Alekseev A.I., Nikulin A.M. “Geography has always ‘yearned for complexity’” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №1. P. 143-166.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-1-143-166

Annotation

In the interview, the Russian geographer A.I. Alekseev considers those facts of his biography that determined his career in geography, key research projects and publications, and also discusses methodology and theory of geography. The interview focuses on rural geography and regions in which Alekseev conducted his studies —from the Non-Black-Earth region and Kuban to the Far East and Altai. Alekseev paid special attention to the Soviet history of rural geography, theory and practice of decision-making in the Soviet agrarian transformations, rural-urban migrations, rural settlement and the ethnic factor in rural geography. He also considered teaching of geography in secondary and higher school, the quality of geography textbooks and the change of generations in geography. The interview combines discussion of geographical theories with life stories of geographers who participated in the field rural research of Alekseev. The interview concludes with the issue of the relationship between quantitative and qualitative approaches in rural studies (‘complex research’) and with the aphorisms of classics of social-economic geography on the features of studying and understanding the rural development.

Keywords

economic geography, rural geography, theoretical geography, rural regions, rural settlement, N.N. Baransky, Yu.G. Saushkin, S.A. Kovalev, A.N. Rakitnikov, A.N. Chelintsev, A.A. Rybnikov

About the authors

Alekseev Alexander I., DSc (Geography), Professor, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119991, Moscow, Lenin Hills, 1.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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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.
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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.
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Berelowitch A., Nikulin A.M. “My constant desire is to establish relations between the cultures of France and Russia ...” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №4. P. 96-114.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-4-96-114

Annotation

In his interview, the French researcher Alexis Berelowitch considers his Russian family roots and the desire to combine French and Russian cultures in his life through different types of cooperation in the Russian and French historical-sociological projects. He first visited Russia as a teenager in a Moscow pioneer camp in the late 1950s, then he worked as a young volunteer teacher of French at the Minsk State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in the late 1960s, and after that he chose the key topic of his research—the development of the nationalist trend among village-writers in the Soviet Union. Since perestroika Berelowitch has participated in Russian-French scientific projects of sociologists who studied the transformations of public opinion under the collapse of the USSR, and in Russian-French scientific projects of historians who studied the early Soviet period of the agrarian history of the 1920s—1930s. Alexis Berelowitch made a great contribution to the development of cultural and scientific relations between France and Russia as a cultural attaché of the French Embassy in the mid-1990s and as a director of the French Scientific Center in Moscow (2002-2006). The interview pays special attention to his personal memories of such remarkable researchers of the Russian peasantry as Basile Kerblay, Moshe Levin, Viktor Danilov and Teodor Shanin.

Keywords

Peasant Studies, perestroika, Russia, USSR, France, university science, Kerblay, Levin, Danilov, Shanin

About the authors

Berelowitch Alexis, University Paris — Sorbonne (Paris IV). France, Paris-5, Rue VictorCousin, 1.
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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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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.
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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.
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Schneider S., Nikulin A.M. “In the joint comparative studies, there is much we can learn from each other” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №3. P. 167-185.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-167-185

Annotation

In the autobiographical interview, Sergio Schneider, a leading Brazilian sociologist in the field of sociology of rural development and professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, reconstructs his scientific career and considers dramatic changes in the life of rural and urban communities of Brazil in the late 20th—early 21st century. In particular, the interview focuses on the development of rural sociology in Brazil, its institutionalization, and research interests of those Brazilian social scientists that determined the development of rural sociology and were the teachers of Sergio Schneider. The development of rural sociology in Brazil is presented as influenced by the German, French, American and English historical-sociological traditions of the study of the agrarian question and interaction of the city and the village. The interview emphasizes the significance of A.V. Chayanov’s intellectual heritage for the worldview of Sergio Schneider and Brazilian rural sociology in general. Sergio Schneider stresses the importance of his personal activist position that has always helped him in the search for interaction between politics and science. In conclusion, he raises the question of the development of comparative Brazil-Russian-Chinese rural-urban studies, in which he currently participates.

