Stalinism, Famine, and Chinese Peasants: Grain Procurements during the Great Leap Forward

A comparison of state-peasantry relations between China under Mao Zedong & the USSR under Joseph Stalin. Peasant efforts in the USSR in the early 1930s to evade state procurement brought ruthlessly punitive responses that generated a famine in many areas. During the Great Leap Forward in China, initiated in 1958, massive grain production increases were forecast, & false reports of favorable results, submitted to the central government, led to large-scale requisitioning of grain. Peasant responses to overprocurement included ingenious efforts to conceal production & desperate efforts to obtain food for Ru areas where famine occurred. Chinese fiction & newspaper articles illustrate these problems. Both China & the USSR suffered seriously from mismanagement, though in China, unlike the USSR, the state did not view itself as at war with the peasantry. 4 Tables. W. H. Stoddard.