agrarian reforms. agrarian reform

In Russian society, the most important issue has always been agrarian. The peasants, who became free in 1861, did not actually receive ownership of the land. They were stifled by lack of land, the community, the landowners, therefore, during the revolution of 1905-1907, the fate of Russia was decided in the countryside.

All the reforms of Stolypin, who in 1906 headed the government, one way or another were aimed at transforming the countryside. The most important of them is land, called "Stolypin", although its project was developed before him.

Its purpose was to strengthen the position of a “strong sole proprietor”. This was the first step of the reform, which was carried out in three main directions:

The destruction of the community and the introduction of peasant private ownership of land instead of communal property;

Assistance to the kulaks through the Peasants' Bank and through the partial sale of state and noble lands to them;

Resettlement of peasants to the outskirts of the country.

The essence of the reform was that the government abandoned the previous policy of supporting the community and moved on to its violent breaking.

As you know, the community was an organizational and economic association of peasants for the use common forest, a pasture and a watering hole, an alliance in relation to the authorities, a kind of social organism that gave villagers small life guarantees. Until 1906, the community was artificially preserved, as it was a convenient means of state control over the peasants. The community was responsible for the payment of taxes and various payments in the performance of state duties. But the community hindered the development of capitalism in agriculture. At the same time, communal land tenure delayed the natural process of stratification of the peasantry and placed a barrier in the way of the formation of a class of small proprietors. The inalienability of allotment lands made it impossible to obtain loans secured by them, and striping and periodic redistribution of land prevented the transition to more productive forms of its use, so giving peasants the right to freely leave the community was a long overdue economic necessity. A feature of the Stolypin agrarian reform was the desire to quickly destroy the community. The main reason for this attitude of the authorities towards the community was the revolutionary events and agrarian riots in 1905-1907.

Another no less important goal of the land reform was the socio-political one, since it was necessary to create a class of small proprietors as the social support of the autocracy as the main cell of the state, which is opposed to all destructive theories.

The implementation of the reform was initiated by a tsarist decree of November 9, 1906, under the modest title "On Supplementing Some Decrees of the Current Law Concerning Peasant Land Ownership", according to which free exit from the community was allowed.

The land plots that had been in the use of the peasants since the last redistribution were assigned to the property, regardless of the change in the number of souls in the family. There was an opportunity to sell your allotment, as well as to allocate land in one place - on a farm or a cut. At the same time, all this involved the lifting of restrictions on the movement of peasants around the country, the transfer of part of the state and specific lands to the Peasant Land Bank to expand operations for the purchase and sale of land, the organization of a resettlement movement in Siberia in order to provide landless and landless peasants with allotments through the development of vast eastern expanses . But the peasants often did not have enough money to set up a farm in a new place. After 1909 there were fewer immigrants. Some of them, unable to withstand the difficult living conditions, returned.

The bank provided benefits to farmers. The Peasants' Bank also contributed to the creation of a layer of prosperous kulaks in the countryside.

From 1907 to 1916 in European Russia, only 22% of peasant households left the community. The emergence of a layer of farmers-farmers evoked resistance from the communal peasants, which was expressed in damage to livestock, crops, implements, beatings and arson of farmers. Only for 1909 - 1910. the police registered about 11,000 facts of arson farms.

Such a reform, for all its simplicity, meant a revolution in the soil structure. It was necessary to change the whole system of life and the psychology of the communal peasantry. For centuries, communal collectivism, corporatism, and equalization have been affirmed. Now it was necessary to move on to individualism, private property psychology.

The decree of November 9, 1906 was then transformed into permanent laws adopted on July 14, 1910 and May 19, 1911, which provided for additional measures to speed up the withdrawal of peasants from the community. For example, in the case of land management work to eliminate striping within the community, its members could henceforth be considered the owners of the land, even if they did not ask for it.

Consequences:

Accelerating the process of stratification of the peasantry,

Destruction of the peasant community

Rejection of the reform by a significant part of the peasantry.

Results:

Separation from the community by 1916 25 - 27% of peasant households,

The growth of agricultural production and the increase in the export of bread.

