The communal and household property of the peasants was 137 million acres of land. Of these, 64 million acres accounted for 2.1 million rich peasant households, and the other part, 73 million acres, for 10.5 poor peasant households. Due to the natural growth of the population, the size of the per capita peasant allotment was sharply reduced. If at the end of the XIX century. it averaged 3.5 acres per capita, then in 1905 - 2.6 acres. 53.5 million peasants had an allotment from 1 to 1.75 acres of land per capita. The purchase of land by peasants increased in volume. At the same time, by 1905 only 490,000 peasant households had bought land. The wealthy part of the peasantry concentrated 3/4 of the purchased land. Most of the peasant households acquired small plots of land, which did not greatly expand their allotments. Lack of land forced the peasants to rent land from the landowners. The poor peasants were often unable to recoup the cost of labor invested in cultivating leased land. The debts of the peasants grew. According to the Ministry of Finance, debts only for redemption payments could be repaid in the 30s of the XX century.

There was a process stratification of the peasantry. There was a washout of the middle peasantry, from which, on the one hand, the prosperous peasantry stood out, on the other, a wider layer of poor peasants who left in search of work in the city or in the landowners' farms. At the end of the XIX century. there were 3.5 million agricultural workers. Their number was constantly increasing. The labor of agricultural workers was paid low, the length of the working day was not determined. In lean years, the wages of farm laborers declined sharply.

The conditions in which the peasant economy was located made it possible for the landowners to cultivate the land with the cheap labor of the peasant, renting the land to him or providing a loan. Rent acted in monetary, used and working out forms. The rent was 81% of the net income from one tithe of land. Every year, the peasants paid hundreds of millions of rubles for rented land. Therefore, the majority of landowners did not seek to restructure their farms on a capitalist basis. Yields were low, especially on the farms of the bulk of the peasants. Thus, the yield of wheat in various countries was: in Russia - 55 pounds per tithe, in Germany - 157, in Belgium - 168. Approximately the same picture was for other crops.

The growth of agricultural production was slow and extensive. At the beginning of the XX century. the total sown area in 62 provinces increased from 81.2 million acres to 138.0 million acres due to the development of the lands of the Trans-Volga region, the southern steppe regions, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Siberia. The export of agricultural products increased in monetary terms from 701 million rubles. in 1901-1905 up to 1126 million rubles. in 1911-1913

Agriculture was subject to the general trends of the economic life of Russian society, the development of agriculture was in close connection with the development of industry.

The peasantry is a class of 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 (labor laborers) and the rural bourgeoisie (kulaks). The stratification of the peasantry, its elimination as a class during the transition to capitalism, is a common pattern for all peoples. But in Russia, this process had specific features, due to the fact that the rural community (“peace” 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 community according to the principle of equal land use, according to the number of male souls in the family. "Mir" vigilantly watched 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, the entire 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 agrotechnical 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, the rich man is the one who has a lot of land, the poor is the one with little land or landless. This is exactly what happened in Western Europe. But in the community, the richest had as much land as the poorest, if they had the same families. Therefore, the Narodniks considered the community the basis of Russian socialism: if the land is divided equally, then there can be no 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 process of stratification. Part 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 "wage workers with an allotment." He included in the composition of agricultural workers part of the one-horse, because two horses were required for a full-fledged peasant economy. The main source of subsistence for such poor people is not allotment farming, but earnings on the side.

But the rural proletariat cannot sell its allotment and go to the city, 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 land that he cannot use. He is allowed into the city only to earn money, for a while, with a passe-partout, a temporary identity card.

V. I. Lenin, on the basis of contemporary statistical works, wrote that the rural proletariat accounted for “at least half of the total number of peasant households, which corresponds to approximately 4/10 of the population.” This excerpt shows that the families of the poor were comparatively small. The reason was not only that a small family received a correspondingly small allotment, but also that the household was insufficiently provided with working hands. The 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 economy.

The communal system especially interfered with the entrepreneurship of the emerging rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks. It was impossible to conduct any rational commodity economy on the communal allotment. It was impossible to increase their possessions at the expense of the poor allotments, and in the conditions of forced three-field and striped stripes, this did not even make sense. And therefore, for entrepreneurial activity, the kulaks were looking for other areas of agriculture - in trade and industry. Let us recall Nekrasov's kulak: "The molasses factory and the inn yard give a decent income to Naum." A typical post-reform kulak is a rural shopkeeper, the owner of small industrial establishments, mainly for the processing of agricultural products. The kulak buys grain and other products from his fellow villagers for resale at higher prices. He takes contracts for the transportation of various goods and hires carters to carry out these contracts.

