Kovalev A.S. State social policy towards the disabled and elderly in rural areas of the RSFSR in the 1920s–1930s: Ideas and everyday practices // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 77-103.

EDN: JXVRCF

Annotation

The article considers the main principles of the Soviet social policy towards disabled peasants in the 1920s–1930s, when they were the least protected category of citizens. The disabled in cities had priority in receiving state social assistance, while “disabled peasants” were supported on a residual basis. The leading actor of social policy in rural areas was peasant mutual-aid committees (peasant committees) which worked from 1921 to 1930. These committees were primarily responsible for providing social support to disabled rural residents. On the one hand, they were to receive the same types of social assistance as urban residents: pension, one-time financial and in-kind assistance, prosthetics, and employment opportunities. On the other hand, disabled and elderly peasants faced class, social and age-based discrimination when trying to get what was due. In addition to practices of social assistance, in the 1920s– 1930s, there were various projects aimed at improving the social situation of the disabled in rural areas. However, most of such ideas focused on the remaining work capacity of the disabled and elderly, including in collective farms. With the beginning of collectivization, peasant mutual-aid committees were replaced by mutual-aid funds, and the responsibility for supporting the disabled and elderly was given to the working population of collective farms. Due to the lack of sufficient financial resources in collective farms, the disabled and elderly were also assigned work tasks which often ignored their capabilities. The author makes a conclusion about low efficiency of the state social policy measures and low level of satisfaction of the real needs of the disabled and elderly in the village.

Keywords

Peasant mutual-aid committees, collective farms, peasants, disability, pension provision, prosthetics, employment.

About the author

Alexander S. Kovalev, DSc (History), Professor, Department of the History of Russia, World and Regional Civilizations, Siberian Federal University. Svobodny Prosp., 79, Krasnoyarsk, 660041.
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Mikhalenko N.V. Images of peasants in the cheap popular prints of the World War I // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 70-76.

EDN: IEGIBS

Annotation

Propaganda cheap popular prints of the World War I were designed to raise the patriotic spirit of the defenders of the Fatherland, to praise the ingenuity, bravery and resourcefulness of both soldiers and people in the rear, to create an image of the weak and harmless enemy. One of the symbols of the people’s war in both military pictures of the 19th century and in popular prints of the 20th century was the peasant, most often in a red shirt, fighting an enemy with agricultural implements or with bare hands. The bravura signature and visual means of popular prints — the coloristic and dynamic juxtaposition of the hero and enemies, the contrast in size of figures — emphasized the power and strength of the peasant. The image of the peasant woman in a sarafan at war was intended to show the unity of the people fighting the enemy and to emphasize the strong character of the Russian woman. Popular prints of the World War I took many images and plot moves from the pictures of the Patriotic War of 1812; since in the early 20th century, in the artistic environment, interest in folklore and folk art was very high, satirical popular prints became a kind of synthetic genre that absorbed traditional content in new verbal and visual forms.

Keywords

Peasants, World War I, Patriotic War of 1812, collection of D. A. Rovinsky, folk pictures, “Today’s Lubok”, V. V. Mayakovsky, K. S. Malevich.

About the author

Natalia V. Mikhalenko, PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Povarskaya St., 25a, Moscow, 121069, Russia.
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Androsenko S. V. Nicholas Berdyaev’s Thoughts on Human Freedom in the Face of Contemporary Challenges: Technology, Civilization and “the Revolt of the Masses” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 44-67.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-44-67

Annotation

The article reconstructs the ideas of one of the most famous Russian Christian thinkers Nikolai Berdyaev on the man’s relationship with technology, which became more complicated in the 20th century due to both the unprecedented growth of its power and the challenge that the philosopher called “democratization of culture”. On the one hand, technology reveals man’s creative power, and the growth of technology’s power to a certain extent makes man’s life easier. On the other hand, technology and technification in the broader sense mean a mediated and often alienated relationship of man with nature and other people, communities and ultimately to himself. Technification develops a specific engineering perception not only of nature but also of life in general, which carries the threat of dehumanization, i.e., turning of production, cognitive and cultural sphere, natural and urban environment and man himself into something similar to a machine. At the same time, Berdyaev considers the crisis generated by technology, the challenges posed by technification and automation, which tear man away from the mother-earth and cosmic rhythms, accelerate or slow down time, compress or stretch space, thus questioning the very natural order previously experienced as unshakable and given by God, as a positive phenomenon emphasizing the religious meaning of technology. The article shows how Berdyaev’s main intellectual ideas and philosophical-anthropological intuitions can be followed through the challenges of the 21st century.

