Positive results of the Stolypin agrarian reform. The results of the Stolypin agrarian reform

stolypin reform agricultural production

Assessment of the results of reforms P.A. Stolypin is complicated by the fact that the reforms have never been fully implemented. Sam P.A. Stolypin suggested that all the reforms he conceived would be implemented in a comprehensive manner (and not only in terms of agrarian reform) and would have the maximum effect in the long run.

It was not possible to destroy the peasant community. For the years 1907-1914. only 26% of peasants came out of the community and took the land into ownership. Of these, only about 11% created a farm and a cut, and many sold the land and left for the city. By 1915, only 10.3% of peasant farms had become truly one-man farmers.

Thus, the peasants did not actively leave the community, mainly they were the kulak or the poor, but not the middle peasants. This happened because: a) the majority of peasants were not able to manage alone, at their own peril and risk, and the community took care of each community member; b) the destruction of the community was the destruction of the patriarchal way of life of the peasants; c) not in all regions of the country, natural conditions made it possible, having destroyed the community, to give all peasants equal plots of land.

Migration policy was the most successful reform measure. For the years 1906-1914. 3.4 million people moved to Siberia, of which two-thirds were small-land and landless peasants. This had a positive effect on the development of the region, as as a result of an increase in the population of Siberia, new lands were developed and productive forces developed.

However, about 17% of the migrants returned (they did not receive the proper state support, they encountered difficulties in a new place and sabotage of the local population), and this hindered the solution of the problem of low-land peasants and increased social tension in the places of their former settlement.

The reform contributed to the rapid growth of agricultural production, an increase in the capacity of the domestic market, and an increase in agricultural exports, with Russia's trade balance becoming more and more active. As a result, it was possible not only to get agriculture out of the crisis, but also to turn it into the dominant of Russia's economic development. The gross income of all agriculture in 1913 amounted to 52.6% of the total gross income. The income of the entire national economy, thanks to the increase in value created in agriculture, increased in comparable prices from 1900 to 1913 by 33.8%.

Differentiation of types of agricultural production by regions has led to an increase in the marketability of agriculture. Three quarters of all raw materials processed by the industry came from agriculture. The agricultural commodity turnover increased during the reform period by 46%. Even more, by 61% compared with 1901-1905, the export of agricultural products increased in the prewar years. Russia was the largest producer and exporter of bread and flax, a number of livestock products. So, in 1910, Russian wheat exports accounted for 36.4% of total world exports.

However, the problems of hunger and agrarian overpopulation were not resolved. The country continued to suffer from technical, economic and cultural backwardness. The growth rate of labor productivity in agriculture was relatively slow. While in Russia in 1913 they received 55 pounds of bread from one tithe, in the USA they received 68 pounds, in France - 89, and in Belgium - 168 pounds. Economic growth took place not on the basis of intensification of production, but due to an increase in the intensity of manual peasant labor, but during the period under review social and economic conditions were created for the transition to a new stage of agrarian transformations - to turning agriculture into a capital-intensive technologically advanced sector of the economy.

What are the results of the reform? In the period 1905-1916. about 3 million households left the community, which is about a third of their number in the provinces where the reform was carried out. This means that it was not possible to either destroy the community or create a stable layer of peasant owners.

This conclusion is supplemented 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 Russian bureaucracy, lack of funds for starting an economy, lack of knowledge of local conditions and more than restrained attitude towards migrants of old-timers. Many died en route or went broke. In the national regions of the country, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz took their lands to resettle immigrants.

The problems of low land and landlessness, agrarian overpopulation, i.e. the basis of social tension in the village persisted.

Thus, the reform failed either in the economic or in the political part. True, some publicists today argue that the reform had promising prospects and allude to the increase in the volume of marketable bread that has taken place, and the improvement of the overall situation in the Russian countryside.

These arguments are not undeniable. Opponents of such a positive position are inclined to explain the increase in the volume of marketable bread and the improvement of the situation in the countryside between the first Russian revolution and the World War, not as a reform, but as the beginning of an industrial upsurge in Russia, which stimulated the growth of agricultural production. Another argument is also given: at the beginning of the century, world grain prices rose.

