Arkhipova M.N. Management models of the northern Russian village in the post-perestroika period // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №3. P. 129-143.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-3-129-143
Annotation
The article considers the management practices of the North-European Russian villagers in the post-perestroika period. Based on the field data, the author examines the practices of the heads of rural administrations in one district of the Arkhangelsk Region. The main field method were ethnographic interviews with villagers of the Arkhangelsk Region, who used to hold or has held leadership positions in rural administrations. The study shows that many villagers remember the Soviet past with nostalgia, which is explained by its special qualities — ‘stability’, ‘collectivism’, ‘mutual assistance’, ‘confidence in the future’. The author argues that there is some correlation between gender and chosen management models: as a rule, women emphasize the principles of collectivism and mutual assistance, focus on helping the most vulnerable groups in their villages (unemployed, single mothers, etc.); while men prefer administrative resources and personal connections, often ignoring the needs of their fellow villagers. The study showed that in the post-Soviet village, there was a kind of symbiosis of several management models with clear gender differences in their application.
Keywords
North of European Russia, nostalgia, gender, managers, power, mutual assistance, collectivism, perestroika, ‘transit’.
About the author
Arkhipova Maryana N., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Center for Applied History, Institute of Social Sciences, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Senior Lecturer, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, bldg. 1, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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Merl S. “I consistently contribute to the assessment of the Soviet economic model” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №1. P. 131-163.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-1-131-163
Annotation
As a part of our traditional “Interviews” we present the selected fragments from the biographical memoirs of Stephan Merl, Professor of the Bielefeld University, a famous researcher of the agrarian economy and policy of the Soviet state. The memoirs were written as answers to the questions formulated by Stephan Merl together with his colleague and friend Alexander Nikulin. The questions set the direction for the biographical reflections as connected with the study of the Russian history and culture, in particular the fate of the Russian village, tragedy of collectivization, and turns of the Soviet agrarian policy. The memoirs reflect the dramatic episodes of the European history in the second half of the 20th century, some of which the author experienced, while others studied in the scientific perspective. Professor Merl’s diligence, deep knowledge of historical sources and research objectivity allowed him to suggest a new interpretation of the events that have become history quite recently or are becoming history now. We present an excerpt from his memoirs which will be published in full in the book series of the Russian Peasant Studies.
Keywords
Russia, Germany, USSR, agriculture, collectivization, agrarian policy, perestroika.
About the author
Merl Stephan, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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In memory of the scholar: Works of Yu.A. Moshkov and some issues of agrarian historiography
Feb 08 2023Kuznetsov I. A. In memory of the scholar: Works of Yu. A. Moshkov and some issues of agrarian historiography // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №4. P. 47-71.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-4-47-71
Annotation
Yuri Aleksandrovich Moshkov (April 6, 1922 — August 30, 2022), a prominent Russian agrarian historian, whose works outlined the main directions in the study of the economic aspects in the history of collectivization and the collective-farm sector of Soviet agriculture, passed away. During his long creative life, the Russian historiography came a long way from the formation of the scientific paradigm for the study of Soviet history during the thaw period, through the methodological crisis of perestroika to the “archival revolution” of the 1990s and the subsequent period of obtaining new sources and choosing new theoretical models under the ideological diversity. The author pays tribute to the memory of his university teacher, highly appreciates his personal contribution, and expresses some general thoughts about the development paths and issues of the Russian agrarian historiography in the second half of the 20th — early 21st century.
Keywords
Historiography, thaw period, perestroika, Yu.A. Moshkov, V. P. Danilov.
About the author
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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“I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice”
May 15 2022Khlystun V. N., Nikulin A. M. “I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №1. P. 171-219.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-1-171-219
Annotation
The interview presents the history of the rural development and agrarian reforms in Russia in the 20th — 21st centuries as based on the facts from the biography of the Academician V.N. Khlystun. The article focuses on the features of educational and scientific institutions associated with the countryside in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia, in particular on the history and present state of the Academician’s alma mater — the State University of Land Use Planning. One of the main issues in the interview is the reforms of the Russian agrarian system, which are considered primarily on the basis of Khlystun’s rich management experience in the 1990s — as the Chairman of the RSFSR State Committee on Land Reform, Russian Minister of Agriculture, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Government, and as a key manager of large financial organizations and analytical structures in the agrarian-industrial complex. In his memoirs, Khlystun describes and analyzes successes and failures of various legislative, economic and political measures of agrarian reforms at the federal and regional levels, and makes some personal assessments of the behavior and competencies of some representatives of the state, political and scientific elites of Russia. He repeatedly emphasizes that rural life is a special social sphere that requires complex and balanced measures for its transformations, i.e., considering various agrarian characteristics of such a vast country as Russia. Khlystun argues that the key to successful rural reforms is a combination of leaders’ broad professional horizons with the ability to give priority to the common national good instead of private interests.
Keywords
Russia, Kazakhstan, State University of Land Use Planning, perestroika, Ministry of Agriculture, land and agrarian reforms, Russian Government.
About the authors
Khlystun Viktor N., DSc (Economics), Professor, State University of Land Use Planning; Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 125064, Moscow, Kazakova St., 15.
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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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Shagaida N.I., Nikulin A.M. “All generations of my family... have been involved in global agrarian transformations” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №2. P. 121-153.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-2-121-153
Annotation
In the biographical interview, N.I. Shagaida, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA, considers the historical roots of the development of the Soviet agrarian system on the examples of her life experience and her family generations involved in agricultural activities in different regions of the former USSR. The interview focuses on her reflections on the peculiarities of agrarian university and academic organizations and on the role of outstanding scientists as determining the results of research teams and the horizons of agrarian sciences. The article presents the milestones in N.I. Shagaida’s scientific research as coinciding with the key stages in restructuring and reforming the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian system, especially with the social-economic experiments and transformations under the reform of the Soviet collective-farm and state-farm system in the Nizhny Novgorod Region and other regions of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, and with the creation of rural development institutions in Lodeynopolsky district of the Leningrad Region. N.I. Shagaida emphasizes that for the successful and sustainable agrarian transformations, science and government have to work systematically in pilot regional projects in order to take into account opinions, requests and estimates of the rural population and local rural leaders in the development and adaptation of the daily innovations under the necessary agrarian changes. Thus, the interview questions the strategic goals of the state in the regulation of land relations, food security, agricultural production and the Russian rural development in general.
Keywords
Family, school, science, USSR, perestroika, reform, agricultural enterprises, land, rural development.
About the authors
Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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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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“My constant desire is to establish relations between the cultures of France and Russia ...”
Jan 14 2020Berelowitch 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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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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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.
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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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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, Jun, September, December)
- Open Access: All volumes and articles can be downloaded for free in the PDF format.
- 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
- 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).
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