Stolypinskaya agrarian reform did not have time to give all the expected results from it. The initiator of the reform himself believed that it would take at least 20 years to gradually resolve the land issue. “Give the state 20 years of internal and external peace, and you will not recognize today's Russia,” said Stolypin. Neither Russia nor the reformer himself had these twenty years. However, over the 7 years of the actual implementation of the reform, noticeable successes have been achieved: the sown area has grown by 10% in general, in the districts maximum output peasants from the community - one and a half times, grain exports increased by one third. Over the years, the amount of mineral fertilizers used has doubled and the use of agricultural machinery has expanded. By 1914, farmers overtook the community in the supply of goods to the city and accounted for 10.3% total number peasant farms (according to L.I. Semennikova, this was a lot in a short time, but not enough on a national scale). By the beginning of 1916, farmers had personal cash deposits in the amount of 2 billion rubles.

The agrarian reform accelerated the development of capitalism in Russia. The reform stimulated not only the development Agriculture, but also industry and trade: a mass of peasants rushed to the cities, increasing the market work force demand for agricultural and industrial products increased sharply. Foreign observers noted that “if the majority European nations If things go the same way between 1912-1950 as they did between 1900-1912, then by the middle of this century Russia will dominate Europe, both politically and economically and financially.”

However, the majority of the peasants were still committed to the community. For the poor, she personified social protection, for the rich, an easy solution to their problems. Thus, it was not possible to radically reform the “soil”.

Stolypin's activities began in political conditions that were qualitatively new for Russia, created by the revolution of 1905. For the first time in its history, the autocracy was forced to coexist with a representative State Duma, moreover, a radical one. So deputies 1st Duma from the peasants, who made up an impressive faction of the Trudoviks, put forward for discussion an agrarian project, which was based on the demand for the confiscation of landowners' lands and the nationalization of all land, which would undermine the foundations of Russian autocracy. The start of the agrarian reform, inspired and developed by Stolypin, was given by a decree of November 9, 1906. After a complex discussion in the State Duma and the State Council, the decree of June 14, 1910 was approved by the tsar as law. An addition to it was the law on land management of May 29, 1911.

Decree of November 9, 1906 “On the Supplementation of Certain Decrees of the Current Law Concerning Peasant Land Ownership and Land Use” (extract) With our Manifesto of November 3, 1905, the collection of redemption payments from peasants for allotment lands is canceled from January 1, 1907. From this date, the aforementioned the lands are freed from the restrictions that lay on them, by virtue of the redemption debt, and the peasants acquire the right to freely leave the community, with the strengthening of the property of individual householders, passing to personal possession, plots from the worldly allotment. However, the actual exercise of this legally recognized right in most rural societies will encounter practical difficulties in the impossibility of determining the size and allotment of plots due to householders leaving the community ... Recognizing, as a result of this, it is necessary now to eliminate the obstacles in the existing laws to the actual exercise by peasants of their rights on allotment lands and approving the special journal of the Council of Ministers held on this subject, We, on the basis of Art. 87 of the Code of Fundamental State Laws, ed.1906, we command: 1. Every householder who owns land on a communal basis may at any time demand that the part due to him from the designated land be strengthened into personal property ... 2. Requirements for strengthening in personal the ownership of parts of the community land ... are presented through the village headman to the society, which, according to a verdict passed by a simple majority of votes, is obliged, within a month from the date of filing the application, to indicate the plots that come ... into the property ... of the householder ... If the society does not deliver such a verdict within the specified period, then, at the request of ... the householder, all the indicated actions are performed on the spot by the zemstvo chief ... 3. Each householder ... has the right ... to demand that the society allocate him these plots in return own site, possibly to one place.

After the coup d'état on June 3, 1907, and the dissolution of the Second State Duma, the desired calm was achieved, and the revolution was suppressed. It's time to start reforms. "We are called to liberate the people from begging, from ignorance, from lack of rights," said Pyotr Stolypin. He saw the way to these goals primarily in the strengthening of statehood. Land reform became the core of his policy, his life's work. This reform was supposed to create in Russia a class of small proprietors - a new strong pillar of order, "the pillar of the state. Then Russia would not be afraid of all revolutions." On May 10, 1907, Stolypin concluded his speech on land reform with the famous words: ) we need great upheavals, we need Great Russia". "Nature has invested in man some innate instincts and one of the most strong feelings this order - a sense of ownership. "- Pyotr Arkadevich wrote in a letter to L.N. Tolstoy in 1907. -" You can not love someone else's on an equal footing with your own and you can not court, improve the land that is in temporary use, on a par with your own land. The artificial castration of our peasant in this respect, the destruction of his innate sense of property, leads to much evil and, most importantly, to poverty. And poverty, in my opinion, is the worst of slavery,” P. Stolypin stressed that he sees no point in “driving the more developed element of the landowners off the land.” On the contrary, the peasants must be turned into real owners.

