EDN: HASCJE
The paper considers the relationship between the structure of human capital and the intensive displacement of young peasants in contemporary Paraguay. In the description of the agrarian economy, the author defines the peasant sector as a part of the agrarian structure with dynamics strongly determined by agribusiness which is integrated into the neoliberal agrifood regime as an important component of globalized markets. The author’s approach to the study of human capital and migration of young farmers is based on Amartya Sen’s theory of human capital, according to which both the development of actors’ ability to increase production and the definition of the valuable type of life are closely associated with the dominant means of socialization affecting the rural youth (educational possibilities, information-communication technologies, other means for producing meanings). Today these means are dominated by hegemonic knowledge in the interests of large corporations.
Rural youth, human capital, displacement of young peasants, Paraguay, agrarian economy, peasant economy, agribusiness, neoliberal agrifood regime.
Ramón Fogel, DSc (Sociology), Research Director, Centro de Estudios Rurales Interdisciplinarios (CERI). Cruz del Defensor 1816 casi, Asunción 001421, Paraguay.
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EDN: FIPUNN
The article considers the demographic-institutional challenges of Russian rural areas and their impact on staffing of the agro-industrial complex (AIC). The authors focus on such key trends as depopulation, aging and urbanization, which reduce labor resources in agriculture, on structural changes in the age and gender dynamics of rural population, migration and degradation of social infrastructure (health, education, culture), which exacerbates the shortage of personnel in agriculture. The article describes the impact of demographic changes on the rural labor market in terms of growing latent unemployment, archaization of employment and declining quality of human capital, and regional differences in the demographic situation and their implications for sustainable rural development. Based on statistical data, the authors predict a further decline in rural population and a deterioration in its age structure, proposing such measures as the development of rural infrastructure, labor mobility and modern technologies in agriculture.
Rural areas, demography, human resources, agriculture, urbanization, labor resources, migration, social infrastructure.
Sergey V. Mitrofanov, PhD (Agriculture), Head of the Department of Economics of Innovation in Agriculture, Institute of Agrarian Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Pokrovsky Bl., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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Renata G. Yanbykh, DSc (Economics), Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Department of Agrarian Policy, Institute of Agrarian Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Pokrovsky Bl., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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Nadezhda V. Orlova, Head of the Institute of Agrarian Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Pokrovsky Bl., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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Dmitry V. Nikolaev, Expert, Department of Economics of Innovation in Agriculture, Institute of Agrarian Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Pokrovsky Bl., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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EDN: CAKXOY
To reassess collectivization and socialist agricultural policy, it is necessary to keep the whole period in view, distinguishing the following phases with basically different political approaches: (1) collectivization under Stalin as based on class war and peasant subjugation to transfer capital from agriculture to industry; (2) collectivization under Khrushchev, striving to complete it, although this policy was basically put in question (in 1953 in the Soviet Union and in 1957 in the GDR and Hungary); (3) efforts to stabilize the economically weak collective farms in the 1960s after finishing collectivization and replacing Khrushchev; (4) the final turn to modernization of agriculture expecting economies of scale through different concepts of industrialization in the 1970s; (5) the failure of these concepts causing a cost trap and enforcing the rehabilitation of small-scale private agriculture in the 1980s. The first part showed how Stalin eliminated modernization from collectivization so that agriculture would serve industrialization. The second part focuses on collectivization in Eastern Europe under Stalin and Khrushchev, including temporary attempts to revise collectivization policy after Stalin’s death. Stalin’s combination of collectivization and class war was applied in Eastern Europe, determining the same fatal consequences for the social-economic capital of agriculture as in the Soviet Union and threats for domestic food supplies. Stalin’s approach was criticized in the Soviet Union: in June 1953, Beria and Malenkov questioned Stalin’s infallibility. The revision of collectivization in several East European countries (primarily Hungary, GDR and Czechoslovakia) aimed at the stabilization of collective farms, which required consolidation denied by Stalin: state investment in agriculture, payment for work and efficient machinery for large-scale farming. Based on the working models of collective farming, numerous private farmers were to join collective farms, which was blocked by Khrushchev insisting on completing collectivization first. With his ideological approach, he worsened the destruction caused by Stalin’s collectivization, and was responsible for the exodus of more flexible workforce from agriculture in the Soviet Union. Only Hungary managed to make use of the potential of family labor. The third part will focus on the stabilization of collective farms after Khrushchev’s removal from office and on the industrialization of agriculture, which started in socialist countries in the 1970s, two decades later than in the West.
