DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-3-6-18
Alexander Chayanov wrote this analytical note to Vyacheslav Molotov in early October 1927 to discuss plans for the agricultural development of the first five-year plan in the USSR. Chayanov begins with a brief review of the history of world agriculture in the early twentieth century. He identifies two poles in this evolution: western (American — typically North America and partly South America, South Africa, and Australia) and eastern (Indian-Chinese, typically agrarian overpopulated countries). The American type of agricultural development is based on farms that use machinery and wage labor and are controlled by the vertical system of financial capitalism. The Indian-Chinese type of agricultural development is characterized by agrarian overpopulation of the peasantry under dominant pre-capitalist relations, exceptional labor intensity, and widespread bondage rent and credit. The rest of the world’s regions can be placed between these two poles. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russia is a paradoxical, complex mixture of these two types. Chayanov believed that in the agrarian science of pre-revolutionary and prewar Russia, these polarized agrarian worlds were reflected in the agrarian-economic disputes of the so-called “southerners” and “northerners” about the strategy of agricultural development. “Southerners” insisted on turning Russia into a “hundredpercent America” by the forced development of farmers’ agriculture. The “northerners” suggested supporting the regional strata of the middle peasantry and its own vertical cooperation to prevent the seizure of the village by trade and financial capital. Chayanov considered himself a “northerner”. He argued that the post-war, post-revolutionary village has changed significantly. First, the younger generation of peasants who had experienced the world war and Russian Revolution set the tone. Second, the Soviet agronomic science and cooperation of the 1920s contributed to the real progress of peasant farms. Soviet Russia has a unique chance to find a fundamentally new path of rural development, thus avoiding the Scylla of Americanfarmers’ dependence on financial capital and the Charybdis of the Indian-Chinese stagnation of peasant overpopulation. Instead of American vertical agrarian integration through the dominance of financial capital over farmers, Soviet vertical integration was to promote the development of diverse forms of peasant cooperation with the support of the socialist state. In the final part of the note, Chayanov considers the ratio of industry and agriculture in the first five-year plan and predicts a radical socialtechnological change under agricultural industrialization. The Soviet leadership ignored the ideas of this note: Stalin rejected Chayanov’s democratic type of vertical cooperation of the peasantry and preferred a horizontal type of cooperation in the form of collectivization. The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.
Agrarian policy, peasants, farmers, agricultural cooperation, agrarian capitalism, socialist agriculture, ways of agricultural development.
Alexander V. Chayanov
Editor: Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Translator: Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-2-127-154
In the interview to the Russian Peasant Studies, the Governor of the Belgorod Region, Doctor of Economics, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yevgeny Savchenko refers to his life trajectory to consider the history and the present state of the agrarian and social policy in Russia and the Belgorod Region. The interview focuses on the role of the state in developing a responsible agrarian policy that establishes the rules under the market economy and regulates economic and social interaction of large and small forms of agricultural production, the social development of the village, innovative trends in agriculture, and takes care of environmental challenges, problems of local self-government, and training of personnel for agriculture. The governor emphasized the significance of agroholdings in agriculture and in the Russian society in general, identifies possible directions of agroholdings participation in the development of rural areas. In the Belgorod rural programs, particular attention is paid to restoring soil fertility, environmental development of the “Green Capital” project, and barriers to the spread of bioenergy and alternative energy. The governor notes that despite the catastrophic trials in the life of the Russian peasantry in the 20th century, which determined the loss of peasant mentality, in contemporary Russia there is still a need for preservation and development of the culture of rural communities and territories that seamlessly combine rural traditions and innovations, for example, in the form of ancestral estates and homeowners’ associations. In the conclusion, the interview stresses that by the will of fate rural Russia often had to be a pioneer.
Rural Russia, rural development, agrarian policy, collective and state farms, agroholdings, vertical integration, ecology, local self-government.
