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ity on the part of the political opposition. It is also
remembered for the relief work led by civic fig-
ures such as Leo
TOLSTOY
. The famine also con-
tributed to the ideological debates between
populists and Marxists, with the latter arguing
that the further impoverishment of the peas-
antry was ultimately advantageous for the
development of capitalism, which in turn would
advance the cause of the proletarian revolution.
Smaller famines and food shortages affected
Russian localities in the years after the 1905
Revolution. Likewise, during World War I and
the Russian civil war, drastic food shortages
caused by transportation problems affected Rus-
sian urban centers and contributed to the politi-
cal unrest of those years. In 1921 outright
famine again struck the Volga region, the tail
end of a period of unrest and severe need. The
famine was one of several causes that marked
the end of draconian civil war food procurement
policies and ushered in the New Economic Pol-
icy. Internal relief work as headed by Maksim
GORKY
and other non-Communist intellectuals,
most of whom were thereupon expelled from
Russia, while foreign relief work was chiefly
undertaken by American and British missions,
most notably by Herbert Hoover's American
Relief Administration and the American Friends
Service Committee. The next major famine, that
of 1932-33, was purposely exacerbated by the
authorities to break the resistance of peasants to
the collectivization of agriculture. The harvests
in those years were adequate (and indeed grain
was exported), but the grain was removed from
the countryside by armed detachments chiefly
composed of internal security troops and mem-
bers of the Communist Party youth organiza-
tion, the
KOMSOMOL
. Many towns in the areas
principally affected (Ukraine, north Caucasus,
the Volga region, and Kazakhstan) also suffered.
The last major famine, in 1946-47, was partly
caused by drought, but partly, especially in the
areas unaffected by drought (such as central
Russia), by the peasants' resistance to the rigor-
ous restoration of the collective farm system,
which had been somewhat relaxed in the war
years. One result of this famine was the delay,
compared with other countries, of the postwar
upward trend in the birthrate. At the time, the
Soviet government denied the existence of
famine and refused all offers of help from abroad.
February Revolution
(1917)
The first of two revolutions in 1917, the Febru-
ary Revolution resulted in the overthrow of the
Russian monarchy and the
ROMANOV
dynasty
that had ruled Russia since 1613. Dissatisfaction
with the autocratic form of government in gen-
eral and the government of Czar
NICHOLAS II
in
particular had been building for decades. It had
accelerated since the outbreak of World War I, as
numerous military defeats and a pervasive sense
of governmental incompetence and corruption
further discredited the government of Nicholas
II. Against a background of rising discontent
with the war, inflation, shortages of food and
fuel, and with Nicholas II still away from the
capital at the front, demonstrations broke out in
Petrograd, as the city of
ST
.
PETERSBURG
had been
renamed in 1914, on March 8, 1917 (February
23 according to the Russian Julian calendar
used in pre-revolutionary Russia). The demon-
strations across the city were led initially by
working-class women, who used the occasion of
International Women's Day to voice their
demands for bread and an end to the war, and
brought together close to 100,000 protesters. By
March 10 (February 25, O.S.) the demonstra-
tions had spontaneously transformed into a gen-
eral strike that closed down the city of Petrograd.
The strike turned into an uprising when troops
posted to the Petrograd joined the demonstra-
tors. On March 11 (February 26), the govern-
ment tried to restore its authority by ordering its
loyal troops to shoot on the crowds, killing or
wounding several hundred demonstrators. It
also closed down the parliament (
DUMA
) and
arrested some radical politicians. That evening
the regiment from the garrison that had been
ordered to shoot on the demonstrators agreed
not to further use violence against the crowds.
By the next day, March 12 (February 27), the
bulk of the garrison had joined the mutiny
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