Much less often, the kulak acts as a farmer, i.e. a genuine agricultural entrepreneur, only he does not operate on a communal plot, but on land bought or rented on the side, usually from a landowner. Only on this earth, where it does not depend on the commune and the communal striping, can the kulak develop a rational specialized commodity economy. Kulaks then made up 3/10 of the rural population, but only 1/5 of households, i.e. the average 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-field natural farming, leaving no room for economic enterprise. The traditional ritual of seasonal work, which allowed one to exist “like everyone else” and did not require initiative, was acceptable and expensive for most peasants.

The Western farmer was predominantly an entrepreneurial farmer, i.e. led a commodity economy, designed for the sale of products. Our peasant was a community member, i.e. collectivist in the perception of the world. Therefore, socialist ideas in the form in which they reached him were more acceptable to him than to the farmer of the West.

Nevertheless, 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 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 the poor.

The Russian serf sometimes received permission to engage in personal handicraft and sell the products of his labor himself. Moreover, sometimes the serf was granted the right to engage in craft "with a margin" from the main, agricultural production.

Fernand Braudel also emphasizes that it was not uncommon for a peasant to receive a passport from his owner to engage in outdoor activities or trade away from his home.

But, while remaining a serf for all this, the peasant, even having made a fortune, did not stop paying the duty, however, already in proportion to his savings.

In what kind of enterprises Russian peasants did not start up! .. They were peddlers, itinerant merchants, shopkeepers or cabbies. Millions of peasants went to the cities every winter to profitably sell their surplus products.

If there was not enough snow for the peasant sleigh to overcome the distance separating the village from the "sales market", famine set in in the cities.

In the summer, countless boatmen plowed the rivers. The naturalist and anthropologist Pyotr Simon Pallas, during his research, which he conducted throughout Russia, stopped at Vyshny Volochek, not far from Tver, “a large village [which] looks like a town. He owes his growth, Pallas notes, to the channel that connects Tvertsa with Meta. This connection of the Volga with Lake Ladoga is the reason why almost all the tillers of this district indulged in commerce; to such an extent that agriculture seems to be abandoned there, "and the village became a city," the center of the county named after it.

Beginning in the 16th century, a layer of village handicraftsmen could afford to abandon work in the fields. Handicraft village production even exceeded in its volume the cottage production organized later 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 - already 3360! True, the smallest production facilities 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 was centered around Moscow. It is in this way that the peasants of the Sheremetyev village of Ivanovo, who have long been famous as good weavers, will eventually open real manufactories that produce 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 at the beginning of the 18th century (as well as later times) was that large-scale trade consisted of relatively few townspeople. The peasants were desperate to make a trading career and achieve prosperity, sometimes even by illegal means.

However, without the patronage of their masters, they, of course, could not achieve anything. In the middle of the century, Count Munnich, speaking on behalf of the Russian government, stated that for a century the peasants "despite any prohibitions were constantly engaged in trade, invested very significant sums in it", so that the growth and "current prosperity" of large-scale trade "owe their existence to the ability , labor and investment of these peasants.

It is paradoxical that such nouveaux riches actually continued to be serfs. Until then, of course, until they bought the free from the owner.

It was in the interests of the owner to continue to receive significant rent from the income of his slave, but he could also ask for a huge ransom price for the peasant. Therefore, the wealthy serf did his best to hide the true size of his income.

Of course, very few managed to amass any significant fortunes. But all the same, the serf class was not isolated from the country's economy, it sought and found opportunities to engage in entrepreneurial activities. In addition, over time, the proportion of state peasants in the total mass of serfs grew. The state peasants were freer, often only theoretical power weighed over 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 harvesting. This market was replenished by ruined peasants or bankrupt artisans who continued to work in the suburbs, but already for their neighbor who was more successful in business.

However, the peasantry, especially in the non-chernozem zone, also experienced the influence of the market. Prosperous peasants (mainly state-owned), leading an economy focused on the sale of products, expanded crops, used improved tools and machines.

In the first half of the XIX century. the stratification of the peasantry increased considerably. Having received the right to buy uninhabited lands, the top of the village began to buy land for allotments from the treasury or private owners. In the 50s. in Russia there were 270 thousand peasant landowners who owned over 1 million acres of land. Among them were relatively large landowners who had 100-200 acres each. Data on peasant landowners, however, are underestimated, since only a state peasant could officially buy land, and a serf was forced to buy it in the name of a master.

