Young urban workers helping to harvest grain at a model collective farm pose for the photographer
Description
- Creator
- Williams, Whiting, 1878-1975, Photographer
- Media Type
- Image
- Text
- Item Types
- Photographs
- Newspaper illustrations
- Description
- This scene was taken when Williams was visiting a collective farm as part of an official tour. Most of the women visible in the photo are fresh recruits from a city, “volunteered” temporarily from among students or urban office workers, among them Komsomol members. Because so many farmers had died and those remaining were often too weak from hunger to work, many such urban work brigades were sent out across Ukraine for the 1933 harvest. In this group, a young farm boy stands with them, and an older woman member of the collective farm stands further back.
Unaccustomed to such work and fed the barely subsistence level rations given the collective farm workers, Williams was told confidentially that many of these volunteers became seriously ill by the end of their assignment, and some never recovered.
- Notes
- This photo, taken August, 1933, was used to illustrate “Why Russia is Hungry,” (March 3, 1934, p.3), the second of two articles by Whiting Williams that ran in a London weekly titled Answers.
The original photograph and the published version are both shown.
See Special Features menu to link to the article. - Inscriptions
- Williams' caption on back of original photograph: “A ‘brigade’ of ‘voluntary’ office workers from the city endeavoring to make up for the lack of farm workers.”
Caption under photo in Answers: “'Volunteer’ harvesters on one of the farms. Many of the peasants are dead or in exile, and large numbers of those who remain are too weak and ill to do any real work.” - Date of Original
- August 1933
- Subject(s)
- Local identifier
- PD208
- Collection
- Whiting Williams
- Language of Item
- English
- Geographic Coverage
-
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Ukraine
Latitude: 49 Longitude: 32
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- Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Recommended Citation
- For original: Williams, Whiting. 1933. “A ‘brigade’ of ‘voluntary’ office workers from the city endeavoring to make up for the lack of farm workers.” [Container 1, Folder 9 ] PG 89 Whiting Williams Photographs, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH. Retrieved from: http://vitacollections.ca/HREC-holodomorphotodirectory/3634245/data
For published version: Williams, Whiting. 1933. 'Volunteer’ harvesters on one of the farms. Many of the peasants are dead or in exile, and large numbers of those who remain are too weak and ill to do any real work.” in:
“Why Russia is Hungry,” Answers (weekly). London, March 3, 1934, p.3. Retrieved from: http://vitacollections.ca/HREC-holodomorphotodirectory/3634245/data - Location of Original
- [Container 1, Folder 9 ] PG 89 Whiting Williams Photographs, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH.
- Terms of Use
- Reproduction of images is restricted to fair use for personal study or research. Any other use requires a contractual agreement with the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH. Contact the Society directly at:
https://www.wrhs.org/research/library/services/ - Reproduction Notes
- Reproduced by contractual agreement with the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH.
