russian and soviet living standards: secular growth and ... · russian/soviet economic development...
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XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006Session 50
Paper presented to Conference on Historical Standards of Living: Eurasian andAmerican Countries, Keio University, Japan, May 31, 2006
Russian and Soviet living standards: Secular growth and conjuncturalcrisesStephen G. Wheatcroft, University of Melbourne, AustraliaEm: [email protected]
(This work is preliminary and in draft form. Please do not quote from it without thepermission of the author.)
This paper extends the analysis that I made of Soviet welfare levels 1880-1960 in my1999 article in Slavic Review1. In that article I drew attention to the combination inRussian/Soviet economic development of both welfare crises on the one hand andremarkably rapid improvements in secular trends in welfare on the other. I drew attentionto the complex situation in which welfare and mortality were subject to secularimprovements at the same time that Russian and Soviet society experienced a series ofmassive conjunctural shocks resulting in crises and famines. I also argued that contrary tonormal perceptions, the Russian and Soviet cases were well documented and supportedby a wealth of statistical material whose reliability was significantly less impaired, thanwas normally assumed. In several regards Russian and Soviet statistical systems werequite remarkable for a society of such a level of under-development undergoing such alevel of welfare crises. Of course there are problems with the data, but the problems weremainly a result of conscious and very deliberate attempts to falsify the conclusions thatwere being based on these data. The continued pursuit of these distorted pictures wouldindeed have produced pressures which would ultimately have led to the distortion of thebase data, if left uncorrected. But repeatedly, at the last moment, there was anintervention from the authorities to stop this from happening. The serious corruption ofbase data was far less frequent and less important than has been assumed. The normalresult was for the base data to be declared secret and for only a select and often highlydistorted set of conclusions to be made public from them2. In short it was the politiciansrather than the statisticians that carried out the distortions. It was the conclusions thatwere based upon these data, and the way that these conclusions were presented for public
1 Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘The Great Leap Upwards: Anthropometric Data and Indicators of Crises andSecular Change in Soviet Welfare Levels, 1880-1960’, Slavic Review, no. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 27-60. Thiswill be referred to in this article as GLU.2 And there were different levels of secrecy at which the base data were held. From 1932 a number of secret“For official use only” publications appeared which contained detailed statistical materials which were notto be publicized and not to be referred to in regular publications. There was a scandal in TsUNKhU in 1932when top secret ‘sovershenno sekretno’ materials on harvest evaluations were accidentally published in arestricted ‘for official use only’ Bulletin.
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use that were erroneous and not necessarily the data themselves. There was often aseparate, internal secret set of conclusions which were based on these data, and whichwere not publicized at the time3. A detailed analysis of the history of the statisticalservices and a search of the secret operation materials in the statistical archives enable usto resurrect much of the base data and to see where and when distortions were made.
In this paper I will pick up and extend some of the comments that I made earlierconcerning the reliability of the statistical data. I will extend some of the discussionsregarding mortality, and anthropometric indicators, and I will add additional data ondisease incidence and market indicators. The paper also engages with recent work thathas attempted to reconsider welfare levels4, and it attempts to present a better frameworkin which to conceptualise the many famines of this period.5 The main argument howeveris that the Russian experience was marked by both rising welfare trends and continuedcrises, and that this needs to be recognized, as such.
1) The reliability of Russian and Soviet data
The assumption that Soviet economic data was bound to be distorted for propagandisticreasons has often misled outside critics6 Provided that we understand how the data were
3 This has been argued for the first five year plan by R.W. Davies, and S.G.Wheatcroft, in ‘FurtherThoughts on the First Soviet Five Year Plan’, Slavic Review, no. 4, December 1974, pp.790-8024 Especially Robert C. Allen, Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution,Princeton and Oxford, 2003, and . Ellman, ‘Vitte, Mironov I oshibochoe ispol’zovanieantropometricheskikh dannykh’, in Ekonomicheskaya Istoriya: Obozrenie, vypusk 11, Moscow, MGU,2005, pp. 159-165.5 See in particular, R.W.Davies and S.G.Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933,Palgrave: 2004, especially chapter 13, ‘The Famine in Perspective’, pp. 400-442. See also. S.G.Wheatcroft,‘Towards explaining the Soviet Famine in 1931-33: Political and natural factors in perspective’, Food andFoodways, Vol. 12, No. 2-3, 2004, pp. 137-164. Special issue on famine edited by Cormac O’ Grada.6It is demonstrably the case that at certain key times the Soviet statisticians over-represented problematicareas in their sample surveys. They did this because they were genuinely interested in what was happeningin these difficult areas, rather than because they were intent on producing a certain effect on subsequentanalysts. At the height of the 1921/22 famine additional food surveys were commissioned, specifically forthe famine areas. Unless properly weighted, this would mean that the sample as it stands would over-estimate the extent of the famine overall See Trudy TsSU, vols. Described in S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘Famineand food consumption records in early Soviet history, 1917-25’, in C. Geissler and D.J.Oddy, eds. Food,Diet and Economic Change: Past and Present, Leicester University Press,1993, pp. 151-174 It is alsodemonstrably the case that at the height of the 1931-33 famine Soviet statisticians in collecting their samplesurvey data on collective farms again targeted those in the most difficult regions where agriculturalproduction was suffering the most. They did this because these data had operational significance and thepeople who were organizing the collection of these data were genuinely interested in finding out howserious the crisis was in these areas. The data were not published at the time and remained secret until wellafter the famine. Scholars who do not understand the nature of these operational data and who blithelyassume that data that concentrated on the worse areas could be assumed to be typical of all areas, or evenexhibit a tendency to over-emphasise better areas, will clearly be greatly misled in the conclusions that theymake. This is precisely the error that Professor Steven Tauger made, and continues to make in his claimsthat the 1932 was 5 million tons lower than in 1931 (Soviet Studies and elsewhere check). If ProfessorTauger had checked more carefully the coverage of his data, he would have had to agree with the scholarswho had used these data before him, that they cannot be used to provide an unweighted aggregate figure onnational production, and he would not have needed to make the sensational and mistaken conclusion that hedid. For a fuller account of criticisms of Tauger see S.G.Wheatcroft, Tragediya Sovetskoi Derevnei, vol. 3
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collected and processed, and how access to the prime data were restricted, we have anindependent way of checking on some of the conclusions that were made on the basis ofthese data, and we have a way to correct the conclusions, or come up with our ownconclusions.
