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ABSTRACT: The main aim of this article is to examine the rise of famine relief policy in the Russian Empire. It focuses on the institution of the granary, central to eighteenth-century cameralist teaching on famine prevention. At the end of the 18th century the government of Russia began to view communal village granaries as the best means to achieve food sustainability and ensure provision for the people. During the 19th century this developed into an extensive organisation of communal granaries that existed up to 1917 and was of unprecedented scale for all Europe. By the end of the 19th century Russia had accumulated a very large amount of grain in its communal granaries, but still suffered regularly from famines. The idea of communal granaries as a famine relief measure was unrealistic, and the granaries never functioned exactly as regulations foresaw. They did not fulfil their main function - famine relief - but instead created far more problems than solutions for the authorities. However, in spite of all this the Russian government demonstrated at the lowest local level its capacity for pushing through its decisions. From the perspective of administrative capacity, the Russian network of public and communal granaries was a remarkable achievement.
Keywords: Cameralism - Granaries - Famine relief - Russian Empire - Baltic provinces
The establishment of grain stocks as a hunger relief measure was one of the main institutional developments of Russian agrarian and economic policy in the 18th century. Before the reign of Peter I (1682-1725) food granaries practically did not exist in Russia, and concern for peasant subsistence was not considered to be a state task. Faith in the ability of state intervention to mitigate famine was first evident during the 18th century. At this time public and communal granaries were established in many parts of Europe - in Prussia, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Baden, Hannover and elsewhere.1 Even if some towns and countries had already established earlier versions of granaries in the Middle Ages, now the institution of the public granary became more formal, more centrally regulated and was integrated into government economic policy. Russia offers an outstanding example of the rise and fall of such a granary-centred famine relief policy in i8th-i9th century Europe. During the 19th century this...