Pokrovsky N.E., Nikulin A.M. “There is and there will be territorial reformatting of rural spaces” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №2. P. 140-158.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-2-140-158
Annotation
In the interview, Professor N. E. Pokrovsky describes his scientific path related to the issues of rural-urban development. Based on his experience as originally a city dweller, Pokrovsky considers how and why city-dwellers move to the countryside with their projects and plans to change the rural reality; identifies the life trajectories of different social strata of city dwellers in their rural searches; focuses on the essential characteristics of rural changes in recent decades, including those identified on the basis of his long-term observations in the Ugorsk rural development project in the Kostroma Region. As a sociologist-Americanist, Pokrovsky refers to the American roots of the rural lifestyle — ideas of T. Jefferson and H. Thoreau — and to his personal impressions of rural regions of the United States. Pokrovsky also mentions the spatial rethinking of rural-urban development as related, on the one hand, to the criticism of life in large cities, and, on the other hand, to the new economic-technological, culturalhistorical and recreational-environmental practices in rural areas. In conclusion, he considers the possibility of a new mapping of rural spaces in order to assess the development of local territories.
Keywords
City, village, suburbanization, deurbanization/counterurbanization, migration, dachas, ecology, Henry Thoreau, Ugor project.
About the authors
Pokrovsky Nikita E., DSc (Sociology), Chief Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vice-Rector for Research, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, 119571.
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Merl S. “I consistently contribute to the assessment of the Soviet economic model” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №1. P. 131-163.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-1-131-163
Annotation
As a part of our traditional “Interviews” we present the selected fragments from the biographical memoirs of Stephan Merl, Professor of the Bielefeld University, a famous researcher of the agrarian economy and policy of the Soviet state. The memoirs were written as answers to the questions formulated by Stephan Merl together with his colleague and friend Alexander Nikulin. The questions set the direction for the biographical reflections as connected with the study of the Russian history and culture, in particular the fate of the Russian village, tragedy of collectivization, and turns of the Soviet agrarian policy. The memoirs reflect the dramatic episodes of the European history in the second half of the 20th century, some of which the author experienced, while others studied in the scientific perspective. Professor Merl’s diligence, deep knowledge of historical sources and research objectivity allowed him to suggest a new interpretation of the events that have become history quite recently or are becoming history now. We present an excerpt from his memoirs which will be published in full in the book series of the Russian Peasant Studies.
Keywords
Russia, Germany, USSR, agriculture, collectivization, agrarian policy, perestroika.
About the author
Merl Stephan, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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Serova E. V., Nikulin A. M. “Today, in the rural development, the main goal is to change the paradigm” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №3. P. 210-236.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-3-210-236
Annotation
In the interview, the famous economist E. V. Serova talks about the features of the life path of the agrarian scientist and describes the stages of her scientific career — studies at the Faculty of Economics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, work at the Agrarian Institute headed by the Academician A. A. Nikonov and in the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Government in the early 1990s, and later in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The interview pays particular attention to the research directions at the Institute for Agrarian Studies and to the development of agrarian education at the Higher School of Economics. Based on the ideas of randomness and regularity in the choice of the scientific profession, on the meaning of controllability and spontaneity of social-economic processes in the course of agrarian reforms, Serova identifies the system features of the strategic transformations of agriculture and rural development in Russia and abroad, which are related not only to economy but also to policy and culture. At the same time, Serova emphasizes the importance of social institutions and historical-cultural patterns of the rural residents’ behavior, on which the efficiency of the state measures in market transformations largely depends. The final part of the interview focuses on the prospects for the development of agrarian science and education, in particular on the need for a new paradigm for the development of rural areas in Russia.
Keywords
Economics, agrarian science, agricultural policy, agrarian education, transitional economy, agriculture, rural development.
About the authors
Serova Evgeniya V., DSc (Economics), Head of the Institute for Agrarian Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics; Pokrovsky Blvd., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Heal of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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Lerman Z., Nikulin A. M. “What surprises me the most is the conviction of so many scientists and politicians in the special importance of large farms” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №2. P. 158-173.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-2-158-173
Annotation
In the interview, the famous agricultural economist Zvi Lerman tells about his family roots and trajectories of his biographical path connected with the Far and Middle East. Despite the relatively late start of agrarian research, Zvi Lerman quickly conducted a great number of both empirical and theoretical rural studies of the development and transformation of production cooperatives — from Israeli kibbutzim to Soviet collective farms. For several decades since the 1990s, Zvi Lerman has participated as an expert-economist in the international research projects on post-socialist and post-Soviet agrarian reforms. He considered the features of the study and implementation of agrarian reforms in most post-Soviet republics — Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. Zvi Lerman also considered the peculiarities of agrarian reforms in such countries of Eastern Europe as Hungary, Slovenia and Albania. He believes that the conviction of many scientists and politicians in the exceptional importance and progressiveness of large agricultural enterprises leads to an imbalance in the rural development policy and damages the sustainable rural development by underestimating the potential of small family farms. Zvi Lerman also mentions the paradoxes of limitations in the development of small family units.
