DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-13-26
This article of the classic of the Russian agrarian-economic thought and the leader of the organization-production school of the 1920s Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) was written in 1923 as a response to the book of Lev Nikolaevich Litoshenko criticizing the theory of peasant economy of the organization-production school. The article clarifies some controversial issues of Chayanov’s agrarian-economic theory and its interpretations. The article has not been published before and is kept in the Russian State Archive of Economics. This publication aims at introducing the recently discovered text to the scientific community and at stimulating further research on the theory and history of the organization-production school and the history of the economic thought in Russia. The publication with comments was prepared by I.А. Kuznetsov and T.A. Savinova.
History of economic thought, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov, L.N. Litoshenko, A.A. Manuylov.
Chayanov Alexander V.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-1-7-12
The journal publishes six works of the outstanding Russian economists of the organization-production school—Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov (1888–1937) and Nikolai Pavlovich Makarov (1887–1980), which have not been published before or were published in quite inaccessible foreign journals in the 1920s. This publication with the comments reconstructs the circumstances in which these scientific works were written, and aims at stimulating further research on the theory and history of the organization-production school and the history of the economic thought in Russia.
History of economic thought, history of agricultural sciences, organization-production school, peasant studies, A.V. Chayanov, N.P. Makarov.
Kuznetsov Igor A., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the School of Public Policy Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Savinova Tatyana A., PhD (Economics), Head of Organizational-Methodical and Personnel Work Chair, Russian State Archive of Economy; 119992, Moscow, B. Pirogovskaya St., 17.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-31-55
Russia started the reconstruction of the institutional bases of social regulation after the complete destruction of the former system. Almost all market and political institutions were to be designed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communist Party and planned economy. As the post-socialist transformation is a profound institutional change new institutionalism can be a theoretical framework for the study of local self-government reform in Russia. Institutionalism is a specific approach to the study of social, economic and political phenomena. The structure of local self-government and behaviour of its actors are determined by a set of rules developed in the soviet and post-soviet period; thus, the changes in this set of rules (or institutions) at the local level are of central importance in understanding the reform (with emphasis on both successes and failures). The development of local self-government in Russia is fundamentally dependent on institutions (both formal and informal) governing actors’ behaviour. The article considers the nature of institutions and the ways they interact, and the local self-government as a political, economic and social institution. The author also applies the governance approach (from government to governance) to the governing system as a long-lasting social institution. Thus, changes in institutions lead to a new regime of governing and to new types of social interactions within local self-government and institutions as its key success factors (good governance).
local self-government, institutions, institutionalism, governance, management system, actors, rules and restrictions
Kopoteva Inna V., PhD (Geography), Senior Researcher, Centre for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-6-30
The comparative study of the zones of refuge conducted by James Scott shows that despite their geographical, cultural, and temporal dispersion, they share a few common, diagnostic characteristics. If they were of any historical depth, most shatter zones to which various groups have repaired over time display something of the ethnic and linguistic complexity and fluidity. Aside from being located in remote marginal areas that are difficult of access, such peoples are also likely to have developed subsistence routines that maximize dispersion, mobility, and resistance to appropriation. Their social structure as well is likely to favor dispersion, fission, and reformulation and to present to the outside world a kind of formlessness that offers no obvious institutional point of entry for would-be projects of unified rule. Finally, many groups in extrastate space appear to have strong, even fierce, traditions of egalitarianism and autonomy both at the village and familial level that represent an effective barrier to tyranny and permanent hierarchy. Geographical remoteness, mobility, choice of crops and cultivation techniques, and, frequently, a “no handles” acephalous social structure, are, to be sure, measures of state evasion. But it is crucial to understand that what is being evaded is not a relationship per se with the state but an evasion of subject status. What hill peoples on the periphery of states have been evading is the hard power of the fiscal state, its capacity to extract direct taxes and labor from a subject population. They have, however, actually sought relationships with valley states that are compatible with a large degree of political autonomy. In particular, a tremendous amount of political conflict has been devoted to the jockeying for advantage as the favored trading partner of one lowland emporium or another. Hills and valleys were complementary as agro-ecological niches. This meant in effect that adjacent valley states typically competed with one another to acquire hill products and populations.
