Death by Hunger: Malcolm Muggeridge and the Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933

Guest post by Rose Burke, who tells us more about her detailed cataloguing and research into Malcolm Muggeridge’s reports sent to the Manchester Guardian from the Soviet Union between 1932 and 1933

I have really enjoyed my time undertaking my MA placement with the Guardian Archive at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library. Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) was a British journalist, satirist, and author who worked as the Russian correspondent for the Manchester Guardian from 1932 to 1933. For my placement, I have been creating item-level descriptions for a substantial folder of correspondence related to Malcolm Muggeridge and the Ukrainian Famine (1932-33). The material in this file primarily focussed on his time working as the Russian correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and comprised correspondence, newspaper articles and clippings, leaflets, and telegrams.

Muggeridge initially planned to stay in Moscow for six months, working as the deputy Moscow correspondent whilst William Henry Chamberlin was away. However, the more time he spent in Russia, the more he began believing that the Soviet Union was in crisis. In letters to the editor of the Manchester Guardian, William Percival Crozier, he details the worsening food shortages, the declining value of the rouble, and reports of disturbances in the North Caucasus. He asked Crozier for a £30 advance so that he could visit the Russian provinces, including Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kouban, and West Siberia. In return, he offered two articles on the state of agriculture and peasants following the implementation of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan.

The Five-Year Plan (accepted in 1928) sought to increase the rate of industrialisation and collectivise agriculture to revolutionise all aspects of society. Propaganda promised that the Five-Year Plan was a complete success, with an unprecedented rate of progress both for industry and for culture. This promotional leaflet for the ‘Moscow Daily News’, found in this file, boasts that the Five-Year Plan was so effective that it was completed in only four years, and that its institution has revolutionised Russia.

Muggeridge was appalled by conditions in Russia, especially in the provinces. He argued that Russia was rife with famine, caused not by poor weather or crop yields, but instead as a direct result of the institution of the Five-Year Plan. Historians estimate that 4—7 million people died in the famine, and millions more were permanently disabled.¹ He wrote several articles about the horrors he witnessed, including forced labour camps, extreme punishments for disobedience, foreign press censorship, and his belief that the famine was deliberately manufactured by the Soviet government.

It was at this point that the relationship between Muggeridge and Crozier became extremely strained. Crozier worried that Muggeridge’s commentary in the articles he wrote was not appropriate. He believed that the newspaper should publish purely factual accounts with no added personal comments. Publishing the plain truth, he argued, would allow the audience to draw their own conclusions about what was occurring themselves.

Muggeridge expressed his anger with the Manchester Guardian for their refusal to publish the truth about the atrocities occurring in Russia. Based on how his articles were being edited, he believed that Crozier was deliberately obscuring the truth about what was happening in Russia. He believed that when the Soviet regime inevitably failed, the Manchester Guardian would be discredited for their failure to print the truth. He points out the hypocrisy in publishing details about fascism in Germany and Polish Ukraine but neglecting to publish any about the Soviet Union.

After leaving the Manchester Guardian and returning to England, Muggeridge began writing his own book about what he had witnessed in Russia. Winter in Moscow, published in 1934, was a scathing account of his disillusionment with the Soviet regime and the passivity of the current Russian correspondents and newspapers.

As well as his personal correspondence, this latter half of this file largely comprises newspaper articles reviewing Muggeridge’s book. Whilst some praise his outspokenness and honesty about affairs in Russia, others dismiss the work due to his confusing writing style. Semi-fictionalised and filled with caricatures, his book was criticised for being too cynical and spiteful, detracting from his observations about what was going on. Muggeridge, however, was staunchly proud of his firm, and often harsh, opinions. Muggeridge made it clear that the one thing he could not stand above all else was passivity. He loathed the League of Nations and UK Parliament for their stagnancy and baseless morality.

Muggeridge made blithe references to his time working at the Manchester Guardian in later articles. He mentioned them when discussing the existence of freedom of speech, arguing that even when writing about ideological viewpoints they do not agree with, there is an expectation the press must be deferential, or else articles will be unpaid or even banned. He further referenced the Manchester Guardian when discussing the ephemerality of journalism and the commodification of the written word. Having viewed the files of literary journalist C.E. Montague at the Manchester Guardian, which contained none of his typical stylistic flairs, Muggeridge argued that journalistic writings are motivated only by the lure of fame and money.

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There is a lot of historiographical debate around the Ukrainian Famine itself. Whilst there is a widespread consensus that the cause of the Ukrainian Famine was largely man-made, there is debate as to whether it constitutes a genocide. The main source of dispute is that there are no records explicitly ordering a mass starvation in the Soviet Union. There are essentially three schools of thought; those who believe the genocide was created deliberately, those who believe the famine was an unintended consequence of industrialisation and collectivisation, and those who believe that whilst the famine was initially unintentional, it was weaponised against specific areas to punish Ukrainians.² Cataloguing the file at the John Rylands Library could help historians to further research this extremely pertinent and topical issue.

Whilst Muggeridge’s time with the Manchester Guardian was relatively short compared to the span of his career, I really enjoyed learning more about his time working as Russian correspondent as part of my placement.

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1. Olga Andriewsky, ‘Towards a Decentred History: The Study of the Holodomor and Ukrainian Historiography’, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2 (2015), pp. 18-43 ↩︎
2. Viktoriia Gorbunova & Vitalii Klymchuk, ‘The Psychological Consequences of the Holodomor in Ukraine’, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 7 (2020), p. 35. ↩︎