In GLU pp. 28-31, I provided a number of examples of false conclusions that had beenmade from anthropometric data. Similar examples could be found for demography whereselective, and clearly distorting indicators of mortality decline were claimed after thepublication of the full data series was suspended in 1927. However in this case ofdemography we also have examples of security officials pursuing unfortunatedemographers and registration officials over their collection of data. A politburo/ CentralCommittee decree under the signatures of Stalin and Molotov claimed that registrationofficials were under-reporting births and double-recording deaths in order to producefalse indicators of the level of population growth. We now know that this decree was partdrafted by Ezhov, and that it instructed the NKVD, at the time under Yezhov toinvestigate these wrecking activities and bring the guilty to justice7. In this case we maywell expect that there would be a massive tendency to respond to these pressures. Weknow population estimates were distorted at this time, but we also know that thesedistortions came to light with the census of 1937 and 1939. Initially the discrepancybetween the records from the registration data and the census was interpreted as being theresult of the census being wrecked, but a repeat census of 1939 eventually persuaded theauthorities that the population was significantly lower than expected. This whole historyis very disturbing, but in the end it demonstrates that even under the political pressuresthat existed in 1937-1939 the census data remained relatively uncorrupted.
For levels of grain production and food consumption the restrictions on publication ofunapproved figures was even more firmly enforced. Consumption data were howeverpublished in restricted internal publications (confidential in print). For grain productionthere was a famous incident in 1932 when the head and deputy of the statistical servicewere publicly censured for allowing an unofficial grain harvest figure to appear in asecret (internal confidential-print) publication. It was important at the time to know whatfigures could be published, and now that we can see all of the archival data it is possiblefor us to correct some of the distortions that were imposed on some of the sound data. Italso allows us to identify what basic data was not sound and suffered from distortions.
There are several major problems with Soviet statistical materials that can only briefly bereferred to here, they include political interference in grain statistics, population statistics,and morbidity data, but in addition there are other general problems which arise out of ageneral lack of appreciation of the importance to have a good understanding of theproblem or something worse. There are enormous problems associated with the frequentchanges in regional boundaries which make it extremely difficult to breakdown timeseries into regionally comparable regions. I have been struggling for years to get somecomparable regional data sets together.
7 These materials have recently appeared in the Ezhov fond of materials that have recently been declassifiedin RGASPI, and this indicates that Ezhov worked with Stalin and Molotov in redrafting this decree, whichmay originally have come from Yagoda. See RGASPI , 671/1/28
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2) Different welfare indicators and their inter-relationshipsBelow I will consider a whole range of welfare indicators, and will be particularlyinterested not only in what trends they show regarding increasing or declining welfare,but also the indicators that they provide regarding deviations or disturbances from thetrend. In the final section I will attempt to draw these together.
a) Mortality trends and disturbancesEver since Frank Lorimer carried out his landmark history of Soviet population in 1946we have been aware of both the long-term decline in mortality and the majordemographic crises that accompanied them. Even with the limited amount ofdemographic materials available at the time Lorimer identified the existence of the majordemographic crises of 198-22, and of the early 1930s. At the time that Lorimer waswriting the Soviet Union was still overcoming a third and fourth crises associated withWW2 and the post-war 1946/47 famine. There had been no regular publication ofregistration data on births and deaths since 1927, and only the 1926 census had beenpublished in any detail (26 volumes). The 1930 census had been abolished, after theformal closure of the statistical office (TsSU) in late 1929 and its merger with the StatePlanning office (Gosplan). The resurrection of a more independent Central Statisticalbody with the name of Central Department for National Economic Accounting(TsUNKhU) in early 1932 would lead to more emphasis being placed on statisticsincluding demographic statistics, and the eventual call for the resumption of censuses.Censuses of livestock were in fact carried out in mid 1931 and were a harbinger of thechanged approach to statistics, but early attempts to call a demographic census in 1933failed for a number of reasons.
The state had adopted an unrealistic presumption that rapid population growth of the mid1920s would continue. Apart from the famine of 1931-33 that reduced the population byseveral million, there was also a very rapid decline in natality rates (partly supported bythe mass application of abortions), which the central government refused to acknowledge.The disjuncture between reality and the states perceptions of reality was not assisted bythe action of the expansion of the power of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs,under Yagoda in the mid 1930s. Soon after the strengthened All Union People’sCommissariat had taken charge of the civic registration system, Yagoda and his officialscalled in the support of Stalin, Molotov and their new adviser in the Secretariate Yezhovto denounce the officials in the civil registration system for double recording deaths andunder-reporting births, in order to under-estimate the rate of population growth. Underthese threats, some registration officials undoubtedly gave way and began providingdistorted figures that produced the desired effects, and kept their critics away.
