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The Stolypin agrarian reforms were a series of changes to Imperial Russia's agricultural sector instituted during the tenure of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. Most, if not all, of these reforms were based on recommendations from a committee known as the "Needs of Agricultural Industry Special Conference," which was held in Russia between 1901 and 1903 during the tenure of Minister of Finance Sergei Witte.
The reforms aimed to transform the traditional obshchina form of Russian agriculture, which bore some similarities to the open-field system of Britain. Serfs who had been liberated by the emancipation reform of 1861 lacked the financial ability to leave their new lands, as they owed money to the state for periods of up to 49 years. [1] Perceived drawbacks of the obshchina system included collective ownership, scattered land allotments based on family size, and a significant level of control by the family elder. Stolypin, as a staunch conservative, also sought to eliminate the commune system — known as the mir — and to reduce radicalism among the peasants, thus preventing further political unrest such as that which occurred during the Revolution of 1905. Stolypin believed that tying the peasants to their own private land-holdings would produce profit-minded and politically conservative farmers like those living in parts of western Europe. [2] Stolypin referred to his own programs as a "wager on the strong and sober". [3]
The reforms began with and introduced the unconditional right of individual landownership (Ukase of November 9, 1906). Stolypin's reforms abolished the obshchina system and replaced it with a capitalist-oriented form highlighting private ownership and consolidated modern farmsteads designed to make peasants conservative instead of radical.
The multifaceted reforms introduced the following:
The state implemented the Stolypin agrarian reforms in a comprehensive campaign from 1906 through 1914. This system was not a command economy like that found in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but rather a continuation of the modified state capitalism program begun under Sergei Witte. Stolypin's program differed from Witte's reforms not in the rapid push — which was a characteristic also found in the Witte reforms — but in the fact that Stolypin's reforms were to the agricultural sector, including improvements to the rights of individuals on a broad level and had the backing of the police. These reforms laid the groundwork for a market-based agricultural system for Russian peasants.
The principal ministers involved in the implementation of the Stolypin agrarian reforms included Stolypin himself as Interior Minister and Prime Minister, Alexander Krivoshein as Agriculture and State Property Minister, and Vladimir Kokovtsov as Finance Minister and Stolypin's successor as Prime Minister.
The Soviet agrarian program in the 1920s reversed the Stolypin reforms. The state took over land owned by peasants and moved them to collective farms. [4]
As a result of the expansion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and other railroads east of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, migration to Siberia increased. Thompson estimated that between 1890 and 1914 that over 10 million persons migrated freely from western Russia to areas east of the Urals. [5]
This was encouraged by the Trans-Siberian Railroad Committee, which was personally headed by Tsar Nicholas II. The Stolypin agrarian reforms included resettlement benefits for peasants who moved to Siberia. An emigration department was created in 1906 at the ministry of agriculture. It organized resettlement and assisted the settlers during their first years in the new settlements. The settlers received on average 16.5 hectares (40.8 acres) of land per man. The total area allocated was 21 million hectares. Migrants received a small state subsidy, exemption from some taxes, and advice from state agencies specifically developed to help with peasant resettlement. [6]
In part thanks to these initiatives, approximately 2.8 million of the 10 million migrants to Siberia relocated between 1908 and 1913. This increased the population of the regions east of the Urals by 2.5 times before the outbreak of World War I.
A number of new types of cooperative assistance were developed as part of the Stolypin agrarian reforms, including financial-credit cooperation, production cooperation, and consumer cooperation. Many elements of Stolypin's cooperation-assistance programs were later incorporated into the early agrarian programs of the Soviet Union, reflecting the lasting influence of Stolypin.
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, began on 22 January 1905. A wave of mass political and social unrest then began to spread across the vast areas of the Russian Empire. The unrest was directed primarily against the Tsar, the nobility, and the ruling class. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. In response to the public pressure, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to go back on his earlier authoritarian stance and enact some reform. This took the form of establishing the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. Despite popular participation in the Duma, the parliament was unable to issue laws of its own, and frequently came into conflict with Nicholas. The Duma's power was limited and Nicholas continued to hold the ruling authority. Furthermore, he could dissolve the Duma, which he did three times in order to get rid of the opposition.
Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte, also known as Sergius Witte, was a Russian statesman who served as the first prime minister of the Russian Empire, replacing the emperor as head of government. Neither liberal nor conservative, he attracted foreign capital to boost Russia's industrialization. Witte's strategy was to avoid the danger of wars.
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin was a Russian statesman who served as the third prime minister and the interior minister of the Russian Empire from 1906 until his assassination in 1911. Known as the greatest reformer of Russian society and economy, his reforms caused unprecedented growth of the Russian state, which was halted by his assassination.
