Smirnova A. A. James Scott, “invisible” space and the Non-Black Earth Region village // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №3. P. 17-31.

EDN: FTCWPJ

Annotation

The author applies James Scott’s concept of “nonstate spaces” to contemporary rural areas in Russia’s Non-Black Earth Region. The article considers Scott’s intellectual legacy, highlighting his key ideas relevant to geography; explains the dichotomy between “state” and “nonstate” spaces through their constitutive features, including population density, agricultural specialization and accuracy of bureaucratic recordkeeping; develops the concept of “state’s seeing” as a simplified perception of territory in the official discourse. As an example of “invisible” places for the Russian statistics, the study focuses on rural settlements officially classified as “without population” in the national census. Such villages vary greatly: some are wastelands that are almost inaccessible, others look like ordinary villages but with seasonal residents, mostly urban dwellers. The Non-Black Earth regions rank first in the number of settlements “without population” due to their natural features, settlement history and contemporary socialeconomic processes. Based on the results of field studies in the Tver Region, the author identifies the main mechanisms for “seeing” such spaces: direct observation, analysis of the remote sensing data, and interviews with local experts, mainly heads of rural settlements or specialists of territorial administrations. The presence of local authorities does not guarantee knowledge of the territory — it depends on the expert’s initiative, competencies and metis (practical knowledge). On the example of villages in the former Alferovskoe rural settlement of the Kalyazin municipal district the author shows how the number of population changes with the inflow of seasonal residents and what problems arise from the undercounting of dacha owners.

Keywords

James Scott, state simplifications, state space, state vision, Non-Black Earth Region, rural areas, settlements “without population”, dacha revitalization.  

About the author

Alexandra A. Smirnova, PhD (Geography), Associate Professor, Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Tver State University. P. Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2, Tver, 170021, Russia.
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Mikhalenko N. V. Literary and philosophical aspects of the “Danse Macabre” in A. V. Chayanov’s works in the context of the era // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №3. P. 6-16.

EDN: BZCSIE

Annotation

The article considers the interpretation of the plot of the “Danse Macabre” in Alexander Chayanov’s mystical stories in the context of the literature of the 1900–1920s. Chayanov’s decision to address this topic was determined by both his interest in the old Western engravings and the plot’s popularity in the literature of that time (in the works of Alexander Blok, Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Nikolay Zabolotsky, and others). Perhaps, the feeling of the power of fate over man in the time of crisis at the turn of the era, during wars and revolutions was interpreted by writers and philosophers in the categories of medieval ideas as a stand against chaos. In each of Chayanov’s novellas, the protagonist faces a challenge from otherworldly forces and becomes a puppet in their game. In “Venediktov…”, the protagonist is subject to the “triangle of souls”, fights against the inferno to rescue his loved one. In “The tale of the hairdresser’s mannequin”, the architect M. perishes, gradually succumbing to the chthonic forces of nature. In “The extraordinary but true adventures of the Count Fedor Buturlin”, there is an interpretation of the contract with the devil. In his texts, Chayanov accurately refers to various episodes of the “Danse Macabre” engravings, seeking a foothold in the world full of chaos.

Keywords

Alexander Chayanov, interpretation of the plot of the “Danse Macabre”, Russian literature of the 1920s.  

About the author

Natalia V. Mikhalenko, PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Povarskaya St., 25a, Moscow, 121069, Russia.
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Prasetyo A., Samudro B. R., Pratama Y. P., Sistriatmaja M. B. Agricultural policy for Indonesia: Stalin’s state gigantism or Bukharin’s cooperative farming // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №2. P. 22-47.

