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Russian Drought in 1921
Many images of horror came from Russia in 1921. Children were said to resemble corpses more than living bodies. To stay alive, peasants were forced to eat grass and even resorted to digging up bodies to find nourishment from human flesh. A staggering estimate of five million Russians lost their lives and prior to the efforts of outside sources, 19 million lives were reportedly in danger. These horrible conditions were not the direct result of genocide or some other form of wartime tragedy; they were the result of one of the most fatal droughts in recent history.
The Russian drought of 1921 was one of the horrific environmentally influenced events of the twentieth century. From 1921 to 1922, millions of people throughout Russia and the Ukraine were without any form of sustenance and faced life threatening levels of starvation. There were a variety of factors that led to this situation. All across Eastern Europe, there were severe droughts in 1920 and 1921. Peasants were only able to plant two thirds of their usual crops and were effected greatly the lack of water supply. In most cases of peasant farming, there were poor agricultural yields and even more commonly, complete crop failures. Connected to the droughts were locusts and other natural disasters that made conditions even less favorable. Though the drought was the driving force behind the immense hunger and lack of food in Russia, there were other factors at play. The country was ravaged by its six year involvement in the First World War and a civil war conflict from 1918-1920 only reduced land quality. The presence of German-Austrian forces in the Ukraine, along with the Bolshevik's White armies, caused many of the peasant's grain reserves to run dry. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin also contributed to the devastation of the 1921 drought. Lenin believed that the peasants were in opposition of the Bolshevik cause and as punishment, frequently seized the little grain or foodstuffs that the peasants possessed. By the final months of 1921, these compounding factors had led Russia into a situation that could not be alleviated with outside help.
Though he initially refused, Lenin would eventually accept support from other nations. The main forces in the relief effort were the American Relief Administration created by President Hoover, the American Friends Service Committee, the Red Cross and the International Save the Children Union. In August of 1921, these groups combined to form the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICCR) which took on the task of trying to feed the millions of starving Russian peasants. These organizations quickly organized and provided much needed assistance. In the United Kingdom, newspaper advertisements and fundraising allowed for six hundred tons of supplies to be sent to Russia by September. In total, the ICCR was able to feed an astonishing ten million people, with most of the support coming from Hoover's American Friends Service Committee. Famine support continued to pump into Russia until 1923, when the country's situation finally began to stabilize.
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