《大英百科全书》(网络版)里的“饥荒（famine）”条目，有一段提到中

国大饥荒，译文如下：

　　二十世纪两次最大的饥荒都有政治原因。1932-34年发生在乌克兰和苏联其他地方的大饥荒，不是因为作物歉收或食物短缺，而是苏联当局粗暴的农业集体化所致。强制将土地集体化，遇到了农民的抵抗，作为回应，政府将其粮食没收，拿去供应城市人口，结果，农村有６百万到８百万人死于饥饿。另一场更严重的饥荒，发生在1958－1960年的中国，当时共产党政府正展开一场以“大跃进”著称的运动。这场运动中，农村经济被改组为公社，同时遍及全国农村的群众性大办工业，还进一步干扰了农耕。结果农业生产受到忽视，组织混乱，再加上气候不好，造成了多达２千万人丧生。

原文：

 Two of the largest famines in the 20th century had political causes. The great famine that occurred in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union in 1932-34 was not due to crop failure or a shortage of food, but rather to the Soviet regime's brutal collectivization of the country's agriculture. When the peasants resisted the forced collectivization of their land, the government replied by confiscating their grain supplies for use by urban populations, with a resulting 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 deaths from starvation in the countryside. An even more serious famine occurred in China in 1958-60, when the Communist government undertook the campaign known as the Great Leap Forward. In this campaign, the rural economy was reorganized into communes, and farming was further disrupted by a massive effort to raise industrial production throughout the countryside. The consequent neglect and disorganization of agricultural production, compounded by bad weather, resulted in the deaths of as many as 20,000,000 people.

转自[新观察]·文库版·大饥荒档案；作(译)者：秋实