11/1/1919 The Prodrazvyorstka: Soviet Russia steps up the confiscation of food from the peasantry

The Red Army has had some successes against its enemies, but Soviet Russia’s situation is still precarious. White armies and their foreign allies threaten the Bolshevik zone from without, but a more insidious problem is the shortage of food. Much of Russia’s most productive agricultural areas are outside Soviet control, while the dislocation caused by war, revolution and now civil war has disrupted the production and distribution of food; as a result, the cities are increasingly going hungry. The urban centres are the heartland of the Bolshevik regime, so food shortages there pose a mortal threat to its survival.

The Bolsheviks have been confiscating the peasantry’s grain surpluses since last May, but now they go one step further, with Sovnarkom (the Soviet government) issuing a decree on prodrazvyorstka, or food apportionment. Instead of taking the farmers’ surpluses, food confiscation quotas are issued to each locality, with the quota to…