State evasion, state prevention, geographical location, mobility, agricultural crops, egalitarian social structure, agro-ecological niches, political autonomy.
Scott James C., Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and Co-Director of Yale Program in Agrarian Studies; Yale University, Box 208209, New Haven, USA, CT 06520-8206.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-6-27
This article is an abridged version of the book by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg “Peasants and the Art of Farming. A Chayanovian Manifesto”—the second one in the series of “little books on big ideas” in the sphere of agrarian transformations established by Saturnino (Jun) Borras. The author identifies key features of the structure and dynamics of peasant agriculture, and its historically variable characteristics that determine labour, production and social processes and relationships. Van der Ploeg believes that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and ensuring sustainable rural development. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. Based on the ideas of Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov, the author seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty. The author examines two main balances identified by Chayanov—the labour-consumer balance and the balance of utility and drudgery, as well as a number of other interacting balances (between people and living nature, of production and reproduction, of internal and external resources, of scale and intensity, etc.), and emphasizes their social, economic and political importance in the past and present. The author also considers the position of peasant agriculture in the wider social context focusing on the town-country relations, state-peasantry relations, and on the balance of agrarian growth and demographic growth. At the end of the article, there is an overview of different models and mechanisms for increasing productivity and intensification, the choice of which is determined by the dominant discourse (i.e. by the state priorities reflected in agrarian programs and reforms, and by the position of agrarian sciences in designing the future of agriculture and assessing the role of peasantry), and a brief description of the current trends of repeasantization in Europe.
peasantry, peasant farming, Chayanov, interacting balances, the state, agricultural sciences, the agrarian question, repeasantization, productivity (yeilds), intensification
van der Ploeg Jan Douwe, Professor at the Wageningen University (the Netherlands) Droevendaalsesteeg 4, 6708 PB Wageningen and at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
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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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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-28-43
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.
Russia, environmental donor, biosphere, national economy, natural landscape, cultural landscape, eco-friendly land use and nature management, ecological specialization
Rodoman Boris B., DSc (Geography),
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-6-32
The article is devoted to what might be called the “grain hypothesis”. Why are the grassy grain crops—typically barley, rye, wheat, rice, maze, and millets—so closely associated with the earliest states? The author’s guess is that only such grains are best suited to concentrated production, tax assessment, appropriation, cadastral surveys, storage, and rationing. On suitable soil, wheat provides the agro-ecology for dense concentrations of human subjects. If we were evaluating crops from the perspective of the pre-modern tax man, the major grains (above all, irrigated rice) would be among the most preferred, and roots and tubers among the least preferred. It follows that state formation becomes possible only when there are few alternatives to a diet dominated by domesticated grains. So long as subsistence is spread across several food-webs, as it is for hunter-gatherers, swidden cultivators, marine foragers, etc., a state is unlikely to arise, inasmuch as there is no readily assessable and accessible staple to serve as a basis for appropriation. Contrary to some earlier assumptions, the state did not invent irrigation as a way of concentrating population, let alone crop domestication; both were the achievements of pre-state peoples. What the state has often done, once established, however, is to maintain, amplify and expand the agro-ecological setting that is the basis of its power by what we might call state-landscaping. This has included repairing silted channels, digging new feeder canals, settling war captives on arable land, penalizing subjects who are not cultivating, clearing new fields, forbidding nontaxable subsistence activities such as swiddening and foraging, and trying to prevent the flight of its subjects. The early state strives to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform landscape of taxable grain crops and to hold on this land a large population available for corvée labor, conscription, and, of course, grain production. For dozens of reasons, ecological and political, the state often fails to achieve this aim, but this is, as it were, the steady glint in its eye.
