282 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR 
have to note in this connection that the requirements had become so 
large by the middle of 1916 that the monthly budget for food and 
fodder supplies alone reached the sum of 5,000,000 rubles. 
In recasting its central administration to meet the requirements 
of a vast supply organization, the Central Committee made every 
effort to afford the representatives from the front an opportunity of 
taking part in the work of the central supply department in Mos- 
cow, as well as in the purchasing commissions set up at Astrakhan, 
Rostov-on-Don, Odessa, Petrograd, and Vladivostok. In theory the 
concentration of the purchasing operations seemed highly desirable, 
but in practice almost insuperable obstacles had to be overcome. By 
the middle of 1916 the entire machinery of the Russian food supply 
had completely broken down. Extraordinary efforts were required 
to provision the army, and the Government was compelled to resort 
to a system of strict centralization for this purpose. During the 
second half of 1916 a conference was held at General Headquarters, 
in which representatives of the two unions took part. Notwith- 
standing some very strenuous objections raised at this conference, 
the Government decided to prohibit altogether private purchases of 
certain foodstuffs (wheat and rye flour, grits of all kinds, oats, bar- 
ley, hay, and salt). It was suggested that the institutions of the two 
unions at the front should obtain these commodities from the nearest 
depots of the Army Supply Department according to estimates to 
be submitted beforehand. 
This system, which may perhaps be correct in theory, gave rise to 
serious difficulties in practice. The bureaucratic machinery of the 
Army Supply Department, in the first place, was working very 
slowly and irregularly. In the second place, the authorities in 
charge of the army depots refused to acknowledge their obliga- 
tions toward the unions. Another difficulty was that the budgetary 
system, by making it necessary for each institution to apply exclu- 
sively to a specified depot of the Army Supply Department, gave 
occasion for endless misunderstandings, for the zemstvo institutions 
had frequently to change their quarters, with the shifting of the 
front. The Army Supply Department declined to supply large 
quantities of goods to the central depots of the Zemstvo Union at 
the front, often giving as an excuse that it had not sufficient stock. 
Meanwhile the Central Committee likewise met with increasing diffi- 
culties in buying sufficient supplies of provisions, for it had tc