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 112 the result of bad seeds, the lack of manure, agricultural implements and horses (taken by the Soviet armies), as well as poor and negligent methods of cultivation (partly voluntary) had also fallen so as to reduce the crop to less than fifty per cent.

The following description of the agricultural position in Russia was given in one of the reports read at a meeting in Moscow on February 22, and printed in the Economic Life of February 24 (1921):

Alarmed at such figures and at the prospect of a greater and more rapid agricultural decay and food shortage the Soviet Congress in December, 1920, decided upon still more violent persecution of the peasantry. The new situation is thus summed up by a friendly correspondent, Michael Farbman:

The threatening famine and its causes should obviously have led to an immediate loosening of the screws and a change of policy, yet the opposite took place. In fact, the Food Department published a programme of grain requisitions almost twice as big as that obtained in the previous year, while Ossinsky, who frankly admitted the peasants' refusal to cultivate their land, outlined a most