POLICY OF THE SOVIET STATE REGARDING FOOD SUPPLY OF UKRAINIAN WORKERS IN 1929–1933 (ON THE EXAMPLE OF KHARKIV)

Abstract

The article examines the material situation of Ukrainian workers (based on the materials of the city Kharkiv) during Stalin’s communist assault, and it is proved that as a result of the economic crisis, the food security of workers by cards and in public canteens worsened. The author proposes to consider the lack of food and manifestations of hunger among the workers of Kharkiv and in general in the USSR in the first half of the 1930’s because of the communist assault and the forced seizure of bread from the peasants by the method of prodrosverstka. Bread seized from peasants went abroad. The currency received from the sale of grain was used for the construction of new buildings of the first five-year plan. Financing of huge capital investments was carried out by the state at the expense of issuing an additional amount of money, not backed by goods, which caused inflation and, as a result, an economic crisis. Because of inflation, prices on the free market have increased. In the conditions of forced bread harvesting and the economic crisis, the state did not have enough bread for the normal food supply of urban workers, even in the capital of the USSR, so it introduced centralized distribution of products, and then gradually removed a number of categories of workers from centralized supply. According to archival data and memories of foreigners, this policy of the Soviet leadership led to a gradual deterioration of the food supply of workers and members of their families, and during 1932–1933 to manifestations of cannibalism, mass thefts at food industry enterprises, as well as to numerous cases of death from hunger and diseases of a large number of Kharkiv residents.