Chayanov A.V. Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy (Part 2) (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 6-55.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-6-55

Annotation

The second part of Chayanov’s book Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy consists of chapters presenting the specific features of the Russian social-agronomic work among the peasantry. In the first chapters (published in the previous issue of the Russian Peasant Studies), Chayanov focused on the strategic and worldview aspects of social agronomy; in the second part, he analyzes tactical directions of social-agronomic work: methods of oral, social-agronomic propaganda; conversations, lectures, courses and agronomic consulting; agricultural exhibitions, demonstration plots, model farms and peasant excursions; agricultural warehouses, rental points and grain-cleaning stations; organizational work of the agronomist; social agronomy and cooperation; the equipment of the agronomic station; registration and evaluation of social-agronomic activities. In all these chapters, Chayanov shows how creative the work of the social agronomist should be, how many diverse and unexpected challenges he faces when interacting with peasant communities, audiences and households. The interaction of social agronomy with another influential institution—agricultural cooperation—is of particular interest. Chayanov analyzes in detail the contradictions and distinctions in the work of agronomists and cooperators, in their common tasks of developing and improving the peasant life. Despite the fact that the book was published a hundred years ago, it is not only of historical interest but presents many valuable answers and practical recommendations for the contemporary agricultural consulting and rural development activists.
The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

social agronomy, peasants, agricultural education, agrarian reform, agricultural cooperation

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editor: Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Translator: Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Researcher, Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Chayanov A.V. Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy (Part 1) (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №1. P. 6-30.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-1-6-30

Annotation

The book by Alexander Chayanov Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy is one of his key interdisciplinary works written and published at the beginning of the October Revolution and the Civil War. In this work, the economist Chayanov is a social philosopher considering the rural evolution as determined not only by the market and the state but mainly by the will and knowledge of rural households that can be led to the sustainable rural development by the organized public mind (a kind of a synonymous for civil society). Its most important social institution in the rural sphere is social agronomy. Chayanov emphasizes that social agronomy is one of the youngest social institutions. It appeared in the late 19th century in Europe and North America and in three decades turned into an influential movement uniting agrarian scientists, agrarian activists and a huge number of peasants striving for agricultural knowledge for more productive and cultural development of their households.
In this book, Chayanov is not only a social philosopher but also a social activist and organizer, teacher and psychologist. The book is based on his seminar, ‘Social Agronomy and Agricultural Cooperation’, which incorporated many years of personal communication with peasants, agronomists and agrarian scientists about dissemination and application of agrarian knowledge by peasants.
We publish the first five chapters of the book about the tasks and methods of social-agronomic work, its program and organization. For the contemporary reader, this publication is not only of historical interest. Chayanov’s ideas are still relevant for the effective interaction of professional agrarians with the rural population, peasants and farmers in the organization of agricultural knowledge, agricultural cooperatives and agricultural consulting. 
The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

social agronomy, agricultural evolution, peasants, state, agrarian reforms, agrarian knowledge, agricultural cooperation

About the authors 

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editor: Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Translator: Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Researcher, Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Chayanov A.V. On differentiation of the peasant economy (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №4. P. 6-21.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-4-6-21