Keywords

Brazil, sociology, regions, peasantry, university science, rural development, Marxism, Chayanov

About the authors

Schneider Sergio, DSc (Sociology), Professor of Sociology of Rural Development and Food Studies, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Av. Paulo Gama, 110, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 90040-060.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Kiselev S.V., Nikulin A.M. “Culture is a factor of labor productivity” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 160-176.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-160-176

Annotation

In his interview to the Russian Peasant Studies, Sergei Kiselev, the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, refers to the facts of his biography to provide an extensive overview of the evolution of some important approaches in the Russian and foreign agrarian economic science and politics in the late 20th—early 21st centuries. The interview focuses on the agrarian and economic policy of the perestroika, the creation of the Agrarian Institute headed by the Academician A.A. Nikonov, the interaction of the state regulation of agriculture with emerging market-economy institutions and relations. One of the topics of the interview is the long-term accession of Russia to the WTO as connected with negotiations on various areas of the economy and especially on agriculture, in which Kiselev took part. The interview also describes the studies of foreign agrarian economies, especially of the USA, which were conducted by meetings of Kiselev with American farmers, scientists and businessmen. When describing the current development of the Russian agriculture Kiselev stresses that Russia has reached a plateau of economic indicators, and to increase them the country needs a substantial increase in agricultural labor productivity, which depends not only on the successes of the national economy as a whole, but also on the quality of agricultural science and education, and the most important factor of their successful improvement is culture in the most extensive and deep meaning of the word.

Keywords

agrarian economy, agrarian policy, agricultural education, perestroika, WTO, farming, labor productivity, culture

About the authors

Kiselev Sergei V., DSc (Economics), Professor, Head of the Department of Agroeconomics, Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119992, Moscow, Leninsky Gory, New Building, Faculty of Economics, Room 422.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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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. 
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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; Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571. 
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Nefedova T.G., Nikulin A.M. “You have to work, and they will find you and will offer you everything” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 123-144.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-123-144

Annotation

In her interview, Tatiana Nefedova, a Chief Researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, tells about her research interests that had formed already in childhood and brought her to the geographical faculty of the Moscow State University, and about her further professional development. As a true geographer, the author traveled a lot all over Russia and the world, participated in different interdisciplinary geographical projects, and at first they were not agricultural. Nevertheless, T.G. Nefedova made a significant scientific contribution to the study and development of rural post-Soviet Russia. At the same time her cross-cultural comparative studies of rural Russia and other countries of the world—Europe and Asia—are no less important. In her interview, she also focuses on various methods to study the spatial development, on the perception and reflections on the poly-scale nature of space, on the diversity of regionality as the most important factor of rural development, and on the ratio of quantitative and qualitative research methods. One of the special topics of the interview is the relationship of the scientist and the authorities. Should a scientist seek power and strive to in fluence the state decision-making with his findings despite the threat of turning from a scientist into a politician or an official? In conclusion, new plans and projects of geographical studies of rural Russia are discussed, for instance, the study of such a combination of factors of social development as the long-inhabited territories, social capital, social mobility, agglomerations, summer residents, and cultural heritage.

Keywords

geography, regions, rural Russia, research methods, rural households, social capital, agglomerations

About the authors

Nefedova Tatyana G., DSc (Geography), Chief Researcher, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; 119017, Moscow, Staromonetny per., 29.
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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.
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Makarov N.P. At the great crossroads. The comparative analysis of the evolution of agriculture in China, the United States of North America, the USSR, and Western Europe (Article of N.P. Makarov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 6-21.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-6-21

Abstract

This article published in the mid-1920s in the Peasant International was written by an outstanding Russian agrarian scientist and a prominent representative of the organization-production school Nikolai Pavlovich Makarov (1887–1980). It is quite strange that this article was not listed in the bibliographies of Makarov’s works although it is absolutely important for the understanding of the evolution of world agriculture in the 20th century. Moreover, the reader will see that in the second half of the 1920s the ideas of this article were developed in the works of other representatives of the organization-production school — A.V. Chayanov, G.S. Studensky, A.A. Rybnikov. As the title and the foreword of the article show, the author seeks to provide an analytical description of the main directions of the world agrarian evolution of the 1920s and its possible alternatives on the example of four main macro-regions of world agriculture: the USA, China, Western Europe and Russia. First the author focuses on the two so-called “poles” of agrarian development — the United States and China — and argues that “old” labor-intensive agrarian China and the “young” capital-intensive agrarian United States are the exact opposites of each other. It is between these poles that the paths of the agricultural evolution of most countries of the world, including Europe and Russia, are located. Makarov concludes with a preliminary diagnosis of the approaching “great agrarian crossroads” of world agriculture. The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

agriculture, USA, China, Western Europe, Russia, agrarian evolution, peasants, farmers

About the authors

Makarov Nikolai Pavlovich

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. 
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