The main provision of Stolypin's reform was the destruction of the community. For this, a stake was placed on the development of personal peasant property in the village by granting the peasants the right to leave the community and create farms, cuts. Important point reforms: the community was destroyed, and the landowner's ownership of land remained intact. This provoked sharp opposition from the peasants. The peasants perceived the ideas of the reform ambiguously. On the one hand, they accepted the idea of ​​private ownership of land, but, on the other hand, they understood that such a reform would not save the countryside from lack of land and landlessness, would not raise the level of peasant agriculture. Another measure proposed by Stolypin was supposed to destroy the community: the resettlement of the peasants. The purpose of this action was twofold. The socio-economic goal is to obtain a land fund, primarily in the central regions of Russia, where small-land peasants did not have the opportunity to create farms and cuts. At the same time, they got the opportunity to develop new territories, i.e. further development capitalism.

The political goal is to defuse social tension in the center of the country. The main areas of resettlement are Siberia, Central Asia, North Caucasus, Kazakhstan. The government provided the settlers with funds for travel and settling in a new place, but these funds were clearly not enough. Why did Stolypin make the main emphasis on, in his words, "to drive a wedge into the community", to destroy it? The answer to this question is simple. The community has always been a protector for the peasants (within it, every peasant had the right to land, that is, everyone was equal); Each householder was relatively free; disposed of the land in his own way; The community helped the peasants to master the culture of agriculture; The community came to the defense of the peasants in their relations with the landlords; The community negotiated with the landowner the conditions of hiring and renting. Thus, the liquidation of the community was primarily in the interests of the landowners, who, under the new conditions, could dictate their terms to the peasants. The landowner could be calm for his land. Obviously, the destruction of the community opened the way for capitalist development, since the community was undoubtedly a feudal relic.

Undoubtedly, the reform had a bourgeois orientation, but the preservation of landownership held back the development of capitalism. Even on December 5, 1906, in his speech in defense of the reform, Stolypin noted that it was impossible to transfer land to persons of a non-peasant class, to sell it for personal debts. The land could be mortgaged only in the Peasants' Bank and bequeathed only to close relatives. In order to protect the landlord from competition from wealthy peasants, measures were taken (Article 56 of the decree) that did not allow the concentration of land in their hands: only 6 plots could be bought in one hand.

In the period 1905-1916. about 3 million householders left the community, which is one third of their number in the provinces where the reform was carried out. This means that it was not possible either to destroy the community or to create a stable layer of peasant proprietors. We can supplement this conclusion with data on the failure of the resettlement policy. In 1908-1909. the number of migrants amounted to 1.3 million people, but very soon many of them began to return back. Reasons: bureaucracy of the Russian bureaucracy, lack of funds for the establishment of a household, ignorance of local conditions and a reserved attitude towards the settlers of the old-timers. Many died on the way or went bankrupt. In the national regions of the country, Kazakhs and Kirghiz were deprived of their lands in order to resettle the settlers. As a result of the reform, the problems of land scarcity and landlessness, agrarian overpopulation, that is, were not resolved. the basis of social tension in the countryside remained. Thus, the reform failed neither in the economic nor in the political part.

Stolypin understood that the results of his labors would not be felt soon. In 1909, he declared: "Give the state 20 years of internal and external peace, and you will not recognize today's Russia." The reforms also yielded notable results: The sown area increased by a total of 10%, and in areas where the peasants most actively left the community - by 15% Grain exports increased by a third, reaching an average of 25% of world grain exports. The amount of mineral fertilizers used has doubled, and purchases of agricultural machinery have increased by almost 3.5 times. The development of agriculture influenced industrial growth, the rate of which in these years was the highest in the world - 8.8%. In 1913, 6 million poods of oil were exported from Siberia. Abroad 4.4 million, which gave huge revenues to the treasury. In 1912, the cooperative Moscow People's Bank was created, which helped the peasants in the acquisition of agricultural equipment, fertilizers, and seeds. Cooperation made it possible to reduce prices in the market (it was useful not only for wealthy and middle peasants, but also for the poor.

