The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million. This is an editorial that appeared in an American magazine a year and a half after the disaster began:
“The effort to keep the outside world in ignorance of the extent of the suffering in Russia has failed completely. Tchicherin, the foreign minister, was afraid that if the Western chanceries realized the extremity to which the Soviet commissars were reduced, they would at once become difficult to negotiate with. …[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin “Lokalanzeiger”, Lenin is a cipher.”
More on the Soviet famine can be read here…
Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.
Magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.
From Amazon: The famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923