Keywords
Russia, China, Israel, post-socialist countries, agrarian reforms, cooperatives, family households, agroholdings.
About the authors
Lerman Zvi, DSc (Economics), Professor Emeretus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 76100, Israel, Rehovot, 12.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy ans Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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“I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice”
May 15 2022Khlystun V. N., Nikulin A. M. “I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №1. P. 171-219.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-1-171-219
Annotation
The interview presents the history of the rural development and agrarian reforms in Russia in the 20th — 21st centuries as based on the facts from the biography of the Academician V.N. Khlystun. The article focuses on the features of educational and scientific institutions associated with the countryside in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia, in particular on the history and present state of the Academician’s alma mater — the State University of Land Use Planning. One of the main issues in the interview is the reforms of the Russian agrarian system, which are considered primarily on the basis of Khlystun’s rich management experience in the 1990s — as the Chairman of the RSFSR State Committee on Land Reform, Russian Minister of Agriculture, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Government, and as a key manager of large financial organizations and analytical structures in the agrarian-industrial complex. In his memoirs, Khlystun describes and analyzes successes and failures of various legislative, economic and political measures of agrarian reforms at the federal and regional levels, and makes some personal assessments of the behavior and competencies of some representatives of the state, political and scientific elites of Russia. He repeatedly emphasizes that rural life is a special social sphere that requires complex and balanced measures for its transformations, i.e., considering various agrarian characteristics of such a vast country as Russia. Khlystun argues that the key to successful rural reforms is a combination of leaders’ broad professional horizons with the ability to give priority to the common national good instead of private interests.
Keywords
Russia, Kazakhstan, State University of Land Use Planning, perestroika, Ministry of Agriculture, land and agrarian reforms, Russian Government.
About the authors
Khlystun Viktor N., DSc (Economics), Professor, State University of Land Use Planning; Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 125064, Moscow, Kazakova St., 15.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Kondrashin V.V., Nikulin A.M. “If you are engaged in scientific research, you must have courage!” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №3. P. 135-171.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-3-135-171
Annotation
The interview with the DSc (History), Professor V. V. Kondrashin presents the milestones of his biography in the historical context of the Russian science and politics in the 20th—21st century. This biographical reflection includes the events of childhood that awakened his interest in history, the difficulties in the academic career of a young man of the people, the historian’s survival under the social crisis of the 1990s. An important part of the interview is formed by Kondrashin’s memories of his teachers in school and university—V. V. Danilov and V. V. Kabanov, M. Levin and T. Shanin. Another significant part of the interview focuses on the most important issues of Kondrashin and his colleagues’ historical research, mainly the history of the Russian and Soviet countryside under revolutions and reforms of the 20th century (peasant wars, NEP, collectivization, World War II and the late Soviet period of agrarian history). The interview was not limited to the Russian historical context—Kondrashin mentions international scientific projects such as the study of the 1932-1933 famine in the USSR, and of the survival and development of the Soviet Union in the interaction with its close and distant neighboring countries. Kondrashin describes the cooperation of Russian scientists with their colleagues from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Eastern Europe, France, England, USA, Japan and Australia. A special part of the interview presents his reflections on the ‘historian and power’ issue. Due to his active social position, Kondrashin was engaged in various social-political activities, including his work as a Senator of the Federation Council. The interview ends with a discussion of his scientific plans for the year of his sixtieth anniversary.
Keywords
History, peasantry, revolution, reforms, NEP, collectivization, USSR.
About the authors
Kondrashin Viktor V., DSc (History), Chief Researcher, Head of the Center for Economic History, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences. 117292 Moscow, Dmitry Ulyanov St., 19. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Shagaida N.I., Nikulin A.M. “All generations of my family... have been involved in global agrarian transformations” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №2. P. 121-153.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-2-121-153
Annotation
In the biographical interview, N.I. Shagaida, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA, considers the historical roots of the development of the Soviet agrarian system on the examples of her life experience and her family generations involved in agricultural activities in different regions of the former USSR. The interview focuses on her reflections on the peculiarities of agrarian university and academic organizations and on the role of outstanding scientists as determining the results of research teams and the horizons of agrarian sciences. The article presents the milestones in N.I. Shagaida’s scientific research as coinciding with the key stages in restructuring and reforming the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian system, especially with the social-economic experiments and transformations under the reform of the Soviet collective-farm and state-farm system in the Nizhny Novgorod Region and other regions of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, and with the creation of rural development institutions in Lodeynopolsky district of the Leningrad Region. N.I. Shagaida emphasizes that for the successful and sustainable agrarian transformations, science and government have to work systematically in pilot regional projects in order to take into account opinions, requests and estimates of the rural population and local rural leaders in the development and adaptation of the daily innovations under the necessary agrarian changes. Thus, the interview questions the strategic goals of the state in the regulation of land relations, food security, agricultural production and the Russian rural development in general.
