Niccolò Pianciola Lingnan University, Hong Kong [email protected]

Sacrificing the : The Stalinist Hierarchy of Consumption and the Great Famine in of 1931-33

1. Introduction: of Food Production, Consumption, and Famine1

Even if the historiography about the Great Famine in Kazakhstan is already a quarter-century-old, 2 so far scholars have not drawn a complete picture of the flow of food resources inside and outside Kazakhstan. This is especially true in relation to meat and livestock, the vital resource of the Kazakh herdsmen who were the main

1 I would like to thank the participants of the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center 2014 Summer International Symposium, and especially our discussant Chida Tetsuro, for insightful comments. I would also like to thank Oscar Sanchez-Sibony and the other members of the Hong Kong Historians' Seminar, where I presented an updated version of the paper, for their comments. Finally, I would like to thank Andrew Straw for his comments and editing assistance, and Yerlan Medeubaev for his help with Kazakh-language literature. 2 The literature about the great famine in Kazakhstan is now extensive: Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, Manash Kozybaev, Makash Tatimov, “Kazakhstanskaya tragediia”, Voprosy istorii 7 (1989): 53-71; Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, Kaydar Aldazhumanov, Manash Kozybaev, Kollektivizatsiia v Kazakhstane: tragediia krest’yanstva (Alma-Ata: Biblioteka istorika, 1992); Тalas Omarbekov, Zobalang (Almaty: Sanat, 1994); id., 20-30 zhyldardaghy Qazaqstan qasireti (Almaty: Sanat, 1997); Niccolò Pianciola, “Famine in the . The Collectivization of Agriculture and the Kazak Herdsmen, 1928-1934”, Cahiers du monde russe, 45/1-2 (2004): 137-192; Isabelle Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’URSS de Staline. Collectivisation et changement social (1928-1945) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2005); Niccolò Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera. Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi e costruzione statale in Centrale (1905-1936) (Rome: Viella, 2009); Matthew Payne, “Seeing Like a Soviet State: Settlement of Nomadic Kazakhs, 1928-1934”, in Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography, edited by Golfo Alexopoulos, Julie Hessler, and Kirill Tomoff (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 59-86; Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Soviet Kazakhstan and the Kazakh Famine, 1921-1934 (PhD dissertation, Yale University 2011); Robert Kindler, Stalins Nomaden. Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014). 1

victims of the famine. In assessing the nature of the relation between Moscow and during early Stalinism, it is essential to understand how many of the resources extracted in Kazakhstan were actually exported outside of the , and to what end. In the present paper, I will focus on livestock procurements as a crucial factor in unleashing the famine, and the use the state made of these resources. The study is based on newly retrieved materials from the Russian State Archive of the Economy in Moscow and from other archival repositories in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. One of the most important interpretative questions in connection to the great famine of 1931-33 in Kazakhstan is why the ethnic distribution of the mortality rate during the famine was so unbalanced. While in Kazakhstan at the end of the 1920s the population was one third Slavic settlers, the victims of the famine were mostly Kazakhs. Different estimates put the number of Kazakhs who perished during the famine between 1.15 and 1.5 million, approximately one third of the total Kazakh population. 3 To assess the death toll among Europeans in Kazakhstan is comparatively more difficult, since waves of immigration and deportation increased the numbers of Europeans, especially starting with the “dekulakization” campaign in 1930. However, it is generally accepted among scholars that victims among Kazakh herdsmen were greater, in both absolute and relative terms, than among Europeans peasants and urban dwellers in the region. The urban population was largely European in Kazakhstan at the time of the famine, and the urban/rural population ratio was extremely low. In addition, no town had reached 100,000 inhabitants.4 In order to explain the "ethnic bias" of the famine death toll, it is important to focus on the relative vulnerability of Kazakh herdsmen and Slavic peasants to food crises. In order to do so, it is important to analyze the region's economy as an agro- pastoral economic system that had formed in the Steppe with Slavic colonization. Immigration of Slavic peasants had started in the first half of the 19th century, but had become massive only in the last 25 years of existence of the Tsarist Empire. While there is no space to go into details in the framework of the present paper,5 the most important point to make in this regard is the interdependency that had developed

3 Sergei Maksudov, "Migracii v SSSR v 1926-1939 godakh", Cahiers du monde russe, 40/4 (1999): 770-775, 789-792; Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs, 268. 4 According to the first Soviet census (the only one before the famine) in 1926, Semipalatinsk was the biggest urban center of Kazakhstan, with 56,635 inhabitants. 5 I tried to do it elsewhere: see Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 33-86, 193-227. 2

between peasants' agricultural (mainly grains) production and herdsmen's livestock production. This meant that the herdsmen’s subsistence depended on the peasant’s grain production much more than the other way round. Forced extraction of grain from the region's market starting in 1928 was, therefore, an important factor in pushing the herdsmen below the subsistence line. Since our aim is to explain a two- year event such as the famine, we must consider processes that started a few decades before, such as the formation of this agro-pastoral economic system mentioned above, as long-term preconditions. Events happening ten to fifteen years before the famine can be considered mid-term preconditions. Here I am referring to the consequences of the eight years of crises between the First World War (which implied requisitions of livestock in the Steppe, the great revolt of 1916 and its repression, and the collapse of the Tsarist state) and the end of the 1921-22 famine that hit the Kazakh north-western steppe particularly hard. This “continuum of crisis” (to borrow Peter Holquist’s expression) included other regional famines, such as the one in Semirech'e in 1917.6 The years between 1916 and 1922 were also a period of violent conflict between pastoralists and agricultural settlers, with very different levels of intensity and violence in different areas of the Steppe. These years of crisis left the surviving Kazakhs destitute and vulnerable, especially in Semirech'e/,7 but also in areas of the Steppe close to . The incomplete recovery (in terms of livestock numbers and, in general, subsistence levels) during the New Economic Policy period from the deep demographic and economic crisis of 1914-1922 is a factor that explains Kazakh society's vulnerability to extractive policies implemented starting with forced procurements in the winter of 1927-28.8 Forced grain and livestock procurements, as well as disruptions caused by the collectivization and total sedentarization campaigns (officially launched in early 1930), are the short-term causes often invoked by scholars to explain the final push towards the subsistence crisis and the famine. It is clear that the extraction of resources from the region had an impact in unleashing the famine. However, different scholars assign different weights to these factors. The question about their relative

6 Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: 's Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 7 The Tsarist oblast' of Semirech'e was renamed Zhetysu (the Kazakh version of the name, which means "Seven Rivers"), in 1921. 8 Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 193-227. 3

importance, and, particularly, the use that the state made of these resources, is still waiting for a conclusive answer.

