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INTRODUCTION
The work examines the reasons for the implementation, the main stages, the results of the Stolypin agrarian reform, which was carried out by the tsarist government in the period from 1906 to 1914. Consideration of the problem is carried out against the background of the political and economic situation that has developed in Russia, on the eve of the ongoing reforms.
The beginning of the 20th century was a time of fundamental transformations in politics and economics. A crisis situation was brewing in the country, revolutionary uprisings arose, the revolution of 1905-1907 took place. Russia needed to get up "on its feet" in order to continue to develop as a strong state in order to gain influence and respect among highly developed countries such as England, France, which in at that time they were capitalist powers, with a well-oiled administrative apparatus, with a stable economy, with good rates of development of industry, production and economy.
Russia had two paths of development: revolutionary and peaceful, i.e. by reforming the political system and the economy. In agriculture, no tendencies towards development were observed, and in fact it was agriculture that was considered as a source of capital accumulation for the development of industry. After the abolition of serfdom, the peasants did not improve their position, life status. The landowner's lawlessness continued. A crisis situation was brewing. More and more peasant uprisings arose. To prevent unrest, the government had to immediately take measures to settle the peasant masses, establish production, and restore agriculture. A reform was needed that could settle all the grievances; a person was needed who would take responsibility for carrying out such a reform. It was Prime Minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. He offered his way out of this situation. His reform was approved and accepted by the government.
The main stages and ways of carrying out the Stolypin agrarian reform are discussed in detail and described in this work. With the help of the available material, we are convinced that this reform was the most acceptable way out of the current situation, gave time to think about further ways of development for Russia.
1. PETR ARKADIEVICH STOLYPIN ABOUT THE REFORM
“We are called to free the people from begging, from ignorance, from lawlessness,” said Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. He saw the way to these goals, first of all, in strengthening the 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 owners - a new "solid pillar of order", a pillar of the state. Then Russia would be "not afraid of all revolutions." Stolypin ended his speech on land reform on May 10, 1907 with the famous words: "They (opponents of statehood) need great upheavals, we need Great Russia!"
"Nature has put in man some innate instincts ... and one of the strongest feelings of this order is the sense of ownership." - Peter Arkadievich wrote in a letter to Leo Tolstoy in 1907. - “You cannot love someone else's on an equal basis with your own, and you cannot court, improve the land that is in temporary use, on a par with your own land. The artificial emasculation of our peasant in this respect, the destruction of his innate sense of property, leads to many bad things and, most importantly, to poverty. And poverty, for me, is the worst of slavery ... "
P.A. Stolypin stressed that he saw no reason to "drive the more developed element of landowners from the land." On the contrary, the peasants must be turned into real owners.
What social system would emerge in Russia after this reform?
Stolypin's supporters both then and later imagined him differently. The nationalist Vasily Shulgin, for example, believed that he would be close to the Italian fascist system. The Octobrists thought it would be more of a Western liberal society. Pyotr Arkadyevich himself said in 1909 in one interview: "Give the state 20 years of internal and external peace, and you will not recognize today's Russia."
The inner peace meant the suppression of the revolution, the outer one meant the absence of wars. “While I am in power,” Stolypin said, “I will do everything in human power to prevent Russia from going to war. We cannot measure ourselves against an external enemy until the worst internal enemies of Russia's greatness — the social revolutionaries — are destroyed. " Stolypin averted the war after Hungary invaded Bosnia in 1908. Having convinced the tsar not to mobilize, he noted with satisfaction: "Today I managed to save Russia from death."
But Stolypin did not succeed in completing the planned reform.
The Black Hundreds and influential court circles were extremely hostile to him. They believed that he was destroying the traditional way of life in Russia. After the suppression of the revolution, Stolypin began to lose the support of the tsar
2. BACKGROUND OF AGRARIAN REFORM
Before the revolution of 1905-1907, two different forms of land ownership coexisted in the Russian countryside: on the one hand, the private property of the landowners, on the other, the communal property of the peasants. At the same time, the nobility and peasants developed two opposite views of the land, two stable worldviews.
The landowners believed that land was the same property as any other. They saw no sin in buying and selling it.
The peasants thought differently. They firmly believed that the land is "no one's", God's, and the right to use it gives only labor. The rural community responded to this age-old idea. All the land in it was divided between families "according to the number of eaters." If the size of a family declined, so did its land allotment.
Until 1905, the state supported the community. It was much easier to collect various duties from her than from many individual peasant farms. S. Witte remarked on this occasion: "It is easier to graze a flock than it is to feed each member of the flock separately." The community was considered the most reliable support of the autocracy in the countryside, one of the "whales" on which the state system was supported.
But the tension between the community and private property gradually increased, the population increased, the peasant plots became smaller and smaller. This burning lack of land was called land scarcity. Involuntarily, the views of the peasants turned to the noble estates, where there was a lot of land. In addition, the peasants considered this property to be initially unfair and illegal. "The landlord's land must be taken away and added to the communal land!" they repeated with conviction.
In 1905, these contradictions resulted in a real "war for the land."
The peasants "with the whole world", that is, the whole community, went to destroy the noble estates. The authorities suppressed the unrest by sending military expeditions to the areas of unrest, carrying out massive flogging and arrests. From the "primordial foundations of autocracy" the community suddenly turned into a "hotbed of revolt." The old peaceful neighborhood of the community and landowners came to an end.
3. STOLYPIN AGRARIAN REFORM. ITS BASIC IDEA
In the course of the peasant unrest in 1905, it became clear that it was impossible to maintain the former situation in the countryside. Communal and private ownership of land could not coexist any longer.
At the end of 1905, the authorities were seriously considering the possibility of meeting peasant demands. General Dmitry Trepav said then: "I myself am a landowner and I will be very happy to give away half of my land for free, being convinced that only on this condition will I keep the other half." But at the beginning of 1906, there was a turning point in mood. Having recovered from the shock, the government chose the opposite path.
An idea arose: what if not to yield to the community, but, on the contrary, to declare a merciless war on it. The point was that private property went over to a decisive offensive against communal property. Especially quickly, within a few months, this idea won the support of the nobility. Many landowners, who had previously fervently supported the community, now turned out to be its implacable opponents. "The community is a beast, this beast must be fought," the famous nobleman, monarchist N. Markov categorically declared. The main spokesman for the anti-community sentiment was the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Pyotr Stolypin. He called for "to give the peasant freedom to work, get rich, free him from the bondage of the obsolete communal system." This was the main idea of the land reform, which was called Stolypin.
It was assumed that well-to-do peasants would turn from community members into "little landowners." Thus, the community will be blown up from within, destroyed. The struggle between the community and private property will end in victory for the latter. A new layer of strong proprietors is emerging in the country - “a solid pillar of order”.
Stolypin's concept proposed a path for the development of a mixed, multi-structured economy, where state forms of economy had to compete with collective and private ones. The constituent elements of his programs are the transition to farms, the use of cooperatives, the development of land reclamation, the introduction of a three-stage agricultural education, the organization of cheap credit for peasants, the formation of an agricultural party, which really represented the interests of small landowners.
Stolypin puts forward the liberal doctrine of the management of the rural community, the elimination of overlap, the development of private property in the countryside and the achievement of economic growth on this basis. As the market-oriented peasant economy of the farming type progresses, in the course of the development of relations of purchase and sale of land, a natural reduction in the landlord's land fund should occur. The future agrarian system of Russia was presented to the premier in the form of a system of small and medium-sized farms, united by local self-governing and small in size noble estates. On this basis, the integration of two cultures - noble and peasant - was to take place.
Stolypin relies on "strong and strong" peasants. However, it does not require widespread uniformity, unification of forms of land tenure and land use. Where, due to local conditions, the community is economically viable, "it is necessary for the peasant himself to choose the way of using the land that suits him best."
The beginning of the land reform was announced by a government decree of November 9, 1906, adopted in an emergency order, bypassing the State Duma. According to this decree, the peasants received the right to leave the community with their land. They could also sell it.
P.A. Stolypin believed that this measure would soon destroy the community. He said that the decree "laid the foundation for a new peasant system."
In February 1907, the Second State Duma was convened. In it, as in the First Duma, the land issue remained at the center of attention. The difference was that now the "noble side" was not only defending itself, but also advancing.
The majority of the deputies in the Second Duma even more firmly than in the First Duma advocated the transfer of part of the noble lands to the peasants. P.A. Stolypin strongly rejected such projects. Of course, the Second Duma did not show any desire to approve the Stolypin decree of November 9th. In connection with this, there were persistent rumors among the peasants that it was impossible to leave the community - those who left would not get the landlord's land.