The situation in the village was favorably affected by the abolition of redemption payments in 1907 and the absence of strong crop failures (the exception was 1911). The legitimacy of such an argument cannot be denied: such a large-scale reform as the Stolypin agrarian reform could not produce a result immediately and therefore it is hardly possible to associate with it those positive changes in the life of the village that were mentioned above and which coincided with the reform in time.

There is also such a view regarding the results of the reform: its effectiveness cannot be evaluated, since there simply was not enough time for the reform: it was prevented by war and revolution. In support of this position, the author of the reform is quoted as saying that for the success of the reform he needs “20 years of peace”. Supporters of this point of view objected. Let us cite the thoughts of the historian A. Avrekh. Agreeing that the reform was interrupted by extraordinary circumstances, he believed "that the question must be posed differently: why has history not given these 20 years?" Answering him, A. Avrech concludes: “But she didn’t give it because the country (including the village) could no longer live in an archaic political and agrarian system ... The collapse of the Stolypin reform was caused by the main objective factor the fact that it was carried out under conditions of maintaining landowner tenure and for preserving this tenure "(Avrekh A. P. A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia // Communist. 1991. No. 1. P. 48-49).

Agrarian reform P.A. Stolypin and other social reforms outlined by him were the last of a series of attempts to socially modernize Russia before the 1917 revolutions. As before, the capitalist orientation of the reform was limited, everything possible was done to preserve landowner land ownership.

Assessment of Stolypin’s activity is contradictory and ambiguous. Some highlight only negative aspects in it, while others consider him a "brilliant political figure," a man who could save Russia from future wars, defeats and revolutions. I would like to cite lines from the book of S. Rybas "Stolypin" that very accurately characterize the attitude of people towards historical figures: "... from this figure the eternal tragedy of the Russian educated active person blows: in an extreme situation, when traditional methods of state governance cease to work, comes to the fore, when the situation stabilizes, it starts to annoy, and it is being removed from the political arena. And then the person proper does not interest anyone, the symbol remains.

The more a person is able to respond to the historical and universal, the wider his nature, the richer his life and the more capable such person is for progress and development.
F. M. Dostoevsky

The agrarian reform of Stolypin, which began in 1906, was due to the realities that took place in the Russian Empire. The country faced mass riots, during which it became absolutely clear that the people did not want to live as before. Moreover, the state itself could not rule the country, relying on previous principles. The economic component of the development of the empire was in decline. This was especially true in the agricultural sector, where there was a clear decline. As a result, political events, as well as economic events, prompted Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin to start implementing reforms.

Background and reasons

One of the main reasons that prompted the Russian Empire to begin a massive change in government was based on the fact that a large number of ordinary people expressed their dissatisfaction with the authorities. If until this time, the expression of discontent was reduced to one-time peaceful actions, then by 1906 these actions became much larger, as well as bloody. As a result, it became obvious that Russia is struggling not only with obvious economic problems, but also with an obvious revolutionary upsurge.

Obviously, any victory of the state over the revolution is based not on physical strength, but on spiritual strength. A strong-minded state must itself take the lead in reform.
Peter Arkadyevich Stolypin

One of the momentous events that prompted the Russian government to begin speedy reforms took place on August 12, 1906. On that day, a terrorist attack occurred in St. Petersburg on Aptekarsky Island. In this place of the capital, Stolypin lived, who at that time held the post of chairman of the government. As a result of the booming explosion, 27 people died and 32 people were injured. Among the wounded were the daughter and son of Stolypin. The Prime Minister himself was not miraculously injured. As a result, the law on military courts was adopted in the country, where all cases concerning terrorist acts were examined in an expedited manner, within 48 hours.

The explosion that occurred once again indicated to Stolypin that the people wanted radical changes within the country. These changes needed to be given to people as soon as possible. That is why Stolypin's agrarian reform was accelerated, a project that began to move forward with gigantic steps.

The essence of reform

The first block called on citizens to calm down, and also informed about the state of emergency in many areas of the country. Due to the attacks in several regions of Russia, they were forced to introduce a state of emergency and military courts.
The second block announced the convening of the State Duma, during which it was planned to create and implement a complex of agrarian reforms within the country.