EDN: FYGXRA

Annotation

This article considers the systemic failure of Indonesia’s Food Estate Program (2020–2024) through the analytical lens of the 1920s Soviet agrarian debates between Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin. The study addresses a critical paradox: state agricultural policies continue to fail while Indonesia imports record amounts of rice despite 33 million small farmers. The authors applied a mixed-methods approach and the extended case study to construct an Agricultural Terms of Trade Index to empirically test the Scissors Crisis hypothesis (50 policy documents and fieldwork in three provinces). The key findings are as follows: (1) Food Estate projects scored 4.6/5 based on Stalinist characteristics (gigantism, coercion, ecological disregard), producing only 4,300 tons of rice at a cost of Rp 349 million per ton vs market price of Rp 6 million; (2) Agricultural Terms of Trade worsened by 40% in 2022–2024, making farmers leave the market and increasing rice imports from 444,000 tons (2019) to 3.05 million tons (2024); (3) successful cooperative models demonstrated 2.1–3.1% efficiency and maintained productivity under crisis periods. The study theoretically confirms the applicability of the Bukharinist political economy for the 21st-century agrarian analysis, proving its relevance beyond Soviet historiography, and proposes a three-tier policy roadmap, prioritizing smallholder empowerment, terms-of-trade stabilization, and cooperative industrialization as alternatives to state gigantism and corporate agriculture.

Keywords

Food sovereignty, agricultural policy, terms of trade, cooperatives, Indonesia, Bukharinist critique, land grabbing, peasant studies, food estate, smallholder agriculture, state intervention.  

About the authors

Prasetyo Andri, Lecturer, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Samudro Bhimo Rizky — PhD (Economics), Full Professor, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Pratama Yogi Pasca — PhD (Economics), Associate Professor, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Sistriatmaja Muhammad Bagus, Lecturer, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Chayanov A. V. Essays on the theory of water management // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №2. P. 6-21.

EDN: DAVLHE

Annotation

Alexander Chayanov visited European countries many times but never visited Asia outside the Russian Empire and USSR; however, his visits to Russian/Soviet Turkestan (as the territory of today’s Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was called and administered in the early 20th century) from 1915 to 1927 were reflected in several works. Before the 1917 Revolution, 28-year-old Chayanov visited Samarkand (Uzbekistan) to study irrigation and water management in the Central Asian regions. The results of this research were published as “Essays on the theory of water management”, which he begun in 1915 in Samarkand and completed in 1917 in Moscow. Chayanov wanted to study water rent — the oldest and still relevant problem of Asian irrigation, already having some experience of studying the economy of European irrigation: in 1908, during his postgraduate internship in Italy, he had studied the economy of the oldest European irrigation systems in Lombardy. To theoretically generalize European and Asian irrigation, Chayanov wrote these essays as a cascade of abstract marginalist schemes, ingeniously transforming von Thünen’s famous economic-mathematical model of the isolated city-state into his model of the isolated oasis-state for Turkestan — in the center of a great desert, there is an isolated oasis-society, whose entire agriculture is based on irrigation. At the center of this equally fertile and waterless vast plain, there is a single water source — property of a small number of individuals who sell water to farmers competing for it. This constructed object is analyzed through numerous, increasingly complex marginalist examples of the economy of the isolated oasis-state. The initial oasis model is further expanded to include land of varying quality and the natural cyclical functioning of the water source. Chayanov concludes his work with institutional questions about the role of water owners in national economy, social regulation of water, promotion of rational water use and trade-offs in water distribution. Chayanov wanted to test his theoretical model on empirical data from fieldwork but could not do it. A century later, today’s generation of historians, sociologists, economists and anthropologists studying irrigation in arid regions of the globe may find these abstract essays useful.

Keywords

Irrigation, oasis, water rent, water management, land use, dryland farming, isolated state.  

About the authors

Alexander V. Chayanov 

Alexander M. Nikulin (publisher), 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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Irina V. Trotsuk (translator), DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Schneider S., Tomazzoni G.C. Panorama of cooperativism in Brazilian agriculture in Alexander Chayanov’s perspective // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №1. P. 25-54.