2. The Stalinist Hierarchy of Consumption

The concept of "hierarchy of consumption" was introduced by Elena Osokina, who studied the transition from the free market of food products during the NEP to the system of state-controlled rationing.9 The Stalinist rationing system started in December 1928, when the Politburo allowed city administrations of industrial centers to introduce bread rationing. As Osokina underscored, the aim of this policy was clearly stated in the relevant decrees: to preserve acceptable levels of consumption among industrial and white-collar workers to the detriment of the non-urban population.10 In February 1929, the rationing system for bread was extended to the entire Soviet Union; in July 1929, rationing was extended to meat. In October 1929, uniform consumption norms for bread, groats, meat, herring, butter, sugar, tea, and eggs were introduced. Norms were set at a slightly higher level in comparison with consumption data derived from household budgets of the 1928-29 economic year. They were of descending quantity for different class/occupational groups: first industrial workers, then white-collar workers, then members of the families of the first two categories, then artisans. On the other hand, norms for other social groups were set at a level that was slightly lower than the average consumption in 1928-29. Social hierarchy was paired with geographical hierarchy, which was also linked to political expediency and preoccupations for political stability. As during the First World War, when the two capitals and the army had precedence in food distribution over any other region, the Stalinist rationing system aimed first at providing food for Moscow and Leningrad, and then for the industrial and mining centers. Industrial workers received 600-800 gr of black bread per day, plus 100-200 gr of meat on "meat days". The quality of both bread and meat was often extremely

9 Elena Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia. O zhizni liudei v uslovijakh stalinskogo snabzheniia, 1928- 1935 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo MGOU, 1993). On state policies of rationing and repression of markets inside the country, and the resilience of market relations in Stalinist society, see Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 10 Elena Osokina, Za fasadom "stalinskogo izobiliia". Raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927-1941 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008), 95. 4

low. White-collar workers received half quantity of bread (300 gr per day). The extreme low level of consumption established a "hierarchy of poverty", which during the famine years was a divide separating those who could survive from those who perished.11 Historians have already pointed out that, for reasons linked to the stability of the regime, the inhabitants of Moscow and Leningrad were consistently fed by the state's rationing system during the famine years. However, outside of the major cities it is estimated that around 100 million people in the Soviet Union were undernourished during the first half of the 1930s, approximately two-thirds of the total Soviet population12. According to estimates that are still contested, Soviet famines at the beginning of the 1930s killed almost six million people, concentrated in Ukraine (more than half of the victims), in Kazakhstan (a quarter of the victims), and in the North .13 These three provided almost 90% of the total number of victims. There were also hundreds of thousands of deaths in different regions of the Russian Soviet Republic, particularly in the Volga (above all in the Volga Germans region) and in the Urals.14 Focusing on national groups, the famine (malnutrition, hunger, and their connected epidemic diseases) killed more than one third of the Kazakhs and at least one fifth of the Ukrainians as well as hundreds of thousands of Russians. With late-Tsarist economic transformations and migrations, areas of the Empire became increasingly differentiated between grain-export and -import regions. The population of the northern region of the Tsarist and Soviet territory, which comprised all the main urban and industrial centers of the country, including Moscow and St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad, could not feed itself with grain produced in the region, and depended on imports. Leningrad, Karelia, Belorussia, and the Central Industrial Region (Moscow, Ivanovo, Nizhnii Novgorod) made up this macroregion. The second grain net-importer macroregion was in the South: Central Asia

11 Osokina, Za fasadom "stalinskogo izobiliia", 101, 109, 111, 123, 155-188. 12 Stephen G. Wheatcroft, "Towards Explaining Soviet Famine of 1931–3: Political And Natural Factors In Perspective", Food & Foodways 12/2-3 (2004): 107. The last census before the famine (1926) counted 148.7 million inhabitants in the Soviet Union. 13 The most accurate estimates of the number of victims are those provided by Robert W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, who gave the quantity of 5.7 excess deaths due to the famine in the four years between 1930 and 1933. See R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-33. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia. Vol. 5 (Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 415. 14 Viktor Kondrashin, Golod 1932-1933 godov: tragediia rossiiskoi derevni (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008). 5

(Kazakhstan excluded) and (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia). In Central Asia, the main agricultural crop was cotton, by far the most important economic resource for the state that the region produced. Area cultivated to cotton greatly expanded during the first Five Year plan. These two net-consumer regions were counterbalanced by three grain net-exporter macroregions: the Southern (Ukraine and ), the Central (the Black-Earth region and the Volga region), and the Eastern (Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan and, to a much lesser extent, the Russian ).15 Inside Kazakhstan, there was a strong regional specialization: the grain- producing regions were northern and south-eastern Kazakhstan, where the majority of Slavic agricultural settlers had migrated during the last decades of the Tsarist Empire. The legacy of the Tsarist agricultural colonization of the Steppe was a division of the rural society between two groups of net grain-producers (the Slavic peasants) and net grain-consumers, the pastoral Kazakhs. 16 This is the crucial factor to bear in mind in order to understand the pattern of the great famine in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan was one of the few regions of the Soviet Union (and by far the most important among them) to have such a divided rural society.17

3. The Place of Kazakhstan in Early Stalinist Food Policies

Grain not only had to be collected and distributed among the Soviet urban population, but it also was a critical source of hard currency in the state effort towards industrialization. The most important Soviet region in terms of grain production was Ukraine. Northern Kazakhstan was also an important region for grain production, but its production was far lower than that of Siberia or the North Caucasus. Even if the quantity of grain requisitioned was small in comparison with other Soviet regions, quotas for grain procurements were sufficiently high to be crucial in the process of

15 Wheatcroft, "Towards Explaining Soviet Famine", 109-110. See also the webpage presenting economic data used by R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/ (accessed September 2, 2014). 16 At the end of the 1920s, one fourth of the Kazakhs tilled the land, but almost entirely for their own subsistence. 17 Kirgizia (present-day Kyrgyzstan) was in the same situation, but the administrative-economic of early Stalinist Soviet Union, its distance from the main urban centers in Russia, and the lack of transport infrastructures explain why the Kyrgyz were spared by the famine. 6

progressive impoverishment of the Kazakhs that started with the first forced grain procurements in 1928.18 Most importantly, in the summer of 1930 a deep crisis in the Soviet meat supply caused the Kremlin to see Kazakhstan as a crucial area for meat and livestock procurements. The quantity of livestock present on Soviet territory had already started to decrease sharply during at least the second year of forced requisitions (1928-29). Peasants preferred to sell livestock on the black market or slaughter and eat their animals, instead of consigning them to procurement squads. During the first winter of the campaign of total collectivization, the number of livestock plummeted in the Soviet Union. This was not only a big problem for the preservation of existing meat consumption levels in the cities, but also for agricultural productivity and for transport in the countryside. The use of animals for transport and traction was still much more important than machines in the Soviet countryside.19 In the summer of 1930, when requisition quotas were set for the next campaign, Kazakhstan became the central region for pan-Soviet meat and livestock policies. It is important to note that the centrality of Kazakhstan was not so much linked to the fact that it contained a larger amount of livestock in comparison with other regions; it had more to do with the fact that the Kremlin saw livestock in "nomads'" hands as less productive and less useful for the state. According to State Planning Committee (Gosplan) numbers, total livestock in the USSR in 1930 included 164,462,000 head: 26,834,000 cows, 31,241,000 horses (of which, 21,457,000 were workhorses), 94,204,000 sheep and goats, 12,183,000 pigs. Of these, 140,915,000 were located in the Russian Socialist Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), of which Kazakhstan was a part until 1936.20 In June 1930, there were 19,576,000 head of livestock in Kazakhstan, 21 making up 13.9% of RSFSR livestock and 11.9% of USSR livestock. On July 15, 1930 a secret Politburo resolution on livestock procurements emphasized the necessity to intensify them in "nomadic regions" (the context of the