Stolypin clearly understood that the implementation of agrarian reforms alone would not allow reassuring the population and would not allow the Russian Empire to make a quantum leap in its development. Therefore, along with changes in agriculture, the Prime Minister spoke about the need to adopt laws on religion, equality among citizens, reform of the local government system, the rights and life of workers, the need to introduce compulsory primary education, the introduction of income tax, an increase in teachers' salaries, and so on. In a word, everything that was subsequently realized by Soviet power was one of the stages of the Stolypin reform.

Of course, it’s extremely difficult to start a change of this scale in the country. That is why Stolypin decided to start with agrarian reform. This was due to several factors:

The main driving force behind evolution is the peasant. It was always like that in all countries, it was like that in those days in the Russian Empire. Therefore, in order to remove the revolutionary tension, it was necessary to turn to the bulk of the dissatisfied, offering them qualitative changes in the country.
The peasants actively showed their position that landlords needed to be redistributed. Often the landowners left themselves the best land, giving the peasants un fertile plots.

The first stage of reform

Stolypin's agrarian reform began with an attempt to destroy the community. Until that moment, peasants in villages lived in communities. These were special territorial entities where people lived as a single team, performing common collective tasks. If you try to give a simpler definition, then the communities are very similar to the collective farms, which were later implemented by the Soviet government. The problem of the communities was that the peasants lived in a cohesive group. They worked for a single purpose for the landowners. Peasants, as a rule, did not have their large allotments, and they were not particularly worried about the final result of their work.

On November 9, 1906, the Government of the Russian Empire issued a decree that allowed peasants to freely leave the community. Exit from the community was free. At the same time, the peasant retained all his property, as well as the lands that were allocated to him. Moreover, if the land was allocated in different areas, the peasant could demand that the land be combined into a single allotment. Coming out of the community, the peasant received land in the form of a cut or a farm.

Map of the agricultural reform of Stolypin.

Cut this is a piece of land that was allocated to a peasant leaving the community, while preserving his peasant's yard in the village.

Farm this is a plot of land that was allocated to a peasant leaving the community, with the resettlement of this peasant from the village to his own plot.

On the one hand, this approach made it possible to implement reforms within the country aimed at changing within the peasant economy. However, on the other hand, the landlord economy remained untouched.

The essence of the Stolypin agrarian reform, as conceived by the creator himself, was reduced to the following advantages that the country received:

Peasants who lived in the community were massively influenced by revolutionaries. Peasants who live on separate farms are much less accessible to revolutionaries.
A person who has received land at his disposal, and who depends on this land, is directly interested in the final result. As a result, a person will think not about revolution, but about how to increase his crop and his profit.
Distract attention from the desire of ordinary people to divide landowner land. Stolypin advocated the inviolability of private property, so with the help of his reforms he tried not only to preserve the landowner land, but also to provide the peasants with what was really needed.

To some extent, Stolypin’s agrarian reform was similar to the creation of advanced farms. A large number of small and medium landowners should appear in the country, who would not depend directly on the state, but would strive to develop their sector on their own. This approach was also expressed in the words of Stolypin himself, who often confirmed that the country in its development emphasizes “strong” and “strong” landowners.

At the initial stage of development of the reform, few enjoyed the right to leave the community. In fact, only wealthy peasants and the poor left the community. Wealthy peasants came out because they had everything for independent work, and now they could work not for the community, but for themselves. The poor went out in order to receive compensation money, thereby raising their financial situation. The poor, as a rule, having lived for some time away from the community and having lost their money, returned back to the community. That is why, at the initial stage of development, very few people left the community in advanced agricultural enterprises.

Official statistics show that only 10% of all formed agricultural holdings could qualify for the title of successful farming. Only these 10% of farms used modern equipment, fertilizer, modern methods of working on the ground, and so on. Ultimately, only these 10% of households worked economically. All other farms that were formed during the agricultural reform of Stolypin turned out to be unprofitable. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of people leaving the community were poor people who were not interested in the development of the agricultural complex. These figures characterize the first months of work of the Stolypin plans.

Resettlement Policy as an Important Stage of Reform

One of the significant problems of the Russian Empire of that time was the so-called land hunger. By this concept is meant that the eastern part of Russia has been very little developed. As a result, the vast majority of land in these regions was undeveloped. Therefore, the agrarian reform of Stolypin set one of the tasks of resettling peasants from the western provinces to the eastern. In particular, it was said that peasants should be resettled beyond the Urals. First of all, these changes should have affected those peasants who did not have their own land.

