Zhidkevich N. Today’s migrant workers in the north and south of European Russia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 97-107.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-97-107
Annotation
The article considers the phenomenon of temporary labor migration, i.e. the so-called ‘contemporary migrant/seasonal work’. The author focuses on its regional features determined by economic, social-cultural and demographic situation in the migrant workers’ hometowns and villages. There is a clear differentiation in such characteristics as the scale of migrant work, women’s seasonal positions, dominant motives of such work and its key specialties, migrant workers’ status in the local community, etc., especially in the northern and southern parts of European Russia. The share of migrant workers in local communities is much higher in the ‘south’ than in the ‘north’ for the density of population in the ‘south’ is higher. In the ‘south’, both men and women are engaged in migrant work while in the ‘north’ women among the migrant workers are rare. The ‘north’ with its forests is known for migrant carpenters that build houses, bathhouses and other buildings for wealthy city dwellers (there are almost no carpenters in the ‘south’). The ‘southern’ migrant workers can be divided into two groups —general workers and skilled workers engaged in oil and gas industries, so labor competition is fierce in the ‘south’; moreover there is a big demand for ‘northern’ carpenters’ unique skills. Thus, ‘southern’ migrant workers are motivated by push-factors, while the ‘northern’—by the attraction-factors. The scale of migrant work and its key specialties determine the differences in migrant workers’ positions in local communities: for instance, carpenters of the ‘north’ mainly have a high social status; ‘southern’ migrant general workers usually have a low status, while the skilled ones—a high status.
Keywords
migrant work, (temporary) labor migration, regional differences, the north and south of European Russia, Russian periphery, employment strategies
About the author
Zhidkevich Natalia, Analyst, Project-Training Laboratory of Municipal Government, National Research University Higher School of Economics, 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ovchintseva L.A. Rural cooperatives: Same goals, new problems // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №2. P. 121-141.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-121-141
Annotation
The article considers the development of farmer cooperatives for processing and marketing of agricultural products. The article is based on the federal and regional statistical data and on the expert interviews conducted by the author with the heads of farms and cooperatives, managers of regional and municipal agribusiness, specialists of auditing unions, cooperation development funds, cooperative unions and other institutions supporting the development of соoperation. The survey was conducted in 2016 in four regions of the Russian Federation—Lipetsk, Penza, Moscow and Kaluga, mainly among cooperatives processing fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products. The situation in the Lipetsk Region is particularly interesting due to the threelevel system of cooperation support: by rural settlements, by districts and by the regional government. The author also describes the influence of district agencies of the Pensa Region on small business. The forms and methods of cooperation support by the regional agroindustrial complex are described on the basis of the author’s research data, which allowed to identify the key difficulties of the farmers that decided to create cooperatives. The article presents the most illustrative quotes from the interviews confirming the lack of access to financial resources, the variability of the state policy considering farmer cooperatives, the imperfection of legal regulation of cooperation, the administrative pressure on cooperatives and small and medium business, the insufficient development of distribution networks and rural infrastructure, and some subjective factors.
Keywords
rural cooperation, factors of cooperatives’ development, cooperatives in the Russian regions, cooperative system in Lipetsk, Penza Agency for the development of cooperation, Kaluga cooperatives, cooperatives in the Moscow Region
About the author
Ovchintseva Lyubov A., PhD (Economics), Senior Researcher, Department of Sustainable Rural Development and Rural Cooperation, Alexander Nikonov All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Issues and Informatics. 21–1, Bolshoi Kharitonievski per., Moscow, 105064, Russia.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Vinogradsky V.G. Forms of informality: Invisible economy of the peasant house // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №2. P. 101-120.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-101-120
Annotation
The article presents author’s interpretation of a number of interviews with the head of the household in the Kuban village, the mother of three children, Lyubov Kuranovskaya, who, while answering the interviewer’s questions, created a detailed picture of peasant everyday life, of the rural formal and informal economy. Fifteen years ago, the journal “Sociological Studies” published the first data of this project, and the articles were not typical for such a scientific edition. In the special foreword, the Editorial Board mentioned that the journal usually did not publish such research documents (reports, tables, interviews, etc.); however, an exception was made for the text was of a great value in terms of its content, and it was an example of qualitative interviewing that could be further analyzed. Thus, the respondent ‘received a voice’ and told the readers about her life without any analytical explanations and generalizations. Lyuba Kuranovskaya still lives in the Kuban stanitsa, though much has changed in fifteen years. The author follows the publishing format of 2002 to show Lyubov Ivanovna’s present life practices, and focuses on those aspects of her family economy that are usually named ‘informal’, ‘expolar’, ‘shadow’ or ‘invisible’. Lyuba talks about her life sincerely, trustingly, and picturesquely. The words speak for themselves — the narrator tries to discursively support her own life world so that to move confidently into the future. The text presents fragments of narratives recorded in 2000 and 2012 (previously not published) together with short comments aimed to tie up current and previous life experiences of Lyubov Ivanovna Kuranovskaya.