Evgeny S. Savchenko, DSc (Economics), Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Governor of the Belgorod Region. 308005, Belgorod, Sobornaya pl., 4.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-2-6-33
This text is a translation into English of the brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’?” published by A.Chayanov in the summer of 1917, between the February and October Revolutions in Russia.
Young 29-year-old professor Chayanov took an active part in the revolutionary events of 1917, trying to justify the fine-drawn plan for agrarian reforms for the new Russia. Chayanov became one of the initiators of the creation of the League for Agrarian Reforms, which included many leading agrarians of various political trends in Russia with a view to discussing and developing a holistic strategy for agrarian reforms in Russia.
The popular-science version of his views on agrarian reform, summarizing the most varied ideas of the League for Agrarian Reforms, Chayanov presented in the brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’”.
In the ideological basis of this work lies the realization of the revolutionary demand “Land to the working people!”, which affirmed the necessity of transferring the landlord’s land into the hands of the peasantry. Chayanov considered various options for such a transition of land in the form of agrarian programs of socialization, nationalization, municipalization of land, a single land tax, and the system of state regulation of land ownership.
In reforming Chayanov proposed to be guided by two principles: 1) the greatest productivity of peasant labor applied to the land; 2) democratization of the distribution of national income. The extensive development of peasant cooperation was to ensure the implementation of these principles. Chayanov also stressed in every possible way the importance of taking into account regional and national peculiarities in resolving the agrarian question in such a huge country as Russia.
Personally, Chayanov was inclined to the way of agrarian reforms combining state regulation of land ownership and progressive taxation. Though, the October Revolution under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and left-wing socialist revolutionaries in their “Decree on Land” declared the implementation of the most radical version of agrarian reforms — the socialization of the land, stopping the search for the best compromise agrarian solutions that Chayanov and his colleagues tried to implement in the League for Agrarian reforms.
Chayanov’s brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’?” is a model of theoretical and practical search for alternatives to the fine-drawn solution of the agrarian question in the interests of the peasants on the basis of a broad political coalition of democratic forces.
Agrarian reform, peasantry, revolution, A.V. Chayanov.
Alexander V. Chayanov
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Fundamental Sociology Higher School of Economics, Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-99-116
The article considers economic successes of the Belgorod region as significantly determined by the governor Yevgeny Savchenko’ agrarian policies, which compensate for the region’s small size and modest human capital. In 2017, the authors published an article describing economic policies and social programs of regional authorities; now the authors focus on the leadership by Yevgeny Savchenko, and his rather paradoxical personal and management views. First, according to Max Weber’s typology of authority, Savchenko is a charismatic leader with strong personality traits and careful political behavior, who benefits from the traditional Slavophile populism and institutional design of the gubernatorial powers that has allowed governors to become more powerful compared to other regional actors during 2002–2012. Second, the Belgorod governor’s project has quite traditional Russian roots in the spirit of A.V. Chayanov’s novel “My brother Alexey’s journey to the land of peasant utopia”, which allowed the Belgorod modernization project to successfully cope with unpredictable challenges from the Russian oligarchy and global economy, and to use competitive standards of consumer society as the grounds for conservative modernization and solidary society development. The Belgorod governor implements his own model of new economy consisting of the extensive development of solidarity and cooperation; ideals of healthy lifestyle; and freedom in choosing ways to work and to rest (regional authorities support corporate, family and individual strategies of life). Third, Savchenko has publicly articulated his personal political-economic theory reflecting a conglomerate of conservative, socialist and populist ideas, and combining anti-liberalism and statist philosophy as the basis for the revival of the Russian state, which the governor sees as an engine of social progress.
Belgorod region, governor, leadership, regional authorities, regional development, ideological roots, philosophical foundations.
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571.
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Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571.
