THE CAUSES OF FAMINE IN RUSSIA 31
promises and finally by draconic measures—to a certain extent
by the introduction of martial law."
What has happened in Russia is this. Owing to the failure of
the collectivized peasant, and the other reasons mentioned
above, the 1932 harvest did not amount even to a moderate
part of the yield anticipated. Further, a large part of the
harvested corn could not be garnered because of the destruction
of live-stock. .Before the peasants were absorbed in the col-
lective farms, draught oxen were slaughtered in masses:
according to Schiller the number of beasts fell from 70*5
millions in 1928 to 29 -2 millions in 1932.
The late Mr. Gareth Jones,1 who visited the Russian famine
area in the winter of 1933, writes that the peasants had to give
up their cows, which were handed over to the collective farms.
The result was a systematic slaughtering of the oxen by the
peasants, for no one wanted to hand over his beasts for nothing.
He goes on to describe how the collective farms were absolutely
unprepared to receive such numbers of cattle and how part
of the cattle perished from disease. Stalin himself, in his
speech at the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party
in Moscow, had to admit the disastrous position of Russian
stock-farming at the present time. So did Mirsoian, the repre-
sentative of Kazakstan, whose speech showed that the reduction
in the number of cattle had continued until quite recently.
Another speaker praised Stalin's frankness in admitting the
magnitude of the collapse in the cattle-raising industry.
But the undoubted collapse of Russian agriculture does not
suffice to explain the death by starvation of millions in the
Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, on the Volga and in the other
agricultural districts which were once the most fertile in
Russia. It should be remembered that these parts of Russia
used to export to foreign countries vast quantities of wheat
1 It will V • remembered that M.r. Gareth Jones was carried off by bandits
while on a-Visit to China in the spring of 1935, and eventually met his death
at their hands*