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The Crop Failure of 1891: Soil Exhaustion, Technological Backwardness, and Russia's “Agrarian Crisis”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

James Y. Simms Jr.
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Russian peasant farming techniques in the last decades of the nineteenth century are generally considered to have been technologically backward. What student of Russian history has not read about the dire effects of the three field system of agriculture, the lack of fertilizer, and the inadequate wooden plow used predominantly by Russian peasants? The low productivity of the peasant is traditionally attributed to these backward methods, which in turn are seen as contributors to the exhaustion of the land and consequently the impoverishment of the Russian peasantry. As the land became exhausted, peasants could not maintain their standard of living or meet an increasing tax burden. Technological backwardness and soil exhaustion are thus important indexes for the “crisis hypothesis,” which states that the economic well-being of the Russian peasantry was deteriorating as the nineteenth century came to a close. An investigation into the causes of the crop failure of 1891 and the quality of the Russian harvest after the crop failure and famine of 1891-92, however, clearly suggests that: (1) soil moisture was the critical determinant of harvest quality; (2) peasant methods were riot unambiguously “backward,” given the climate and soil conditions in much of the black earth district and the grainlands in general, and may even have been appropriate; and (3) Russian farmland was not becoming exhausted, particularly in the so-called hunger provinces of the central black earth district. Quite simply, the vicissitudes of weather determined the harvest in tsarist Russia.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Summer 1982 , pp. 236 - 250
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1982

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References

1. See, for example, Lazar, Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture: From Alexander II to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 57–63 Google Scholar; Robinson, Geroid T., Rural Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 94–101 Google Scholar; Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., A History of Russia, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 478Google Scholar; Richard, Robbins, Famine in Russia 1891-1892 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 3–10 Google Scholar. For comments pertaining to backwardness per se, see Florinsky, Michael T., Russia: A History and an Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 2:924 Google Scholar; Florinsky, Michael T., The End of the Russian Empire (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 183 Google Scholar.

2. For a discussion of the “crisis” in Russian agriculture which occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, see James Y. Simms, Jr., “The Crisis in Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century: A Different View,” Slavic Review, 36, no. 3 (September 1977): 377-98. In this article indexes used to substantiate the existence of the crisis such as the tax burden, redemption arrears, decline in grain prices, and the relationship of the size of the harvest to the population are examined and shown to be fallacious.

3. I want to emphasize that my concern is with the cause of the crop failure of 1891 and not with the famine that followed the crop failure. The causes of a crop failure are often quite distinct from the causes of a famine. If, for example, there are sufficient reserves in a country or if access to food reserves exists, a famine does not necessarily follow from a crop failure.

4. Levasseur, M. E., La Recolte de 1891 en Russie (Paris: Chamerot and Renouard, 1891), p. 27 Google Scholar; this was a report to the National Society of Agriculture of France, December 23, 1891. [ Ermolov, A. S.], Neurozhai i narodnoe bedstvie (St. Petersburg, 1892), pp. 15–16 Google Scholar.

5. U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, House Miscellaneous Documents, 52nd Cong., 1st sess., 1891-92, “Grain Crops of the World,” vol. 37, p. 163. For similar data, see Levasseur, La Recolte, p. 27 and [Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 15-16.

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7. This is a general statement based on evidence in several sources. See [Ermolov], Neurozhai, p. 18; Entsiklopedicheskiislovar1', vol. 9 (St. Petersburg: Brokhaus and Efron, 1893), p. 104; House Miscellaneous Documents, “Grain Crops of the World,” vol. 37, pp. 172-74 and “The Russian Farm Products in 1891,” vol. 38, pp. 321-22; Alfred, Vendrikh, Otchet po upravleniiu perevozkami (St. Petersburg, 1896), p. 2 Google Scholar; Charles E., Smith, “The Famine in Russia” The North American Review, 154 (May 1892): 542Google Scholar; U.S., Department of State, Russia, Diplomatic Dispatches of Charles Emory Smith, vol. 42, no. 142 (January 11,1892); U.S., Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, no. 120 (October 22, 1891), p. 746; Levasseur, , La Ricolte, p. 35Google Scholar.

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11. Volin, , A Century of Russian Agriculture, p. 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The issues of the crop failure and subsequent famine attracted a great deal of attention and produced much discussion among contemporaries (see Nikolai-on, “Nechto ob usloviiakh nashego khoziaistvennago razvitiia,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1894, no. 4, p. 1; S. K., “Khronika vnutrennei zhizni,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1892, no. 2, p. 108 Google Scholar).

12. See the comments by Stepniak as the editor of Free Russia, June-December 1891 and January-December 1892; see also the materials relating to the famine in Russkoe bogatstvo, June-December 1891 and January-June 1892 and in Vestnik Evropy, June-December 1891 and January-December 1892.

