Gordeeva I.A. “Small deeds” in the Russian communitarian movement // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 88-105.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-88-105

Annotation

The article considers the ideas and work of Alexander Engelgardt (1832-1893) and Nikolai Nepluev (1851-1908) as the first stage of the communitarian version of the “small deeds” branch in the Russian populist movement of the 1870-1890s. The common features of Engelgardt and Nepluev projects were their communitarian spirit and practical orientation. Moreover, they were landowners who questioned the role of their estates in Russia after the Great Reforms. The social ideals of Engelgardt and Nepluev opposed both the concept of violent revolution and the idea of liberal reforms. They insisted that the methods of social development had to be (1) peaceful and based on the everyday local transformations in the spirit of “small deeds”, thus, following the communal traditions of the Russian peasantry; (2) radical enough to ensure both deep transformations of the Russian society and the very type of its social relations. Engelgardt aimed at making the Russian village cultural by turning educated people into “intelligent peasants”. In the late 1870s—early 1880s, in his estate Batischevo in the Smolensk Province, he tried to “produce” intelligent peasants. On the contrary, Nepluev tried to “produce” intelligent peasants from peasant children by agricultural education and Christian upbringing. He succeeded in establishing the Orthodox Exaltation-of-the-Holy-Cross Labor Brotherhood that combined the ideas of Christian community and labor artel (1890s—late 1920s).

Keywords

“small deeds” theory, Russian communitarian movement, Alexander Engelgardt, Nikolai Nepluev, Exaltation-of-the-Holy-Cross Labor Brotherhood, Russian populism

About the author

Gordeeva Irina A., PhD (History), Associate Professor, Department of Church-History Disciplines, Faculty of History, St. Philaret’s Christian Orthodox Institute. Pokrovka St., 29, Moscow, 105062.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Merl S. Agricultural reforms in Russia from 1856 to the present: Successes and failures in the international comparative perspective // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 56-87.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-56-87

Annotation

Despite its initial backwardness, the agricultural sector played a decisive role in the Russian/Soviet history. Until the 1950s, it was the main sector of occupation; it had contributed greatly to the gross domestic product and gross value added until forced collectivization destroyed huge agricultural resources. The article argues that emancipation paved the way for agricultural modernization by promoting a new agricultural structure based on the market and the skills of the heads of large-scale and family farms. The author identifies three Russian/Soviet approaches to the agrarian reform (1856–1928, 1929–1987, from 1987) in terms of contribution to the modernization of agriculture and of catching up with the developed countries. The article argues that until 1928 and (after the agricultural depression of the 1990s) from 2000, Russia was successful in both modernization and catching up, while Stalin’s forced collectivization at first led to stagnation. After the World War II, forced collectivization prevented any “green revolution” (i.e. application of the agricultural scientific research findings). Under the state command system in agriculture, poor mechanization did not increase the labor productivity. Although Russia was known for agricultural surpluses before collectivization, the late Soviet Union became a major grain importer. Only the reform that started in 1987 removed the state command system to make the agricultural producers masters of their fields again, which led to a considerable increase in agricultural productivity since 2005. Basing the reappraisal of the agrarian reforms on the recent successes, the article likes to encourage further discussion. It proposes to regard the use of the available rural labor force, the quality of the industrial inputs in agriculture and the extent to which the producers were allowed to be masters of their agricultural production as the most appropriate criteria for assessing the agrarian reforms’ results.

Keywords

agrarian reform, efficiency of agricultural production, emancipation, forced collectivization, green revolution, mechanization of agriculture, modernization, peasant farms, rural underemployment, socialist industrialized agriculture, Alexander II, Stalin, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin

About the author

Merl Stephan, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University; Universitätsstr., 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Savinova T.A. “...The mind involuntarily seeks a way out of the situation and tries to fill the absolute scarcity of agricultural machinery with the increasing utilization rate” (A note by A.V.Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №1. P. 84-92.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-1-84-92

Annotation

The publication introduces into the scientific discourse the note of A.V. Chayanov written by him as a member of the scientific-technical team of the All-Union Association of Workers of Science and Technology to promote the socialist development in the USSR. This note presents Chayanov’s proposals for solving the specific tasks of the spring agricultural campaign in 1930 and for intensifying the use of agricultural machinery in areas of all-round collectivization by introducing machine-tractor trains running from south to north and back. In this note, Chayanov predicted many pressure points and challenges in organizing the Soviet mobile highly-mechanized agriculture. Much later, after the first five-year period and his death, under the development of virgin lands and Brezhnev’s agricultural industry, when tractor and combine columns ran between regions of the Soviet Union, those natural and social risks that Chayanov identified and described so accurately and responsibly became evident. The foreword presents a brief history of the All-Union Association of Workers of Science and Technology and its role in the differentiation and extermination of dissenting intelligentsia in the 1929-1930.

