Soviet Drought in 1940

I guess I was a bit snarky, but here is why I find this really improbable.

First, the war itself did immense damage. In 1945 kolkhozes had only 42 percent of the number of horses and 38 percent of the number of working-age men that they had had before the war. Sown area dropped from 117.7 million hectares in 1940 to 84.0 million in 1946.

Now, in 1946, the grain harvest was only 39.6 million tons as compared to 47.3 million in 1945 and 95.5 million in 1940, the last full year before the war.

So this strikes me as a stark difference, that can't be attributable just to a dry year.

Don't forget too in 1946-47 the Soviets were exporting their already limited amount of grain to feed Eastern Europe, despite the famine. Historians think the USSR could have fed itself if it cut grain exports during this period; so perhaps Stalin, in response to a bad harvest, cuts exports to the Third Reich.

Maybe this leads to bread riots, and instability in the Reich. :)

Interesting figures. They appear to be the official Soviet figures, which are considered by many to be exaggerated for the years 1937-1940, but even the estimates by critics put the numbers in the 86-87 million range, so your point is well taken. The war did take a major toll on Soviet agriculture.

As to how big the devastation was, 1945 is probably not a good comparison year because the Soviets were still mobilized for war for a goodly part of it. In 1947, the harvest was in the 65.9 million tons range, but the Soviets had an extra year to repair some of the worst devastation, so if 1946 had not been a drought year it would have probably been somewhat lower than 1947, but considerably higher than 1945.

To get a general order of magnitude idea of how much of the drop in Soviet production in 1946 was due to drought and how much was due to war, I suspect that a non-drought figure of around 60 million tons for 1946 would be reasonably close. So the war devastation reduced Soviet agricultural production by somewhere around 30-35% in the short-term.

If the 1946 harvest should have been 60 million tons, the drought would reduce the 1946 harvest by roughly 34% compared to what it would be in a non-drought 1946. If we make a 1940 drought reduce the Soviet harvest by a comparable amount, then we can plug in whatever number we think is right for the real world 1940 harvest and divide by three to get the amount of tons the drought would cost the Soviets. It's going to be in the 25-30 million ton range. As to how that would impact the Soviet war effort, I don't know. It would be interesting to look at historic Soviet food stocks in 1941/42 to get some idea how much this would impact them.
 
Don't forget too in 1946-47 the Soviets were exporting their already limited amount of grain to feed Eastern Europe, despite the famine. Historians think the USSR could have fed itself if it cut grain exports during this period; so perhaps Stalin, in response to a bad harvest, cuts exports to the Third Reich.

Maybe this leads to bread riots, and instability in the Reich. :)

The bit about exporting to Eastern Europe is a good point.

Do you have figures on Soviet grain production and stockpiles during the World War II years? I can find figures through 1940 and for 1945-47, but not for 1941-44.
 
Importing food post war?

The bit about exporting to Eastern Europe is a good point.

Do you have figures on Soviet grain production and stockpiles during the World War II years? I can find figures through 1940 and for 1945-47, but not for 1941-44.

If the Soviets had decided to not export food to Eastern Europe due to the post war drought, then either Eastern Europe gets it from someone else eg the west, or they starve. This starvation would presumably be seen as a consequence of Soviet policy in the newly occupied countires.

I cannot see this being anything other than a major destabalising factor for the newly conquored not yet Warsaw Pact countries. Food riots, famine, demands to be allowed to import from the US, Canada etc, dogs and cats living together, the usual chaos.

As to the famine in 1941 - Stalin was really good at denying reality and covering it up. I forsee something really ugly and stupid.
 
Some figures on historical Soviet agriculture in the World War II years. These are expressed in terms of percent of the 1936-1940 average, with that average set at 100%, so they aren't directly comparable to the figures for millions of tons we were tossing around earlier.