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15. [Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 5-15; “Beseda I,” Trudy: Imperatorskoe vol'noe ekonomicheskoe obshchestvo (hereafter cited as Trudy: IVEO), 1, no. 1 (January-February 1892): 72, 75, 80, 81.

16. For example, the following argue that soil exhaustion, backwardness of technique, and land shortage were important components in causing the crop failure: N. G., “Pis'ma iz derevni,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1892, no. 2, p. 154; P. L. Korf, “Poezdka v neurozhainiia mestnosti Kurskoi gubernii,” Trudy: TVEO, 1, no. 4 (July-August 1892): 117-18; Smith, “Famine in Russia,” p. 544; W. C. Edgar, The Russian Famine of 1891 and 1892 (Minneapolis, Minn.; Millers and Manufacturers Ins. Co., 1893), p. 43; W. C. Edgar, “Russia's Land System: The Cause of the Famine,” The Forum, 13 (March-August 1892): 576-77.

17. Plekhanov, G. V., O zadachakh sotsialistov v bor'be s golodom v Rossii (Geneva: Sotsial Demokrat, 1892), pp. 14–17 Google Scholar.

18. G. V., Plekhanov, “Vserossiiskoe razorenie” Sotsial Demokrat, 4 (1892): 90Google Scholar; emphasis in the original.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. V. S. Solov'ev, “Narodnaia beda i obshchestvenniia pomoshch',” Vestnik Evropy, 5 (October 1891): 781, 782, 784.

22. Ibid., p. 784.

23. In addition to the above citations from W. C. Edgar, Plekhanov, and Solov'ev, see also E. Von Der Bruggen, Russia of Today, trans. M. Sandwith (London: Digby, Long and Co., 1904), p. 171 and Geoffrey, Drage, Russian Affairs (London: John Murray, 1904), p. 140 Google Scholar.

24. N. A., Karyshev, “Prodovol'stvennoe delo i sel'sko-khoziaistvennoe strakhovanie” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1893, no. 1, p. 10 Google Scholar.

25. Smith, “Famine in Russia,” p. 544. See also Steveni, , Europe's Great Calamity, p. 19Google Scholar; Edgar, The Russian Famine, p. 43; Edgar, “Russia's Land System,” pp. 576-77.

26. A number of scholars see the famine as a component of the crisis. See, for example, Lazar, Volin, “The Russian Peasant: From Emancipation to Kolkhoz,” in The Transformation of Russian Society, ed. Cyril E. Black (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 198 Google Scholar; Haimson, Leopold H., The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Florinsky, , Russia: A History, 2:1159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Khromov, P. A., Ekonomika Rossiiperioda promyshlennogo kapitalizma (Moscow, 1963), p. 53 Google Scholar.

28. Riasanovsky, , A History, p. 478Google Scholar.

29. “Beseda I,” pp. 69-70.

30. Admittedly, the society's debate included only a few people, but it is evidence that there were those who argued that climate was the sole factor in causing the crop failure. Of the ten discussants who ventured an opinion, seven were clearly disposed or leaned toward meteorological factors, while three argued that technology made a difference. See ibid., pp. 67-106.

31. Ibid., p. 85. Ermolov amplifies this view in his monograph on the causes and impact of the famine. He is very emphatic that the harvest of 1891 depended entirely upon meteorological conditions ([Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 21, 22, 38, 40, 56).

32. “Beseda I,” p. 76.

33. Ibid., p. 101.

34. Ibid., pp. 72, 74; see also [Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 8, 9, 10.

35. “Beseda I,” p. 88. In fairness to the proponents of the meteorological argument, it should be acknowledged that they claimed that climate was decisive only for the harvest of 1891. At least some of them agreed that the level of technology would make a difference in the harvest in normal years (ibid., pp. 85, 88, 102).

36. It is my opinion that the tsarist government, at least the Ministry of Finance, also felt that weather was the single most important determinant of the harvest. See James Y. Simms, Jr., “The Impact of the Russian Famine of 1891-92: A New Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1976), pp. 226-29.

37. See Delinikaitis, S. A., Zasukha i bor'ba s nei (Moscow, 1949), p. 8 Google Scholar.

38. [Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 9, 10.

39. Rotmistrov, V. G. points out the grave effects of a cold spring and late thaw for the retention of moisture in the soil (The Nature of Drought [Odessa, 1913], p. 8 Google Scholar).

40. Readers who remain skeptical should examine the impact of drought and high temperature upon the harvest of the United States over the past few years. Harsh weather conditions take precedence over the most advanced technology.

