ABSTRACT
From the time of the Russian Empire to the present, year-to-year grain output has fluctuated enormously. The Russian Empire was one of the largest suppliers of grain to Western Europe. According to Vladimir P. Timoshenko, the abolition of serfdom and the completion of the first railroad line marked a substantial increase of grain exports relative to the total value of exports during the second half of 1870. Conventional wisdom holds that prior to the war Russia exported large amounts of grain at the expense of domestic per capita grain consumption. Comparisons between pre-war and post-war grain production are fraught with enormous data problems. In 1928 the Soviet government resorted to "extraordinary measures" involving coercion and compulsion to force the peasants to relinquish more grain. The chapter aims to compare the official planning goals of agricultural output (grain production) and inputs (investment, fertilizer, technology) with actual achievement. The war inflicted damages of unparalled magnitude on agriculture.
