92 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
so that the Minsk district (White Russia) was unprepared
for the change to be introduced on that date. During the
conversation Jakovliev told the Minsk official that he must
first of all see that the workers in the local paper mill (called
"the Labour Hero") were supplied and not the surrounding
inhabitants. In his care for the industrial workers' welfare,
Jakovliev went to the length of demanding that the bread
should be delivered at their dwellings "so that they should not
have to stand in the queues outside the shops." He said that
this method had already been adopted successfully in Moscow
and Leningrad, and held in prospect a supply of lorries for the
purpose.
If further proof were required that there would be famine
in wide areas of Soviet Russia during the financial year 1934-5,
a declaration of the Soviet Government at the end of December
1934 provides it. This decree refers to an "elemental catas-
trophe5' and not merely to a "partial destruction of the harvest
through drought." The districts affected are enumerated and
it is decreed that over a million tons (69,179,000 poods) of
grain are to be set aside as a relief supply "for sowing, food and
cattle fodder."
This decree was issued on December 26,1934, and published
in Pravda on the following day. Significantly enough, while the
title of the decree speaks only of "assistance to the collective.
farms in their sowing campaign," the text also refers expressly
to food or fodder supplies. The decree enumerates one by one
various districts in the famine zone, and gives a complete
picture of the vast territory suffering from "elemental" distress.
It is as follows: the whole of the Ukraine, excepting parts of
the Kiev and Chernigov districts, half of the former Central
Russian black earth zone, the whole of the Northern Caucasus,
the Don region, the lower and middle Volga and, finally, a
large part of Western Siberia—in other words, a territory
inhabited by about one-third of the entire population of the
Union. The Ukraine is allotted more than half of the amount