But when the census was eventually carried out in 1937, despite the willingness ofKraval’ the Stalinist leader of TsUNKhU of the time, the population count indicated alevel of growth significantly slower than the government had claimed. Kraval’, who wasan unsuccessful Stalinist, but also many honest statisticians were arrested and repressedas wreckers as a result of this census. A new census was carried out in 1939, whichlargely replicated the 1937 growth indicators, apart from the addition of the 1937-9
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growth. After the heroic intervention of P.I.Popov, the first director of TsSU8 thegovernment eventually accepted internally (and secretly) that there had been moremortality than it had initially claimed9, and that its early growth estimates had beenwrong. The country was however soon overwhelmed by WW2 which caused anothermajor demographic crisis, which was followed by another famine in 1946/7. It was only 6years after Stalin’s death, when a new census was carried out, that the statistical service(renamed TsSU) began again publishing detailed mortality and natality data and theresults of the 1959 census.
Several attempts were made at this time to review the earlier available data and match itup with the trends of the late 1950s. Few of these later estimates provided much of anadvance on the detailed work of Lorimer in 1946. At the time it was largely believed thatwe would never be able to get a better fix on the demographic developments of the time,because no reliable registration data had been kept, and because the census data had beenlost during the war.10
After the Soviet statistical archives became accessible to researchers, it emerged that thecensus data for both 1937 and 1939 were intact, that fairly reliable series of registrationdata were available, and that the officials in charge of registration data in TsUNKhU hadbeen called on to explain the discrepancy between the census results, and the estimatesbased on their registration data. From these materials it is possible to provide a moredetailed estimate of population trends for several of the years in the 1930s.
The Central Statistical Office Demographers Andreev, Darskii and Kharkova, wereinstructed to make an estimate of this annual dynamic, which appeared in 1990 on the eveof the fall of the USSR. Its dynamic is produced below in figure 1
8 On the eve of the 1939 census, P.I.Popov , the elderly first Director of TsSU, who had been sacked in1926 wrote to Molotov and Stalin invoking the name of Lenin, to argue that the results when they appearedwould still be lower than expected and that this should be recognized as false expectations from Gosplanrather than as continued wrecking in the statistical offices. When the low figures did materialize Stalin andMolotov accepted them and placed Popov (who had just criticized Gosplan) together with Voznesenskii(who was currently director of Gosplan) in charge of a commission to work out future statistical processes’9 The results of the 1939 census were published in summary form over two pages in the newspaper Pravdaon June 2, 1939 and April 29, 1940. (cf 26 volumes of the 1939 census). And of course no conclusionswere made concerning the earlier planned population growth.10 I was repeatedly told by colleagues, who I respect, and who I think were themselves mis-informed, thatthe basic data had been evacuated from Moscow during the War and had been sunk on a barge in theVolga.
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Figure 1: The dynamic of USSR Crude Death Rates, 1890-1956 as computed byAndreev, Darskii and Kharkova
These figures are now widely accepted, although I have some suspicions about parts ofthe dynamic, and believe that they tend to under-estimate the fall in births during thiscrisis and therefore the scale of mortality in the crisis of 1931-33. Nevertheless the scaleof mortality was extremely high11.
ADK’s figures above, nevertheless provide a rough indication of the overall dynamic. Wecan identify three major demographic crises from 1915-22, 1929-34, 1941-49 along agenerally declining trend of mortality. We can measure the overall trend of mortalitydecrease for the entire period, including the three crisis periods, and we can measure theoverall trend for the period excluding the three crisis periods, and it is clear that the crisismortality periods will have caused the deaths of many millions of the population, but donot seem to have disturbed the extremely rapid overall trend in mortality decline. extent of the famine
11 The grounds for my doubts are explained in S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘O demograficheskikh svidetel’stvakhTragedii Sovetskoi Derevni v 1931-33’ [On demographic evidence of the Tragedy of the Soviet Village,1931-33’, in V.P. Danilov et al, eds. Tragediya Sovetskoi Derevni: Kollektivizatsiya I raskulachivanie:Dokumenty I Materialy, 1927-1939, [The Tragedy of the Soviet Village: Collectivization andDekulakization: Documents and Materials, 1927-39], vol. 3, Konets 1930-1933, Moscow, 2001, pp. 866-886.
The Dynamic of USSR Crude Death Rate,1890-1956
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1890-1956 all yearsy=548.0228-0.27072x
Rsquared adj=0.22415
1890-1956 less crisis yearsy=767.759-0.3877x Rsquared adj
= 0.95716
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b) Anthropometric indicators: trends and disturbances (Measuring what?)Mortality as a welfare indicator is rather absolute. You are either dead or you are not.Anthropometric data can offer us a more nuanced set of indicators as the record ofmalnourishment is stamped on the population in the way in which the secular trendtowards growth is disturbed. There have been many attempts to use anthropometric datato indicate the rising trend towards improved welfare, but there have been relatively fewattempts to measure the way in which anthropometric indicators respond to temporarycrises, famines and other challenges.
The data that are used below are derived from a latitudinal survey of terminal heightsfrom Russian military recruitment data, 1874-1913, and three accumulative surveys ofterminal heights from surveys for the clothing industry conducted in 1927, 1957 and1975. Latitudinal surveys were carried out every year on a certain age cohort. Asexplained elsewhere12 the Tsarist conscript data need some minor adjustments to accountfor minor changes in age of conscription and the extent to which this fell short of the ageat which terminal height was achieved. Accumulative surveys were carried out over amore limited number of years and in each survey numbers of people of different ageswere measured to provide indications of the average terminal heights for all of thesegenerations. The different data sets for the different years are then linked together. Thethree data sets used below cover the male population in central Russia. Details of the datasets and sources are provided in GLU pp. 41-45.
Table 2: Terminal Heights of Russian Male Population in Central Regions ofRSFSR, by year of Birth from 1857-1957
12 GLU, p.39-40
Terminal heights of Russian Male Population inCentral Regions of RFSFR
162
164
166
168
170
172
1857
1864
1871
1878
1885
1892
1899
1906
1913
1920
1927
1934
1941
1948
1955
1899 births1913 e.g.s.
