Food has been crucial to the functioning and survival of governments and regimes since the emergence of early states. Only in a few countries is the connection between food and politics as pronounced as in Russia. Virtually every significant development in Russian and Soviet history since the 1917 Revolution has been either directly driven by or closely associated with the question of food and access to it. Food shortages played a critical role in the collapse of both the Russian Empire and the USSR. Under Vladimir Putin’s watch, Russia, a major importer of grain, transformed itself into the world’s largest exporter. Bread and Autocracy focuses on this crucial yet widely overlooked transformation. The book argues that this transformation was a result of a deliberate government strategy. The Kremlin’s aim is to achieve nutritional independence and shield Putin’s Russia from dependence on food imports. Self-sufficiency in key food staples is meant to protect the regime from food shortages in case of a major confrontation with the West, for which Putin has long prepared. Russia’s focus on nutritional self-sufficiency also sets the country apart from almost all modern autocracies. While many authoritarian regimes have adopted industrial import-substitution policies, in Putin’s Russia it is the substitution of food imports with domestically produced crops that is crucial for regime survival. Bread and Autocracy presents the connection between food, politics, and security in post-Soviet Russia and shows the emergence of food self-sufficiency as key pillar of regime security, stability, and survival.

Food has been crucial to the survival of regimes since the emergence of early states. Yet despite its significance, until recently food availability was rarely discussed as a principal political issue outside the global South. This essay centers on the political role of food in Putin's Russia and the Kremlin's longstanding goal of establishing nutritional autarky that would insulate the regime from dependence on food imports. We present the origins of Putin's food policies, their ideological basis and the forms that they have taken since early 2000s. We also discuss Russia's use of food as a weapon during the 2022 war in Ukraine.