2. Reform of agricultural landholdings and emigration to Siberia Flashcards
Significance of land reform
Stolypin saw it as key to Tsarism’s survival
- Aimed to break up the village commune
- Do away with open-field strip farming
- Reconstruct Russian agriculture on basis of peasants owning their own separate farms
Believe that reform would bring political, and economic, benefits
Political benefits of land reform
- Peasants owning own separate farms - would develop strong attachment to principle of private ownership - resist socialist calls for communal/state ownership of land
- Assumed that peasants who benefitted would have a vested interest in survival of Tsarist regime
Economic benefits of land reform
- Powerful incentive for peasants to develop and improve their land (absent prior to this: where strips in open fields often reallocated between households every 10-15 years or so
- More highly motivated peasantry - more productive
- Increased agricultural production - would ensure supply of food to Russia’s growing industrial towns and eliminate possibility of outbreaks of unrest caused by high food prices
- Increased output - would also enable Russia to export foodstuffs - generate capital to be invested
What did Stolypin look forward to after implementing land reform?
- The emergence of a class of prosperous, politically conservative peasant farmers
Key features of 1906-11 measures?
- Every peasant householder - could demand that his share of communal land be turned into his own private property
- Householders could request that his strips be converted into separate small farm - commune had to pay compensation if it didn’t grant request
- Separate small farms could only be created after vote among villagers
- Govt set up local bodies - land organisation commissions to settle any disputes arising out of its land reform measures
- The rules governing the operation of the Peasants’ Land Bank, founded 1882, relaxed to allow enterprising peasants to borrow money at favourable interest rates to acquire more land
Long-term impact of Stolypin’s land reforms?
- Implementation overtaken by war + revolution - any estimate is difficult
- Impossible to say how successful they would’ve been - Impact limited before 1914
Short-term impact of Stolypin’s land reform?
- Initially - no rush to take advantage of opportunities offered by reforms - after a 1 year or 2, take-up tailed off sharply
- Many peasants saw no reason to depart from traditional customs and practices
By 1914 - 20% of peasant householders had left the village commune and become legal owners of land they farmed
Not all those leavers became proprietors of separate farms - around 1/2 owned land in form of strips in open fields - still had links w/ commune
Reason for sharp increase in agricultural production in Russia in years before 1914?
- Not attributed simply to land reform
- Other factors equally, if not more, important - run good harvest in 1909-13
- Steps towards opening up of Siberia
- Greater use of machinery and fertilisers
What was Stolypin’s land reforms largely concerned with?
- Making more productive use of land that peasants were already cultivating
- Didn’t involve any transfer of additional land to the peasantry
- Didn’t really address the issue of peasant land hunger
- Didn’t alleviate the problem of rural over-population in ‘Black Earth’ region
Siberia
- Turn of century - Siberia - mineral-rich, sparsely populated and economically under-developed - barely habitable
Trans-Siberian railway
- South-western Siberia - abundance of cultivated land: opening of the railway - made this potentially fertile area more readily accessible
- Mass migration a possibility
Built to promote economic development of Siberia
Single-track - restricted amount of traffic that could be carried
Inducements to peasants to migrate to Siberia
- Free or cheap land
- Interest-free loans
- Reduced railway fares
Lavishly funded govt advertising - publicised what was on offer
Result of govt persuasion to migrate to Siberia
- Between 1906 and 13 - some 3.5 million peasants emigrated to Siberia
- Though nearly 20% failed to settle - made the return journey to European Russia
Stolypin’s plans for reform for other areas
- Local govt
- Education
- Protection of workers
Stolypin’s plans for local govt
- Wanted to streamline the local govt system
- Getting rid of land captains (landowners who in 1889 had been given powers to direct and control peasant affairs in their localities)
- Wanted to give zemstva additional powers
