Different psychology and different land allocation. You can't use these monstrosities or even the normal tractors on the narrow strips of land which were a curse of the Russian peasants. But, while being a curse, they were also a byproduct of a fundamental community-based mentality so you have something of a catch-22 situation. A reasonable solution would be seemingly creation of the cooperatives, a form which was pretty much community-based while allowing integration of the small slots and introduction of the more effective methods. Number of the cooperatives kept growing but they still represented a small minority by 1917. The Soviet solution was formally along the cooperative lines but with a complete enslavement of the member peasants and full control of the operations by the state.At this time, my Grandfather was farming with horses in the upper Midwest.
However, there were cooperatives that could be joined to get better prices on Seed, and all the rest.
2nd, There were Steam Traction engines around( gas tractors just recently being introduced) had by wealthier Farmers who had the cast to purchase one of those Iron Monsters
that could pull a 14 bottom plow, where a horse team could pull but a single bottom plow
So to the advantage of both, he would offer to plow his neighbors fields, for a percentage of the crop at harvest.
That way, more land could be plowed, at a far faster rate, getting your crops planted sooner.
More growing time, better yields. More crop acres, bigger harvests
Same for harvesttime. Combines rather than hand harvesting. Faster, one Farmer could effectively work far more land without killing himself and his sons from the extra work.
In a few years, IC Tractors were a fraction the price of the Steamers, so more individuals could finance tractors on their own. More machinery replaces horses, so lessens the need for set aside acre for fodder to feed the horses, so that land could be used for sellable crops
Production raised the amout, and as economics go, too much supply, prices drop
So the '20s wasn't a great time to be a farmer.
But he owned his own land, even if in debt.
For Want of a Word – Stolypin endures
- Thread starter Stenkarazin
- Start date
Not ALL of them. For example, A.K. Tolstoy wrote in "Mighty Potok" that he respects only a peasant who does not spend all his money on buying a drink. N. Leskov (AFAIK) did not say a single good word about the Russian peasants except for the Old Believers. But I agree, the idealized view prevailed and the obvious problems like heavy drinking and lack of a business initiative had been routinely written off upon the "hard environment" and oppression (like Nekrasov) or drooling upon the "traditional values" (like Lev Tolstoy).
marathag
Banned
Exactly.
In the Grange era, the Cooperative was to increase bargaining and purchasing power as well to disseminate best practices, but was totally optional to join.
How you ran your own farm, was your own business, for better or worse.
brooklyn99
Banned
Concerning the issue of rural overpopulation and the resulting land-hunger, how far would measures taken to proactively encourage rural-to-urban migration-with the added benefit of boosting the industrial sector- be enough to alleviate the problem? You mentioned Labour Laws that seemed to have been reasonably nice. Maybe that could've been one motivation for the peasants to migrate, because these perks could only be accessed by working in Industry?
marathag
Banned
In the US, it was the draw of more pay, plus more free time, even with industry demanding between over 60 hours a week.
Basically, the same principles had been working in the imperial Russia, at least by the end of the XIX - early XX. Law of 1897 was setting work day 11.5 hours (for night shift, Saturdays, days before the holidays, and for the women and underage -10 hours). Before and after there were laws regulating rules of employment, compensation for the work-related injuries, etc. Pay for the skilled professional workers had been high and on the big industrial plants even unskilled workers had been well-paid.
Potential drawbacks were (a) limited demand by the industry (but it kept growing), (b) housing issues - had been steadily improving all the way to the employers constructing the settlements for their workers with the ability to buy houses and apartments at a discount price or to rent apartments in the apartment buildings and (c) inertia - too many really poor peasants had been sticking to their lousy life conditions rather to risk a change. In that sense population of the US had a much greater “entrepreneurial“ mentality.
Here you touched a fundamental difference: in the European Russia (in a narrow meaning of the word) the farms had been pretty much absent and so were the individual fields. In a communal model the peasants lived in the villages and had been getting sets of the narrow strips of land instead of the meaningful fields. So cooperative Russian-style would mean that the individual sets of the strips would be joined together (and form a contiguous area allowing more effective methods) to be jointly work upon.
The problem is your picture is far too rosy and idealistic. By the time of the revolution , wages and conditions for workers had fallen greatly due to excess numbers of people coming into the cities looking for work. This led to the mass unrest as urban unemployment rose rapidly that fuelled the revolution. US, it worked not due to so much to mentality ( US rural population was overall richer than the Russian but just as hidebound ) but more the balance between labour and capital was never at key times early on ,so one sided in favour of capital .
@alexmilman Stolypin was certainly an enthousiastic proponent of settling Siberia.
Regarding Turkestan proper, these were Krivoshein's plans according to "Peopling the russian periphery":
Regarding Turkestan proper, these were Krivoshein's plans according to "Peopling the russian periphery":
I don't see these policies butterflied, after all without Civil War and the stalinist famines there is a bigger rural population around. Certainly there will be clashes between the native population and the settlers.
Would there be any chance to institute a modernized version of the process of the so-called Great Partition and the Enskiftet as they were done in Sweden in the 18th century and early 19th century? And then follow up with further consolidation of farmland?
