ABSTRACT
The pressure of Germany upon Russia after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the occupation of a large part of the country by Germany, the revictualling of Germany and Austria from the Ukraine, and the outbreak of the Civil War, led inevitably to the extension of the blockade against the Central Empires in order to include Russia. The peasant had always rightly or wrongly blamed the Government for famines, and he had been encouraged in this attitude by socialists of all groups because they found in it "rich material for agitation". The All-Russian Central Executive Committee organized measures in the autumn of 1921 and throughout 1922 with the object of preventing a repetition of the conditions of the preceding disastrous year. The coincidence of numerous unfavourable conditions in the year 1921 brought on a famine, not only on the Volga, where famine has frequently been acute, but in those parts of Russia which had always been looked upon as exceptionally productive.
