Organizer: Felix Wemheuer, University of Vienna, Austria

Chair and Discussant: Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, University of Vienna, Austria

This border crossing panel will discuss famines that took place under State Socialism such as the Great Famine in the PRC in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward (1959-1961) and the ongoing famine in North Korea (1988-?). It will raise the question of the relation between socialist state and  rural society using different theoretical and methodical approaches to find answers as a result of both academic research and journalist investigations. Ralph Thaxton and Felix Wemheuer will focus on the village level. Based on oral history and field studies in Chinese villages their papers will focus on the questions of resistance and survival. While challenging conventional views on the question of how survival was possible and on which levels peasant life was threatened during the Great Leap Forward, both papers also discuss methodological questions related to oral history and collective memory. Jasper Becker will explain how the Socialist State in North Korea produced the famine and give an estimate of how many people have died so far. Based on his journalist investigations and interviews with refugees he will critically discuss the role of the UN Food Program and it results. Ruediger Frank will discuss the reforms in North Korea and the future of the food problem.

Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik who will act as commentator is interested in looking at the memory of famines in the sense of memories of a traumatic event. She will discussion the comparability of both famines under State Socialism from this angle and provide a framework for border crossing famine research in East Asia.

Felix Wemheuer, University of Vienna, Austria

In the autumn of 1958, Henan Province became a nationwide model for the most radical implementation of the Great Leap Forward policies and the "holy land of the People's Communes". As a result, Henan was hit by one of the most serious famines in China.  In the so called "Xinyang Incident" over two million peasants starved and were beaten to death. This paper attempts to describe the memories of this catastrophe on the village level. Based on Maurice Halbwachs' theory of collective memories, it will compare the memories of different social groups such as peasant women, local cadres and intellectuals. It will be shown how these groups remember the power structures in the village, their struggle for survival and their own roles during the famine. The paper will raise the broader question, whether or not the memories of these groups are influenced by official historiography and how collective memories on traumatic events are formed and articulated against the background of today's living situation of the eye witnesses. Memories of the Great Leap Famine in Henan will be discussed in connection with methodical considerations regarding the problems of oral history interviews with Chinese rural dwellers made by a male western academic.

Ralph A. Thaxton Jr., Brandeis University

This paper focuses on how China's rural people resisted the socialist state imposition of the Great Leap Forward, paying special attention to how this resistance from below formed and ultimately provided the means for escaping death from starvation in the years 1958 to 1961. It challenges the established paradigm of Western social science and journalism, which holds that the Liu Shaoqi-Deng Xiaoping opponents of Mao conceived and effectively implemented reforms that saved peasants from the famine of Mao's Great Leap. It argues that certain hidden forms of rural based popular resistance to socialist rule ultimately proved decisive in the struggle for survival. These forms of resistance enabled state captured farmers to escape the political regimentation and state appropriation engendering the unprecedented social crisis of the Great Leap Forward Famine. And it provides a comparative framework for understanding how other state induced agrarian famines have ended, reflecting on the implications of these processes for state legitimacy in the long aftermath of the calamities.

Jasper Becker, Independent Scholar

How many people have died in North Korea's famine? It is probably close to 3 million. The surviving population is stunted and malnourished. Many claim the famine started in earnest around 1985 and people began dying in 1987/88. This makes the famine the longest in history and one of the most severe. Jasper Becker looks at data now available on the current situation and how tentative economic reforms are changing the availability of food. The UN claims it is feeding a third of the population principally in the main cities apart from Pyongyang.The capital remains relatively well supplied with food. Food markets are now flourishing in most parts of the country but peasants remain handicapped by the lack of transport and uncertainties about their legal status. Agriculture continues remain in the control of the state and there is still no sign that the collective farms are being broken up. Much of the food available on the markets is either imported or taken from aid donations. North Korea remains short of at least a million tonnes of grain as much as it as done for the last 20 years. Jasper Becker's investigation based on interviews carried out along the border between China and North Korea and with North Koreans living in China and South Korea. It also draws extensively on research carried out by aid groups and academics.

Ruediger Frank, University of Vienna, Austria

Two topics dominate the public image of North Korea in the world since over a decade: the nuclear issue, and the food problem. The latter has always been looming but became particularly obvious and burdensome by 1995, when it developed into a famine. The whole story of this tragedy still waits to be told. Nevertheless, the impact was strong enough to trigger or at least support a hitherto unseen reform policy in North Korea, encompassing changes in ideology, administrative structure, and various fields of the national economy. In this paper, the characteristics of state socialism as witnessed in the Eastern Block and in particular their relevance for agriculture will be explored and contrasted with the specific case of North Korea. The reasons for the relative functioning of the North Korean agriculture over some decades will be discussed, as well as the new circumstances that made a continuation of the old approach impossible and demanded a policy change. The next part will discuss the various options of reform and perform a reality check considering a sufficient likelihood of regime stability as one precondition for a top-down reform process. Finally, the actual reform measures will be introduced and their future will be discussed. To close the circle, a comparison with other transformation experiences in Europe and Asia will be performed.