EDN: DRJNJY

Annotation

In the last decade, Brazil has witnessed a significant expansion of cooperativism in agriculture. However, the cooperative movement did not follow a uniform pattern, revealing asymmetries and inequalities in Brazilian cooperativism. The article aims at describing cooperativism in Brazilian agriculture, for which the authors analyze data of agricultural censuses (IBGE, 2006; 2017), using markers to distinguish socialpolitical categories of family and non-family agriculture. In addition, the authors examine variables related to gender and education characteristics of farmers, distribution of rural units by area, purpose of agricultural production, sources of income, and access to technology. According to the results, there is a significant number of farmers affiliated with cooperatives in Brazil. However, cooperativism is concentrated in one of the five macroregions of the country and is more typical for non-family rather than family agriculture. Moreover, there are differences in cooperativism by size of property, and units associated with cooperatives in Brazil are more focused on marketing their production than the non-cooperative ones, which is reflected in the share of agricultural income in the total income of farmers and their families. Based on the results, the authors reconsider the ideas of Alexander Chayanov (2017) to assess the potential of cooperativism in the development of Brazilian agriculture if based on a more planned society and economy.

Keywords

Cooperativism, agriculture, Brazil, Alexander Chayanov.  

About the authors

Sergio Schneider, DSc (Sociology), Full Professor of Sociology of Rural Development and Food Studies, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Farroupilha, Porto Alegre, State of Rio Grande do Sul, 90010-150, Brazil.
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Gean Carlos Tomazzoni, PhD (Management), Associate Professor, Federal Technological University of Paraná. Av. Sete de Setembro, 3165, Rebouças, 80230-901, Curitiba, State of Paraná, Brazil.
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Brutskus B.D. Agricultural Economy: National-Economic Foundations. Chapter 14. General Principles of Agricultural Cooperation // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №1. P. 6-24.

EDN: DORWDB

Annotation

This is an English translation of Chapter 14 “General Principles of Agricultural Cooperation” from the textbook published in Russian by the agricultural economist B. D. Brutskus in Germany in 1923. Boris Davidovich Brutskus (1874–1938), a liberal economist, always emphasized the importance of the multi-structured national economy in which various social institutions can have goals and values   different from those of entrepreneurial enterprises of the capitalist market economy. Brutskus recognized the specificity of agriculture compared to other economic sectors, in particular the different organization of the peasant economy and the capitalist enterprise. Thus, he was a like-minded colleague of scholars from Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov’s organization-production school. The Soviet government declared Brutskus a reactionary bourgeois economist and expelled him from the USSR in 1922 for his profound and witty critique of the political-economic foundations of the socialist economy.
While in exile, Brutskus presented his agrarian-economic views as a textbook on agricultural economy. In both Tsarist Russia and Soviet Russia of the 1920s as a primarily agrarian country, such textbooks were very popular. Brutskus’s textbook had two distinctive features: first, since the author was an agronomist by basic education, he placed a strong emphasis on agricultural biological processes in relation to agrarian economy; second, two final chapters of the textbook focused on agricultural cooperation, which was also unusual for textbooks that certainly included information about cooperation, but not in such large volumes and not in such a structured manner. 
Brutskus’s textbook attracted attention not only in the Russian emigrant community, but also in Soviet Russia, where it was reprinted and widely used in universities until the start of collectivization in 1929, despite the fact that the author was in exile and had been declared an enemy of Soviet power. However, in the USSR the textbook was published without two last chapters on cooperation due to Soviet censorship. Brutskus commented on this ban in the article on cooperative ideology published in the German newspaper in Russian: “Recently, the Soviet government showed minimal liberality towards my academic work. After 15 months of censorship, my course on agricultural economy was cleared for publication4... But in one respect censors showed extreme intolerance: two chapters on agricultural cooperation were cut from the first page to the last. Although there is nothing specifically political in these chapters. However, the Bolshevik censorship could not accept my description of cooperation as a unique principle of economic construction, different from socialism”5. According to Brutskus, cooperative social institutions — a special economic phenomenon, a unique third force, different from institutions of both capitalist and state-controlled, socialist economies; however, cooperation always faces the risk of being incorporated and absorbed by both market entrepreneurship and state bureaucracy. The past hundred years seem to have convincingly confirmed many of Brutskus’s ideas of cooperation and his concerns about the distorting influence of both capitalism and socialism on cooperation. We publish this chapter from Brutskus’s book in English as a still-relevant example of the classic legacy of Chayanov’s school from its golden age.

