History 2158A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mao Zedong, Thanos
14 Jun 2018
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The Third Horseman: Famine and Hunger
The Ukrainian Famine (1932-1933)
●Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)
○ “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must cover this distance in 10 years. Either we
do this or they will crush us.”
●The Five Year Plan (1928- 1932)
○Called for the complete overhaul of the soviet union
○Industry and Agriculture: Combining peasant farms into collective farms that produce more
●Collectivization of agriculture and the expansion of industry
○Peasant resistance
○Collective farms were unable to meet grain quotas
■State was convinced that Ukrainians were hiding extra grain
●Starvation
○Famine denied
○Starvation was thought to be resistance to socialism
○Grain quotas were not reduced, authorities continued to seize all grain
●The Rhetoric vs. the Reality
Bengal Famine (1943-1944)
●India was still part of the British Empire
●Preceded by:
○The Second World War: Burma was invaded and Bengal relied on their rice
○Environmental factors: winter 1942 - rice crop was destroyed by tsunami
○Government policies: government prioritized urban population needs of Calcutta
●Famine
○Panicked buying and hoarding
○Poor rural population began to starve
○Slow government reaction, didn’t know how to fix it
■At the beginning of the second world war the government had allowed food policies to be
controlled by provincial governments
○British reluctant to divert resources from the war
○Once they started to help:
■Distributed food into countryside
■Price dropping
■Took control of food policies
Chinese Famine (1958-1962)
●Mao Zedong (1893-1976)
○Idea to harness resources and channel into mass production
●Agriculture and industry
○People’s communes
○Steel campaign
●In 1958, chinese leaders calculated that all these initiatives would double grain production in a year
○Low-level officials began to lie about how much they were producing, inflating production statistics
●By 1959, crop production collapsed, crops weren’t harvested because of the steel campaign
○Central government began to use these numbers to determine how much grain the communes should hand
over to the central government
○Similar reaction as the Soviet government, thought they were hiding and hoarding it
○Mass starvation as a result
Document Summary
We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must cover this distance in 10 years. Either we do this or they will crush us. Called for the complete overhaul of the soviet union. Industry and agriculture: combining peasant farms into collective farms that produce more. Collectivization of agriculture and the expansion of industry. Collective farms were unable to meet grain quotas. State was convinced that ukrainians were hiding extra grain. Starvation was thought to be resistance to socialism. Grain quotas were not reduced, authorities continued to seize all grain. India was still part of the british empire. The second world war: burma was invaded and bengal relied on their rice. Environmental factors: winter 1942 - rice crop was destroyed by tsunami. Government policies: government prioritized urban population needs of calcutta. Slow government reaction, didn"t know how to fix it.