Keywords

organization-production school, A.V. Chayanov, All-Union Association of Workers of Science and Technology, intelligentsia, scientific-technical team, agricultural machinery, sowing campaign, machine-tractor trains

About the author

Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of the Department of OrganizationalMethodological and Personnel Work, Russian State Archive of Economics; Researcher, Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119435 Moscow, Bolshaya Pirogovskaya, 17.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Kuznetsov I.A. Production of grains and potatoes per capita in European Russia in 1883–1913: Regional dynamics // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №1. P. 53-83.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-1-53-83

Annotation

The article presents the calculations of the annual production of grains and potatoes per capita in the regions of European Russia and the analysis of its dynamics from 1883 to 1913. The calculations are based on the harvest statistics of the Central Statistical Committee: the gross harvest of rye, wheat, oats, barley, einkorn, buckwheat, millet, peas, corn and potato in poods. Potatoes is considered both separately and together with grains (recalculated in the ratio 4:1). The data on the annual population was taken from the demographer V. Zaitsev book published in 1927: 49 provinces were grouped in 12 regions based on the classification of the Central Statistical Committee with some changes. The author analyzed the dynamics of moving averages by five-year periods and identified the average upward trend in the production of grains and potatoes per capita in European Russia as consisting of multidirectional trends in the regions of different natural-geographical and economic types. The upward trend was typical for the Novorossiysk, Little-Russia, Transurals, Baltic, Southwest, Western regions and the Samara Province, while the downward trend was typical for the Non-Black-Earth-industrial, Northern, North-Western, Central-Black-Earth and Central-Volga regions. The author provides an interpretation of these trends taking into account differences in the agrarian systems of grain-producing (net exporters) and grain-consuming (net importers) regions.

Keywords

agrarian history, grain production per capita, harvest statistics, population statistics

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Research Laboratory of Economic and Social History Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Russia, 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Andreenkov S.N. Reforms in the economies’ system and land use in the Novosibirsk Region in the 1990s // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №4. P. 58-75.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-4-58-75

Annotation

The article considers the features of reorganization of agricultural enterprises and land use system in the Novosibirsk Region in the 1990s. This reform was the main direction of the agrarian transformations in the 1990s. The author identifies the logic and consequences of the collective and state farms transformation into various forms of commercial enterprises (joint-stock companies, cooperatives, peasant farms and their associations) and features of the land redistribution. At the first stage of the reform (1991), the collective and state farm system of the Novosibirsk Region did not change, new forms of farms and land use just started to develop, and the size of subsidiary plots significantly increased. At the second stage of the reform (1992–1993), the reorganization of collective and state farms accelerated, a network of large commercial enterprises developed, and the number of peasant farms increased. However, the new organizational-economic system met the market economy standards only formally. The new agricultural jointstock companies and cooperatives did not differ much from their predecessors—collective and state farms. Large farms remained the main supplier of agricultural products on the market although they worked in extremely unfavorable conditions. Nevertheless, the role of small economies represented by peasant farms also increased.