During the life of Stolypin, Imperial Russia did not really appreciate his merits: he did not rise to the highest ranks and awards. And he didn’t really care about it, because he approached his achievements differently. “I was carried upstairs by a wave of events - probably for a moment! - he wrote to L.N. Tolstoy. - I still want to use this moment to the best of my strength, understanding and feelings for the benefit of people and my Motherland, which I love, as they loved it in the old days ... "

agrarian question occupied a central position in domestic politics. The beginning of the agrarian reform, the inspirer and developer of which was P.A. Stolypin, put a decree of November 9, 1906.

Stolypin reform

After a very difficult discussion in the State Duma and the State Council, the decree was approved by the tsar as a law from June 14, 1910. An addition to it was the law on land management from May 29, 1911.

The main provision of the Stolypin reform was community destruction. For this, a stake was placed on the development of personal peasant property in the village by granting the peasants the right to leave the community and create farms, cuts.

An important point of the reform: the landowner's ownership of land was preserved intact. This provoked sharp opposition from the peasant deputies in the Duma and from the masses of peasants.

Another measure proposed by Stolypin was supposed to destroy the community: resettlement of peasants. The purpose of this action was twofold. The socio-economic goal is to obtain a land fund, primarily in the central regions of Russia, where the lack of land among the peasants made it difficult to create farms and cuts. In addition, this made it possible to develop new territories, i.e. further development of capitalism, although this oriented it towards an extensive path. The political goal is to defuse social tension in the center of the country. The main areas of resettlement are Siberia, Central Asia, the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. The government allocated funds to the settlers for travel and settling in a new place, but practice has shown that they were clearly not enough.

In the period 1905 - 1916. about 3 million householders left the community, which is approximately 1/3 of their number in the provinces where the reform was carried out. This means that it was not possible to destroy the community, nor to create a stable layer of owners. This conclusion is supplemented by data on the failure of the resettlement policy. In 1908 - 1909. the number of migrants amounted to 1.3 million people, but very soon many of them began to return back. The reasons were different: the bureaucracy of the Russian bureaucracy, the lack of funds for arranging a household, ignorance of local conditions, and the more than reserved attitude of the old-timers towards the settlers. Many died on the way or went bankrupt.

Thus, the social goals set by the government were not achieved. But the reform accelerated the stratification in the countryside - the rural bourgeoisie and the proletariat were formed. It is obvious that the destruction of the community opened the way for capitalist development, since the community was a feudal relic.

Stolypin's agrarian reform was a legitimate effort to eliminate the problems identified by the revolution of 1905-1907. Before 1906 there were several attempts to solve the agrarian question. But all of them boiled down either to the seizure of land from the landowners and the allocation of it to the peasants, or to the use of nationalized lands for these purposes.

P. A. Stolypin, not without reason, decided that the only support of the monarchy was precisely the landlords and wealthy peasants. The seizure of landowners' lands meant undermining the authority of the emperor and, as a result, the possibility of another revolution.

For supporting royal power In August 1906, Pyotr Stolypin announced a government program in which a number of reforms were proposed regarding equality, police regulations, local self-government, and education. But of all the proposals, only Stolypin's agrarian reform found its embodiment. Its goal was to destroy the communal system and allocate land to the peasants. The peasant had to become the owner of the land that previously belonged to the community. There were two ways to determine the allotment:

  • If communal lands have not been redistributed over the past twenty-four years, then every peasant at any time could claim his allotment as personal property.
  • If there was such a redistribution, then the land that was processed last went into land ownership.

In addition, the peasants had the opportunity to buy land on credit at low mortgage rates. For these purposes, a peasant credit bank was created. The sale of land plots made it possible to concentrate significant plots in the hands of the most interested and able-bodied peasants.

