Kuznetsov I. A. In search of a “self-determining social reality” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №1. P. 150-155.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-1-150-155

Annotation

Review of the book: Kedrov N.G. (2022). Apocrypha of Agrarian Historiography. Essays on the Study of Collectivization in Soviet and Russian Historical Science, Vologda: Polygraph-Periodicals, 2022, 339 p. ISBN 978-5-91965-300-4

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vernadsky Avenue, 82, Moscow, 119571; Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Gazetny Lane, 3-5, Moscow, 125009.
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The article was submitted on 29.01.2024.

Kuznetsov I. A. In memory of the scholar: Works of Yu. A. Moshkov and some issues of agrarian historiography // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №4. P. 47-71.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-4-47-71

Annotation

Yuri Aleksandrovich Moshkov (April 6, 1922 — August 30, 2022), a prominent Russian agrarian historian, whose works outlined the main directions in the study of the economic aspects in the history of collectivization and the collective-farm sector of Soviet agriculture, passed away. During his long creative life, the Russian historiography came a long way from the formation of the scientific paradigm for the study of Soviet history during the thaw period, through the methodological crisis of perestroika to the “archival revolution” of the 1990s and the subsequent period of obtaining new sources and choosing new theoretical models under the ideological diversity. The author pays tribute to the memory of his university teacher, highly appreciates his personal contribution, and expresses some general thoughts about the development paths and issues of the Russian agrarian historiography in the second half of the 20th — early 21st century.

Keywords

Historiography, thaw period, perestroika, Yu.A. Moshkov, V. P. Danilov.

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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Kuznetsov I. A. Russia’s harvest statistics in the first half of the 19th century: The problem of primary data // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №3. P. 35-54.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-3-35-54

Annotation

The author reports the discovery in the regional archives of the primary documents and uyezd data compiled for the governors’ harvest statistics in the first half of the 19th century, although historiography used to question or deny their existence. According to the archival data, the primary information about harvest in estates and villages was collected annually in autumn. This information was provided by the elders of peasant communities and the managers of landlords’ estates. Since the end of the 18th century, information was collected by the officials of the Lower Zemstvo Court: they either wrote it down from what their informants told or collected the already prepared notes. The final report on the uyezd harvest was compiled by the secretary of the Lower Zemstvo Court and sent to the Governor’s Office. The Governor’s Office compiled a similar record for the province, in which the uyezd data was duplicated and summarized. Provincial reports on sowing and harvest were sent to the government (Ministry of Internal Affairs and/or Ministry of Police) as urgent messages in November. The collection of harvest data was not related to the governors’ annual reports which duplicated the previously sent information. The discovered documents do not solve the problem of reliability and representativeness of the governors’ crop statistics but correct the historiographic ideas about the functions of the imperial administration in the field of control over harvests and food security in the Russian regions.

Keywords

Agrarian history of Russia, crop statistics, governors’ reports, Lower Zemstvo Court (nizhny zemsky sud), Victor Yatsunsky, Boris Litvak.

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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Kuznetsov I.A. Stolypin agrarian reform and agricultural productivity of European Russia in the late 19th — early 20th century // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №3. P. 42-78.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-3-42-78

Annotation

The author considers the links between measures of the Stolypin agrarian reform and indicators of the Russian agricultural development based on various statistical data: statistics of yields (Central Statistical Committee), statistics of grain prices and land management (Main Directorate of Land Management and Agriculture), data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on peasant exits from the community, data from the survey of farms and allotments conducted by the GUZiZ in 1913. The author also uses data on the income from non-grain crops and animal husbandry, and on the cost of commercial outputs per unit of agricultural land on the eve of the First World War. Based on the analysis of statistics, the author refutes the idea that agriculture had passed the peak of progressive shifts before the reform and that the growth of agricultural production slowed down under the reform. The author reveals mistakes in the 1913 survey of yields, which makes its data invalid for studying the ratio of yields by farm type; uses the moving average method to smooth out annual fluctuations in the CSC statistics of yields; compares the indicators of the best five years before the reform with the indicators of the best five years of the reform to minimize the influence of weather fluctuations on the measurement of the grain production dynamics; calculates the shifts in yields of major crops; with the correlation analysis, identifies the relationship between shifts in yields and productivity for the selected periods under the Stolypin reform in 47 provinces of European Russia; studies the links of the reform with other indicators of the agrarian development; proves the significant positive links (mainly of medium strength and weak) between the peasant activity in the individualization of land tenure (exits from the community) and land use (farms on the allotments) under the reform, and the negative links between economic indicators and the development of group land management within the communal land tenure. Thus, the author insists that the previous historiographic statements about the absence of links between the reform and yields, and about the negative links between the registration of peasant land ownership and the increase in yields on allotments were not confirmed. 