Keywords

land reform, collective farms, state farms, agriculture, land use, Novosibirsk Region

About the author

Andreenkov Sergey N., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Sector of Agrarian History, Institute of History, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 630090, Novosibirsk, Akademika Nikolaeva St., 8.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Chayanov A.V. Peasant economy in Belgium (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №4. P. 53-57.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-4-53-57

Annotation

This is an early work of Alexander Chayanov first published in the journal Krestyanskoe delo (Peasant Work) in 1910. The article is based on Chayanov’s observations during his stay in Belgium in summer of 1909, when, according to one of his biographers, he tried to find development models for the Russian agriculture. On behalf of the Belgian farmer Octave Colyar, Chayanov described the changes in the Belgian agriculture after the great agricultural crisis (depression) of the late 19th century. The inflow of North-American and Russian grain to the Belgian market (the so-called ‘grain invasion’) had negative impact on prices and made agricultural producers change their specialization—Belgium turned from an exporter of grain to an exporter of livestock products. The article presents Chayanov at the beginning of his career, before the development of his theory of consumption-labor balance. Not only in his early works but also throughout his career, Chayanov used the comparative method to study the agricultural development of Russia and Western Europe. However, the Belgian case was one of the most important. In this article, Chayanov is an agrarian economist, sociologist and rural anthropologist presenting a detailed portrait of the peasant based on the history of his economy.
The publication with comments was prepared by V.O. Afanasenkov.

Keywords

agrarian history, Chayanov, Belgium, global agricultural crisis, ‘grain invasion’, peasant economy

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editor: Vladislav O. Afanasenkov—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. 

Afanasenkov V.О. An early work of A.V. Chayanov on the Belgian peasant economy (a publisher’s preface) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №4. P. 50-52.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-4-50-52

Annotation

This is an early work of Alexander Chayanov first published in the journal Krestyanskoe delo (Peasant Work) in 1910. The article is based on Chayanov’s observations during his stay in Belgium in summer of 1909, when, according to one of his biographers, he tried to find development models for the Russian agriculture. On behalf of the Belgian farmer Octave Colyar, Chayanov described the changes in the Belgian agriculture after the great agricultural crisis (depression) of the late 19th century. The inflow of North-American and Russian grain to the Belgian market (the so-called ‘grain invasion’) had negative impact on prices and made agricultural producers change their specialization—Belgium turned from an exporter of grain to an exporter of livestock products. The article presents Chayanov at the beginning of his career, before the development of his theory of consumption-labor balance. Not only in his early works but also throughout his career, Chayanov used the comparative method to study the agricultural development of Russia and Western Europe. However, the Belgian case was one of the most important. In this article, Chayanov is an agrarian economist, sociologist and rural anthropologist presenting a detailed portrait of the peasant based on the history of his economy.

Keywords

agrarian history, Chayanov, Belgium, global agricultural crisis, ‘grain invasion’, peasant economy

About the author

Afanasenkov Vladislav O.—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. 

Zaslavskaya T.I. “... I am pressed for time now” (Letters of Tatiana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya of 1972–1974) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №3. P. 78-139.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-78-139

Annotation

The letters of the academician Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya (1927–2013) describe her life in Novosibirsk and her work at the Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (currently the IEOIP SB RAS). These letters present a chronicle of thoughts and feelings of T.I. Zaslavskaya about problems and conflicts in the Soviet science, about paradoxes of economics, culture, education, and everyday life of the Soviet society in the first half of the 1970s. In these letters, T.I. Zaslavskaya’s assessments and characteristics of her contemporaries—colleagues in science, politicians, figures of art and culture—are of particular interest. The letters also reveal the identity of their author—a strong and talented woman, hardworking and cheerful, curious and friendly, tender and vulnerable, keenly feeling injustice and rudeness, falsehood and stupidity. The addressee of these letters is a friend of T.I. Zaslavskaya—Yuri Efimovich Sokolovsky (1927–1984)—PhD (Pedagogy), Associate Professor of the Moscow State Institute of Culture, a Cultural Studies scholar, true expert in the historical-cultural heritage of Moscow, prominent researcher of the psychological-pedagogical issues of the artistic creativity and of the organization and development of rural and urban cultural-educational institutions. The letters were provided for publication in the Russian Peasant Studies by G.I. Reprintseva, the widow of Yu.E. Sokolovsky. The letters were edited and commented by G.I. Reprintseva and A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

Zaslavskaya, Soviet society, science, sociology, economics, culture, Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Moscow, rural Russia

About the authors

Zaslavskaya Tatyana Ivanovna

Editors: Reprintseva Galina I., PhD (Pedagogy); for more than 40 years, she was conducting research at the Russian Academy of Education, in particular in the Laboratory of SocialPedagogical Issues of Family Relations at the Institute of Social Pedagogy; for the achievements in the field of pedagogy, she was awarded the medal of K.D. Ushinsky.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
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, MSSES. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Savinova T.A. The last ‘semidesyatnik’ (representative of the 1870s): On the biography of Vasily Nikolaevich Grigoriev (1852–1925) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №3. P. 61-77.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-61-77

