Free The Eastern Front 1914-1917 by Norman Stone Page B

land of so many people meant that there was more space for animals on it: and the first great surprise of Russian agriculture was the growth recorded, in the census of 1916, 19 in the animal population. The cattle-population appearsto have increased by twenty-five per cent, the sheep and goat population still more. This gave many advantages, though it also lessened the amount of surplus grain available for the towns. In the same way, removal of people from the land made it possible for more land to be farmed: and, despite the supposedly savage effects of conscription, peasant land-sowing did not only not decline, but increased by eighteen per cent in the war-years.
    It was not at all true to make out the Russian food-problem to be a consequence of low harvests, provoked by labour-shortage. The harvests were, on the contrary, rather higher than before the war, if due allowance is made for the occupation by Germany of the empire’s western fringe. Taking the area available in 1916—the forty-seven provinces of European Russia—the harvest of 1914 was 4,304 million poods (1 pood= 16 kg.), that of 1915 was 4,659 million, that of 1916, 3,916 million. Even in 1917, when the food shortage of the towns became crippling, the harvest itself was not too far below pre-war levels—3,800 million poods, not including potatoes. 20 It was certainly true that army demand had risen; but it was also true that exports had fallen by an equivalent amount. If it had been a simple question of dividing the grain available by the mouths that wanted to consume it, there would have been enough and to spare. Lositski quotes the following figures: 21
Production of and Demand for, Grain 1917 (million poods, rounded).
Production

Demand
harvest of 1917:
3,809
army:
501
net, i.e. less rain
kept back for sowing:
3,124
towns:
263
remainder from 1916:
669
country:
1,472
livestock:
1,001
Totals:
3,793

3,273
In other words, the harvest of 1917 ought to have been enough to supply all needs, even leaving out of account the reserves that 21 out of the 44 provinces involved claimed to have.
    Part of the difficulty in actually carrying out the operation of supplying that section of the country that did not live in the grain-producing areas was brought about by transport; the railways, overburdened in wartime, could not make sufficient grain available both to towns and army: a problem, however, also distorted by legend, to a degree that deserves separate discussions. Certainly, the towns did not benefit from the constant harvests of peasant Russia, but found themselves, on the contrary increasingly deprived of food. In 1913–14 they had taken 390 million poods of grain. In 1915–16 they got 330 million; and in 1916–17, 295 million, although in these years their population, swollen by natural increase,refugees, and migrant labour, increased by one-third. In January and February 1917, Moscow and the Central Provinces as a whole received less than a third of what they needed; by mid-summer, they were receiving 6,256 waggons of grain per month of the 30,000 they were supposed to get. In December, 1916, Petrograd had got 524,000 poods of grain in place of the 3,740,000 it needed, and in January forty-nine grain-waggons per day of the eighty-nine it needed. This was the vital factor in revolution, from March until the end of the year; and it became all the greater in its effects, since the quantities that were delivered were not divided up fairly, or even, sometimes, divided up at all. Suppliers sometimes held it back, at all levels, so as to profit from the inevitable price-increase: rye rose in price in Moscow from a base of seventy-six kopecks per pood in 1914 to 333 per cent in March 1917 and 666 per cent in the autumn. Government attempts to control prices usually caused havoc. The bakers in Petrograd complained that they could not afford to bake bread at the declared price, because that price was out of joint with the price of fuel; and yet if the government