Editor’s foreword // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 6-7.

The Russian Peasant Studies has always focused on the classical Russian and foreign peasant-studies heritage to prove its significance for the current agricultural development. That is why the colleagues of our journal became the participants of the scientific project “The school of A.V. Chayanov and contemporary rural development: Preserving the scientists’ findings through the actualization of their heritage” supported by the Presidential Grants Foundation and Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. According to the project, in 2019, the Chayanov Research Center began its work aiming at solving the following scientific and educational tasks: —collecting information about the life and activities of the representatives of the Chayanov school, updating the bibliography of their works (in all languages), digitizing documents and creating an electronic archive available on the website of the Chayanov Research Center; —giving open lectures, holding seminars and round tables for students and scientists at the Russian and foreign universities devoted to the memory and intellectual heritage of the Chayanov organization-production school; —conducting field historical-sociological studies in rural areas with the scientific approaches of the Chayanov school to make recommendations for the sustainable development of rural regions of the Russian Federation. The project target groups include scientists — representatives of economic sociology, social geography, social statistics, economic history, anthropology and other disciplines; students and postgraduates from different economic, geographical, statistical, sociological and other faculties, who want to understand the logic of historical development of the Russian society as a whole and its rural territories in particular, and to learn historical traditions and the development of the methodology of their interdisciplinary study; managers and activists specializing in agricultural development, preservation of rural areas, and organizing the interaction of scientists with representatives of production, regional authorities and local communities. The Russian Peasant Studies will systematically describe the work of the project “The school of A.V. Chayanov and contemporary rural development: Preserving the scientists’ findings through the actualization of their heritage”. This issue presents two works of Chayanov—“The southern border of the prevailing three-field system of farming in the peasant lands of Russia by the early 20th century” and the English version of “A Short Course on Cooperation”. These works will certainly be interesting and useful for social researchers and rural activists who study the history and current state of the Russian and international rural development.