GOLOD

Shortly after the civil war between the “Reds” and the “Whites” the country was exhausted. There was a lack of workers in agriculture, and for fear of socialization, farmers only grew crops for their own needs. As a result, the first major famine occurred and millions of people were saved by humanitarian organizations. In addition to the American Relief Organization of later US President Herbert C. Hoover, British Quakers and the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who was awarded for this commitment with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922, helped. After the foreign organizations left the country, the Soviet helpers felt under pressure in between of the confrontation between East and West. This famine is ignored in Russian history books.

Journalist Maxim Kurnikov, one of the initiators of this film: “Once, turning over the pages of an archival file, I came across someone’s accurate handwriting. An investigator conducted a survey of the villagers. A woman described how they faced famine, how they ate all the cattle and pets, how one of the neighbours came and said, “There is no way out, let’s eat the corpses before they start to rot”… While reading this, I began to lose consciousness, the ceiling and the floor turned upside down. Having regained my senses, I started to cry. I could not understand how to live on with this knowledge. I wondered, “Why didn’t we study this at the university?”, “Why are there no books about it?” At that moment I gave an oath that I would do everything to tell this story to as many people as possible.”