The creation of the June third system, which was personified by the Third State Duma, along with the agrarian reform, was the second step in the transformation of Russia into a bourgeois monarchy (the first step was the reform of 1861).
The socio-political meaning boils down to the fact that Caesarism was finally crossed out: the "peasant" Duma turned into a "master's" Duma. On November 16, 1907, two weeks after the start of the work of the Third Duma, Stolypin addressed it with a government declaration. The first and main task of the government is not reform, but the fight against revolution.
The second central task of the government, Stolypin announced the implementation of the agrarian law on November 9, 1906, which is "the fundamental thought of the current government ...".
Of the reforms, reforms of local self-government, education, workers' insurance, etc. were promised.
In the Third State Duma, convened in 1907 under a new electoral law (which limited the representation of the poor), completely different sentiments reigned than in the first two. This Duma was called Stolypin ... She not only approved the decree of November 9, but went even further than P.A. Stolypin. (For example, in order to accelerate the destruction of the community, the Duma declared all communities where no land redistribution had taken place for more than 24 years).
Discussion of the decree on November 9, 1906 began in the Duma on October 23, 1908, i.e. two years after he entered life. In total, the discussion lasted for more than six months.
After the adoption of the decree on November 9 by the Duma, with the amendments introduced, it was submitted for discussion by the State Council and was also adopted, after which, by the date of its approval, the king began to be called the law on June 14, 1910. In its content, it was, of course, a liberal bourgeois law, contributing to the development of capitalism in the countryside and, therefore, progressive.
The decree introduced extremely important changes in the land tenure of the peasants. All peasants received the right to leave the community, which in this case allocated land to the person who was leaving for their own possession. At the same time, the decree provided for privileges for wealthy peasants in order to induce them to leave the community. In particular, those who left the community received "in the ownership of individual householders" all the lands "in its permanent use." This meant that people from the community also received surpluses in excess of the per capita norm. At the same time, if no redistributions were made in a given community over the past 24 years, then the householder received the surplus free of charge, if there were redistributions, then he paid the community for the surplus at the redemption prices of 1861. Since prices have increased several times over 40 years, this was also beneficial to wealthy people.
Communities in which there had been no redistributions from the moment the peasants switched to ransom were recognized as mechanically transferred to the private property of individual householders. To legally formalize the ownership of their land, the peasants of such communities only had to submit an application to the land management commission, which formalized the documents for the land actually in their possession into the ownership of the householder. In addition to this provision, the law differed from the decree in some simplification of the procedure for leaving the community.
In 1906, the "Provisional Regulations" on the land management of peasants were adopted, which became law after the approval of the Duma on May 29, 1911. Land management commissions created on the basis of this law were given the right to allocate individual householders in the course of general land management of communities without the consent of the gathering, at their discretion, if the commission considered that such allocation did not affect the interests of the community. The commissions also had the final say in defining land disputes. This right opened the way for the arbitrariness of the commissions.
4. MAIN DIRECTIONS OF THE STOLYPIN AGRARIAN REFORM
Stolypin, being a landowner, the leader of the provincial nobility, knew and understood the interests of the landowners; in the post of governor during the revolution saw the peasants in revolt, therefore for him the agrarian question was not an abstract concept.
The essence of the reforms: the establishment of a solid foundation for the autocracy and advancement along the path of industrial and, consequently, capitalist development.
The core of the reforms is agrarian policy.
The agrarian reform was Stolypin's main and favorite brainchild.
The reform had several goals: socio-political - to create in the countryside a solid support for the autocracy from strong owners, breaking them off from the bulk of the peasantry and opposing them to it; strong farms were to become an obstacle to the growth of revolution in the countryside; socio-economic - to destroy the community, to plant private farms in the form of cuts and farms, and send the surplus of labor to the city, where it will be swallowed up by the growing industry; economic - to ensure the rise of agriculture and further industrialization of the country in order to eliminate the lag behind the advanced powers.
The first step in this direction was taken in 1861. Then the agrarian question was solved at the expense of the peasants, who paid the landowners both for land and for freedom. Agrarian legislation 1906-1910 was the second step, while the government, in order to consolidate its power and the power of the landowners, again tried to solve the agrarian question at the expense of the peasantry.
The new agrarian policy was carried out on the basis of the decree on November 9, 1906. This decree was the main work of Stolypin's life. It was a symbol of faith, a great and last hope, an obsession, its present and future - great, if the reform succeeds; catastrophic if it fails. And Stolypin was aware of this.
In general, the series of laws of 1906-1912. was of a bourgeois character.
The medieval allotment land tenure of peasants was abolished, the withdrawal from the community, the sale of land, free relocation to cities and the outskirts were allowed, redemption payments, corporal punishment, and some legal restrictions were abolished.
The agrarian reform consisted of a set of consistently carried out and interconnected measures.
From the end of 1906, the state began a powerful offensive against 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 prevalence of the fact of sole ownership of land over the legal right to use. The peasants could now leave it and receive land in full ownership. They could now single out what was in actual use from the community, regardless of its will. The land plot became the property not of the family, but of an individual householder.
The peasants were cut off from the communal land plots - cuts. Wealthy peasants moved their estates to the same plots - they were called farms. Farms were regarded by the authorities as the ideal form of land tenure. From the side of the farmers, who lived apart from each other, there was no need to fear riots and unrest.
Measures were taken to ensure the strength and stability of labor peasant farms. So, in order to avoid speculation in land and concentration of property, the maximum size of individual land tenure was legally limited, and the sale of land to non-peasants was allowed.
After the start of the reform, many poor people rushed out of the community, who immediately sold their land and went to the cities. Wealthy peasants were in no hurry to leave. How was this explained? First of all, leaving the community broke the usual way of life and the whole worldview of the peasant. The peasant resisted the transition to farms and the cut not out of darkness and ignorance, as the authorities believed, but out of sound everyday considerations. The community protected him from complete ruin and many other vicissitudes of fate. Peasant agriculture was very dependent on the vagaries of the weather. Having several scattered strips of land in different parts of the public allotment: one in a lowland, another on a hill, etc. (such an order was called a striped strip), the peasant provided himself with an annual average harvest: in a dry year, strips in the lowlands were rescued, in a rainy year - on the hills. Having received the allotment in one cut, the peasant was at the mercy of the elements. He went broke in the first dry year if the cut was in a high place. The next year was rainy, and it was the turn of a neighbor who found himself in the lowlands to go broke. Only a large cut, located in different reliefs, could guarantee an annual average yield.
After the peasants left the cut or farm, the former "insurance" against crop failure disappeared. Now, just one dry or overly rainy year could bring poverty and hunger. So that such fears among the peasants disappeared, those leaving the community began to cut the best land. Naturally, this aroused the indignation of the other members of the community. Hostility grew rapidly between the two. The number of those who left the community began to gradually decrease.
The formation of farms and cuts was even somewhat slowed down for another purpose - the consolidation of allotment land into personal property. Each member of the community could declare his withdrawal from it and secure his own striped allotment, which the community from now on could neither reduce nor move.
But the owner could sell his fortified allotment even to a person outside the community. From an agrotechnical point of view, such an innovation could not bring much benefit (the allotment, as it was striped, and remained), but it was capable of severely disrupting the unity of the peasant world, causing a split in the community. It was assumed that any householder who lost several souls in his family and fearfully awaited the next redistribution would certainly seize the opportunity to leave his entire allotment intact.
In 1907 - 1915. 25% of householders declared about the separation from the community, while 20% actually did stand out - 2008.4 thousand householders. New forms of land tenure became widespread: farmsteads and cuts. As of January 1, 1916, there were already 1,221.5 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 communes. The number of such farms was about one third of all communal households.
Despite all the efforts of the government, farmsteads took root well only in the northwestern provinces, including in part Pskov and Smolensk. The peasants of the Kovno province, even before the start of the Stolypin reform, began to settle in farms. The same phenomenon was observed in the Pskov province. In these parts, the influence of Prussia and the Baltic states was felt. The local landscape, changeable, indented by rivers and streams, also contributed to the creation of farms.
In the southern and southeastern provinces, the main obstacle to widespread khutorization was water difficulties. But here (in the Northern Black Sea region, in the Northern Caucasus and in the steppe Trans-Volga region) the planting of cuts was quite successful. The absence of strong communal traditions in these places was combined with a high level of development of agrarian capitalism, exceptional soil fertility, its uniformity over very large areas and a low level of agriculture. The peasant, almost without spending on improving his bands of labor and means, left them without regret and switched to the cut.
