The work of NES Professor Andrei Markevich "Russia in the Great War: Mobilisation, Grain, and Revolution" was published in a new book
"The economics of the Great War: A centennial perspective" under the editorship of Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison. The book includes 20 chapters of different authors on the prerequisites, the war itself and the consequences of it. The publication marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
"In Russia, which had been a major grain exporter before World War I, it was widely believed that there was massive surplus labour in the countryside, so that 15 million males could be mobilised into the Russian army without seriously disrupting agricultural production. As Andrei Markevich shows, however, this proved to be far from the case, and by 1917 agricultural output had fallen by 20%, with the magnitude of the decline in grain output by locality highly correlated with the incidence of the military draft", states the book.
In addition, the war damaged the incentives of individual farmers to supply food to the market rather than producing for themselves. The unwillingness of peasants to provide grain to the market created food shortages in the cities, which led ultimately to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917.
The book can be downloaded from the VoxEU website.