"Groping toward Soviet Power in the Countryside: The Non-Party Peasant Conferences of Kharkiv Province in 1920," Journal of Ukrainian Studies 35-36 (2010-2011): 179-191. (original) (raw)
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Magas V. THE ALL-RUSSIAN PEASANT UNION AND AUTHORITIES IN THE YEARS OF THE FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE SUMMARY. The activity of the first Peasant Unions in Ukraine confined within the limits of the current legislation – namely, the Decree on February 18, 1905, which started the judgement campaign, although the unions were established as unlawful societies. A short period of ARPU open legal activities began after the announcement of the Manifesto on October 17 that proclaimed various freedoms, including “meetings and organizations”. The central authorities of the Peasant Union worked out the democratic reforms program and its centers implemented the tactics of “peaceful attack” on the landowners and local authorities, keeping the peasants from radical actions. This period ended with the widespread brutal repression against the ARPU leaders and members at the end of 1905 – at the beginning of 1906. The Decree on March 4, 1906 “On the Temporary Rules of Societies and Unions” at the legislative level made it impossible to continue the open Peasant Union organizations activities. In its turn, the peasant congresses of various levels in 1906-1907 showed revolutionary sentiment growth. The constant pursuit and the completion of the revolution caused the decline of the Union institutions. Thus, the authorities saw a huge threat in the breadth and scope of the activities supported by simple peasants and decided to use the repressive means, while the possibility of a dialogue with the peasants for the reform of the agrarian and political sphere was lost, and the beginnings of a civil society in the country were destroyed. Keywords: The First Russian Revolution, the All-Russian Peasant Union, the public authorities, the Constituent Congress. Магась В.О. Всероссийский крестьянский союз и власть в годы Первой русской революции в Украине Аннотация. Первые местные ячейки Всероссийского крестьянского союза в Украине образовывались вопреки действующему в империи законодательству, однако с провозглашением Манифеста 17 октября 1905 г. сформировались условия для их легальной деятельности. На этом этапе тактика Союза предусматривала мирную борьбу за созыв Учредительного собрания. В 1906-1907 гг. деятельность организаций Союза в Украине проходила конспиративно и под влиянием постоянных преследований со стороны власти постепенно затухала. Ключевые слова: Первая русская революция, Всероссийский крестьянский союз, органы государственной власти, Учредительное собрание.
Evolution of Peasant Land Tenure During the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921
Baltic Journal of Economic Studies, 2018
The subject of the study is the evolution of peasant land tenure during the period of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921. The contribution supports the assumption that the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1921 was a peasant one by its character. The principal agent of Ukrainian history of that period was the peasantry. Peasant revolutionary activity dramatically affected the state of land tenure in Ukraine. It clearly underwent radical changes. The essence of these transformations was the elimination of landlordism and the expansion of the peasant land tenure. The main subject of land relations in Ukraine during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921 was a peasant landowner. The methodological basis of the study was the concept of the "Great Peasant Revolution", put forward in the scientific works of V. Danilov, T. Shanin. Its main statements were further developed in the latest developments of N. Kovalev, I. Farenii, S. Kornovenko, and other scholars. Peasant revolution of the early twentieth century laid the foundation of all the revolutionary transformations deploying in Ukraine in the first decades of the twentieth century. A socio-cultural approach is the core methodological benchmark of our study. One of the features of the socio-cultural paradigm is a certain universalism, which makes it possible to study cultural, political, economic, and other elements as a whole, as well as consider society as a unity of culture and sociality. Considering these basic principles, the peasantry at the beginning of the twentieth century appears as a complicated socio-cultural phenomenon where a well-established routine, the land, the work on it, peasants are closely interconnected. The peasantry was the conservative basis of civilization, a specific form of culture, which reminded statehood by the way of socio-cultural organization. Peasant economy was a socio-cultural phenomenon, object and subject of agrarian policy, it occupied an important place in the social division of labour as a peculiar microscope; and most importantly it was the structural component of the Ukrainian revolutionary society of that time. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the evolution of peasant land tenure during the period of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921. The basis of the analysis is the agrarian policy adopted by Bolsheviks, N. Makhno, P. Wrangel. The study of these examples clarifies the evolution of peasant land tenure in the Ukrainian village during the period of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were substantiated. A deliberate policy of liquidation of large land tenure in Ukraine in 1917-1918 by the Soviet authorities was not carried out. Attempts for its implementation took place in Ukraine only in 1919 and were not successful in the end. The Makhnovists were much more effective in their endeavours. Firstly, they did not provoke resistance from peasants of various wealth; secondly, their policy was introduced before the Bolsheviks came to power; and thirdly, their policy was legalized by the relevant decisions of the congresses. P. Wrangel conducted a policy of liquidation of large land tenure in Ukraine in 1920. In its essence, it was similar to the one of Soviet power and Makhno. At the same time, it varied qualitatively from the Soviet one: 1) it had a more thoughtful, systematic, purposeful character; 2) the Government of the South of Russia managed to move away from declarations and eliminated large land tenure in practice; 3) the future of statehood, for which P. Wrangel fought, was clearly linked with the peasantry; 4) he did not identify private ownership of land with large land tenure. The latter was understood as a component of the institution of private land ownership. P. Wrangel believed that possession, use, and disposal of land were the essence of the peasants' aspirations for land ownership. Therefore, only large land tenure suffered the liquidation.
