Ukraine by Andrea Graziosi
This paper investigates what the Holodomor tells us about the development and dynamics of Soviet ... more This paper investigates what the Holodomor tells us about the development and dynamics of Soviet history. It starts by examining the evolving relations between Stalin and the peasantry during the Soviet Union's first decades as well as the social, economic, moral, and psychological consequences in the USSR after 1933 following the destruction of traditional rural society. The relationship between the Holodomor and the viability of the Soviet system will then be discussed along with the opportunities that history presented to the Soviet leadership after 1945 to reverse the country's critical 1928--29 decisions. This leadership's awareness of the tragedies of the 1930s in the countryside, as well as of their consequences, will then be raised, before shifting the focus to the linkage between the peasant and the national questions in Soviet history. In this context the Holodomor will be discussed as a tool to solve both the peasant and the national "irritants" caused by Ukraine to both the Soviet system and Stalin's personal power. The legacy of such a "solution" will then be addressed, including a consideration to the background of the collapse of the Soviet system from the perspective of the sustainability of a state whose past is marred by unacknowledged genocidal practices. Finally, the consequences of the growing awareness of the Holodomor's importance and nature on the USSR's image will be discussed. In particular, the question of the "modernity" of the Soviet system and of the "modernizing" effects of Stalin's 1928--29 policies will be raised.
historiography-graziosi.indd 95 8/8/16 11:24 AM historiography-graziosi.indd 96 8/8/16 11:24 AM t... more historiography-graziosi.indd 95 8/8/16 11:24 AM historiography-graziosi.indd 96 8/8/16 11:24 AM the twentieth century throuGh the prism of ukrAine ◆ 97
Famines by Andrea Graziosi
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2017
This article provides a comparative analysis of two of the twentieth century's largest political ... more This article provides a comparative analysis of two of the twentieth century's largest political famines, which deeply influenced the history of the two largest Communist states, as well as-albeit indirectly-their posture and behavior in the international arena. 1 The time frame is defined by Iosif Stalin's Great Turning Point (GTP) and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (GLF) and the crises they caused, that is, 1928-1934 in the Soviet Union and 1958-1962 in China. However, I have extended the coverage backward to account for what I term the "hidden" five-year plan launched in 1925, which led to the crisis of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union, and the Socialist High Tide (SHT) and its failure in China (1955-1956). I have also extended the chronological horizon forward to include at least some of the long-term consequences of these avoidable tragedies, analyzing their impact on subsequent Soviet and Chinese history. 2 The article presents an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences between these two events, offering sufficient detail about each famine to allow for meaningful comparisons. Because comparative studies of the two events are recent and few in number, my contribution is difficult to position among them. As usually happens when a new field is opened, all of the recent comparative studies are useful. 3 Readers interested in my view of the much wider,
Nationalities Papers, 2020
The 20th century has been a century of political famines, that is, famines directly-and at times ... more The 20th century has been a century of political famines, that is, famines directly-and at times willfully-caused by human policies, in war 1 and in peacetime. Scores of millions starved to death in times during which there was enough food to feed everyone and the means to transport it where needed. The conscious use of hunger to punish, repress, or eliminate specific groups was inaugurated by the German empire against the Herero and Nama in Namibia in 1904-1908, and reached its first acme in World War I with the Armenian genocide, in which starvation played an important role. However, the British strategy against the Central European empires and the German submarine war were also based on the strategy of starving the enemy into surrender. Hunger was used by the Bolsheviks to quell the great peasant insurrections of 1919-1921 (Vincent 1985; Shirinian 2017; Danilov and Shanin 1994, documents nos. 174 and 198). Political famines, including intentional, specifically targeted starvation, continued in the following decades, first reaching a peak in Europe with the Soviet famines examined in this issue, then during World War II, when they also affected Bengal or Vietnam, and in its aftermath. They culminated in the catastrophic famine ignited by Mao's Great Leap Forward (Dikötter 2011; Wemheuer 2014; Bianco 2014; Graziosi 2017b). The strangling of Biafra in 1968, the Khmer Rouge's use of hunger in Cambodia in the 1970s, and the famine caused by the Derg's policies in Ethiopia at the beginning of the following decade were other major instances of human-provoked mass starvation. After the 1990s, while not disappearing, the use of enforced starvation started to decrease both in number and intensity (
Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 1989
published in Famines in European History. The Last Great European Famines Reconsidered, edited by Declan Curran, Lubomyr Luciuk and Andrew G. Newby, New York, Routledge, 2015: 223-260
This essay addresses the similarities and differences between the cluster of Soviet famines in 19... more This essay addresses the similarities and differences between the cluster of Soviet famines in 1931-33 and the great Chinese famine of 1958-1962. The similarities include: Ideology; planning; the dynamics of the famines; the relationship among harvest, state procurements and peasant behaviour; the role of local cadres; life and death in the villages; the situation in the cities vis-à-vis the countryside, and the production of an official lie for the outside world. Differences involve the following: Dekulakization; peasant resistance and anti-peasant mass violence; communes versus sovkhozes and kolkhozes; common mess halls; small peasant holdings; famine and nationality; mortality peaks; the role of the party and that of Mao versus Stalin's; the way out of the crises, and the legacies of these two famines; memory; sources and historiography.
