However much grain might be procured by state agents, ruined railways could not transport it all to the cities, labor was insufficient to unload the grain that did get transported, and functioning mills were too few. At the same time, perhaps 80 percent of the grain requisitioned in the name of the state was being diverted for private sale to black markets.218 In a mass exodus for survival, Moscow’s population, which had swelled during the Great War to 2 million, declined to under 1 million.219
