Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 67, 2019/2, 183-205 DOI 10.25162/xxxx-xxxx-xxxx Marten Seppel Communal Granaries in the Russian Empire Conception, Implementation, and Failures in the Baltic Provinces* Abstract: Te main aim of this article is to examine the rise of famine relief policy in the Russian Empire. It focuses on the institution of the granary, central to eighteenth-century cam- eralist teaching on famine prevention. At the end of the 18th century the government of Rus- sia began to view communal village granaries as the best means to achieve food sustainability and ensure provision for the people. During the 19th century this developed into an extensive organisation of communal granaries that existed up to 1917 and was of unprecedented scale for all Europe. By the end of the 19th century Russia had accumulated a very large amount of grain in its communal granaries, but still sufered regularly from famines. Te idea of communal granaries as a famine relief measure was unrealistic, and the granaries never functioned exact- ly as regulations foresaw. Tey did not fulfl their main function – famine relief – but instead created far more problems than solutions for the authorities. However, in spite of all this the Russian government demonstrated at the lowest local level its capacity for pushing through its decisions. From the perspective of administrative capacity, the Russian network of public and communal granaries was a remarkable achievement. Keywords: Cameralism – Granaries – Famine relief – Russian Empire – Baltic provinces Te establishment of grain stocks as a hunger relief measure was one of the main in- stitutional developments of Russian agrarian and economic policy in the 18th century. Before the reign of Peter I (1682–1725) food granaries practically did not exist in Rus- sia, and concern for peasant subsistence was not considered to be a state task. Faith in the ability of state intervention to mitigate famine was frst evident during the 18th century. At this time public and communal granaries were established in many parts of Europe – in Prussia, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Baden, Hannover and elsewhere. 1 Even if some towns and countries had already established earlier versions of granaries in the Middle Ages, now the institution of the public granary became more formal, more cen- trally regulated and was integrated into government economic policy. Russia ofers an outstanding example of the rise and fall of such a granary-centred famine relief policy * Tis paper presents the results of research supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Stifung, Tartu Uni- versity, and a grant from the Estonian Research Council (PRG318). I would also like to thank Keith Tribe, Enn Tarvel, Danila Raskov, and Anti Selart. And, last but not least, I thank the anonymous reviewers for their many constructive suggestions. 1 See Naudé Die Getreidehandelspolitik; Berg Volatility, pp. 14–19; Alvarez Los Pósitos; Herr Rural Change, pp. 32–33; Dí ez Evolución del pósito; Wagemann Land-Kornmagazin, pp. 265–273; Zimmer- mann ‘Noth’, pp. 116–117.