The so-called landless were supposed to move beyond the Urals, where they were supposed to establish their own farming. This process was completely voluntary and the government did not force any of the peasants to resettle in the eastern regions of violence. Moreover, the resettlement policy was based on providing the peasants who decided to move beyond the Urals with maximum benefits and good living conditions. As a result, the person who agreed to such a relocation received the following exemptions from the government:

The farm of the peasant was exempted from any taxes for 5 years.
The peasant received land in his property. Land was provided on the basis of: 15 hectares for farming, as well as 45 hectares for each member of the family.
Each immigrant received a cash loan on a concessional basis. The size of this court depended on the region of resettlement, and in some regions reached up to 400 rubles. This is a lot of money for the Russian Empire. In any region, 200 rubles were issued free of charge, and the remaining money in the form of a loan.
All men who formed a farm were exempted from military service.

The significant advantages that the state guaranteed to the peasants led to the fact that in the early years of the agrarian reform, a large number of people moved from the western provinces to the eastern. However, despite such an interest of the population in this program, the number of immigrants decreased every year. Moreover, every year the percentage of people who returned back to the southern and western provinces increased. The most striking example is the indicators of the migration of people to Siberia. In the period from 1906 to 1914, more than 3 million people moved to Siberia. However, the problem was that the government was not ready for such a massive resettlement and did not manage to prepare normal conditions for people to live in a particular region. As a result, people came to a new place of residence without any amenities and no devices for a comfortable stay. As a result, only 17% of people returned from their former place of residence from Siberia.

Despite this, Stolypin's agrarian reform in terms of relocation of people yielded positive results. Here, the positive results should not be considered in terms of the number of people who resettled and returned. The main indicator of the effectiveness of this reform is the development of new lands. If we talk about the same Siberia, the resettlement of people has led to the fact that 30 million acres of land have been developed in this region, which was previously empty. An even more important advantage was that the new farms were completely divorced from the communities. A man independently came with his family and independently raised his farm. He had no public interests, no neighboring interests. He knew that there was a specific land plot that belonged to him and which should feed him. That is why the indicators of the effectiveness of agrarian reform in the eastern regions of Russia are slightly higher than in the western regions. And this is despite the fact that the western regions and western provinces are traditionally more funded and traditionally more fertile with cultivated land. It was in the east that they succeeded in creating strong farms.

Key Reform Results

The agrarian reform of Stolypin was of great importance for the Russian Empire. For the first time, a country began to implement such a scale of change within the country. Positive changes were obvious, but in order for the historical process to give a positive dynamic, it needs time. It is no coincidence that Stolypin himself said:

Give the country 20 years of peace, internal and external, and you will not recognize Russia.
Stolypin Pyotr Arkadevich

This was true, but, unfortunately, Russia did not have 20 years of silence.

If we talk about the results of agrarian reform, then its main results that have been achieved by the state over 7 years can be reduced to the following provisions:

Sown areas across the country were increased by 10%.
In certain regions where peasants massively left the community, sown areas were able to increase to 150%.
Grain export was increased, accounting for 25% of the total world grain export. In the harvest years, this indicator increased to 35 - 40%.
Over the years of reform, the purchase of agricultural equipment increased 3.5 times.
The volume of fertilizers used increased 2.5 times.
Industrial growth in the country went at colossal steps + 8.8% per year, in this regard, the Russian Empire came to first place in the world.

These are far from complete indicators of the reform in the Russian Empire in terms of agriculture, but even these figures show that the reform had unambiguous positive dynamics and an unambiguous positive result for the country. Along with this, it was not possible to achieve the full implementation of the tasks that Stolypin posed for the country. The country was not able to fully realize the farms. This was due to the fact that the traditions of collective farming among the peasants were very strong. And the peasants found a way out for themselves in the creation of cooperatives. In addition, artels were created everywhere. The first artel was created in 1907.

Artel it is an association of a group of people who characterize one profession for the joint work of these people with the achievement of common results, with the achievement of common income and with common responsibility for the final result.

