by James Millar
The sovereign’s court included the most combat-worthy Muscovite troops and provided cadres for administrative and diplomatic tasks. An efficient military and administrative institution, the sovereign’s court was vital to the victory of the princes of Moscow over their opponents and to the functioning of the Russian state during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See also: BOYAR; CHANCELLERY SYSTEM; IVAN III; IVAN IV; OPRICHNINA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alef, Gustave. (1986). The Origins of Muscovite Autocracy: The Age of Ivan III. Forschungen zur Osteurop?ischen Geschichte, vol. 39. Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut; Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Poe, Marshall T. (2003). The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.
SERGEI BOGATYREV
GOVERNING SENATE
The Governing Senate was founded in 1711. Its initial primary responsibility was to govern the empire when the emperor was on military campaigns. The establishment of the Senate was also part of a government re-organization undertaken by Peter I (1689-1725) who wished to make the government structure more responsive to his wishes and more effective at tapping society’s resources for military purposes. In 1722 it was transformed from a higher governing organ to a higher supervisory one responsible for resolving legal and administrative disputes. Catherine II (1763-1796) further systemized the Senate by dividing it into six departments with relatively clear institutional responsibilities related to administrative oversight.
The governmental reforms undertaken by Alexander I (1801-1825) fundamentally changed the role of the Senate. According to his decrees of 1801 and 1802 the Senate had the right to judicial
GRAIN CRISIS OF 1928
review and supervision of the highest governmental organs, including the newly established ministries. No legislative bill could become law without the Senate’s approval. However, one year later a new decree stripped the Senate of these powers. The founding of the ministerial system and the State Council (1810) fatally weakened the Senate’s role in practice. For the remainder of the nineteenth century it played the role of a High Court of Review and along with other institutions exercised limited administrative supervision. Until 1905 the Senate, whose forty or fifty members were chosen by the tsar, rarely met, except on ceremonial occasions. Six departments that dealt with a myriad of judicial, social, and political issues continued to work under the supervision of the Senate.
After the Revolution of 1905 the role of the Senate changed once again. It became the High Criminal Court dealing with corruption in the bureaucracy. Its first department played a role in the preparations for the formation of the First Duma, while its Second Department became the supreme appellate court for land-related issues. See also: ALEXANDER I; CATHERINE II; PETER I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1991). The Russian Empire 1801-1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yaney, George. (1973). The Systemization of Russian Government. London: University of Illinois Press.
ZHAND P. SHAKIBI
GRAIN CRISIS OF 1928
The Grain Crisis of 1928 was economic and political in nature and was a turning point in the Soviet regime’s policy toward the peasantry, a preview of Josef Stalin’s harsh methods of collectivization. Ten years after the Revolution, agriculture was still based on individual farming, with peasants cultivating more than ninety-seven percent of the land and selling their product to the state at set procurement prices in order to meet their tax obligations. The most important product was grain, and the system of state procurement supplied grain to feed the cities and the military, and for export. Under the New Economic Policy (NEP), the existence of a free market for agricultural products helped keep procurement prices competitive. Most peasants were at or near the subsistence level. A small number of richer peasants (the so-called kulaks) supplied most of the grain sold on the free market. Prices for industrial products produced by the state sector were kept relatively high in order to accumulate capital. In December 1927, the Fifteenth Party Congress of the Communist Party endorsed the idea of planned economic development, requiring the state to accumulate even more capital from domestic sources, principally the peasantry, while maintaining exports. Grain procurement prices were lowered in order to keep state expenditures down. A war scare in 1927 led people to hoard food.
Within this context, the grain crisis began to take shape toward the end of 1927. Although it was an average harvest, grain procurements fell precipitously at the end of the year; in November and December of 1927, procurements were about half of what they had been during the same months of the previous year. The problem was especially acute in Siberia, the Volga, and the Urals, even though the harvest had been good in these areas. Richer peasants withheld grain from the market, waiting for prices to rise. Peasants also switched from producing grain to other agricultural commodities. For example, in the Urals, while peasant grain sales to the state declined by a third, the sale of meat rose by fifty percent, egg sales doubled, and bacon sales went up four times.
Stalin insisted that the kulaks were withholding grain from the market to sabotage the regime, creating as much a political problem as an economic problem. He argued that the class struggle was intensifying. In January 1928 he visited the Urals and West Siberia and called for a series of emergency measures to extract grain from the recalcitrant peasantry. In direct opposition to the views of Nikolai Bukharin and other moderates in the Politburo, quotas for compulsory grain deliveries were imposed on kulaks and also on middle peasants. Peasants responded by decreasing grain production during 1928, but this simply intensified the crisis. For the year October 1927-October 1928, grain procurements fell by fourteen percent relative to the same period a year earlier, although the harvest was down by only seven to eight percent.
