Chayanov A. The history of the current state of science of organization of agriculture and taxation in the USSR (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №1. P. 63-73.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-63-73
Annotation
This is the first publication in Russian of the article of the classic of the Russian agrarian-economic thought and the leader of the organization-production school Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937), which was written in 1929 and published in an abridged version in English in 1930 in the “American Journal of Agricultural Economics”. The full Russian version of the article is published according to the original kept in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article considers the history of agrarian-economic science in Russia from the eighteenth century and the system of agrarian-economic education in the USSR in the late 1920s. The comments were prepared by I.А. Kuznetsov.
Keywords
History of agricultural sciences, history of economic thought, organization-production school, A.V. Chayanov.
About the author
Chayanov Alexander V.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Chayanov A.V. To the Board of the State Institute of Agricultural Economy (Letter of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №1. P. 54-62.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-54-62
Annotation
This is a publication of an archival document—a letter of Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) written in 1928 to the administration of the Research Institute of Agricultural Economy as a response to the criticism of his theory of peasant economy by an agrarian-Marxist and employee of the Institute Ivan Vermenichev. The letter reveals the circumstances of writing and publishing Chayanov’s article “The current state of agriculture and agricultural statistics in Russia”. This publication characterizes the atmosphere of ideological discussions and persecution of the non-communist scientific thought in the USSR in the late 1920s. The comments were prepared by I.А. Kuznetsov.
Keywords
History of economic thought, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov, I.D. Vermenichev.
About the author
Chayanov Alexander V.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Chayanov A.V. On the new trends of the Russian economic thought (Article of A.V. Chayanov on the Proceedings of the Higher Seminary of Agricultural Economy and Policy) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №1. P. 34-40.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-34-40
Annotation
This article of the classic of the Russian agrarian-economic thought and the leader of the organization-production school of the 1920s Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) was first published in 1922 in the journal “New Russian Book” (Berlin). The article describes the work of the scientific institution created by Chayanov, the Higher Seminary of Agricultural Economy and Policy, and the general state of economic sciences in Russia after the end of the civil war and transition to the NEP. The publication with comments was prepared by I.А. Kuznetsov and T.A. Savinova.
Keywords
History of economic thought, history of science in Russia, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov.
About the authors
Chayanov Alexander V.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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Chayanov A.V. Agrarian dogmas and fantasies (Article of A.V. Chayanov on A.A. Manuylov and L.N. Litoshenko theory of peasant economy) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №1. P. 13-26.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-13-26
Annotation
This article of the classic of the Russian agrarian-economic thought and the leader of the organization-production school of the 1920s Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) was written in 1923 as a response to the book of Lev Nikolaevich Litoshenko criticizing the theory of peasant economy of the organization-production school. The article clarifies some controversial issues of Chayanov’s agrarian-economic theory and its interpretations. The article has not been published before and is kept in the Russian State Archive of Economics. This publication aims at introducing the recently discovered text to the scientific community and at stimulating further research on the theory and history of the organization-production school and the history of the economic thought in Russia. The publication with comments was prepared by I.А. Kuznetsov and T.A. Savinova.
Keywords
History of economic thought, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov, L.N. Litoshenko, A.A. Manuylov.
About the authors
Chayanov Alexander V.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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Kuznetsov I.A., Savinova T.A. Unknown and little-known works of the economists of the organization-production school // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №1. P. 7-12.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-7-12
Annotation
The journal publishes six works of the outstanding Russian economists of the organization-production school—Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) and Nikolai Pavlovich Makarov (1887–1980), which have not been published before or were published in quite inaccessible foreign journals in the 1920s. This publication with the comments reconstructs the circumstances in which these scientific works were written, and aims at stimulating further research on the theory and history of the organization-production school and the history of the economic thought in Russia.
Keywords
History of economic thought, history of agricultural sciences, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov, N.P. Makarov.
