This thesis is concerned with analysing the available data on grain production and its utilisation from the time when the earliest grain statistics became available in pre-revolutionary Russia until the eve of mass transformation of Soviet agriculture that was associated with mass collectivisation in 1929. The pre-revolutionary period and post revolutionary period are treated separately in two separate parts of the thesis. In each part I describe the methods of collecting and organising statistics related to the production and utilisation of grain. I discuss the circumstances in which these statistics were gathered and I attempt to assess the reliability of these data and place them in a more meaningful and more comparative form. I then present an account of the available works that have attempted to analyse the balance of grain production and its utilisation. I conclude by making my own assessment of the balance and compare it with the general conceptions held on the nature of the grain problem. I conclude that the balance of grain production and utilisation was a highly complex phenomenon dependent upon the inter-relationship of demographic, economic and agronomic factors that differed from region to region and from time to time. The full complexity of these inter-relationships was little understood by the political leadership of the time.