Cannabis

Industrial hemp

At the end of the 19th century, cannabis cultivation for fiber was one of the main sources of revenue of the peasants of Orel, Kaluga, Kursk, Chernigov, Mogilev and partly Minsk provinces of the Russian Empire. According to the Russian Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, about 140 thousand tons of hemp were produced annually in the European part of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century, which accounted for about 40% of the production of hemp in Europe.

During dekulakization, large farms engaged in cannabis cultivation were fragmented into small (0.1-0.15 ha) plots, handled and capable of satisfying only domestic needs. By the beginning of the 1930s, the "cannabis industry of agriculture in the Middle Volga region, as well as in other cannabis regions of the USSR, is in a state of decline", which is expressed in "shrinking of acreage, low yields, reduction in the commodity share of gross collections."[2]

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1937 reports that:

The socialist reconstruction of agriculture has dramatically changed the face of backward cannabis cultivation in the USSR. The unfolding Stakhanov movement in agriculture, in particular among the cannabis growers, provided higher yields of cannabis. 14.03. In 1936 a special meeting of the leaders of the party and government was held with the leaders in flax and hemp. A number of Stakhanovites-carpet-weavers were awarded orders of the Union. After 1934 the cannabis crops began to recover, and if in 1934 the cannabis sown area was 598,000 hectares, then its crops in 1936 occupied 680,000 hectares, amounting to 4/5 of the world's total area under cannabis. Decree of the Council of People 's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b.) (March 1934) granted special privileges and advantages for hemp crops on homesteads, backyards and floodplains. Preparation of hemp fiber from cannabis in the USSR in 1933-34. reached 39.4 thousand tons and in 1934-35. - 44,9 thousand tons; production of hemp oil (from seeds) in the USSR in 1933 amounted to 5.0 thousand tons, and in 1934 - 6.3 thousand tons.[3]