Annotation

This article by A.V. Chayanov was first published in the journal, “Paths of Agriculture” (1927, no. 5, pp. 101-21).This is a revised version of his report presented at the beginning of 1927 in Moscow at a discussion on the social-economic differentiation of the Soviet peasantry. Many prominent scientists participated in this discussion, including representatives of the two most important, ideological trends in Soviet agricultural science: on the one hand, Marxist agrarians (L.N. Kritsman, V.S. Nemchinov, Ya.A. Anisimov, I.D. Vermenichev, K.N. Naumov), and on the other hand, the so-called “agrarian neo-populists” (A.V. Chayanov, N.P. Makarov, A.N. Chelintsev).
In the report, Chayanov presents a new interpretation of the social-economic differentiation of the peasantry in Soviet Russia, which differs from the differentiation of the peasantry in pre-revolutionary Russia. According to Chayanov, after the destruction of the landlord and capitalist economies by revolution, the main reasons for the differentiation of the Soviet peasantry in the 1920s were regional contradictions in the peasant population distribution. On the one hand, peasants concentrated in the central, black earth regions, and on the other hand, they moved to the markets of sea ports and large cities. Chayanov argued that in this way, four types of relatively independent, family economies emerged from the mass of semi-subsistence peasant economies: farming, credit-usurious, commercial seasonal-working, and auxiliary economies.
Moreover, unlike the famous Marxist, three-element, agrarian scheme —“kulak– middle peasant–poor peasant”—which was developed by the school of L.N. Kritsman, Chayanov developed a more complex, six-element scheme of the differentiation of peasant economies: capitalist, semi-labor, well-to-do family-labor, poor family-labor, semi-proletarian, and proletarian. Based on this scheme, Chayanov suggested a number of economic policy steps for the systematic development of agricultural cooperation, primarily in the interests of the middle strata of the Soviet peasantry.
In the discussion of peasant differentiation in 1927, the arguments of Chayanov and his colleagues from the organization-production school were more convincing and justified than those of their opponents from the Marxist agrarians. However, in 1928, the Stalinist leadership began to inflate the threat of increasing class differentiation in the village. Thus, it initiated the struggle against the kulaks as a class, which became the prologue to forced collectivization during which Chayanov’s school was destroyed.
The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

peasantry, agricultural regions, USSR, social-economic differentiation, Chayanov, agrarian Marxists, agricultural cooperation

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editor: Nikulin Alexander  M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Translator: Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Researcher, Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Chayanov A.V. A Short Course on Cooperation (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 8-56.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-8-56

Annotation

Translated from: Chayanov A., A Short Course on Cooperation Published by the Central Partnership “Cooperative Publishing House,” Moscow, 1925.

Peasant cooperative movement was one of the most important topics in Alexander Chayanov’s scientific, organizational and pedagogical work. He wrote many articles and books on agricultural cooperation, and had hundreds of classes with students at universities and with peasants to explain and discuss various cooperative issues. Finally, Chayanov presented his conception of the ways to develop agricultural cooperation in his famous book Basic Ideas and Forms of Peasant Cooperation2. At the same time, Chayanov was a talented and passionate popularizer and propagandist of cooperative knowledge among the wider population. Thus, on the basis of his lectures for the Old Believers’ Agricultural Courses “Friend of Land” in Moscow in 1915, he published a booklet A Short Course on Cooperation, and in the next 10 years it was reprinted four times and became a desk book on cooperation for many Russian peasants, agronomists, and activists of rural development. This short course presents clear and unambiguous definitions of cooperation and its aims; each chapter is illustrated with popular historical and contemporary examples of the cooperative movement and of the interaction between peasant farms and specific types of cooperatives. This booklet reminds of two great genres of world literature. On the one hand, it is a propaedeutic ABC of Cooperation, like Leo Tolstoy’s ABC for Children. On the other hand, it is a political-economic Cooperative Manifesto, similar to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Communist Manifesto, in which Chayanov describes a fascinating struggle of the Russian and international cooperative movement for the new just social world. Under the current rural development, Chayanov’s Short Course on Cooperation is not only of a historical interest; it is an outstanding example of the unity of cooperative thoughts and deeds aimed at improving the lives of the broad strata of rural workers all over the world. This Chayanov’s work was translated into English from its fourth and last lifetime edition of 19253.
The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

agricultural cooperation, peasants, consumer cooperatives, credit cooperatives, marketing cooperatives, dairy cooperatives, cooperative solidarity

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editor: Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82. 
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Translator: Trotsuk Irina V., 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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Chayanov A.V. Letter from A.V. Chayanov to V.M. Molotov on the current state of agriculture in the USSR compared with its pre-war state and the situation in agriculture of capitalist countries (October 6, 1927) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №3. P. 6-18.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-3-6-18

Annotation

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.

Keywords

Agrarian policy, peasants, farmers, agricultural cooperation, agrarian capitalism, socialist agriculture, ways of agricultural development.

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.
Editor: Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Translator: Trotsuk Irina V., 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. 
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.