Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1921 by Mauricio s> Borrero (review)

Abstract

970 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 readingof When RussiaLearned toRead,it stillseems thatVasiliiChurkin,Anton Krechet and Nat Pinkerton are among the best guides we have to popular beliefs and values in late imperialRussia. Department ofHistory STEPHEN LOVELL King'sCollege London Borrero,Mauricio. HungyMoscow:Scarcity andSociety in theRussianCivilWar, I9I7-I92I. Studies in Modern European History, 4I. Peter Lang, New Yorkand Oxford, 2003. Xi+ 228 pp. Tables.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?45.00? IN this well-researched monograph, the author aims to provide a better understandingof the impact on the residentsof Moscow of the chronic food shortageswhich afflictedRussianurbansocietyduringthe revolutionsof 19I7 and the subsequent civil war. Much of the author's success in achieving this aim is due to the approachhe takesto the topic. Leavingaside the question of the ideology behind the Bolshevikgovernment'sfood provisioningpolicies, he confines himself to examining the survival strategies devised by individuals and organizationsin Moscow to overcome the food supplyproblem, and how these strategies affected the implementation of government policies. The elimination of ideology makes for a much clearer and more convincing exposition of the processes at work in the food supplyproblem, and suggests stronglythat in theseprocessesideology was not an influentialfactor. Mauricio Borrerofollows previous writerson the subjectlike LarsLih and Vladimir Mau in stressing that the problems of food supply which the Bolsheviks faced were inherited from the tsarist regime and from the Provisional Government, and that the means the Bolsheviks employed to tackle them were ones which had been implemented by the previous Russian governments. The difference was that by the time the Bolsheviks came to power, the situation had deterioratedfurtherand requiredthe application of more determinedmethods. An added complication for the Soviet government was that it had come to power at a time when power in the countrywas becoming decentralized and institutions were proliferating, so that in the area of food supply different organizations and agencies competed with one another in the attempt to obtain stocks of food and distributethem in the urban areas. This disrupted the smooth performanceof Russia'sfood supplynetwork.Eventuallythe Food Supply Commissariat (Narkomprod)would emerge victorious as the agency in overall control of food provisioning. But rivalries between Narkomprod and local food supply agencies were never fully eliminated, and in Moscow the municipal provisioning organization continued to snipe at Narkomprod's perceived shortcomingsin the area of food distributionthroughout the Civil Warperiod. Step by step the author takes the reader along the route by which grain came from the countryside to the urban consumer and shows at each stage how bottlenecks,wastage and pilferingcould occur and how this exacerbated food shortages.There were insufficienttrainsto transportgrain to the towns, REVIEWS 971 a lackof people to unload the trainsthat did arriveat theirurbandestinations, a shortageof horsesto transferthe grainfrom the railwaystationsto the mills, and a lack of capacity in the mills themselves. And at every stage on the way there were many opportunitiesfor those in charge of the grain to steal it for their own consumption or to divert it to the black market. As a result, the provisioning authorities often had insufficient food to distribute to the population. These deficiencies made it necessary for Muscovites to take it upon themselves to travel to the countryside to purchase food and bring it backto the cityto feed themselvesand theirfamilies.Such tripswere, strictly speaking,illegalbecause they infringedthe state'smonopoly of trade,but they were to some extent tolerated by the authoritiesbecause they alleviated the food supplyproblem in the towns. A particularly useful section in Borrero's book is that dealing with the rationing system and the way it evolved. Rationing had been inherited from the Provisional Government, but under pressure of ever more serious food shortages, the Bolsheviks had developed class-based rationing systems that divided the urban populations into three or four categories. Over time as more and more people were successfulin theirbid to be included in the more privileged categories, the system was undermined, and in I920 rations came to be allocated on the basis of work performed in the previous weeks. As the author emphasizes, ration cards only gave the holder an entitlement to food, not food itself, since none might be available. Shortagesmade it necessaryfor the Moscow population to resort fairly regularlyto the black market, which flourished during the Civil...