letting their land on lease’. “The terms on which the land is let on lease 
have grown considerably worse as compared with the pre-revolutionary 
times’, melancholically quotes comrade Gaister on this occasion from a 
newspaper article. Cvrill Zaitzeff. 
3. Conclusion. 
In conclusion we must dwell on the question of the actual development 
of agricultural production in Russia after the Bolshevist revolution. Very 
often the advocates of Bolshevism try to produce the impression that the 
agricultural production of Russia has now reached its pre-war level. This 
impression is entirely wrong. On the whole, agricultural production, if we 
take the territory of the U.S.S.R. and the area under cereals, is by 7.5 per 
cent behind the pre-war level, whereas the population during the same 
period of time has increased by 7.2 per cent. This means that the product- 
ion has been lagging behind the pre-war standard practically to the same 
extent to which the number of eaters or consumers has increased. 
In particular, the main cereal crops in 1927 gave the following figures 
in percentage to the acreage of 1913: 
Rye 
Wheat 
Oats 
Barley 
These data given by Oganovsky (“Economicheskaja Jisn' of January 13, 
1928) do not quite coincide with the data given by Vishnevsky (“On the 
agrarian front”, p. 129), but they are fairly close to them. 
These figures illustrate the decay of market production of cereals in 
Russia in connection with the revolution. Whenever we hear of an increase 
of the area under cultivation, we must bear in mind that this increase is 
not only a partial phenomenon, but that it means a revival of natural 
economy in the so-called “consuming” regions of Russia whose population, 
being occupied in industry and elsewhere outside farming, used to consume 
corn brought over from other parts of the country. Now these parts of 
Russia have to produce, to a much larger extent than before, their own 
food and their own raw materials for home industry needs*). On the other 
hand, a considerable part of the producing region, namely “the entire zone 
of the black-soil wheat-producing steppes to the East of the Volga has been 
to a great extent laid waste’’. Besides, in 1927, “the area under spring corn 
*) Thus, the growth of maize and sunflower crops which occupy, absolutely 
speaking, small areas, is also a fact implying a return to natural economics, or, as 
Vishnevsky puts it in the article quoted hereafter. “a predominance of the farms of 
semi-consuming type” (op. cit., p. 130) 
/