18 I develop this point in Pianciola, "Famine in the Steppe" and in Stalinismo di frontiera. Further research by other scholars has confirmed this argument. See especially Cameron, The Hungry Steppe. 19 For an assessment of the "livestock disaster" during the collectivization years, cf. also Davies and Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger, 301-339. 20 Russian State Archive of the Economy (hereafter RGAE), 4372/62/20, Chislennost’ skota po respublikam v 1929-1931 (1930). Camels were not included in these figures. 21 State Archive of the Russian Federation (hereafter GARF), 6985/1/19/105, Materials of the Kiselev commission. The numbers for livestock did not include camels; there were approximately 788,000 camels in June 1930 in Kazakhstan. 7

text clarifies that Politburo members were primarily referring to Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus republics), and set the quota for the year. Soyuzmyaso (literally “[Soviet] Union Meat”) was the Soviet organization in charge of overseeing meat and livestock procurements and of running the entire network of Soviet slaughterhouses and meat packing factories. A certain amount of grain (50-80,000 tons) should have been put at the disposal of Soyuzmyaso, so that it could be exchanged for livestock in nomadic areas.22 The same Politburo resolution decreed that, out of a total of 475,000 head of cattle to be sent to Moscow and Leningrad from all over the country during the period from July to late September, 100,000 head of cattle (21%) should be collected in Kazakhstan. Another 100,000 head were to be procured from the North Caucasus. The Politburo also decided that meat distribution should be granted to "no more than 14 million people" in urban and industrial centers over the Soviet Union, i.e. approximately 9% of the total Soviet population, and set meat consumption norms for four categories of geographical areas and social groups (workers and clerks/bureaucrats). Consumption norms for workers in Moscow and Leningrad were twice as large as the norms for workers in areas of the lowest category ("Cities of list no. 2 and all other industries").23 Kazakhstan, as regional Party secretary Filipp Goloshchekin pointed out, was the area that had "the largest livestock procurement quota in the [Soviet] Union".24 According to the 1930-31 livestock procurement plan, Kazakhstan had to provide 493,500 tons of "live weight" out of a total of 2,676,400 for the entire Soviet Union, or 18.4% of the total, i.e. one time and a half the share of Kazakhstan livestock of total Soviet livestock. The second Soviet republic was Ukraine with 434,800 tons (16.2%); third was North Caucasus, with 226,700 tons (8.5%). These three republics were therefore supposed to be supplying 43.1% of the total procurement. "Central Asia", which for livestock procurement plans purposes comprised only Uzbekistan, Turkmenia and Tajikistan, had to turn in only 66,200 tons of live weight (2.5%),

22 Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (hereafter RGASPI), 17/3/789/12ob, Sekretno. Postanovlenie Politburo TsK VKP(b) o skotozagotovkakh i miasosnabzhenii ot 15.07.1930 g. (the same document can be found at GAKOO, R-5/2/431/34-37. The reference to "nomadic regions" is at list 34ob). 23 RGASPI, 17/3/789/12, Sekretno. Postanovlenie Politburo TsK VKP(b) o skotozagotovkakh i miasosnabzhenii ot 15.07.1930 g.; Soyuzmyaso acknowledged the decision with a resolution of its own the same day: RGAE, 8297/1a/2/document 25 [listy are not numbered], Postanovlenie Soyuzmyasa, 15.07.1930. 24 RGASPI, 84/2/16/34, Alma-Ata. Kazkraikom VKP(b) v TsK VKP(b), O skotozagotovkakh v Kazakhstane, 18.02.1931. 8

while a separate quota of 62,000 tons was assigned to Kirgizia (2.3%). Livestock procurement was divided between a plan for komplektovanie of livestock in kolkhozes and sovkhozes (i.e., cattle, horses, and other animals that should be moved to collective and state farms, where in mid-1930 the lacking of traction force was particularly felt), and a separate plan of meat procurements. The komplektovanie plan was assigned to Kazakhstan in the amount of 1,667,300 head of cattle, calves, pigs, sheep and goats. Of these, pigs were only 12,600 head. The average weight of an animal was calculated at around 100 kg (98.96 kg), since the corresponding total amount of live weight was 165,000 tons, Soyuzmyaso worked on the presumption that in Kazakhstan an average head of cattle weighed 230 kg, and the average weight of small livestock was 45 kg. These figures are extremely low in comparison with present-day European or North American standards. Telegrams from Kazakhstan protested that these figures were too high, and that the actual average weight at the time was less (171 kg for large livestock, 37 kg for small livestock).25 Therefore, a larger number of animals needed to be confiscated in order to fulfill the weight plan. The total meat procurement plan was 328,500 tons of live weight. Together with the livestock procurement plan they formed the above-mentioned amount of 493,500 tons.26 Even if we accept the 98.96 kg average used by Soyuzmyaso, this live weight quota meant that approximately 5 million animals (4,986,823, all species considered) had to be collected and/or slaughtered in Kazakhstan during the 1930-31 campaign. While Soyuzmyaso documents do not specify separate figures for different species, this amount should mostly concern horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and - marginally - pigs (pigs in Kazakhstan were only a few thousands in mid-1930). Camels were not considered edible animals, and it is unlikely that they were requisitioned for komplektovanie in sovkhozes and kolkhozes outside Kazakhstan. Horses were mostly requisitioned for komplektovanie, however horse meat still ended up on Moscow tables: Soyuzmyaso had to remind its lower organizations that horse meat should be not used for urban food rationing except in regions where it was customary to eat it, especially Bashkiria and Tatarstan. In any case horsemeat, mixed with meat of other

25 RGAE, 8297/1a/44/39, Predsedatel' pravleniia "Sojuzmjaso", Po voposu ustanovleniia raschetnykh tsen po kazakhstankomu skotu i mjasu v usloviiakh Urala, December 1931. 26 RGAE, 4372/29/896/13, Plan skotozagotovok dlia miasosnabzheniia i komplektovaniia na 1930-31 god., 19.08.1931. 9

animals, was used to produce sausages that were consumed in the entire Soviet Union.27 In June 1930, the quantity of livestock in Kazakhstan (including camels) was calculated in the amount of 20,364,708 head.28 Livestock requisitions for Kazakhstan in 1930-31 amounted to approximately one fourth (24.5%) of the entire animal population of the republic. Later assessments of the quantity of livestock in Kazakhstan put its number in June 1931 at 8,848,259. Eventually, livestock decrease was therefore significantly higher (-56.5%) than the requisition plan for 1930-31. More research is needed to explain this discrepancy. One factor could be the overestimation of animal weight, as mentioned above. Another factor could also be the 'appropriation' of Kazakhstan livestock by other regional procurement agencies. We know, for instance, that in 1931 livestock collected in Kazakhstan and sent to the Novosibirsk slaughterhouse was illegitimately included in the annual quotas of Siberian 'meat weight'. 29 However, the most likely and significant causes were epizootic diseases and undernourishment of the animal flocks in the newly created giant livestock kolkhozes and procurement points.30 In the same period, the number of camels, which probably were not exported in great quantities outside of the republic, dropped by 40.7%. The inflated livestock procurement quotas were partially based on the belief, shared by the Stalinist leadership in Moscow, that a much bigger amount of livestock was actually present in Kazakhstan than official statistics claimed. One of the aspects of the Stalinist turn in the second half of the 1920s was the war waged against official statistics and non-submissive economists, with the removal of Pavel Popov from the Central Statistical Directorate, and the closing down of the institute headed by Nikolai Kondrat'ev.31 A variation of the well-known "myth of grain plenty" owned by kulaks was the myth about livestock abundance, especially in peripheral pastoral regions. The clearest evidence of this I was able to find is a telegram sent by Mikoyan from

