Note 32 — POVERTY AND DISCONTENT IN RUSSIA

It is this part of the population that begins to suffer from lack of food when, for any reason, there is complete or partial failure of the crops. Twenty million people, in twenty-two provinces, were reduced to absolute starvation by the famine of 1906, and were kept alive only by governmental relief on a colossal scale. Famine is predicted again this year in the provinces of Kaluga, Tula, Tambof, Samara, Saratof, Viatka, Poltava, and Chernigof. In the province last named the peasants were already mixing weeds with their rye flour in November, 1907. (Nasha Zhizn, St. Petersburg, May 23. 1906; Russian Thought, St. Petersburg, December, 1907, p. 217.)