ABSTRACT
Among the great cereal-exporting countries of the world, Russia's position is to some extent peculiar. From most of her competitors on the world grain market she differs in not being a new country: a circumstance which exercises a considerable influence on development of her agricultural production. Russian farming has been developed gradually, mostly by small peasant producers, and has been growing spontaneously, as an essential function of the complex body of the nation, which it was called upon to feed and support. Under the pressure of her growing financial burdens and of the claims of her balance of payments, Russia had, at all costs, to produce net surplus of grain available for disposal on world market, and this she did, year after year. In Russia, the marketable surplus of cereals was produced by the large farms, on the one hand, and by peasant family farmers, on the other.
