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By David P. Lilly, Loyola University
Chicago, Illinois, 1994-1995
This paper was selected by the Loyola Department of History as
the Outstanding Paper for the 1994-1995 academic year.
. . . those people's efforts are in vain who with unchanged lives desire to
come to the people's aid by distributing the wealth they have first taken
from them.
-- Leo Tolstoy <1>
Famine is one of the worst, if not the worst of the disasters that afflict
humankind. The people affected are reduced to chronic poverty and are in
absolute want. Probably the worst thing about a famine is that it is not
only caused by natural phenomena, but it is also due to man-made causes that
could have been avoided. A famine is not just simply caused by a crop
failure whose immediate cause is meteorological, usually drought, but is
also produced by a complex of social and economic forces that reflect
general rural poverty. The Russian famine of 1891-92 affected an area of
around 900,000 square miles in the Volga and central agricultural areas.
Ironically, these were once the most fertile and productive parts of Russia.
This area included the provinces of Nizhni-Novgorod, Riazan, Tula, Kazan,
Simbirsk, Saratov, Penza, Samara and Tambov. It affected between fourteen to
twenty million people, of which 375,000 to 400,000 died, mostly of disease.
Due to malnutrition caused by the famine, people were more susceptible to
infection. One of the largest relief campaigns in Russian history was
undertaken by the government to help alleviate the disaster in which eleven
million people received supplemental rations from the state.
Count Leo Tolstoi was the main critic of the government. He blamed it for
its policies regarding the famine itself while also criticizing the relief
efforts implemented by the state. There were also major relief efforts from
the West, particularly the United States, which sent grain and money to the
beleaguered area. Western correspondents reported regularly on the situation
to the rest of the world. The Russian famine illustrated without a doubt
the internal weakness and utter backwardness of the Russian Empire.
It also
demonstrated the poor standard of living and the medieval conditions that
the majority of the population endured. The famine proved that the tsarist
government was inept and inefficient in a way that made it incapable of
foreseeing the disaster. Furthermore it mishandled the relief effort in
spite of the tremendous effort that was undertaken.
Throughout its long history, Russia has been plagued by famine. The Nikonian
chronicle, written between 1127 and 1303, recorded no less than eleven
famine years during that period. In 1873 when he was visiting his estate in
Samara, Leo Tolstoi became aware of the seriousness of a famine there.
Alexander I in 1822 was the first to attempt to create a comprehensive
famine relief system. Modified by Nicholas I in 1834, it had changed little
since then. It provided for a network of granaries that theoretically would
have been filled by the peasants in good years and relied upon during a crop
failure. While this theory looked good on paper, in practice it was a
complete failure. Even in the best years the peasants were too poor to
contribute, and where the granaries actually existed they were usually
empty. <2>
Causes
The famine in 1891-92 was initially caused by the bad weather in 1890 and
1891. The dry autumn delayed the seeding of the fields, and the winter,
which began early, was more severe than usual, with only light snowfall.
Heavy snow usually protects the seedlings from the cold. Melting snow and
ice caused the spring floods of the Volga that spread over the plains whose
grass is used as fodder. This year the small amount of snow caused the
ground to freeze. This killed the young plants because the late planting did
not give them enough time to take root. The poor weather eliminated the main
source of feed for the animals. They were crucial to the peasants because
they provided the power needed to plow the fields. The cold weather lasted
until mid-April, followed by a summer in 1892 that was extremely hot and
dry. Five rainless months contributed to the smallest total grain harvest
for European Russia in a decade.
Despite the poor harvest of 1891, there was enough food available to feed
the population, but this would only have been possible if the harvest was
rightly distributed. <3> This was almost impossible because the limited
means of communication could not establish equilibrium between certain
areas. In some areas there was a surplus and in others there was a deficit.
Most of this grain, however, was exported. This was due to government
economic policies that encouraged the sale of Russian grain abroad to
strengthen the national economy. Even though the crops were diminishing
yearly, exports remained the same; the grain reserves were thereby reduced.
Due to a worldwide agricultural crisis, the price of grain was declining.
Peasants received less and less for their crops so they sought to increase
the size of their crops at the expense of fallow, pasture, and forest land.
