Total tsarist government confiscations of agricultural land during the war—which was seized with minimal or zero compensation from some of the empire’s most productive farmers, and contributed to the severe shortage of grain in 1916 and the bread riots in 1917—amounted to at least 15 million acres.78 Now, the peasants began to follow suit, seizing crop lands, draft animals, implements, in what they called the Black Repartition.
