crisis

2025. Vol.10. №1.

Elimination of the world crisis (Article of B.D. Brutskus)

May 19 2025

Brutskus B.D. Elimination of the world crisis (Article of B.D. Brutskus) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 6-15.

EDN: AAOQLZ

Annotation

Boris Davidovich Brutskus (1874–1938) was a remarkable economist whose agrarian studies are usually attributed to A. V. Chayanov’s organization-production school. However, agrarian issues were only one aspect of Brutskus’s multifaceted intellectual heritage as a major specialist in Jewish migration and colonization in the late 19th — early 20th centuries, in the political-economic criticism of the Russian Revolution, Soviet economic system and socialism in general. He was an insightful expert not only in issues of the Russian and Soviet economic policy but also in international economic-political relations.
In his theoretical and ideological views Brutskus was a consistent supporter of liberalism but not an orthodox supporter of the homo economicus model. He spoke with deep respect and understanding about worldview values of socialism of both populist and Marxist directions, which were associated with the ideas of cooperative family economies and a socially oriented state, and emphasized that the market, free enterprise and economic freedom were fundamental conditions for any freedom in principle.
With the Bolsheviks coming to power, during the civil war, Brutskus consistently and convincingly criticized the Soviet economic policy, for which the United State Political Administration (OGPU) expelled him on the so-called philosophical steamship to Germany. In Europe, until the early 1930s, Brutskus lectured on agrarian issues and political economy at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin and taught at the Yiddish University in Vilnius. After the Nazis came to power, he moved to Paris, and in 1935 emigrated to Palestine, where he headed the Department of Agricultural Economics and Policy at the University of Jerusalem, which was established with funds from the Jewish National Fund and at which he conducted research and taught until his death in 1938. Brutskus “was very enthusiastic about not only teaching but also practical activities to promote Jewish agriculture”. Brutskus’s great contribution to the developing Jewish agricultural and economic science was recognized and highly praised: his course of lectures was published posthumously, and the national journalism called him a Jewish genius of our time.
Brutskus was an incredibly gifted and prolific economist and publicist, his analytical articles on the most current social-economic events of the 1920s and 1930s were published in newspapers and magazines not only in the Russian émigré press but also in national languages in periodicals of some European and North American countries. Thereby, it is not surprising that the article “Elimination of the world crisis”, which was discovered in B.D. Brutskus’s collection in the Central Archive for History of the Jewish People and which the author had prepared for publication but had not managed to publish, provides an overview of fundamental contradictions and probable alternatives for political-economic development of the world economy recovering with difficulty and in contradictory ways from the Great Depression in the second half of the 1930s.
In this article, Brutskus identifies those groups of countries and key sectors of the economy that overcame consequences of the world crisis in different ways. This multipolarity of political-economic development caused Brutskus concern mainly due to the strengthening tendencies of bureaucratic autarkization of economies in some countries preparing for war. At the end of the article, Brutskus prophetically warns that the implementation of the German slogan “guns instead of butter” under declining international movement of migrants, capital, goods and increasing political-economic polarization of countries leads to an escalation of international tension and future military-political conflicts.

Keywords

Crisis, market, capitalism, unemployment, agriculture, industry, League of Nations, economic policy.

About the authors

Boris D. Brutskus
Publishers: Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics),Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.Gazetny per., 3-5, bl. 1, Moscow, 125009, Russia.
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Afanasenkov Vladislav O., Junior Researcher, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Gazetny per., 3-5, bl. 1, Moscow, 125009, Russia.
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Translator: Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Additional Info

Submitted Wednesday, 25 December 2024
Copyright © Auhtors, 2025
Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

2022. Vol.7. №2.

“Peasant journey to the Communist Party and back”: Volost peasant organizations of the RCP (Bolsheviks) in 1918–1920 (based on the archival materials of the Vyatka Province)

Sep 12 2022

Timkin Yu. N. “Peasant journey to the Communist Party and back”: Volost peasant organizations of the RCP (Bolsheviks) in 1918–1920 (based on the archival materials of the Vyatka Province) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №2. P. 47-67.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-2-47-67

Annotation

The article considers the development and work of the volost peasant cells of the RCP (b) in 1918–1920 through the relationship between the state and the people. The article is based on the archival materials from the Central State Archive of the Kirov Region and the State Archive of the Social and Political History of the Udmurt Republic, and on the historical-genetic and historical-institutional approaches. The author also analyzed materials from the funds of the Vyatka Gubkom and the Vyatka, Glazov, Kotelnich, Malmyzh, Nolin, Orlov, Soviet, Urzhum and Yaran regional committees of the RCP (b), Provincial Commission on the Party History, Vyatka Province Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies, Yaransk Regional Committees of the Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies Councils, Vyatka Regional Statistical Committee, and the personal fund of Vasily Georgievich Plenkov. The author examines the development and crisis of the volost peasant cells of the RCP (b) in the Vyatka Province in 1918–1920 in order to identify the features of the Vyatka peasantry in the early 20th century and peasants’ expectations from the new power; of the interaction between the Soviet power and peasants; of the crisis of volost cells and their transformation into power structures consisting of the employees of the Soviet volost institutions. The study revealed that on the eve of the 1917 Revolution, the Vyatka village community still existed though middle peasants prevailed. Peasants expected from the new government to solve primarily social-economic tasks: the lack of land, construction of road infrastructure, and social development. Bolsheviks only partially satisfied the peasants’ demands, which led to the strongest peasants’ dissatisfaction under the forced food policy and other political measures, and, thus, determined the crisis of volost cells in 1919–1920. The author argues that in the village dominated by communist peasants who wanted to develop their economy on the market basis, there was hardly any ground for the voluntary acceptance of communist ideas. Volost peasant cells were created as associations supporting the new government, but eventually either disintegrated or turned into the ‘party of power’.

Keywords

Vyatka Province, middle peasants, community, volost organizations of the RCP (b), war communism, crisis.

About the author

Timkin Yuri N., PhD (History), Associate Professor, Department of Theory and History of State and Law, Vyatka State University. 610000 Kirov, Moskovskaya St., 36.
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