The grain crisis of 1928 was a critical turning point in Soviet economic and political history. Applying compulsion to the peasants rather than using economic incentives meant that NEP was dead. Most significantly, the events of 1928 showed that Stalin saw the peasantry as the enemy and established the context of a warlike crisis that would
GRAIN TRADE
justify violence. The outlines of the harsh collectivization drive were already visible. See also: COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; KULAKS; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nove, Alec. (1969). An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. London: Allen Lane. Tucker, Robert. (1990). Stalin in Power. New York: Norton.
CAROL GAYLE WILLIAM MOSKOFF
GRAIN TRADE
In Russia the dynamics of the grain trade depended on demand in the domestic and foreign markets. Before 1762 the export of grain was conducted under government supervision and depended on the domestic price level. If local prices exceeded an established level, export of grain was prohibited because of fears of further price rises. But even in the years of low prices, permission for the export of grain was required. The government considered grain a strategic commodity and gave this permission reluctantly. As a result, before 1762 grain trade was limited mainly to the empire’s frontiers. Only after the declaration of freedom of grain trade in 1762 did a systematic growth of grain exports begin. Before the 1780s the export of grain was prohibited only in case of a substantial price rise, and by the 1790s export became virtually free. Domestic demand for grain came from the urban population, the army, industry (mainly distillation), and the rural population of provinces that experienced a grain deficit.
The demand for marketable grain was comparatively small because nearly 75 percent of the population, even as late as 1897, was engaged in agriculture and able to satisfy its need for grain with its own production. The urban population was not large (in 1914 only 15.3% of the population lived in towns, and a portion of the townspeople engaged in agriculture). The regular army was comparatively small (in 1719, 2.9% of the country’s total population; in 1795, 2.5%; in 1850, 1.5%; in 1913, 0.8%). The consumption of vodka was limited physiologically (in 1913 in Russia the consumption of vodka converted to s
pirit was only 3.1 liters per capita) and the technology of distillation was improving. A constant demand for grain was felt only in the vicinity of big cities, industrial centers, and where arable land was scarce or soil poor. According to rough estimates, during the 1800s the urban population consumed 4.7 percent of all grain produced; in 1851-1860, 5.6 percent; and in 1912-1913, 9.1 percent; with industry consuming 4.1, 3.5, and 0.5 percent correspondingly; the army, 2.1, 2.1, and 1.2 percent; and exports 1.0, 3.8, and 15.7 percent. During the 1800s the share of marketable grain was nearly 12 percent of the gross yield of grain; during the 1850s, 15 percent; and in 1892-1913, 26.4 percent.
The grain trade began to grow markedly after the abolition of serfdom. Domestic and, even more, foreign demand increased, both of which were stimulated by extension of the railway network. Of three most important factors stimulating the demand for grain, export was in the first place, industrialization the second, and urbanization the third. The export of marketable grain constituted 7 percent of the total grain trade during the early 1800s, 26 percent during the 1850s, and 60 percent in 1892-1893; in terms of weight the average annual export of grain amounted to 0.2 million tons, 1.1 million tons, and 10.7 million tons correspondingly. The export of grain acquired vital importance for Russia. The main export cereals were wheat, rye, barley, and oats. In the mass of exported grain in 1762-1802 the share of wheat was 48 percent; rye, 45 percent; barley, 3.9 percent; oats, 2.8 percent; other cereals, 0.3 percent; in 1841-1850, 66, 17, 4, 6, and 7 percent correspondingly; in 1912-1913, 37, 8, 41, 11, and 3 percent. Russian grain was mainly exported to Western European countries. Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy imported mainly Russian grain, while England, Belgium, and France imported U.S. grain. Russia and the United States competed mainly in exports of red cereals: wheat and some barley. Grey cereals, rye and oats, were chiefly delivered from Russia and did not encounter U.S. competition.
During the post-reform period considerable success was achieved in the organization of the grain trade: A whole army of trade agents appeared; credit for marketable grain was created; great amounts of capital were mobilized; means of communication, ports, and the merchant navy were improved; a tariff system was designed; a fairly dense network of elevators and granaries was formed; a corporative organization of grain tradesmen emerged; grain exGRAIN TRADE
Laborers in Odessa walk among the cattle-driven wagons laden with sacks of wheat, 1878. © CORBIS changes were founded in major centers of grain trade (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Voronezh, Elizavet-grad, Borisoglebsk); information on crops, grain exports, stocks, prices, and freights became widely available. Western European commercial ethics and trade customs were gradually adopted. Despite indisputable progress, the organization of Russian grain trade did not attain the high level of development that it did in the United States, Russia’s main competitor in the world grain market. Elevators and granaries served merely as storehouses in Russia; classification of grains was not practiced there. Railways were not equipped with proper warehouses, rolling stock, and double track sections. Consequently, in good years, grain piled up at railway junctions, waiting for loading in the open, sometimes for up to two months. The quality of grain deteriorated, making it difficult for tradesmen to meet the conditions of contracts. The state of the roads along which grain was delivered to railway stations was unsatisfactory. Macadamized roads were few. In European Russia in 1912, there were
GRAIN TRADE
6 kilometers (3.7 miles) of them per 1,000 square kilometers (386.1 square miles); in the United States, 53 kilometers (33 miles); in Germany, 516 kilometers (320.6 miles); in Great Britain, 819 kilometers (508.9 miles); and in France, 1,073 kilometers (666.7 miles). Grain was brought to the stations not when it was profitable to sell it but when roads permitted. In ports there was a lack of warehouses for grain storage as well as a lack of facilities for grain reloading. All this raised overhead expenses and prices, and reduced the competitive capacity of Russian grain.