Keywords

Cooperation, agrarian policy, market, peasantry, capitalism, socialism.  

About the authors

Boris D. Brutskus

Alexander M. Nikulin (publisher), 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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Irina V. Trotsuk (translator), DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Kuznetsov E. A., Mikhailovskaya V. A. Tourist industries and the “right to the city”: Constructing local identity in post-Soviet Sortavala through the access to tourism resources // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №4. P. 40-71.

EDN: DYUCXN

Annotation

The article considers grassroots economic practices in the tourism sector of Sortavala, a town in northwestern Russia, which has undergone significant transformation following the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of international borders in the 2020s. In the absence of large industrial enterprizes, domestic tourism has become a primary economic activity for local residents. The authors focus on tourism crafts — f lexible, small-scale, and often informal practices that aim at self-sufficiency — to show how they adapt to the region’s unstable social-economic conditions. These practices differ from both precarious wage labor and formal entrepreneurship, representing a distinct mode of engagement with the tourist economy, which is widely perceived as the only viable and strategically promising development path. Based on the qualitative study conducted in 2023–2024, the authors argue that access to tourism resources (places, infrastructure, narratives, and natural environments), which can be monetized through tourist interactions, serves as the central factor of participation in this economy. This access is unevenly distributed, has become a key site of social conflicts, and serves as not only an economic opportunity but also a mechanism for expressing and enacting a sense of belonging. Through tourism crafts, local actors assert a form of the “right to the city” — the right not only to inhabit but also to actively shape urban and natural spaces. Thus, grassroots involvement in tourism functions as a medium for articulating and renegotiating local identity.

Keywords

Sortavala, tourism economy, informal economy, tourism crafts, tourism resources, right to the city, local identity.  

About the authors

Egor A. Kuznetsov, Research Intern, Center for Sociocultural and Ethnolinguistic Research, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE University). Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000, Russia.
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Varvara A. Mikhailovskaya, Research Intern, Center for Sociocultural and Ethnolinguistic Research, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE University). Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000, Russia.
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Merl S. Collectivization and socialist agriculture (1917–1992): Revised comparison of the Soviet and East-European experience. Part III. Stabilization of collective farms, industrialization and collapse of socialist agriculture (1960–1992) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №4. P. 6-39.

EDN: ARKNVZ 

Annotation

To reassess collectivization and socialist agricultural policy, it is necessary to keep the whole period in view, distinguishing the following phases with basically different political approaches: (1) collectivization under Stalin as based on class war and peasant subjugation to transfer capital from agriculture to industry; (2) collectivization under Khrushchev, striving to complete it, although this policy was basically put in question (in 1953 in the Soviet Union and in 1957 in the GDR and Hungary); (3) efforts to stabilize the economically weak collective farms in the 1960s after finishing collectivization and replacing Khrushchev; (4) the final turn to modernization of agriculture expecting economies of scale through different concepts of industrialization in the 1970s; (5) the failure of these concepts causing a cost trap and enforcing the rehabilitation of small-scale private agriculture in the 1980s. The two first parts considered collectivization in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe under Stalin and Khrushchev; the third part focuses on the attempts to stabilize collective farms and to finally begin modernization to create industrial agriculture. Due to the myth of agricultural mechanization under Stalin, modernization in socialist countries started only in the 1970s, two decades later than in the West. However, modernization was carried out in the same way as collectivization before — “on the cheap” (agricultural machinery and equipment were below the Western standard). Moreover, by order from above, huge investment was wasted on changes in the size of production units despite economic necessity. Although since the 1970s, most heads of large farms were highly qualified, the command economy did not allow them to manage farms based on their competence. Ruling parties kept control over agriculture and set prices. In the 1980s, when fighting against the cost trap of socialist agriculture, they paradoxically returned to the support of cost-efficient small agricultural production that Stalin and Khrushchev had tried to liquidate. Although the bulk of the workforce was satisfied with working conditions and payment on large farms, agricultural enterprises suffered economically from extreme inefficiency. Only after the fall of socialist regimes did agricultural enterprises manage to prove their competitiveness in the market by f inally gaining access to high-quality inputs.

