“…Well, Brother Vasya, I Have to Die Here, in Siberia”: Famine in Rural Areas of the Novosibirsk Region in the 1940s

The phenomenon of local famine, which had its own causality, dynamics and chronology in the 1940s, remains an understudied topic in modern historiography.This article analyzes the factors that repeatedly caused in the rural areas of the Novosibirsk Oblast the food crisis.Famine was connected, firstly, with the strengthening of mobilization pressure on the collective farm village, which began on the eve of the war and continued after its completion.Secondly, it was due to the shortcomings of the state's agrarian policy, which was not responsive to the local conditions of agricultural production.The economic system created by the Bolsheviks did not possess its own mechanisms for timely response to local food shortages.Informing about the famine went exclusively through political channels.Without the involvement of the authorities, it was impossible to solve the problem of access to food on the ground.The authorities themselves reacted belatedly, their assistance was insufficient and was accompanied by numerous costs, including corruption.The state deliberately blocked the information channels that could have signaled food difficulties.District authorities were prohibited from collecting information on actual yields on collective farms and to compile bread and fodder balances.Rural residents were the most vulnerable category of the population from the point of view of food security.The authorities not only did not provide collective farmers with any guarantees of survival, but also tried to block individual peasant tactics to escape from hunger, fighting for strict compliance with the statute of the agricultural association.