In Russia, foreign grain trade was in the hands of Western European tradesmen, and domestic trade remained in the hands of native tradesmen, mainly Jews, who purchased grain in the country and delivered it to ports for foreign exporters who gave credits and therefore dictated the conditions. The buyers-up were interested only in expanding and accelerating their turnovers. They did not attach much importance to the price level, since they made money on the difference between purchase and sale price. The sellers were peasants overburdened with various payments and landowners with big debts. They were short of liquid capital and, because of transportation conditions, not free to choose the moment of sale. Russian grain producers could neither wait for a favorable situation in the market nor exert influence upon prices, the level of which depended on crops and market competition of the sellers themselves. Inadequate organization of the grain trade resulted in the sale of Russian grain on world markets at less of a profit than U.S. grain. U.S. producers and sellers were to some extent able to regulate grain supplies to the world market, restraining the fall in prices in case of surplus grain supplies and maintaining high prices in a profitable market situation.
On account of great export (during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grain played the same role as did oil and gasoline during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries) the level of prices was of great significance for Russia. Incomes and solvency of peasants and landlords, the country’s trade balance, and earnings from customs duties depended on the price level. From the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, the situation in the world grain markets was for the most part advantageous to Russia. Russian local grain prices, expressed in grams of gold, rose 10.2 times from 1,707 grams (60.2 ounces) to 1,914 grams (67.5 ounces) (5.7 times during the eighteenth century), while the general index of prices for domestic goods rose 6.6 times (five times during the eighteenth century). By contrast, in European countries, despite cyclic fluctuations, grain prices and the general price index had a tendency to decline in this period. In eighteenth-century Russia, a phenomenal rise in grain prices (and generally in all prices) occurred. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Russia had stood apart from the price revolution in Europe, but during the eighteenth century Russia entered world trade, and a belated price revolution took place. The Russian price revolution resulted in a leveling of Russian and world prices. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Russian prices were about nine to ten times lower than world prices, and at the turn of the twentieth century only 20 to 30 percent lower.
The leveling of Russian and world prices occurred under the influence of the market economy laws, which required, first of all, that prices for Russian goods correspond not only with national but also with world production costs, and, second, that they be determined by the relations between demand and supply both in the Russian and world markets. As Russia was joining the world market, local grain prices were becoming less dependent on local crops and local demand, and more dependent on the situation in the world market. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the dynamics of Russian grain prices were largely determined by the world market situation, and red grain prices were fully dependent on it. All of this attests that from the beginning of the eighteenth century Russia joined the international division of labor and gradually turned into a full member of the world economy and world market, and that the principles of the market economy penetrated the Russian national economy as early as the eighteenth century, long before the reforms of the 1860s. Hence, from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century the general line of Russia’s so-cioeconomic evolution remained unchanged and consisted in commercialization of the economy and enhancement of the role of the market as a production regulator. Serfdom hampered and slowed down but did not prevent the development of capitalism in Russia, just as prior to 1865 slavery did not stop the development of capitalism in the United States. Grain prices exerted substantial influence upon numerous aspects of the economic, social, and political life of the country. They play
ed an important part in the modernization of the national economy, development of social stratification of the peasantry, destruction of the peasant
GRAND ALLIANCE
commune, and urbanization and industrialization of the country. See also: AGRICULTURE; ECONOMY, TSARIST; FOREIGN TRADE; PEASANT ECONOMY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herlihy, Patricia. (1986). Odessa: A History, 1794-1914. Cambridge, MA: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Mironov, Boris N. (1992). “Consequences of the Price Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” Economic History Review 45(3):457-478.
BORIS N. MIRONOV
GRAND ALLIANCE
Officially termed the Anti-Hitlerite Coalition by the Soviet Union, the Grand Alliance (1941-1945) was a military and political coalition of countries fighting against the Axis (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan), and their satellites. The alliance evolved during World War II through common understandings and specific formal and informal agreements negotiated between the Big Three (United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain) at wartime conferences, ministerial meetings, and periodic summits between the respective heads of state. In addition to the Big Three, the alliance included China, members of the British Commonwealth, France, and many other countries. While some formal agreements and modest liaison and coordinating bodies existed within the context of these agreements, particularly between the United States and Great Britain, the alliance as a whole formed few formal official policy organs.