As a result, we can say that the Stolypin agrarian reform was one of the stages of the mass reform of Russia. This reform was supposed to fundamentally change the country, transferring it to the rank of one of the leading world powers, not only in the military sense, but also in the economic sense. The main task of these reforms was to destroy the communities of peasants, creating powerful farms. The government wanted to see strong land owners in which not only landowners, but also private farms would be expressed.

When assessing the Stolypin reforms, historians first of all note the gap economic transformations and reforms aimed at liberalizing social and political life. So, Ya.A. Avrech notes: “The organic vice of Stolypin’s course was that he wanted to carry out reforms outside of democracy and contrary to it.” 1 One of the prominent cadet publicists A.S. Izgoyev noted that Stolypin's agrarian reform, aimed at Europeanizing Russian agriculture, could not be successful "without reform of the legal system." P.B. Struve, arguing that Stolypin’s agrarian policy “stands in a flashy contradiction to his other policies”: he is changing the economic foundation, but leaving the political superstructure intact.

Regarding the opinion of agrarian reform then politicians are contemporaries of Stolypin, and scientists give her very conflicting assessments. A.S. Outcast: “Land reform on November 9 is essentially a social revolution. This reform is the result that life brought to the Russian revolution and its most acute social form of the peasant movement ... The creation of a small personal owner was the main state need, and no matter which party is in power, it would be the logic of things ... it would be all the same summed up to this historical task ”1. Petr Struve’s original assessment of the Stolypin agrarian reform: “No matter how you regard Stolypin’s agrarian policy, you can accept it as the greatest evil, you can bless it as a beneficial surgery,” he made a huge shift in Russian life with this policy. And the shift is truly revolutionary both in essence and formally. For there can be no doubt that with the agrarian reform that liquidated the community, only the liberation of the peasants and the railroads can be ranked in importance in the economic development of Russia. ”

At the same time, among the prominent Russian scientists and economists there were critics of the Stolypin agrarian course. One of them was Alexander Ivanovich Chuprov. Recognizing that branched farms have many advantages, he nonetheless upheld the idea of \u200b\u200bpreserving the community. Attempts to create branched farms everywhere he regarded as utopian. Chuprov was afraid that with the destruction of the community, the only way to perish would be to save the "economic independence of the masses." In addition, small, sole private farms, deprived of capital and knowledge, will not be able to conduct a profitable economy, in a difficult moment they will go bankrupt. As a successor to the community, he saw farms organized on the principles of an artel.

A.P. Korelin and K.F. Shatsillo (1995) believe that the Stolypin agrarian reform was “scientifically and progressively scientific. Its implementation - timely, reasonable, without administrative pressure - could, apparently, remove the problem of revolution ”1. This path did not take place because of the reluctance of the autocracy to carry out reforms in a timely manner, because of the opposition of the conservative bureaucracy and the nobility, and also because of the unwillingness of society to accept the reforms. Expert on the agrarian question in Russia V.P. Danilov believes that the result of the Stolypin agrarian reform, if it was fully implemented, would be “the final defeat of the peasantry in the struggle for land and for the free development of their economy, the complete establishment in Russia of the landowner type of capitalism and pauperization of the rural population”.

Stolypin apparently underestimated the working question. He carried out his transformations during the recession of the labor movement, but this did not mean that the workers reconciled with their position. The volleys to the peaceful demonstration of the workers at the distant Lena goldfields barely thundered when the powerful upsurge of the labor movement throughout Russia began. Having proclaimed a combination of pacification and reform, Stolypin resorted mainly to repression against the workers. The factory legislation program, developed by the Kokovtsov commission in 1905, was buried under pressure from manufacturers and breeders who showed narrow-class egoism and did not want to reckon with national interests.

State activity P.A. Stolypin ... S. 58.

On July 6, 1906, in the midst of the First Russian Revolution, Peter Arkadyevich Stolypin replaced Ilya Logginovich Goremykin as chairman of the Council of Ministers. Prior to this, on July 6 of the same year, he was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Russian Empire. His figure has become one of the most controversial in the history of Russia, and the most important place in his activity is occupied by internal reforms. The government was faced with large-scale tasks to modernize the agricultural sector of the country, which was of great importance for the future of the empire.