1909 births1923 e.g.s
1934 births1948 e.g.s.
1923 births1937 e.g.s.
1913 births1927 e.g.s.
1918 Births1932 e.g.s.
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c) Disease IncidenceAn important but hard to quantify welfare indicator is the extent to which the populationsuccumbs to infectious diseases. Morbidity data or data on the recorded incidence ofdisease are notoriously difficult to handle. In many cases changes in recorded morbidityare indicators of changes in recording habits of those attempting to register diseases.Attempts to use such data need to be checked against what we know about general trendsin the incidence of these and other diseases elsewhere and need to be treated verycarefully.
Dramatic short-term changes in numbers of cases of infectious disease, provided that theyare not the result of changed registration practices, are indicative of something. Rapidincreases in numbers of cases of disease at a time when we would expect the registrationsystem to be strained would have to be considered more seriously, and declines inmorbidity from some diseases when the morbidity of others is falling would also besignificant.
Apart from the normal problems of under-registration of epidemic illnesses, it is clearthat there was a degree of distortion and under-reporting in the morbidity data that theSoviet government handed over to the Health Organizations of the League of Nations inthe late 1920s and 1930s.13 The tables given below include the official figures handedover to the Health Organization of the League of Nations and subsequently reworked bythe US OSS. There is also a series of data produced by the leading Soviet medicalhistorian of the 1970 Dr. Barayan. No other comprehensive sets of morbidity data havebeen found in the Soviet archives, but I have located a series of secret data produced bythe sanitary department of the railway transportation Commissariat, which are listedTransanup14in the tables below. Although obviously not as comprehensive as nationaldata, they do provide an interesting picture of relative growth.
The sections below indicate the dynamic of two important epidemic illnesses, which wereeradicated over this time- Cholera and Smallpox, the dynamic of some of the majorepidemic diseases that are normally associated with famines- Typhus and typhoid, andfinally the curious case of Malaria whose incidence appears to be contrary to that foralmost all other diseases.
i) Two major killing diseases whose incidence fell sharply: Cholera andSmallpox
13 Although the publication of morbidity data in the USSR ceased in the late 1920s, a special monthlyepidemiological bulletin was prepared for the Health Organizations of the League of Nations and was dulytransferred to these organizations until 1937. In 1937 those involved in transferring these data were accusedof spying and the change of data ceased. A comparison of these data with those later used by Sovietmedical historians with access to the primary data indicate that data provided to the League of Nations wasincomplete and provided a somewhat sanitized view of developments in the early 1930s. See O.V. Barayan,Itogi Poluvekovoi borby s infektsiyami v SSSR [The Results of half a century of combating infectiousdiseases in the USSR], Moscow, 1968. See also S.G. Wheatcroft, ‘Famine and factors affecting mortality inthe USSR: The Demographic Crises of 1914-1922 and 1930-33’, CREES Discussion papers , SIPS, nos 20-21, Birmingham University, 1981.14 RGAE, F. 1562, op 329, d. 114, l. 107
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Cholera often appears to have coincided with famines and welfare crises but this islargely accidental. Cholera was not endemic in Russia and only appeared in Russia whenone of the World-wide pandemics brought it to Russia from India. There were only 4Cholera pandemics in the 19th Century
1828-33 about 220,000 deaths mainly (200,000) in 18311847-59 about 1 million deaths mainly (690,000) in 18481865-73 about 320,000 deaths mainly (240,00) in 1871-721892-96 about 380,000 deaths mainly (300,000) in 1892
The fifth and final pandemic in Russia began in 1903 and lasted through to 1922 withprobably less than 200,000 deaths and most (110,000) coming in 1910
Cholera in Russia
0100,000200,000300,000400,000500,000600,000700,000800,000
1829
1837
1845
1853
1861
1869
1877
1885
1893
1901
1909
1917
1925
1933
1941
1949
Barayan deaths
Cholera in Russia
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
1829
1837
1845
1853
1861
1869
1877
1885
1893
1901
1909
1917
1925
1933
1941
1949
Barayan cases
Sheldon Watts in his study of ‘Disease Power and Imperialism’ draws attention to whathe claims is the different trend in eradication of Cholera in Britain and in India. He notesthat the British dynamic was for a significant reduction in cholera deaths for eachpandemic after 1848. He compares this with the Indian dynamic which ‘dramaticallyincreased’ over the same period15. The Russian dynamic was clearly much closer to theBritish, than the Indian and cholera virtually disappeared after the early 1920s.
15 Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism,Yale1997, p. 167.
10
Cholera
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
5000019
09
1913
1917
1921
1925
1929
1933
1937
1941
1945
1949
Barayan
Smallpox was the other major disease which was eradicated fairly early in the twentiethcentury. The registered incidence of smallpox was over 150,000 cases in the RussianEmpire in 1910. These figures were exceeded during the early years of the post-revolutionary health crises in 1919, but there was not a massive explosion of Smallpox inthe early 1920s, and levels of smallpox were greatly reduced in subsequent years.
Smallpox
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
OSSBaraun
As can be seen in the table above, there was a slight elevation in smallpox during thefamine of 1931-33, but far less than had been present during the earlier period.
ii) Two serious diseases often associated with famine whose incidence fell
Typhus is often referred to as the famine disease. It is almost invariably associated withfamine. This is largely because famines normally cause large population movements andconcentrations of refugees, who live in unhealthy and dirty accommodation where theypick up the fleas that provide the vector for typhus. Typhus was the major disease of thefamine of 1918-22, with well over 2 million cases registered in 1919 and 1920. It wasclearly a major debilitating factor in the demographic crisis of these times.
