Land dispute of agricultural cooperatives in the early 1920s: growing pains or indicator of peasantization

Importance. The purpose of the study is to highlight the problem of economic self-identification of the peasantry at the beginning of the 1920s recovery period. The main emphasis is placed on the land conflict use in the agricultural environment as an economic and social consolidation indicator of the peasantry. Research hypothesis: in the survival strategy of the peasant community, the traditional economic usefulness (functionality) restoration was a physical and social self-preservation guarantee. Participation in collective forms of management acted as a “corporate elevator” of economic recovery with the prospect of reviving the individual peasant economy, which allows the use of the term okrestyanivaniye. Land conflict in this case is a traditional way of ensuring the agricultural community functionality, regardless of its organizational form (family, community, collective). The empirical basis of the study is the materials of the land dispute between the Troekurovskaya volost of the Lebedyansky district artels of the Tambov province.
Materials and Methods. The source base of the study is made up of documents from the Regional state Institution “State Archive of the Lipetsk Region” (SALR), including correspondence from provincial and county land departments and commissions, reports and correspondence of surveyors with land authorities, plans, land plots, acts, statements, complaints from Lebedyansky County artels’ representatives. Most of the submitted documents are being put into circulation for the first time. Statistical and reporting materials of the Tambov provincial Executive Committee, provincial and county government bodies meetings are also used in the research process. A systematic approach, general scientific and historical research methods are used.
Results and Discussion. The dynamics analysis of collective construction in the Tambov province is conducted, the land management results of the Lebedyansky district artels in the first half of the 1920s are revealed. Regional features of the peasant attitude to socialist forms of management are revealed. The evolution of the inter-artel land dispute is considered: causes, motivation, conflict course, parties’ arguments and land authorities reaction of the Tambov province and Lebedyansky district. Based on the artels’ evidentiary documents analysis, the economic and social components of the land dispute are revealed.
Conclusion. The goal-setting of border groups of peasants to participate in artel forms of farming is determined. Based on the analysis of the dynamics of the land conflict, a conclusion is made about the desire of farmers in the conditions of the economic crisis of the beginning of the recovery period to use collective forms to ensure economic, social and physical survival, as a basis for the subsequent revival of individual farming. The term peasantization is used in relation to the designated process

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