This led to the reduction of the herds which were the only source of power
and fertilizer, the chopping down of forests, which were the natural wind
breaks, and the rapid exhaustion of the soil. Before examining the situation
of the peasantry at the time immediately leading up to the famine, one must
first look back thirty years to investigate the origins of rural poverty.
When the Emancipation Manifesto was proclaimed on 19 February 1861, the
peasants initially regarded it as a great blessing granted to them by their
beloved little father, Tsar Alexander II. This blessing, however, eventually
became a curse on the peasantry because of the harsh provisions that were
thrust upon their shoulders. The allotments they were given were woefully
inadequate to supply even their limited needs. It was estimated that ten to
fourteen hectares were needed to maintain a peasant family, but most only
received two to three hectares. <4>
The peasantry also had to pay for the
land at a high cost--the supposed loss to the landlord by emancipation
rather than the market value of the land. Most also had to hand over the
land to collective farms, the mfr. It was responsible for the payment of
redemption money for the land as well as the taxes, and was responsible
directly to the government. Thus, the foundation of Russian agriculture was
viewed as radically weak and ultimately responsible for the famine.
One of the major problems caused by collective ownership was that the
peasant had no incentive to cultivate the land intelligently because it was
eventually passed on to other members of the mir. He worked it for what it
". . . will immediately yield for him, caring little for its future
condition, for he does not know how soon the mir may allot it to another."
<5>
Another problem was that as the peasant families grew, the commune land
was further subdivided. The apportionment was barely enough to maintain the
peasant in even the most primitive manner. Before emancipation, most
peasants could rely upon their owners for help since they were the source of
their wealth. At emancipation, most landlords, however, left their estates,
since they lacked skill in cultivation of the land and depended on their
serfs. They only visited for a few weeks out of the year and as to the
condition of the peasants, the landlords were legally released from all
responsibility. <6>
And other factors made the situation worse. The development of railroads
that raised the value of land and produce encouraged some landlords to
devastate the forests, impoverish the soil, and raise the already high rents
on their peasants. Burdened with heavy debt and taxes, peasants were left
with only two viable options--to rent land from the village usurer, the
kulak, or to leave the mir and go to the cities in search of factory work.
<7>
The peasants were also burdened by their own backward methods of farming
which dated back to the Dark Ages. They used primitive methods and medieval
implements, such as wooden ploughs that were incapable of plowing deep
enough. They were also ignorant of new fertilizers such as phosphates. They
usually used manure as a fertilizer, but not in the Volga region. There it
was used instead as a fuel because the area was bare of forests and the
winters were severe.
The reduction in the number of animals, the source of
their fertilizer, further exhausted the fertility of the soil. The peasants
also lacked any adequate agricultural knowledge and had neither the material
means nor desire to improve the condition of the land. They had no
inducement to raise the productiveness of the soil because anything produced
above the subsistence level would have been surrendered in the form of dues
and taxes.
Government efforts to educate the peasantry on the best modes of cultivating
the land were insufficient. The only school of agriculture in the entire
Empire was the Petrovsky Academy in Moscow. Even these graduates were not
permitted to make any practical application of their knowledge. The
government also conscripted the strongest and ablest of the young peasant
men into the military as soon as they were old enough. They were thereby
taking the best workers away from the land where they were most desperately
needed. Many critics argued that one million men in the army at peacetime
was not justified and if those men had been in the fields the famine may not
have happened. <8> Critics also state that the money saved from this could
have been used to construct lines of communication and make agricultural
improvements.
To the Russian peasant the harvest meant everything because he
was unable to save; he depended on the harvest to carry him from one year to
the next. The crop was not merely just food for the peasants; it also
provided their clothing, fuel, taxes, and fodder for the animals. If the
crop failed, everything failed. A crop failure spelled certain doom for the
peasant because not only did they have little or no food to eat, but also no
material to make clothes from home spun flax. They also had no material to
make fires to keep warm during the long, cold winter or any means to pay
taxes or rent. Constantly living on the edge of starvation even during the
best harvest years, the famine showed just how bad a life the peasantry
endured.