Along with the purchase of land, its lease spread. The tenants were both entire villages and individual wealthy peasants. There are cases when a peasant rented up to 5 thousand acres. Such large tenants became agricultural entrepreneurs, supplying flax, wool, oil, grain, etc. to the market.

Not being able to use serf labor, rich peasants widely hired farm laborers and day laborers from among the impoverished fellow villagers who did not have enough bread received from their allotment until the new harvest.

Characteristically, the landowners also resorted to hiring workers, and there are cases when foreign serfs were hired. The stratification of the peasantry and the growing use of hired labor testified that serfdom was becoming obsolete.

Nevertheless, until the abolition of serfdom, despite the growing stratification of property, the majority of the villages 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 them to collect duties.

What to look for when answering:

Speaking of 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 hindered the economic progress of the country were directly related to serfdom. The answer should be structured in such a way that it testifies to the inevitability of the fall of serfdom in Russia.

1 A factory is an enterprise based on machine labor, as opposed to a manufactory 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.

2 The low profitability of the farm encouraged landowners to take out loans secured by estates. Loans were provided by the Noble Bank for 49 years at 6% per annum. If the landowner could not cope with paying 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. The landowners widely resorted to mortgage and remortgage of estates, and the funds received were often used unproductively, they lived without thinking about tomorrow.

TOPIC 48.

INTERNAL POLICY OF RUSSIA IN THE II QUARTER OF THE XIX CENTURY.

The process of social stratification of the countryside began with the separation from the general mass of relatively prosperous peasants: usurers, buyers, merchants, entrepreneurs. The number of this village elite was still insignificant, but its economic role in the village turned out to be very large: the village usurer - the rich often kept an entire district in his bondage.

Economically, he is sometimes stronger than the landowner to whom he belonged. The main source of enrichment for the village elite was trade and usury, and the object of its exploitation was both the poorest and the middle part of the peasantry.

The formation of the poorest group of the peasantry under serfdom was associated not only with the social processes taking place in the countryside, but also with the pauperization (impoverishment) of the peasants as a direct consequence of the intensification of their feudal serf exploitation, aggravated by crop failures and other natural disasters. Pauperization of the countryside should not be confused with the process of social stratification of the peasantry, but it must be borne in mind that pauperization accelerated the process of proletarianization - the formation of a proletarianized stratum of the population deprived of the means of production. This was of no small importance in shaping the labor market for capitalist industry and entrepreneurial agriculture. The social stratification of the peasantry is not only the separation of various property groups from its midst, but also the formation of new relations between them, which have a capitalist character. This is precisely the fundamental, qualitative difference between social stratification and simple property inequality. New social phenomena in the serf village were combined with the feudal traits of bondage and non-economic coercion.

The social stratification of the peasantry was a natural process that undermined the foundations of serfdom and created the conditions for the victory of a new, more progressive mode of production.

Pre-reform Russia was characterized by widespread small-scale, predominantly peasant industry. Many traditional peasant crafts, which had a centuries-old history, were most developed at the end of the 8th - the first half of the 19th century, which was due to the growth of the social division of labor, the deepening of economic specialization of individual regions of the country and the intensification of exchange between them. New types of industries also emerged.

Peasant industry served as a broad base for the growth of capitalist industrial production: capital was accumulated, cadres of trained workers were trained for large industrial enterprises; in the process of decomposition of small commodity producers (artisans), an industrial bourgeoisie was formed - a dynasty of famous manufacturers Morozov, Guchkov, Garelin, Ryabushinsky, who came out of serfs - handicraftsmen. The development of peasant industry transformed the economic appearance of the countryside and the very life of the peasant. In the fishing villages, the process of social stratification of the peasantry took place more intensively, its separation from agriculture, the conflict between phenomena of a capitalist nature and feudal relations became more acute.

An important factor in the formation of the labor market for the developing industry was the growth of the trade waste of the peasants. Otkhodnichestvo not only contributed to the formation of a labor market, it also weakened the bonds that attached the peasant to the allotment, to the landowner, and decomposed the foundations of the feudal-serf system of economy.

More on the topic The process of social stratification of the village began with the separation from the general mass of relatively wealthy peasants: usurers,:

1. By mortgaging their land allotments, the majority of the peasants turned into disenfranchised tenants; at the same time, the stratum of wealthy
2. Identification of abstract forms of the social process and the possibility of the emergence of social science
3. 2.1.2.1.2.3. The addressee is close and the communication process has already begun