The Harvest of Sorrow

Oct 10, 2024 10:26 AM

Author:Robert Conquest

Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written.

More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book than from the whole of the First World War.

Epic in scope and rich in detail, The Harvest of Sorrow describes how millions of peasants in the USSR were dispossessed and deported as a result of the abolition of private property, and how millions in the newly established ‘collective’ farms of the Ukraine and other regions were then deliberately starved to death through impossibly high quotas, the removal of all other sources of food and their isolation from outside help.

With the publication of this and his earlier book, The Great Terror, which revealed the truth about Stalin’s political purges, Robert Conquest revealed to the West the staggering human cost of the Soviet regime.

Reviews

This narrative is even more dreadfully surreal, more astoundingly alien, than that of The Great Terror

—— Martin Amis

Massive and devastating ... The Harvest of Sorrow reveals the truth about the dreadful years as fully and unflinchingly as Mr Conquest's The Great Terror presented it about Stalin's later crimes

—— The Times

A harrowing story, told with great power and a wealth of detail

—— Evening Standard

It is to Robert Conquest's undying credit that he has at last brought this incredible story into the light of day

—— Spectator

Majestic ... The detachment of Conquest's telling adds to the story's horror and its effectiveness

—— Sunday Times

The first thoroughgoing account of the tragedy ... heartrending

—— Telegraph

Essential reading for those who wish to understand the nature of the Soviet system

—— Wall Street Journal

As a meditation about a world on edge, it is well worth reading

—— The Economist

Persuasive . . . runs refreshingly counter to conventional wisdom

—— Bloomberg

Jared Diamond does it again: another rich, original, and fascinating chapter in the human saga-with vital lessons for our difficult times.

—— Steven Pinker, author of 'Enlightenment Now'

Upheaval is a brilliant, gripping, personal account of nations in crisis, informed by how people respond to crisis. It's an especially timely read today, when nations are stressed and have much to learn about how to survive big challenges. I urge you to read it.

—— Paul Ehrlich, author of 'Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic'

In Upheaval, I find eye-opening lessons about the political and psychological forces that lead to crisis and then resilience, how individuals and nations experience trauma in similar ways, and what that suggests about our future and the world's . . . wise and beautiful.

—— Diane Ackerman, author of 'The Zookeeper's Wife'

Jared Diamond is one of the deepest thinkers and most authoritative writers of our time-arguably of all time-and Upheaval proves his prescience in analyzing historical crises within nations at a time when national crises have erupted around the world . . . No scientist has ever won the Nobel Prize for literature. Jared Diamond should be the first.

—— Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of 'Heavens on Earth'

Sparky . . . captures what made that 1958 play [A Taste of Honey] an era-defining classic

—— Daily Telegraph

A breezy, readable new biography… Todd’s portrait is enlivened by anecdotes from friends and family… she uses a polyphonic approach…including many examples from other ordinary women’s adjacent experiences

—— Holly Williams , i

I...hugely enjoyed Tastes of Honey, Selina Todd’s heroic attempt to do the impossible and explain the life and work of the mysterious Shelagh Delaney. Alongside Andrea Dunbar, Delaney was our most unexpected and gifted postwar playwright

—— David Hare , New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

[A] brilliant biography

—— Steven Long , Crack

What makes Atkinson an exceptional writer – and this is her most ambitious and most gripping work to date – is that she does so with an emotional delicacy and understanding that transcend experiment or playfulness. Life After Life gives us a heroine whose fictional underpinning is permanently exposed, whose artificial status is never in doubt; and yet one who feels painfully, horribly real to us.

—— Alex Clark , Guardian

Deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting...The scenes set in Blitz-stricken London will stay with me forever...Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility.. . [a]magnificently tender and humane novel.

—— Julie Myerson , Observer

Brilliantly researched, Jack Fairweather's book is both gripping and powerfully written - a riveting and deeply moving tale of courage in the face of unimaginable horror

—— Henry Hemming, bestselling author of M

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