Transformation versus Tradition: Agrarian Policy and Government–Peasant Relations in Right-Bank Ukraine 1920–1923

References

• Sullivant , Robert S. 1962 . Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 1917-1957 62 New York
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• Subtelny , Orest . 1988 . The Ukraine: A History 376 – 377 . Toronto (n5) See, for example, Borys, The Sovietization, pp. 294-295. See also
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• Hanzha , O. I. 1996 . Opir selyan stanovlennyu totalitarnoho rezhimu v USRR 6 – 7 . Kyiv
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• See Borys, The Sovietization, pp. 257-278, for a discussion of the relationship between the Bolsheviks and left-wing Ukrainian political parties.
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• Ibid., p. 252.
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• These issues are discussed in Graziosi, Bol'sheviki, pp. 76-81, 170-174.
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• Maksimov, 'Itogi', p. 45.
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• Pershyn, Narysy, p. 114. Estimates of kulak landholding produced by Soviet historians varied greatly. M. A. Rubach calculated that there were 487 000 kulak households in 1919, 12% of the total number of peasant households. The Central Statistical Administration (TsSU URSR) calculated that there were 620 000 kulak households in Ukraine in that year (15.5%). The failure to draw up an acceptable figure was undoubtedly linked to the difficulty in identifying which peasants were actually kulaks.
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• Dmytro Manuils'ky, Poryadnik volostnoho orhanizatora radyans'koi vlady: Z dodatkom vidnovidnoho zakonodavstva (Kharkiv, 1920), pp. 10-11.
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• This idea was accepted by later Soviet historians. See, for example, Mihal, 'Konfiskatsiya', p. 110.
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• Ibid., p. 114.
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• Mihal, 'Konfiskatsii', pp. 114, 117.
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• Mihal, Zdiisnennya, p. 31.
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• 'Pro zakreplinnya korystuvannya zemlyu', cited in B. M. Babyi, Ukrains'ka radyans'ka derzhava v period vidbudovu narodnoho hospodarstva 1921-1925 rr. (Kyiv, 1961), p. 337.
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• A fact that was recognised by party officials. See Klunnyi, Do pytannya, p. 14.
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• Quoted in Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie pri sovete ministrov USSR, Partiinyi arkhiv Zhitomirskogo obkoma kompartii Ukrainy, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Zhitomirskoi oblasti, Sotsialisticheskoe stroitel'stvo na Zhitomirshchine 1921-1941: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Kiev, 1983), p. 45.
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• Mihal, 'Konfiskatsiya', p. 112.
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• Examples of Soviet views of the popularity of collective farming can be found in A. F. Chmyga, Kolkhoznoe dvizhenie na Ukraine (1917-1929): Ocherk istorii (Moscow, 1974), pp. 135-136, 139, 142. See also V. I. Butenko, 'Razvitie sel'skokhozyaistvennoi kooperatsii na Ukraine v 20 gg.', Vestnik Khar'kovskogo universiteta. Istoriya, 343, 1989, 23, pp. 3-10.
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• This was the opinion of A. Ternichenko surveying the progress in the state's attempts to reorganise the land in 1922. See 'Ocherednye zadachi', p. 8.
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• Mihal, Zdiisnennya, p. 50.
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• Ternichenko, 'Ocherednye zadachi', p. 6.
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• Mihal, Zdiisnennya, pp. 63-64.
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• Mihal, Zdiisnennya, p. 74.
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• Subtelny, The Ukraine, pp. 387-393. The policy of korenizatsiya (taking root) was approved at the XII Party Congress in 1923. Stalin apparently considered Ukraine a 'weak point of Soviet power'.
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• (n23) The Land Law of 5 February 1920 had made no provision for land reorganisation. Thereafter, however, it became a major government priority. See I. Maksimov, 'Itogi zemleustroistva na Ukraine na 1-e yanvarya 1922-go goda', Sil's 'ke hospodarstvo, 1922, 3-4, pp. 44-56.