Keywords
in-depth interview, types of informality, family economy, peasant life practices, peasant worlds, rural sociology, discourse of rural everyday life
About the author
Vinogradsky Valery G., DSc (Philosophy), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Russia.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Regional practices of business and the authorities interaction (the Russian North-West case)
Mar 30 2017Bozhkov O.B., Ignatova S.N. Regional practices of business and the authorities interaction (the Russian North-West case) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 115-130.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-115-130
Annotation
The coordination of interests, cooperation and confrontation between the local authorities and business within the rural society play an important role in the development of rural Russia. The authors believe that the function of creating the rural business climate belongs to the regional authorities, while the local self-government lacks the levers of interaction with entrepreneurs. The success of entrepreneurial activities in agriculture is determined both by the strategy of local (and regional) leaders in the industry, and by human and social capital of rural enterprises’ managers. There is an obvious “patrimonial” model of management, in which the head of the district develops an internal policy based on one’s own goals and objectives with an eye on the regional requirements. This policy either encourages the development of agriculture at the local level, or only supports its preservation without any prospects for growth. Such conclusions are based on the results of long-term studies in the peripheral agricultural areas of non-Black-Earth regions of the Russian Federation. Despite the territorial proximity and similarity of geography and climate, each area under study has its own strategy for the development of agricultural business. Thus, the most interesting and various practices can be observed at the district level due to the specific conditions for the local agricultural enterprises. The authors confirmed their initial assumption that it is necessary to conduct a typological analysis of territories and to form clusters of similar (in many ways) areas to develop a single model of rural development for the Russian Federation.
Keywords
ocal authorities, business environment, agricultural production, practices of interaction
About the authors
Bozhkov Oleg B., Senior Researcher, Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Research Center “Biographical Foundation”. 190005, Saint Petersburg, 7 Krasnoarmeiskay St., 25/14.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ignatova Svetlana N., Researcher, Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 190005, St. Petersburg, 7 Krasnoarmeiskay st., 25/14.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mapping multistructural rural economy: Suburban and peripheral areas of the Tyumen Region
Mar 30 2017Sheludkov A.V., Rasskazov S.V. Mapping multistructural rural economy: Suburban and peripheral areas of the Tyumen Region // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 102-114.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-102-114
Annotation
The article considers the geographical prerequisites for the development of multistructural rural economy. The authors use departmental statistics and the data of the Federal State Statistics Service to show the differences of social-economic landscapes in remote and close to centers rural areas. Such differences determine the domination of particular economic agents, and the specialization of rural areas by forms and sectors of agriculture. For instance, commodity production, agribusiness and private farms concentrate around the cities; here a suburban area of agriculture is developing supported by the pendulum migration; large enterprises are fully integrated in the formal market and win the competition for land resources, especially in grain production, while the farmers can benefit from the development of service industries or narrow economic niches. In the peripheral areas of the southeast, there are smallholdings, peasant farms and cooperatives. People use household plots and free land to develop dairy and meat husbandry, to grow potatoes and vegetables, and to produce honey. The owners of large household plots can be considered potential farmers, but due to the high institutional barriers they retain a semi-legal status. In general, settlements of the sub-region teeter on the edge of formal (cooperatives and peasant farms) and informal (smallholdings, secondhand dealers, etc.) economies. Large-scale enterprises can also work here, but usually they act as external players exploiting resources of the periphery and not taking care of local communities. However, the situation is not static, its vectors of development include economic and social risks associated with the gradual displacement of small and medium agricultural producers by large enterprises, and with the dependence of peripheral farms on the intermediary structures. At the same time, the multistructural economy creates new opportunities such as economic specialization of villages and diversification of rural economy. This research was conducted as a part of the complex research project of the Council of municipalities of the Tyumen region.
