Food-Supply Committees of 1918–21

local agencies of the People’s Commissariat for Foodstuffs during the first years of Soviet power. They played an important role in the efforts to obtain grain products during the Civil War of 1918–20.

The May 31, 1918, decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee established province, oblast, district, and city food-supply committees composed of food-supply commissars (in provinces, districts and oblasts), collegiums, and representatives of needy provinces. The food-supply committees were under the jurisdiction of the People’s Commissar of Food and were controlled by the local soviets, which also elected the food-supply commissars. The committees procured and distributed grain and other food products and supplied the rural population with urgently needed manufactured goods. Special workers’ detachments, the food appropriation detachments, were attached to the food-supply committees. After the New Economic Policy was instituted, the food-supply committees were reorganized in the fall of 1921 into food-supply departments of the local soviets.