41. Arcadius Kahan, “Natural Calamities and Their Effects Upon the Food Supply in Russia (An Introduction to a Catalogue),” Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, 16 (September 1968): 374-75.

42. Mellor, R. E. H., Geography of the U.S.S.R. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1965), pp. 193–94Google Scholar. See also the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, trans, from the third Soviet ed., vol. 9 (New York, 1975), s.v. “Drought,” which lists major droughts in 1891, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1936, 1946, 1954, 1957, 1967, and 1971, or again roughly five or ten year intervals.

43. Fisher, H. H., The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1927), p. 475 Google Scholar; Theodore Laue, H. Von, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 211 Google Scholar.

44. Steveni, , Europe's Great Calamity, pp. 18, 21Google Scholar; Volin, , A Century of Russian Agriculture, p. 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar; I., Korsakov, Golod v sovetskoi Rossii i egoprichiny (Iur'ev [Tartu], 1922), p. 24 Google Scholar; Mordovtsev, D, “Deistvitel'niia prichiny Samarskago goloda” Otechestvenniia zapiski, no. 4 (April 1874): 385Google Scholar.

45. Volin, , A Century of Russian Agriculture, pp. 485-87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Mordovtsev, “Deistvitel'niia prichiny,” p. 385.

47. F., Stefanovskii, Materialy dlia izucheniia svoistv “golodnago” khleba; danniia po izsledovaniiu obraztsov, sobrannykh v 1891-92 v Volzhko-Kamskom krae (Kazan, 1893), p. 60 Google Scholar; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', p. 104; Mordovtsev, “Deistvitel'niia prichiny,” p. 365.

48. Mordovtsev, “Deistvitel'niia prichiny,” pp. 367-69; I., Sergeevskii, Golod v Rossii: So vvedeniem i poslesloviem P. Lavrov (Geneva: Society of Old Populists, 1892), p. 36 Google Scholar; Stefanovskii, , Materialy dlia izucheniia, p. 62Google Scholar.

49. In relation to the average harvest of rye for the period 1870-82, the harvest of 1873 in Samara was 46 percent of the norm and in Saratov, 109 percent. The harvest of rye in Samara for 1874 was 205 percent of the norm. One wonders why that figure did not get as much attention as the poor harvest figure. See N. Annenskii, “Prilozhenie,” in Vliianie urozhaev i khlebnykh tsen na nekotoriia storony russkago narodnago khoziaistva, ed. A. I. Chuprov and A. S. Posnikov, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1897), 2:18.

50. For example, see Riasanovsky, , A History, p. 478Google Scholar; Volin, , A Century of Russian Agriculture, p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robbins, , Famine, p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argue that peasant farmland was exhausted.

51. Nifontov, A. S., Zernovoe proizvodstvo Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka (Moscow, 1974), p. 266 Google Scholar.

52. Ibid., p. 267. See also the harvest data in Kovalevsky, M. W., La Russie àla fin du 19 “ siecle (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1900), p. 167 Google Scholar; Khromov, P. A., Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii v XIX-XX vekakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), p. 452 Google Scholar.

53. Raymond W., Goldsmith, “The Economic Growth of Tsarist Russia 1860-1913” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 9 (April 1961): 442Google Scholar. In general, there was also an increase in output per desiatina even in the famine district. See Annenskii, “Prilozhenie,” pp. 44-58.

54. Robinson, , Rural Russia under the Old Regime, p. 98Google Scholar; see also Florinsky, , The End of the Russian Empire, p. 184Google Scholar, who gives similar data.

55. Goldsmith, “Economic Growth,” p. 442.

56. Robinson, , Rural Russia under the Old Regime, p. 210Google Scholar.

57. To confirm my interpretation, I discussed this question with professor of agronomy George W. Hawkins and Stacy Gettier, the supervisor of the Soil Testing and Plant Analysis Laboratory, both of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Professor Hawkins and Mr. Gettier agreed that the excellent harvests of the years 1893-96 could not have been produced on exhausted soil.

58. [Ermolov], Neurozhai, pp. 41, 56. This is also the opinion of Professor Hawkins and Mr. Gettier of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A. F. Gustafson states that “although some soils may be low in plant food, the supply of moisture usually limits crop yields in dry farming” ﹛Using and Managing Soils [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948], p. 106).

59. Robinson, , Rural. Russia under the Old Regime, p. 244 and p. 97Google Scholar.

60. Liashchenko, Peter I., History of the National Economy of Russia, trans. L. M. Herman (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 180 Google Scholar; see also Paul, Miliukov, Russia and Its Crisis (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 328 Google Scholar.

61. “Beseda I,” p. 102; see also “Beseda II,” Trudy: IVEO, 1, no. 1 (January-February 1892): 133.

