Summary Of The Article '1932 Harvest And The Famine Of 1933'

Another view is that of the article “The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933” by Dr. Mark B. Tauger. Tauger is an American professor at West Virginia University, who has written multiple works on famines and agriculture, writes in his article about the famine in 1932-33. He states that the Soviets did not cause the famine on purpose, but that in fact the famine came about due to a combination of bad harvests in these years and bad planning by the Soviets. He does not deny that the Soviets caused it but he says that it was mainly an accident on the part of the Soviets and that there was no intent of genocide (Tauger 70). He goes against most other historians who write on this topic and is one of the principle proponents of this view.
Discussion of the three sources 3-4 pages, in the following format:
--Context (relevant information about the time period in which the historian wrote
--Contribution made by the historian to the debate over the historical question
--Interpretation (meaning how did the historian interpret the information and what conclusions did he or she arrive at?
--Sources and their use (what sources did the historian use to arrive at his or her conclusions?)
Tauger cites multiple primary sources. He uses accounts of survivors and witnesses, Stalin’s own words, and estimations and counts of the amount of grain harvested in the years of this time period given by the TsUNKhU, the statistical division of the USSR (70). Tauger points to the fact that a lot of the quotas were reduced in 1932 when the Soviet leadership realized that the harvest was in danger. He notes that the harvests were in some cases only 60% of the pre-harvest estimates, and the Soviets were not ready for this (71). He also shows that the Ukrainian peasants were not the only people affected by the famine -- even people in the cities were. And not just Ukrainian cities were affected, but even people in Moscow suffered due to the famine