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Stephen Wegren, Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-74-98
The round table “Organization-production school in the Russian agrarian-economic thought: History and the present state” at the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration gathered historians, sociologists, economists, and culturologists for an interdisciplinary discussion of the relevance of the scientific legacy of A.V. Chayanov and his colleagues not only for agrarian science, but also social sciences and humanities on the eve of the anniversaries of the organization-production school representatives. The participants of the round table focused on the genesis and historical prerequisites of the organization-production school, and on the ideas of the Chayanov’s school as influencing the rural development of Russia and the world in the past and present. The participants of the round table were particularly interested in the recently discovered unique archival papers, such as the responses of A.V. Chayanov and N.P. Makarov to criticism of L.N. Litoshenko and A.A. Manuylov considering the theoretical-methodological foundations of the organization-production school’s idea of peasant economy; and the Chayanov’s texts for the German, French and American journals comprehensively describing features of the Russian and Soviet agrarian-economic science development. The intellectual legacy of A.V. Chayanov and his colleagues A.A. Rybnikov, A.N. Chelintsev, B.D. Brutskus, N.P. Makarov, A.N. Minin, and G.A. Studentsky was considered from the perspective of populist, socialist and liberal traditions in the development of Russian and international peasant studies. The participants of the round table also mentioned theories of other remarkable agrarians that can be called predecessors and followers of the organization-production school.
Peasant studies, interdisciplinary studies, organization-production school, theory of peasant economy, populism; socialism, liberalism, rural development.
Valery G. Vinogradsky, DSc (Philosophy), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Alexander V. Gordon, DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, Institute of Scientific Information in Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Igor A. Kuznetsov, PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82.
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Alexander A. Kurakin, Senior Researcher at the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Higher School of Economics, 101100, Moscow, Myasnitskaya, 20.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Lyubov A. Ovchintseva, PhD (Economics), Senior Researcher, Department of Sustainable Rural Development and Rural Cooperation, Alexander Nikonov All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Issues and Informatics; 105064, Moscow, Bolshoi Kharitonievski Per., 21–1.
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Alexander V. Petrikov, DSc (Economics), Academician of RAS, Head of the Alexander Nikonov All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Issues and Informatics; 105064, Moscow, Bolshoi Kharitonievski Per., 21–1. In 2007–2016 — Deputy Minister of agriculture.
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Tatyana A. Savinova, 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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Teodor Shanin, Professor, President of the Moscow School of Social and Economics Sciences, chairman of the Advisory Board of the journal “Russian Peasant Studies”. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500‑1809‑2017‑2‑4‑184‑190
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-120-151
This article is a transcript of the round table at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on March 27, which focused on the comparative analysis of the strategic directions of post-socialist rural development in the People’s Republic of China, the Polish People’s Republic and the Russian Federation. Professor Roman Kisiel made a presentation on the problems of Polish rural economy; professor Yan Hairong highlighted the dialectics of contradictions between collective and private farming in China. To a certain extent the Russian scientists L.D. Boni, V.V. Babashkin, and A.V. Gordon became the co-presenters of the Polish and Chinese colleagues when discussing such problems of rural development as the interaction of large and small-scale agrarian production, capitalist, family and collective forms of agriculture, economy and ecology, the city and village, and especially the national agrarian policies regulating all the above. In many ways, China and Poland turned out to be the poles of political and social-cultural agrarian transformations, which determine possible variations of regional models of rural-urban development in Russia. The round table discussion can be useful not only for academic scientists, but also for practitioners involved in developing state and municipal agrarian policies that are to take into account international agrarian experience.
peasantry, land ownership, agrarian reforms, rural development, comparative studies, China, Poland, Russia
Vladimir V. Babashkin., Professor, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82.
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Ludmila D. Boni, DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117997, Nakhimovsky Av., 32.
Alexander V. Gordon, DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences
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Roman Kisiel, Professor of Economic Science, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. 10-719 Olsztyn, ul. Oczapowskiego 4.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571, Russia
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Marina G. Pugacheva, Senior Researcher, Centre for Fundamental Sociology Higher School of Economics, Deputy Editor Russian Sociological Review, Staraya Basmannaya str., 21/4, Room A205, Moscow, Russian Federation 105066.