In the fields it was known as early as June 1891 that the crops would be a
complete failure, and with supplies exhausted, a famine appeared to be
inevitable. Despite the early warning of the impending disaster, the
chinovniks, agriculturists who occupied salaried positions and were far
removed from the actual tillers of the soil, were oblivious of the situation
and continued to send favorable reports to St. Petersburg. <9> Therefore the
government proceeded to collect taxes that the peasants in the afflicted
regions could not pay because they had no income from grain. To compensate,
the tax collectors seized the peasants' horses, cows and pigs. Physically
able men, although usually suffering from dysentery or scurvy, often left
their villages to wander the countryside, begging for food and employment.
The movement of these large masses of starving peasants was the main reason
for the rapid spread and frequent outbreaks of diseases such as scarlet
fever, typhus, diphtheria, cholera and smallpox throughout the region. The
rest of the village population, the old, young, and females, were usually
required to stay at home. <10> The staple of the peasant diet during the
famine was "hunger bread" that was made from weeds, chopped straw, cockle,
tree bark, and sometimes, sand. It was described as ". . . a lump of hard
black earth covered with a coating of mold" <11> and as ". . . so disgusting
in smell, taste and appearance that it is difficult to imagine that mankind
could be reduced to such an extremity as to be forced to eat it." <12>
It was often blamed for prevalence of typhus. The winter was especially
harsh.
The peasants had to resort to using their straw roofs for fires, thus
leaving them unprotected from the elements. Suicide and, surprisingly,
alcoholism were prevalent amongst the peasantry during this time. Some
peasants were reported to have spent their donated money or sold gifts of
food for vodka or other strong drink.
Relief Efforts
By the fall of 1891 it had become obvious that a major calamity could be
prevented only by the shipment of enormous quantities of grain into the
stricken provinces. <13> The government was ignorant of the famine until tax
collectors reported that the peasants of the region had nothing with which
to pay them. Petersburg thought that the collectors were to blame and the
Emperor sent men into the interior to investigate. The grain buyers,
however, knew of the situation. They quickly bought and exported reserve
grain before an Imperial ukase forbidding the export of wheat, oats and rye
was issued.
A special Relief Committee was organized by Alexander III, who
named the Caesarovich, the future Nicholas II, as president. The Emperor
himself gave half of his income, around five million rubles, to relief funds
while the Empress, through the special relief committee, collected twelve
million rubles, mostly from foreign donations. The Empress' sister, Grand
Duchess Elizabeth, organized her own relief committee that held bazaars in
Moscow to sell peasant-made items. The central treasury, with its slow,
cumbersome procedures was the main source of famine relief. For this reason,
aid reached the afflicted areas tardily Relief was also slowed even more
because there was no system of distributing assistance; everything was done
on a trial and error basis.
The government distributed special financial aid
of 150 million rubles to the zemstvos to finance food and seed purchases.
They bought food, then loaned it to those who could be expected to repay In
such a system, only some workers and landowners were eligible, and the rest
of the rural population, consisting of the elderly, children, and widows,
were excluded. <14>
Flour was distributed monthly to children over the age of two, and to women
and men who were unable to work. It only lasted between fifteen to twenty
days, and due to the lack of fuel it usually had to be eaten raw. Many of
those who did not belong to a commune were denied aid because the government
hoped that they would find work. The government did not realize that work
was extremely scarce and even if they found employment the wages were low
while food prices were very high. At most the zemstvos could only provide
one and a fourth pounds of rye per day to able bodied men or women. Those
receiving this aid were chosen by a Zemski Nachalnik who was appointed by
the government to preside over a specified district or county. <15> The
power of the official to choose who received food and who did not, thus
practically deciding who lived and who died, was very often abused. Only
one-third of the seed that was needed was distributed and more often than
not eaten by the sowers. They received it too late or not at all because
they were too weak to walk to the place of distribution. Even if they had
enough seed most of the peasants would be unable to plow because millions of
horses either died or were sold, leaving enormous areas unsown. In February
1892 the government addressed the shortage of stock problem by arranging for
the purchase of 30,000 horses from the Kirghiz steppes.
The effects of the famine were not limited to just the immediate area
afflicted, but the entire economic equilibrium of the country was upset. It
hurt those in the cities because ". . . masses of the people in industrial
regions earn[ed] barely enough to buy their additional supply of bread at
ordinary prices. [When prices rose] to about double the average they
suffer[ed] severely." <16> The fear of revolution was heavy in the air of
the capitals. Many thought a peasant insurrection would spark dormant
dissatisfaction in the cities and lead to a great rebellion.
