Quoi qu’il en coûte : prêts alimentaires et aide aux victimes de la famine dans l’Empire russe tardif

Abstract

Late Tsarist Russia commanded a unique system of famine relief that provided food aid on credit. No other state operationalized debts this copiously in order to prevent its populace from starving. The article analyses the hunger relief operation between 1891 and 1893, examining why the Russian Empire resorted to food loans as the major tool to counter the threat of famine. It shows how it worked and to what extent it actually provided relief. It demonstrates how the Russian government was structurally and culturally dependent on this cost ineffective and provisional relief system that neither by design nor by name was supposed to be humanitarian but in essence saved millions of lives. It shows how on the one hand cultural fears of peasant indebtedness and unproductiveness stalled relief efforts while on the other hand these very fears prompted the state to turn loans into donations. The autocracy systematically addressed social needs – by balancing humanitarianism and financial accountability.