Review by Choice Review
The Soviet famine of 1931-1933 and that in China from 1958-1962 are described by Wemheuer as "great leap" famines, directly precipitated by government development policies. Unlike Yang Jisheng in Tombstone (CH, Oct'13, 51-0995) and Frank Dikötter in Mao's Great Famine (CH, Apr'11, 48-4585), Wemheuer spends little time discussing the specifics of the myriad of Chinese government policies and their implementation or the horrors of the famine; nor does he do so for the Soviet famine. Rather, he focuses on the macroeconomic development policies of both governments, specifically the socialization of agricultural production and the drive to rapidly industrialize, financed by the forced transfer of wealth from agriculturalists to the state and urban residents as well as the specific policies that made both famines primarily rural, not urban, phenomena. He concludes that neither famine was engineered purposefully by Stalin or Mao, that both Tibetans and Ukrainians have used assertions of genocide to define their current sense of identity and nationality, and that the end of famine in both the USSR and PRC stemmed from a mix of policies controlling the movement of peoples, control of fertility, and a new regime of socialized and private property rights in the countryside. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections. --Marcia J. Frost, Wittenberg University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