Legal Policy of the Soviet State in Relation to the Ukrainian Peasantry in 1921-1923
Gradually, step by step Ukrainian historical science is dispelling many myths that have been created over the centuries. This process of demythologisation of the history is not easy, because many facts are considered by researchers to be axioms which need no proof, and when the material refuting certain statements is found to disprove them, radical change of someone’s point of view seems for them to be like sacrilege. But implacable passing of time predetermines evolution of the scientific idea, and the new generation of researchers looks back at a smilingly finally solved problem again and again. One of such myths, which can still be found in many educational and scientific sources, is the opinion that there is no problem with an issue of introduction of the NEP agricultural tax-in-kind as an alternative to food requisitioning during the period of military communism. Many historians still believe that no sooner had the delegates of the X Congress of the RKP(b) approve the new course and replacement of food requisitioning with tax-in-kind, the peasantry, having realised all benefits of the new policy, immediately started developing the economy and rushed to surrender tax-in-kind to the respective public institutions. Thus, document analysis allows us to conclude that it was at the beginning of the 1920s, when the Soviet state laid a legal foundation for the system of cruel exploitation of the peasantry and subjection of any forms of dissatisfaction with the policy. From the legal point of view, acts of the Bolshevik government were completely legal, because adoption of the aforementioned legislative acts was within the competence of the highest bodies of state authority. When studying the issues of the legal policy in relation to the peasantry, the Soviet leaders based themselves neither on reason (but it is unreasonable, purposeless to fail to observe the principles of the economics of the country), nor, what is more, on the notion of fairness. The idea of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” shaded everything.
Review : \u27Rural Unrest during the First Russian Revolution: Kursk Province\u27
2015
The provincial, particularly the rural and agrarian, aspects of Russian history have received renewed attention of late. In many ways, the book under review fits well with two other recent publications by Catherine Evtuhov and Tracy Dennison (Tracy Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom [Cambridge, 2011]; Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Province: Economy, Society and Civilization in Nizhnii Novgorod [Pittsburgh, 2011]), contributing greatly to our understanding of provincial life and peasant economy in imperial Russia. Miller’s thorough study puts Kursk province under a microscope in search of an explanation of the socio-economic causal factors that contributed to violent peasant rebellions in Kursk province during the course of the 1905 Revolution. Making use of a wide variety of provincial and central archival sources, as well as the statistical studies published by the provinces zemstvo, Miller teases out an explanation of why some villages erupted in violence ...
Peasant resistance to the state reforms – 1905–1964
Europa Orientalis. Studia z Dziejów Europy Wschodniej i Państw Bałtyckich, 2016
Peasant resistance to the state reforms-1905-1964 e u r o pa o r i e n ta l i s 6 (2015) Studia z dziejów Europy Wschodniej i Państw Bałtyckich issn 2081-8741 Федорова Марина, Абдыльманова Райхан 120 to consider the peasant resistance to reforms "from above" and its influence on intensity modern processes. The active forms of resistance further are considered as open collective actions of the lowest layers and groups of the population expressing the own socio economic and political interests. They include revolts, performances, meetings concern communal decisions. Attempting to influence a course of socioeconomic transformations in the beginning of ХХ (1905-1907) it is possible to consider centuries communal of the decision: verdicts, orders, applications, applications, decisions, resolutions, letters, telegrams etc. 3 In verdicts and orders the peasants required gratuitous alienation landowner's, state, specific, monasterial, church grounds, cancellation redeem payments and replacement of all taxes by uniform progressive-surtax for all estates, liquidation country estate, cancellation of a private property on land. For example the peasants of Mohovy village of Kursk province wrote: "Recognizing that the land is natural wealth and came into existence without human and is necessary for each person, can not belong in the property of one man, and should be general property for everyone, who processes it…" 4. Revolts in Northwest of the Soviet Russia in 1918-1919 S.V. Yarov illustrates as an opposition between peasantry and authorities during the Civil War and shows the meetings as the usual household phenomenon of military communist period. The author subdivides excitements into the "uncompleted" performances, "chaotic" and "meeting" of excitement, deserter's uprising 5. The basic reasons of the peasant excitements in villages of the northwest Soviet Russia in the specified period (including territory Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Novgorod, Olonetsk, Petrograd, Pskov, Severodvinsk and Cherepovets provinces) were requisition of bread and cattle as the taxes and extreme mobilization, and also military mobilization of people. The listed above excitements unite common features: the revolts had no the brightly expressed political orientation, peasants were basically dispersed by Red Army Men, the revolts were short-no more than two days. The revolts 3