27 RGAE, 8297/1a/7/111-123, Protokol soveshchaniia "Soyuzmyaso", O zavoze koniny v Moskvu i ee ispol'zovanii, 10.03.1930. 28 GARF, 6985/1/19/105, Materials of the Kiselev commission. 29 RGASPI, 17/167/32/58, Shifrotelegramma zamestitelia Narkoma snabzheniia SSSR M.N. Belen'kogo v TsK VKP(b) o khode skotozagotovok v Zapadnoi Sibiri. 15.09.1931, in V.V. Kondrashin et al. (sost.), Golod v SSSR, 1929-1934. Tom pervyi. 1929-iiul' 1932. Kniga 1. Dokumenty (Moskva: MFD, 2011), 618. 30 On this point see Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 388-391. 31 Andrea Graziosi, L'Urss di Lenin e Stalin. Storia dell'Unione Sovietica, 1914-1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 208-226; Vincent Barnett, “A Long Wave Goodbye: Kondrat’ev and the Conjuncture Institute, 1920-1928”, -Asia Studies 47/3 (1995): 414. 10

Alma-Ata to Stalin and Molotov in January 1931. The People's Commissar for Supply was traveling in Kazakhstan to oversee livestock procurements, putting pressure on Goloshchekin. Mikoyan wrote that

The livestock procurement plan, contrary to the assertions of [the party leadership of] Kazakhstan and Kirgizia, is rather understated, than exaggerated. Gosplans of Kazakhstan and Kirgizia work on the basis of data of the Kondrat'ev-Groman kind (operiruiut kondrat'evsko- gromanovskimi tsiframi) about livestock quantity, and assert that meat procurements plan is too high. As a matter of fact, there is a huge quantity of unaccounted livestock, a fact confirmed by livestock procurements from a number of districts [... during the last quarter of the year].32

Mikoyan then informed Moscow that Goloshchekin started to issue "correct, categorical directives" only at the beginning of January 1931 (following threatening telegrams sent to Goloshchekin by Stalin and Molotov, and probably in anticipation of Mikoyan's trip). These directives also included the creation of a large number of "slaughtering points" in the steppe. In each of them, 500 to 1,000 sheep and 200 to 400 cattle were killed every day, but a huge quantity of meat was lost because the facilities for its conservation and transport from far-away districts were lacking.33 While Mikoyan was forcing the "extraction" of livestock from Kazakhstan, the republic had already been hit by regional famines since the beginning of 1930, especially in the north-west (Aktiubinsk/Aktobe region). These famines were a direct consequence of third consecutive campaign of forced grain requisitions (which had started in winter 1927-1928) and of the first campaign of forced total collectivization. Secret reports by the OGPU officially counted nearly 110,000 persons in Kazakhstan as "starving" (golodaiushchie) in 1930.34

32 RGASPI, 558/11/63/73, Strogo sekretno. Mikoyan -- Moskva TsKVKP t.t. Stalinu, Molotovu, 20.01.1931. Vladimir Groman (1874-1940) was one of the leading Soviet economists during the 1920s, a member of Gosplan Presídium, and a former Menshevik. He was arrested in 1930 and condemned to ten years inprison during the trial against former members of the Menshevik party in early March 1931. During the same trial Kondrat’ev was forced to “confess” that he collaborated with Groman and the other Mensheviks with the aim of “restoring capitalism” in the USSR. Cf. Alessandro Stanziani, L’économie en revolution. Le cas russe 1870-1930 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998), 251-255, 413. 33 RGASPI, 558/11/63/73, Strogo sekretno. Mikoyan -- Moskva TsKVKP t.t. Stalinu, Molotovu, 20.01.1931. 34 Viktor Kondrashin, Khlebozagotovitel'naya politika v gody pervoi piatiletki i ee rezultaty (1929- 1933gg.) (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2014), 45. 11

4. Feeding the Capitals

The famine became generalized in the Soviet republic starting in the late summer-early autumn of 1931. Requisitions of meat, livestock and grain during late 1930 and the first half of 1931 where therefore crucial in pushing the region over the edge. During 1931, half of the entire import of meat and livestock into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic35 came from Kazakhstan. Data for the first quarter of the year (the period of the year when livestock procurements were concentrated) shows that half of the meat imported into Moscow and Leningrad (the highest category in the four-category list in the Stalinist hierarchy of consumption) came from Kazakhstan.36 More precisely, 53.9% of the meat imported into Moscow and Moscow oblast' during February and March 1931, and 43.3% for Leningrad and Leningrad oblast' for the same period. Also during February and March, Kazakhstan provided 57.5% of meat exported to all other regions of the RSFSR except Moscow and Leningrad.37 On the basis of meat consumption data in Moscow for the period, it is safe to assume that in 1931 between one third and 40% of the meat actually eaten by Muscovites came from Kazakhstan. The livestock and meat export plan from Kazakhstan for the third quarter of 1931, when famine was already ravaging the Soviet republic, was 88,215 tons (including both living animals and meat products), to be sent to Moscow (53.5%), to Leningrad (37.3%), the oblast' (7.1%), and the (1.7%).38 The rapid decrease in the number of Kazakhstan livestock made fulfilling the plan impossible. Only 21.3% of the plan for the third quarter of the year was fulfilled. During the fourth quarter of 1931, livestock and meat should have been exported to the same four regions of the Russian Soviet Federative Republic: this time 66,000 tons, of which 52.0% to Leningrad, 37.9% to Moscow, 7.9% to the Ural oblast', and 2.3% to the Russian Far East. However, the livestock procurement and slaughtering

35 Obviously, from areas of the RSFSR other than Kazakhstan. 36 Talas Omarbekov was the first scholar who pointed out that a significant share of the meat requisitioned in Kazakhstan ended up in Russia’s biggest cities. See Omarbekov, 20-30 zhyldardaghy, 62-81. 37 RGAE, 4372/29/915/19, Plan zavoza-vyvoza mjasa, February-March 1931. 38 Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter TsGARK), 264/1/461/259, [Kazakstanskomu] Kraikomu: otgruzki myasoproduktov po kazakstanskoi kontory "Soyuzmyaso", November 1931. The percentages in the text are those reported in the document: the amount of tons to be sent to the four different regions do not add up to the total (a 0.4% of the total is missing). It is impossible to tell whether the missing 0.4% was exported to other regions, or it is a mere arithmetic error. 12

plan could be completed only at 28.2% two months into the fourth quarter; but the completion of the export plan was a bit higher, 34.5%.39 Of the total amount of meat products and livestock imported to Moscow during the fourth quarter of 1931, 41.8% came from Kazakhstan.40 The general livestock procurement plan for Kazakhstan in the fourth quarter of 1931 was 184,200 tons, 20.1% of the total Soviet plan (the second region was Ukraine, with 16%; the third the North Caucasus, with 7.9% of the total plan).41 On the basis of data from export in the first half of 1931, it is possible to infer that as much as 80-90% of the livestock procured in Kazakhstan were intended for export outside the republic.42 In the fourth quarter of 1931, approximately one third of the procurement plan was exported. The Kazakhstan Party committee was well aware of the catastrophic consequences of the forced exports. As a result, they tried at least to retain livestock meant for komplektovanie in Kazakhstan as long as possible, claiming it was needed for plowing, on the reasonable premise that if the livestock had to be used as traction force in state and collective farms in any case, there was no reason why it could not be used in Kazakhstan in the first place. Alma-Ata tried to get this practice (called perederzhka) approved by Moscow. The Kremlin did not tolerate it. In a letter to Stalin of mid-1931, Mikoyan defined it as a "clear act of sabotage".43 Goloshchekin then tried to set a maximum quota for livestock export, to be implemented in the following requisition and export campaign. On 9 September 1931, the Republican committee of the Party decreed that 157,000 tons of live weight, or 37% of the annual plan, should remain in Kazakhstan for the "forced reconstruction of the livestock economy", i.e., should have been distributed among kolkhozes and sovkhozes.44 This indirectly suggests that before that date, more than two thirds of livestock requisitioned in Kazakhstan had been exported outside the Soviet republic.45

