Bag people

[citation needed] Some of them were people from the cities travelling to the countryside to buy food for small scale trade or for personal consumption, often exchanging it for material goods from farmers due to collapse of the monetary system.

Historically, the bag people have appeared in response to economic and political collapse that ended organized delivery and distribution of food in the cities.

It also flourished throughout Eastern Europe and Germany after the devastation of World War I.

With the devastation of the economy during the Russian Civil War and the period of war communism with its policy of prodrazvyorstka (food requisition by state), meshochniks from countryside were seen as profiteers and persecuted by the Cheka.

[2][3][4][5][6] In literature, bag people are mentioned, for example, in Remarque's The Road Back and Karel Čapek's The Absolute at Large.