ORGANIZATION OF SUPPLY 185 
in the zemstvo assemblies. The matter was further complicated be- 
cause, in the opinion of numerous zemstvos, the assessment had 
not been properly distributed, for they believed that the Govern- 
ment had failed to take into account the fact that, prior to the pro- 
mulgation of the law of November 29, the system of wholesale grain 
purchases was by no means uniform, so that the balance of grain 
remaining over from the preceding harvest had no relation to the 
total amount of grain harvested, which was used as the basis for the 
assessment. Finally, after a number of changes had been made in 
the original scheme, thirty provincial zemstvos consented to sup- 
port it, only four declining to accept the responsibility. In 1916 the 
zemstvos also took part in the elaboration of a scale of fixed prices 
for cattle requisitioned for the army, besides taking charge of the 
requisitioning operations and the delivery of the cattle to the army. 
After the Revolution the local commissioners of the Minister of 
Agriculture were replaced by committees in which the leading part 
was played by the chairmen and members of zemstvo boards. These 
food supply committees carried into effect the grain monopoly which 
was inaugurated by the Provisional Government in March, 1917. 
We shall not dwell here in detail upon the organization of the 
purchasing operations which the reader will find in another volume 
of this series.® We shall confine ourselves to noting the fact that the 
share taken by the zemstvos in this most important task was very 
extensive. The zemstvos, however, did not limit their work in this 
field to a participation in the official organization for collecting the 
supplies. Some of them on their own initiative in 1914 and in 1915, 
when neither grain levy nor cattle requisition was as yet in opera- 
tion, undertook to provide foodstuffs for the army. The extent of 
this work may be gathered from the following illustrations. The dis- 
trict zemstvo of Khorson had assembled 9,202,761 puds of rye, 
wheat, and barley by January 1, 1916. The district zemstvo of 
Odessa provided 1,476,134 puds of grain by the autumn of 1914, 
and by the autumn of 1915, 782,597 puds of barley, 59,615 puds of 
wheat, 20,763 puds of millet, and 5,969 puds of oats. The Stavropol 
provincial zemstvo board within one year (October 25, 1914—Sep- 
tember 1, 1915) delivered 926,703 puds of barley and wheat. The 
district zemstvo of Ossa in the province of Perm had collected nearly 
8 See Struve, op. cit.