39 TsGARK, 264/1/461/261, Svedeniia vypolneniia plana zaboia i otgruzok skotomyasoproduktov proletarskim tsentram za IV kvartala po kraevoi kontore "Soyuzmyaso", 3 December 1931. 40 RGAE, 8297/1a/40/72, Plan zavoza-vyvoza mjasa na IV kvartal 1931 goda, August 1931. 41 RGASPI, 84/2/17/24, Plan skotozagotovok na IV kvartal 1931 g. dlia myasosnabzheniia (v zhivom vese). 42 RGAE, 4372/29/915/13, 15, 19, 82, Materialy o zagotovke i raspredelenii miasoproduktov v 1931g. 43 RGASPI 84/2/16/66-69, Narodnyi Komissar Snabzheniia Soyuza SSR, A. Mikoyan -- Sekretariu TsK VKP(b) tov. Stalinu, no date, but 1931. 44 RGASPI, 17/25/65/22, Rezoliutsiia Kazkraikoma VKP(b) po skotozagotovkam, 09.09.1931. 45 Often Kazakhstani historiography presents Goloshchekin as the main individual responsible for the famine. The point is especially made in popular literature such as Valerii Mikhailov's Khronika velikogo dhzuta: dokumental’noe povestvovanie (Alma-Ata: Interbuk, 1990). See now its English translation: The Great Disaster: Genocide of the Kazakhs (London: Stacey International, 2014). As the 13

However, this measure was a case of 'too little, too late'. In the second half of 1931, famine became widespread all over Kazakhstan. The funneling of livestock out of the Kazakh steppe during 1930-31 was clearly a crucial factor in the magnitude of the famine among the herdsmen. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is perhaps worth underscoring that this was not an "anti-Kazakh" policy aimed at their extermination by famine. Procurement plans for 1930-31 set a requisition quota of 59% for pigs present in Kazakhstan at the time; pigs were raised only by Europeans.46 Horses and cattle were also requisitioned from Russian, Ukrainian, and other European peasants in the region. Kazakhstan was however seen by the Kremlin as a crucial meat reserve of the Union in 1930-1931, and treated accordingly, no matter what consequences this could have for the population. This disregard had the result of focusing the famine on the Kazakh herdsmen who depended on livestock for their survival incomparably more than European peasants on the Steppe. Well into the high point of the famine, in 1932, Kazakhstan was still the region of the Soviet Union with the highest livestock requisition quotas for meat supply (therefore not counting komplektovanie), with 313,200 tons out of a total for the Soviet Union of 2,405,800 tons, or 13%.47 This amount of live weight amounted to approximately 3,165,000 head. Later assessments put the quantity of livestock in Kazakhstan at the end of December 1931 at 6.2 million head. Therefore, the annual procurement plan - only for meat supply, and at the height of the famine - amounted to more than half of the livestock present in the Republic at the time. I do not have the plan fulfillment data, but the figure was most probably very low, since at the end of 1932, 5.2 million head were still present in Kazakhstan. This must have been due to a policy shift in mid-1932. On the one hand, over the summer 1932 the Kremlin most probably acknowledged that its requisition plans were unrealistic and decreed a relaxation in meat procurements from the Soviet republic. With a special postanovlenie on September 17, Kazakhstani collective farmers were allowed to possess privately a higher quantity of livestock, in the attempt to rebuild the region's animal capital.48 On the other hand, this did not mean that export of

interaction between Moscow and Alma-Ata described in this paper makes clear, the responsibility for the Kazakh catastrophe lies entirely with decisions taken in the Kremlin. 46 The plan foresaw the requisition of 12,600 pigs out of 21,348 (59.02%). These numbers, however, show the marginality of pigs in livestock procurement policies in Kazakhstan. 47 RGASPI, 84/2/17/27, Plan skotozagotovok na 1932 g. dlia miasosnabzheniia (v tys. tonn zhivogo vesa). 48 GARF, 6985/1/9/2, Kazakstanskaya Pravda, 26.10.1932. 14

livestock and meat from the republic was discontinued. For the fourth quarter of 1932 (October to December), 16.7% of the meat imported into Moscow still came from Kazakhstan, along with 13.5% of the meat imported into Leningrad.49

Livestock in Kazakhstan, 1926-1934, million heads (source: GARF, 6985/1/4/38; 6985/1/19/105).50

45 Camels

40 Pigs Sheep & Goats 35 Cale

30 Horses

25

20

15

10

5

0

5. Livestock Procurements, ‘Farm Gigantism’ and Meat Packing Industry in the Steppe

Livestock procurements were mostly carried out during the coldest months of the year (especially January-March), since during autumn the main efforts of the state and its manpower were focused on grain procurements. The winter concentration of humans and animals in the relatively bigger winter encampments (aul-kstau, still around 70,000 in Kazakhstan at the eve of the famine) made the task of procurements

49 RGASPI, 84/2/18/103-104, Plan zavoza myasa na IV kvartal 1932 goda, 30.10.1932. 50 I was able to find data about camels only for June 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934. 15

easier. However, late winter is the period in the pastoral annual production cycle when livestock are the weakest and often emaciated from food stress. During winter livestock was fed with hay stockpiled in advance, or by letting horses dig the snow to reach grass, and then allowing other livestock to graze. The transfer of animals over long distances during harsh weather conditions and low seasonal temperatures was one of the causes of sizeable loss of livestock.51 Additionally, the creation of bigger productive units, which was at a very initial stage when the famine hit, was another factor leading to livestock death, since livestock concentration increased the outbreak of epidemics – as the OGPU was signaling already in January 1931.52 The increased livestock and meat procurement plans of 1930-31 prompted the creation of giant collective and state farms to enable the concentration and export of animals. In 1931, Gosplan planned to turn Kazakhstan into the center of state-controlled livestock breeding. A network of 350 giant livestock-breeding sovkhozes was planned for the entire USSR during the First Five- Year Plan, with a surface of 50 million hectares. Of these, 100 sovkhozes were planned in Kazakhstan, with a total surface of 20 million hectares. In October 1931, 41 sovkhozes already existed in Kazakhstan, controlling a surface of 8,346,000 hectares. At this date, the total number of livestock-breeding sovkhozes in the entire USSR was 150, controlling a surface of 19,744,000 hectares. The second region where livestock-breeding sovkhozes were concentrated in 1931 was Siberia, with 19. According to the original plan, of the 350 livestock-breeding sovkhozes, 100 should have been created in Kazakhstan, 45 in Siberia, 20 in the Urals, 20 in the Far East, 18 in the Middle Volga, 18 in the Lower Volga, 15 in the Transcaucausus, 15 in the North Caucasus, and 12 in Kirgizia. All the other regions had 8 or fewer sovkhozes each. The absolute centrality of Kazakhstan in Soviet state-controlled livestock breeding is apparent.53

