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Summary: the world as it is, not as we would like it
Review: Robert Conquest has endured the slurs of the Communist Left in America and Europe as he continues to recall history as a way to chronicle the fight for individual liberty. History will extol his virtues far more than present day academics or big media worthies ever will. This story of inhumane cruelty, perpetrated by Bolshevik ideologues, is so horrible that one wants to suspend disbelief at the turn of every page in every chapter. The complete disregard for the Kulaks by the Bolsheviks at the expense of achieving an ideal should be a lesson for us all. This story should be on the History Channel every week like the stories of German concentration camps. The sheer numbers of genocidal killing show this crime to be even bigger than the holocaust. Conquest details this horror, chapter and verse, of Stalin's collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine. He shows the Communist ideal for what it is, a fraud, and this is why we don't see this event chronicled on a weekly basis. We have too many people in the media in America who are seemingly ignorant, or who wish to turn their heads to the truth, of what actually happened. We still have the "Walter Duranty types" among us who would seek to distribute misinformation to the public in order to keep the collectivist ideal alive. It makes you wonder what it takes for people to get the message? This book points out how Duranty was given a Pulitzer Prize for his misreporting from the Soviet Union, in the early 30's, that the famine and genocide in the Ukraine were virtually non-existent. That this cur and toady of Stalin, for 14 years the voice to America from Moscow, has not had his Pulitzer prize retroactively recalled tells you something about those who award the Pulitzer prize. This prize is clearly a very bad and a very sick joke. If the Irish think their potato famine was a tragedy, which it certainly was, and they thump their chest at the English, which they certainly do, what do they have to say about the Bolshevik's slaughter of the Kulak's? One would think that all people of all nations would band together to denounce such inhumane treatment of mankind by a concentrated number of ideological zealots as described in this book. This is a very sad story that is very trying to read. It's like reading Valladares' book "Against All Hope" which is about Cuba under Castro. A more comprehensive book would be "The Black Book of Communism" which also includes information about this Soviet caused famine in the Ukraine. It also includes the plight of people, in all of the other countries that are or have been under the yoke of Communist dictators. Their methods of societal control are identical to those chronicled in this book; the mind reels at the numbers of the dead, ...7 million... 11 million... 14 million? It's just too much to believe. This holocaust should never be forgotten. It should be taught as a required course for college graduation. Why isn't it?
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Summary: Evil, hatred, starvation and murder: more of Stalin
Review: Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow is an essential book for students of Russia and 20th Century Stalinist Russia. This must read book depicts in comprehensive detail the acts with the facts concerning Stalins's starvation politics in Russia and particularly the Ukraine. In order to know, to have a real understanding of Stalin's legacy in today's political scene, e.g. Iraq, Sudan, the Balkans etc., everyone should read this book and recognize the murderous atrocities that we, 21st Century citizens of the world, are allowing to go on today without reaction or even outraged protest. Conquest describes it all: the oppression, the leveraged inculcation of doctrine, the deprivation of life sustaining food, the functionary thugs carrying out Stalin's mass murder scheme, the deaths, the cannabalism, all the horrors of this totalitarian madman's wicked will. It is painful at time to read this book but it inspires the reader with wisdom and knowledge to react intolerantly against today's political monsters like Saddam or the Balkan ethnic hate mongers. My only negative criticism of the book is of Mr. Conquests writing style. He is at time awkward and cumbersome in his syntax. Sometimes he is obtuse in his phrasing. The style did hinder the ease of reading the book (though it contains no an easy subject matter to relax with) but I would read it again without hesitation. This is one book that should be mandatory reading for students in high school and especially college studentd, particularly for political science majors.
