Bread and Revolution

Note to my readers. I am also getting my feet wet on Substack.

So this was posted overnight on Twitter. It was an extraordinary post, because it has extraordinary implications. So here is the post:

Currently the minimum wage in Russia is 16,242 Rubles per month ($162.43 USD) If you break this down into a 40 hour week that is 101.5 Rubles per hour. Bread in Russia now costs 143.75 Rubles or 1.5 hours of work or you can take the bread on credit and pay 11.99 Rubles (0.12 USD) per month for a year.

You might say wow that’s really cheap until you look at what the price of bread was a year ago or even 2021 that bread was between 40–60 Rubles.

One of the causes of the 1917 revolutions was bread. A conservative revolution was first in February, led by people like Alexandr Kerensky. They got the Tsar to abdicate in favor of a right-wing junta. These will be the core of the white army in the coming civil war.

One of the promises was bread. There were shortages of bread. According to CEPR.org:

The peasants’ unwillingness to sell grain in wartime led to deepening food crises that directly affected domestic politics. The shortage of food in St Petersburg and persistent bread queues in the city in the winter of 1916/17 triggered the events of February 1917, leading to the overthrow of the…