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Bookmark1995
Banned
In many societies that became totalitarian communist, it is important to remember that the ruling class wasn't overthrown for no reason. There was some sense that this ruling class was leeching off the workers.
Yes Mao executing the landlords was definitely a human rights violating, but the landlords weren't exactly nice people, and executing them WAS incredibly popular among the Chinese people for the reason they had spent years exploiting.
Communism can be described as a cure for social ills that was often worse than the disease.
But could Stolyin have created a class of well off farmers similiar to the ones in the OTL Midwest if there had been enough time to settle them in Siberia?
Problem is time, if happen before the war? Maybe but during wartime help for them will be minimal (if even such) as all resources (human included) will be used war the war effort; after the peace? The big problem for such endevour is the political, economical and social instability that will grasp Russia.
It's probable that Stolyn with some luck and skill can plant the seed of this but the fruit will be taken and enjoyed much later and apparently by a different regime.
Well, I’m not sure what is rosy in the facts that I listed, they are facts backed up by the official documents, but you did not produce anything but the blanket statements. So, if you want a serious conversation, you have to produce the numbers to support your claims because otherwise they are just a hot air.
Anyway, conversation was about the trends that existed during period preceding wwi and AFAIK nobody denied that by the end of the 1916 situation deteriorated with the resulting revolution. However, I’d like to see the factual data regarding growing urban unemployment in Russia between 1913 and 1916.
As far as the workers wages and conditions are involved, according to https://rg.ru/2018/11/11/rodina-pervaia-mirovaia-vojna-ukradennaia-pobeda.html the effective salary of the workers between 1913 and 1916 grew by 8% while the working day and a number of the working days in the year remain the same, fixed by the labor laws.
I have no idea what the statement about the balance of a capital is supposed to mean but prevailing mentality of a Russian peasant is a known factor which was greatly impacting (in a negative way) implementation of Stolypin’s reforms: percentage of the peasants willing to resettle or to become the individual farmers remained relatively small. It is an established fact which can’t be denied.
The US farmers simply did not have a communal tradition similar to one of the Russian peasants and this is another undeniable fact.
There is nothing new or original or even unjust in blaming the “ruling class“ for the problems but the question remains what constitutes the ruling class in each specific case. What, specifically, constituted the “ruling class” in Russia by 1914? The landed aristocracy mostly disappeared and was not a ruling class for quite a while. Probably it is safe to say that most of the high positions in the civic administration and army prior to WWI had been held by the members of nobility but OTOH, it is also probably safe to say that most of the nobility were not making its living off the estates but had been salaried employees or entrepreneurs (*). But after 1905 traditional exclusive positions in the high government institutions had been gone: State Council got the members of intelligencia, clergy and peasants. In the army ... well, both Denikin and Kornilov were not of the noble descent and they both had been generals prior to WWI the less known general Grulev was a converted Jew, Yegorov, future Soviet Marshal made it into colonel rank in the imperial army, etc.
IIRC, one of the revolutionary slogans used against the Provisional Government was “Get rid of the ministers-capitalists!” Well, how many of them had been “capitalists”? A popular satiric verse of the RCW had been mocking Wrangel making his speak in a broken Russian-German language, which was a complete absurdity, but it was OK “for the masses”: enemy is defined and he is not “one of us”.
As for your question, Stolypin did create a class you are talking about, it was just not big enough. The peasants of Siberia sided with the Samara government against the Bolsheviks until Kolchak alienated them with his policies. More than that, the industrial workers of the region formed few regiments: the Bolsheviks could not offer them anything attractive.
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(*) Take one of the very aristocratic families, von Wrangels. Father of Peter Wrangel (the White commander) most of his life worked either as an entrepreneur (usually not very successful) or as an employee of various companies. Peter Wrangel was an engineer by education, his junior brother was a well-known art specialist who worked in Hermitage and a publisher of art magazine.
There were moves in that direction and Stolypin reform encouraged this schema. But the government was reluctant to do an enforcement and relied upon people’s willingness: nobody wanted repetition of the disturbances of 1905.
As was already discussed, probably encouragement of the cooperatives (in the Russian form) would be an acceptable compromise form. Something was happening in that direction and probably government could do more by the proper money lending policies. Anyway, even the optimistic assessments required 20 years of a dedicated peaceful,development.
Bookmark1995
Banned
That's the theme of history, ain't it.
But it is important to remember that the first part of Mao's reign saw some progress in things like electricity and industrialization.
Mao gained support, and then wasted it on all these mad schemes.
But the people who still governed Russia in World War I were incompetents who destroyed royalist loyalty in Russia.
This is what I had in mind. But Krivoshein and others had bigger aspirations that involved many more settlers, that would cause greater conflict. Of course such settler scheme would be long-term and expensive.
Yes, this this beyond the disputation (I’d be cautious about “incompetent” but as a group they were clearly not up to the task) but did they represent a meaningful social class? Or, to put shoe on other foot, were, say, the estate owners circa 1917 the true oppressors responsible for the government’s failures? Keep in mind that most of the “estates” looted in 1917 were pretty much summer residencies owned by the people of various social classes (as officially defined) and occupations.