The peasantry is a class in feudal society. The classes of bourgeois society are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Therefore, the transition of the peasantry to capitalism is expressed in the stratified division of the peasantry into two classes corresponding to the bourgeois mode of production - the rural proletariat (Batrakov) and the rural bourgeoisie (kulaks). The stratification of the peasantry, its liquidation as a class during the transition to capitalism is a common pattern for all peoples. But in Russia this process had peculiarities due to the fact that the rural community (“world” or “society”) was preserved here.
The basis of this community was communal ownership of land. For use, the land was divided among the members of the bus according to the principle of equal land use, according to the number of male souls in the family. "Mir" vigilantly ensured that everyone had the same plots of land, not only in quantity, but in quality of land. Therefore, each field was divided into strips and each peasant received his share by lot. In addition, in accordance with the three-field system, all arable land was divided into three parts: one was sown with spring grain, the other with winter grain, and the third was left fallow. Naturally, everyone was obliged to obey this traditional crop rotation. The agricultural process on allotment land was impossible. The community froze agriculture at a traditionally primitive level.
Land is the main means of production for farmers. Therefore, it is obvious that a rich man is one who has a lot of land, a poor man is one who has little land or is landless. This is exactly how it was in Western Europe. But in the community, the richest had as much land as the poorest, if they had the same families. Therefore, the populists considered the community the basis of Russian socialism: if the land is divided equally, then there cannot be a stratification of the peasants into rich and poor.
However, the populists were wrong. The community really slowed down the stratification, but could not stop it, but it distorted the process of stratification. Some of the peasants within the community became poor and went bankrupt, but these poor people were not landless, but horseless or one-horse. V.I. Lenin called them “hired workers with an allotment.” He included part of the agricultural workers with one horses, because a full-fledged peasant farm required two horses. The main source of livelihood for such poor people is not allotment farming, but earnings on the side.
But the rural proletariat cannot sell their plot of land and go to the city and become workers. He cannot sell because the land is not his property. He cannot leave because the community will not let him go: he must pay his share of taxes and redemption payments for the land that he cannot use. He is released into the city only to earn money, for a while, with a passport or temporary identity card.
V.I. Lenin, based on contemporary statistical works, wrote that the rural proletariat constituted “at least half of the total number of peasant households, which corresponds to approximately 4/10 of the population.” From this excerpt it is clear that the families of the poor were relatively small. The reason was not only that a small family received a correspondingly small allotment, but also the insufficient supply of workers for the economy. A peasant family was a labor collective in which everyone had a job, and if there were not enough people in this collective, it was difficult to run a full-fledged farm.
Communal orders especially interfered with the entrepreneurship of the prominent rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks. It was impossible to conduct any kind of rational commercial farming on a communal plot. It was impossible to increase their holdings at the expense of poor peasants’ plots, and in the conditions of forced three-field and interstriated farming, this did not make sense. And therefore, for entrepreneurial activity, the kulaks looked for other areas of agriculture - in trade and industry. Let us remember the Nekrasov kulak: “Naumu, the molasses factory and the inn provide a decent income." A typical post-reform kulak is a rural shopkeeper, the owner of small industrial establishments, mainly for processing agricultural products. The kulak buys grain and other products from his fellow villagers for resale at higher prices.He takes out contracts for the transportation of various goods; to fulfill these contracts, he hires drivers.
Much less often, a kulak acts as a farmer, that is, a truly agricultural entrepreneur, only he acts not on a community plot, but on land purchased rented from the side, usually from a landowner. Only on land, where it does not depend on the community and communal overindulgence, can the kulak develop a rational, specialized commodity economy. The kulaks then made up 3/10 of the rural population, but only 1/5 of the households, i.e. the kulak family was one and a half times larger than the average peasant family. So, the community not only delayed the stratification of the peasants, but also hampered the development of agriculture. "Peace" of the peasant was the bearer of age-old wisdom. Community - frozen traditional methods of three-field natural farming, which left no room for economic activities”; entrepreneurship. The traditional ritual of seasonal slaves, which allowed one to exist “like everyone else” and did not require the manifestation of initiative, was acceptable and dear to most peasants.
