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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Vorbrugg A.  Not about land, not quite a grab: Dispersed dispossession in rural Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №3. P. 19-47.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-3-19-47

Annotation

In most literature in geography and agrarian studies, rural dispossession is neatly related to land rights or access, a trend that increased with debates about the recent wave of farmland investments worldwide. This paper critiques this focus and the assumed nexus between rural dispossession and farmland, as they prevent us from understanding widespread but more dispersed stakes, modes and temporalities of dispossession. I draw on long term fieldwork in rural Russia in which I traced the lasting effects of historical devaluation and systemic disadvantage, and the disintegration of sustaining institutions and infrastructures. I introduce the concept of dispersed dispossession which contributes to the broader conceptual debates on dispossession by bringing complex stakes, modes and temporalities of dispossession into view. For the empirical case, it allows to better understand forms of dispossession that occur rather slowly and silently, and concern social and relational goods rather than natural resources as such. 

Keywords

Dispossession, rural transformation, Russia, land, post-Soviet political economies.

About the authors

Vorbrugg Alexander, a Postdoctoral Researcher Institute of Geography, University of Bern (Switzerland). Hallerstr. 12, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
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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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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.
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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
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Kisiel Roman, Professor of Economic Science, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. 10-719 Olsztyn, ul. Oczapowskiego 4.
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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; 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571, Russia
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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.
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Hairong Yan, Professor, Hong Kong, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
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Rodoman B.B. Ecological specialization as a desirable future for Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 28-43.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-28-43

Annotation

The author believes that in the future Russia can become a global environmental donor preserving the biosphere of the whole planet for the country’s vast territories and natural landscape have changed little under the human activities. Today in the global economy, Russia plays mainly a role of an exporter of exhaustible energy resources, which puts its future in a risky dependence on various unstable factors affecting the extraction and consumption of such resources. The article proposes a project of changing and expanding the role of Russia as a supplier of natural resources and conditions necessary for the survival and future development of the humankind. The author considers as the main wealth of the country not some minerals, vegetable or animal raw materials, but the entire natural landscape and all natural components of the cultural landscape. The preservation and maintenance of the natural landscape as the most important element of the biosphere, its material, spiritual and information consumption without destruction and depletion should become a priority branch of the Russian national economy. The accumulation of population in urban agglomerations, the lack of population and roads in the former rural areas, the vast military ranges consisting of forests and steppes, and the wild landscapes along the administrative borders of settlements and regions contribute to the transformation of the significant part of Russia into nature reserves and parks, and to the preservation of nature in hunting and fishing grounds for the eco-friendly land use and nature management. The ecological specialization and recreational role of the suburban area of the eucumene-polis can become priorities of the Russian national economy and provide the country with a unique and indispensable place in the global community. 

Keywords

Russia, environmental donor, biosphere, national economy, natural landscape, cultural landscape, eco-friendly land use and nature management, ecological specialization

About the author

Rodoman Boris B., DSc (Geography),
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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.
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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; Russia, 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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