Ippolitov V.A. Factors affecting the health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s (on the example of the Tambov Province) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №2. P. 46-63.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-2-46-63

Annotation

The author identifies factors that affected peasants’ health in the 1920s based on the unpublished documents of the Health Department of the Executive Committee of the Tambov Regional Council of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies from the State Archives of the Tambov Region. The article focuses on the generational history of rural society, on the “revolutionary turning point” generation, whose representatives were born at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, mainly in the 1890s. The author shows the influence of malnutrition and famine of 1924–1925 on the health of rural residents and the negative consequences of eating various food substitutes and concludes that the famine affected the most the poorest peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation. The article presents a comparison of positive and negative factors affecting peasants’ health, focusing on the issues of medical care, morbidity, nutrition, water supply and other factors of the population health status. The author argues that the chronic underfunding of the healthcare system did not allow to provide the rural population with quality medical care, and malaria and syphilis were the most common diseases. The author makes a conclusion about the unsatisfactory health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s, referring to the death and birth rates in the countryside and to the relationship between the demographic behavior and depeasantization.

Keywords

Peasants, famine, epidemic, mortality, healthcare, party, NEP, generations.

About the author

Ippolitov Vladimir A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Tambov State Technical University. Sovetskaya St., 106/5, Tambov, 392000.
Е-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

 

Slezin A.A. The conflict of generations in the spiritual sphere of rural society in the second half of the 1920s // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №1. P. 45-66.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-1-45-66

Annotation

The author identifies the anti-religious aspects of the Soviet “turning to the village” policy, focusing on the main directions in the evolution of anti-religious activities of the communist youth in the mid-1920s and on the changes in the value orientations of peasant generations in the critical period of the Russian history. The study aims at assessing the peasantry’s reaction to the “revolutionary turn” generation (born at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries) activities and the reasons for the generational conflict, based on the analysis of the spiritual sphere of the Russian village. The author argues that this conflict turned into an intergenerational gap in the Russian village, which is an understudied aspect of the village split into antagonistic camps, used by the Party leadership to accelerate socialist modernization. The anti-religious activities of communist organizations after the “turning to the village” policy seemed to significantly soften forms and methods of the work with the peasantry, but a more thorough analysis shows that such activities remained a powerful factor of the conflict. For instance, value orientations of peasant generations were becoming more different. The spiritual legacy, which the “revolutionary turn” generation was to pass on to its successors, was rejected by the younger generation. The “new faith” completely denied the old traditions and irreconcilable theomachism. Peasants of the “revolutionary turn” generation expressed their attitude to anti-religious activities in the form of hooliganism, and radical measures were a response. The study of the national youth movement (including the negative one) and of the features of the intergenerational conflict in the Russian village are of particular relevance in the search for an educational model that meets the contemporary demands of the state and society.

Keywords

Peasants, religion, generations, revolutionary turn, youth, Komsomol, intergenerational gap, “turning to the village” policy, atheist alliance, NEP.

About the author

Slezin Anatoly A., DSc (History), Chief Researcher, Tambov State Technical University, Sovetskaya St., 106/5, Tambov, 392000.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

 

Lepetyukhina Ya.O., Neroda M.A. Uferwerk partnership, or implementation of social utopia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 141-150.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-141-150

Annotation

The article considers the history and everyday practices of the German housing cooperative partnership Uferwerk located in the countryside not far from Berlin. On the example of the housing cooperative Uferwerk, the authors analyze the social structure, financial and legal features of the contemporary housing partnership that reconstructs traditional relations and at the same time creates new humanistic relations of the community. This partnership transformed and rebuilt the former industrial territory of the metallurgical manufactory into an environmentally attractive space for the community of ninety adults and sixty children of various generations. The article focuses on the successful intergenerational interaction of the members of this housing partnership; considers its search for optimal legal and organizational-financial forms. The authors emphasize that all members of this unique project did not have any special data or skills for creating a cooperative, arranging a joint life, reconstructing real estate or developing a set of rules for the partnership. Thus, the new community developed due to the internal mutual learning based on the active participation of its members in management and decision-making, work and leisure, and on their desire to achieve the old utopian goals of cooperative solidarity in the new social realities of the 21st century.

Keywords

community, family, partnership, cooperative, suburbanization, real estate, ecology, generations, utopia

About the authors

Lepetyukhina Yana O., PhD Student, Institute of Political Sciences, RheinischWestfälische Technische Hochschule. Mies-van-der-Rohe-Straße, 10, 52074, Aachen.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Neroda Maxim A., Graphic Designer; Head of the Electric Workshop at the Uferwerk Partnership. Halle 36 e.V., Luisenstr. 16, 14542 Werder (Havel).
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

 

Russian Peasant Studies. Scientific journal

Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)

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