The Western agricultural owner was primarily a farmer-entrepreneur, that is, he ran a commercial enterprise designed to sell products. Our peasant was a community member, that is, a collectivist in his perception of the world. Therefore, socialist ideas in the form in which they reached him were more acceptable to him than to the farmers of the West
The peasantry is a class in feudal society. The classes of bourgeois society are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Therefore, the transition of the peasantry to capitalism is expressed in stratification, the division of the peasantry into two classes corresponding to the bourgeois mode of production - the rural proletariat (farmers) and the rural bourgeoisie (kulaks). The stratification of the peasantry, its liquidation as a class during the transition to capitalism is a common pattern for all peoples. But in Russia this process had peculiarities due to the fact that here it was preserved rural community (“world” or “society”).
The basis of the community was communal ownership of land. For use, land was distributed among community members according to the principle of equal land use, according to the number of male souls in the family. “Mir” vigilantly ensured that everyone had the same allotments not only in quantity, but also in the quality of the land. Therefore, each field was divided into strips, and each peasant received his share by lot. In addition, in accordance with the three-field system, all arable land was divided into three parts: one was sown with spring grain, the other with winter grain, and the third was left fallow. Naturally, everyone was obliged to obey this traditional crop rotation. The agricultural process on allotment land was impossible. The community froze agriculture at a primitive traditional level.
Land is the main means of production in agriculture. Therefore, obviously, a rich man is one who has a lot of land,
- 13.1. Stratification of the peasantry
poor - land-poor or landless. This is exactly what happened in Western Europe. But in a community, the richest had the same amount of land as the poorest, if they had the same families. Therefore, the populists considered the community the basis of Russian socialism: if the land is divided equally, then there cannot be a stratification of the peasants into rich and poor. However, the populists were wrong. The community really slowed down the stratification, but could not stop it, but distorted the separation process. Some of the peasants within the community became poor and went bankrupt, but these poor people were not landless, but horseless or one-horse. V.I. Lenin called them "hired workers with an allotment." He included part of the agricultural workers with one horses, because a full-fledged peasant farm required two horses. The main source of livelihood for such poor people is not allotment farming, but earnings on the side.
The rural proletariat could not sell their plot of land and go to the city and become workers; firstly, because the land is not his property; secondly, the community will not let him go, since he must pay his share of taxes and redemption payments for land that he cannot use. They were allowed into the city only to earn money, for a while, with a passport or temporary identity card. V.I. Lenin, based on contemporary statistical works, wrote that the rural proletariat constituted “... no less than half of the total number of peasant households, which corresponds to approximately 4/10 of the population.” From this excerpt it is clear that the families of the poor were relatively small. The reason was not only that a small family received a correspondingly small allotment, but also the insufficient supply of workers for the economy. A peasant family was a labor collective in which everyone had a job, and if there were not enough people in this collective, it was difficult to run a full-fledged farm.
Communal orders especially interfered with the entrepreneurship of the prominent rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks. It was impossible to conduct any kind of rational commercial farming on a communal plot. It was impossible to increase one’s holdings at the expense of poor peasants’ plots, and in the conditions of forced three-field and interstriated land this did not make sense. For entrepreneurial activity, the kulaks looked for other areas of agriculture - in trade and industry. Let’s remember Nekrasov’s kulak: “In my opinion, the molasses factory and the inn give a decent income.” A typical post-reform kulak is a rural shopkeeper, the owner of small industrial establishments, mainly processing agricultural products. The kulak buys grain and other products from his fellow villagers for resale at higher prices. He takes out contracts for the transportation of various goods and hires drivers to carry out these contracts. Much less often a fist acts as a farmer, i.e. a truly agricultural entrepreneur, only he operates not on a community plot, but on land purchased or rented externally, as a rule, from the landowner. Only on this land, where it does not depend on the community and communal interstitiality, can the kulak develop a rational, specialized commodity economy. Kulaks then made up 3/10 of the rural population, but only 1/5 of the households, i.e. On average, a kulak family was one and a half times larger than the average peasant family.
So, the community not only delayed the stratification of the peasants, but also hampered the development of agriculture.
“Peace” for the peasant was the bearer of age-old wisdom. The community is frozen traditional methods of three-fold natural agriculture, which left no room for economic entrepreneurship. The traditional ritual of seasonal work, which allowed one to exist like everyone else and did not require the manifestation of initiative, was acceptable and dear to most peasants. The Western farmer was primarily a farmer-entrepreneur, i.e. ran a commercial enterprise designed to sell products. The Russian peasant was a community member, i.e. collectivist in his perception of the world. Therefore, socialist ideas in the form in which they reached him were more acceptable to him than to the farmers of the West.
