Customer Reviews

The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This economic history by William Moskoff discusses the food supply in the Soviet Union during World War II. Despite being an economic history, I was pleasantly surprised at how engaging it was. The foreword, by John N. Hazard, Deputy Director of the US lend-Lease program from 1941-45, set the stage for a surprisingly "human" look at the impacts of war on the agriculture and food industries and the resulting deprivation of the citizens of the Soviet Union. One might believe that the Soviet people simply suffered from the normal scarcities of war, but Moskoff argues that the Soviet leadership decided, justifiably, that the primary efforts of the centralized Soviet economy would focus almost solely on supporting its wartime requirements. Consequently, the entire civilian population came to rely on local efforts and resources to feed itself throughout the war.

Moskoff seems to have had access to some Soviet archival data, which was probably only newly available from 1988 to 1990 when he researched and wrote his book. Though he cites this information throughout the book, he draws much of his data from US and German sources. He credited them all and briefly clarified the problems inherent in figures from each source. His greatest insights came from 31 interviews taken from Soviet émigrés. He explained the relative reliability of the anecdotal evidence they provided, and used it well to test the veracity of archival data and give readers perspective on the hardships endured by the Soviet people.

Moskoff discusses the impacts of collectivization, the soviet transportation system, poor planning for a wartime food reserve and blunders in agricultural research on the ability for the centralized economy to produce food prior to the onset of war. He then presents the specific problems caused by the German Offensive and the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht in 1941. Using these facts, he offers his evaluation of the reasons behind Soviet agricultural and food policy and the impacts of those policy decisions.

His discussion of how the Soviet people suffered under wartime policy decisions truly comes out with the statistical evidence he provides, and the assertions of those interviewed support the author's insights while sometimes running contrary to official Soviet documentation. They also open a window into some of the coping strategies used by the Soviet People to survive. Survival was apparently not a foregone conclusion and Moskoff details the horrors of the siege of Leningrad and suggests the prevalence of malnutrition and starvation throughout the Soviet Union.

Moskoff carefully and logically crafted the body of evidence for his argument. In concluding, he carefully made assertions that his evidence would support. His only controversial claim was that civilians bore the burden of hunger in the name of patriotism. No historical evidence could fully support a statement like this. In my opinion, the Soviet people may have felt patriotism, but it was incidental to their hunger. They bore their hunger out of necessity and through their will to survive.