On the other hand, those who did not have sufficient funds to buy land, Stolypin's agrarian reform intended to relocate to free territories where there were uncultivated state lands - on Far East, to Siberia, to Central Asia, to the Caucasus. Settlers were provided with a number of benefits, including a five-year exemption from taxes, low cost of railway tickets, forgiveness of arrears, a loan in the amount of 100-400 rubles without charging interest.

The Stolypin agrarian reform, in its essence, put the peasants in conditions market economy where their wealth depended on how they were able to dispose of their property. It was assumed that they would work more efficiently on their plots, causing the flourishing of agriculture. Many of them sold their land, and they themselves went to the city to work, which led to an influx of labor. Others emigrated abroad in search of better conditions life.

The Stolypin agrarian reform and its results did not justify the hopes of Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin and the Russian government. In total, less than one third of the peasant households left the community during its holding. The reason for this was that the reform did not take into account the patriarchal way of life of the peasants, their fear of independent activity, and their inability to manage without community support. Over the past years, everyone has become accustomed to the fact that the community takes responsibility for each of its members.

But, nevertheless, the Stolypin agrarian reform had positive results:

  • The beginning of private ownership of land was laid.
  • The productivity of peasant lands increased.
  • The demand for the agricultural industry has increased.
  • rose

28. Agrarian reform P.A. Stolypin.

The Stolypin agrarian reform is a generalized name for a wide range of measures in the field of agriculture carried out by the Russian government under the leadership of P. A. Stolypin since 1906. The main directions of the reform were the transfer of allotment land to the ownership of peasants, the gradual elimination of rural society as a collective owner of land, widespread lending to peasants, the purchase of landowners' land for resale to peasants on preferential terms, and land management, which made it possible to optimize the peasant economy by eliminating striped land.

The reform was a set of measures aimed at two goals: the short-term goal of the reform was to resolve the "agrarian question" as a source of mass discontent (primarily, the cessation of agrarian unrest), the long-term goal was the sustainable prosperity and development of agriculture and the peasantry, the integration of the peasantry into the market economy.

If the first goal was supposed to be achieved immediately (the scale of agrarian unrest in the summer of 1906 was incompatible with the peaceful life of the country and the normal functioning of the economy), then the second goal - prosperity - Stolypin himself considered achievable in a twenty-year perspective.

The reform unfolded in several directions:

Improving the quality of peasants' property rights to land, which consisted primarily in replacing the collective and limited land ownership of rural communities with full-fledged private property of individual peasant householders; measures in this direction were of an administrative and legal nature.

The eradication of obsolete class civil law restrictions that impeded the effective economic activity of peasants.

Improving the efficiency of peasant agriculture; government measures consisted primarily in encouraging the allocation of plots “to one place” (cuts, farms) to peasant owners, which required the state to carry out a huge amount of complex and expensive land management work to develop striped communal lands.

Encouraging the purchase of privately owned (primarily landlord) lands by peasants, through various operations of the Peasant Land Bank, was predominantly concessional lending.

Building encouragement working capital farms through lending in all forms (bank lending secured by land, loans to members of cooperatives and partnerships).

Expansion of direct subsidizing of the activities of the so-called "agronomic assistance" (agronomic consulting, educational activities, maintenance of experimental and exemplary farms, trade in modern equipment and fertilizers).

Support for cooperatives and peasant associations.

The reform was aimed at improving peasant allotment land use and had little effect on private land ownership. The reform was carried out in 47 provinces of European Russia (all provinces, except for the three provinces of the Ostsee region); the reform did not affect the Cossack land tenure and the land tenure of the Bashkirs.

Decrees were issued in 1906, 1910 and 1911:

    each peasant could take ownership of the allotment,

    could freely leave the community and choose another place of residence,

    move to the Urals in order to receive land (about 15 hectares) and money from the state to improve the economy,

    settlers received tax benefits and were exempted from military service.

a) The goals of the reform.

Socio-political goals of the reform.

The main goal was to win wide sections of the peasantry to the side of the regime and prevent a new agrarian war. To do this, it was supposed to contribute to the transformation of the majority of the inhabitants of their native village into a “strong, wealthy peasantry imbued with the idea of ​​property,” which, according to Stolypin, makes it the best bulwark of order and tranquility.” Carrying out the reform, the government did not seek to affect the interests of the landowners. In the post-reform period and at the beginning of the 20th century. The government was unable to protect the landownership of the nobility from reduction, but the large and small landed nobility continued to be the most reliable support for the autocracy. To push him away would be suicidal for the regime.