Collectivization of agriculture, Stalin, Khrushchev, Kadar, Ulbricht, socialist agriculture, mechanization, collective farms, industrialization of agriculture, modernization, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Hungary, GDR, small peasant farms, economies of scale, private plots, class war, myths of Stalin’s infallibility, social differentiation
Stephan Merl, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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EDN: AFTTUR
The article continues the discussion about the ways to fight against hunger suggested in the philosophy of Russian cosmism. Thus, the idea of overcoming hunger through the common cause is presented in the works of V. N. Chekrygin and his treatise On the Council of the Resurrection Museum. The author considers practical proposals of N. F. Fedorov and his followers — A. K. Gorsky, N. A. Setnitsky, V. N. Muravyov — related to the ideas of artificial rainmaking and of turning the army into a natural-science force, focusing on their place in the “economy of regulation” developed by Russian cosmism. The article presents the approaches of Gorsky, Setnitsky and Muravyov to the issues of labor and their visions of the culture of the future, emphasizing that, unlike A. M. Gorky’s and biocosmists’ Prometheistic interpretation of regulation, Gorsky, Setnitsky and Muravyov followed Fedorov in defining regulation as a personal religious duty to fulfill the commandment of “possessing land” and cultivating world to transform it into the Kingdom of God. The author considers the ideas of the natural-science branch of cosmism presented by N. A. Umov, K. E. Tsiolkovsky, V. I. Vernadsky and A. L. Chizhevsky, who defined the human mind as a key agent in world development and the creator of the noosphere, thus, interpreting hunger as a noospheric task.
Philosophy of cosmism, problem of hunger, exploitation, regulation, science, economy, legacy of N. F. Fedorov, cosmists’ projects of the 1920s–1930s, A. K. Gorsky, N. A. Setnitsky, V.N. Muravyov, biocosmism, V.N. Chekrygin, treatise On the Council of the Resurrection Museum.
Anastasia G. Gacheva, DSc (Philology), Leading Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Chief Librarian, N. F. Fedorov Moscow Library No. 180. Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, Moscow, 121069.
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EDN: ADGDWI
Literature on collectivization in Eastern Europe presents an outdated picture of Soviet collectivization close to Stalin’s interpretation, and literature on Soviet collectivization ignores alternative policies to promote forced industrialization in countries with predominantly small-scale peasant farms. Before discussing collectivization and socialist agricultural policy in Eastern Europe, the author examines collectivization in the Soviet Union under Stalin, combining this analysis with some methodological reflections on the approach and central terms applied. Then the author focuses on the entangled comparison of collectivization and socialist agricultural policy after the World War II in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to thoroughly reassess this policy by answering the following key questions for the assessment of socialist agricultural policy: whether enforced collectivization was necessary or harmful for industrialization; whether Stalin’s collectivization aimed at modernization of the agrarian sector at all; why socialist agricultural policy, after liquidation of private farms during collectivization under Stalin and Khrushchev, since the late 1970s in almost all socialist countries returned to supporting private small agricultural production. In addition to focusing on the decisive turning points of the agricultural policy, the author keeps the whole period in view, distinguishing the following phases with basically different political approaches: (1) collectivization under Stalin as based on class war and peasant subjugation to transfer capital from agriculture to industry; (2) collectivization under Khrushchev striving to complete it, although this policy was basically put in question (in 1953 in the Soviet Union and in 1957 in the GDR and Hungary); (3) efforts to stabilize the economically weak collective farms in the 1960s after finishing collectivization and replacing Khrushchev; (4) the final turn to modernization of agriculture expecting economies of scale through different concepts of industrialization in the 1970s; (5) the failure of these concepts causing a cost trap and enforcing the rehabilitation of small-scale private agriculture in the 1980s. The first part of the article shows how Stalin in 1929 turned collectivization away from modernization goals, which made collectivization an end in itself, enforcing the diversion of resources from agriculture to industrialization. Stalin did not trust the peasants and ignored their great capacities of increasing production, which made members of collective farms forced laborers with limited civil rights. Mechanization ensured primarily state control over agriculture and prevented an increase in yields.