Keywords

N. A. Berdyaev, man, philosophical anthropology, technology, nature, freedom, culture, civilization, peasants, mass culture, mass society, engineering.

About the author

Sofia V. Androsenko, PhD Student, Philosophy Department, Moscow State University, Press Secretary, St Philaret’s Institute. Tokmakov per., 11, Moscow, 105066.
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Timkin Yu. N. “Face of the village”: Activities of the Vyatka Provincial Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to revitalize rural and volost organizations in 1924–1926 // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №2. P. 89-108.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-2-89-108

Annotation

The author considers the litsom k derevne (‘turning to the village’) policy implemented by the ruling party in 1924–1926. The article is based on the materials of the Central State Archive of the Kirov Region and on the principles of historicism, objectivity and historical institutionalism. The author focuses on the activities of the commission for work in the village of the Vyatka Provincial Committee and its practical measures to create a non-party activist group, attract peasants and strengthen the lower Soviet level. The study of the peasant everyday life in one volost of the province, in particular of the communist peasants’ farms, showed that many members of rural and volost party organizations were not much different from the so-called “well-off village elite” and were closely connected with it. By joining the ruling party, young active peasants got a good chance to improve their social status and make a career. The provincial committee aimed at encouraging poor peasants, hired farm workers, peasants who served in the Red Army, Komsomol members and activists of delegate women’s meetings to join the party by promoting them to various paid positions in the Soviet and party apparatus and cooperation. The author argues that the litsom k derevne policy allowed the party elite to organize the rural poor and farm workers, thus, creating “rural proletariat”, splitting the village, and “making” a “class” of kulaks as its main enemy in the village.

Keywords

Vyatka Province, provincial committee, commission, volost organizations of the RCP(B), communists, peasants, poor people, kulaks.

About the author

Yuri N. Timkin, PhD (History), Associate Professor, Department of Theory and History of State and Law, Vyatka State University. Moskovskaya St., 36, Kirov, 610000, Russia.
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Goryushkina N. E. Peasants’ exercise of the rights to alcohol trade in excise Russia (1863–1894) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №2. P. 39-60.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-2-39-60

Annotation

The author considers the peasants’ rights to open or close pubs under the excise system in Russia. Such an analysis is important for understanding the communal legal consciousness, peasant perception of the alcohol trade and consumption, external and internal factors of peasant behavior at communal gatherings, and the government reasons for refusing free alcohol trade in the 1890s. Rural peasant community was considered by the government as a stronghold of national stability, sobriety and order; therefore, it was given the right to authorize or prohibit the sale of alcohol in villages. In fact, moral principles did not prevail in the communal perception of alcohol trade. Most decisions of peasant gatherings had no moral basis, and a permission to open a pub was usually based on the wine merchant’s bribe. Despite legislative prohibitions, peasant gatherings accepted backsheesh in alcohol, money or their combination. In the excise period, the number of pubs remained high, there was a monopolization trend, and drunkenness was a serious social problem. The author argues that all attempts to make peasants guardians of the state interest in alcohol trade were unsuccessful. The ease with which peasant votes were bought, omnipotence of rural authorities, and peasant dependence on the wine merchant forced the government to involve provincial and district authorities in the public control of alcohol trade. However, the result did not meet expectations; thereby, the government banned free alcohol trade and introduced wine monopoly.

Keywords

Peasants, excise reform, (free) alcohol trade, pub, peasant gathering and its decisions, sobriety.

