclesiastical utensils, and many other valuables.Footnote ³¹ But these valuables were not used to help the hungry in the Don Oblast or in the Volga region. The Soviet regime kept them exclusively for its own needs, such as, for instance, financing “a worldwide revolution” in Europe. The money was invested in western banks, with proceeds benefitting the Bolshevik government (Mitrofanov Reference Mitrofanov2002). Any protests provided grounds for a campaign against clergy.

Just like in the 1920s, the famine of 1932–1933 brought about no religious cults. Moreover, this was not even possible in the context of an aggressive antireligious propaganda campaign run by the Soviet government since the early 1920s. (Tabunshchikova and Shadrina Reference Tabunshchikova and Shadrina2016, 114–136). Famine vividly demonstrated how different the position of the Russian Orthodox Church now was. Since the Church, “beheaded” and decentralized by dissensions instigated by the State Political Administration, could no longer express an opinion and call on the believers for help, like it did in 1921, parish clergy’s privately shared negative views of “wholesale collectivization” gained extra traction.

This did not go unnoticed by the populace, nor was it ignored the Soviet authorities, who used it as a weapon against the priests. Analysis of archived investigative documents show that repressions of the Orthodox clergy in 1932–1933 were related to clergymen’s protests against the “kolkhoz-building.” Standard accusations levied against the ecclesiastics were often based on eyewitness accounts of what a priest said in a private conversation. For instance, priest A.M. Alekseyev was charged with “agitating against the kolkhoz movement of the sowing campaign and a number of other campaigns.” During grain requisitioning, Alekseyev, “having undertaken to foil these afforts, carried out systematic anti-Soviet propaganda, urged the population not give the state their surplus grain, threatened the needy with an imminent arrival of the Whites from abroad and their merciless execution of those helping the authorities to build a socialist state.”Footnote ³² Alekseyev was exiled to the North for 5 years. Archival documents abound with similar cases.

Clearly, clergymen shared their fears that the kolkhoz policy would lead the population to ruin in private conversations. Since a priest cotinued to enjoy respect especially in Cossack communities, the Soviet regime took steps to curtail the clergy’s influence by means of repressions. The priests’ personal views notwithstanding, the Russian Orthodox Church had no influence on the changes in state policies, nor was it able to help the hungry. Repressions of the early 1930s served as the first step on the way to repressions of 1937–1938, many of which were based on false accusations.

Besides, religious rituals could hardly be carried out properly, if at all in the time of famine. Eyewitness accounts make a point of the desire to celebrate major holy days, mainly Easter, even if symbolically, with an “extra” cake of pig weed and dust or, if possible, an egg purchased with the last of the money.

But often, religious holy days were no different from regular days, filled with tragic losses. “On the first day of Easter … father is dying on the bed. And the little brother, dying on the bench, is begging, ‘Give me but a half an egg to eat. I am dying.’ But there’s nothing. Only water, that’s it. And a willow twig is in the cabin.” Consequently, no calendar or lifecycle events were celebrated either: “There were no childbirth celebrations, no baptisms, weddings, nor even proper funerals.” Stanitsa Staronishesteblievskaia resident P.A. Kostiglot noted that “rituals were observed and kept up to 1932, when people lived a life. Then came [those who] put everyone here in jail, tried them in courts, and starved them. All games were over then: all anyone could think of was how to survive” (Bondar Reference Bondar, Matveev and Kokun’ko2014, 187).

The sources at our disposal do not give us complete information on the reaction of dissident communities to famine in 1921–1922 and 1932–1933. Nevertheless, documents offer some insight into their activities, which in the contexts of struggle with hunger turned against the government. In March 1934, officers of the Joint State Political Directorate of the Azov-Black Sea Krai succeeded at wiping out a “c[ounter]-[revolutionary] monarchist organization of the Joannites”Footnote ³³ operating in several communities in Don and Kuban, with headquarters on a homestead called Zapadnii Sosyk. When interrogated upon their arrest, members of the organization stated that “by focusing their c[ounter]-r[evolutionary] activities on wealthy Cossacks, our organization simultaneously worked on Cossack youth, from whom rebel units were formed, mostly from among the military reserve.”Footnote ³⁴ Based on the Joannites’ statements, the Joint State Political Directorate’s officers arrested six reservists in stanitsa Starominskaia. Members of the organization were alleged to have been preparing an armed insurrection of the Don and Kuban Cossacks, but postponed it till the beginning of intervention: «“we were betting on a well-heeled Cossack as the primary force capable of standing up againt the Soviet rule when the time is right.”Footnote ³⁵ Remarkably, to stimulate anti-Soviet sentiments among the Cossacks, the Joannites tried to revive the monarchist ideals by resorting to the typical Russian impersonation. As reported by the criminal investigation materials, “at one of the safe houses in Samsonenko’s domicile in stanitsa Starominskaia, the c[ounter]-r[evolutionary] organization had concealed the so-called “royal heir Alexei,” brought there by some Kalmychek Yemelian from stanitsa Pavlovskaia for the purpose of greater promotion of the monarchy among the Don Cossacks.” Members of the organization even paraded this “heir” around the Cossack stanitsas in the company of Ye. Kalmychek.Footnote ³⁶ Nevertheless, judging by the fact that the Joint State Political Directorate’s officers only mentioned the “royal heir” in passing, this action of the Joannites garnered no success among the Don and Kuban Cossacks.