Collectivization of agriculture, Stalin, Khrushchev, socialist agriculture, mechanization, kolkhoz system, industrialization of agriculture, modernization, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, small peasant farms, Chayanov, economies of scale, private plots, social differentiation, exploitation, myth of infallibility, Litsom k derevne.
Stephan Merl, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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EDN: BMNVIL
The article reconstructs the researchers’ “subjective reality” in Teodor Shanin’s peasant studies projects. While there has been extensive research on methodological, epistemological and empirical dimensions of these projects, little attention has been paid to personal experiences, emotions and transformations of the researchers. This study aims at filling this gap by reconstructing their subjective perceptions through oral histories, memories and published sources and also at ‘localizing’ such a subjective reality by examining its connection with the Peredelkino House of Creativity, where Shanin’s research team used to meet periodically. The article consists of the following parts: first, it outlines the broader conditions of Shanin’s peasant studies expeditions; then it focuses on “subjective reality of the first encounters” with Shanin and his ideas; the fieldwork is examined through the researchers’ observation of rural communities, their efforts to gain peasants’ trust and methodological challenges they faced; further, the study considers the long table discussions at Peredelkino, emphasizing their dual function as spaces for methodological and personal support; finally, the author explains institutionalization of the projects’ subjective reality through their lasting impact on research and educational initiatives of its participants. The findings show that the scholars’ subjective reality was deeply intertwined with the broader intellectual and social-political transformations of the 1990s, which resulted in the specific research culture of Shanin’s peasant studies projects — a combination of reflections on ethnographic experiences, analytical and methodological frameworks with personal experiences, friendship, and intellectual partnership.
Teodor Shanin, peasant studies, subjective reality, oral history, long table method, Peredelkino, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.
Ilya Presnyakov, PhD Student, Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University, Gilman Bldg., Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel.
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EDN: AAOQLZ
Boris Davidovich Brutskus (1874–1938) was a remarkable economist whose agrarian studies are usually attributed to A. V. Chayanov’s organization-production school. However, agrarian issues were only one aspect of Brutskus’s multifaceted intellectual heritage as a major specialist in Jewish migration and colonization in the late 19th — early 20th centuries, in the political-economic criticism of the Russian Revolution, Soviet economic system and socialism in general. He was an insightful expert not only in issues of the Russian and Soviet economic policy but also in international economic-political relations.
In his theoretical and ideological views Brutskus was a consistent supporter of liberalism but not an orthodox supporter of the homo economicus model. He spoke with deep respect and understanding about worldview values of socialism of both populist and Marxist directions, which were associated with the ideas of cooperative family economies and a socially oriented state, and emphasized that the market, free enterprise and economic freedom were fundamental conditions for any freedom in principle.
With the Bolsheviks coming to power, during the civil war, Brutskus consistently and convincingly criticized the Soviet economic policy, for which the United State Political Administration (OGPU) expelled him on the so-called philosophical steamship to Germany. In Europe, until the early 1930s, Brutskus lectured on agrarian issues and political economy at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin and taught at the Yiddish University in Vilnius. After the Nazis came to power, he moved to Paris, and in 1935 emigrated to Palestine, where he headed the Department of Agricultural Economics and Policy at the University of Jerusalem, which was established with funds from the Jewish National Fund and at which he conducted research and taught until his death in 1938. Brutskus “was very enthusiastic about not only teaching but also practical activities to promote Jewish agriculture”. Brutskus’s great contribution to the developing Jewish agricultural and economic science was recognized and highly praised: his course of lectures was published posthumously, and the national journalism called him a Jewish genius of our time.
Brutskus was an incredibly gifted and prolific economist and publicist, his analytical articles on the most current social-economic events of the 1920s and 1930s were published in newspapers and magazines not only in the Russian émigré press but also in national languages in periodicals of some European and North American countries. Thereby, it is not surprising that the article “Elimination of the world crisis”, which was discovered in B.D. Brutskus’s collection in the Central Archive for History of the Jewish People and which the author had prepared for publication but had not managed to publish, provides an overview of fundamental contradictions and probable alternatives for political-economic development of the world economy recovering with difficulty and in contradictory ways from the Great Depression in the second half of the 1930s.