Keywords

Stolypin agrarian reform, agrarian history of Russia, agricultural statistics, productivity, land management, peasant community.

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571 Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Kuznetsov I.A. Prerequisites for the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №3. P. 47-69.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-3-47-69

Annotation

The article considers historiographic issues in the study of reasons and factors that determined the agricultural collectivization in the USSR in the 1930s. The article is a kind of a review which aims at systematizing the data accumulated in the Russian scientific historical literature and the author’s studies of historical sources. The author identifies a number of prerequisites for collectivization: the ones external to the peasantry (village, agriculture) explain motives of the political choice made by the Soviet government at the turn of the 1920s—1930s in favor of collectivization. These external prerequisites are divided into doctrinal and pragmatic. The doctrine that determined collectivization was socialism, and the author identifies the place of the radical communist idea of the Bolsheviks among other Russian socialist projects for uniting peasants into production collectives since the last quarter of the 19th century. Pragmatic prerequisites for collectivization were determined by the government’s goal to obtain agricultural resources for industrialization and militarization of the national economy in the quantities that would exceed possibilities of the equivalent market exchange. Collectivization did have prerequisites within the village community, which allow to understand why this political course was implemented—the author focuses on the peculiarities of the mentality and political culture of the Russian peasantry.

Keywords

agrarian history, collectivization, socialism, peasantry, industrialization in the USSR

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. Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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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.
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Chayanov A.V. The southern border of the prevailing three-field system of farming in the peasant lands of Russia by the early 20th century (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 62-82.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-62-82

Annotation

This is an article of Alexander Chayanov (1888–1937) first published in 1910 in the Agriculture and Forestry. The article is based on the graduate work of Chayanov written at the Moscow Agricultural Institute under the guidance of the Professor of agricultural economy and agricultural statistics A.F. Fortunatov. The article considers farming systems used by peasants on communal lands in the provinces of European Russia in the late 19th—early 20th centuries. Chayanov grouped main systems of the peasant economy into five types: three-field, two-field, many-field, transient (lea tillage), and upland farming. The key sources for the definition and localization of farming systems were the data of non-government (zemstvo) statistics and the descriptions of farming systems provided by local agronomists in a number of provinces. Chayanov also used the ratio of the sown and fallow lands as an indicator of the farming system. He calculated this ratio on the basis of the land statistics data collected by the Central Statistical Committee in 1881 and 1893 in 46 gubernias of European Russia. The results of his work are presented in the cartogram indicating the southern and eastern borders of the prevailing three-field system of farming. This publication is mainly for historians focusing on the agrarian history and the works of Chayanov. The publication with comments was prepared by I. A. Kuznetsov and E. S. Grishin.

Keywords

agrarian history, historical geography, three-field system, peasant economy, A.V. Chayanov

About the authors

Chayanov Alexander V.

Editors: Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Research Laboratory for Economic and Social History, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Grishin Evgeny S., Head of the Department of Historical Cartography and GeoInformation Systems, Research Laboratory for Economic and Social History, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Kuznetsov I.A., Grishin E.S.  A.V. Chayanov as a researcher of the three-field system: A publishers’ preface // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 57-61.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-57-61