In the Central non-black earth region, the peasant, on the contrary, had to invest a lot of energy in the cultivation of his allotment. Without care, this land will not give birth to anything. Fertilization of the soil here began from time immemorial. And since the end of the nineteenth century. cases of collective transitions of entire villages to multi-field crop rotations with the sowing of forage grasses have become more frequent. Got development and transition to "wide stripes" (instead of narrow, tangled).
The activities of the government would be much more beneficial if in the central non-chernozem provinces it, instead of planting farms and cuts, provided assistance to intensify peasant agriculture within the community. At first, especially under Prince B.A. Vasilchikov, chief manager of land management and agriculture, such assistance was partly provided. But with the arrival of A.V. Krivoshein, who in 1908 took the post of chief manager of land management and agriculture and became Stolypin's closest associate, the land management department pursued a sharply anti-communal policy. As a result, the scythe found itself on a stone: the peasants resisted the planting of farms and cuts, and the government almost openly prevented the introduction of advanced farming systems on communal lands. The only thing in which land managers and local peasants found a common interest was the division of the joint land tenure of several villages. In Moscow and some other provinces, this type of land management has received such a great development that it began to overshadow work on the allocation of farms and cuts.
In the central black earth provinces, the main obstacle to the formation of farms and cuts on communal lands was peasant land shortages. For example, in the Kursk province, local peasants "wanted the landlord's land immediately and for free." From this it followed that before planting farms and cuts, in these provinces it was necessary to solve the problem of peasant land shortages - including at the expense of inflated landlord latifundia.
The third June coup d'état radically changed the situation in the country. The peasants had to give up their dreams of an early "cutting". The pace of implementation of the decree on November 9, 1906 increased sharply. In 1908, in comparison with 1907, the number of strengthened householders increased tenfold and exceeded half a million. In 1909, a record figure was reached - 579.4 thousand fortified. But from 1910 the rate of strengthening began to decline. The artificial measures introduced into the law on June 14, 1910, did not straighten the curve. The number of peasants who were separated from the community stabilized only after the law on land management on May 29, 1911 was issued. However, again to approach the highest rates of 1908-1909. never succeeded.
Over the years, in some southern provinces, for example in Bessarabia and Poltava, communal land ownership was almost completely eliminated. In other provinces, for example in Kursk, it has lost its leading position. (In these provinces, there were many communities with backyard land ownership before).
But in the provinces of the northern, northeastern, southeastern, and partly in the central industrial, the reform only slightly affected the mass of the communal peasantry.
The personal peasant land property, which was in strides fortified, was very distantly similar to the classical Roman "sacred and inviolable private property." And the point is not only in the legal restrictions imposed on the fortified allotments (the prohibition to sell to persons of the non-peasant class, to mortgage in private banks). The peasants themselves, leaving the community, attached paramount importance to the consolidation of not specific lanes, but their total area. Therefore, it happened that they were not averse to taking part in the general redistribution, if at the same time the area of their allotment did not decrease (for example, when switching to "wide stripes"). To prevent the authorities from interfering and upsetting the matter, such redistributions were sometimes carried out secretly. It happened that the same view of the land being fortified was adopted by the local authorities. The ministerial revision of 1911 revealed numerous cases of share fortification in the Oryol province.
This means that it was not certain zones that were strengthened, but the share of this or that householder in worldly land tenure. Yes, and the government itself eventually took the same point of view, appropriating by law on May 29, 1911, the right to move the fortified zones when allocating farms or cuts.
Therefore, the massive strengthening of the striped lands actually led only to the formation of unlimited communities. By the beginning of the Stolypin reform, about a third of the communities in European Russia had not redistributed the land. Sometimes two communities coexisted side by side - the re-dividing and the unlimited. Nobody noted a big difference in the level of their farming. Only in the limitless were the rich richer, and the poor poorer.
In reality, the government, of course, did not want to concentrate the land in the hands of a few world eaters and ruin the masses of farmers. With no means of food in the village, the landless poor had to pour into the city. The industry, which was in a depression until 1910, could not cope with an influx of labor on such a scale. The masses of homeless and unemployed people threatened with new social upheavals. Therefore, the government hastened to make an addition to its decree, forbidding, within one county, to concentrate in the same hands more than six higher per capita allotments, determined by the reform of 1861. For different provinces, this ranged from 12 to 18 dess. The ceiling set for "strong masters" was quite low. The corresponding norm was entered into the law on June 14, 1910.
In real life, most of the poor left the community, as well as city dwellers who remembered that in a long-abandoned village they had an allotment that could now be sold. The land was also sold by settlers leaving for Siberia. A huge amount of lands of the striped fortification went on sale. In 1914, for example, 60% of the area fortified this year was sold. The peasant society sometimes turned out to be the buyer of the land, and then it returned to the mundane cauldron. More often, wealthy peasants bought land, who, by the way, were not always in a hurry to leave the community themselves. Other communal peasants also bought. Fortified and public lands were in the hands of one and the same owner. Without leaving the community, he at the same time had fortified areas. A witness and participant in all this shake-up could still remember where and what her stripes were. But already in the second generation, such confusion should have begun, which no court would have been able to sort out. Something like this, however, has already taken place once. Allotments bought out ahead of schedule (according to the reform of 1861) at one time severely disturbed the uniformity of land use in the community. But then they gradually began to align. Since the Stolypin reform did not resolve the agrarian question and land oppression continued to grow, a new wave of redistribution was inevitable, which was to sweep away a lot of Stolypin's legacy. Indeed, land redistributions, which had almost died out at the height of the reform, since 1912 have again gone upward.
Stolypin, apparently, himself understood that the striped fortification would not create a "strong owner". It was not for nothing that he called on the local authorities "to be imbued with the conviction that strengthening the plots is only half the battle, even just the beginning of the business, and that the November 9 law was not created to strengthen the striped area." On October 15, 1908, by agreement of the Ministers of Internal Affairs, Justice and the Chief Governor of Land Management and Agriculture, the "Temporary Regulations on the Allocation of Allotment Land to Some Places" were issued. "The most perfect type of land arrangement is a farm," the rules said, "and if it is impossible to form such, a continuous cut for all field lands, allotted separately from the root estate."
March 1909, the Committee on Land Management Affairs approved the "Provisional Regulations for the Land Management of Entire Rural Societies." Since that time, the local land management bodies have increasingly focused on the spreading of plots of entire villages. In the new instruction, published in 1910, it was especially emphasized: “The ultimate goal of land management is to expand the entire allotment; therefore, when carrying out work on allotments, one should strive to ensure that these works cover the largest possible area of the allotment being arranged ... " single. In practice, with a shortage of land surveyors, this meant the termination of single allotments. Indeed, a strong owner could wait for a long time until all the poor people in the neighboring village were expelled for cutting.
May 1911 the law "On land management" was issued. It includes the main provisions of the instructions of 1909-1910. the new law established that from now on, prior consolidation of allotted lands into personal ownership is not required for the transition to cut and farm farming. Since that time, the striped fortification has lost its former significance.
Of the total number of farms and cuts created during the reform, 64.3% arose as a result of the looting of entire villages. It was more convenient for land surveyors to work in this way, the productivity of their labor increased, the high authorities received round numbers for juggling, but at the same time the number of small farmers and otrubniks, who could not be called "strong owners", multiplied. Many farms were not viable. In the Poltava province, for example, with the complete expansion of villages, an average of 4.1 dessiatines fell on one owner. The peasants said that on some farmsteads "there is nowhere to drive the chicken out."
Only about 30% of farms and cuts on communal lands were formed by the allocation of individual owners. But these, as a rule, were strong masters. In the same Poltava province, the average size of a single allotment was 10 dess. But most of these divisions were made in the early years of the reform. Then this business practically came to naught.
Stolypin treated this development with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he understood that only cutting the allotment into cuts isolates the peasant farms from each other, only complete resettlement on farms will finally liquidate the community. It will be difficult for peasants scattered across the farms to raise rebellions.
On the other hand, Stolypin could not help but see that instead of strong, stable farms, the land management department was fabricating a mass of small and obviously weak ones, those who could not in any way stabilize the situation in the countryside and become the support of the regime. However, he was not able to turn the cumbersome machine of the land management department in such a way that it did not act as it was convenient for it, but as it needed for the good of the cause.
Simultaneously with the promulgation of new agrarian laws, the government is taking measures to violently destroy the community, not fully relying on economic factors. Immediately after November 9, 1906, the entire state apparatus is set in motion by issuing the most categorical circulars and orders, as well as by repressions against those who are not very energetic in implementing them.
