The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Global Grain Markets

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Before WWI, the Russian Empire was one of the world’s biggest cereals exporters, shipping enormous quantities of wheat, rye, and oats to consumer markets across Western Europe and the Middle East. Behind these exports stood millions of peasants who grew surplus wheat, thousands of merchants who bought and sold it, and hundreds of technocrats and ministers, who debated falling grain prices, standards of measurement, and how to streamline its transport–both across the empire and around the world. This panel revisits grain, one of the most important commodities in imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union, from Paul I to Stalin. Papers will span the Tsarist and Soviet periods, with each panelist considering Russia’s and Ukraine’s cereals trade and its interactions in world markets. Panelists will ask how different participants in the grain trade, at the local and metropolitan levels, responded to disruptions and change--from capitalism, to speculation, to commercialization, to war, revolution, and Soviet state building. To what extent did the global market shape Russia and, vice-versa, to what extent did Russia shape the global market? How can new histories of capitalism change the way we think about the grain trade before and after 1917? What new global connections did the grain trade give rise to? How was it related to the tension between autocracy and Russia’s integration with international institutions and markets?

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Geoffrey Durham, U of Wisconsin-Madison

Papers

• Moving and Measuring Grain across Imperial Borders, 1790s-1830s - Geoffrey Durham, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• 'A Global Unified Price': On the Making of Global Grain Prices and Its Effects - Tova Benjamin, Davidson College

• Stalin, Grain Exports, and Soviet Debt - Friedrich Asschenfeldt, Princeton U

Discussant

• Peter Fraunholtz, Northeastern U