Harrowing pics show starving Russians selling human body parts as MEAT during 1920s famine as desperate families become cannibals to survive
An estimated five to ten million people died as a result of food shortages largely caused by civil war and drought
STARVING people sell human body parts including severed heads in a desperate bid to feed their families.
These disturbing pictures show the horrors of the Russian famine in the 1920s which hit around 25million people in the Volga and Ural River region of the vast country.
From 1921 until the end of 1922, an estimated five to ten million people lost their lives.
After the end of the First World War, Russia was blighted by a civil war, drought and inept government resulting in food shortages.
The harrowing images of children screaming in hunger and people dying on the street give a glimpse into the terrifying period in Russian history.
People were forced to eat grass, dirt, dogs, cats and leather horse harnesses.
There were reports of parents killing and eating their own children with rampant starvation making people take unimaginable measures to survive.
Despite reports of cannibalism, the police took no action as it was deemed a legitimate method of survival.
One picture shows a couple selling human remains, including the corpse of a young boy, in a degrading bid to feed themselves.
As news of the famine spread around the world, the United States and some western European countries stepped in to provide food and relief workers which saved million of lives.
In the early 1930s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin inflicted a man-made famine on Ukraine which claimed the lives of up to 7.5 million people.
Considered a genocide by historians, Stalin inflicted the famine in a savage bid to wipe out the Ukrainian independence movement.
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