Ivan Logginovich Goremykin was a Russian politician who served as the prime minister of the Russian Empire in 1906 and again from 1914 to 1916, during World War I. He was the last person to have the civil rank of Active Privy Councillor, 1st class. During his time in government, Goremykin pursued conservative policies.
Under Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Empire slowly industrialized while repressing opposition from the center and the far-left. During the 1890s Russia's industrial development led to a large increase in the size of the urban middle class and of the working class, which gave rise to a more dynamic political atmosphere. Because the state and foreigners owned much of Russia's industry, the Russian working class was comparatively stronger and the Russian bourgeoisie comparatively weaker than in the West.
An obshchina or mir, also officially termed as a rural community between the 19th and 20th centuries, was a peasant village community, or a khutor, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word obshchiy.
Count Vladimir Nikolayevich Kokovtsov was a Russian politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Russia from 1911 to 1914, during the reign of Emperor Nicholas II.
A khutor or khutir is a type of rural locality in some countries of Eastern Europe; in the past the term mostly referred to a single-homestead settlement. The term can be translated as "hamlet".
Alexander Vasilyevich Krivoshein (July 19 was a Russian monarchist politician and minister of agriculture under Pyotr Stolypin.
The State Duma, also known as the Imperial Duma, was the lower house of the legislature in the Russian Empire, while the upper house was the State Council. It held its meetings in the Tauride Palace in Saint Petersburg. It convened four times between 27 April 1906 and the collapse of the empire in February 1917. The first and the second dumas were more democratic and represented a greater number of national types than their successors. The third duma was dominated by gentry, landowners, and businessmen. The fourth duma held five sessions; it existed until 2 March 1917, and was formally dissolved on 6 October 1917.
Legislative elections were held in the Russian Empire from 26 March to 20 April 1906. At stake were the 497 seats in the State Duma of the Russian Empire, the legislative assembly. Election for the First State Duma, which only ran from 27 April to 8 July (O.S.) 1906, returned a significant bloc of moderate socialists and two liberal parties which demanded further reforms. For this reason, it is sometimes called the Duma of Public Anger.
Stolypin car is a type of railroad carriage in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and modern Russia.
The Russian Empire was a vast empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its proclamation in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about 22,800,000 km2 (8,800,000 sq mi), roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the third-largest empire in history, behind only the British and Mongol empires. It also colonized North America between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.
The Coup of June 1907, sometimes known as Stolypin's Coup, is the name commonly given to the dissolution of the Second State Duma of the Russian Empire, the arrest of some its members and a fundamental change in the Russian electoral law by Tsar Nicholas II on 16 June [O.S. 3 June] 1907. This act is considered by many historians to mark the end of the Russian Revolution of 1905, and was the subject of intense subsequent debate as to its legality. It also created a fundamental shift in the makeup of future Dumas in the Russian Empire: whereas previous laws had given peasants and other lower-class people a larger proportion of electors to the Duma, the new law transferred this to the propertied classes, in an effort to avoid election of the large number of liberal and revolutionary deputies who had dominated the First and Second Dumas. Although it largely succeeded in this objective, it ultimately failed to preserve the Imperial system, which ceased to exist during the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Nicholas II or Nikolai II was the last reigning Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. He married Alix of Hesse in 1894 and had children Olga (1895), Tatiana (1897), Maria (1899), Anastasia (1901) - collectively known as the OTMA sisters - and the tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich.
The Ministry of State Property, also translated as the Ministry of State Domains, was the ministry in the government of the Russian Empire which controlled government-owned lands and any other government property, especially farms and agricultural land, and prior to the peasant reform of 1863, the state peasants that worked the lands.
Agriculture in Siberia was started many millennia ago by peoples indigenous to the region. While these native Siberians had little more than "digging sticks" called mattocks instead of ploughs at their disposal, Siberian agriculture would develop through the centuries until millions of Russian farmers were settled there, reaping significant bounties off this huge expanse of land stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
State peasants were a special social estate (class) of peasantry in 18th–19th century Russia, the number of which in some periods reached half of the agricultural population. In contrast to private serfs, state peasants were considered personally free, although their freedom of movement was restricted.
Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused, and traditional. Governments and political parties seeking agrarian socialist policies have existed throughout the world, in regions including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, Africa and Australia.
The Russian peasants' uprising of 1905–1906, also known as the Jaquerie of 1905–1906 or the agrarian revolt of 1905–1906, was a series of peasant uprisings and violence that broke out throughout the Russian Empire in the years of 1905–1906.