Keywords

Collective farms, socialist agriculture, industrialization of agriculture, modernization, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Kadar, Brezhnev, Ulbricht, Grüneberg, mechanization, private plots, economies of scale.  

About the author

Stephan Merl, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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Androsenko S. V. Nicholas Berdyaev’s Thoughts on Human Freedom in the Face of Contemporary Challenges: Technology, Civilization and “the Revolt of the Masses” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 44-67.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-44-67

Annotation

The article reconstructs the ideas of one of the most famous Russian Christian thinkers Nikolai Berdyaev on the man’s relationship with technology, which became more complicated in the 20th century due to both the unprecedented growth of its power and the challenge that the philosopher called “democratization of culture”. On the one hand, technology reveals man’s creative power, and the growth of technology’s power to a certain extent makes man’s life easier. On the other hand, technology and technification in the broader sense mean a mediated and often alienated relationship of man with nature and other people, communities and ultimately to himself. Technification develops a specific engineering perception not only of nature but also of life in general, which carries the threat of dehumanization, i.e., turning of production, cognitive and cultural sphere, natural and urban environment and man himself into something similar to a machine. At the same time, Berdyaev considers the crisis generated by technology, the challenges posed by technification and automation, which tear man away from the mother-earth and cosmic rhythms, accelerate or slow down time, compress or stretch space, thus questioning the very natural order previously experienced as unshakable and given by God, as a positive phenomenon emphasizing the religious meaning of technology. The article shows how Berdyaev’s main intellectual ideas and philosophical-anthropological intuitions can be followed through the challenges of the 21st century.

Keywords

N. A. Berdyaev, man, philosophical anthropology, technology, nature, freedom, culture, civilization, peasants, mass culture, mass society, engineering.

About the author

Sofia V. Androsenko, PhD Student, Philosophy Department, Moscow State University, Press Secretary, St Philaret’s Institute. Tokmakov per., 11, Moscow, 105066.
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Gumenyuk I. S., Yustratova V. O. Rural agglomeration as a new form of spatial development of the rural-urban partnership (on the example of the Kaliningrad Region) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 21-43.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-21-43

Annotation

Russian publications on the development of rural areas have increasingly used the term “rural agglomeration”. However, interpretations of this term and its relationship with more traditional geographical notions “territorial socio-economic system” and “rural-urban continuum” are still unclear. Moreover, rural agglomerations can be considered as local settlement systems identified by the activity method. Thus, practical application of the term causes difficulties due to the lack of clear quantitative and qualitative criteria for identifying rural agglomerations. On the example of the Kaliningrad Region, the authors developed and tested a methodology for identifying rural agglomerations based on the parameter of time accessibility, which also contributed to the theoretical clarification of the concept. The authors argue that in the economic-geographical perspective, rural agglomeration can be defined as a local rural-urban setlement system, in which the city is its core and rural settlements — its elements; intensive inter-village connections are spatially reflected in the transport infrastructure facilities. Rural agglomerations are normative systems identified with the activity approach, namely the isochronous method (20-minute interval from the center along public roads). Thus, the authors identified 8 rural agglomerations in the Kaliningrad Region with an average population of 12.7 thousand people, an average number of 40 settlements and a core in the form of a small city with an average population of 5.7 thousand people.

Keywords

Rural agglomeration, rural-urban continuum, territorial socio-economic system, small town, Kaliningrad Region.

About the authors

Ivan S. Gumenyuk, PhD (Geography) Associate Professor, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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Veronica O. Yustratova, PhD Student, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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