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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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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Sobolev A.V., Kurakin A.A., Trotsuk I.V. Methodological approaches to the study of Russian cooperation and “Theory and practice of cooperation” as an academic discipline // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 31-50.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-31-50

Annotation

The article focuses on the theoretical and methodological problems encountered by the Russian scholars of cooperative organizations. The authors identify four basic methodological approaches to the cooperation phenomenon in the Russian academic tradition: (1) socio-reformist (or socio-ideological), (2) descriptive-monographic, and (3) economic-theoretical, with the first two being dominant. After a short discussion of the prospects and limitations of the theoretical studies of cooperatives as business organizations by Russian scholars, some of the distinguishing features of Russian cooperation thought are mentioned. Considering the features of the Russian cooperative thought, the authors found it useful to name the most prominent Russian researchers of cooperation who can be included in the ICA list of the world cooperative heritage. The authors pay special attention to the myth of the first Russian cooperative and the Decembrists as the first Russian cooperators. Unfortunately, this myth was officially recognized and determines the birthday of the cooperative movement in Russia. The article briefly discusses the contribution to cooperative thought made by Antsiferov, Bilimovich, Tugan-Baranovsky, Chayanov, and Totomianz. Special attention is paid to the scientific contribution of Emelianoff, almost unknown in modern Russia, and the fate of his ideas. Finally, the authors emphasize the particular importance of describing the transformations and the most important achievements of the Russian and foreign cooperative thought in the curriculum of the discipline “Theory and practice of cooperation”.

Keywords

Russian cooperative thought, the history of Russian cooperation, the birth of Russian cooperative movement, economic theory of cooperation, Emelianoff, cooperation as an academic discipline.

About the authors

Alexander V. Sobolev, DSc (Economics), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82; professor The Russian University of Cooperation (RUC).
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Irina V. Trotsuk., DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia; 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 A. Kurakin, Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Higher School of Economics. 101000, Moscow, Myasnitskaya, 20.
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Nikulin A.M. Chayanovian utopian visions: Looking for the balance under the crises of optima intensification // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 6-30.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-6-30

Annotation

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. 

Keywords

autarchic state, peasant economy, capitalism in agriculture, cultural diversity, technological progress, relativistic ethics

About the author

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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Domnikov S.D. Forms of life and landscapes of culture. // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 38-67.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-38-67

Annotation

The author considers a complex system of man-landscape relationship as a starting point of worldview formation and a primary condition for the development of cultural traditions. This basic level of social and environmental organization is presented as a space-technological and adaptiv e environmental system, which is constructed by the relations of man with the landscape and by a set of external world objects that are vitally important and culturally significant for human existence. The main function of culture is adaptive, whereas the landscape plays an active role in designing human world, i. e. in acquiring basic economic skills, technology development, and related programs and life strategies. The author believes that the historically accurate models of culture embody typologically different forms of social landscape and organize spatiotemporally the local ‘life-worlds’”; for instance, the classic landscape embraces the space of “the lack of the Other”. The author focuses on the genesis of the agrarian cultural tradition, and considers the relationship of two discourses — existential-phenomenological philosophy and philosophical anthropology. The article follows the general evolution of the classical anthropology with the distinction of dzōon (living being) and bios (life form), which led to the problematization of “symbolic forms” (E. Cassirer).

Keywords

totemism, anthropology, form of life, form of culture, symbolic form, cultural landscape

About the author

Sergey D. Domnikov, PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy of Culture of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 
12/1 Goncharnaya Str., Moscow, 109240.
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Bernstein G., Trotsuk I. Policital Economy of the Agrarian Change // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 8-37.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-8-37

Annotation

According to the author, the understanding of the agrarian transformations in the modern world requires an analysis of capitalism as a special system of social relations between capital and labor, which as historical development is changing the social nature of small farms, runs the processes of commodification and produces not a single "class" of the peasants or the heads of households and internally heterogeneous classes small agricultural capitalists, small producers and workers. The author poses a challenge - using categorical apparatus of the class theory of Marx on the capitalist mode of production, to bring order in the diverse and complex agrarian history of the modern world, designating a number of "common themes" in the world-historical career of capitalism and refusing thereby from simple and ideologically attractive moralizing stories about peasant world and its disappearance. The article indicated by the general logic of the historical relationships of colonialism and capitalism, gave rise to large-scale agricultural transformation on all continents; highlighted local and global trends in the development of agriculture and the rural economy; given the characteristics of new forms of organization of the world capitalist system that emerged under the influence of neo-liberal globalization; The role of resistance to capitalist exploitation and land reform in the development of modern agriculture. 

Keywords

political economy, agrarian change, capitalism, colonialism, class of capitalists, class of petty commodity producers, class of wage labour, Marx’s theory

About the authors

Henry Bernstein, Professor of Development Studies of the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University, Beijing; coeditor of Journal of Agrarian Change.
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom.
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Irina V. Trotsuk, D. Sc (Sociology), Associate Professor at the Sociology Chair of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia; Senior Researcher at the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
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