Famine

This chapter assesses how hunger accompanied collectivization across the Soviet Union. Unlike Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where dire starvation is evident in the historical record despite Stalinist efforts to hide collectivization's disastrous consequences, in Uzbekistan collectivization-related famine was severe enough to appear in interviewee accounts from every province, but it did not result in mass starvation. The chapter compares interviewee memories of hunger in 1933 with Uzbekistan's archival records that document famine. While party initiatives such as land reform, collectivization, and dekulakization produced pervasive and dominant public narratives, Uzbekistan's famine of 1933 was not a matter of public discussion, and there was no dominant, state-sponsored narrative that was shaping individual accounts. Respondent stories offer stark details of individual and community suffering with a wide variety of explanations for famine. Beyond documenting famine in Uzbekistan, the chapter analyzes memory of the Soviet past in an instance when the state was not consciously and actively directing Uzbek dehqons' consciousness.