Reading a Grain Table: War Communism and the 1921 Famine
A debate in a history seminar turns on a table compiled from Soviet sources. It shows the 1913 grain harvest at about 80 million tons and the 1920 harvest at about 45 million tons; procurement under prodrazvyorstka in 1920-21 is given as roughly 12 million tons, against marketed grain of about 21 per cent of the harvest in 1913. One student argues that War Communism caused the famine of 1921-22; another argues that drought and the civil war did, and that the policy was a response. The seminar also has a 1921 Sovnarkom decree ordering continued requisitioning in grain-surplus provinces, a Cheka report on peasant resistance in Tambov, and a peasant petition complaining that seed grain had been taken. The instructor warns that the table's harvest figures are estimates from an era of poor statistics, and that the famine's worst mortality came in 1922, after the harvest had partly recovered.
1. What can and cannot be inferred from the procurement ratio in the table?
Read the worked answer
The ratio is 12 million tons taken from a harvest of about 45 million tons, roughly 27 per cent, compared with marketed grain of about 21 per cent in 1913.
What it can show: the scale of extraction was high, and higher than the pre-war proportion of grain that normally left the village. That is a real and important finding.
What it cannot show: causation. The denominator is an official harvest estimate produced in wartime by a weak statistical system, and the numerator may include grain collected in one province and counted against another's harvest. Neither figure tells us what was left for seed, fodder and consumption.
Nor does the ratio distinguish taking surplus from taking necessities. A 27 per cent levy from a rich harvest is different from the same levy when the harvest has fallen to 45 million tons, because the reserve has disappeared.
The correct inference is about pressure, not cause: the policy extracted a very large share of a shrinking harvest. Whether that produced famine requires consumption and mortality data, not a procurement percentage.
2. Using all four sources, weigh war, drought and policy as causes of the famine.
Read the worked answer
Separate the cause of the shortfall from the cause of the deaths.
- Shortfall: the civil war removed labour, horses and transport, and disrupted sowing; drought in 1921 hit the Volga provinces. The fall from about 80 to about 45 million tons between 1913 and 1920 is consistent with war and disruption before the drought even struck.
- Policy: the 1921 decree ordering continued requisitioning in grain-surplus provinces, the peasant petition about seed grain, and the Cheka report on Tambov resistance all show that extraction continued into the famine year. Taking seed grain converts a one-year shortage into a multi-year one.
- Timing: the worst mortality came in 1922, after the harvest had partly recovered. That is the strongest argument that deaths were shaped by entitlement and distribution, not only by production.
Best judgement: drought and war created the shortfall; requisitioning determined who bore it, removing buffers and hitting peasants hardest. Policy was not the sole cause, but it was a cause of the famine's depth.
3. What additional evidence would most efficiently discriminate between the rival explanations?
Read the worked answer
Look for variation rather than more national averages.
- District-level mortality and district-level procurement together. If districts with heavy requisitioning but moderate drought had higher mortality, policy carries weight; if mortality tracks rainfall and harvest alone, drought does.
- Grain balance sheets showing seed, fodder, food and waste, to test whether the levy removed necessities or only surplus.
- Transport data: rail freight and rolling stock, to test whether grain was unavailable or merely undistributable.
- Urban ration and price data, to see whether the state prioritised cities at peasant expense.
- Peasant petitions and local reports from provinces where requisitioning was lighter, as a comparison group.
The logic is comparison: the argument cannot be settled by a single national table, but it can be narrowed by showing that outcomes differed where policy differed, holding drought roughly constant.