DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-47-72
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.
N. A. Setnitsky, A. V. Chayanov, capitalism, non-capitalist systems, city, village, exploitation, nature, utopia, cosmism.
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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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-7-24
The article presents the results of the explication and analysis of the “peasant question” as one of the semantic centers of N. F. Fedorov’s common cause philosophy. In its various formulations and analytical sections, the peasant question is an ideologically complex issue of cosmism, which combines multiple antinomies of being — urban and rural, present and due, secular (universal-philistine) and sacred (cosmic-peasant). The cause-and-effect analysis of the peasant question shows that its polysemantic nature is determined by the extreme ontological tension of the main nerve of the cosmism philosophy — issues of “life and death” in its moral-family form as issues of mortal sons who lost brotherhood and universal fatherland, and as issues of fathers awaiting bodily resurrection, a rebirth. The article identifies the supra-moralistic significance of the “bread labor” — various subject-life, planetary-cosmic expressions of agriculture in civilizational practices and projective goal setting of cosmosophy. The author emphasizes that in his deep retrospective and prospective historical analysis Fedorov clearly realized the peasant essence of the question of life and was a pure pragmatist of life as immortal and perfect for all sons of men, psychocratically integrated into the “adult society”.
N. F. Fedorov, common cause philosophy, cosmism, supra-moralism, peasantry, peasant question, agriculture, village, regulation of nature, resurrection.
Alexander A. Onosov, PhD (Philosophy), Leading Researcher, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, RUDN University. Lomonosovsky Prosp., 27–4, Moscow, 119991, Russia.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-2-79-88
As its witness and participant, S. A. Esenin responded to the World War I with works written in 1914–1915. As the “singer of the village”, the poet sincerely worried about peasants who were close to him and went to the front. Most of Esenin’s works about the World War I reflect the village life and changes in the usual peasant way of life, especially the unfortunate fate of the peasant woman, to whom the poems “The Patterns” () and “The Mother’s Prayer” () are dedicated. Esenin shows the bride’s grief and tells the story of the lonely mother commemorating her breadwinner son. Other works inspired by war events also present female images: in the little poem “Rus” (1914), Esenin describes militia, departure of men, women waiting for and receiving news from the front and faith in victory as moments in the life of peasant women inseparable from village realities. When repeatedly describing the sendoff of men from villages, Esenin not only emphasizes the crying of women anticipating troubles but also mentions outdoor festivities of recruits with playful girls, referring to his personal experience (“Through the Village by the Crooked Path...”, 1914). However, the main result of war for the poet is the death of soldiers; therefore, the images of peasant women in his works of the World War I are associated mainly with tears, suffering and commemoration.
S. A. Esenin, World War I, village, motives, “Rus”, “The Mother’s Prayer”, “The Patterns”, “Through the Village by the Curved Road...”.
Alla A. Nikolaeva, PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher, Scientific Seсretary of the Esenin Group, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Povarskaya St., 25а, bldg. 1, Moscow, 121069, Russia.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-1-96-106
The article aims at presenting a list of new rural settlements in the Republic of Udmurtia, which were founded in the first two decades of the 21st century, and at identifying the features of their social-economic functioning and economic significance. The article is based on the results of the author’s official requests about the liquidation and emergence of new settlements, which were made in November 2023 to the authorities and administration of the Republic of Udmurtia; on the collected legal documents of regional importance, cartographic, scientific, and online sources. Thus, the author identifies quantitative and qualitative characteristics of restored villages in the Republic of Udmurtia, emphasizes the high interest in the liquidated rural settlements, presents a list of new villages which appeared on the site of the previously abolished ones, and describes the economic activity of villagers as predominantly agricultural and agrotourism. The available facts of the restoration of previously abolished villages in the Republic of Udmurtia show this restoration as an isolated phenomenon, but it should be evaluated positively in both economic and social terms.
Village, creation of a settlement, Republic of Udmurtia, rural studies, rural area, abolished settlement.
Balabeykina Olga A., PhD (Geography), Associate Professor, Department of Regional Economics and Environmental Management, Saint Petersburg State Economic University, Canala Griboedova Nab., 30–32, Letter A, Saint Petersburg, 191023.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-3-144-184
Today, urban-type settlements still have an ‘intermediate’ position between the city and the village, as in the Soviet period. However, the consequences of the 1990s’ crisis and the transition to the market economy have changed the social-economic situation in such settlements. The authors consider Lokot in the Brasovsky district of the Bryansk Region as an example of the peripheral urban-type settlement and describe its changes on the axis of urbanization in the post-Soviet period based on the following indicators: appearance of the village, employment, mobility, migration and lifestyle of its population. Each indicator has undergone transformations of various scale since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but there is no single trend (pro-urban or pro-rural): the appearance of the village and the lifestyle of the local population have become more urban due to the development of the services sector, while employment, mobility and migration, on the contrary, have become more rural primarily due to the closure of the city-forming industrial enterprises, which led to a significant outflow of the able-bodied population to cities. Thus, the multidirectional nature of transformation does not allow to unambiguously define Lokot as a city or a village.
Urban-type settlement, city, village, lifestyle, Bryansk Region, socialeconomic transformation.
Samburova Svetlana A., Master’s Student, Department of Economic and Social Geography of Russia, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Leninsky Gory, 1, Moscow, 119991, Russia.
