Chayanov A.V. What is the Agrarian Question? (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №2. P. 6-33.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-2-6-33
Annotation
This text is a translation into English of the brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’?” published by A.Chayanov in the summer of 1917, between the February and October Revolutions in Russia.
Young 29-year-old professor Chayanov took an active part in the revolutionary events of 1917, trying to justify the fine-drawn plan for agrarian reforms for the new Russia. Chayanov became one of the initiators of the creation of the League for Agrarian Reforms, which included many leading agrarians of various political trends in Russia with a view to discussing and developing a holistic strategy for agrarian reforms in Russia.
The popular-science version of his views on agrarian reform, summarizing the most varied ideas of the League for Agrarian Reforms, Chayanov presented in the brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’”.
In the ideological basis of this work lies the realization of the revolutionary demand “Land to the working people!”, which affirmed the necessity of transferring the landlord’s land into the hands of the peasantry. Chayanov considered various options for such a transition of land in the form of agrarian programs of socialization, nationalization, municipalization of land, a single land tax, and the system of state regulation of land ownership.
In reforming Chayanov proposed to be guided by two principles: 1) the greatest productivity of peasant labor applied to the land; 2) democratization of the distribution of national income. The extensive development of peasant cooperation was to ensure the implementation of these principles. Chayanov also stressed in every possible way the importance of taking into account regional and national peculiarities in resolving the agrarian question in such a huge country as Russia.
Personally, Chayanov was inclined to the way of agrarian reforms combining state regulation of land ownership and progressive taxation. Though, the October Revolution under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and left-wing socialist revolutionaries in their “Decree on Land” declared the implementation of the most radical version of agrarian reforms — the socialization of the land, stopping the search for the best compromise agrarian solutions that Chayanov and his colleagues tried to implement in the League for Agrarian reforms.
Chayanov’s brochure “What is the ‘Agrarian Question’?” is a model of theoretical and practical search for alternatives to the fine-drawn solution of the agrarian question in the interests of the peasants on the basis of a broad political coalition of democratic forces.
Keywords
Agrarian reform, peasantry, revolution, A.V. Chayanov.
About the authors
Alexander V. Chayanov
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Fundamental Sociology Higher School of Economics, Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
van der Ploeg J. D. The role of Chayanovian ideas in Peasant Studies, and in the art of farming // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 6-27.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-6-27
Annotation
This article is an abridged version of the book by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg “Peasants and the Art of Farming. A Chayanovian Manifesto”—the second one in the series of “little books on big ideas” in the sphere of agrarian transformations established by Saturnino (Jun) Borras. The author identifies key features of the structure and dynamics of peasant agriculture, and its historically variable characteristics that determine labour, production and social processes and relationships. Van der Ploeg believes that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and ensuring sustainable rural development. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. Based on the ideas of Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov, the author seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty. The author examines two main balances identified by Chayanov—the labour-consumer balance and the balance of utility and drudgery, as well as a number of other interacting balances (between people and living nature, of production and reproduction, of internal and external resources, of scale and intensity, etc.), and emphasizes their social, economic and political importance in the past and present. The author also considers the position of peasant agriculture in the wider social context focusing on the town-country relations, state-peasantry relations, and on the balance of agrarian growth and demographic growth. At the end of the article, there is an overview of different models and mechanisms for increasing productivity and intensification, the choice of which is determined by the dominant discourse (i.e. by the state priorities reflected in agrarian programs and reforms, and by the position of agrarian sciences in designing the future of agriculture and assessing the role of peasantry), and a brief description of the current trends of repeasantization in Europe.