11
Typhus
0500000
10000001500000200000025000003000000
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
BaraunOSSTransanup
This is the disease concerning which the Soviet officials were most anxious. There isevidence of systematic distortion in the reports of typhus that were sent to Geneva. Theofficial series of data that was sent to the League of Nations registered a four-foldincrease in growth of typhus from 1931 to 1932, but then a reduction in 1933. This ishighly unlikely and appears to be a distortion. The estimates made by the Soviet medicalhistorians showed a further 4 fold increase and those of TranSanUp a 4.6 fold increase.The table below shows the dynamic in these years as seen from these sources.
Dynamic of increase in Typhus during 1929-33 famine
HO-LN Baraun Transanup HO-LN Baraun Transanup1929 33,254 40,000 387 Cf prev Cf prev Cf prev1930 38,588 60,000 823 116 150 2131931 19,302 80,000 3,374 50 133 4101932 77,832 220,000 15,338 403 275 4551933 35,218 800,000 70,866 45 364 4621934 58,194 410,000 20,4491935 66.812 120,000 3,8701933 cf29 106% 2000% 18,312%
Despite the much greater figures that emerge from Baraun’s estimates or the indicatorsfrom TranSanUp, it is still clear that we are dealing with a much lower level of typhusduring this period than during the earlier famine of 1921/22. This had initially led me tosuppose that overall mortality rates would have been lower at this time, but that is not thecase. Here we are dealing with a relatively modern pattern of famine epidemiology wheretraditional famine diseases like typhus have less importance.
The other major famine-related diseases were the water and food borne diseases (otherthan cholera, which we have already discussed). There was a large range of these waterand food borne diseases which included the fairly exotic disease of Typhoid but also anumber of very common diseases like dysentery and gastro-enteritis. Data are onlyavailable for the more exotic diseases, which is unfortunate because it is likely that in theconditions of relatively low mobility, most deaths would probably have come fromrelatively normal diseases of gastro-enteritis and dysentery, which would not have beenregistered. The dynamic for typhoid showing a general reduction is given below:
12
Typhoid
0100000200000300000400000500000600000
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
OSSBaraunTransanup
There was a distinct downward trend in typhoid. The 400,000 cases registered in 1920were lower than the 500,000 cases registered in 1909 and 1910. According to Baraunthere was a small rise in typhoid in 1931-33, but that was concealed in the data sent toGeneva.See below.
Dynamic of increase in Typhoid during 1929-33 famine
HO-LN Baraun Transanup HO-LN Baraun Transanup1929 171,988 110,000 5,583 Cf prev Cf prev Cf prev1930 195,017 170,000 10,539 113 112 1891931 109,145 190,000 16,228 56 137 1541932 161,117 260,000 17,301 148 115 1071933 82,163 300,000 10,130 51 70 591934 175,147 210,000 10,8951935 105,855 200,000 6.8171933 cf29 48% 124% 181%
iii) Malaria: a contrary dynamicThe malaria data, at first look extremely odd. Epidemics of malaria are seen to bepeaking several years after the famines, when the other epidemics peaked. But if westudy the specifics of this disease we can see that the dynamic as represented in these datais correct. Malaria is spread by the anopholese mosquito biting infected humans andcompleting a complex chain. Most anopholese are fairly choosy as to whether they areanthrophylic or zoophylic, ie. whether they eat human or animal blood. But many of theanaopholese types in Russia are hetero and will bite either. In circumstances in whichthere is a great reduction in livestock numbers, and they fell by almost 50% after the twodroughts of 1921/22 and 1931/32, we could expect a great increase in human-biting bysome of the anopholese who otherwise would have consumed livestock blood. This willset up new processes, which will take time to build up infections so that the full cycle canbe achieved. It is therefore perfectly logical that malaria epidemics in Russia build up twoto three years after the famine, after livestock levels have fallen, and that they decline aslivestock numbers grow.
13
Malaria
0
2000000
4000000
6000000
8000000
10000000
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
OSSBaraun
d. Nutritional indicatorsTwo different types of nutrition data are often used as indicators of welfare crises. One ofthese refers to food availability indicators based upon gross food production indicatorsand the construction of rudimentary food consumption balances. These balances are fairlyeasy to construct, and could provide some overall indicators of the situation. But far morerevealing would be the results of sample nutritional surveys carried out over this period.