About the author

Natalya E. Goryushkina, DSc (History), Head of the Department of History and SocialCultural Services, Southwestern State University. 50 years of October St., 94, 305040, Kursk, Russia.
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Crovetto M. M. Peasants and agricultural wageworkers in Argentina in the 20th — 21st centuries: Some paradoxes of the dichotomy ‘rural–urban’ // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №4. P. 72-82.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-4-72-82

Annotation

The article proposes an unusual starting point to consider the peasantry in Argentina — the concept of rurality. This paper is based on the already highly debated conceptualizations of the rural–urban question in dichotomous terms; the author develops an analytical approach that implies a complex perspective of spatiality in non-binary forms. Such a task involves the integration of other variables in the study of societies connected with the agrarian worlds, already stripped of obsolete univocal characteristics. To solve this task, the author revises some of the discussions of peasant decomposition and wage earning in Argentina. These debates have renewed the understanding of the present peasant and agricultural wage-earning in Argentina, given that historically there were only peasants in the ‘non-pampean’ area (outside the Pampas region). It was not until the 1960 that the peasant self-perceptions and organizations emerged under the slowing demand for labor in the industrial sector. After the analysis of documentary sources in various regions of the country, the author argues that there are rural workers of non-peasant origin, which can be empirically proved. They depend on subsistence activities with the classic peasant features. Agricultural workers and inhabitants of rural worlds are not necessarily the same subjects mobilized daily and being the result of the agro-industrial activities since the 1980s. Since then, they have acquired typical characteristics of the globalized capitalist mode of production. Thus, paradoxically, in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, in some regions of Argentina globalization creates the peasantry.

Keywords

Peasants, agricultural wageworkers, rural societies, urban societies, Argentina, 21st century.

About the author

Crovetto María Marcela, DSc (Social Sciences), Adjunct Researcher, National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Gino Germani Research Institute; Professor, Sociology Department, Social Sciences Faculty, University of Buenos Aires. J. E. Uriburu St., 950, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1414.
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Ippolitov V.A. Factors affecting the health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s (on the example of the Tambov Province) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №2. P. 46-63.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-2-46-63

Annotation

The author identifies factors that affected peasants’ health in the 1920s based on the unpublished documents of the Health Department of the Executive Committee of the Tambov Regional Council of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies from the State Archives of the Tambov Region. The article focuses on the generational history of rural society, on the “revolutionary turning point” generation, whose representatives were born at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, mainly in the 1890s. The author shows the influence of malnutrition and famine of 1924–1925 on the health of rural residents and the negative consequences of eating various food substitutes and concludes that the famine affected the most the poorest peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation. The article presents a comparison of positive and negative factors affecting peasants’ health, focusing on the issues of medical care, morbidity, nutrition, water supply and other factors of the population health status. The author argues that the chronic underfunding of the healthcare system did not allow to provide the rural population with quality medical care, and malaria and syphilis were the most common diseases. The author makes a conclusion about the unsatisfactory health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s, referring to the death and birth rates in the countryside and to the relationship between the demographic behavior and depeasantization.

Keywords

Peasants, famine, epidemic, mortality, healthcare, party, NEP, generations.

About the author

Vladimir A. Ippolitov, PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Tambov State Technical University. Sovetskaya St., 106/5, Tambov, 392000.
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Slezin A.A. The conflict of generations in the spiritual sphere of rural society in the second half of the 1920s // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №1. P. 45-66.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-1-45-66

Annotation

The author identifies the anti-religious aspects of the Soviet “turning to the village” policy, focusing on the main directions in the evolution of anti-religious activities of the communist youth in the mid-1920s and on the changes in the value orientations of peasant generations in the critical period of the Russian history. The study aims at assessing the peasantry’s reaction to the “revolutionary turn” generation (born at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries) activities and the reasons for the generational conflict, based on the analysis of the spiritual sphere of the Russian village. The author argues that this conflict turned into an intergenerational gap in the Russian village, which is an understudied aspect of the village split into antagonistic camps, used by the Party leadership to accelerate socialist modernization. The anti-religious activities of communist organizations after the “turning to the village” policy seemed to significantly soften forms and methods of the work with the peasantry, but a more thorough analysis shows that such activities remained a powerful factor of the conflict. For instance, value orientations of peasant generations were becoming more different. The spiritual legacy, which the “revolutionary turn” generation was to pass on to its successors, was rejected by the younger generation. The “new faith” completely denied the old traditions and irreconcilable theomachism. Peasants of the “revolutionary turn” generation expressed their attitude to anti-religious activities in the form of hooliganism, and radical measures were a response. The study of the national youth movement (including the negative one) and of the features of the intergenerational conflict in the Russian village are of particular relevance in the search for an educational model that meets the contemporary demands of the state and society.