In this article, Brutskus identifies those groups of countries and key sectors of the economy that overcame consequences of the world crisis in different ways. This multipolarity of political-economic development caused Brutskus concern mainly due to the strengthening tendencies of bureaucratic autarkization of economies in some countries preparing for war. At the end of the article, Brutskus prophetically warns that the implementation of the German slogan “guns instead of butter” under declining international movement of migrants, capital, goods and increasing political-economic polarization of countries leads to an escalation of international tension and future military-political conflicts.
Crisis, market, capitalism, unemployment, agriculture, industry, League of Nations, economic policy.
Boris D. Brutskus
Publishers: Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics),Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.Gazetny per., 3-5, bl. 1, Moscow, 125009, Russia.
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Vladislav O. Afanasenkov, Junior Researcher, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Gazetny per., 3-5, bl. 1, Moscow, 125009, Russia.
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Translator: Irina V. Trotsuk, DSc (Sociology), Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-44-67
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.
N. A. Berdyaev, man, philosophical anthropology, technology, nature, freedom, culture, civilization, peasants, mass culture, mass society, engineering.
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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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-21-43
Russian publications on the development of rural areas have increasingly used the term “rural agglomeration”. However, interpretations of this term and its relationship with more traditional geographical notions “territorial socio-economic system” and “rural-urban continuum” are still unclear. Moreover, rural agglomerations can be considered as local settlement systems identified by the activity method. Thus, practical application of the term causes difficulties due to the lack of clear quantitative and qualitative criteria for identifying rural agglomerations. On the example of the Kaliningrad Region, the authors developed and tested a methodology for identifying rural agglomerations based on the parameter of time accessibility, which also contributed to the theoretical clarification of the concept. The authors argue that in the economic-geographical perspective, rural agglomeration can be defined as a local rural-urban setlement system, in which the city is its core and rural settlements — its elements; intensive inter-village connections are spatially reflected in the transport infrastructure facilities. Rural agglomerations are normative systems identified with the activity approach, namely the isochronous method (20-minute interval from the center along public roads). Thus, the authors identified 8 rural agglomerations in the Kaliningrad Region with an average population of 12.7 thousand people, an average number of 40 settlements and a core in the form of a small city with an average population of 5.7 thousand people.
Rural agglomeration, rural-urban continuum, territorial socio-economic system, small town, Kaliningrad Region.
Ivan S. Gumenyuk, PhD (Geography) Associate Professor, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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Veronica O. Yustratova, PhD Student, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-6-20
The article aims at identifying theoretical and practical reasons for the failure of the agricultural cooperation development in Russia. Authors suggest that rural cooperatives in Russia do not develop due to the general features of the formation of social capital in the Russian countryside, the lack of necessary institutional conditions, and the wrong idea that cooperatives based on the classical principles of cooperation can operate successfully in the contemporary economy and society. The first theoretical barrier to cooperation is that in the contemporary high-technology agriculture, hybrid structures (cooperatives) are less efficient than the hierarchical one used by agroholdings. The second theoretical barrier is the inconsistency of seven classical principles of cooperation formulated at the time of Raiffeisen (i.e. outdated) with today’s economic realities and their transformations. The third practical barrier is the rapid degradation of rural areas and the low level of trust and interaction between members of agricultural cooperatives, which is why there are no trends of the bottom-up development of cooperation. The authors conclude that a high level of social capital is the necessary condition for cooperation: at the formation stage, this level is high due to interpersonal relationships developed from the informal social interactions of its members and a high level of trust among members and between members and management, but cooperatives start to lose their social capital as they enlarge — the sense of community, trust and mutual assistance disappears, the atmosphere becomes more business-oriented.
Cooperation, agricultural cooperatives, classical principles of cooperation, agroholdings, social capital, trust, rural development, rural areas.
Renata G. Yanbykh, DSc (Economics), Institute for Agrarian Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Pokrovsky Blvr., 11, Moscow, 109028, Russia.
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Zvi Lerman, PhD (Finance), Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel). 76100, Israel, Rehovot, 12.
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