The government also attempted to limit the social and economic consequences
of the disaster by instituting a system of public works. This had been a
technique of famine relief since the time of Catherine II. In theory this
would provide the destitute with employment, while also accomplishing
something meaningful in return. This undertaking ultimately proved to be a
major fiasco, due to poor organization and mismanagement by General
Annenkov, the director of the project. Ten million rubles were allocated to
finance the repair and construction of roads and forestry, thus providing
immediate employment relief. The major problem was that the works were not
put into effect until the summer and fall of 1892 when the crisis had
already passed. They were also established far from peasant villages and
the conditions of work were extremely harsh. The public works system was
scrapped because the projects undertaken were poorly planned and managed.
The projects brought a four million ruble deficit to the budget without
adequately providing employment to the peasants or paying them properly.
<17>
The poor transportation and communication networks of the region proved to
be a large obstacle in carrying out the relief effort. The implementation of
the relief effort was slow due to the fact that government
information-gathering agencies were unable to develop an accurate picture of
the needs of the afflicted areas quickly enough. The actual implementation
was difficult because of the insufficiency of the rail system of Russia,
which proved inadequate to handle this large scale emergency. The region
east of the Volga only had one rail line while other afflicted areas had
none.
Count Vorontsov-Dashkov was named vice president of the Relief
Committee and given power over all Russian railways to transport, free of
charge, grain or other supplies for the peasants. <18> The zemstvos,
encouraged by special freight rates, purchased grain from distant markets to
avoid high prices locally. This strained the capacity of the railways and
caused delays. The railroad crisis was further complicated by the habit of
clients of the lines demanding ten times more trucks than they needed in
order to insure that they received any. The waterways of the area proved
inadequate to handle the enormous shipments of the relief effort as well.
It was difficult to move barges into the area by the Volga because it was
shallowed by the drought. The waterways to the provinces of Viatka, Perm,
and Kazan were not navigable during the late fall and winter because of the
poor weather. In areas where relief measures could penetrate and be
initiated, they were carried out, and starvation was successfully fought
even though the peasants merely lived from hand to mouth. The conditions,
however, were indescribably terrible in remote areas where relief measures
could not penetrate because of the poor transportation network.
Leo Tolstoi and the Famine
After witnessing the tragedy of the famine of 1873, Count Leo Tolstoi went
to Moscow and published an article on November 6, 1892 in the Moscow
Gazette. Entitled "A Terrible Question," it opened the eyes of the
government to the crisis. In the article he said that the people were
starving because the rich ate too much and suggested that the government
should import foreign grain. This article proved to be unpopular with the
government and the paper received a warning from the Minister of the
Interior because of it. During the famine of 1891-92, Tolstoi was an ardent
and outspoken critic of government officials.
He felt they did not
understand the true causes of the famine, they did not have a true picture
of what was really going on in the afflicted regions, and were mishandling
relief efforts. He wanted the government to accumulate exact statistics by
sending officials into the villages and compiling from individual inquiries
information needed for wise and efficient aid. <19> Tolstoi claimed that the
government provided no help for laborers who were able to work and for those
with horses or cattle. He reported that large quantities of grain were
either stolen or allowed to spoil, thus wasting precious food and money.
Tolstoi proposed the establishment of large-scale public works and the
regulation of grain while forbidding the hoarding of flour. He advocated the
opening of sufficient free eating houses in famine- villages, along with
the organization of all available voluntary forces in national relief work.
All of these suggestions were ignored by St. Petersburg, however. He
therefore left Yasnaya Polyana and went to his estate in the Dankovsky
district where he gathered information on the needs of each family and
individual.
He set up eating rooms of his own that provided two meals a day
and a supply of wood for fuel during the winter in exchange for work.
However, for the most needy it was free. Meanwhile his wife was doing her
part by collecting donations for his work in Moscow. He also opened soup
booths in twenty-two villages, and set up corn and clothing stores for those
enduring the tragedy. In his heart, he revolted against the necessity of
such efforts, thinking it was abominable that he had to feed the people by
whom he was fed. He complained that he was ". . . distributing the vomit
sicked up by the rich." <20>
Tolstoi also made sure that the horses and work materials were supplied to
the muzhiks. This enabled them to make their own clothes and shoes. He
bought the surplus goods at full price and distributed them among the
poorest people. To prevent a repetition of the famine, he provided seed and
replaced horses so the peasants would be able to plant and prepare for the
next harvest. <21> He remained in the famine areas until after the good
harvest of 1893, which brought the territory back to normal.
