Wemheuer - Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union

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Felix Wemheuer, Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union

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FAMINE POLITICS IN MAOIST CHINA AND THE SOVIET UNION

FELIX WEMHEUER

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Haven and London

Copyright 2014 by Yale University.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wemheuer, Felix.

Famine politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union / Felix Wemheuer.

pages cm.(Yale agrarian studies series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-300-19581-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. FaminesChina. 2. FaminesSoviet Union. 3. ChinaEconomic policy19491976. 4. Soviet UnionEconomic policy. I. Title. II. Series: Yale agrarian studies.

HC79.F3W457 2014

363.80951'09045dc23

2014001973

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Xiaoqing and Meylin

Tsze-kung asked about government. The Master said, The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.

Tsze-kung said, If it cannot be helped, and one of these must be dispensed with, which of the three should be foregone first? The military equipment, said the Master.

Tsze-kung again asked, If it cannot be helped, and one of the remaining two must be dispensed with, which of them should be foregone? The Master answered, Part with the food. From of old, death has been the lot of all men; but if the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the State.

CONFUCIUS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union grows out of over six years of research, as well as many international conferences and field trips to China. With a scholarship from the Austrian Science Fund, I was able to carry out research for eighteen months as a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University (20082010). I owe particular thanks to Professor Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik of the University of Vienna, who supported my leave from my position at the Institute of East Asian Studies and who over the years has given deeply appreciated assistance and encouragement to my research and academic career. Numerous others have supported me in writing this book, providing useful feedback at various stages of the project. I would like to thank Thomas Bernstein of Columbia University; Jeremy Brown of Simon Fraser University; Cao Shuji of Shanghai Jiaotong Daxue; Chen Yixin of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington; Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley of San Diego State University; Gao Wangling of Renmin University; Wendy Z. Goldman of Carnegie Mellon University; Andrea Janku of SOAS, London; Andreas Kappeler of the University of Vienna; William Kirby of Harvard University; Hiroaki Kuromiya of Indiana University, Bloomington; Ruth Libbey, Cambridge (MA); Kimberley Manning of Concordia University, Montreal; Gleb Netchvolodov, Tartu; Cormac Grda of University College Dublin; James C. Scott of Yale University; Steve Smith of Oxford University; Ralph Thaxton of Brandeis University; Hannah Untersweg of the University of Vienna; Stephen Wheatcroft of the University of Melbourne; and Xin Yi of the Peoples University of China. On a final note, I would like to express my warmest and deepest appreciation to my wife, Li Xiaoqing, for all her encouragement and support over the years.

All maps and graphs have been drawn by Gleb Netchvolodov. Some of the materials were published earlier in modified form. A part of were published in Felix Wemheuer, Regime Changes of Memories: Creating the Official History of the Ukrainian and Chinese Famines under State Socialism and after the Cold War, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, no. 1 (2009): 3159.

Abbreviations and Measurements

Abbreviations

Measurements

1 jin = 500 grams
1 mu = 1/15 hectare
1 ton = 1,000 kg (metric ton)

FAMINE POLITICS IN MAOIST CHINA AND THE SOVIET UNION

Introduction

DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY more people died of famine than in any other century in human history. larger history of Socialist revolutions in agrarian empires. In this book, I will mainly compare the Soviet famine of 19311933 with the Great Leap famine because of their similarities.

Famines under socialism were quite different from epidemic hunger in Africa today. The times of mass starvation were relatively short, but the famines were characterized by high excess mortality and lowered birthrates.