The USSR has an unparalleled history of nutritional surveys, which were pioneered byzemstva statisticians, working in their separate provinces before the revolution onRussian peasant budgets. During the first World War Chayanov and Litoshenko carriedout much work on producing a synthetic regional network of peasant food consumptionsurveys. These were developed within the early TsSU where a vast network ofconsumption surveys were carried out in the years of civil war, famine and the 1920s andwhich covered peasant households but also worker households16
.§§FFiirrsstt ccrriittiiccaall mmaassss ssttuuddiieess§§RRuussssiiaa 11991188--2222 dduurriinngg ffaammiinneess CCDDRR HHoouusseehhoollddss KKCCaallss CDR
HHoouusseehhoollddss KKCCaallss uurrbbaann rruurraall uurrbbaann rruurraall uurrbbaann
§§ PPeettrrooggrraadd §§SSaarraattoovv§§MMaarrcchh 11991199 33,,009900 11,,559988 8888..55 662222 22,,777733 6633..55§§JJuullyy 11991199 9999 22,,441155 7733..11 111122 22,,777766 7733..11§§DDeecc 11991199 339999 22,,224422 8800..55 110055 33,,115566 8888..88§§MMaayy 11992200 332233 22,,669900 4455..77 110099 119922 22,,227755 44,,447744 5511..88§§OOcctt 11992200 337799 33,,337755 2211..88 113311 229977 22,,442255 33,,662266 4433..22§§AApprriill 11992211 553322 22,,661155 2233 115522 227744 22,,772233 33,,119966 4422..22§§SSeepptt 11992211 448800 22,,884466 2266..33 115555 335577 22,,002255 22,,661155 4400..88§§FFeebb 11992222 447799 33,,000033 4400..11 116600 552222 11,,990011 11,,776622 114477..11§§OOcctt 11992222 446688 33,,337799 1199..77 116600 558899 22,,882277 44,,224422 3311..44§§FFeebb 11992233 449900 33,,662277 1199..11 116600 553388 22,,773399 33,,889922 1199..44§§SSeeee aallssoo MMoossccooww,, SSaarraattoovv aanndd KKiieevv iinn CCaahhiieerrss dduu MMoonnddee rruussssee,, 3388 ((44)) ,, 11999977,, pppp.. 552255--555588
16 S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘Famine and food consumption records in early Soviet history, 1917-25’, in C. Geissler& D.J. Oddy, eds., Food, Diet and Economic Change: Past and Present, Leicester University Press, 1993,pp. 151-74, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘Soviet statistics of nutrition and mortality during times of famine,1917-1922 and 1931-1933’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 38(4), octobre-decembre 1997, pp.525-558
14
The abolition of TsSU in 1929 had appeared to put an end to these surveys, andespecially in the countryside where many of the rural correspondents were soon to beattacked and repressed as kulaks. However, by 1932 and the resurrection of TsUNKhU, itbecame clear that the system had simply undergone transformation and was continuing toproduce secret detailed reports on food consumption both in the towns and amongst thekolkhoz peasants.
The tables below provide an indication of the results of these surveys for the 1930s.
KCals per person per day
2,000
2,200
2,400
2,600
2,800
3,000
3,200
1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
Workerskolkhoz peasants
15
Kolkhoz peasant food consumption
1800
2000
2200
2400
2600
2800
3000
3200
3400
Jan1933
May Sep Jan1934
May Sep Jan1935
May Sep Jan1936
May Sep Jan1937
Apr Aug Dec Apr Aug Dec Apr Aug Dec
peasant conspcavyr
These data do indicate a quite sharp improvement in peasant and worker nutrition from1933 to 1936. In the first half of 1937 there clearly was some strain on rural nutrition,which passed with the favourable harvest of 1937. Urban nutrition levels will fall in 1938and 1940.
Additional nutritional data are available for the non-German-occupied parts of the USSR,and they show signs of dramatic declines and famines. But I have not yet assembled thesedata. Nutritional levels were also strained in the famine of 1946/7 and began improvingafter that.
e) Bringing the indicators togetherIf we were simply to chart the incidence of mortality crises and severe anthropometricchallenges (according to year of birth) we would see the following patterns.
i) Crises of War, Revolution and FamineDuration Severity
Mortality crisis 1915-1922 8 years 30 deaths/th 110%Anthropometric challenge 1899-1909 10 years 28 mm 1.6%Lag 16 to 13 years
ii) Crises of Collectivization and famineDuration Severity
Mortality crisis 1930-34 4 years 18deaths/th 90%Anthropometric challenge 1913-18 6 years 12 mm 0.7%Lag 17 to 16 years
16
iii) Crises of War and FamineDuration Severity
Mortality crisis 1941-49 8 years 38deaths/th 300%Anthropometric challenge 1923-34 11 years 18 mm 1.1%Lag 18 to 15 years
These results appear to indicate that the anthropometric strain that was associated withhigh mortality lasted on average for two to three years longer than the high mortalitylevels. This is the kind of result that we would expect. High mortality is likely to be amore severe consequence than anthropometric challenge and consequently we wouldexpect it to have an effect for a shorter period.
The 18-13 year lag with birth date, at first may seem a little strange. Our first intuitiveresponse would be to argue that the famine would be most severe for the very young andconsequently we would expect a far lower lag. But we need to remember that those whowere most severely affected would die, and therefore leave no trace of the strain behindthem. Furthermore, it is now understood that those who experienced a strain in their earlyyears before the growth spurt, have a good chance of catching up for their earlierchallenge, whilst those who experienced a severe challenge after the passing of theirgrowth spurt (normally 12 to 14), would find it difficult to catch up on the years ofdeprived growth. See GLU for references on this.
These terminal height data appear to be indicators of the extent of these welfare crises asexperienced by growing children, who had already passed through the growth spurt, buthad not yet reached terminal height.
Other anthropometric data are available for pre-terminal height measurements of schoolchildren and of birth weights (normally taken to be an indication of the health of themother at time of birth). The available data are summarized in GLU, but are onlyavailable for selective years and consequently need to be taken with some care.
Epidemiological data and mortality. The normally strong relationship between typhus andfamine mortality appears not to have been much weaker for the 1931-33 famine, than ithad been for earlier famines. This appears to fit in with the argument of Cormac O’Gradathat the epidemiology of modern famines is distinctly different for the classic 19th centuryfamines. There was also a major decline in morbidity for Cholera and smallpox whichhad earlier been major killers. There was also a major decline in typhoid, although it islikely that other more common diseases that were spread by water and food, would haveincreased during the later famine. A study of the Soviet famines enables us to specifymore precisely where that divide came in the USSR to within ten years, ie between 1922and 1931.
Nutritional data and mortality. The available food consumption survey data tends toconfirm the very low levels of nutrition amongst certain groups in key years. This isdespite the fact that the most vulnerable groups would not have been captured by thesesurveys.
17
3) Welfare and famines in perspectivea) Recent work on Russian and Soviet welfare trendsi) Pre-revolutionaryIn 1970 Professor Simms argued that conventional views on peasant imisseration in thelate Tsarist Empire were misleading because Russian peasants were paying an increasingamount of voluntary indirect taxation on alcohol and luxury goods. He argued that thismeant that they were not facing imisseration and that the much vaunted increase inindebtedness was probably only the result of peasant tax avoidance17. He also argued thatthere was something wrong is seeing growing and record grain exports (over 10 milliontons per year in 1909-13) for a country facing agricultural disaster.