The West, particularly the United States, helped the relief effort by
contributing money and food to the famine stricken area. Western newspapers
such as The Times of London sent correspondents into the area to report on
the situation first hand. They described in great detail the horrors they
saw and were partly responsible for the foreign aid that came into Russia.
The journalists pleaded for their readers to contribute to the relief effort
to help the starving. The Iowa Auxiliary of the Red Cross sent a cargo of
corn rather than money because the correspondents described how
inefficiently the aid was getting to the peasants. <22> Sympathetic
Philadelphians sent six million, pounds of flour that had been collected by
merchant millers to Russia. The relief movement was started by the publisher
of Northwestern Miller, W.C. Edgar, who assembled a donation collected from
states.
Transportation was provided free of charge by railroads and sent on
two steamships from New York to the Baltic port of Libau. Mr. Edgar
accompanied the expedition and wrote articles about the situation and
encouraged others to help in the relief. <23> Some unscrupulous merchants
used the charity of foreigners to their own advantage, however. In December
1891, the urban committee of St. Petersburg bought 300,000 pounds of grain
from some merchants at Linau and later discovered it was heavily adulterated
with dust and so, unusable.
Conclusion
The Russian famine of 1891-92 was an incredible disaster, not only for the
misery it caused, but due to the fact that it could either have been
prevented entirely or at least its impact lessened. The effectiveness of the
government relief effort has been under debate for many years. Statistics
show that few actual cases of starvation were reported, but that is
misleading because the majority of people died from diseases accompanying
the famine. The government attempt to establish a system of public works to
provide employment was a complete failure. However, government assistance
averted the threat of mass starvation and prevented the total economic
collapse of the region, despite the massive obstacles impeding the relief
effort. One of the major impediments to efficient relief was the lack of
cooperation between various ministries. The famine brought into view the
corruption and inefficiency of the government, and showed how St. Petersburg
was so out of touch with the vast portion of the country. It also exposed
the dire poverty of the peasants, which could be traced back to emancipation
and beyond. This famine, which pointed out the weakness of their social
structure, should have been a huge warning to the government. The tsarist
regimes, however, failed to address adequately Russia's massive agricultural
problems that ultimately helped lead to the government's downfall. The
tsars' Soviet successors did not fare any better. The country continued to
be plagued by famine, including the one caused by the policies of Stalin in
1931-32. Soviet attempts to solve Russia's agriculture problems, such as
Khrushchev's Virgin Land project, all ultimately ended in failure. One hopes
that Boris Yeltsin has recognized and learnedamed the lessons that the
famine of 1891-92 can teach.
Notes
1 J. Stradling and W. Reason, In the Land of Tolstoi (London James Clarke
and Company, 1897), p. 37.
2 R. Robbins, Famine in Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975),
p. 19
3 C. Smith, "The Famine in Russia," North American Review, CLIV (1892), 543.
4 Stradling and Reason, 14.
5 W. Edgar, "Russia's Conflict With Hunger," American Review of Reviews, V
(1892), p. 576.
6 Ibid., 579.
7 Stradling and Reason, 19.
8 M. Halstead, "Politics of the Russian Famine," American Review of Reviews,
V (1892), 572.
9 Edgar, 692.
10 E, Lanin, "Famine in Russia," Fortnightly Review, LVI (1891), p. 640.
11 Ibid., 647.
12 Edgar, 698.
13 Robbins, 62.
14 Edgar, 693.
15 Ibid.
16 S. Stepnik, "The Russian Famine and the Revolution," The Fortnightly
Review, LVII (1892), 359.
17 Robbins, 75.
18 Edgar, 695.
19 Stradling and Reason, 45.
20 M. de Courcel, Tolstoy: The Ultimate Reconciliation (New York Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1988), 22.
21 Stradling and Reason, 59.
22 "Aid For Starving Russians," The Nation, LVI (1892), 130.
23 "American Relief to Russia," American Review of Reviews, LIV (1892), 267.
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http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1994-5/Lilly.htm
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