«Hunger is not a neighbor - you won’t get away from it»: the first measures of the authorities in the fight against hunger in 1891-1892 (by the example of the Kursk province)

The fight against crop failure and the famine that followed it in 1891-1892 was the first manifestation of a large-scale, well-coordinated, albeit somewhat belated, work of the entire vertical of power: central, regional, local; moreover, it revealed the beginnings of an emerging civil society. However, these events exposed the fundamental problems of peasant land use, which led to the emergence of such social catastrophes. Famine of 1891-1892 affected the densely populated, agrarian, black earth provinces, the struggle against hunger was first started by the zemstvo self-government bodies, then the central government and the public joined in, who jointly undertook a number of measures that prevented deaths from starvation. In this article, the author considers the causes and prerequisites for crop failures and crop shortages, the main directions of providing assistance to those in need on the example of a typical Great Russian, agrarian province of Kursk.