Irina V. Trotsuk, 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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Hairong Yan, Professor, Hong Kong, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-44-56
In the interview to the Russian Journal of Peasant Studies, Elmira Nikolaevna Krylatykh, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a famous researcher of the agrofood sphere in Russia and Europe, an author of more than 250 scientific works, a professor that supervised more than 30 doctoral and PhD theses, considers the milestones of her life and scientific career, and defines the key thematic and institutional transformations of the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian science. Thus, she describes the Soviet scientific approaches to the study of agrarian economy that determined the strong points in the research of the All-Union Institute of Agricultural Economics, in which E.N. Krylatykh studied the costs of the collective farms production. The interview also focuses on the development of economic and mathematical modeling of agrarian economy in the All-Union Research Institute of Cybernetics of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture, in which E.N. Krylatykh wrote and defended her doctoral thesis “Agricultural production planning based on the system of economic and mathematical models”. E.N. Krylatykh makes interesting estimates of scientific developments and their authors when considers the features of organization and development of science at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University, the Agrarian Institute of the Lenin’s All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Academy of National Economy that later turned into the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Throughout the interview, E.N. Krylatykh emphasizes the significance of random circumstances that determine the fate of the scientist.
Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, collective farm economy, economic and mathematical modeling, organization of science, agrarian science in the USSR, the post-Soviet transformation of agrarian science
Elmira N. Krylatykh, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, DSc (Economics), Head of the Chair of Organizational Management, Higher School of Corporate Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 84.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-33-52
The journal “Russian Peasant Studies” starts a new section “An interview with a researcher” to discuss with the leading Russian and foreign scientists the interdisciplinary problems of the history and the current issues of peasant studies and agrarian science. The first interview was conducted by Alexander Nikulin, the editor of the journal, with the Russian historian Alexander Gordon, the head of the East and South-East Asia section of the INION RAS. He made a significant contribution to the development of Russian peasant studies and their integration in the world historical and cultural tradition. The interview questions consider the relationship of agrarian science and peasant studies, the role of regional factors in the development of peasant studies in France, the Middle and Far East, Southeast Asia and Russia, the contribution of Russian and foreign scientists, writers and intellectuals to the institutionalization of peasant studies, and the current strategies in their development. However, the interview rather focuses on the scientific biography of Alexander Gordon—a researcher and a historian who emphasized the importance of the commune in peasant culture and of the peasant identity as a land owner and a hard worker.
commune, peasantry, agrarian reforms, peasant studies, Asia, Europe, the USSR, Russia
Alexander V. Gordon., DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Alexander M. Nikulin., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Russia, 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-6-30
The article considers the features of A. V. Chayanov worldview, who in his multifaceted intellectual activities used to experiment with the genre of utopia. Based on the analysis of such utopian works of Chayanov as “Few Studies of the Isolated State” (1915– 1923), “My Brother Alexey’s Journey to the Land of Peasant Utopia” (1920), and “On the Possible Future of the Peasant Economy” (1928) the author identifies basic elements of Chayanov’s scientific and creative worldview. All three Chayanov’s utopias vary greatly in style and genre, thus indicating his amazing fantasy and plastic ingenuity. For instance, the first utopia is predominantly a marginal-mathematical treatise on the competitive coexistence of capitalist and peasant economies in agriculture. The second utopia is a kind of fantastic-political tale of the ineradicable variety of political and social-economic structures of the world. The third utopia represents the genre of typical scientific and technological utopia with atypical existential-aesthetic end. In each utopia, Chayanov creates an original model of social development that despite the social crises of the first third of the XX century seeks a compromise between town and village, industry and agriculture, peasantry and state capitalism, science and art, individual and society. The article critically considers the utopian relativistic ethics of Chayanovian agrarianism based on the idea of achieving the harmonic optima of social development.
autarchic state, peasant economy, capitalism in agriculture, cultural diversity, technological progress, relativistic ethics
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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