This monograph is about living standards and agricultural development in Russia in 1900–1940. These issues are of great importance for understanding events in the Russian Empire and the USSR. The book's author uses his previous publications, literature in Russian and English, numerous Russian dissertations, and both central and provincial archives. This history is set in the context of a neo-Malthusian demographic-structural theory of the history of agrarian societies, in which there are three factors that determine historical processes: demographic, technological, and geographical/ecological. It is these three processes, and their influence on developments in 1900–1940, that Sergei Nefedov studies. He is concerned with European Russia. Given the area's diversity, he deals not just with averages but concentrates on two regions—the Central Black Earth region and the Urals region. The book ignores other parts of the Russian Empire/USSR, such as Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Poland, and Finland.
The argument throughout is based on the available statistical sources, which are carefully evaluated in light of previous assessments of their quality, and summarized in numerous tables. A valuable feature of the book is that where the author disagrees with other writers, he carefully explains the causes of the disagreement. For example, when disagreeing with Boris Mironov about the economic implications of anthropometric data, he explains that the difference in interpretation results from a dispute about which years are most important for human growth (birth years or puberty), and cites evidence to support the puberty view (364–74). Similarly, after reaching different conclusions from Robert Allen about rural consumption in the late 1930s, he explains the difference as resulting from different estimates of the amount of grain needed for animal fodder (349–50).
For the years 1900–1914, the Nefedov belongs to the pessimistic school. He paints a picture of rural poverty, overpopulation and environmental degradation (largely caused by growing population). As far as food consumption is concerned, his figures, which are very close to those of Allen, show that average consumption was just above the subsistence minimum, but fluctuated considerably from year to year, depending on weather conditions. In the four years 1908/09—1911/12, which included two bad harvests, consumption fell below subsistence level and there was widespread hunger. On the other hand, in 1912 and 1913 favorable weather conditions led to record harvests and average consumption levels were well above the subsistence minimum. Besides year-to-year fluctuations, in this period there were also major regional differences. For example, in parts of Samara province and in the steppe-Black Sea areas, consumption was much above the average. In general, the south of Russia was much better off than the center. There was also substantial differentiation in consumption among the peasants resulting from whether under serfdom they (or their ancestors) had been noble serfs or state peasants. As far as production is concerned, there was no need for hunger anywhere, since production even in bad years was adequate to feed everyone. A significant share of grain output was exported to the world market, however, which paid higher prices than starving Russian peasants.
As for the February Revolution, Nefedov sees this as a result of the dissatisfaction of the peasant-soldiers (who surrendered, deserted, and mutinied in large numbers) with the war, and the poor bread rations in St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1917. Maneuvers among the political elite are ignored. Since the new authorities were unable to resolve the land question, reduce inflation, or ensure adequate food supplies, the peasants themselves began seizing noble land, and this was endorsed by the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who were able to take power in October. The period 1914–22 was a demographic catastrophe. War, disease, famine, and emigration led to a population decline of 6% in the Urals region and 13% in the Central Black Earth region (160), and this in a country with a high rate of population growth under normal conditions. The outcome of the Civil War was a victory for the peasants. The nobility was wiped out, but so were Bolshevik dreams of socialism and collectivization. The new regime depended on the peasantry.
NEP was a period of relative prosperity for the peasants. Average food consumption was higher than before the First World War, because there was more land for the peasants, it was no longer necessary to pay rent or interest to nobles or banks, and exports were reduced. However, for the country's development NEP was unsatisfactory. Arable land was split into numerous small scattered strips, productivity was low, and rural overpopulation and its accompanying ecological problems remained. The peasants preferred to eat their grain themselves, or feed it to their animals, rather than sell it to the state at the prices the state fixed. Low grain exports constrained the state's ability to import technology.
The solution to these problems was collectivization. This is interpreted as the technological modernization of agriculture using US technology of tractors and combine harvesters on large farms which could utilize these new machines efficiently. This implies that, to understand collectivization, textbooks and teachers should pay less attention to the industrialization debate and Evgenii Preobrazhensky and more attention to how the Soviet leadership was influenced by US agricultural technology. At the July 1928 Party Plenum, Stalin stressed that Soviet state farms should be like American agrofactories. In January 1929 Stalin himself received Thomas Campbell, who was the controlling stockholder of a huge mechanized farm in Montana, to learn about the possibilities of this type of farming (229).
The mass deportations of 1930–32 were a necessary preventive measure to ensure that a new civil war of peasants versus the state would not break out. Nefedov considers Stalin's goals as rational, in the tradition of Peter the Great and Sergei Witte, and necessary for the technological modernization of agriculture, but with results undermined by poor management of the collectivization process. The famine was not planned, rather it was as unexpected as an earthquake, but was a result of the conflict between the state and the peasants. After their experience with state exactions in 1931, the peasants were reluctant to bring in the 1932 harvest on time, and hid part of what they did harvest from the state's procurement officials. Frequently, grain was put in primitive stores vulnerable to attack by mice. As a result, much of the 1932 harvest was consumed by mice, and the peasants who were relying on that grain starved. The demographic result of the conflict between the state and the peasants was a catastrophe. At the beginning of 1935 the population of the USSR was 18 million less than it would have been without collectivization, with two-thirds of this demographic loss resulting from the estimated decline in births (351). Comparing the situation in 1938–40 with that under NEP, the main achievements of collectivization and the mass introduction of tractors and combine harvesters are considered to be the increased grain deliveries to the state and the reduced requirement for labor at harvest-time. These two achievements made industrialization possible. Nefedov notes that, despite mechanization, there was no significant increase in grain yields, and suggests that this may have resulted from poor labor incentives and the hostility of many (especially older) peasants to the collective system.
The consumption of the peasants and workers in 1938–40 is carefully calculated and compared with that under NEP. The conclusion reached is that the food consumption of the peasants worsened and that of the workers declined qualitatively. Comparing average calorie consumption of the peasants in February 1924–27 with that in 1938–40, Nefedov estimates that it fell by 12%, mainly as a result of the decline in livestock products (337). The worst February was that of 1937, when average calorie consumption fell to the subsistence minimum. There was also a significant fall in vodka consumption, although there was a rise in the consumption of industrial goods, such as clothes, in the villages. Furthermore, food consumption in calories per person was significantly higher than in the Tsarist period. For urban workers, on average between 1925–27 and 1938–1939, calorie consumption increased by 5%, but this was achieved at the cost of a qualitative worsening—bread consumption increased while ingestion of meat, milk, and eggs declined.
In the Conclusion, Nefedov argues that industrialization prevented a Japanese attack in 1933 and enabled the USSR to defeat the Nazis. In addition, during the 1941–45 war, the collective farms were an efficient instrument to mobilize agricultural products and, despite all difficulties, supply the army and the urban population (383). This traditional “patriotic” argument ignores the contribution to Soviet wartime food consumption made by the household plots of collective farmers, the plots the urban population were encouraged to cultivate in the war, the subsidiary farms created by industrial enterprises, and Lend-Lease supplies. It also ignores the mass civilian deaths from starvation.
This book is essential reading for all teachers of Russian history, 1900–1940. Researchers will find it an important, if controversial, contribution to the economic history of that period.