Keywords
peasantry, peasant farming, Chayanov, interacting balances, the state, agricultural sciences, the agrarian question, repeasantization, productivity (yeilds), intensification
About the authors
van der Ploeg Jan Douwe, Professor at the Wageningen University (the Netherlands) Droevendaalsesteeg 4, 6708 PB Wageningen and at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Vallet G. The neglected roots of Switzerland’s national economy: The key role of peasantry // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №4. P. 56-69.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-56-69
Annotation
The article aims to identify the role of peasantry in the Swiss national production system and in the Swiss society in general. There is an evident paradox when considering the peasantry in Switzerland: though its economic power has been decreasing over time, its political power remains. The author uses the archival data to resolve this paradox and prove the key role of the Swiss peasantry in Switzerland from the historical and institutional perspectives in creating the “Swiss model” based on money. Therefore, the Swiss peasantry has always been involved in the national decision-making and represents the cultural basis of the local scale (centripetal forces) in this small open economy (centrifugal forces). The article focuses on the Swiss case to reveal the relationship between the peasantry as a social group with specific functions and the national production system. The latter refers to the system of different sectors of the national economy, which requires a “glue” in the form of monetary policies that are consistent with economic and social structures. According to Schumpeter, “nothing demonstrates so clearly what a people is made of than how it conducts its monetary policy… everything that a people desires, does, suffers, is reflected in a people’s monetary system” (Schumpeter, 2014: xiv). The article aims to explain the extent to which peasants as a social group matter in the Swiss national production system. The author believes that this group has also participated in developing a strong economic system in Switzerland relying on the Swiss franc, therefore the term “peasantry” implies both economic and cultural features in the historical context. The first part of the article identifies current characteristics of Swiss peasants as a social group; the second part describes their role in the 1930s, i.e. in the development of the strong national production system; and the third part sums up the first two by explaining the key role of peasantry in Switzerland in a broad sense.
Keywords
Switzerland, peasantry, national history, national production system, economic and social model, social and economic institutions
About the author
Vallet Guillaume, Associate Professor in economics and sociology, Department of Economics, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, BP 47, 38040.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Russia, Poland, and China: Models of post-socialist rural development. Round table // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 120-151.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-120-151
Annotation
This article is a transcript of the round table at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on March 27, which focused on the comparative analysis of the strategic directions of post-socialist rural development in the People’s Republic of China, the Polish People’s Republic and the Russian Federation. Professor Roman Kisiel made a presentation on the problems of Polish rural economy; professor Yan Hairong highlighted the dialectics of contradictions between collective and private farming in China. To a certain extent the Russian scientists L.D. Boni, V.V. Babashkin, and A.V. Gordon became the co-presenters of the Polish and Chinese colleagues when discussing such problems of rural development as the interaction of large and small-scale agrarian production, capitalist, family and collective forms of agriculture, economy and ecology, the city and village, and especially the national agrarian policies regulating all the above. In many ways, China and Poland turned out to be the poles of political and social-cultural agrarian transformations, which determine possible variations of regional models of rural-urban development in Russia. The round table discussion can be useful not only for academic scientists, but also for practitioners involved in developing state and municipal agrarian policies that are to take into account international agrarian experience.
Keywords
peasantry, land ownership, agrarian reforms, rural development, comparative studies, China, Poland, Russia
About the authors
Vladimir V. Babashkin., Professor, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ludmila D. Boni, DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117997, Nakhimovsky Av., 32.
Alexander V. Gordon, DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Roman Kisiel, Professor of Economic Science, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. 10-719 Olsztyn, ul. Oczapowskiego 4.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571, Russia
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Marina G. Pugacheva, Senior Researcher, Centre for Fundamental Sociology Higher School of Economics, Deputy Editor Russian Sociological Review, Staraya Basmannaya str., 21/4, Room A205, Moscow, Russian Federation 105066.
Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Hairong Yan, Professor, Hong Kong, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Gordon A.V., Nikulin A.M. “From a ‘commune member’ to the economic agent—a farmer, an ‘owner and hard worker’...” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №2. P. 33-52.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-33-52
Annotation
The journal “Russian Peasant Studies” starts a new section “An interview with a researcher” to discuss with the leading Russian and foreign scientists the interdisciplinary problems of the history and the current issues of peasant studies and agrarian science. The first interview was conducted by Alexander Nikulin, the editor of the journal, with the Russian historian Alexander Gordon, the head of the East and South-East Asia section of the INION RAS. He made a significant contribution to the development of Russian peasant studies and their integration in the world historical and cultural tradition. The interview questions consider the relationship of agrarian science and peasant studies, the role of regional factors in the development of peasant studies in France, the Middle and Far East, Southeast Asia and Russia, the contribution of Russian and foreign scientists, writers and intellectuals to the institutionalization of peasant studies, and the current strategies in their development. However, the interview rather focuses on the scientific biography of Alexander Gordon—a researcher and a historian who emphasized the importance of the commune in peasant culture and of the peasant identity as a land owner and a hard worker.
Keywords
commune, peasantry, agrarian reforms, peasant studies, Asia, Europe, the USSR, Russia
About the authors
Alexander V. Gordon., DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Alexander M. Nikulin., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Russia, 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Contemporary Peasant Studies, and Agrarian History of Russia in the XX Century. Round table.
Feb 06 2017Contemporary Peasant Studies, and Agrarian History of Russia in the XX Century. Round table. // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 68-92
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-68-92
Annotation
This publication is a transcript of the round table dedicated to the presentation of the book “Contemporary Peasant Studies, and Agrarian History of Russia in the XX Century” that took place on March 18, 2016 at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences within the XXIII International Symposium “The Paths of Russia. North–South”. The book consists of the materials of the theoretical seminars “Modern Theories of Agrarian Development” that worked in 1992–2000 under the direction of Viktor Danilov and Teodor Shanin, made a significant contribution to the development of post-Soviet agrarian historiography, and for several decades united Russian and foreign researchers of different generations. The participants of the round table discussed the development of Russian and foreign Peasant Studies in the 1960s — 1990s, their current state, problems and prospects. In particular, it was repeatedly noted that one can argue about whether or not there are real peasants in today’s Russia, however, there is no doubt about the preservation of peasant consciousness features in the Russian population. The round table participants shared their personal memories about theoretical seminars of Shanin-Danilov, their experience of the field anthropological and sociological research and scientific discussions.
Keywords
Peasant Studies, agrarian seminar, peasantry, rural sociology, agrarian history, Russian history, post-Soviet agrarian historiography
Participants
Участники круглого стола: Валерий Георгиевич Виноградский, д-р филос. наук, Институт аграрных проблем РАН (Саратов); Александр Владимирович Гордон, д-р ист. наук, профессор, ИНИОН РАН ; Василий Васильевич Зверев, д-р ист. наук, профессор РАНХиГС ; Николай Алексеевич Ивницкий, д-р ист. наук, профессор; Виктор Викторович Кондрашин, д-р ист. наук, профессор, член Совета Федерации (Пенза); Авенир Павлович Корелин, д-р ист. наук, профессор, ИРИ РАН ; Павел Петрович Марченя, канд. ист. наук, Московский университет МВД России; Сергей Анатольевич Никольский, д-р филос. наук, профессор, ИФ РАН ; Сергей Юрьевич Разин, Институт гуманитарного образования и информационных технологий; Игорь Николаевич Слепнёв, канд. ист. наук, РГНФ ; Сергей Иванович Толстов, канд. ист. наук (Томск); Теодор Шанин, профессор, Манчестерский университет, Московская высшая школа социальных и экономических наук; Галина Александровна Ястребинская, канд. экон. наук, Всероссийский институт аграрных проблем и информатики. Ведущий — редактор книги «Современное крестьяноведение и аграрная история России в XX веке» д-р ист. наук, профессор РАНХиГС Владимир Валентинович Бабашкин.
Scientific life
- Russian Peasant Studies in Russian State index of scientific journals ("white list")
Dear colleagues!
Our journal, along with other scientific journals published by RANEPA, is included in the Russian State List of Scientific Publications (the "White List").
Information about the Russian State List of Scientific Journals
Journal profile at the Russian Center for Scientific Information
Press release on the RANEPA websiteWe are pleased that the results of our work over the 10 years of the journal's existence have been so highly recognized!
Friends and Partners
