Diaz-Geada A. Class differentiation in contemporary rural Galiza: A first approach // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №4. P. 54-71.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-4-54-71
Annotation
The article aims at making a first approach to the study of class differentiation in rural communities of contemporary Galiza. First, the author reconstructs the debates on the ‘agrarian question’ in the history of the Spanish state — from the reformist thought of the late 19th century to the present, focusing on how this question was discussed in the Galizan context, in the field of Galizan agrarian historiography. This field of research developed mainly from the study of the peasants’ access to land ownership in relation to various disentailments introduced by the liberal capitalist state. The author pays particular attention to the consequences of the land tenure regime that prevailed in Galiza — foro, a long-term lease: the increasing number of peasants were becoming owners, which agrarian historiography considered a key element of social-economic changes from the late 19th century to the first third of the 20th century. Another interrelated processes were the antiforal agrarian mobilization, growing commercialization of agrarian production, remittances of Galizan migrants from Americas, and technical development of production. The author emphasizes how social inequalities have changed in rural communities, focusing on the consequences of the liberal capitalist state in social structure and referring to different studies that prove the intensification of social inequalities. Finally, the author describes social changes at the last stage of the Franco dictatorship. Thus, this article is a first step in the study of how class inequalities have transformed contemporary peasant communities.
Keywords
Class differentiation, rural history, Galiza, agrarian question, peasant communities, 19th — 20th centuries.
About the author
Alba Diaz-Geada, PhD (History), Professor, History Department, Faculty of Humanities, University of Santiago de Compostela. Campus Terra Complexo docente do campus de Lugo, s/n, Lugo, 27002, Spain.
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Merl S. Reassessment of the Soviet agrarian policy in the light of today’s achievements // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 45-69.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-45-69
Annotation
Obvious successes of Putin’s policy require a reassessment of the Soviet agrarian policy. The article addresses the question of whether the Bolsheviks’ approach was appropriate for the Russian peasantry and considers limitations of the concept “socialist industrialized agriculture’. To assess achievements of the Soviet agriculture the author uses qualitative instead of quantitative criteria: per hectare yields and milk per cow since 1913. They kept to be extremely low which is striking for the agriculture based on large-scale and partly mechanized production. The gap in yields as compared to the neighboring capitalist countries even widened from 1930 to 1991. The strong and steady growth in yields since 2000 does not allow to explain failures of the Soviet agriculture by bad soils, specific climate or natural limitations—the Soviet agrarian policy is to blame. Instead of “revolutionizing”, socialist agriculture did not take part in any significant productivity rise as elsewhere in the world during the “green revolution”. The author argues that the main reason for such a failure was “infantilization” of agricultural producers—peasants, heads of state and collective farms—by a combination of mistrust and scrupulous control. During the Soviet period agricultural producers never were the masters of their fields. The situation became even worse after the planned economy provided agriculture with insufficient and ineffective machinery below Western standards. Although necessary machinery and knowledge of organizing the production were available in the West, in the Soviet Union the mechanization of crop production and animal husbandry was not completed. The article starts with the description of peasants’ interests, behavior und expectations in the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917– 1918; then the author focuses on the foundations of the Soviet agrarian policy suggested by Lenin and Stalin, continues with a short review of different approaches to agriculture developed by Khrushchev, Brezhnev und Gorbachev, and finishes with a summary of the reasons for Putin’s successes paying special attention to the short periods of yields growth—1924–1930, 1953–1958, 1965–1970, and 1986–1991.
Keywords
Socialist agriculture, agrarian policy, industrialized agriculture, infantilization of peasants, class differentiation, V.I. Lenin, J.V. Stalin, N.S. Khrushchev, L.I. Brezhnev, M.S. Gorbachev, V.V. Putin.
About the author
Merl Stephan, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University; 25 Universitätsstr., 33615, Bielefeld, Germany.
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Russian Peasant Studies. Scientific journal
Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
- Publisher: Delo Publishing, RANEPA
- Editor-in-Chief: Nikulin Alexander
- ISSN 2500-1809 (Print), ISSN 2949-2564 (Online)
- Founded in 2016
- Frequency: four issues per year (March, Jun, September, December)
- Open Access: All volumes and articles can be downloaded for free in the PDF format.
- Author fees: free of chagre
- Indexation: Russian Science Citation Index, Russian Science Citation Index Core, List of Journals approved by Russian Hihger Attestation committee (Ministry for Sciende and Education), Scopus, UlrichWeb Global Serials Directory, European reference index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIHPLUS), CNKI scholar
- Russian registration number: PI FS77-65824 27-May-2016
Hard copies of the journal can be purchased at the Delo e-store or by subscription in the "Press of Russia" Agency (subscription index - Т81017).
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