51 Sheep were also sheared in winter for wool procurements (the usual shearing time was June), causing their death. See Zh.B. Abylkhozhin, M.K. Kozybaev, M.B. Tatimov, “Kazakhstanskaya tragediia”, Voprosy Istorii 7 (1989): 59. 52 TsGARK, 247/2/12/48, Soobshchenie PP OGPU v Kraikom VKP(b) o massovykh zabolevaniiakh skota v Karkaralinskom i Kzyl-Ordinskom raionakh, 28.01.1931, in Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane, 1931-33 gg., sost. K.S. Aldazhumanov, M.K. Kairgaliev, V.P. Osipov, Iu.I. Romanov (Almaty: Fond “XXI vek”, 1998), 78. 53 RGAE, 4372/29/747/41, Otvod zemli i organizatsiia Sovkhozov "Skotovoda" na pjatiletke, 1931. Kazakhstan was also the center of the study of livestock breeding: the Nauchno-Issledovatel'skij Institut po mjasnomu skotovodstvu was located in Alma-Ata (with a filial in Orenburg). 16

The quantity of livestock of the "Skotovod" organization was planned for 5 million head in 1932 and 7 million head in 1933, therefore with an average quantity of livestock of approximately 20,000 head per sovkhoz. In 1931, "Skotovod" controlled 4.1 million head of livestock.54 In Kazakhastan, the so-called "Meat- sovkhozes" (Myasosovkhozy) would have covered on average 200,000 hectares each, whereas in the USSR as a whole, the average surface would have been 140,000 hectares for every sovkhoz. Later, just after the famine, the Kremlin scapegoated Goloshchekin and the Kazakhstan Party committee, and accused them of chasing gigantizm dreams. However, the early 1931 measures were planned in Moscow, and followed the same logic as collectivization: to concentrate animals and peasants in state-controlled units to have a tighter and easier control over the rural economy. After two waves of total collectivization campaigns, in 1931, for the first time, the majority of peasants were included in collective and state farms. In Kazakhstan, 60.4% of peasants were in economic units under state control by the spring of 1931. The remaining 39.6%, peasants outside state and collective farms (edinolichniki) at this point sowed only 10.7% of the cultivated surface in the republic. This means that at this point those who were still out of the state/collective system were predominantly Kazakh herdsmen.55 The plan of concentrating livestock in giant kolkhozes was intended to bring the livestock-breeding sector under the same line. The concentration of livestock in bigger productive units was not meant to be a purely extractive policy for the Soviet republic. This plan was also linked to the development of a meat packing industry in Kazakhstan, the most significant industrialization effort in the region during the first two Five-Year Plans, with the exception of big mining projects in central and eastern Kazakhstan. By February 1928, the Soviet government decided to build a meat packing factory in Semipalatinsk. Its construction started in 1931, along with the simultaneous construction of four other large meat packing plants (myasokombinaty) in Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, and Orsk (in the Middle Volga region).56 Teams of Soviet and American engineers drafted their construction plans by relying on models and

54 RGAE, 4372/29/747/347, Kollegii Narkomzema SSSR. Dokladnaja zapiska "Skotovoda" o reorganizatsii kormovoi bazy "Skotovoda", putem prisposoblenija programmy zernotresta k nuzhdam zhivotnovodstva (Zampredpravleniia Dalakov), 1931. 55 RGASPI, 17/25/64/88ob, Postanovleniia kazakstanskogo kraikoma, 28.07.1931. 56 Compared to the other four, the Baku plant was planned to be smaller in size. 17

expertise from Chicago, the world's meat packing capital at the time.57 Other existing factories of smaller size and older conception were enlarged in the same period. Two of them were located in Kazakhstan, in Petropavlovsk and Ural'sk. The only other preexisting small plant located in Central Asia was in Frunze (present-day Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan).58 During 1932, Soyuzmyaso foresaw the beginning of construction of an additional 4 big, 13 mid-sized and 35 small meat packing plants in the Soviet Union.59

6. Importing Livestock from Abroad and Providing Grains

During the same years, the Soviet state was also importing livestock from abroad (Mongolia, Xinjiang, Persia, Turkey),60 in part to replenish the disappearing stock in livestock-breeding regions such as Kazakhstan, and in part to contribute to the supply of the capitals and industrial centers (livestock from Mongolia was sent to Moscow and Leningrad via the Trans-Siberian railway). All the livestock imported from Xinjiang was, for instance, assigned to Kazakhstan.61 However, the quantity of imports never remotely matched the quantity of local livestock and meat disappearing from Kazakhstan and other production regions over the same period. In 1929 and 1930 (considered together), the Soviet Union imported 171,000 head of large livestock and 748,400 head of small livestock; in 1931, 164,800 head of big and 1,155,000 of small livestock. The plan for 1932 was higher than the 1931 figures (320,000 and 1,735,000 respectively),62 but difficulties in transportation and other factors disrupted the plan (specifically for Xinjiang, because of the decision by the local administration to impose a purchase monopoly on livestock in the region). According to the plan, in 1932 30,000 head of large livestock and 400,000 sheep and goats should have been imported from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan. However, for the

57 RGAE, 8297/1a/61/67, Titul'nuyi spisok ''ektov Novogo Stroitel'stva v 1932 g. po "Soyuzmyaso", v tys. rublei, 02.02.1932; RGAE, 8297/1a/74, Postanovlenie N. 24 Pravleniia Vses. Ob''. Gos. Myasn. Promyshlennosti "Soyuzmyaso", Moskva, 17.01.1932. 58 RGAE, 8297/1a/61/69, Titul'nyi spisok po rekonstruktsii i rasshireniiu predpriiatii "Soyuzmyaso" na 1932g., v tys. rublei. 59 RGAE, 8297/1a/61/74-76a, Tochki stroitel'stva i moshchnost' 35 melkikh kombinatov, 17.01.1932. 60 Tannu Tuva was considered one of the foreign regions of livestock import in official statistics (it was nominally independent from the Soviet Union until 1944). It was by far the most marginal region in terms of quantity of imports. 61 RGASPI, 84/1/6/94, Sekretno. A. Mikoyan Sekretariu TsK VKP(b) - tov. Stalinu, Predsedateliu SNK SSSR - tov. Molotovu, 28.07.1933. I am indebted with Samuel Hirst for pointing me to this source. 62 RGASPI, 84/1/6/13, Sravnitel'nye svedeniia po importu skota iz stran vostoka, 25.10.1932. 18