In addition, noble class organizations, including the council of the united nobility, had a great influence on Nicholas 2 and his entourage. Members of the government, and even more so the Prime Minister, who raises the question of the alienation of landowners' lands, could not remain in his place, much less organize the implementation of such a reform. The reformers also took into account the fact that the landowners' farms produced a significant part of marketable grain. Another goal was the destruction of the rural community in the struggle of 1905-1907. , the reformers understood that the main thing in the peasant movement was the question of land, and did not seek to immediately destroy the administrative organization of the community.

Socio-economic goals were closely related to socio-political ones. It was planned to liquidate the land community, its economic land distribution mechanism, on the one hand, which formed the basis of the social unity of the community, and on the other, hindered the development of agricultural technology. The ultimate economic goal of the reforms was to be the general rise of the country's agriculture, the transformation of the agrarian sector into the economic base of the new Russia.

b) Preparation of reform

The preparation of reform projects before the revolution actually began with the Conference on the needs of the agricultural industry under the leadership of S.Yu. Witte, in 1902-1903. In 1905-1907. The conclusions formulated by the Meeting, primarily the idea of ​​the need to destroy the land and turn the peasants into land owners, were reflected in a number of projects of state officials (V.I. Gurko.). With the beginning of the revolution and the active participation of the peasants in the destruction of the landed estates, Nicholas 2, frightened by the agrarian uprisings, changed his attitude towards the landed peasant community.

The Peasant Bank was allowed to issue loans for peasant plots (November 1903), which in fact meant the possibility of alienating communal lands. P.A. Stolypin in 1906, having become prime minister, supported the landlords, who did not affect the interests. Gurko's project formed the basis of the Decree of November 9, 1906, which marked the beginning of the agrarian reform.

c) Fundamentals of the direction of the reform.

The change in the form of ownership of peasant land, the transformation of peasants into full-fledged owners of their allotments, was envisaged by the law of 1910. carried out primarily by "strengthening" allotments into private ownership. In addition, according to the law of 1911, it was allowed to carry out land management (reduction of land into farms and cuts) without “strengthening”, after which the peasants also became landowners.

The peasant could sell the allotment only to the peasant, which limited the right to land ownership.

Organization of farms and cuts. Without land management, technical improvement, economic development of agriculture was impossible in the conditions of peasant striping (23 peasants of the central regions had allotments divided into 6 or more strips in various places of the communal field) and were far away (40% of the peasants of the center should were to walk weekly from their estates to allotments of 5 and more versts). In economic terms, according to Gurko's plan, fortifications without land management did not make sense.

Therefore, the work of state land management commissions was planned to reduce the strips of the peasant allotment into a single area - a cut. If such a cut was far from the village, the estate was transferred there and a farm was formed.

Resettlement of peasants to free lands.

To solve the problem of peasant shortage of land and reduce agrarian overpopulation in the central regions, the resettlement policy was intensified. Funds were allocated to transport those wishing to new places, primarily to Siberia. Special ("Stolypin") passenger cars were built for the settlers. Beyond the Urals, the peasants were given lands free of charge, for raising the economy and landscaping, and loans were issued.

The sale of land to peasants in installments through a peasant bank was also necessary to reduce the lack of land. On the security of allotment land, loans were issued for the purchase of state land transferred to the Bank's fund, and land that was sold by landowners.

The development of agricultural cooperation, both commercial and credit, was given an impetus by the publication in 1908 of an exemplary charter. Credit partnerships received some benefits.

d) Progress of the reform.

1. Legal basis, stages and lessons of the reform.

The legislative basis for the reform was the decree of November 9, 1906, after the adoption of which the implementation of the reform began. The main provisions of the decree were enshrined in a 1910 law approved by the Duma and the State Council. Serious clarifications were introduced into the course of the reform by the law of 1911, which reflected the change in the emphasis of government policy and marked the beginning of the second stage of the reform.

