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2025. Vol.10. №1.

On the “subjective reality” of Teodor Shanin’s peasant projects: Field studies, ‘long table’ method, and Peredelkino (an oral history approach)

May 20 2025

Presnyakov I. On the “subjective reality” of Teodor Shanin’s peasant projects: Field studies, ‘long table’ method, and Peredelkino (an oral history approach) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 16-42.

EDN: BMNVIL

Annotation

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.

Keywords

Teodor Shanin, peasant studies, subjective reality, oral history, long table method, Peredelkino, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.

About the author

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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2025. Vol.10. №1.

Elimination of the world crisis (Article of B.D. Brutskus)

May 19 2025

Brutskus B.D. Elimination of the world crisis (Article of B.D. Brutskus) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 6-15.

EDN: AAOQLZ

Annotation

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.

Keywords

Crisis, market, capitalism, unemployment, agriculture, industry, League of Nations, economic policy.

About the authors

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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Afanasenkov Vladislav O., 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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2024. Vol.9. №4.

Nicholas Berdyaev’s Thoughts on Human Freedom in the Face of Contemporary Challenges: Technology, Civilization and “the Revolt of the Masses”

Feb 10 2025

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

Androsenko Sofia V., PhD Student, Philosophy Department, Moscow State University, Press Secretary, St Philaret’s Institute. Tokmakov per., 11, Moscow, 105066.
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2024. Vol.9. №4.

Rural agglomeration as a new form of spatial development of the rural-urban partnership (on the example of the Kaliningrad Region)

Feb 10 2025

Gumenyuk I. S., Yustratova V. O. Rural agglomeration as a new form of spatial development of the rural-urban partnership (on the example of the Kaliningrad Region) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 21-43.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-21-43

Annotation

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.

Keywords

Rural agglomeration, rural-urban continuum, territorial socio-economic system, small town, Kaliningrad Region.

About the authors

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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2024. Vol.9. №4.

The future of agricultural cooperatives in Russia: Does theory matter?

Feb 06 2025

Yanbykh R. G., Lerman Z. The future of agricultural cooperatives in Russia: Does theory matter? // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 6-20.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-6-20

Annotation

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.

Keywords

Cooperation, agricultural cooperatives, classical principles of cooperation, agroholdings, social capital, trust, rural development, rural areas.

About the authors

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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Lerman Zvi, PhD (Finance), Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel). 76100, Israel, Rehovot, 12.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Peasant cosmos of the Russian avant-garde and N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism

Oct 25 2024

Titarenko E. M. Peasant cosmos of the Russian avant-garde and N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 105-118.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-105-118

Annotation

The author conducts a comparative analysis of the peasant cosmos representations in the Russian avant-garde art and of Nikolai Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism based on the works of visual art, articles, treatises, autobiographies and letters of K. Malevich, N. Goncharova, P. Filonov and V. Chekrygin. Aesthetic supra-moralism as the highest morality or “Universal Synthesis” is Fedorov’s religious-philosophical doctrine promoting the idea of cosmism as a project of world order based on the all-unity and a synthesis of science, art and religion. Avant-garde artists expressed their understanding of the human involvement in the multifaceted and complex spatial relationships through images of the peasant world. By comparing the anthropological projection of the Russian avant-garde art with Fedorov’s project of aesthetic supra-moralism, the author shows the similarity between the artistic images of peasant cosmos and the cosmic ideas about the correlation between macrocosm (universe) and microcosm (individuals). In this context, the author explains Malevich’s return to figurativeness and anthropocentrism in his second peasant cycle. The article also considers cosmic intuitions of the Russian avant-garde as related to the perception and interpretation of the sacred church space and of the nature as a temple. Feodorov’s ekphrasis of the Orthodox church describes the liturgical image of all-unity and kinship, uniting the peasant world as a cosmos. Malevich reduces this description to a color image or a feeling, in which the temple’s objectivity dissolves.

Keywords

Peasantry, Russian avant-garde of the first quarter of the 20th century, peasant cosmos in art, suprematism, K. S. Malevich, analytical art, N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism, cosmism.

About the author

Evgeny M. Titarenko, PhD (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University; Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Universitetskaya Nab., 7–9, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Animal immortality in Russian cosmism: Scientific and religious aspects

Oct 25 2024

Zvonova E. E. Animal immortality in Russian cosmism: Scientific and religious aspects // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 92-104.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-92-104

Annotation

The article considers scientific and religious aspects of animal immortality in the Russian cosmism philosophy, showing its ideological connection with the Orthodox tradition, for which both “cosmic” and “resurrection”, Easter motifs with significant ecological potential are more typical than for Catholicism and Protestantism. The special place of man in the Christian picture of the world together with anthropocentrism specific to historically Christian cultures do not imply as a mandatory consequence a worldview characterized by the exaltation of man over the world and animals or ethically unjustified speciesism. The article focuses on the specific features of people and animals according to Christianity which emphasizes humanity’s guilt before our smaller brothers due to the fall (loss of the heavenly state) and the human moral non-superiority over animals, providing religious arguments for animal immortality. The author stresses the absence of gap between religious-philosophical and natural-scientific branches of cosmism, since the thinking of cosmists is filled with patterns of the Orthodox outlook and national mentality. Thus, V. I. Vernadsky’s ideas about the autotrophic humanity and its influence on the biosphere are considered as a manifestation of the trend of animal emancipation from the “natural” deadly order, V. F. Kuprevich’s immortalist views — as proving the appropriateness of the immortality-through-science perspective for animals, including the positive role of technology and the ‘animalistic immortalism” art of the Russian cosmism.

