The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine

(Paperback)

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Reissued alongside the fiftieth anniversary of The Great Terror, which revealed the truth of Stalin's purges, this equally ground-breaking book revealed the staggering human cost of Stalin's famines Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written. More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book than from the whole of the First World War. Epic in scope and rich in detail, The Harvest of Sorrow describes how millions of peasants in the USSR were dispossessed and deported as a result of the abolition of private property, and how millions in the newly established 'collective' farms of the Ukraine and other regions were then deliberately starved to death through impossibly high quotas, the removal of all other sources of food and their isolation from outside help. With the publication of this and his earlier book, The Great Terror, which revealed the truth about Stalin's political purges, Robert Conquest revealed to the West the staggering human cost of the Soviet regime.

Reviews

This narrative is even more dreadfully surreal, more astoundingly alien, than that of The Great Terror -- Martin Amis
Massive and devastating ... The Harvest of Sorrow reveals the truth about the dreadful years as fully and unflinchingly as Mr Conquest's The Great Terror presented it about Stalin's later crimes * The Times *
A harrowing story, told with great power and a wealth of detail * Evening Standard *
It is to Robert Conquest's undying credit that he has at last brought this incredible story into the light of day * Spectator *
Majestic ... The detachment of Conquest's telling adds to the story's horror and its effectiveness * Sunday Times *
The first thoroughgoing account of the tragedy ... heartrending * Telegraph *
Essential reading for those who wish to understand the nature of the Soviet system * Wall Street Journal *

Author Bio

Robert Conquest (1917 - 2015) was one of the twentieth century's greatest historians of the Soviet Union. He came to international renown on publication of his ground-breaking history The Great Terror- Stalin's Purge of the Thirties in 1968, which revealed the true extent and nature Stalin's political executions and imprisonments. As well as holding academic posts at various universities, including the London School of Economics, Columbia University and Stanford University, he was an acclaimed poet, critic, novelist and translator.