Reflejos espinales

10 Edelman, Proletarian Peasants, p. 44. 1. H. Romanenko, Sil's'ke hospodarstvo U krains’koi RSR, Kiev, 1958, p. 273.

^ 1 Edelman, Proletarian Peasants, p. 51. One pud equalled 36.11 pounds.

12 Edelman, Proletarian Peasants, p. 46. A desiatina equalled 2400 sazhen or 2.7 acres. U Romanenko, Sil's'ke hospodarstvo, p. 273. Pershyn, Narysy, p. 81.

CHAPTER TWO 36

also becoming increasingly common on noble estates, as landlords sought to improve the productivity and profitability of their lands.

In contrast, peasant households in Right-Bank Ukraine were slow to introduce new agricultural techniques or new crops on their holdings. One observer noted the peasants’ continued use of ‘agricultural techniques of the time of Yaroslav’. T h i s was due to the peasants’ belief in traditional farming methods and the lack of available capital to improve the land. Peasants maintained a three-field system (whilst gentry farms were increasingly introducing multi-field rotations of up to eight or nine crops). Tradition dictated that crops were rotated each year so that one field was planted with a winter grain, the second with a spring grain and the third left fallow. The drawback of such a system was that the fallow field was often used for some other purpose and the productivity of the land declined gradually over time. The use of fertiliser on peasant land was quite rare and peasants proved wary of such innovations.

The agronomist A. A. Kofod, adviser to P. A. Stolypin, cited the example of peasants in Volyn who struggled to match the higher productivity of neighbouring German

colonists. After several years of experimenting, the root cause of their low productivity

17 was attributed to their system of land tenure rather than to any more superficial features. Three factors affected the productivity of the land: the intermingling of strips of land on

peasant allotments (cherezpolositsa), small, inefficient plots of land {melkopolositsd), and

large distances between the peasant household and land or between strips of land 18

{daVnozemeVe). The average peasant in the Right Bank spent much time and effort trying

U Reynolds, ‘Some Experiences in K iev’, p. 223. ‘Yaroslav’ is a reference to the tenth-century ruler o f Kyiv Rus'.

For a discussion o f German-colonist farming see Roger P. Bartlett, ‘Colonists, Gastarbeiter, and the Problems o f Agriculture in Post-Emancipation Russia’, Slavonic and East European Review, 90, 1982, 4, 547-71. These colonists were particularly common in Volyn.

A.A.Kofod, B or'ba s chrezpolositsieu v Rossii i za granitseiu, St Petersburg, 1906, pp. 59-64.

18 P. P. Telichuk, Agrarnie otnosheniia v pravoberezhnoi Ukraine vp erio d reaktsii 1907-1910, Avtoreferat, Kiev, 1960, p 12.

to cultivate various small distant plots. Households in the Right Bank usually held less than ten strips but the distance from one to another would often be several miles.

Peasants frequently lacked the equipment to efficiently farm their land. The majority of peasants continued to use wooden ploughs which did not penetrate the soil as deeply as more modem metal ones. They also suffered from a lack o f livestock. Nearly half the peasant land-owning households in Ukraine lacked draught animals (45.5%). A further 12.1% owned only one horse or ox. Considerable numbers were without even rudimentary

20

ploughs (44.9%) and many households (48.5%) had only one cow. In previous centuries

peasants had increased productivity by increasing the area of land sown on the edges o f the village. This had been possible when villages remained relatively small and surplus land on

21

village boundaries was available for cultivation. By the late nineteenth century this was no

longer feasible.

Population growth put further pressure on dwindling land resources. Between 1858

22

and 1897 the population of the Right Bank increased by 90%. The average increase for

23

Ukraine as a whole between 1877 and 1917 was 72%. Podillia, in terms of density of

population at the end of the nineteenth century, was second only to the central Moscow region.^^ Peasants in Southern Ukraine which had only relatively recently been settled, held

average plots of 9.3 hectares. Their Kyiv counterparts held an average o f only 3.4

25

hectares. This intensified conflicts over land between peasants and others.

The resilience of the gentry sector meant that little land was available to peasants. Between 1877 and 1905 landlords in Central Russia lost or sold 30% of their holdings. In the

O George Yaney, The Urge to Mobilise: Agrarian Reform in Russia 1861-1930, Urban a, Chicago, London, 1982, p 164.

20 UCE, II, p. 848. Figures according to 1917 census. See Holubnychy, ‘ 1917 Agrarian Revolution’, p. 4 21 See, for example, Ukrains'ka mynuvshyna on zaimanshchina rights o f earlier centuries, p. 146. 22 Edelman, Proletarian Peasants, p. 37.

23 Subtelny, Ukraine, p. 261.

24 Allen, Ukraine, pp. 349-350. The sugar industry helped prevent rural overcrowding by providing employment. 25 Figures according to UCE, II, p. 845.

CHAPTER TWO 38

Right Bank the corresponding figure was only 16%.^^ Prices for land were pushed beyond the reach of the average peasant. Land prices in Ukraine rose by a factor of 14.4 in the

27

period 1861-1914. The average price per desiatina in Ukraine was 169 rubles. In the three

28

Right-Bank provinces, it reached 225 rubles. Communities sometimes rented land for

peasant use but usually any land that did come on to the market was snapped up by 29

merchants.

The economic dominance of the nobility in Right-Bank Ukraine put pressure on the peasant economy. High proportions of military conscripts from Right-Bank Ukraine at the turn o f the century were rejected on the grounds of poor health. In Kyiv hubernia 21.9% of recruits were considered unfit to serve. The figures in Podillia and Volyn were 22.1% and 24%. A government survey of 1903 found that average income fell short of subsistence requirements in these provinces. Many households were dependent on outside earnings for survival. Those provinces where average incomes were lower tended to produce a higher

30

proportion of unfit conscripts. A correspondent visiting Volyn at New Year in 1909 found

the peasant population in the grip of ‘the most despairing poverty, bordering on destitution’. Alcohol was seen as the traditional peasant remedy for disease and hunger with the result that

31 ‘nowhere in the world is there such drunkenness than in the villages of Volyn’.

Peasant households and village institutions employed a number of strategies to

mitigate economic hardship. Some migrated eastwards through government sponsored

schemes into the Urals or Siberia. It is estimated that during the years 1891-1914 around 20% o f the 1,982,000 Ukrainians from the nine hubemii who crossed the Urals were from

26 Edelman, Proletarian Peasants, p. 45

27 UCE, vol II, p. 845. This is an average figure. The figure for Right-Bank Ukraine was undoubtedly higher.