Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union

Felix Wemheuer

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780300206784
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations and Measurements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Comparing the Great Leap Famines under Stalin and Mao
• 1. The “Tribute” of the Peasantry in Times of Food Availability Decline
• 2. Protecting the Cities, Fighting for Survival of the Regime
• Part 2: The Politicization of Hunger in Maoist China
• 3. Hierarchies of Hunger and Peasant-State Relations (1949–1958)
• 4. Preventing Urban Famine by Starving the Countryside (1959–1962)
• Part 3: Famines on the Periphery
• 5. The Burden of Empire: The Crisis of “Indigenization” in Ukraine and Tibet
• 6. “Eating Mice for the Liberation of Tibet”: Hunger in Official Chinese History
• 7. “Genocide Against the Nation”: The Counter-Narratives of Tibetan and Ukrainian Nationalism
• Epilogue and Conclusion: Lessons Learned—How the Soviet Union and China Escaped Famine
• Conclusion: Hunger and Socialism
• Notes
• Index