Keywords
multi-structural economy, rural economy, rural settlements, rural municipalities, social-economic polarization, center-periphery structure
About the authors
Sheludkov Alexander V., Analyst, Association “Council of Municipalities of the Tyumen Region”, post-graduate student of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Staromonetniy per., 29. Moscow, Russia 119017.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Rasskasov Sergei V. , PhD (Geography), Associate Professor, Department of Modern History, Tyumen State University. 6 Volodarskogo St. 625003 Tyumen, Russia.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Breslavsky A.S. “Suburban Revolution”: The regional case (Ulan-Ude) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 90-101.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-90-101
Annotation
The author considers the processes of suburban growth in major Russian cities that becomes more and more visible, and at the same time has much in common with the processes of development of other large cities in post-socialist countries. The driving forces of the so-called “post-socialist suburban revolution” in Russia determined by the rapid growth of private housing construction on the periphery of the capital cities are similar to those typical for Eastern European countries. They are as follows: the prolonged housing crisis, restrictions on the private property and private housing construction in the Soviet period, degradation of the social infrastructure in central districts of the cities in the 1990s, liberalization of distribution and developing of urban and suburban areas, in-migration from rural areas — all these factors have a significant impact on the growth of cities with a million-plus population as well as on smaller regional capitals. The growth and development of the suburban zone of Ulan-Ude — the capital of the Republic of Buryatia — quite fit into this “post-socialist context” though with important regional features related to local housing traditions, level of income, character of rural-urban migration, etc. The key directions of growth of the inner and outer suburbs of Ulan-Ude are as follows: wooden low-rise housing construction, transformation of dachas into places of year-round accommodation, construction of cottages and townhouses, high-rise housing construction, development and reconstruction of suburban villages. The suburban area of Ulan-Ude has mono-functional character (residential areas) for the industrial and commercial construction and social and public infrastructure are still poorly developed, which determines the rural-urban look of the suburban micro-districts.
Keywords
suburbs, urbanization, suburbanization, Ulan-Ude, segments of housing development, social geography
About the author
Breslavsky Anatoly S., Research Fellow, PhD (History), Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Address: 6, Sakhyanovoi St., Ulan-Ude, 670047, Russian Federation.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Kopoteva I.V. Civil society and civic engagement in rural Russia // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 142-166
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-142-166
Annotation
The article considers various approaches to the concept “civil society” (designed to serve the state, and therefore created on state initiative and with its support; a classical type of opposition to the government and business; Soviet-type organizations, a part of official and formal structures of the state and society), and discusses the possibilities to apply this concept to contemporary Russia. Although some scientists raise the question of whether or not there is a civil society in Russia, the author is interested in finding answers to other questions: what kind of civil society exists in Russia? Is there a rural civil society? If the answer to the last question is positive, then what are the in dicators of civil society — geography, target audience, registered social activity? The article considers examples of registered and unregistered public, non-profit organizations of different levels (federal level, e. g. ACCOR, and local level — e. g. women’s, sports and other clubs, veterans’ councils, action groups). The author discusses the criteria by which public organizations and initiative groups can be attributed to the rural civil society, and identifies two types of rural social organizations — the first possess political influence, the second focus on solving local problems by the local community members.
Keywords
Civil society, state, civil participation, Russian society, rural communities, local initiatives, non-profit and non-governmental organizations.
About the author
Kopoteva Inna V., PhD (Geography), Senior Researcher at the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 82/5, Prospect Vernadskogo, Moscow, Russian Federation 119571.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Wegren S. Нousehold Inequality and Village Discord: Toward a Post-Socialist Moral Economy // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 122-141
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-122-141
Annotation
The author believes that rural Russia is much more unequal today than during the Soviet period in terms of income and wealth (land). The article describes three periods in the XX century, when rural Russia experienced a significant upheaval in the economic interaction between peasants and their means of production: the Stolypin reform of 1906–1911, the Stalin’s collectivization, and the ending of the Soviet system in the early 1990s. The author analyzes the effects of the market revolution that came with the end of Soviet rule and facilitated the growth of village inequality, and focuses on intra-village relations between different economic strata. The paper has several goals: to quantify the growth in household inequality; to examine intra-village relationships between “rich” and “poor” households; to explore whether high-income households feel communality with the village community. To analyze the level of village discord, the author uses survey data from a geographically diverse sample of 900 rural households. The article argues that the post-socialist moral economy is not based upon state regulated income levels or wealth holdings—rather on opportunity and economic freedom bounded mainly by the energy, willpower, capabilities and adaptability of household members.
Keywords
Village stability, household inequality, village conflict, high- and low-income households, (post-socialist) moral economy, means of production.
About the author
Wegren Stephen, Professor of Political Science at the Southern Methodist University. Dallas, Texas, 75275, USA. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.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, 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, 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).
e-issn
