Yet the Communists had absolute control over the new state, not through the Russian Soviet government but through the Communist Party, which boasted of being an international organization and which could discipline the various national Communist parties if they did not obey the decrees issued by the central authority in Moscow. Any deviation from these orders was interpreted as a counter-revolutionary act, contrary to the wishes of the workers and peasants whose mouthpiece was the Communist Party. During 1921 and 1922 there came one of those periods of drought which are not unknown in Ukraine. The grain crop was an utter failure, all kinds of transportation had broken down as a result of the Civil Wars, and the country was plunged into misery. It is estimated that several million people died in Ukraine and the country was brought to the deepest depths, far worse than during the earlier years of war. Typhus added to the misery and carried away still more of the population. Outside aid was sought and the American Relief Administration did wonderful work in securing food from abroad and in distributing it to the starving population. The Ukrainians in their misery did their best to reject all communization. In the Ukrainian districts there had never been the communal ownership of land which was so typical of the Great Russians, and the peasants fought hard and steadily to maintain possession of their own land and that which they had secured from the landlords during the period of the Ukrainian Republic. This naturally antagonized the Soviets, and made them realize that they were going to have a hard task to bring the country around to their mode of life. They attacked the problem in two ways. On the governmental side, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic authorized the Russian Soviet government to represent it in foreign negotiations at a conference in Genoa. From that time on it became customary for the Ukrainian Soviet Republic to follow the Russian line, although for a while there was always a Ukrainian representative in the Soviet Embassy in all those countries where Ukraine had been formerly recognized. Then, at the end of 1922, there was signed a declaration for the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This was ratified in 1923 and came into effect in 1924. Under this new system, the various Soviet Republics, including Ukraine, transferred all their foreign and most of their domestic affairs to the government of the Soviet Union, which was, as before, almost identical with the government of the old Russian Soviet Republic. In the All Union Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Delegates, the Russian Republic had an overwhelming majority, if there was to be any voting, and between the control of the Communist Party by the Russians and the control of the Soviet Union by the same people, it was abundantly evident that any autonomy in Ukraine was a mere shadow which could be stopped at any time.