In 1915 -1916. In connection with the war, the reform actually stopped. In June 1917 the reform was officially terminated by the Provisional Government. The reform was carried out by the efforts of the main department of land management and agriculture, headed by A.V.

Krivoshein, and Stolypin's Minister of the Interior.

2. The transformation of peasants into landowners at the first stage (1907-1910), in accordance with the decree of November 9, 1906, proceeded in several ways.

Strengthening striped plots in the property. Over the years, 2 million plots have been strengthened. When the pressure of local authorities ceased, the strengthening process was sharply reduced. In addition, most of the peasants, who only wanted to sell their allotment and not run their own household, have already done this. After 1911, only those who wanted to sell their plot applied. In total, in 1907-1915. 2.5 million people became "fortified" - 26% of the peasants of European Russia (excluding the western provinces and the Trans-Urals), but almost 40% of them sold their plots, most of them moving beyond the Urals, leaving for the city or replenishing the stratum of the rural proletariat.

Land management at the second stage (1911-1916) according to the laws of 1910 and 1911 made it possible to obtain an allotment in the property automatically - after the creation of cuts and farms, without submitting an application for strengthening the property.

In the "old-hearted" communities (communities where there had been no redistribution since 1861), according to the law of 1910, the peasants were automatically recognized as the owners of allotments. Such communities accounted for 30% of their total number. At the same time, only 600,000 of the 3.5 million members of the boundless communities requested documents certifying their property.

The peasants of the western provinces and some areas of the south, where communities did not exist, also automatically became owners. To do this, they did not need to sell special applications. The reform did not formally take place beyond the Urals, but even there the peasants did not know communal property.

3. Land management.

Organization of farms and cuts. In 1907-1910, only 1/10 of the peasants, who strengthened their allotments, formed farms and cuts.

After 1910 the government realized that a strong peasantry could not emerge on multi-lane sections. For this, it was necessary not to formally strengthen the property, but the economic transformation of allotments. The local authorities, who sometimes resorted to coercion of the community members, were no longer recommended to "artificially encourage" the strengthening process. The main direction of the reform was land management, which now in itself turned peasants into private property.

Now the process has accelerated. In total, by 1916, 1.6 million farms and cuts were formed on approximately 1/3 of the peasant allotment (communal and household) land purchased by the peasants from the bank. It was the beginning. It is important that in reality the potential scope of the movement turned out to be wider: another 20% of the peasants of European Russia filed applications for land management, but land management work was suspended by the war and interrupted by the revolution.

4. Resettlement beyond the Urals.

By decree of March 10, 1906, the right to resettle peasants was granted to everyone without restrictions. The government allocated considerable funds for the costs of settling settlers in new places, for their medical care and public needs, and for laying roads.

Having received a loan from the government, 3.3 million people moved to the new lands in “Stolypin” wagons, 2/3 of which were landless or land-poor peasants. 0.5 million returned, many replenished the population of Siberian cities or became agricultural workers. Only a small part of the peasants became farmers in the new place.

The results of the resettlement campaign were as follows. First, during this period, a huge leap was made in the economic and social development of Siberia. Also, the population of this region increased by 153% during the years of colonization. If before resettlement to Siberia there was a reduction in sown areas, then in 1906-1913 they were expanded by 80%, while in the European part of Russia by 6.2%. In terms of the rate of development of animal husbandry, Siberia also overtook the European part of Russia.

5. Destruction of the community.

For the transition to new economic relations, a whole system of economic and legal measures was developed to regulate the agrarian economy. The Decree of November 9, 1906 proclaimed the predominance of the fact of sole ownership of land over the legal right to use it. The peasants could now allocate the land that was in actual use from the community, regardless of its will. The land allotment became the property not of the family, but of an individual householder. Measures were taken to ensure the strength and stability of working peasant farms. So, in order to avoid land speculation and concentration of property, the maximum size of individual land ownership was limited by law, and the sale of land to non-peasants was allowed. The law of June 5, 1912 allowed the issuance of a loan secured by any allotment land acquired by the peasants. Development various forms credit - mortgage, reclamation, agricultural, land management - contributed to the intensification of market relations in the countryside.