- Populism is the ideology and movement of the various intelligentsia at the bourgeois-democratic stage of the liberation struggle in Russia (1861 - 1895). It expressed the interests of the peasants, opposed serfdom and the capitalist development of Russia, and advocated the overthrow of the autocracy through a peasant revolution.
However, the peasantry, especially in the non-black soil zone, also experienced the influence of the market. Wealthy peasants (mainly state-owned), conducting farming aimed at selling products, expanded their crops and used improved tools and machines.
In the first half of the 19th century. The stratification of the peasantry increased significantly. Having received the right to buy uninhabited lands, the village elite began to buy land for plots from the treasury or private owners. In the 50s in Russia there were 270 thousand peasant landowners who owned over 1 million dessiatines of land. Among them were relatively large landowners who had 100-200 dessiatines. Data on peasant landowners, however, are underestimated, since only the state peasant could officially buy land, and the serf was forced to buy it in the name of the master.
Along with the purchase of land, its lease became widespread. The tenants were entire villages and individual wealthy peasants. There are cases when a peasant rented up to 5 thousand dessiatines. Such large tenants became agricultural entrepreneurs, supplying flax, wool, oil, grain, etc. to the market.
Unable to use serf labor, rich peasants widely hired farm laborers and day laborers from among their impoverished fellow villagers, who did not have enough bread from their plots until the new harvest.
It is typical that landowners also resorted to hiring workers, and there are known cases when other people’s serfs were hired. The stratification of the peasantry and the growing use of wage labor indicated that serfdom was becoming obsolete.
Nevertheless, until the abolition of serfdom, despite the growing stratification of property, the majority of the village were middle peasants. The landowner prevented both the excessive enrichment of the peasants, which made them too independent, and their final ruin, which did not allow the collection of duties from them.
What to pay attention to when answering:
Speaking about new phenomena in the development of industry and agriculture, it should be shown that they developed in spite of serfdom, which only hindered their formation. At the same time, phenomena that hampered the economic progress of the country were directly related to serfdom. The answer should be structured in such a way that it indicates the inevitability of the fall of serfdom in Russia.
1 Factory is an enterprise based on machine labor, in contrast to manufacture, based on manual labor. True, in Russia the names “factory” and “manufactory” were given to enterprises regardless of the use of machines and other equipment on them.
2 The low profitability of the farm encouraged landowners to take out loans secured by their estates. Loans were provided by the Noble Bank for 49 years at 6% per annum. If the landowner could not cope with the payment of the debt and needed additional funds, he could remortgage the estate, receiving a new loan, but for a shorter period and at higher interest rates. The estates of insolvent debtors were taken into custody. Landowners widely resorted to pledging and re-mortgaging their estates, and the funds received were often used unproductively and they lived without thinking about the future.
| TOPIC 48. | INTERNAL POLITICS OF RUSSIA IN THE II QUARTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY. |
Basic political principles of Nicholas's reign
Second quarter of the 19th century. entered the history of Russia as the “Nicholas era” or even “the era of the Nikolaev reaction.” The most important slogan of Nicholas I, who spent 30 years on the Russian throne, was: “The revolution is on the threshold of Russia, but, I swear, it will not penetrate it as long as the breath of life remains in me.” Nicholas I, although distinguished, like his father and older brother, by an exaggerated love of parades and military drills, was a capable and energetic person who understood the need to reform Russia. However, the fear of revolution caused by the Decembrist uprising and the growth of the revolutionary movement in Europe forced him to shy away from deep reforms and pursue a protective policy that ended in collapse during the Crimean War.
Codification of laws
In the first years of the reign of Nicholas I, work was organized to codify Russian laws. A single set of laws was last adopted in Russia in 1649. Since then, thousands of legislative acts have accumulated, often contradicting each other. The work of compiling a code of laws was entrusted to a group of lawyers led by M.M. Speransky. All Russian laws issued after 1649 have been collected and arranged in chronological order. They compiled 47 volumes of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire. In 1832, the 15-volume Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was published, which included all current laws. The publication of the Code made it possible to streamline the activities of the state apparatus.
