PREFACE 23
time when deaths were most numerous during the summer
of 1933. The authenticity of the photographs, which form a
permanent record of the terrible events in the Ukraine after
the agricultural collapse, is undoubted; for an examination
made by experts shows that they were taken with a Leica
camera of a type which did not exist at the time of the famine
of 1921-2, and that the pictures were actually taken in the
streets and squares of Kharkov in the summer of 1933, as is
also apparent from various details clearly visible in the pictures.
In addition to these photographs taken in Kharkov, the
English edition of the book contains also others, which were
supplied to the author by Dr. F. Dittloff, for many years
Director of the German Government Agricultural Concession
—Drusag—in the North Caucasus. This institution was most
flourishing in the time of the Stresemann regime and of the
German Rapallo Policy, but was liquidated in 1933. The
photographs were taken by Dr. Dittloff himself in the summer
of 1933, and they demonstrate the conditions then prevailing
on the plains of the agricultural areas of the Hunger Zone.
A few of them have been published before elsewhere without
his permission. Dr. Dittloff accepts full responsibility for the
guarantee of their authenticity.
My treatment of the various problems was facilitated by a
number of facts which it might be worth while to enumerate.
I had a grasp of the economic position because I was acquainted
with the economic geography of Russia, more especially with
regard to foodstuffs, and because I had studied the agricultural
districts in question for a number of years. In dealing with
the campaign of Moscow against the nationalities I had the
advantage of having been for the last ten years Secretary-
General of the European Nationalities Congress, and thus
having had to deal with the problem of the nationalities in
various parts of Europe. The same applies to the personal
observations made during the last fifteen years at almost all
the important political conferences dealing with the inter-