62. “Beseda II,” p. 132.

63. “Beseda I,” p. 103.

64. “Beseda II,” p. 132.

65. Eugene D. Vinogradoff, “The ‘Invisible Hand’ and the Russian Peasant,” Peasant Studies Newsletter, 4 (July 1975): 10; see also Rotmistrov, , Nature of Drought, p. 9Google Scholar, who says that deep plowing had very little significance to the battle against drought or to the retention of moisture in the soil. The view is supported by both Professor Hawkins and Mr. Gettier of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

66. A statement made by Professor Hawkins in a conversation with me.

67. “Beseda I,” p. 102; “Beseda II,” p. 133.

68. “Beseda I,” p. 102.

69. Ibid., p. 88. Nonetheless, peasants were buying more and more steel plows (which, by the way, indicates growing prosperity) in part because of the propaganda arguing for the superiority of the steel plow over the sokha and the ease of plowing with the steel as compared to the wooden plow. “'You are going off to a factory,’ a wife says to her husband, ‘then buy a steel plow, because I will not plow with a wooden one'” ( “Beseda II,” p. 136).

70. “Beseda III,” Trudy: IVEO, 1, no. 1 (January-February 1892): 171-73.

71. Nikolai-on, “Nechto ob usloviiakh nashego khoziaistvennago razvitiia,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1894, no. 6, p. 118. One of the noted nineteenth-century authorities, A. Shiskin, also favȯred using improved seeds to counter the arid conditions in Russia ( Rotmistrov, , Nature of Drought, p. 4Google Scholar).

72. “Beseda I,” pp. 80, 88, 89, 91.

73. Vinogradoff, “The ‘Invisible Hand,'” p. 10.

74. Billington, Ray Allen, Westward Expansion, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 708–709 Google Scholar; Fite, Gilbert C., The Farmers’ Frontier 1865-1900 (New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1966), p. 52Google Scholar.

75. Smith, C. Henry, The Story of the Mennonites, 4th ed., rev. and enlarged by Cornelius Krahn (Newton, Kan.: Mennonite Publication Office, 1957), pp. 654–55Google Scholar; Malin, James C., Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas (Lawrence, Kan.: University of Kansas Press, 1944), pp. 166–67Google Scholar; Smith, C. Henry, The Coming of the Mennonites (Berne, Indiana: Mennonite Book Concern, 1927), p. 106Google Scholar.

76. Gustafson, , Using and Managing Soils, p. 102Google Scholar.

77. Rotmistrov, , Nature of Drought, p. 9Google Scholar. Professor Hawkins of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University maintains that the use of manure on black soil will not increase productivity.

78. Gustafson, , Using and Managing Soils, p. 106Google Scholar.

79. See Liashchenko, , History of the National Economy, p. 448Google Scholar; Mary Matossian, “The Peasant Way of Life,” in The Peasant in Nineteenth Century Russia, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 9. See also Mazour, Anatole G., Russia: Tsarist and Communist (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1962), p. 266Google Scholar; Miliukov, , Russia and Its Crisis, p. 328Google Scholar; and Florinsky, , Russia: A History, p. 924CrossRefGoogle Scholar who are not favorably disposed to the three field system.

80. Robinson, , Rural Russia under the Old Regime, pp. 98, 244Google Scholar; Wren, Melvin C., The Course of Russian History (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 340Google Scholar.

81. Robinson, , Rural Russia under the Old Regime, p. 98Google Scholar; Wren, , Course of Russian History, p. 540Google Scholar.

82. Rotmistrov, , Nature of Drought, p. 36 and pp. 33-34Google Scholar.

83. Ibid., pp. 31, 35. Rotmistrov was not arguing that the three field system was the best system of crop rotation. In fact, he suggested a four field system — including bare fallow — as a better system for fighting droughts (ibid., pp. 38-42, 45). In addition, he was against continuous planting of cereals which he argued was detrimental to the retention of moisture (ibid., pp. 40-45).

84. Stallings, J. H., Soil Conservation (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1957), pp. 297–98Google Scholar. See also Russell, E. Walter, Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, 10th ed. (London: Longman, 1973), p. 790Google Scholar; Gustafson, , Using and Managing Soils, p. 104Google Scholar. Professor Hawkins of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University maintains that fallow helps retain moisture.

85. Gustafson, , Using and Managing Soils, p. 104Google Scholar; Stallings, Soil Conservation, p. 298.

86. Delinikaitis, , Zasukha, p. 15Google Scholar. While favoring fallow over non-fallow practices, Delinikaitis sought the solution for the drought problem in planting more trees and implementing a grass crop-rotation system.

87. [Ermolov], Neurozhai, p. 64.