Topic plan
Topic 5. Development of capitalism in Russia
Development of capitalism in Russia. Features of the stratification of the peasantry in community conditions. The transition of landowners to capitalist farming. Workouts. Development of commodity production in agriculture. Capitalist evolution of peasant crafts. Capitalist restructuring of large-scale industry. Its corporatization. Features of industrialization of Russia. Railway construction and industry. Industrial boom of the 90s. and market development.
The peasantry is a class in feudal society. The classes of bourgeois society are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Therefore, the transition of the peasantry to capitalism is expressed in stratification, the division of the peasantry into two classes corresponding to the bourgeois mode of production - the rural proletariat (farmers) and the rural bourgeoisie (kulaks). The stratification of the peasantry, its liquidation as a class during the transition to capitalism is a common pattern for all peoples. In Russia, this process had features due to the fact that the rural community (“world” or “society”) was preserved here.
The basis of this community was communal ownership of land. For use, the land was divided among community members according to the principle of equal land use, according to the number of male souls in the family. "Mir" vigilantly ensured that everyone had the same allotments not only in quantity, but also in quality of land. Therefore, each field was divided into strips and each peasant received his share by lot. In addition, in accordance with the three-field system, all arable land was divided into three parts: one was sown with spring grain, the other with winter grain, and the third was left fallow. Naturally, everyone was obliged to obey this traditional crop rotation. The agricultural process on allotment land was impossible. The community froze agriculture at a primitive traditional level.
Land is the main means of production in agriculture. A rich man is one who has a lot of land, a poor man is one who has little land or is landless. This is exactly what happened in Western Europe. In a community, the richest had the same amount of land as the poorest if they had the same families. Therefore, the populists considered the community the basis of Russian socialism: if the land is divided equally, then there cannot be a stratification of the peasants into rich and poor.
However, the populists were wrong. The community really slowed down the stratification, but could not stop it, but it distorted the process of stratification. Some of the peasants within the community became poor and went bankrupt, but these poor people were not landless, but horseless or one-horse. V.I. Lenin called them “hired workers with an allotment.” He included part of the agricultural workers with one horses, because a full-fledged peasant farm required two horses. The main source of livelihood for such poor people is not allotment farming, but earnings on the side.
The rural proletariat could not sell their plots and go to the city and become workers. He could not sell, because the land is not his property, he could not leave, because the community would not let him go: he must pay his share of taxes and redemption payments for the land, without being able to use it. He is released into the city only to earn money, for a while, with a passport - a temporary identity card.
V.I. Lenin, based on modern statistical works, wrote that the rural proletariat made up “at least half of the total number of peasant households, which corresponds to approximately 4/10 of the population.” This shows that the families of the poor were relatively small. The reason for this is not only that a small family received a correspondingly small allotment, but also the insufficient supply of workers for the farm. A peasant family was a labor collective in which everyone had a job, and if there were not enough people in this collective, it was difficult to run a full-fledged farm.
Community orders especially hampered entrepreneurship and the isolated rural bourgeoisie - the kulaks. It is impossible to conduct any kind of rational commercial farming on a communal plot. It was impossible to increase one’s holdings at the expense of poor peasants’ plots, and in the conditions of forced three-field and interstriated land this did not make sense. Therefore, for entrepreneurial activities, the kulaks looked for other areas of agriculture in trade and industry. Let's remember Nekrasov's kulak: “Naumu, the production plant and the inn give a decent income...”. A typical post-reform kulak is a rural shopkeeper, the owner of small industrial establishments, mainly processing agricultural products. The kulak buys grain and other products from his fellow villagers for resale at higher prices. He takes out contracts for the transportation of various goods and hires drivers to carry them out.
Much less often a fist acts as a farmer, i.e. a truly agricultural entrepreneur, only he operates not on a communal plot, but on land purchased or rented externally, usually from a landowner. Only on this land, where it does not depend on the community and communal interstitiality, can the kulak develop a rational, specialized commodity economy. Kulaks then made up 3/10 of the rural population, but only 1/5 of the households, i.e. On average, a kulak family was one and a half times larger than the average peasant family.