Keywords
Family, school, science, USSR, perestroika, reform, agricultural enterprises, land, rural development.
About the authors
Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Doktorov B.Z., Nikulin A.M. Teodor Shanin: Peasant Studies and Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №3. P. 146-172.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-3-146-172
Annotation
In this interview, Boris Doktorov, a Russian sociologist living in America, a researcher of intellectual biographies and methods of social sciences in the 20th–21st centuries, together with the Editor-in-Chief of the Russian Peasant Studies and Head of the Chayanov Research Center of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Alexander Nikulin, talks about the outstanding British sociologist Teodor Shanin, whose scientific legacy is closely related to the development of an interdisciplinary social science—peasant studies, and who conducted a number of fundamental historical-sociological and economic-sociological studies of rural Russia. The interview considers the basic concepts and milestones in the development of peasant studies as a branch of the historical-sociological knowledge in Russia, analyzes Shanin’s estimates of various aspects of the Russian social-humanitarian thought as related to the study of the peasantry and to the recommendations on alternatives for the development and transformation of peasant worlds, which were suggested by agrarian populists and Marxists, G.V. Plekhanov and V.I. Lenin, A.V. Chayanov and I.V. Stalin. The interview considers the impact of literature and art on descriptions and explanations of the role of the peasantry through the intellectual interests of Teodor Shanin; focuses on his joint activities with his closest colleagues in the study of rural Russia—the outstanding agrarian scientists V.P. Danilov and T.I. Zaslavskaya. Throughout the interview, Shanin’s worldview and moral-ethical principles in the search for humanistic alternatives for the Russian and global rural development are discussed.
Keywords
peasantry, peasant studies, agrarian policy, Teodor Shanin, V.P. Danilov, T.I. Zaslavskaya, village writers, rural Russia
About the authors
Doktorov Boris Z., DSc (Philosophy), Professor, Independet Analyst. 100 Village Lane, Foster City, CA 94404, USA.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Lisichkin G.S., Pugacheva M.G., Yarmolyuk S.F. “I wanted to draw the society’s attention to agriculture” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 159-174.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-159-174
Annotation
This interview with Gennady Stepanovich Lisichkin was taken on February 1, 1999 for the book Press in Society (1959-2000). Estimates of Journalists and Sociologists. Documents. We believe that the biography of this famous scholar and publicist, which is closely related to the development of agriculture in the USSR in the 1950-1970s, will be interesting to the readers of the Russian Peasant Studies. In 1953, after graduating from the MGIMO University and working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gennady Stepanovich voluntarily went to Kazakhstan and was the head of the collective farm for three years. Later he worked at the USSR Embassy in Yugoslavia, as an editor of the department in the Izvestia and as an economic observer in the Pravda. He was an involuntary initiator of the public discussion on the economic challenges of agricultural production in the central press in the 1960s (a selection of documents from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History was published in the section “Beyond the Economic Discussion in the Press”).
Keywords
agriculture, virgin lands development, Germans in Kazakhstan, market socialism, Izvestia, economic discussion
About the authors
Lisichkin Gennady S., DSc (Economics), Senior Researcher, Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Pugacheva Marina G., Senior Researcher, Center for Fundamental Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000.
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Yarmolyuk Svetlana F. (1936-1917), PhD (Economics), Head of the project, Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Alekseev A.I., Nikulin A.M. “Geography has always ‘yearned for complexity’” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №1. P. 143-166.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-1-143-166
Annotation
In the interview, the Russian geographer A.I. Alekseev considers those facts of his biography that determined his career in geography, key research projects and publications, and also discusses methodology and theory of geography. The interview focuses on rural geography and regions in which Alekseev conducted his studies —from the Non-Black-Earth region and Kuban to the Far East and Altai. Alekseev paid special attention to the Soviet history of rural geography, theory and practice of decision-making in the Soviet agrarian transformations, rural-urban migrations, rural settlement and the ethnic factor in rural geography. He also considered teaching of geography in secondary and higher school, the quality of geography textbooks and the change of generations in geography. The interview combines discussion of geographical theories with life stories of geographers who participated in the field rural research of Alekseev. The interview concludes with the issue of the relationship between quantitative and qualitative approaches in rural studies (‘complex research’) and with the aphorisms of classics of social-economic geography on the features of studying and understanding the rural development.
Keywords
economic geography, rural geography, theoretical geography, rural regions, rural settlement, N.N. Baransky, Yu.G. Saushkin, S.A. Kovalev, A.N. Rakitnikov, A.N. Chelintsev, A.A. Rybnikov
About the authors
Alekseev Alexander I., DSc (Geography), Professor, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119991, Moscow, Lenin Hills, 1.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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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).
e-issn
