 In a 1919 pogrom, Jews were robbed and beaten, and a large tribute was exacted from the community.Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Joseph Stalin's Bolshevik government and troops called for provisions from Ukraine, the "bread-basket of the Europe".Under this "New Economic Policy", the peasantry's produce was harvested, through mandatory quotas, only to be shipped to the population centers of Moscow, St. Petersburg etc.