VATNIKSTAN prepared a review of Stolypin's agrarian reform, figured out its causes, consequences and impact on further Russian history.

Peter Arkadyevich Stolypin

Peter Stolypin sought through economic reforms to suppress the hotbed of the revolution. He often declared this at meetings in the Second State Duma. It is worth noting that the reformer wanted to eradicate any revolutionary sentiment. Thus, his government widely used the Regulation on Enhanced and Emergency Protection, introducing its norms in certain regions of the country.

From the beginning of the revolution until July 1909, at least one and a half million people were subjected to repression. By the beginning of 1908, about 200 thousand prisoners were in prison. Many publicists, public figures of that time opposed the mass introduction of the death penalty in the Russian Empire, the decree on military courts of August 19, 1906 was criticized. For example, an article by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko “Everyday phenomenon. Notes by the journalist on the death penalty ”and Leo Tolstoy’s manifesto“ I Can't Keep Silence ”, which criticized the policy of the tsarist authorities in suppressing mass uprisings. Trade union organizations were defeated in the country; in total, about 350 labor unions were closed.

Stolypin understood that the ruling regime would not withstand the pressure of revolutionary upheavals, and therefore sought to eliminate the underlying underlying causes of the struggle against power. For this, economic transformations were needed. He stated:

“A revolution is not an external disease, but an internal disease, and it cannot be cured by external means alone.”

Land reform

One of the most acute topics of the beginning of the XX century was the land issue. For the stable functioning of agriculture, it was necessary to endow the peasant with land and turn it into an owner. At the same time, since Stolypin himself had noble roots, he did not encroach on the "holy of holies" of the Russian Empire - landowner land. Land was alienated to peasants at the expense of the community land fund. The nobility saw in the community a breeding ground for rebellious sentiments, so it sought to divert the peasant threat from landowner land. Peter Stolypin himself spoke out sharply negatively about the community:

"Our land community is a rotten anachronism, living only thanks to the artificial, baseless sentimentalism of the last half century, contrary to common sense and the most important state needs."

The main problem was that the community called all the peasants equal:

"... the Russian peasant has a passion to balance, to bring everything to the same level ... the best elements of the village should be belittled to understanding, to the aspirations of the worst, inert majority."

At the same time, he believed that the further transformation and transformation of the peasant into the middle class required separating him from the community and endowing it with his land to form capital. The middle class, in turn, was to become the basis of the new economy. Moreover, according to Stolypin, the reform was not a weakness of power:

“Not random distribution of land, not calming the riot with handouts - the riot is repaid by force, but recognition of the inviolability of private property, and as a result ... creation of small personal property, real right to leave the community and resolving issues of improving land use - these are the tasks that the government considers to be issues the existence of the Russian state. "

Peasant with children. Ryazan province, 1910

The beginning of the reform was the Decree of November 9, 1906, according to which the peasants were allowed to freely leave the community. According to this document, the community member could get the land on which he ran the farm for free - this land was called "cut".

In fact, the community should have been divided into parts by small owners. Despite the fact that the peasant became the personal owner of the land, many restrictions arose during use. It was possible to sell land only to a person connected with agriculture, mortgage - only in the Peasant Land Bank, and bequeathed - only to close relatives. This step contributed to the formation of a prosperous layer of the peasant population, which was able to buy up neighboring areas of poor communes.

There was also another way to obtain land in private possession. Upon leaving the community, the peasant was given a plot of land that was not connected with the communal territory - a farm. Farms were especially attractive to reformers. Stolypin himself was a fan of farm households characteristic of the western and Baltic provinces. At the same time, those farms that appeared after the reform were incomparably poorer and smaller than the 60-acre plots of Kherson German colonists with stone buildings. The freed peasant was returning to his fiftieth plot without any infrastructure.

S.A. Korovin, “On the world”

An important issue was the legality of land alienation in communities where redistribution took place relatively recently, and land could not be considered a fully equipped land user. Then the Council of State introduced an amendment, according to which sole ownership was established in those territories where there were no redistributions from the moment of land allotment. June 14, 1910 the law was approved by the king. A supplement to this was the Law on Land Surveying of May 20, 1911. Under this project, the territories on which land surveying was carried out passed into hereditary ownership. This allowed the authorities to clearly formulate the boundaries of peasant possessions.