Annotation

The article considers the biography and career of one of the founders of the zemstvo statistics V.N. Grigoriev. For the first time in the academic tradition the key stages of his career were studied in detail: development of his populist worldview and of the Ryazan zemstvo statistics, exile in Kineshma, Simferopol and Voronezh, and work at the Moscow self-government. The author focuses on the creation of the Ryazan Zemstvo Statistical Bureau, the study of four uyezds in the Ryazan Province, conflict with the Moscow City Council, work on the classic work Peasant Migration from the Ryazan Province, and its evaluation by A.I. Chuprov. Based on the archival sources from two federal repositories, the author introduces the work of Grigoriev in zemstvo statistics in 1883–1886, when he was openly supervised by the police. The activities of Grigoriev in the Moscow government consisted of his work in the Statistical Department of the Moscow City Council, and from 1897 to 1917 as a member of the Council he participated in the management of the city economy and charity. The finale of his statistical activities was the bibliography Index of Zemstvo Statistical Works from the 1860s to 1917 praised by V.A. Chayanov.

Keywords

zemstvo statistics, V.N. Grigoriev, V.G. Korolenko, Ryazan zemstvo, resettlement of peasants, Moscow City Council, subject index

About the author

Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of the Department of Organizational, Methodological and Personnel Work, Researcher of the Chayanov Research Center, MSSES. Russian State Archive of Economics. Bolshaya Pirogovskaya St., 17, Moscow, 119435.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Savino G. “Land hunger” of the Italian peasantry: From the unification of the country to the agrarian reform // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 108-127.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-108-127

Annotation

The article considers the development of the agrarian question in Italy after the unification of the country in 1861, before the implementation of the peasant policy, and to the early years of the republic in the late 1940s—early 1950s. The questions and composition of the Italian peasantry were different in the regions of the country, especially in the South of Italy, where in the early 20th century 2/3 of peasants and sailors did not have the right to vote. At this time in the country, especially in such regions as Emilia-Romagna, the so-called “agrarian socialism” started to develop on the basis of cooperatives and peasant trade unions under the guidance of socialists. After the World War I, contradictions in the agrarian policy of the socialists intensified after the demobilization of the army. Under the slogan of socialization, there was an idea of distributing uncultivated lands among the peasants, but this idea did not answer the “land-hunger question” of the peasantry and had many critics on the left, like Antonio Gramsci. The Italian liberal politicians did not try to solve the agrarian question, which became the ground for the rise of fascism in the villages, and in some regions the conflict turned into a quasi-civil war. Fascism pinned great hopes on the rural world instead of the chaotic and unstable city, because the new ruling class considered the village as a stronghold of traditional values. The swamp drainage program was an important part of the agrarian policy of the Mussolini regime, and in the 1930s it became the slogan of fascism.
The World War II hit the Italian village hardly. The anti-fascist parties included the agrarian question in their programs, and in the villages the resistance against the regime was based on the demand for agrarian reform. Fausto Gullo, a communist and minister of agriculture in 1944–1946, in 1944 wrote several decrees on the use of uncultivated lands, agrarian treaties, and the creation of “people’s granaries”. They became an incentive for the peasantry, but after the exclusion of the communists from the government the clashes in the villages became bloody. The Sicilian mafia shot at the crowd of peasants on May 1, 1947, and the police opened fire in Melissa, Calabria, on October 29, 1949. The De Gasperi government adopted various measures within the agrarian reform in 1950-1951 and partially implemented the principles of the Article 44 of the Italian Constitution adopted in 1948. The agrarian reform of 1950 satisfied the “land hunger” of the Italian peasantry, but the society changed completely in the following decades due to the development of the country as an industrial economy.

Keywords

agrarian reform, southern question, peasantry, Emilio Sereni, Alcide de Gasperi, mafia, Christian Democratic Party, Italian Communist Party

About the author

Savino Giovanni, Assistant Professor, Institute for Social Sciences, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.