In 1907 - 1915. 25% of households announced their separation from the community, while 20% - 2008.4 thousand households actually separated. New forms of land tenure became widespread: farms and cuts. As of January 1, 1916, there were already 1221.5 thousand of them. In addition, the law of June 14, 1910 considered it unnecessary for many peasants to leave the community, who were only formally considered community members. The number of such households amounted to about one third of all communal households.

6. Purchase of land by peasants with the help of a peasant bank.

The bank sold 15 million state and landowners' land, of which 30% was bought by installments by peasants. At the same time, special benefits were provided to the owners of farms and cuts, who, unlike others, received a loan in the amount of 100% of the cost of the acquired land at 5% per annum. As a result, if until 1906 the bulk of land buyers were peasant collectives, then by 1913 .7% of buyers were individual peasants.

7. Cooperative movement.

The cooperative movement developed rapidly. In 1905-1915, the number of rural credit partnerships increased from 1680 to 15.5 thousand. The number of production and consumer cooperatives in the countryside increased from 3 thousand. (1908) to 10 thousand (1915)

Many economists came to the conclusion that it is cooperation that represents the most promising direction for the development of the Russian countryside, meeting the needs of modernizing the peasant economy. Credit relations gave a strong impetus to the development of production, consumer and marketing cooperatives. The peasants, on a cooperative basis, created dairy and butter artels, agricultural societies, consumer shops, and even peasant artel dairy factories.

e) Conclusions.

Serious progress is being made in the peasant sector of Russia. Harvest years and fluctuations in world grain prices played an important role in this, but cut-off farms and farms were especially progressing, where new technologies were used to a greater extent. The yield in these areas exceeded similar indicators of communal fields by 30-50%. Even more, by 61% compared with 1901-1905, the export of agricultural products increased in the prewar years. Russia was the largest producer and exporter of bread and flax, a number of livestock products. So, in 1910, the export of Russian wheat amounted to 36.4% of the total world export.

But this does not mean that pre-war Russia should be presented as a "peasant's paradise." The problems of hunger and agrarian overpopulation were not solved. The country still suffered from technical, economic and cultural backwardness. According to calculations

I.D. Kondratiev in the USA, on average, a farm accounted for a fixed capital of 3,900 rubles, while in European Russia the fixed capital of an average peasant farm barely reached 900 rubles. The national income per capita of the agricultural population in Russia was about 52 rubles a year, and in the United States - 262 rubles.

The growth rate of labor productivity in agriculture was relatively slow. While in Russia in 1913 they received 55 poods of bread from one tithe, in the USA they received 68, in France - 89, and in Belgium - 168 poods. Economic growth took place not on the basis of the intensification of production, but by increasing the intensity of manual peasant labor. But during the period under review, socio-economic conditions were created for the transition to a new stage of agrarian transformation - to the transformation of agriculture into a capital-intensive technologically progressive sector of the economy.

But a number of external circumstances (the death of Stolypin, the beginning of the war) interrupted the Stolypin reform. Stolypin himself believed that it would take 15-20 years for the success of his undertakings. But even during the period 1906-1913 a lot was done.

1) Social results of the fate of the community.

The community as a self-governing body of the Russian village was not affected by the reform, but the socio-economic body of the community began to collapse, the number of land communities decreased from 135,000 to 110,000.

At the same time, in the central non-chernozem regions, the disintegration of the community was almost not observed, it was here that there were numerous cases of arson.

2) Socio-political results of the reform.

There was a gradual cessation of peasant uprisings. At the first stage 1907 -1909. when allotments were consolidated into property, often under pressure from zemstvo chiefs, the number of peasant uprisings began to grow, in 1910 -1000. But after the shift in the emphasis of government policy to land management, the rejection of coercion and some economic successes, peasant unrest almost stopped; to 128. The main political goal was still not achieved. As 1917 showed, the peasantry retained the ability "with the whole world" to oppose the landlords. In 1917, it became obvious that the agrarian reform was 50 years late, but main reason failure was the socio-political half-heartedness of the transformations, manifested in the preservation of the landed estates intact.

RESULTS of the reforms:

    The cooperative movement developed.

    The number of wealthy peasants increased.

    According to the gross harvest of bread, Russia was in 1st place in the world.

    The number of livestock increased by 2.5 times.

    About 2.5 million people moved to new lands.


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