The practice of the reform showed that the mass of the peasantry was opposed to being separated from the community - at least in most localities. A survey of the mood of the peasants by the Free Economic Society showed that in the central provinces the peasants had a negative attitude towards separation from the community (89 negative indicators in the questionnaires against 7 positive ones). Many peasant correspondents wrote that the decree on November 9 was aimed at ruining a mass of peasants so that a few could profit from it.
In the current situation, the only way for the government to carry out the reform was the way of violence against the main mass of the peasantry. The specific methods of violence varied - from intimidating rural gatherings to drafting fictitious sentences, from canceling the decisions of gatherings by the zemstvo chief to making decisions by county land management commissions on the allocation of householders, from using police force to obtain the "consent" of gatherings to expelling opponents of the division.
In order to get the consent of the peasants to break up the entire allotment, officials from the land management authorities, it happened, resorted to the most unceremonious measures of pressure. One typical case is described in the memoirs of the zemstvo chief V. Polivanov. The author served in the Gryazovets district of the Vologda province. One day, early in the morning, during a difficult time, an indispensable member of the land management commission came to one of the villages. A gathering was called, and the indispensable member explained to the "peasants" that they had to go to the farmstead: the community was small, there was enough land and water on three sides. "As I looked at the plan, I tell my clerk: as soon as possible, Lopatikha should be transferred to the farm." After consulting with each other, the scavengers refused. Neither promises to provide a loan, nor threats to arrest the "rioters" and bring the soldiers to their quarters had no effect. The peasants kept repeating: "As the old people lived so we will live, but we do not agree to the farm." Then the indispensable member went to drink tea, and forbade the peasants to disperse and sit on the ground. After drinking tea, I was inevitably drawn to sleep. He went out to the peasants who were waiting at the windows late in the evening. "Well, do you agree?" “Everyone agrees!” The gathering answered amicably. - To the farms, so to the farms, to the aspen, so to the aspen, just so that everyone, therefore, together. V. Polivanov claimed that he managed to reach the governor and restore justice.
However, there is evidence that sometimes the resistance of peasants to too strong pressure from officials led to bloody clashes.
4.1 OPERATIONS OF THE PEASANT BANK
In 1906-1907. By decree of the tsar, some of the state and appanage lands were transferred to the Peasant Bank for sale to peasants in order to weaken the land tightness.
Opponents of the Stolypin land reform said that it was being carried out according to the principle: "The rich will be added, the poor will be taken away." According to the plan of the supporters of the reform, the peasant-proprietors had to increase their holdings not only at the expense of the rural poor. In this they were helped by the Peasant Land Bank, which bought land from landowners and sold them to peasants in small plots. The law of June 5, 1912 allowed the issuance of a loan on the security of any allotment land acquired by peasants.
The development of various forms of credit - mortgage, land reclamation, agricultural, land management - contributed to the intensification of market relations in the countryside. But in reality, this land was bought mainly by kulaks, who thus received additional opportunities for expanding the economy, since only wealthy peasants could afford to buy land even through a bank, with payment in installments.
Many nobles, impoverished or worried about peasant unrest, willingly sold their land. The inspirer of the reform P.A. Stolypin, to set an example, sold one of his estates himself. Thus, the bank acted as an intermediary between the sellers of land - the nobles and its buyers - the peasants.
The Bank carried out on a grand scale the purchase of land with its subsequent resale to peasants on preferential terms, intermediary operations to increase peasant land use. He increased the credit to the peasants and significantly reduced the cost of it, and the Bank paid a higher interest on its obligations than the peasants paid him. The difference in payment was covered by subsidies from the budget, amounting for the period from 1906 to 1917. 1457.5 billion rubles.
The bank actively influenced the forms of land tenure: for peasants who acquired land in sole ownership, payments were reduced. As a result, if until 1906 the bulk of land buyers were peasant collectives, by 1913 79.7% of buyers were sole peasants.
The scale of operations of the Peasant Land Bank in 1905-1907 the purchase of land has increased almost threefold. Many landowners were in a hurry to part with their estates. In 1905-1907. the bank bought over 2.7 million dess. land. State and specific lands were transferred to his disposal. Meanwhile, the peasants, counting on the elimination of landlordism in the near future, were not very willing to make purchases. From November 1905 to early May 1907, the bank sold only about 170 thousand dessiatins. In his hands was a lot of land, for the economic management of which he was not adapted, and little money. To support him, the government even used the accumulations of pension funds.
The activities of the Peasant Bank caused growing irritation among the landlords. This was manifested in sharp attacks against him at the III Congress of authorized noble societies in March-April 1907. The delegates were unhappy that the bank was selling land only to peasants (some landowners were not averse to using it as buyers). They were also worried that the bank had not yet completely abandoned the sale of land to rural communities (although it tried to sell land mainly to individual peasants in whole plots). The general mood of the noble deputies was expressed by A.D. Kashkarov: "I believe that the Peasant Bank should not deal with the resolution of the so-called agrarian question ... the agrarian question must be terminated by the power of power."
At the same time, the peasants were very reluctant to leave the community and strengthen their allotments. There was a rumor that those who left the community would not have land allotted from the landlords.
Only after the end of the revolution did the agrarian reform progress faster. First of all, the government took vigorous action to liquidate the land reserves of the Peasant Bank. On June 13, 1907, this issue was examined by the Council of Ministers, it was decided to form temporary branches of the Council of the Bank on the ground, transferring a number of important powers to them.
Partly as a result of the measures taken, and also as a result of the change in the general situation in the country, the affairs of the Peasant Bank went better. In total for 1907-1915. 3909 thousand dessiatins were sold from the bank's fund, divided into approximately 280 thousand farm and cut plots. Until 1911, sales increased annually, and then began to decline.
This was explained, firstly, by the fact that during the implementation of the decree on November 9, 1906, a large amount of cheap allotment "peasant" land was thrown onto the market, and secondly, by the fact that with the end of the revolution the landowners sharply reduced the sale of their land. It turned out that the suppression of the revolution in the end did not benefit the creation of farms and cuts on bank lands.
The question of how purchases of bank farms and cuts were distributed among various strata of the peasantry has not been sufficiently studied. According to some estimates, the wealthy top among buyers was only 5-6%. The rest belonged to the middle peasantry and the poor. Its attempts to gain a foothold on the bank's lands were explained quite simply. Many landowners' lands, leased from year to year to the same societies, became, as it were, part of their allotment. Their sale to the Peasant Bank hit first of all on the land-poor owners. Meanwhile, the bank gave a loan in the amount of up to 90-95% of the cost of the site. The sale of a fortified allotment usually allowed the first installment to be paid. Some zemstvos provided assistance in setting up farms. All this pushed the poor to bank land, and the bank, having losses from the maintenance of purchased land on its balance sheet, was not picky in choosing clients.
Having set foot on the bank land, the peasant seemed to restore for himself those exhausting and endless redemption payments, which, under the pressure of the revolution, the government canceled on January 1, 1907. Soon there were arrears on bank payments. As before, the authorities were forced to resort to installments and overtime. But something also appeared that the peasant did not know before: the sale by auction of the entire economy. From 1908 to 1914 in this way 11.4 thousand plots were sold. This, apparently, was first of all a measure of intimidation. And the bulk of the poor, one must think, remained in their farms and cuts. For her, however, the same life continued ("to interrupt", "to hold out", "to hold out") that she led in the community.
However, this does not exclude the fact that quite strong farms have appeared on the banking lands. From this point of view, land management on bank lands was more promising than on allotments.
4.2 COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT
Loans from a peasant bank could not fully satisfy the peasant's demand for a monetary commodity. Therefore, credit cooperation became widespread, which went through two stages in its movement. At the first stage, administrative forms of regulation of small credit relations prevailed. By creating a skilled cadre of small credit inspectors and by allocating significant loans through state banks for initial loans to credit partnerships and for subsequent loans, the government stimulated the cooperative movement. At the second stage, rural credit partnerships, accumulating their own capital, developed independently. As a result, a wide network of small peasant credit institutions, savings and loan banks and credit partnerships, which served the money turnover of peasant farms, was created. By January 1, 1914, the number of such institutions exceeded 13 thousand.
Credit relations gave a strong impetus to the development of production, consumer and marketing cooperatives. Peasants on a cooperative basis created dairy and oil artels, agricultural societies, consumer stores and even peasant artel dairy factories.
4.3 REMOVAL OF PEASANTS IN SIBERIA
The Stolypin government also passed a series of new laws on the resettlement of peasants to the outskirts. The possibilities for the wide development of resettlement were laid down in the law of June 6, 1904. This law introduced freedom of resettlement without privileges, and the government was given the right to make decisions on the opening of free privileged resettlement from certain areas of the empire, "eviction from which was recognized as particularly desirable."
