Russian famine of 1891–1892

[6] The reawakening of Russian Marxism and populism is often traced to the public's anger over the tsarist government's poor handling of the disaster.

When the Volga River flooded, the lack of fire caused the water to freeze, which killed more seedlings and the fodder used to feed the horses.

[citation needed] They rarely had modern fertilizers or machinery (the Petrovsky Academy, in Moscow, was Russia's only agricultural school).

It refused to use the word golod (голод) but called it a poor harvest, neurozhai (неурожай), and stopped the papers from reporting on it.

[citation needed] The government also contributed to the famine indirectly by conscripting peasant sons and sending taxmen to seize livestock when grain ran out.

The government also implemented a system of redemption payments as compensation to landlords who had lost their serfs, who, across Russia, had gained their freedom as part of reforms a few years earlier that were instigated by Tsar Alexander.

Starving peasants had to eat raw donated flour and "famine bread", a mixture of moss, goosefoot, bark and husks.

From late February to mid-July, the relief ships sailed to Russia averaging around 2,000 tons of food on board, mostly wheat and corn flour and grain.

the US government (through the Department of the Interior)[specify] provided financial assistance to certain Russian regions (guberniyas), mainly in the form of loans, in the amount of US$75 million (equivalent to $2.3 billion in 2023).