So, the community not only delayed the stratification of the peasants, but also hampered the development of agriculture. "Peace" for the peasant was the bearer of age-old wisdom. The community is the frozen traditional methods of three-field natural farming, which left no room for economic entrepreneurship. The traditional ritual of seasonal work, which allowed one to exist “like everyone else” and did not require the manifestation of initiative, was unacceptable and expensive for most peasants.
The Western farmer was primarily a farmer-entrepreneur, i.e. ran a commercial enterprise designed to sell products. Our peasant remained a community member, i.e. collectivist in his perception of the world. Therefore, socialist ideas in the form in which they reached him were more acceptable to him than to the farmers of the West.
Yet, despite the fact that in the time of Peter I the serf became a slave, a “thing” (as Alexander I would later put it), there were still some loopholes in this humiliating position of the peasants.
According to the historian Le Play, the standard of living of the Russian peasant was still comparable to the standard of living of many peasants in the West. Naturally, this did not apply to the entire mass of Russian serfs, because even within the same estate there were people, one might say, wealthy, and poor.
A Russian serf sometimes received permission to engage in personal crafts and sell the products of his labor himself. Moreover, sometimes the serf was granted the right to engage in crafts “with a separation” from the main agricultural production.
Fernand Braudel also emphasizes that often a peasant received a passport from his owner to engage in latrine farming or trade away from his home.
But, at the same time remaining a serf, the peasant, even having amassed a fortune, did not stop paying duties, although in proportion to his savings.
What enterprises were Russian peasants excluded from!.. They were peddlers, traveling traders, shopkeepers or cab drivers. Millions of peasants went to the cities every winter to sell their surplus food at a profit.
If there was not enough snow for the peasant sleighs to cover the distance separating the village from the “sale market,” famine occurred in the cities.
In summer, countless boatmen plied the rivers. Naturalist and anthropologist Peter Simon Pallas, during his research throughout Russia, stopped at Vyshny Volochyok, not far from Tver, “a large village [that] looks like a town. “He owes his growth,” Pallas notes, “to the channel connecting Tvertsa with Meta. This connection of the Volga with Lake Ladoga is the reason that almost all the farmers of this area indulged in commerce; to such an extent that agriculture seemed abandoned there,” and the village became a city, “the center of the district named after it.”
Starting from the 16th century, a layer of village artisans could afford to throw their work into the fields. Handicraft village production even surpassed in its volume the cottage industry that was subsequently organized by the owners of manufactories.
The serfs were able to contribute to the rapid and widespread development of Peter’s manufactories: if in 1725 there were 233 of them in Russia, then at the end of the 18th century there were already 3360! True, the smallest industries are also taken into account here, which, however, does not greatly spoil the picture of the overall rise.
The main part of this industrial offensive centered around Moscow. It is in this way that the peasants of the village of Ivanovo, which belonged to the Sheremetyevs, who have long been famous as good weavers, will eventually open real manufactories producing printed, linen and cotton fabrics.
Profits will gradually acquire fantastic proportions and Ivanovo will turn into a Russian textile center.
A distinctive feature of the Russian market of the early 18th century (as well as of later times) was that large-scale trade involved relatively few townspeople. Peasants desperately sought to make a trading career and achieve prosperity, sometimes even through illegal means.
However, without the patronage of their masters, they naturally could not achieve anything. In the middle of the century, Count Minich, speaking on behalf of the Russian government, stated that throughout the century, peasants “despite any prohibitions, were constantly engaged in trade, investing very significant sums in it,” so that the growth and “current prosperity” of large-scale trade “owe its existence to the ability , labor and capital investments of these peasants.”
It is paradoxical that such nouveau riche actually continued to remain serfs. Until, of course, they bought their manumission from the owner.
It was in the owner’s interests to continue to receive significant rent from the income of his slave, but he could also ask for a huge redemption price for the peasant. Therefore, the wealthy serf tried his best to hide the true size of his income.
Of course, very few managed to make any significant fortunes. But nevertheless, the serf class was not isolated from the country’s economy; it sought and found opportunities to engage in entrepreneurial activity. In addition, over time, the share of state peasants in the total mass of serfs grew. State peasants were freer; often only theoretical power weighed on them.
The wage labor market gradually developed - not only in cities, in transport, but also in the countryside, during the “hot season” - in haymaking or harvest. This market was replenished by bankrupt peasants or bankrupt artisans who continued to work in the suburbs, but for their more successful neighbor.