For the first time, the law on preferential resettlement was applied in 1905: the government "opened" resettlement from the Poltava and Kharkov provinces, where the peasant movement was especially widespread.
The massive resettlement of peasants to the eastern outskirts of the country was one of the most important directions of the reform. Thus, the "land tightness" in the European part of Russia was reduced, and discontent was "let off".
By decree on March 10, 1906, the right to resettle the peasants was granted to everyone without restrictions. The government allocated considerable funds for the costs of settling migrants in new places, for their medical care and public needs, for the construction of roads. In 1906-1913. 2,792.8 thousand people moved beyond the Urals.
Over the 11 years of the reform, over 3 million people moved to the free lands of Siberia and Central Asia. In 1908, the number of immigrants was the largest in all the years of the reform and amounted to 665 thousand people.
However, the scale of this measure also led to difficulties in its implementation. The wave of immigrants quickly subsided. Not everyone was able to develop new lands. Back to European Russia, a return flow of immigrants moved. Completely ruined poor people returned, unable to settle down in a new place. The number of peasants who were unable to adapt to the new conditions and were forced to return amounted to 12% of the total number of migrants. In total, about 550 thousand people returned in this way.
The results of the resettlement campaign were as follows. First, during this period a huge leap forward was made in the economic and social development of Siberia. Also, the population of this region during the years of colonization increased by 153%. If before the resettlement to Siberia there was a reduction in sown areas, then for 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.
4.4 AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES
One of the main obstacles to the economic progress of the village was the low culture of agriculture and the illiteracy of the overwhelming majority of producers accustomed to working according to a common custom. During the years of reform, peasants were provided with large-scale agro-economic assistance. Agro-industrial services for peasants were specially created, which organized training courses on cattle breeding and dairy production, democratization and the introduction of progressive forms of agricultural production. Much attention was paid to the progress of the out-of-school agricultural education system. If in 1905 the number of students at agricultural courses was 2 thousand people, then in 1912 - 58 thousand, and at agricultural readings - respectively 31.6 thousand and 1046 thousand people.
Currently, it is believed that Stolypin's agrarian reforms led to the concentration of the land fund in the hands of a small wealthy stratum as a result of landlessness of the bulk of the peasants. Reality shows the opposite — an increase in the proportion of the "middle strata" in peasant land use. This is clearly seen from the data given in the table. During the reform period, peasants actively bought land and increased their land fund annually by 2 million dessiatines. Also, peasant land use increased significantly due to the lease of landlord and state land.
Distribution of the land fund between groups of peasant buyers
With a male soul Period Landless Up to three dessiatines Over three dessiatines 1885-1903 10,961,527.6 1906-1912 16,368,413,3
5. RESULTS OF THE STOLYPIN AGRARIAN REFORM
agrarian reform land tenure Stolypin
The results of the reform are characterized by a rapid growth in agricultural production, an increase in the capacity of the domestic market, an increase in the export of agricultural products, and Russia's trade balance was becoming more and more active. As a result, it was possible not only to bring agriculture out of the crisis, but also to turn it into a dominant feature of Russia's economic development. The gross income of all agriculture in 1913 was 52.6% of the total gross income. The income of the entire national economy, due to the increase in the value created in agriculture, increased in comparable prices from 1900 to 1913 by 33.8%.
Differentiation of types of agricultural production by regions led to an increase in the marketability of agriculture. Three quarters of all raw materials processed by the industry came from agriculture. The turnover of agricultural products increased by 46% during the reform period.
Even more, by 61% compared with 1901-1905, the export of agricultural products increased in the pre-war years. Russia was the largest producer and exporter of bread and flax, and a number of livestock products. So, in 1910, the export of Russian wheat amounted to 36.4% of the total world export.
What has been said does not mean at all that pre-war Russia should be presented as a "peasant paradise". The problems of hunger and agrarian overpopulation have not been resolved. The country still suffered from technical, economic and cultural backwardness. According to the calculations of I.D. Kondratyev in the United States, on average, a farm had a fixed capital of 3900 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 per 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 did not take place on the basis of intensification of production, but due to an increase in the intensity of manual peasant labor. But in the period under review, socio-economic conditions were created for the transition to a new stage of agrarian transformations - to the transformation of agriculture into a capital-intensive technologically progressive sector of the economy.
5.1 RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE STOLYPIN AGRARIAN REFORM
The community withstood the clash with private land ownership, and after the February Revolution of 1917 launched a decisive offensive. Now the struggle for land again found a way out in the arson of estates and the murders of landowners, which took place with even greater ferocity than in 1905. “Then they didn’t bring the matter to the end, did they stop halfway? - the peasants reasoned. - Well, now we will not stop and we will exterminate all the landowners at the root. "
The results of the Stolypin agrarian reform are expressed in the following figures. By January 1, 1916, 2 million householders left the community for the striped fortification. They owned 14.1 million dessiatins. land. 469 thousand householders living in unrestricted communities received certificates of identification for 2.8 million dessiatins. 1.3 million householders passed to the farm and otrubnoye property (12.7 million dessiatins). In addition, 280 thousand farms and cut enterprises were formed on the banking lands - this is a special account. But the other figures given above cannot be added mechanically, since some householders, having strengthened the allotments, then went out to the farmsteads and cuts, while others went to them immediately, without a striped reinforcement. According to rough estimates, a total of about 3 million householders left the community, which is slightly less than a third of their total number in those provinces where the reform was carried out. However, as noted, some of the emigrants actually abandoned agriculture long ago. 22% of the land was withdrawn from the communal turnover. About half of them were sold. Some part returned to the communal cauldron.
Over the 11 years of the Stolypin land reform, 26% of the peasants left the community. 85% of the peasant lands remained with the community. Ultimately, the authorities failed to destroy the community or create a stable and sufficiently massive layer of peasant-owners. So what can be said about the general failure of the Stolypin agrarian reform.
At the same time, it is known that after the end of the revolution and before the start of the First World War, the situation in the Russian countryside improved markedly. Of course, besides the reform, there were other factors at work. First, as has already happened, since 1907, the redemption payments, which the peasants had been paying for more than 40 years, were canceled. Secondly, the world agricultural crisis ended and grain prices began to rise. From this, presumably, something fell to ordinary peasants. Thirdly, during the years of the revolution, landowners' landownership declined, and in connection with this, enslaving forms of exploitation also decreased. Finally, fourthly, for the entire period there was only one lean year (1911), but two consecutive years (1912-1913) had excellent harvests. As for the agrarian reform, such a large-scale event, which required such a significant land shakeup, could not have a positive effect in the very first years of its implementation. Nevertheless, the activities that accompanied her were good, useful business.
This concerns the provision of greater personal freedom to the peasants, the arrangement of farms and cuts on bank lands, resettlement to Siberia, and some types of land management.
5.2 POSITIVE RESULTS OF AGRARIAN REFORM
The positive results of the agrarian reform include:
up to a quarter of the farms were separated from the community, the stratification of the countryside increased, the rural elite gave up to half of the market grain,
3 million households moved from European Russia,
4 million acres of communal lands were involved in the market turnover,
the cost of agricultural guns increased from 59 to 83 rubles. one yard,
consumption of superphosphate fertilizers increased from 8 to 20 million poods,
for 1890-1913 per capita income of the rural population increased from 22 to 33 rubles. in year,
5.3 NEGATIVE RESULTS OF AGRARIAN REFORM
The negative results of the agrarian reform include:
from 70% to 90% of the peasants who left the community in one way or another retained ties with the community, the bulk of the peasants were the labor farms of the community members,
0.5 million migrants returned back to Central Russia,
the peasant household had 2-4 dessiatines, while the norm was 7-8 dessiatines,
the main agricultural tool is a plow (8 million pieces), 58% of farms did not have plows,
mineral fertilizers were used on 2% of the sown area,
in 1911-1912 the country was struck by famine, which affected 30 million people.
6. REASONS OF THE STOLYPIN AGRARIAN REFORM BACKGROUND
In the course of the revolution and the civil war, communal land tenure won a decisive victory. However, a decade later, at the end of the 1920s, a sharp struggle broke out again between the peasant community and the state. The result of this struggle was the destruction of the community.
But a number of external circumstances (Stolypin's death, the beginning of the war) interrupted the Stolypin reform. If we look at all the reforms that were conceived by Stolypin and announced in the declaration, we will see that most of them failed to come true, and some were just started, but the death of their creator did not allow them to be completed, because many introductions were held on enthusiasm Stolypin, who tried to somehow improve the political or economic structure of Russia.
