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The 20th century has been a century of political famines, that is, famines directly—and at times willfully—caused by human policies, in war1and in peacetime. Scores of millions starved to death in times during which there was enough food to feed everyone and the means to transport it where needed.

Ten or more years ago I informally proposed to a friend sitting in the editorial board of a major historical journal to organise a forum on Soviet famines in the light of the new sources and interpretations that were emerging. The answer I received struck me: it was a good idea and the topic was indeed important, but times weren't yet ripe. At first I was reminded of what Mikhail Suslov supposedly told Vasily Grossman: people weren't yet ready for Life and Destiny, whose essential 'truth' he did not therefore question. Then, I came to the conclusion that the answer was in itself a sign of the relevance of the topic and of its potential impact upon our reading of the past century. In fact, as I will try to briefly show in my conclusions, within Soviet famines keys can be found that open doors to an array of new, conceptual questions which force us to reconsider many of our basic ideas and representations. This is for historians a fascinating opportunity, but it can also prove a harrowing personal experience, so that in a way my colleague – being unquestionably wrong – was also unquestionably right: big questions have their times, and we can 'force' these times only up to a point, and at a risk, as is often the case with 'forcing'.

This article offers a comparative study of the domestic and international dimensions of two calamitous famines in Communist countries: one in the USSR engendered by Iosif Stalin's Great Turning Point (1928–1934) and the other in the People's Republic of China in connection with Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958–1962). The article traces the historical roots of these catastrophes and explains how Sino-Soviet interactions affected the genesis of the famine in China. It also discusses the long-term consequences of these avoidable tragedies, comparing their impact on subsequent Soviet and Chinese history. A close look at the evident affinity between the famines opens new and at times unexpected vistas, which allow us not only to get a better grasp of each event in its own specificity but also to shed new light on fundamental questions.

This essay addresses the similarities and differences between the cluster of Soviet famines in 1931-33 and the great Chinese famine of 1958-1962. The similarities include: Ideology; planning; the dynamics of the famines; the relationship among harvest, state procurements and peasant behaviour; the role of local cadres; life and death in the villages; the situation in the cities vis-à-vis the countryside, and the production of an official lie for the outside world. Differences involve the following: Dekulakization; peasant resistance and anti-peasant mass violence; communes versus sovkhozes and kolkhozes; common mess halls; small peasant holdings; famine and nationality; mortality peaks; the role of the party and that of Mao versus Stalin's; the way out of the crises, and the legacies of these two famines; memory; sources and historiography.

<p class="EW-Title">Selected Bibliography of Socialist Famines in the Twentieth Century</p>