At the time I pointed out that if you took a regional approach the situation was veryclear18. There was a very sharp difference between the Old World parts of the country theNorthern Consumer Region and the Central Producer Region which were struggling withover population and land shortages, and the New World parts of the country in the Southand East. The Northern Consumer Region (NCR) with Moscow and St.Petersburg werethe traditional food deficit regions where the population was growing and where localproduction, without new land, was being outstripped. Traditionally the NCR had beensupplied by the Central Producer Region (CPR) of the Central Black Earth Regions andthe Volga. But these regions now had relatively high populations, and no spare land, andwere not in a position to cope with the increasing demands of the north. These were areasthat were highly indebted, and in these areas there was no great increase in indirecttaxation payments. These were areas of real immiserization and occasional famine.
By contrast there were the New World areas of the South and East. The South (Ukraineand North Caucasus) were areas of relatively new settlement and development. It wasonly following the collapse of the last remnants of the Mongol invasion, with the fall ofthe Crimean Khanate in the late 18th century, that the fertile virgin lands of SouthUkraine and North Caucasus were open for settlement. Settlement and grain productionfrom the relatively large estates of the South developed rapidly in the 19th century. Thesewere the areas of large grain exports, and rising per capita production, even net of grainexports. These were the areas where indebtedness was low and where indirect taxationpayments were high. So there was no real contradiction in the country whose New Worldregions had the largest grain exports, also being the country whose old world areas werefacing shortage and famine. The problem was simply that Russia is a big and variatedcountry.
Recently Boris Mironov appears to have returned to this old question of welfare levelsfrom 1890-1905 when Witte was attempting to force industrialization. Mironov claimsthat anthropometric indicators show that Witte’s industrialization drive was not at the
17 James Y.. Simms, ‘The Crisis in Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century: A DifferentView, Slavic Review, no. 3, September 1977, pp. 370-396.18 S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘Crises and the Condition of the Peasantry in Late Imperial Russia’, in E. Kingston-Mann and T. Mixter, eds., Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921,Princeton, 1991, pp. 128-174
18
expense of reducing peasant and worker living standards19. Professor Michael Ellman,has with good reason, objected to the way in which Professor Mironov has caste hisarguments.20 Ellman correctly points out that when you unpack the anthropometric dataand look at the separate periods, it is arguable that there were reversal in the previousupward trend precisely during the Witte period. Of course we would expect this given thepresence of the famine of 1891/92. Ellman appears to be arguing in support of my generalarguments made in GLU, and naturally I agree with him.
ii) Post-revolutionaryRobert Allen’s reinterpretation of Russian and Soviet Economic HistoryRobert Allen has recently written a very interesting reinterpretation of Soviet Economicdevelopment. While I agree with most of what Allen writes, concerning theunacknowledged rapidity of Soviet economic growth rates, especially when comparedwith similar under-developed countries, I do disagree with a few points, especially hisclaim that by the late 1930s, living standards and per capita consumption in the USSRwere significantly higher than they had been in the 1920s. Allen explains that : ‘Mostaccounts maintained that the standard of living of the working population declined, orwas static at best, during the first Five-Year Plans. The bedrock support for thisinterpretation is the national income accounting of Bergson and the related calculations ofreal wages by Chapman’. Allen notes that both Bergson and Chapman had claimed adecline in standard of living over this period. Bergson had claimed a 3% decline in percapita consumption in 1937 cf 1928 for the whole economy. While Chapman had claimedfor the same period a 6% decline in urban per capita household purchases; and asignificant (unspecified) decline also in rural per capita household purchases of goods.
Allen argues that the standard pessimism is misplaced. There was a decline during thefamine ‘But by the late 1930s, per capita consumption was significantly higher than ithad been in the 1920s….The rural population did not share in this advance – its standardof living only returned to the 1928 level from the trough of 1932-33- but the urbanpopulation and those millions who moved from the country to city realized a significantincrease in consumption.’ p. 133
To support this claim Allen constructed his own food balances and provides the resultsgiven in figure 7.1 in Calorie Availability, Russia/USSR, 1885-1989. We are referred tothe text and to appendix C for sources, but they are not well explained. Allen appears tobe using Gregory’s data for the pre-war period and mine for the 1920s and the 1930s, buthis results are very different to mine. I carried out the same exercise in a SIPS Discussionpaper Nos 1-2 back in 1976, and had very different results see below.
19 B.N.Mironov, ‘Kto platil za industrializatsiyu: ekonomicheskaya politika S.Yu.Vitte I blagosostoyaniyenaseleniya v 1890-1905gg. po antropometricheskim dannym’ [Who payed for industrialization: theeconomic policy of S.Yu. Witte and the welfare of the population in 1890-1905, according toanthropometric data], Ekonomicheskaya istoriya: Ezhegodnik. 2001, Moscow 2002, pp. 422-43420 M.Ellman, ‘Vitte, Mironov i oshibochnoe ispol’zovanie antropometricheskikh dannykh’, [Witte,Mironov and the erroneous use of anthropometric data], Ekonomicheskaya istoriya: Obozrenie, vyp. 11.Moscow, 2005, pp. 159-165
19
SIPS 1 Allen SIPS 1 Allen1900-13 2964 2,000 100.0% 100.0%1927/28 2783 2,500 93.9% 125.0%1933 2449 2,000 82.6% 100.0%1937 2578 2,400 87.0% 120.0%1938 2708 2,600 91.4% 130.0%
The main difference is that Allen is providing an extremely low consumption norm for1900-1913, and all of his figures are lower than mine. In a footnote Allen explains thathe would have used Gregory’s data back to 1885, but when he did the calorieconsumption that resulted ‘is too low to be plausible. The implication is that the Imperialagricultural statistics understate production before 1895….If Russian yields were, in fact,higher, then much of the dynamism of tsarist agriculture becomes an illusion. ’ Allenp.263, fn 2.