1940 - Grain harvest 124% Gross output 116%
1941 - Grain harvest 73% Gross output 74%
1942 - Grain harvest 39% Gross output 44%
1943 - Grain harvest 39% Gross output 52%
1944 - Grain harvest 63% Gross output 75%
1945 - Grain harvest 61% Gross output 78%

The 1941 figures indicate that the Soviets were able to bring in a surprisingly high percentage of the 1941 harvest--pretty close to three-fourths of the 1936-1940 average. That means that the part of the Soviet population left behind in German-held territory had to have been in a world of hurt. Food shortages because the Soviets didn't leave much harvest behind, plus the German attitudes toward Slavs, would have meant a lot of malnutrition/starvation in 1941/42 historically.

That's an interesting point that a lot of the people who say the Germans should have tried to make allies of the Soviet people in territory they occupied forget: The Germans would have had to provide rather major amounts of food aid or the people they controlled would have still faced major food shortages.

Going back to the 1940 drought idea: It looks as though destruction from the German invasion decreased grain production on Soviet territory by 37-39%, and total agricultural production by 22-25%, with some unknown percentage of the reduction being from the fact that a lot of Soviet manpower was still in the army in 1944-45. So my earlier guesses are probably in the right ballpark.

Historically, there was a lot of malnutrition and some starvation in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union outside of Leningrad. There was considerable malnutrition and starvation in the German-occupied territories, probably more so than in the unoccupied territories.

So how does this scenario play out? If the Germans weren't aware of the drought/famine before they invaded they would quickly become aware of it after the invasion. My suspicion is that they would take advantage of the situation by trying to grab as much of the 1941 harvest as possible. Hitler was quite aware of the impact food shortages had on Germany in World War I. The drought would probably direct German follow-on offensives after the initial border thrust more toward the Ukraine than to Leningrad and Moscow, though I would have to look at the agricultural potential of the area in front of Moscow. That might actually attract the Germans.

Populations in German-occupied areas would be even more thoroughly hosed than they were historically because they would be starting the tough part of 1941/42 already nearly malnourished. Figure a lot fewer slave laborers for the Germans (and considerably fewer people surviving to become partisans, though desperate conditions might push a higher percentage in that direction.

The Soviets would lose a lot more civilians to starvation in 1941-44. The western allies might increase the food percentage of Lend Lease, but the tonnage would have to come from decreasing something else or shifting from another theatre, so there are limits to their ability to do that.

Leningrad would get a lot weaker faster during the siege if the population started out on the verge of malnutrition, and the Soviets would have fewer food supplies to send over the frozen lake route during the winter of 1941/42. Would Leningrad fall? I don't know.
 
Interesting tidbit: Without Soviet grain imported in 1940/early 1941, German supplies would have been very tight to nearly non-existent by late fall of 1941.

The Soviets were historically very effective at grabbing the 1941 harvest, and sabotaging/destroying anything they couldn't get out. Add in longer term things that reduced agricultural production, like removing tractors and horses, and removing the administrators that made the economy of the areas the Germans grabbed work, and the Germans had a horrible time exploiting the territories, even if they let the locals die in order to extract a surplus.
 
Would Stalin have cut grain exports entirely though? He still considers the USSR unready for war, and that fulfilling his agreements with Hitler to be insurance until the Red Army can roll across the border.

Might Stalin simply make additional concessions politically to justify reducing (but not ceasing) grain exports to Germany? Perhaps relinquishing Bessarabia, agreeing to a "neutralized" Lithuania, and so on. Stalin genuinely didn't want to give Germany an excuse for war, and the effects of the drought on Soviet strength aren't going to make him feel any more prepared.

Not ceasing grain exports entirely though means there'd be high costs to the population, or at least segments of it. Cutting rations in the gulag system, reducing food shipments to politically unreliable areas, etc seem a likely response initially.

Longer-term planning might involve an early "Virgin Lands" style program to boost production in Central Asia and Siberia, especially if that means expelling some populations in the Caucasus, Poles and others considered to be suspect to new, giant collective or state farms in Kazakhstan and such. The war would probably suspend those plans before their utter failure becomes evident, but that means an ugly infrastructure is planned and prepared for Stalin's post-war purges and population transfers.
 
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