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Summary: Terror and Sorrow
Review: This book is a model of historical reseach: detailed, precise, and analytical, it also conveys the human element of one of the great tragedies in history. Millions of people starved to death as a result of communist despotism under the dictator Joseph Stalin. Conquest does not pull any punches: "This was the climax of the 'revolution from above,' as Stalin put it, in which he and his associates crushed two elements seen as irremediably hostile to the regime: the peasantry of the USSR as a whole, and the Ukrainian nation" (p.3). More people died in this war of communists against peasants than the total number of people who died for all countries in World War I (p.4). It becomes clear when you read this book, that Marxist ideology, which depricated both peasants and nationalists was not the only thing responsible for the tragedy. Marx dismissed rural life as "idiocy" and believed nationalism to be a form of false consciousness, but it was Lenin and his henchmen who took that condescending and dehumanizing attitude and turned it into a brutal policy of repression. This book is a walk through a house of horrors. In comparison to real events described in this book, even "Grimm Tales" really do seem like child's play. In their dogmatic fight to extinguish the market, the communists who came to power in Russia annihilated millions of people, perpetuated nation-wide poverty, and humiliated and denigraded ethnic minorities. And what an irony this is, given that almost everyone who belonged to the revolutionary communist elite also belonged to an ethnic minority group, i.e. was not Russian. Conquest calls Bolsheviks "a highly doctrinal and theorizing sect." I not only agree with this finding, but would like to add that for me the main lesson of the Ukrainian famine lies in the danger of dogma and ideology which do not scruple to sacrifice real people for the sake of visions and utopias. Growing up in the Ukraine in the 1970s and 1980s, I merely heard something about the famine that Stalin orchestrated. The full nature of the heinous crimes committed by Stalin was not known, even though Khruschev, who was ethnically Ukrainian, criticized Stalin's "personality cult" in the 1950s. This is because the Soviet regime that brought Stalin to power and which he epitomized for 29 years, until his death in 1953, was then still in place. Adherence to untested dogma also leads to suppression of factual information. The Ukraine was devastated by Stalin's satanic policies, whose real goal was the continuation of his and his regime's power. The book gives us hope, because it suggests that truth, however horrible and well-conceived, cannot be hidden forever.
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Summary: It had to be one more million than the Holocaust
Review: This book is a travesty- a carefully crafted political document masquerading as history. The victims of this supposed Stalinist-caused Ukranian famine had to number 7 million to beat the Nazi's horrible and DOCUMENTED crimes. Communism has to be worse than Fascism. Robert Conquest has been on an anti-Communist crusade since he was a propagandist for the British Foreign Office in the Fifties. He's an old Cold Warrior who's created a niche as an expert on Soviet history. "The Harvest of Sorrow" was written at the behest of Ukranian nationalists and their organization UNA during the Reagan "evil empire" phase of the Cold War. Don't believe anything you read in this tome- especially the facts and figures about the number of famine victims and its purposeful intent. Use the "divide by ten" rule scholars apply when reading ancient or medieval accounts. The most interesting and sickening point of the whole book is that number seven million. Its pulled out of the bureaucratic air by adding up various censuses taken in the chaotic 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. Many of Conquest's sources are avowed anti-commies and pro-German Ukranian nationalists and if this book had been written in the late 1930s or early 1940s Joseph Goebbels could have used it in one of his diatribes. This book is outright propaganda- Mr Conquest never really left his original profession.
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Summary: the other holocaust
Review: this is an excellent overview of "the other holocaust" of the 20-th century. 7 million innocent Ukrainian men, women and children ( mostly peasants) died from artificial famine created by satraps from Moscow, such as Kaganovych, Krushev,et al.
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Summary: Just wonderful
Review: This is the only full account of Stalins war on the peasentry in which millions were killed. Conquest states that 'the Ukrain was one large Belsen'(reffereing to the Nazi extermiantion camp). Thsi difinitve work details the horror and the various stages of the war. COllectivization, the crushing of the Kulaks, and finally the destruction of the peasent. Sadly the communists ahd appealed to the peasents for support during the civil war promising them 'land', the only land the peasents got was mass graves in the woods where Soviet Cheka killed them.
