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.
Е-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.
Uleri F. Capitalism and the peasant mode of production: A Chayanovian analysis // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №3. P. 43-60.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-43-60
Annotation
Although the disappearance of the peasantry under capitalism was repeatedly announced, peasants are still here, and the peasant mode of production still serves as a livelihood basis for millions of rural households. Based on Chayanov’s ideas, the article identifies some reasons for this resistance to capitalism by describing the internal functional logic of the peasant economy and the difference of the peasant mode of production from the capitalist one. The complexity and spatial-temporal variability of agricultural production and social-economic formations of the mature capitalism are replacing agriculture in the process of changes that consist of multiple transformations (Geels, 2002; van der Ploeg, 2008). One of the most debated agrarian changes is the trajectories of rural development under the persistence or dissolution of the peasant mode of production in the course of modernization that characterizes the evolution and consolidation of capitalist societies. The fate of the peasantry, or the “peasant question”, is the core part of the larger debate on the “agrarian question”, which the Marxist political economy defines as a set of agrarian transformations leading to the penetration of capitalist relations into agriculture and to the transfer from pre-capitalist, feudal or semi-feudal modes of production to capitalism (McMichael, 2006; Akram-Lodhi, Kay, 2010a; 2010b; Lerche, 2014). However today the empirical scenario is contrary to the Marxist perspective for the peasant mode of production expands and reappears in the repeasantization as a viable alternative to the capitalist agriculture (Domínguez, 2012; Corrado, 2013; Carrosio, 2014; van der Berg et al., 2018). The author presents an overview of the classical conceptualizations of the fate of the peasantry and explains “why peasants are still here” by the spatially and temporally contextualized analysis of the peasant economy in the microeconomic perspective with the help of the theory of peasant economy (TPE) proposed by Chayanov in the early 20th century.
Keywords
peasantry, capitalism, Chayanov, capital, labor
About the author
Uleri Francesca, PhD Researcher, Agrisystem Doctoral School, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza (Italy).
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
«Land hunger» of the Italian peasantry: From the unification of the country to the agrarian reform
Aug 07 2019Savino 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.
Il'inykh V.A. Organization of the agronomic services in Siberia in the 1920s: Discourse and choice // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 83-107.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-83-107
Annotation
The article presents the expert discourse on the optimal structure of the agricultural network in Siberia in the 1920s and its institutionalization in the agronomic services in the village. The author conducts his analysis taking into account the agrarian policy of the Soviet state and the ideological-theoretical struggle in the agrarian science; he also focuses on the views of A.V. Chayanov. Before the revolution, there were two systems of agronomic assistance in Russia. The state agricultural assistance was sectoral and was provided in large districts. The zemstvo (public) assistance was local and complex. In Siberia in the early 20th century, the state agronomy prevailed. After the establishment of the Soviet power in the region, the discussion began between supporters of the sectoral, local and district systems of the agricultural network. The People’s Commissariat of Agriculture recommended the widespread introduction of the local agricultural network; and there were also local experiments with other systems. In the mid1920s, under the administrative reform, the local-district system was chosen, but soon it was changed into the district one. The Soviet agronomic system developed under the NEP was largely based on the principles of pre-revolutionary social agronomy. The distinctive feature of the Soviet agricultural assistance was its nationalization. Theorists of the public agronomy positively evaluated this feature of the Soviet agricultural system, which, in their opinion, allowed efficient rationalization of the peasant economy. In the late 1920s, the USSR abandoned the basic principles of public agronomy and later eliminated the agronomic assistance system of the NEP period.
Keywords
agriculture, peasantry, land authorities, agronomic services, NEP, A.V. Chayanov
About the author
Il’inykh Vladimir A., DSc (History), Head of the Department 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.
Uzun V.Ya., Nikulin A.M. “I often wondered what really useful could be done for peasants” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №3. P. 128-161.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-3-128-161
Annotation
In his biographical interview for the Russian Peasant Studies, Vasily Yakimovich Uzun remembers the milestones of his life from the hungry peasant childhood in the Gagauz village to the mature agrarian scientist working in one of the leading Russian research institutions, and considers issues of efficient interaction of theory and practice, economics and politics in ensuring the sustainability of rural-urban development and norms of social justice. In his memoirs, the scientist reconstructs events of his rural war and post-war childhood related to school years and peasant and collective-farm labor, years of studies at the agricultural institute and work as an agronomist on a collective farm, decision to start a scientific career and study economic-mathematical methods of agricultural management that were actual in the 1960–1970s. Then V.V. Uzun focuses on the political and economic events of the 1980s with their dramatic attempts in the period of both stagnation and perestroika to develop a system of comprehensive measures for the effective agrarian reform of the Soviet economy. The interview provides a detailed review of the post-Soviet period of the Russian rural development, in particular of the Nizhny Novgorod experiments on the market reform of large collective farms. The scientific analysis of political-economic issues of rural development is accompanied by characteristic personal examples and anecdotes from the life of Vasily Yakimovich Uzun.
Keywords
Agrarian economy, Gagauz village, peasantry, economic-mathematical methods, perestroika, theory and practice.
About the authors
Uzun Vasily Ya., DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Center for Agro-Food Policy, 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.
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.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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
Chayanov Alexander V.
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.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Trotsuk Irina V., 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.
Trotsuk Irina V., 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
Babashkin Vladimir V., 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.
Boni Ludmila D., DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117997, Nakhimovsky Av., 32.
Gordon Alexander V., 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.
Kisiel Roman, 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.
Nikulin Alexander M., 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.
Pugacheva Marina G., 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.
Trotsuk Irina V., 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
Gordon Alexander V., 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.
Nikulin Alexander M., 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.
Russian Peasant Studies. Scientific journal
Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
- Publisher: Delo Publishing, RANEPA
- Editor-in-Chief: Nikulin Alexander
- ISSN 2500-1809 (Print), ISSN 2949-2564 (Online)
- Founded in 2016
- Frequency: four issues per year (March, June, September, December)
- Open Access: All volumes and articles can be downloaded for free in the PDF format by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)..
- Author fees: free of chagre
- Indexation: Russian Science Citation Index, Russian Science Citation Index Core, List of Journals approved by Russian Hihger Attestation committee (Ministry for Sciende and Education), Scopus, UlrichWeb Global Serials Directory, European reference index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIHPLUS), CNKI scholar, Sherpa Romeo , AGRIS
- Russian registration number: PI FS77-65824 27-May-2016
Hard copies of the journal can be purchased at the Delo e-store or by subscription in the "Press of Russia" Agency (subscription index - Т81017).
Scimagio rating
e-issn
Friends and Partners
Rosa Luxemburg foundation
was a partner of Russian Peasant Studies before it was removed from list of approved foundations in 2022