Food Detachments (Prodotryady)
식량분견대
Armed worker brigades organized by the Soviet government during the Russian Civil War (1918–1921) to enforce the food dictatorship and the policy of forced grain requisitioning (prodrazvyorstka). Composed primarily of urban factory workers and poor peasant volunteers, they were dispatched to the countryside to seize grain from peasants at state-fixed prices or to confiscate it outright from kulaks and wealthier households. Half the seized grain went to the sponsoring organization, the other half to the People's Commissariat of Food. In practice, the detachments often took even subsistence grain, triggering armed peasant resistance and large-scale uprisings such as the Tambov Rebellion. They were disbanded in 1921 with the introduction of the New Economic Policy and replaced by a tax-in-kind (prodnalog).
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Sources
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia: definition, history, organizational structure, connection to Tambov Rebellion and NEP dissolution.
- Wikipedia (EN) English Wikipedia: prodotriady as enforcement arm of prodrazverstka, working alongside kombeds.
- soviethistory.msu.edu Michigan State University Soviet History project: Lenin's August 4, 1918 decree on food requisition detachments, original text from Bednota.
- booksite.ru Great Soviet Encyclopedia entry on продотряды: creation, численность (Продармия up to 62,000; ВЦСПС detachments over 20,000), and dissolution with NEP in 1921.