The article is directed to the study of the famine threat in the Turkestan region during the reign of the Temporary Government just that came to the power of Bolsheviks. The methodological basis of the article is the publications of the newspaper "Birlik tuy", published in the period from June 1917 to April 1918. A review of newspaper publications clearly shows the threat of famine that gripped the Turkestan region in 1917-1918. The reasons for the terrible famine of 1921-1922 gripping Kazakhstan, according to the author, is not only the "mistakes" of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War but the drought that broke out in those years. Still, the origins of the famine include the earlier policy of resettlement of the tsarist administration, which deprived the Kazakhs of fertile, irrigated land, which led to the impoverishment of the local population