above-mentioned reasons, in the second half of the year only 4,000 head of big and 34,352 head of small livestock had reached Kazakhstan.63 In 1933, the Soviet Union imported 80,258 head of large livestock and 848,750 head of small livestock; in 1934 these figures were 81,629 and 811,611 head respectively. Xinjiang was the main exporting region, followed by Mongolia. The USSR imported from Xinjiang 23,709 head of large livestock and 388,030 head of small livestock in 1933; 6,853 and 284,193 respectively were imported in 1934, a substantial decrease.64 Kazakhstan was also granted a certain amount of grain in order to feed the herdsmen of livestock-breeding kolkhozes and sovkhozes. The Politburo assigned 200,000 pud of grain to this purpose in July 1931.65 However, the extremely high grain requisition quotas for Kazakhstan in 1931-32 went in the opposite direction, depriving the region of food resources. Initially the grain procurement plan for 1931- 32 was almost twice the amount of grain that was eventually collected during the previous procurement campaign of 1930-31, 85 million pud in comparison to 48.5 million pud. The Politburo was reasoning on the basis of overoptimistic data about the increase in area of grain cultivation and productivity: in a report to Stalin, Mikoyan assumed a 16.8% increase in comparison with the previous year in cultivated area, and of 27.8% in productivity.66 In July 1931, The Kazakhstan Council of People's Commissars sent a number of telegrams to Stalin and Mikoyan, requesting a decrease in the quota because a drought had hit the main grain-growing regions of Northern Kazakhstan. Moreover, the situation in the areas close to the border was extremely problematic, since Kazakh famine refugees were leaving the republic in the hundreds of thousands. Sovnarkom chairman Uraz Isaev also contradictorily indicated that the surface of sown grain was decreasing in the south (Alma-Ata and Syr-Dar'ia oblasts) where an expansion of cotton cultivation was under way, while at the same time mentioning that the expansion of grain cultivation meant that a larger amount of the

63 RGASPI, 84/1/6/21-24, Narkomu snabzheniia SSSR A.I. Mikoyanu. Dokladnaia zapiska V/O "Zagotskot" N.A. Bazovskogo "Ob importe skota", 1932. 64 RGASPI, 84/1/6/109, Sopostavlenie ob'ema importnykh operatsii v 1934 godu po otnosheniu k 1933 g. (v golovakh). 65 RGASPI, 17/162/10/90, Iz protokola N. 43 zasedaniia Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) "O khlebe dlia Kazakhstana", 16.07.1931, in V.V. Kondrashin et al. (sost.), Golod v SSSR, 1929-1934. Tom pervyi. 1929-iiul' 1932. Kniga 1. Dokumenty (Moskva: MFD, 2011), 438. 66 RGASPI, 17/25/64/39, Zasedanie sekretariata kazakstanskogo kraikoma ot 08.07.1931; RGASPI, 84/2/17/2, Narodnyi Komissar Snabzheniia Soyuza SSR, A. Mikoyan -- Sekretariu TsK VKP(b) tov. Stalinu, O plane khlebozagotovok po Nizhnei Volge, Srednoi Volge, TsChO, Bashrespublike, Tatrespublike, Kazakhstanu i Dagestanu, 05.07.1931. 19

harvest had to be set aside for the following sowing season.67 The quota was eventually lowered to 65 million pud, which was still only slightly lower than the 1928-29 figures, and this in a year of famine.68 The plan was later further lowered to 53,880,000 pud. Of these, 36,459,000 (67.7%) had been collected by December 1931.69 Eventual actual grain procurements from the 1931 harvest reached 40,400,000 puds, i.e. only 75% of the quota was achieved. In 1932, at the height of the famine, the grain procurement plan for Kazakhstan was 43,000,000 puds, higher than the amount of grain effectively collected the previous year. In fact, this time the plan was actually over-fulfilled, and Soviet authorities procured 45,300,000 pud of grain from the 1932 harvest.70

7. Agricultural Colonization and Sedentarization of the Kazakhs

The fate of the Kazakhs was determined by the fact that the Kremlin saw Kazakhstan as an ambiguous "dual space", both grain provider and grain consumer. This made Kazakhstan different from most, if not all, Soviet regions, clearly divided between grain-producing regions and grain-consuming regions. This "dual categorization" was a direct consequence of past Tsarist and ongoing agricultural colonization, since Kazakhstan was expected to increase its grain production thanks to the influx of a new wave of agricultural colonists starting in 1929. That year immigration into the region was made legal again for the first time after the revolution. With the onset of dekulakization, eventually most of the new 'colonists' were deported peasants from Russia. In 1931, Kazakhstan was expected to provide 12.8% of the grain that Ukraine provided to the state (16.5% in 1932);71 this quantity was in any case twice as much as Central Asia. At the same time, however,

67 TsGARK, 30/6/64/25-27, Telegrammy U. Izaeva i Kakhiani Stalinu i Mikoyanu, July 1931. The initial request of Kazakhstan's Sovnarkom was to lower the quota to 75 million pud. 68 RGASPI, 17/25/64/100, Postanovlenie Kazakskogo Kraikoma, 26.07.1931. Grain procurement plan in 1928 had been of 70 million pud. 69 Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (APRF), 3/40/79/161, Svodka o zagotovkakh zernovykh kul'tur (bez grantsa) v SSSR na 01.12.1931, published in V.V. Kondrashin et al. (sost.), Golod v SSSR, 1929-1934. Tom pervyi. 1929-iiul' 1932. Kniga 1. Dokumenty (Moskva: MFD, 2011), 550-551. 70 Kondrashin, Khlebozagotovitel'naia politika, 67, 146-147. 71 Ivi. 20

Kazakhstan was also considered a grain-consumer because of its herdsmen population. In the space of fewer than ten years between the beginning of the 1920s and the end of the decade, Kazakhstan turned from the central area for Bolshevik decolonizing measures to the main focus of Bolshevik neo-colonial policies. Kazakhstan (along with Kirgizia) was the area where the Bolsheviks had implemented the most aggressive and violent measures of decolonization against Slavic agricultural settlers in 1921-22.72 It was then the region where the most extensive new policy of agricultural colonization by new waves of European peasants started to be implemented as the same time as collectivization. In 1929, comprehensive plans were drafted, aimed at the "discovery of unused or under-used land areas, completely suitable on the basis of their natural qualities and economic conditions for the organization of wheat-growing economic units (state and collective farms), in the first place big-sized and commercially-oriented".73 A total sedentarization campaign of the Kazakhs, along with the other Soviet nomadic populations, was launched at the same time as total collectivization. Beginning in the spring of 1929, and in tandem with the launching of the First Five- Year Plan, the necessity of sedentarizing the nomads was directly linked, in official documents, to the aim of extending the surface tilled with grain in the Union (i.e., the problem of turning land used by "less productive" nomads into agricultural land).74 The significance of sedentarization plan for the Soviet government went well beyond its economic aims. Sedentarization was seen as the necessary precondition for the implementation of Soviet policies in the realm of education, healthcare, and in general for the inclusion of the Kazakhs in the institutions of the Soviet state.75 On paper, sedentarization plans included the choice of "sedentarization points" in each district, chosen in areas with sufficient resources (land and water) to make the transition to agriculture and/or sedentary livestock breeding possible. The "points" should have