These results are strange and it looks to me as though Allen is using uncorrected pre-revolutionary grain production figures. Over thirty years ago I wrote an articledemonstrating the need to apply a large (19%) correction to pre-revolutionary grainproduction data21. The figures above appear not to include that correction. Of course ifthe correction were included for all years from 1885 to 1913 it would not reduce theindicator of rapid growth of grain yield in these years. And perhaps I should add thatthose who have analysed this problem in some detail do not think that the growth thatappears to have supported the 10 million tons of grain exports per year were an illusion.
Since Gregory claims to be accepting my arguments as regards to the corrections neededto the pre-revolutionary data (Gregory, 1982, p. 224) and Allen appears to be usingGregory’s pre-revolutionary data and my post-revolutionary data, we clearly need to lookfurther into the detail of Allen’s figures to see why his calculations differ so greatly fromthose that I made 30 years ago. I plan to do that some time, but not here and now.
3b) Famines in perspectiveThe normal image that we still have of famines and their relationship with economicdevelopment is very similar to Tawney’s old image of the Asian peasant, who wasstationary (not going anywhere) and up to his neck in water, suffering as the tide wasgradually rising. By contrast the Russian population can be seen as being highly mobileand as rushing towards some promised land. The population are not rushing voluntarily,but are being driven forward. Progress through the water is hard, even though the water isonly waist high and not up to the neck. The tide isn’t really a problem, but there are anumber of large surf waves which will knock them down. If several of these large wavescome together they are bound to loose their footing. And even when they reach the shorethere will still be the threat of a freak Tsunami.
21 S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘The Reliability of Russian prewar grain output statistics’, Soviet Studies, 1974, vol.xxvi.
20
The Russian and Soviet population were exposed to seven cases of famine in their 80year run to the shore, 1880-1960. These came in 1891/92, 1918-20, 1921/22, 1928-30,1931-33, 1942-45, 1946/47, and these 7 famines can be placed into four groups.
i) Famine following a number of poor harvest years and a severe drought in 1891.The mortality consequences of the famine were probably fairly low, because ofthe great size of the famine relief operations.22 Much of the mortality that isnormally ascribed to this famine is probably the result of the cholera epidemic of1892, I have argued that if you excluded the cholera mortality from the famine,mortality in 1891/92 may even have been lower than normal23. (2 years)ii) A series of famines following major civil disturbances and enemy occupationof surplus producing areas, which first manifested itself as an urban famine in1918-20. Following a serious drought in 1921, the northern urban faminesuddenly became a much larger southern rural famine. Both these famines wereaccompanied by massive pandemics, high mortality and loss of height amongstcertain particularly vulnerable parts of the population, which were still growingbut had no chance to catch up for height loss before they reached the age at whichgrowth stopped. (5 years)iii) A similar scenario to ii) in as much as there was a series of famines resultingfrom severe grain shortages to the urban areas for 1928-30. However due to theapplication of rationing and harsh procurement from the peasantry the urbanpopulation remained in tact. A single good harvest year of 1930 was not used toadvantage to restore grain reserves, and was used to impose Collectivization onthe population. A serious drought in 1931 again shifted the centre of the famine tothe rural areas. Unlike the drought of 1921/22, the drought of 1931/32 wasfollowed by yet another harvest failure, and it is this additional year 1932/33 thataccounts for the extremely high mortality of this famine. Epidemic illness was notparticularly high. The anthropometric shadow in Central Ruussia was also not asprominent as it had been in 1918-22, but mortality overall especially in Ukraineand North Caucasus was very high. (6 years)iv) A series of famines resulting from German occupation of food surplus areas,the besieging of Leningrad and the accumulation of large numbers of refugees indistant hard to supply areas of Urals and Siberia. After a slight break in 1945 andbefore agriculture could recover and stocks be built up there was another seriousdrought in 1946 extending the famine through to 1947. Epidemic illnesses werelargely contained but mortality was high and the anthropometric shadow fairlyclear on those groups affected. (6 years).
Nevertheless when these conjunctural welfare crises were passed in the late 1950s and1960s the USSR emerged as one of the most rapid growing under-developed economiesin the world. Comparisons with America greatly confused the situation in which a poorcountry had managed to achieve great secular growth despite a quite remarkable series ofconjunctural crises. They had indeed brought some of this onto themselves, but it is a
22 See R.G.Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891-92: The Imperial Government responds to famine, NY, 197523 S.G.Wheatcroft, ‘The 1891-92 Famine in Russia: Towards a more detailed analysis of its scale anddemographic significance’, in L. Edmondson & P. Waldron, eds., Economy and Society in Russia and theSoviet Union, 1860-1930, Macmillan, 1992, pp. 58-9.
21
traversty to claim that they had brought it all on themselves, and to ignore the realwelfare achievements of the time.
4) ConclusionsThis paper has probably attempted to do too many things.
a) It has attempted to make you take seriously Soviet statistical data setsb) It has argued that we should try to disengage secular trends from conjunctural
crises and to recognize that welfare levels were affected by both, and that theycould operate in different directions
c) It has suggested that we should try to assess the relationship between differentconjunctural indicators24.
d) It has responded to some recent writings in this area and has attempted to seethem in some historical perspective.
24 I would be very interested to know whether the kinds of relationship that I am finding betweenanthropometric data and mortality data in Russia were characteristic of those found in other countries.