About the authors
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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Kopoteva I.V. Theoretical approaches to the study of local self-government reform in Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №4. P. 31-55.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-31-55
Annotation
Russia started the reconstruction of the institutional bases of social regulation after the complete destruction of the former system. Almost all market and political institutions were to be designed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communist Party and planned economy. As the post-socialist transformation is a profound institutional change new institutionalism can be a theoretical framework for the study of local self-government reform in Russia. Institutionalism is a specific approach to the study of social, economic and political phenomena. The structure of local self-government and behaviour of its actors are determined by a set of rules developed in the soviet and post-soviet period; thus, the changes in this set of rules (or institutions) at the local level are of central importance in understanding the reform (with emphasis on both successes and failures). The development of local self-government in Russia is fundamentally dependent on institutions (both formal and informal) governing actors’ behaviour. The article considers the nature of institutions and the ways they interact, and the local self-government as a political, economic and social institution. The author also applies the governance approach (from government to governance) to the governing system as a long-lasting social institution. Thus, changes in institutions lead to a new regime of governing and to new types of social interactions within local self-government and institutions as its key success factors (good governance).
Keywords
local self-government, institutions, institutionalism, governance, management system, actors, rules and restrictions
About the author
Kopoteva Inna V., PhD (Geography), Senior Researcher, Centre for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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State evasion and state prevention: Geographical location, agriculture, and social structure
Oct 05 2017Scott J.C. State evasion and state prevention: Geographical location, agriculture, and social structure // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №4. P. 6-30.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-6-30
Annotation
The comparative study of the zones of refuge conducted by James Scott shows that despite their geographical, cultural, and temporal dispersion, they share a few common, diagnostic characteristics. If they were of any historical depth, most shatter zones to which various groups have repaired over time display something of the ethnic and linguistic complexity and fluidity. Aside from being located in remote marginal areas that are difficult of access, such peoples are also likely to have developed subsistence routines that maximize dispersion, mobility, and resistance to appropriation. Their social structure as well is likely to favor dispersion, fission, and reformulation and to present to the outside world a kind of formlessness that offers no obvious institutional point of entry for would-be projects of unified rule. Finally, many groups in extrastate space appear to have strong, even fierce, traditions of egalitarianism and autonomy both at the village and familial level that represent an effective barrier to tyranny and permanent hierarchy. Geographical remoteness, mobility, choice of crops and cultivation techniques, and, frequently, a “no handles” acephalous social structure, are, to be sure, measures of state evasion. But it is crucial to understand that what is being evaded is not a relationship per se with the state but an evasion of subject status. What hill peoples on the periphery of states have been evading is the hard power of the fiscal state, its capacity to extract direct taxes and labor from a subject population. They have, however, actually sought relationships with valley states that are compatible with a large degree of political autonomy. In particular, a tremendous amount of political conflict has been devoted to the jockeying for advantage as the favored trading partner of one lowland emporium or another. Hills and valleys were complementary as agro-ecological niches. This meant in effect that adjacent valley states typically competed with one another to acquire hill products and populations.
Keywords
State evasion, state prevention, geographical location, mobility, agricultural crops, egalitarian social structure, agro-ecological niches, political autonomy.
About the author
Scott James C., Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and Co-Director of Yale Program in Agrarian Studies; Yale University, Box 208209, New Haven, USA, CT 06520-8206.
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van der Ploeg J. D. The role of Chayanovian ideas in Peasant Studies, and in the art of farming // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 6-27.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-6-27
Annotation
This article is an abridged version of the book by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg “Peasants and the Art of Farming. A Chayanovian Manifesto”—the second one in the series of “little books on big ideas” in the sphere of agrarian transformations established by Saturnino (Jun) Borras. The author identifies key features of the structure and dynamics of peasant agriculture, and its historically variable characteristics that determine labour, production and social processes and relationships. Van der Ploeg believes that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and ensuring sustainable rural development. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. Based on the ideas of Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov, the author seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty. The author examines two main balances identified by Chayanov—the labour-consumer balance and the balance of utility and drudgery, as well as a number of other interacting balances (between people and living nature, of production and reproduction, of internal and external resources, of scale and intensity, etc.), and emphasizes their social, economic and political importance in the past and present. The author also considers the position of peasant agriculture in the wider social context focusing on the town-country relations, state-peasantry relations, and on the balance of agrarian growth and demographic growth. At the end of the article, there is an overview of different models and mechanisms for increasing productivity and intensification, the choice of which is determined by the dominant discourse (i.e. by the state priorities reflected in agrarian programs and reforms, and by the position of agrarian sciences in designing the future of agriculture and assessing the role of peasantry), and a brief description of the current trends of repeasantization in Europe.