72 Vladimir Genis, "Deportatsiia russkikh iz Turkestana v 1921 godu («Delo Safarova»)", Voprosy istorii 1 (1998); Niccolò Pianciola, "Décoloniser l'Asie centrale? Bolcheviks et colons au Semirech´e (1920-1922)", Cahiers du monde russe 49/1 (2008): 101-144. 73 Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter APRK), 141/1/2863/34, Rezoliutsiia po dokladu Narkomzema o sel'skom khoziaistve i zemleustroistve v Kazakhstane. Razdel I, Programma rabot pravitel'stvennoi ekspeditsii v Kazakhstane, 1929. 74 VII Vsekazakskij s’ezd Sovetov. 8-15 aprelia 1929: stenograficheskii otchet i postanovlenija (Alma- Ata, 1930): 247-248. 75 Cf., among many analogous documents: APRK, 141/1/3800/35, Dokladnaia zapiska k voprosu ob osedanii kochevykh i polukochevykh kazakskikh khoziaistv KazASSR (1930). 21

been turned into villages by the construction of houses. Sedentarization therefore would have required a significant mobilization of agronomic knowledge and economic resources (especially construction materials), and a massive deployment of coercive state power. Plans drafted in 1929 and 1930 foresaw the sedentarization of 544,000 Kazakh nomadic households out of a total of 566,000 (the remaining 22,000 were households of bais, or rich herdsmen, whose situation "should be dealt with individually", as one document put it). 76 However, unlike collectivization and procurements, sedentarization as an organized campaign was carried out very laxly and extremely slowly until the famine struck. Archives in Kazakhstan and Moscow provide countless cases of delay or neglect in the choice of "sedentarization points", and a general inaction by the regional and district committees in charge of the campaign.77 Across the Stalinist bureaucracy, sedentarization was always a low- priority campaign that, in the chaotic situation of the First Five-Year Plan, no administrative body was effectively carrying out. After procurements and the famine wiped out 90% of livestock and one third of the Kazakhs, and forced other hundreds of thousands to abandon their native districts in search of food, the real sedentarization was the settlement of Kazakh famine refugees and survivors who had lost everything and had to rely on the state for their subsistence. This settlement lasted approximately between 1933 and 1940 (the last groups of Kazakh famine refugees came back into the Soviet republic at the end of the 1930s). The "total sedentarization" campaign of 1930-33 therefore was not a direct significant factor in causing the famine. However, sedentarization plans and the official discourse claiming that "traditional" Kazakh way of life had to be traumatically reformed provided a powerful justification for the disruptive livestock and grain procurements that pushed a significant part of the population below the subsistence line. The "sedentarization" memes in the official discourse of Stalinist administrative and repressive bodies helped to interpret the economic disruption, death, and the flight of the population in each specific district as part of a traumatic process of socialist "creative destruction".

76 Ivi. 77 Cf. APRK, 141/1/4839/4, V respublikanskii komitet po osedaniiu -- t. Kuramisovu [no date, but 1931]. 22

8. Conclusion

The focus of the present paper has been the analysis of Kazakhstan’s place in the context of Soviet food policies between the end of the NEP and the contemporary creation of the rationing system in urban centers, and the great famine in the Soviet republic. On the basis of recently retrieved archival materials, I showed that in 1930 the Politburo decided that Kazakhstan would be the main Soviet area for the supply of meat, especially to the biggest Russian industrial and political centers at the top of the early Stalinist consumption hierarchy. This decision led to massive requisitions of livestock and meat products from the republic, concentrated in the period from the late summer of 1930 to the summer of 1932. The use of Kazakhstan as a strategic meat reserve had a significant impact on the 1931 outbreak of a generalized famine that killed approximately one third of the Kazakh population. It is therefore safe to conclude that, even if grain procurements played an important role, the most important direct economic cause leading to the famine was the massive livestock requisition campaign of 1930-31. The campaign was an ad-hoc response to the food crisis, especially in relation to meat products, into which the Soviet Union had been plunged as a result of the first period of forced requisitions and total collectivization campaigns between January 1928 and the summer of 1930. This deadly policy has to be understood in the framework of the creation of a hierarchy of consumption in Stalin's Soviet Union. As the available archival evidence shows, the policies that Moscow implemented between the summer of 1930 and late 1932 meant that Kazakhstan's economic resources, and a large part of the local population, were sacrificed in order to preserve a sufficient quantity of food supply to regions and social groups that were at the highest level in the regime’s social and political hierarchy. In periods of economic, political and/or environmental crisis, the Stalinist hierarchy of consumption turned into a divide between social groups whose survival was ensured and social groups that were left to die. Kazakhs were consciously sacrificed insofar as the flow of information from Kazakhstan to Moscow about the deep food crisis in the Steppe never really stopped, both because of communication by Kazakhstan administrators, and trips made by Moscow envoys during the famine. As we have seen, Anastas Mikoyan, the man overseeing Soviet

23

food distribution policies, visited Kazakhstan in early 1931.78 It is difficult not to attribute the readiness to sacrifice the Kazakhs by the Stalinist leadership to a "colonial gaze" that saw Central Asian herdsmen as "backward" and unproductive people, on many levels less useful than other populations with regard to the ends of the Soviet state, and therefore largely dispensable.79 As Terry Martin has shown, a hierarchy between “culturally backward” and non-backward national groups was clearly present in the Stalinist official mind, and had concrete consequences, especially for cultural and nation-building policies. However, the importance of this factor is difficult to single out and to weigh against other factors in the Politburo’s decision-making. The main victims of the Stalinist collectivization famine, after all, were Ukrainian peasants who were not part of those nations characterized as "backward". They were instead perceived as a threat because of the strength of the nationalist movement in Ukraine (a characteristic of "advanced" nations), and for the geopolitical position of Ukraine.80 Four additional factors deriving from the mindset of the Stalinist leadership can be instead pinned down to explain why the Kremlin decided to subject Kazakhstan to unbearably high procurements of both grains and livestock, well into the famine. First, the lack of understanding of the intertwined nature of the two sectors of Kazakhstan's economy after massive agricultural colonization, and the contradictory perception of the region as a "dual space" of both grain-producers and grain-consumers; second, the unrealistic assessment of the productive capacity of the region; third, the expectation of a transformative crisis of the pastoral sector connected with the foreseen sedentarization. The final and crucial factor was callous indifference to mass death, considered a price worth paying for higher political ends. In the absence of this readiness to implement lethal policies, the political decisions that led to the crisis could have been reversed or corrected; at least once the information about the destructive consequences of these policies had reached the Kremlin.81

78 RGASPI, 558/11/63/73 (20.01.1931); Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 470. 79 One aspect that was surely important for the Stalinist leadership was that at the beginning of the 1930s, the Kazakhs, as with other Central Asian peoples, were only at the beginning of their integration into the ranks of the Red Army, since they had been exempted from the draft until 1928. 80 Cf. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001), 56, 166-7, 344-431. 81 In my previous work about the famine in Kazakhstan, I formulated a hypothesis about the "redistribution of damage" at different levels of the state apparatus. The idea was that district (rayon) administrators had a crucial role in concentrating the extraction of resources from the Kazakhs, more 24

than Slavic peasants in Kazakhstan, because of (1) the productive needs of the state (district administrators tended to sacrifice Kazakhs in their area more than the Slavs due to an expected shift towards grain production, and the less "productive value" of the Kazakhs), and because (2) district administrators were disproportionately Europeans, and this may have led them to a anti-Kazakh bias (in a situation in which in any case part of the population was doomed, because of Kremlin policies of extraction of resources from the region). The argument was especially made in relation of grain requisitions, and of the distribution of seeds and food aid during the famine. I think that the hypothesis still stands as such, but it has not been confirmed or conclusively refuted by later research carried out by myself or other scholars. At this point, I am not sure that, on the basis of the existing documentation left by the Soviet bureaucratic machine, the hypothesis will be ever confirmed or refuted. Cf. Pianciola, “Famine in the Steppe", 187-188; and Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 472-475. 25