Prodrazverstka, also transliterated Prodrazvyorstka (, short for , ) was a policy and campaign of confiscation of grain and other agricultural products from peasants at nominal fixed prices according to specified quotas (the noun razverstka, , and the verb razverstat, refer to the partition of the requested total amount as obligations from the suppliers). This strategy often led to the deaths of many country-dwelling people, such as its involvement with the Holodomor famine. The term is commonly associated with war communism during the Russian Civil War when it was introduced by the Bolshevik government. However, Bolsheviks borrowed the idea from the grain razverstka introduced in the Russian Empire in 1916 during World War I. World War I grain razverstka 1916 saw a food crisis in the Russian Empire. While the harvest was good in Lower Volga Region and Western Siberia, its transportation by railroads collapsed. Additionally, the food market was in disarray as fixed prices for government purchases were unattractive. A decree of November 29, 1916 signed by Aleksandr Rittich of the Ministry of Agriculture introduced razverstka as the collection of grain for defense purposes. The Russian Provisional Government established after the February Revolution of 1917 could not propose any incentives for peasants, and their state monopoly on grain sales failed to achieve its goal. Soviet prodrazverstka In 1918 the center of Soviet Russia found itself cut off from the most important agricultural regions of the country - at this stage of the Russian Civil War the White movement controlled many of the traditional food-producing areas. Reserves of grain ran low, causing hunger among the urban population, from which the Bolshevik government received its strongest support. In order to satisfy minimal food needs, the Soviet government introduced strict control over the food surpluses of prosperous rural households. Since many peasants were extremely unhappy with this policy and tried to resist it, they were branded as "saboteurs" of the bread monopoly of the state and advocates of free "predatory", "speculative" trade. Vladimir Lenin believed that prodrazvyorstka was the only possible way - in the circumstances - to procure sufficient amounts of grain and other agricultural products for the population of the cities during the civil war. Before prodrazverstka, Lenin's May 9, 1918 decree ("О продовольственной диктатуре") introduced the concept of "produce dictatorship". This and other subsequent decrees ordered the forced collection of foodstuffs, without any limitations, and used the Red Army