grain hypothesis, early state, agro-ecology, state building, concentration of population, sedentism, pre-state people, uniform landscape, ecological and political reasons
Scott James C., Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and Co-Director of Yale Program in Agrarian Studies; Yale University, Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520–8206.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-31-50
The article focuses on the theoretical and methodological problems encountered by the Russian scholars of cooperative organizations. The authors identify four basic methodological approaches to the cooperation phenomenon in the Russian academic tradition: (1) socio-reformist (or socio-ideological), (2) descriptive-monographic, and (3) economic-theoretical, with the first two being dominant. After a short discussion of the prospects and limitations of the theoretical studies of cooperatives as business organizations by Russian scholars, some of the distinguishing features of Russian cooperation thought are mentioned. Considering the features of the Russian cooperative thought, the authors found it useful to name the most prominent Russian researchers of cooperation who can be included in the ICA list of the world cooperative heritage. The authors pay special attention to the myth of the first Russian cooperative and the Decembrists as the first Russian cooperators. Unfortunately, this myth was officially recognized and determines the birthday of the cooperative movement in Russia. The article briefly discusses the contribution to cooperative thought made by Antsiferov, Bilimovich, Tugan-Baranovsky, Chayanov, and Totomianz. Special attention is paid to the scientific contribution of Emelianoff, almost unknown in modern Russia, and the fate of his ideas. Finally, the authors emphasize the particular importance of describing the transformations and the most important achievements of the Russian and foreign cooperative thought in the curriculum of the discipline “Theory and practice of cooperation”.
Russian cooperative thought, the history of Russian cooperation, the birth of Russian cooperative movement, economic theory of cooperation, Emelianoff, cooperation as an academic discipline.
Sobolev Alexander V., DSc (Economics), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82; professor The Russian University of Cooperation (RUC).
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Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo,82.
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Kurakin Alexander A., Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Higher School of Economics. 101000, Moscow, Myasnitskaya, 20.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-6-30
The article considers the features of A. V. Chayanov worldview, who in his multifaceted intellectual activities used to experiment with the genre of utopia. Based on the analysis of such utopian works of Chayanov as “Few Studies of the Isolated State” (1915– 1923), “My Brother Alexey’s Journey to the Land of Peasant Utopia” (1920), and “On the Possible Future of the Peasant Economy” (1928) the author identifies basic elements of Chayanov’s scientific and creative worldview. All three Chayanov’s utopias vary greatly in style and genre, thus indicating his amazing fantasy and plastic ingenuity. For instance, the first utopia is predominantly a marginal-mathematical treatise on the competitive coexistence of capitalist and peasant economies in agriculture. The second utopia is a kind of fantastic-political tale of the ineradicable variety of political and social-economic structures of the world. The third utopia represents the genre of typical scientific and technological utopia with atypical existential-aesthetic end. In each utopia, Chayanov creates an original model of social development that despite the social crises of the first third of the XX century seeks a compromise between town and village, industry and agriculture, peasantry and state capitalism, science and art, individual and society. The article critically considers the utopian relativistic ethics of Chayanovian agrarianism based on the idea of achieving the harmonic optima of social development.
autarchic state, peasant economy, capitalism in agriculture, cultural diversity, technological progress, relativistic ethics
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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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-38-67
The author considers a complex system of man-landscape relationship as a starting point of worldview formation and a primary condition for the development of cultural traditions. This basic level of social and environmental organization is presented as a space-technological and adaptiv e environmental system, which is constructed by the relations of man with the landscape and by a set of external world objects that are vitally important and culturally significant for human existence. The main function of culture is adaptive, whereas the landscape plays an active role in designing human world, i. e. in acquiring basic economic skills, technology development, and related programs and life strategies. The author believes that the historically accurate models of culture embody typologically different forms of social landscape and organize spatiotemporally the local ‘life-worlds’”; for instance, the classic landscape embraces the space of “the lack of the Other”. The author focuses on the genesis of the agrarian cultural tradition, and considers the relationship of two discourses — existential-phenomenological philosophy and philosophical anthropology. The article follows the general evolution of the classical anthropology with the distinction of dzōon (living being) and bios (life form), which led to the problematization of “symbolic forms” (E. Cassirer).
totemism, anthropology, form of life, form of culture, symbolic form, cultural landscape
Domnikov Sergey D., PhD (History), Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy of Culture of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
12/1 Goncharnaya Str., Moscow, 109240.
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