Mind and Labor on the Farm in Black-Earth Russia,
1861-1914
David Kerans, Researcher at the Davis Centre
for Russian Studies,
Harvard University
*Choice
Outstanding Academic Book for 2002*
Choice,
the magazine of the American Library Association has
selected Mind and Labor on the Farm in Black-Earth
Russia by David Kerans as a 2002 Outstanding Academic
Title
Did Tsarist Russia's political and industrial backwardness
result from its rigid and archaic agrarian structure?
Did the Russian revolution stem in large part from a
parasitical elite's exploitation of an enormous peasant
class? Was the Russian peasantry itself backward and
'dark' as a result? The attention contemporaries and
historians have lavished on these questions has enshrined
them as fundamental issues in Russian history. Mind
and Labor on the Farm in Black-Earth Russia endeavors
to recast our understanding of the agrarian problem
by uncovering the history of both the physical and the
mental dimensions of agriculture. Employing Russia's
unparalleled resources of literary, agronomic and statistical
information on peasant labor and culture, this book
also offers new and haunting perspectives on the limitations
of traditional agriculture to adapt to a rapidly changing
economic geography, such as that of late nineteenth
and early twentieth century Russia.
Historians have long agreed that Russia's agricultural
sector was incapable of rapid increases in productivity,
and thus doomed to stagnation and poverty. Obstacles
imposed by the communal organization of agriculture,
the scarcity of education, the oppressive power of landlords
and the lack of non-agricultural employment are recognized
as having shackled peasant farming in centuries-old
backward routines. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and
Stalin's brutal collectivization of agriculture at the
close of the 1920s are commonly understood to have been
natural outcomes of these frustrating circumstances.
By taking a ground-level view of the evolution of Russian
agricultural technique, the author arrives at a very
different understanding of the agrarian problem. The
book identifies both the achievements and the limitations
of peasant farmers in adapting farming practices to
the economic and technological challenges of the half-century
preceding the Revolution. Most importantly, the book
delves deeply into peasant life and culture to demonstrate
how and why farming improvements did not pass determinable
levels.
"[readers] ... will be rewarded by a comprehensive
description of how peasants in Tambov province farmed
in the three-field system before 1914. The choice of
province is appropriate: situated in the black-earth
belt of central Russia, it was one of the regions that,
rightly or wrongly, defined the agrarian question. Using
a wealth of published and archival sources, the book
includes the only detailed account ... of the entire
crop cycle." - American Historical Review
"...quite simply a resource that no historian
can afford not to read. [recommended to] All academic
collections." - Choice
Contents
Introduction. Part I: Farming through the peasant's
eyes Part II: Towards a history and understanding
of agronomic aptitude Part III: The three-field
system and beyond Part IV: Government's solution
to the agrarian problem Part V: Alternatives
for reform Conclusion
2000
491 pages
ISBN 978-963-9116-94-8 cloth $59.95 / €49.95 / £40.00
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