Stolypin himself believed that it would take 15-20 years for the success of his undertakings. But also for the period 1906 - 1913. a lot has been done.
The revolution showed a huge socio-economic and political gap between the people and the government. The country needed radical reforms, which were not followed. We can say that the country during the period of the Stolypin reforms was experiencing not a constitutional crisis, but a revolutionary one. Standing still or half-reforms could not solve the situation, but only on the contrary expanded the bridgehead for the struggle for cardinal transformations. Only the destruction of the tsarist regime and landlordism could change the course of events, the measures that Stolypin took in the course of his reforms were half-hearted. The main failure of Stolypin's reforms lies in the fact that he wanted to carry out reorganization outside the democratic way and in spite of him Struve wrote: “It is precisely his agrarian policy that is in a flashy contradiction with his rest of the policy. It changes the economic foundation of the country, while the rest of politics seeks to keep the political "superstructure" intact as much as possible and only slightly decorates its facade. " Of course, Stolypin was an outstanding figure and politician, but with the existence of such a system that was in Russia, all his projects were "split" about a lack of understanding or unwillingness to understand the importance of his undertakings. I must say that without those human qualities, such as: courage, determination, assertiveness, political flair, cunning - Stolypin was hardly able to make any contribution to the development of the country.
What are the reasons for her defeat?
First, Stolypin began his reforms with a great delay (not in 1861, but only in 1906).
Secondly, the transition from a natural type of economy to a market one under the conditions of an administrative-command system is possible, first of all, on the basis of the vigorous activity of the state. In this case, the financial and credit activity of the state should play a special role. An example of this is the government, which was able to reorient the powerful bureaucratic apparatus of the empire to energetic work with amazing speed and scope. At the same time, "local economic and economic profitability was deliberately sacrificed for the future social effect from the creation and development of new economic forms." This is how the Ministry of Finance, the Peasant Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture, and other state institutions acted.
Third, where the administrative principles of economic management and leveling methods of distribution prevailed, there will always be a strong opposition to transformations.
Fourthly, the cause of the defeat is the massive revolutionary struggle, which swept the tsarist monarchy from the historical arena together with its agrarian reform.
Consequently, it is necessary to have a social support in the person of proactive and qualified strata of the population.
The collapse of the Stolypin reform did not mean that it was not of serious importance. It was a major step along the capitalist path, contributed to a certain extent to the growth in the use of machinery, fertilizers, and an increase in the marketability of agriculture.
CONCLUSION
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin was a talented politician, he conceived several reforms that could make the Russian Empire a state of the art in all respects. One of these ideas was Stolypin's agrarian reform.
The essence of Stolypin's agrarian reform was reduced to the desire to create a layer of prosperous peasantry in the countryside. Pyotr Arkadyevich believed that by creating such a layer, one could forget about the revolutionary plague for a long time. The well-to-do peasantry was to become a reliable support for the Russian state and its power. Stolypin believed that it was by no means possible to meet the needs of the peasantry at the expense of the landlords. Stolypin saw the implementation of his idea in the destruction of the peasant community. The peasant community was a structure that had both pros and cons. The community often fed and rescued peasants in lean years. The people who were in the community were supposed to provide each other with some help. On the other hand, lazy people and alcoholics lived at the expense of the community, with whom, according to the rules of the community, it was necessary to share the harvest and other products of labor. Destroying the community, Stolypin wanted to make every peasant, first of all, an owner, responsible only for himself and his family. In this situation, everyone would strive to work harder, thereby providing themselves with everything they need.
The Stolypin Agrarian Reform began life in 1906. That year, a decree was adopted that made it easier for all peasants to leave the community. Leaving a peasant community, a former member of it could demand from it that a plot of land assigned to him be assigned to him as personal property. Moreover, this land was given to the peasant not on the principle of "stripes", as before, but was tied to one place. By 1916, 2.5 million peasants left the community.
During the agrarian reform of Stolypin, the activity of the Peasant Bank, established back in 1882, intensified. The bank served as an intermediary between landlords who wanted to sell their land and peasants who wanted to buy them.
The second direction of the Stolypin agrarian reform was the policy of resettlement of peasants. By resettlement, Pyotr Arkadyevich hoped to reduce the land hunger in the central provinces, and to populate the uninhabited lands of Siberia. In part, this policy has paid off. The settlers were provided with large plots of land and many benefits, but the process itself was poorly adjusted. It should be noted that the first settlers gave a significant increase in the wheat harvest in Russia.
Stolypin's agrarian reform was a great project, which was prevented from completing by the death of its author.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
1. Munchaev Sh.M. "History of Russia" Moscow, 2000.
Orlov A.S., Georgiev V.A. "History from ancient times to the present day" Moscow, 2001.
S.V. Kuleshov "History of the Fatherland" Moscow, 1991.
Tyukavkina V.G. "History of the USSR" Moscow, 1989.
Shatsillo K.F. "We need a great Russia" Moscow, 1991.
Avrekh A.Ya. “P.A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia ”Moscow, 1991.
V. V. Kozarezov "About Peter Arkadievich Stolypin" Moscow, 1991.
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Every student, even one who is not interested in history, has heard about the Stolypin reforms. The agrarian one was especially sensational, but, besides it, there were others that you need to know about in order to successfully pass the exam.
A bit of biography
To begin with, let's figure out who Stolypin is and why he got on the pages of Russian history. Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin - reformer and statesman of tsarist Russia. He took the post of Prime Minister of Internal Affairs of the Empire on July 8, 1906. He implemented a chain of bills that were called the "Stolypin Agrarian Reform".
Petr Arkadievich Stolypin
Thanks to them, the peasants received land in private ownership, which had not previously even been considered by the government. Historians and contemporaries of Stolypin describe him as a fearless person, an excellent orator (“Do not intimidate!”, “First calm, then reforms” - the minister’s phrases, which became winged). 11 attempts were made on Pyotr Arkadievich in his entire life (the main part during his prime minister's career).
A high-ranking official was killed on September 1 (14) in Kiev by Dmitry Bagrov, shot twice: one bullet hit the arm, the second - in the stomach and liver. Buried in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
Reasons for reforms
Before delving into the essence of the reforms, it is worth briefly considering their reasons. The first Russian revolution (1905-1907) became the impetus for the enlightenment of the people and the government about the problems of the state. The main thing: economic stagnation prevented the Russian Empire from becoming a capitalist state.
The Russians, realizing this, blamed tsarism for everything, which is why the ideas of anarchism appeared among the broad masses. Alas, the majority in power were large landowners; their views on the development of the country were sharply different from those of the people. Of course, such a situation in the power was too tense and demanded immediate decisive action, for which P. Stolypin undertook.
Stolypin's reforms
The prime minister had two important reforms:
Legal proceedings;
Agrarian.
The first reform was enshrined in the 1906 "Provisions of the Council of Ministers on courts martial", which stated that any violation of the law could be considered on an expedited basis. We are talking about constant robberies, terrorist acts and banditry on ships. The fact is that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was going through difficult times. Most of the population was poor, so breaking laws in search of food or money became commonplace.
After the reform, any suspect was tried behind closed doors, without the participation of a prosecutor, a witness or even a lawyer. Of course, it was impossible to leave the court innocent. Within a day, the sentence (most often the death sentence) was brought into effect. Thus, 683 out of 1102 citizens were deprived of their lives. The results were not long in coming.
On the one hand, people, fearing death, stopped committing robberies and terror in the navy. In general, the task was completed, but the ill-wishers raised riots against Stolypin, and their consequences were reflected even on the official. The reformer found himself in a difficult situation: in the circles of power he, except for Nicholas II, had no supporters and the people hated him too.
The agrarian reform of November 9, 1906 made people talk about Pyotr Stolypin. Its goal was to improve agricultural activity, to eliminate landlord ownership for the further development of capitalism. What did he do? The official endowed the peasants with land plots and a minimum set of democratic rights.
The trick was that the land was issued on state bail for 55.5 years. Of course, a person who has no money for bread will not be able to repay the loan. Then the minister decided to populate the "empty" corners of Russia with the working class.
The bills provided for the free distribution of land and their implementation in the North Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia. Stolypin's actions did not quite justify themselves, since 800 thousand of a million immigrants returned back.
Stolypin wagons
On May 29, 1911, a decree was issued to expand the rights of the commissions on cuts (land that the peasants received) in order to move from communities to farms or small private landholdings. Unfortunately, only 2.3% of newly-made landowners founded farmsteads, for the rest it was unbearable.