Keywords
peasantry, peasant farming, Chayanov, interacting balances, the state, agricultural sciences, the agrarian question, repeasantization, productivity (yeilds), intensification
About the authors
van der Ploeg Jan Douwe, Professor at the Wageningen University (the Netherlands) Droevendaalsesteeg 4, 6708 PB Wageningen and at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
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Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Rodoman B.B. Ecological specialization as a desirable future for Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 28-43.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-28-43
Annotation
The author believes that in the future Russia can become a global environmental donor preserving the biosphere of the whole planet for the country’s vast territories and natural landscape have changed little under the human activities. Today in the global economy, Russia plays mainly a role of an exporter of exhaustible energy resources, which puts its future in a risky dependence on various unstable factors affecting the extraction and consumption of such resources. The article proposes a project of changing and expanding the role of Russia as a supplier of natural resources and conditions necessary for the survival and future development of the humankind. The author considers as the main wealth of the country not some minerals, vegetable or animal raw materials, but the entire natural landscape and all natural components of the cultural landscape. The preservation and maintenance of the natural landscape as the most important element of the biosphere, its material, spiritual and information consumption without destruction and depletion should become a priority branch of the Russian national economy. The accumulation of population in urban agglomerations, the lack of population and roads in the former rural areas, the vast military ranges consisting of forests and steppes, and the wild landscapes along the administrative borders of settlements and regions contribute to the transformation of the significant part of Russia into nature reserves and parks, and to the preservation of nature in hunting and fishing grounds for the eco-friendly land use and nature management. The ecological specialization and recreational role of the suburban area of the eucumene-polis can become priorities of the Russian national economy and provide the country with a unique and indispensable place in the global community.
Keywords
Russia, environmental donor, biosphere, national economy, natural landscape, cultural landscape, eco-friendly land use and nature management, ecological specialization
About the author
Rodoman Boris B., DSc (Geography),
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Scott J. Early states in the history of humankind: Agroecology, writing, grain and city walls // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №2. P. 6-32.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-6-32
Annotation
The article is devoted to what might be called the “grain hypothesis”. Why are the grassy grain crops—typically barley, rye, wheat, rice, maze, and millets—so closely associated with the earliest states? The author’s guess is that only such grains are best suited to concentrated production, tax assessment, appropriation, cadastral surveys, storage, and rationing. On suitable soil, wheat provides the agro-ecology for dense concentrations of human subjects. If we were evaluating crops from the perspective of the pre-modern tax man, the major grains (above all, irrigated rice) would be among the most preferred, and roots and tubers among the least preferred. It follows that state formation becomes possible only when there are few alternatives to a diet dominated by domesticated grains. So long as subsistence is spread across several food-webs, as it is for hunter-gatherers, swidden cultivators, marine foragers, etc., a state is unlikely to arise, inasmuch as there is no readily assessable and accessible staple to serve as a basis for appropriation. Contrary to some earlier assumptions, the state did not invent irrigation as a way of concentrating population, let alone crop domestication; both were the achievements of pre-state peoples. What the state has often done, once established, however, is to maintain, amplify and expand the agro-ecological setting that is the basis of its power by what we might call state-landscaping. This has included repairing silted channels, digging new feeder canals, settling war captives on arable land, penalizing subjects who are not cultivating, clearing new fields, forbidding nontaxable subsistence activities such as swiddening and foraging, and trying to prevent the flight of its subjects. The early state strives to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform landscape of taxable grain crops and to hold on this land a large population available for corvée labor, conscription, and, of course, grain production. For dozens of reasons, ecological and political, the state often fails to achieve this aim, but this is, as it were, the steady glint in its eye.
Keywords
grain hypothesis, early state, agro-ecology, state building, concentration of population, sedentism, pre-state people, uniform landscape, ecological and political reasons
About the author
Scott James C., Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and Co-Director of Yale Program in Agrarian Studies; Yale University, Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520–8206.
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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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