The process of land management itself was not clearly worked out by the management, since the size of the land was set the same for each region: the climatic factor, soil fertility, and terrain infrastructure were not taken into account. Small businesses that just started to develop often did not receive the necessary benefits. The land management reform itself was progressing slowly: there were not enough specialists, there were many disputes among the peasants. All this caused discontent among the population of the existing system.

Peasants in festive attire. Yaroslavl province, 1915

In his first speech as chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Second State Duma, Stolypin outlined in general terms the ways in which peasants can buy land:

“The main department sees a way to eliminate acute low-land land in the preferential, appropriate value of the purchaser and the paying ability of the acquirer, the sale of land to farmers. For this purpose, the government has, according to the decrees of August 12 and 27, 1906, 9 million dessiatines and purchased from November 3, 1905. The peasant bank over 2 million acres. But for the success of the case, an increase in peasant land ownership must be associated with the improvement of land use forms, for which incentive measures, and mainly credit, are necessary. The Main Directorate intends to go in this matter through the broad development and organization of a land, land reclamation and resettlement loan.

An important role in the functioning of the economic system was assigned to the Peasant Land Bank with its right to buy landowner land (given in 1895) and issue securities for the entire amount of transactions (added in 1905). In the process of reform, the market situation threatened to depreciate the landowners' land, so the bank began a massive purchase of noble estates. For 1906–1907 more land was bought than in 11 previous years. At the same time, prices have risen. This made it difficult for borrowers to buy up further, since the peasants had to pay huge payments, which inevitably led to ruin. Moreover, for 1906–1916. for nobles 4.6 million dessiatines paid about 500 million rubles, and for 1906-1915. up to 570 thousand acres of land were taken from borrowers.

The arrears of clients of the Peasant Land Bank were constantly growing, and the number of new borrowers was declining, as the level of trust in the bank among the peasants became critically low. Therefore, the Peasant Land Bank, the most important instrument of the government, could not fulfill the main task of developing a new class and creating favorable conditions for introducing the economy to the newly made owner.

Resettlement policy

An integral part of agrarian reform is the resettlement policy pursued by the government of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. By a decree of March 10, 1906, each peasant was granted the right to resettle in the uninhabited areas of Siberia, the Urals, Turkestan, the Steppe Territory and the Caucasus.

Peasants at the Chelyabinsk resettlement point. The beginning of the twentieth century.

Authorities encouraged the settlement of territories beyond the Urals, hoping to alleviate land shortages in the European part of the country. The government stimulated the relocation of benefits, allowances and loans. A special carriage was even designed for the settlers. They were given the right to strengthen and sell their land allotment freely. Relocation growth rates were really high: since 1906, and especially in 1908 - 1909, more than 1.3 million people moved to new places. By 1910, in the Tomsk province alone, about 700 thousand people had accumulated. The problem was that the peasants did not have the necessary funds to settle on new land.

According to economists, every peasant needed a loan of at least 450 rubles. In reality, loans did not exceed 100 rubles (about 61.5% had such money with them). Moreover, if the initial amount was not spent on accommodation, but on food, the peasant lost the right to receive the remainder of the loan. Another important problem was corruption: local officials demanded a bribe. All this led to the return of part of the immigrants. The total number of immigrants for 1906 - 1916 amounted to more than 3.1 million people, the percentage of returnees in the early years was 9%, in the subsequent years it rose to 31%.

Immigrants near the railway. The beginning of the 20th century.

The situation was also difficult for the settlers who moved to Turkestan, the Steppe Territory, and Transcaucasia. Land was given to peasants at the expense of the local population - all this led to hostility of the indigenous people and the newcomer. At the same time, the resettlement was carried out at the level of minimum costs by the state with an obvious attempt to shift all the hardships of developing new lands, including financial ones, to peasant shoulders. Surprisingly, there could well be enough money for the reform, but the government, represented by Stolypin, believed that it was more important to invest in support of noble agriculture - the backbone of the autocracy.