Annotation

This is an article of Alexander Chayanov (1888–1937) first published in 1910 in the Agriculture and Forestry. The article is based on the graduate work of Chayanov written at the Moscow Agricultural Institute under the guidance of the Professor of agricultural economy and agricultural statistics A.F. Fortunatov. The article considers farming systems used by peasants on communal lands in the provinces of European Russia in the late 19th—early 20th centuries. Chayanov grouped main systems of the peasant economy into five types: three-field, two-field, many-field, transient (lea tillage), and upland farming. The key sources for the definition and localization of farming systems were the data of non-government (zemstvo) statistics and the descriptions of farming systems provided by local agronomists in a number of provinces. Chayanov also used the ratio of the sown and fallow lands as an indicator of the farming system. He calculated this ratio on the basis of the land statistics data collected by the Central Statistical Committee in 1881 and 1893 in 46 gubernias of European Russia. The results of his work are presented in the cartogram indicating the southern and eastern borders of the prevailing three-field system of farming. This publication is mainly for historians focusing on the agrarian history and the works of Chayanov.

Keywords

Agrarian history, historical geography, three-field system, peasant economy, A.V. Chayanov.

About the authors

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Research Laboratory for Economic and Social History, 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. 
Grishin Evgeny S., Head of the Department of Historical Cartography and GeoInformation Systems, Research Laboratory for Economic and Social History, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Kuznetsov I.A. The agrarian revolution of 1917 in Russia: Is it worth studying economic history and forgetting the sad end? // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 22-44.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-22-44

Abstract

The article considers the possible further studies of the economic history of agriculture and the peasantry of the Russian regions in 1861–1914. The author analyzes the theory of Russian revolutions developed by Boris Mironov and identifies logical contradictions in his argumentation. This theory overvalues the significance of random and subjective factors and underestimates the agrarian overpopulation and economic contradictions determined by the agrarian development. The author’s criticism of the “optimistic” paradigm in the economic history of post-reform Russia outlines the objectives of the study of agricultural development and its social consequences for the peasantry. The article proposes to discuss the idea that economic progress and growth of agricultural production in the Black-Earth regions of the South and South-East with their low production costs were the key factors of the crisis due to the relative overproduction of grain in Russia. Many small peasant farms in the old agricultural center could not compete in the grain market and, thus, were pushed out of it and marginalized, reinforced the natural-consumer activities and lost incentives for intensification of production. Market restrictions determined by the overproduction of grain became an important factor of agrarian overpopulation in the central regions. Institutional constraints that existed long before the Stolypin reform were aggravated by agrarian overpopulation that also created the social base for revolution. The agrarian revolution of 1917 was to strengthen the position of the family-labor economy by eliminating payment for the access to land as the main factor of production.

Keywords

history of Russian revolutions, agrarian revolution, agrarian overpopulation, peasant economy, modernization, B.N. Mironov

About the author

Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Kerblay B. A.V. Chayanov. Evolution of the Russian agrarian thought from 1908 to 1930: At the crossroads (Article of B. Kerblay) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №4. P. 17-68.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-4-17-68

Annotation

The Russian Peasant Studies presents a collection of archival documents related to the publication of Alexander Chayanov’s works in 1967 in France and England, which was prepared by the Professor of Sorbonne University Basile Kerblay. This collection includes the correspondence of Olga Gurevich, the widow of Chayanov, with Basile Kerblay in 1966-1970, and her translation from French of Kerblay’s article on the work of Chayanov. Kerblay’s article was published as a preface to the collected works of Chayanov and became classic. This is the first serious study of the biography and work of Chayanov and of the theory of the Russian organization-production school of the 1920s in Western sociology. This article is published in Russian for the first time. The letters of Kerblay and Olga Gurevich reveal some additional circumstances of the publication of Alexander Chayanov’s works in 1967 and some features of the ideological atmosphere of the USSR at that time. The collection of archival documents in the Russian Peasant Studies includes comments and a brief biography of Olga Gurevich. These documents are a part of the funds of the Russian State Archive of Economics. This publication is dedicated to the anniversary of Chayanov. The publication with comments was prepared by I.A. Kuznetsov and T.A. Savinova.

Keywords

A.V. Chayanov, rural Russia, peasant studies, interdisciplinary research, agrarian policy, Russian revolution, collectivization.

About the authors

Kerblay Basile
Editors: Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, the School of Public Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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Translator: Gurevich Olga