Soviet history by Andrea Graziosi
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2021
In the essay, I derive from the knowledge of Soviet history a map of the problems, fault lines, w... more In the essay, I derive from the knowledge of Soviet history a map of the problems, fault lines, weaknesses, and strengths that history handed down to post-1991 Russia. Some of the elements composing this map—Crimea and the Donbas, for example, and more generally those related to the transformation of administrative borders into political ones—were immediately visible but could lie relatively still until this or that event triggered their activation. Others, such as ways of thinking (what French historians call mentalités) and intellectual horizons, which play a crucial role in shaping the vision of what is possible to do in dealing with a reality that is often much more malleable than our minds can contemplate, were fully operational since the beginning. Yet other elements, such as the weight of Soviet education, in the broadest sense of the term, were also immediately felt and continued to reproduce themselves as years went by and new cohorts of Soviet-educated people climbed the social and political ladder. Yet others, such as those stemming from the peculiarities of Soviet modernization in the economic and legal fields (e.g., the underdevelopment of the credit system) had to be confronted and somehow fixed very soon, which meant doing so while relying primarily on Soviet-created or crudely imported intellectual tools.
The discussion assesses in four sections the influence
of these and other problems and elements on the predicament and choices of Russian political leaders, as well as of selected population strata, by taking into account intellectual, economic, social, demographic, “imperial,” national, and (broadly speaking) cultural factors.
Storica, 2000
The Stalinist terror's secret decrees translated into Italian and commented by Graziosi, Khlevniu... more The Stalinist terror's secret decrees translated into Italian and commented by Graziosi, Khlevniuk and Martin
Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 2019
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Andrea Graziosi, « Visiteurs d'un autre temps » : les travailleurs étrangers dans les plans quinq... more Andrea Graziosi, « Visiteurs d'un autre temps » : les travailleurs étrangers dans les plans quinquennaux avant la guerre. Cet essai utilise les récits et les témoignages laissés par certains des 70 000 à 80 000 travailleurs et spécialistes étrangers qui ont vécu et travaillé en Russie soviétique dans les années 1920 et 1930, pour examiner le développement de l'industrie soviétique dans une perspective comparatiste. Il comporte trois parties : 1) une brève description du milieu et de la formation de ces travailleurs ; 2) une analyse de leurs témoignages centrée sur les différences entre les expériences occidentales et soviétique ; 3) un examen comparatif de l'industrialisation soviétique. Il se penche notamment sur les problèmes du rendement de la main-d'oeuvre, de l'organisation de la production et des relations au sein de l'entreprise.
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Ukraine by Andrea Graziosi
Famines by Andrea Graziosi
Soviet history by Andrea Graziosi
The discussion assesses in four sections the influence
of these and other problems and elements on the predicament and choices of Russian political leaders, as well as of selected population strata, by taking into account intellectual, economic, social, demographic, “imperial,” national, and (broadly speaking) cultural factors.
The discussion assesses in four sections the influence
of these and other problems and elements on the predicament and choices of Russian political leaders, as well as of selected population strata, by taking into account intellectual, economic, social, demographic, “imperial,” national, and (broadly speaking) cultural factors.
Please note that in the essay, I erroneously wrote that Karl Kautsky was a Jew. Actually, his father was Czech, and his mother was Austrian-German. Sorry.