Nevertheless, today the reforms were recognized as the right path to the development of the country. Their results already then led to an increase in production in the agrarian sphere and the appearance of the first signs of capitalist trade ties. The reform was a stage of evolution in the development of the country, and also eradicated feudalism. Moreover, already in 1909 Russia took first place in grain production.
Outcomes
Stolypin devoted all the years of his life to improving the Russian economy. Thus, the achievement of his works was great, although they were not appreciated by the contemporaries of the reformer:
In 1916, among the peasants, 26% had their own land, and 3.1% formed farmsteads;
In the sparsely populated parts of the state, 2.8 times more people began to live, which should have led to the acceleration of the industrialization of these regions. Of course, this approach was progressive;
The peasants were interested in working on cuts, which increased the level of exports and domestic trade;
As the demand for agricultural machinery increased, its sales increased and the treasury was replenished.
All the results of the reforms were a step towards capitalism, which was so demanded by the Russian Empire. Unfortunately, their significance and achievements have sunk into the abyss, the reason for which the state was drawn!
28. Agrarian reform of PA Stolypin.
The Stolypin agrarian reform is the 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, extensive lending to peasants, the purchase of landowners' land for resale to peasants on favorable terms, land management, which allows to optimize the peasant economy by eliminating the strip.
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 (first of all, to end agrarian unrest), the long-term goal was sustainable prosperity and development of agriculture and the peasantry, the integration of the peasantry into the market the 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' ownership of land, which consisted, first of all, in replacing the collective and limited ownership of land in rural communities with full-fledged private property of individual peasant householders; measures in this direction were of an administrative and legal nature.
The elimination of outdated estate civil legal restrictions that hindered the effective economic activity of the peasants.
Improving the efficiency of peasant agriculture; government measures consisted primarily in encouraging the allocation of land plots to the peasants-owners "to one place" (cut, farmstead), which required the government to carry out a huge amount of complex and expensive land management work to open up the striped communal lands.
Encouraging the purchase of private (primarily landlord) land by peasants, through various kinds of operations of the Peasant Land Bank, preferential lending was of predominant importance.
Encouragement of increasing the working capital of peasant farms through lending in all forms (bank lending secured by land, loans to members of cooperatives and partnerships).
Expansion of direct subsidies for so-called "agronomic assistance" activities (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 Territory); the reform did not affect the Cossack land tenure and land tenure of the Bashkirs.
In 1906, 1910 and 1911, decrees were issued:
every 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 get land (about 15 hectares) and money from the state to raise the economy,
immigrants received tax breaks, were exempted from military service.
a) Objectives of the reform.
Socio-political goals of the reform.
The main goal was to attract broad strata 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, imbued with the idea of property, rich peasantry," which, according to Stolypin, makes the best stronghold of order and tranquility. " In 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 noble landownership from the reduction, but the large and small landed nobility continued to constitute the most reliable support of the autocracy. To push him away would be suicide for the regime.
In addition, the noble estate organizations, including the council of the united nobility, had a great influence on Nicholas II and his entourage. Members of the government, and even more so the prime minister, who raises the question of alienating the landowners' lands, could not hold on to their place, and even more so 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 issue in the peasant movement was the issue 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 constituted the basis of the social unity of the community, and on the other hand, it hindered the development of agricultural technology. The ultimate economic goal of the reforms was to be a general rise in the country's agriculture, the transformation of the agricultural sector into the economic base of the new Russia.
b) Preparation of the reform
The preparation of reform projects before the revolution actually began with a meeting 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 government officials (V.I. Gurko.). With the beginning of the revolution and the active participation of the peasants in the defeat of the landlord estates, Nicholas II, frightened by the agrarian uprisings, changed his attitude towards the land peasant community.
The peasant bank was allowed to issue loans for peasant allotments (November 1903), which actually meant the possibility of alienating communal lands. P.A. Stolypin in 1906, when he became prime minister, supported the landowners who did not affect the interests of the landlords. Gurko's project formed the basis of the Decree on November 9, 1906, and laid the foundation for 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 assumed by the law of 1910. carried out primarily by "strengthening" allotments for private ownership. In addition, according to the law of 1911, it was allowed to carry out land management (reduction of land to 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, the economic development of agriculture was impossible in the conditions of peasant striped land (23 peasants of the central regions had plots divided into 6 or more strips, in different places of the communal field) and were far away (40% of the peasants of the center should were weekly to pass from their estates to allotments 5 and more versts). In economic terms, according to Gurko's plan, strengthening without land management did not make sense.
Therefore, the work of the state land management commissions was planned to reduce the strips of the peasant allotment into a single section - the cut. If such a cut was far from the village, the estate was transferred there and a farm was formed.
Resettlement of peasants to vacant land.
To solve the problem of peasant land shortages and reduce agrarian overpopulation in the central regions, the resettlement policy was intensified. Funds were allocated for transporting those wishing to new places, primarily to Siberia. Special ("Stolypin") passenger cars were built for the migrants. Beyond the Urals, land was handed over to peasants free of charge, for raising the economy and improvement, loans were issued.
The sale of land to peasants in installments through a peasant bank was also necessary to reduce the land shortage. Loans were issued against the security of allotment land 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 trade and credit, was given an impetus by the publication in 1908 of an exemplary charter. Credit partnerships have received some benefits.
d) The course of the reform.
1. Legal basis, stages and lessons of the reform.
The legislative basis for the reform was the decree on November 9, 1906, after which the reform began to be implemented. The main provisions of the decree were enshrined in the law of 1910, approved by the Duma and the State Council. Serious clarifications in the course of the reform were introduced by the law of 1911, which reflected a change in the emphasis of government policy and signified 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 the Stolypin Minister of Internal Affairs.
2. The transformation of peasants into landowners at the first stage (1907 -1910), in accordance with the decree on November 9, 1906, proceeded in several ways.
Strengthening of striped plots in ownership. Over the years, 2 million allotments have been strengthened. When pressure from local authorities ceased, the process of strengthening was sharply reduced. In addition, most of the peasants who only wanted to sell their land and not run their farm have already done so. After 1911, only those who wanted to sell their land applied. In total, in 1907-1915. 2.5 million people - 26% of the peasants of European Russia (excluding the western provinces and the Trans-Urals) - became "fortified", but almost 40% of them sold their plots, for the most part moved 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 the allotment in ownership automatically - after the creation of cuts and farms, without submitting an application for strengthening the ownership.
In “old-hearted” communities (communities where there was 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 the total. At the same time, only 600,000 of the 3.5 million members of the unbounded communities requested documents proving 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 statements. Beyond the Urals, the reform did not formally take place, 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 in multi-lane areas. This required not a formal strengthening of ownership, 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 into the private property of the peasants.
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) and land purchased by the peasants from the bank. This was the beginning. It is important that in reality the potential scope of the movement turned out to be wider: another 20% of peasants in European Russia submitted applications for land management, but land management work was suspended by the war and interrupted by the revolution.
4. Migration beyond the Urals.
By the decree of March 10, 1906, the right to resettle the peasants was granted to all who wished, without restrictions. The government allocated considerable funds for the costs of settling migrants in new places, for their medical care and public needs, for the construction of roads.
Having received a loan from the government, 3.3 million people moved to new lands in "Stolypin" cars, 2/3 of whom were landless or landless peasants. 0.5 million returned, many of them 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 forward was made in the economic and social development of Siberia. Also, the population of this region during the years of colonization increased by 153%. If before the 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. The 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 prevalence of the fact of sole ownership of land over the legal right to use. The peasants could now allocate land that was in actual use from the community, regardless of its will. The land plot became the property not of a family, but of an individual householder. Measures were taken to ensure the strength and stability of labor peasant farms. So, in order to avoid speculation in land and concentration of property, the maximum size of individual land tenure was legally limited, and the sale of land to non-peasants was allowed. The law of June 5, 1912 allowed the issuance of a loan on the security of any allotment land acquired by peasants. The development of various forms of credit - mortgage, land reclamation, agricultural, land management - contributed to the intensification of market relations in the countryside.
In 1907 - 1915. 25% of householders declared about the separation from the community, while 20% actually did stand out - 2008.4 thousand householders. New forms of land tenure became widespread: farmsteads and cuts. As of January 1, 1916, there were already 1,221.5 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 communes. The number of such farms was 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 of state and landowners' land, of which 30% were bought in installments by peasants. At the same time, special privileges were provided to the owners of farms and cuts, who, unlike others, received a loan in the amount of 100% of the value of the acquired land at 5% per annum. As a result, if before 1906 the bulk of land buyers were peasant collectives, then by 1913 79 , 7% of buyers were sole 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 village increased from 3 thousand. (1908) up to 10 thousand (1915)
Many economists have come to the conclusion that it is cooperation that is the most promising direction in the development of the Russian countryside, meeting the needs of the modernization of 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 oil artels, agricultural societies, consumer stores and even peasant artel dairy factories.
e) Conclusions.
