ORGANIZATION OF SUPPLY 185
in the zemstvo assemblies. The matter was further complicated because,
 in the opinion of numerous zemstvos, the assessment had
not been properly distributed, for they believed that the Government
 had failed to take into account the fact that, prior to the promulgation
 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 support
 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 operation,
 undertook to provide foodstuffs for the army. The extent of
this work may be gathered from the following illustrations. The district
 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—September
 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.