Results of the reform

The results of the reforms of Peter Stolypin were quite contradictory. Of the positives, one can single out the rapid growth of agricultural production, an increase in the capacity of the domestic market, and an increase in the export of agricultural products, and Russia's trade balance has become more and more active. The gross income of all agriculture in 1913 amounted to 52.6% of the total. The income of the entire national economy, due to an increase in the value of products created in agriculture, increased in comparable prices from 1900 to 1913 by 33.8%.

Many regions began to produce agricultural products, this led to an increase in trade and economic ties between different regions of the country. It is worth noting that agricultural commodity circulation increased during the reform period by 46%. The export of agricultural products in the prewar years increased by 61%, compared with 1901 - 1905. Russia has become the largest producer of bread, flax and a number of livestock products. So, in 1910, Russian wheat exports accounted for 36.4% of total world exports.

Here is how Russian public and political figure Pyotr Berngardovich Struve spoke about the reform:

“No matter how you relate to Stolypin’s agrarian policy - you can take it as the greatest evil, you can bless it as a beneficent surgical operation - he made a huge shift in Russian life with this policy. And - the shift is truly revolutionary both in essence and formally. For there can be no doubt that with the agrarian reform that liquidated the community, only the liberation of the peasants and the railroads can be ranked in importance in the economic development of Russia. ”

At the same time, there were many errors in the reform. The problems of hunger and peasant low land have not been resolved. The country continued to suffer from technical, economic and cultural backwardness. According to the calculations of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratiev, a prominent Russian economist, in the USA, on average, a farm accounted for fixed capital in the amount of 3900 rubles, and in European Russia 900 rubles were allocated for one farm. The national per capita income of the agricultural population in Russia was approximately 52 rubles per year, and in the United States - 262 rubles.

Distribution of newly formed farms between householders in the village of Belinok, Grodno province. 1909 year

In general, many prominent figures of that time spoke critically about Stolypin's reforms, and this applies not only to revolutionary sectors of society. For example, Leo Tolstoy, already mentioned in the article, wrote the following:

“... they thought in Russia to calm the agitated population, and waiting and wanting only one thing: the abolition of the right to land ownership (as outrageous in our time as serfdom was half a century ago), to reassure the population so that, having destroyed the community, to form small land ownership . The mistake was huge. Instead of using the consciousness of the illegality of the right of personal land ownership still living in the people, a consciousness that converges with the doctrine of the attitude of people to the land of the most advanced people in the world, together with exposing this principle to the people, you thought to reassure him by luring it’s the most base, old, outdated understanding of man’s attitude to the earth, which exists in Europe, to the great regret of all thinking people in this Europe. ”

Leo Tolstoy among the peasants at the fair. The village of Lomtsy, Oryol province. 1909 year

The soil fertility of the average land plot was relatively low, and the productivity rate was slow. Economic growth was not based on the intensification of production, but due to an increase in the intensity of manual peasant labor. The government was never able to destroy the community due to the fact that only wealthy peasants who wanted to acquire more land and stop feeding the community, and the poor who already lost contact with the community and wanted to get land to sell it left it. The main, middle layer, peasants remained in the community. For example, Stolypin wrote about the failures of the reforms, Metropolitan Benjamin (Fedchenkov):

“Stolypin was credited by some as if a brilliant saving idea of \u200b\u200bthe agricultural system, the so-called farm economy. This, in his opinion, was supposed to strengthen the possessive feelings of the peasant farmers and thus stop the revolutionary ferment ... Then I lived in the village and clearly saw that the people were against it. And the reason was simple. From the existing area it was impossible to endow all millions of peasants with farms, and even for them it would be necessary to pay. This means that a small group of new owners would stand out from more prosperous men, and the masses would remain as low-land as before. Farms among the people failed. In our district, there were barely three or four families evicted on the farm. The case froze, it was artificial and abnormal. "

Stolypin stated that it would take him 15–20 years to bring the country to economic prosperity, but the reform stopped in 1913. A number of researchers, however, believe that such reforms required a minimum of 50 years. This is the period for the gradual development of large capitalist farms, which, given the short working season in Russian agriculture, could exist only with a significant concentration of technology and labor in the most important time of the agrarian season. However, these prospects no longer have any relation to the reforms of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. Reforms did not give the desired result, the country did not come out of the crisis, new shock was coming to Russia.