Keywords

Peasants, religion, generations, revolutionary turn, youth, Komsomol, intergenerational gap, “turning to the village” policy, atheist alliance, NEP.

About the author

Anatoly A. Slezin, DSc (History), Chief Researcher, Tambov State Technical University, Sovetskaya St., 106/5, Tambov, 392000.
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Fedotova A. A. “Cattle grazing is prohibited after the bison was killed in Białowieża Forest”: Woodland grazing as a traditional form of the peasant forest management in the long 19th century // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №3. P. 55-88.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-3-55-88

Annotation

The article considers one of the key resources for peasants in Eastern Europe — wood pastures. Based on the new archival materials, the author shows that peasant communities, in the spirit of James Scott, consistently sabotaged the state efforts to ban woodland grazing. During the long 19th century, the state was strengthening control over many aspects of the rural economic life, which gradually made peasant conflicts with the state forest administration more acute. The author applies the casestudy approach to the relationships of peasants and local and metropolitan administration in Białowieża Forest. Its unique feature is a long history of the effective protection measures which facilitated finding sources on the topic. The research revealed the struggle for the control over forest resources between peasants and officials as experts in the ‘rational’ forestry. In the long 19th century, peasants used all available means of resistance: petitions to the authorities of all levels, sabotage of administrative orders, bribes to forestry personnel, and direct violations of orders. The decades of conflicts prove that peasant communities only partially followed the rules introduced by the state administration which tried to change the principles of forestry management to make forests more profitable and ‘rational’. The administration spent significant resources to control wood grazing but achieved very modest results in terms of both reducing the number of livestock in forests and collecting compensation for the damage from ungulates. In the second half of the 19th — early 20th century, there were the most important changes associated with the more consistent and strict control over traditional forest resources, especially in 1889–1915. The administration’s reactions to the peasant petitions were sympathetic and positive at the provincial and ministerial levels, which can be explained by the shortage of pasture and fodder and the general paternalistic sentiments of the government. The administration tried not so much to increase income from wood grazing as to ‘accustom’ peasants to the idea that forests were rather private or state than public property.

Keywords

Natural resources, Białowieża Forest, long 19th century, wood pastures, peasants, Russian Empire.

About the author

Anastasia A. Fedotova, PhD (Biology), Senior Researcher, Saint Petersburg Branch, S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Universitetskaya Nab., 5/2, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russia.
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Chayanov A.V. Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy (Part 2) (Article of A.V. Chayanov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 6-55.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-6-55

Annotation

The second part of Chayanov’s book Main Ideas and Methods of Social Agronomy consists of chapters presenting the specific features of the Russian social-agronomic work among the peasantry. In the first chapters (published in the previous issue of the Russian Peasant Studies), Chayanov focused on the strategic and worldview aspects of social agronomy; in the second part, he analyzes tactical directions of social-agronomic work: methods of oral, social-agronomic propaganda; conversations, lectures, courses and agronomic consulting; agricultural exhibitions, demonstration plots, model farms and peasant excursions; agricultural warehouses, rental points and grain-cleaning stations; organizational work of the agronomist; social agronomy and cooperation; the equipment of the agronomic station; registration and evaluation of social-agronomic activities. In all these chapters, Chayanov shows how creative the work of the social agronomist should be, how many diverse and unexpected challenges he faces when interacting with peasant communities, audiences and households. The interaction of social agronomy with another influential institution—agricultural cooperation—is of particular interest. Chayanov analyzes in detail the contradictions and distinctions in the work of agronomists and cooperators, in their common tasks of developing and improving the peasant life. Despite the fact that the book was published a hundred years ago, it is not only of historical interest but presents many valuable answers and practical recommendations for the contemporary agricultural consulting and rural development activists.
The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

social agronomy, peasants, agricultural education, agrarian reform, agricultural cooperation

About the authors

Alexander V. Chayanov

Editor: Alexander M. Nikulin, 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: Irina V. Trotsuk, 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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