The total amount of grain harvested in the Soviet countryside (39.6 million tons) was the second lowest amount in Soviet history, only ahead of the 1921 harvest (36.2 million tons). However, the 1946 harvest was farmed on a bigger area than the 1921 harvest, as the Soviet Union had in the meantime annexed the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Bucovina, as well as eastern Poland, thus increasing the amount of land to harvest. As pointed out by historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft, exact statements about Soviet grain yields at the time are made more difficult by the thorough falsification of Soviet government statistics, some of which were taken as authentic by other historians.