Keywords

Russian cosmism, immortality, animals, ecology, anthropocentrism, speciesism, autotrophic humanity.

About the author

Ekaterina E. Zvonova, PhD (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Institute of Social Sciences, I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University; Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES). Trubetskaya st., 8, p. 2,  Moscow, 119048, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Prishvin’s philosophy of land in the context of ecotheology

Oct 25 2024

Knorre (Konstantinova) E. Yu. Prishvin’s philosophy of land in the context of ecotheology // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 73-91.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-73-91

Annotation

The article reconstructs the idea of land management in the ecophilosophy of Mikhail Prishvin. For the first time, the author shows parallels between Prishvin’s philosophy of land and H. Thoreau’s transcendentalism, T. Goricheva’s ecoliturgy and eschatological issues in J. Haught’s ecotheology. Prishvin’s motif of land hidden for man’s sins correlates with the myth of the Invisible City of Kitezh, which went under water. Such ideas were borrowed from the teaching of Aurelius Augustine about the City of God and the earthly city, Plato’s myth of the cave, and the return of fallen Sophia to the world in God (Blissful Being) in the philosophy of V. Solovyov. Prishvin uses the myth of the lost paradise land to criticize the rational-positivist worldview of the mechanistic civilization as based on the idea of earth and nature as inanimate objects subordinated to the will of man. Prishvin contrasts humanity that divides land into conflicting parts during wars and revolutions or reshapes it through land reclamation projects of the 1920s and 1930s with the economic behavior of Adam, the Russian Parsifal, Prishvin’s collective hero, who, in the light of “family attention” of “distinguishing love”, reveals the name of the creature “resurrecting from among” “the personal Russia” as the land that once went under water. The author concludes that the idea of economic behavior on land as distinguishing attention and the perception of land as a community of people, “community of creation” that restores the lost whole of the multifaced cosmos, the Whole Man, was proposed by Prishvin as an alternative to the objective thinking that does not distinguish “faces” and perceives land utilitarianly, as its possession. Thus, Prishvin’s Christian personalism is close to the tradition of spiritual resistance to a depersonalizing civilization in the Russian and foreign ecophilosophy of the 19th– 20th centuries.

Keywords

M. Prishvin, H. Thoreau, T. Goricheva, J. Haught, romanticism, transcendentalism, Christian ecology, ecotheology, ecoliturgy, Parsifal, Whole-Man, cosmic Eucharist, Christian personalism.

About the author

Elena Yu. Knorre (Konstantinova), PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Orthodox Saint Tikhon University for the Humanities. Povarskaya St., 25а, Moscow, 121069, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Nikolai Setnitsky and Alexander Chayanov: On ideals, exploitation, non-capitalist systems and regulation of nature

Oct 25 2024

Nikulin A. M. Nikolai Setnitsky and Alexander Chayanov: On ideals, exploitation, non-capitalist systems and regulation of nature // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 47-72.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-47-72

Annotation

The author conducts a comparative biographical analysis to consider the social-philosophical and political-economic views and the interdisciplinary intellectual heritage of the remarkable Russian scientists N. A. Setnitsky and A. V. Chayanov on the ideals of social development, features of capitalist and non-capitalist economic systems, issues of regulating the relationship between man and nature in the 1920s–1930s. The article identifies the fundamental worldview ideas of the “agrarian-relativist” Chayanov and the “apocalyptic cosmist” Setnitsky, which determined their theoretical-methodological approaches to the cognition and transformation of reality, focusing on the comparative analytical assessment of their utopian and futurological forecasts and projects. The author concludes about the significance of the intellectual heritage of Setnitsky and Chayanov for the study of contemporary political, economic and environmental issues in Russia and the world.

Keywords

N. A. Setnitsky, A. V. Chayanov, capitalism, non-capitalist systems, city, village, exploitation, nature, utopia, cosmism.

About the author

Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

The fight against hunger in the philosophy of Russian cosmism: N. F. Fedorov and Universal Cause collections

Oct 25 2024

Gacheva A. G. The fight against hunger in the philosophy of Russian cosmism: N. F. Fedorov and Universal Cause collections // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 25-46.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-25-46

Annotation

The article is the first part of the study of the issues of hunger in the philosophy of Russian cosmism. Its representatives believed that we need to study natural processes and their management to solve the problem of hunger, emphasizing that regulation requires complete knowledge and universal solidarity. The article examines the ideas of N. F. Fedorov, who suggested to consider the issue of overcoming hunger in the Christian context, defining the regulation of nature as the fulfillment of the commandment to “possess land”. The author reconstructs the dynamics of the perception of the hunger problem in the first collection Universal Cause (1914) and in the draft of the second collection compiled by A. K. Gorsky and N. A. Setnitsky in 1920 during the devastation of the Civil War. The article also presents the results of the analysis of the one-day newspaper To the Rescue! published under the famine of 1921–1922.

Keywords

Philosophy of cosmism, problem of hunger, regulation of nature, legacy of N. F. Fedorov, A. K. Gorsky, N. A. Setnitsky, Universal Cause.

About the author

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 and Researcher, N. F. Fedorov Library No. 180 in the South-West Administrative District of Moscow. 25A, bld. 1, Povarskaya st., Moscow, 121069.
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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)

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