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Alekseev Alexander I., DSc (Geography), Professor, Department of Economic and Social Geography of Russia, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Leninsky Gory, 1, Moscow, 119991, Russia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-2-140-158
In the interview, Professor N. E. Pokrovsky describes his scientific path related to the issues of rural-urban development. Based on his experience as originally a city dweller, Pokrovsky considers how and why city-dwellers move to the countryside with their projects and plans to change the rural reality; identifies the life trajectories of different social strata of city dwellers in their rural searches; focuses on the essential characteristics of rural changes in recent decades, including those identified on the basis of his long-term observations in the Ugorsk rural development project in the Kostroma Region. As a sociologist-Americanist, Pokrovsky refers to the American roots of the rural lifestyle — ideas of T. Jefferson and H. Thoreau — and to his personal impressions of rural regions of the United States. Pokrovsky also mentions the spatial rethinking of rural-urban development as related, on the one hand, to the criticism of life in large cities, and, on the other hand, to the new economic-technological, culturalhistorical and recreational-environmental practices in rural areas. In conclusion, he considers the possibility of a new mapping of rural spaces in order to assess the development of local territories.
City, village, suburbanization, deurbanization/counterurbanization, migration, dachas, ecology, Henry Thoreau, Ugor project.
Pokrovsky Nikita E., DSc (Sociology), Chief Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vice-Rector for Research, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, 119571.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-1-71-90
The author reconstructs the history of the Plotnikovo village in the Novosibirsk district of the Novosibirsk Region in the late 1920s – 1930s. The research was conducted in the microhistoric format, which allows to consider the agrarian history of Russia in the everyday perspective of its direct actors – peasants united in their primary communities. The article aims at presenting the course of collectivization and its price for a certain rural settlement. In the Plotnikovo village, collectivization began at the end of 1929 with the creation of a giant commune which collapsed after the publication of Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success”. The small collective farm “Zavety Ilyicha” was established on the basis of this commune. Collectivization resumed in 1931 and ended in the late 1930s. The author also considers anti-peasant repressions, de-kulakization, local famine in 1934-1935, state regulations of the size of the collective farmers’ smallholdings, behavioral strategies of peasants and rural officials. The author concludes that in the early 1940s the Plotnikovo village was at the same or even lower level of development than in the early 1920s. Thus, in general collectivization had a negative impact on the development of agricultural productive forces in the village under study, and the difficulties the villagers survived in the 1930s cannot be counted – only named by V.P. Danilov’s term ‘tragedy of the Soviet village’.
Peasantry, village, agrarian policy of the Soviet state, collectivization, collective farms, smallholdings, microhistory, Siberia, Т. Shanin, V.P. Danilov.
Il’inykh Vladimir A., DSc (History), Head of the Agrarian and Demographic History Sector, Institute of History, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 630090, Novosibirsk, Ac. Nikolaev St., 8.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-140-155
The article considers reasons that determine the very possibility of the townspeople moving to the village for permanent residence. The non-standard grammatical form of the question in the title in Russian stresses the double context of the Russian word “why—from what”: on the one hand, it is a pronoun with a preposition (from what) indicating a certain phenomenon; on the other hand, it is an interrogative pronoun (why), a synonym of the adverb “wherefore” asking about reasons for moving to the village. In recent decades, the scale and speed of the civilizational development have changed the functionality of the place of residence, which makes the researchers reconsider their previous approaches to the study of the reasons of migration from the city to the countryside. However, in contemporary sociological works, both Russian and Western, little attention is paid to the issue of the townspeople moving to permanent residence in the countryside, as compared to the studies of the reverse process—the migration of villagers to the city. Based on the analysis of the interviews data, the article focuses on the reasons that determine the possible and necessary decisions of the townspeople to choose a new place of residence under the current conditions of everyday rural life. The author emphasizes that such reasons, which explain a seemingly ordinary and rational fact of the townspeople moving to the village for permanent residence, help to understand the evolution of life practices in both rural and urban social systems.
townspeople, village, former townspeople, villagers, migration, everyday practices, rural world, phenomenon, fact
Vinogradskaya Olga Ya., Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, 119571.
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DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-4-123-135
The article considers key reasons for townspeople moving to the village as a permanent residence. The author believes that the main reason is that the technological world of the big city forcibly deprives the man of subjectivity and does not allow him to influence continuous plunge into mandatory daily household routine and everyday endless cycle. The daily technological routine of urban life enhances the feeling of hopelessness and even danger of everyday practices, isolates people from each other. Some townspeople believe that rural world can provide them with a place and nature to live as “human beings”. Townspeople try to at least temporarily escape from the technological world that seized them by getting out of the city to visit one’s country house, by taking a journey, by visiting one’s relatives in the village or, sometimes and today more and more often, by moving to the countryside. Townspeople, unlike villagers, consider the village an unusual expolar space that makes them happier and more creative and provides opportunities for activities that are possible only in this new world. The difference of the new world from the urban “mechanized” one is not the degree of mechanization but that the “technology” no longer subjugates the man but frees him from dangers and provides with opportunities to skillfully and effectively master a variety of innovations.
City, village, former townspeople, villagers, migration, economic practices, technological world, technological development.
Vinogradskaya Olga Ya., Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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