“Land and liberty” as the age-old dream of the Russian peasantry

Abstract

Purpose of the research: we doubt the thesis, traditional for Russian historiography, that the desires and dreams of peasants have historically been enclosed in a capacious formula “land and liberty”. The appeal to peasant demands allows us to conclude that the formula “land and liberty” was a product of the liberal and revolutionary circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, for which it was traditionally considered themselves more understanding of peasant needs than the peasants themselves. In fact, the main thing in the desires of the peasants was the acquisition of the possibility of free economic management, and the latter at different times had different interpretations due to the changing conditions of life. The main mistake of those who considered themselves experts in peasant needs was the initial belief that at all times the peasants associated the improvement of their lives exclusively with agricultural labor. As a result, we come to the conclusion that with the expansion of other opportunities during the revolution and civil war, the peasants began to demand the creation of normal living conditions not only in the countryside, which was reflected in the slogans of the insurgents of 1920–1922.