Rating:
Summary: Just wonderful
Review: This is the only full account of Stalins war on the peasentry in which millions were killed. Conquest states that 'the Ukrain was one large Belsen'(reffereing to the Nazi extermiantion camp). Thsi difinitve work details the horror and the various stages of the war. COllectivization, the crushing of the Kulaks, and finally the destruction of the peasent. Sadly the communists ahd appealed to the peasents for support during the civil war promising them 'land', the only land the peasents got was mass graves in the woods where Soviet Cheka killed them.
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Summary: A must read for students of the SU- but be wary
Review: To those who follow the field, all historians agree that the Ukrainian famine of the early '30s was responsible for a great tragedy. But, there has always been a question about the numbers involved. Before the fall of the Soviet Union information was scarce and limited to secondhand accounts and what the Soviets would allow to be released. Harvest of Sorrow is based on this type of documentation. Unfortunately there are many with a political motivation or whose understanding of history is limited to what they purchase in bookstores who tend to believe that any criticism of Conquest is "revisionism" of some sort. Absolutely false. (As an aside, my own background is US military. During the late 80's and early 90's I focused on the Warsaw Pact. I also speak Russian, work in a field that deals with the former Soviet Union and have visited there several times.) Historians of the left AND the right have criticised the numbers in Harvest of Sorrow NOT because of ideological reasons but because the numbers don't add up with the data. Even conservative historians (Figes) have recently held that the numbers in Harvest are greatly exaggerated. Generally the old numbers agreed upon ranged from 3 to 13 million (interestingly anti-Stalinist marxist historians insist millions died). Recent research since 1990 when archives of the Soviet government was opened shows the numbers to have probably been around 1 million, or several million less than Harvest of Sorrow contends. The archives consist of census data, requistions for supplies, personel, arrests, etc, etc. That and the amount of intentional planning involved is what criticisms from historians to this book consist of, NOT whether the Soviets committed atrocities or used the famine for their ends. Increasingly the archival data shows that it was incompetance and the organizational stupidity of the party that aggravated the famine rather than any centrally directed program from Stalin. Conquest uses second and third hand personal accounts to arrive at numbers (At the time that is all that was there to work with). The data now shows that he has made serious errors. Unfortunately many don't seem to understand this and any criticism or comments against this work are deemed as "left wing" or communist. Most of this comes from those with only a passing interest in objective history. By all means read Harvest of Sorrow. There is much to commend it in terms of the stories of survivors. But be wary of the numbers and of the scholarship. Many with some sort of axe to grind and a less-than-stellar knowledge of history will always think those who don't agree are revisionists or marxists. I am neither a revisionist or marxist but I do think that the job of historians is to get to the truth.
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Summary: The "Human" Face of Communism
Review: We have heard so many excuses for the disaster that we call Soviet communism that one can almost recite them by heart - communism has never been tried, communism rescued citizens from the "tyanny" of the tsar (this is so pathetic as to be beyond laughable), communism had the wrong people, wrong methods, wrong country, blah, blah, blah. Soviet collectivism is nowhere better illustrated than in the largest mass killing in the history of the world when over 14 million Ukranians were starved, shot and beaten to death by that "rescuing" crew - Lenin, Stalin & Company. This, of course, does not include the millions killed in the Civil War and the years directly afterwards. And if it were left up to Western intellectuals to highlight this holocaust we would still be waiting for news much less disapproval or blame. Robert Conquest's tome reads like a documentary, describing a madness that one does not associate with civilized nations or people. But he is relentlessly systematic, the research and evidence overwhelming and mindnumbing. This methodical and studious approach is much more effective than anguished calls for revenge. Perhaps the magnitude of the event is too great to grasp for some, is so far beyond the pale that it surpasses the senses. But that fact does not explain why even today the Soviet system has never come in for a tenth of the criticism of Nazi Germany despite committing five to six times the number of murders if over a longer time span. Worse, the regime had intellectual support in the West even after it's crimes were discovered - from the New York Times correspondent in Moscow to the usual bevy of college professors and "activists". Conquest is measured but in this case the words and actions alone do not need shouting. In more poetic hands, this could have been a requiem - instead we have a lesson for the ages.
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