The peasant sector in Russia is making significant progress. A large role in this was played by the harvest years and the rise in world prices for grain, but the cutting and farmsteads, where new technologies were used to a greater extent, were especially progressing. The yield in these areas exceeded those of the communal fields by 30-50%. Exports of agricultural products in the pre-war years increased even more, by 61% compared to 1901-1905. 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 paradise". The problems of hunger and agrarian overpopulation have not been resolved. The country continued to suffer from technical, economic and cultural backwardness.
I. D. Kondratyev in the United States, on average, a farm had a fixed capital of 3900 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 per 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 did not take place on the basis of intensification of production, but due to an increase in the intensity of manual peasant labor. But in the period under review, socio-economic conditions were created for the transition to a new stage of agrarian transformations - to the transformation of agriculture into a capital-intensive technologically progressive sector of the economy.
But a number of external circumstances (Stolypin's death, the outbreak of war) interrupted the Stolypin reform. Stolypin himself believed that it would take 15-20 years for the success of his undertakings. But even in the period 1906-1913, a lot was done.
1) Social outcomes of the community's fate.
The community as a self-governing body of the Russian village was not affected by the reform, but the socio-economic organism of the community began to deteriorate, the number of land communities decreased from 135,000 to 110,000.
At the same time, in the central non-chernozem regions, the collapse 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 expropriations. At the first stage, 1907 -1909. with the strengthening of allotments into property, often under the pressure of 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 abandonment of coercion and some economic success, peasant unrest almost ceased. up 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 the main reason for the failure was the socio-political half-heartedness of the reforms, which manifested itself in the preservation of the landowners' lands intact.
RESULTS of the reforms:
The cooperative movement developed.
The number of well-to-do peasants increased.
In terms of gross grain harvest, Russia was in 1st place in the world.
The number of livestock increased 2.5 times.
About 2.5 million people moved to the new lands.
The agrarian question occupied a central place in domestic politics. The beginning of the agrarian reform, the inspirer and developer of which was P.A. Stolypin, issued 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... The law on land management from May 29, 1911.
The main provision of Stolypin's reform was destruction of the community... For this, a stake was made on the development of personal peasant property in the village by giving the peasants the right to leave the community and create farms, a cut.
An important point of the reform: landlord ownership of land was preserved intact. This provoked sharp opposition from the peasant deputies in the Duma and the masses of peasants.
Another measure proposed by Stolypin was to destroy the community: resettlement of peasants... The meaning 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 tensions in the center of the country. The main areas of resettlement are Siberia, Central Asia, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan. The government allocated funds to the displaced people for travel, 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 about 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 property owners. This conclusion is complemented by data on the failure of the resettlement policy. In 1908 - 1909 the number of immigrants was 1.3 million, but very soon many of them began to return. The reasons were different: the bureaucracy of the Russian bureaucracy, the lack of funds for setting up a farm, ignorance of local conditions and the more than restrained attitude of the old-timers towards the immigrants. Many died along 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.
Agrarian transformation (in short - Stolypin's reform) is a generalized name for a whole range of measures that have been carried out in the field of agriculture since 1906. PA Stolypin was in charge of these changes. The main goal of all measures was to create conditions for attracting peasants to work on their land.
In the past, the system of such transformations (P. A. Stolypin's reforms - briefly) was criticized in every possible way, nowadays it is customary to praise it. At the same time, no one seeks to fully understand it. It should also not be forgotten that Stolypin himself was not the author of the agrarian reform, it was only part of the general system of the reforms he intended.
Stolypin as Minister of Internal Affairs
A relatively young Stolypin came to power without much struggle and work. His candidacy in 1905 was nominated by Prince A.D. Obolensky, who was his relative and chief prosecutor of the Synod. The opponent of this candidacy was S. Yu. Witte, who saw another person in the post of Minister of Internal Affairs.
Having come to power, Stolypin failed to change the attitude of the cabinet of ministers. Many officials never became his associates. For example, V.N. Kakovo, who served as Minister of Finance, was very skeptical about Stolypin's ideas regarding the solution of the agrarian question - he spared money for it.
In order to protect himself and his family, Stolypin, at the suggestion of the tsar, moved to the Winter Palace, which was reliably guarded.
The most difficult decision for him was the adoption of the decree on courts-martial. He later admitted that he was forced to bear this "heavy cross" against his own will. Stolypin's reforms are described below (briefly).
General description of the modernization program
When the peasant movement began to decline by the fall of 1906, the government announced its plans for the agrarian question. The so-called Stolypin program began with a decree of 11/09/1906. Stolypin's agrarian reform followed, which is briefly described in the article.
While still the governor of Saratov, the future minister wanted to organize assistance for the creation of strong individual farms for peasants on the basis of state lands. Such actions were supposed to show the peasants a new path and induce them to abandon communal land tenure.
Another official, V. I. Gurko, was developing a project, the purpose of which was to create farmsteads on peasant lands, and not on state ones. The difference was significant. But even this Gurko did not consider the most important. Its main goal was to secure the allotment land in the ownership of the peasants. According to this plan, any member of the peasant community could take his allotment, and no one had the right to reduce or change it. This would allow the government to split the community. Stolypin's reform (agrarian for short) was required by the unfavorable situation in the empire.
The situation in the country on the eve of the reform
In 1905-1907, as part of the revolution in Russia, peasant unrest took place. Together with the problems within the country in 1905, Russia lost in the war with Japan. All this spoke of serious problems that needed to be addressed.
At the same time, the State Duma begins its work. She gave the go-ahead for the reforms of Witte and Stolypin (in short - agrarian).
Directions
The transformations were supposed to create strong economic allotments and destroy collective land ownership, which hindered further development. It was necessary to eradicate outdated class restrictions, encourage the purchase of land from landlords, and increase the turnover of running their own economy through lending.
Stolypin's agrarian reform, which is briefly described in the article, was aimed at improving allotment land tenure and practically did not concern private property.
The main stages of modernization
By May 1906, a congress of noble societies was held, at which DI Pestrzhetsky made a presentation. He was one of the Interior Ministry officials who was developing an agricultural project. His report criticized possible land transformations. It stated that in the country the peasants had no problems with the lack of land, and the nobles had no grounds for alienating it. Individual cases of land shortages were proposed to be resolved by purchasing allotments through a bank and resettlement to the outskirts of the country.
The report caused controversial judgments of the nobles on this matter. The views on the reforms of Witte and Stolypin (in short - agrarian reform) were also ambiguous. There were also those (Count D. A. Olsufiev) who offered to compromise with the peasants. This meant selling them the land, keeping the bulk of it. But such reasoning did not meet with support or even sympathy from the majority of those present.
The only thing on which almost everyone at the congress was unanimous was the negative attitude towards the communities. K. N. Grimm, V. L. Kushelev, A. P. Urusov and others came out with attacks on the peasant communities. Concerning them, the phrase was sounded that "this is a swamp in which everything that could be in the open is bogged down." The nobles believed that the community should be destroyed for the benefit of the peasants.
Those who tried to raise the issue of alienating the landowners' lands did not receive support. Back in 1905, when the land management manager NN Kutler proposed to the tsar to solve the problem of the peasants' land shortage in this way, the ruler refused him and dismissed him.
Stolypin was also not a supporter of the compulsory alienation of land, believing that everything goes on as usual. Some of the nobles, fearing the revolution, sold the land to the Peasant Bank, who divided it into small plots and sold it to those peasants who were cramped in the community. This was the main meaning of Stolypin's reform briefly.
During 1905-1907, the bank bought more than 2.5 million acres of land from landowners. However, peasants, fearing the elimination of private land ownership, practically did not make land purchases. During this time, the bank sold only 170 thousand dessiatines. The bank's activities caused discontent among the nobles. Further, land sales began to increase. The reform began to bear fruit only after 1911.
Results of Stolypin's reforms
Briefly statistics of the results of the agrarian reform:
- more than 6 million households have applied for the assignment of land plots to private ownership;
- by the February Revolution, about 30% of the land was transferred to the ownership of peasants and associations;
- with the help of the Peasant Bank, the peasants acquired 9.6 million dessiatines;
- landlord farms lost their significance as a mass phenomenon; by 1916, almost all sowing of land was peasant.
