Russian Grain Procurement in a Revolutionary State

Abstract

The Russian provisional government and Bolshevik regime, in their respective efforts to address and resolve the food-supply crisis of 1917–19, sought to modernize state-village relations and mobilize peasant-citizens to contribute to the task according to their ability. Grain registration, an accounting of peasant grain stocks to find “surpluses,” was a continuation of a reformist trend within the state bureaucracy to replace customary means of allotting state obligations with an effort to base them on an assessment of household productive capacity. Evidence from Penza Province suggests that grain registration, both data gathering and interpretation, played a complex role in the evolution of grain procurement policy. The implementation of registration was impacted by local conditions and was embraced when and where it served local interests. Registration contributed to significant tensions within the state apparatus; it exacerbated the growth of the localism that undermined the authority of the hierarchical procurement apparatus. Grain registration revealed the adaptability of peasants and local officials in the face of top-down reform and prompted efforts to enhance state effectiveness. Ultimately, the persistent challenges posed by grain registration forced the regime to abandon registration and to reorganize the provincial apparatus to enhance oversight of local officials.