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• These problems are outlined in A. Ternichenko, 'Ocherednye zadachi sotsialisticheskogo zemleustroistva na Kievshchine', Zhurnal Kievskogo gubernskogo ekonomsoveshchaniya, 1922, 2-4, pp. 3-10 at p. 6. See also Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady i upravlinnya (hereafter TsDAVO), Kyiv, fond 27, opys 3, sprava 288, arkush 24, 'Kratkii predvaritel'nyi otchet ob ispolnennykh rabotakh po zemleustroistvu na Volyni, 1922'. Fond 27 contains the papers of Narkomzem URSR.
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• (n27) Only 8% of land surveyors in Podillya possessed the necessary geodesic instruments to carry out their work. There was a lack of paper in Kyiv and Podillya and many surveyors lacked the necessary clothing or footwear. See Maksimov, 'Itogi', p. 52; TsDAVO, f. 27, op. 2, spr. 124, ark. 35, 'Perepiska s Narkomzemom R KU ob obsledovanii Podol'skogo gubzemotdela', 14 July 1921. See also Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivs 'koi oblasti (hereafter DAKO) Kyiv, f. R-349, op. 1, spr. 1160, ark. 13, 'Kratkii istoricheskii obzor deyatel'nosti zemel'nykh organov Kievskoi gubernii', 30 September 1922; DAKO, f. R-1, op. 1, spr. 98, ark. 21. Peasants were often reluctant to accept the paper money the surveyors carried with them. The village community was obliged to provide food, shelter and material assistance to the surveyors and formal agreements were often concluded to this effect. An example of such an accord can be found in DAKO, f. R-349, op. 1, spr. 1861, ark. 11, copy of prigovor between land surveyor Pavel K. Radzin and 43 households of Sharnipol'e village, 2 March 1923.
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• Kabanov , V. V. 1984 . 'Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya i krest'yanskaya obshchina' . Istoricheskie zapiski , 111 : 100 – 150 . For a discussion of Bolshevik policy towards rural administration see
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• Himka , John Paul . 1994 . 'The National and the Social in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1920: The Historical Agenda' . Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte , 34 : 95 – 110 . The best discussion of the historiography of the Ukrainian revolution, and its shortcomings, is
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• For example, Khristian Rakovsky, a leading figure in the Ukrainian Soviet regimes of 1919 and 1920 onwards, was of mixed Bulgarian-Romanian origins with strong links to Moscow. Georgii Pyatakov, another prominent Ukrainian Bolshevik leader, was born in Kyiv to a Russian industrialist family. See Andrea Graziosi, 'G. L. Piatakov (1890-1937): A Mirror of Soviet History', Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 1996, 1-2, pp. 102-166.
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• The first Soviet regime in Right-Bank Ukraine was barely a month old when Soviet troops retreated from the region in accordance with the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. The best account of the second Soviet regime, established in the Right Bank in February-March 1919, and the reasons for its failure, can be found in Andrea Graziosi, Bol'sheviki i krest'yane na Ukraine 1918-1919 gody: Ocherk o bol'shevizmakh, natsional-sotsializmakh i krest'yanskikh dvizheniyakh (Moscow, 1997). See also Jurij Borys, The Sovietization of the Ukraine 1917-1923: The Communist Doctrine and Practice of National Self-Determination, revised edition (Edmonton, 1980) p. 293.
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• The 1897 census calculated that the population of the Right Bank was 9 567 010, of which 76.9% were ethnically Ukrainian, 4.3% Russian and 12.8% Jewish, with the remaining 6% comprising Poles and others. In Ukraine as a whole, 93% of ethnic Ukrainians were classed as peasants, with 87.2% working directly on the land. Figures cited in Bohdan Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine (London, 1985), p. 4; H. Klunnyi, Do pytannya pro zemel'nu polityku na Ukraini v diskusiinomu poryadkovi. Dlya chleniv KP(B)U (Kyiv, 1921), pp. 10-11.
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• Ukrainian regional developments during the revolution have only really been studied in any depth by Ukrainian historians, which is surprising given the number of regional studies on events in Russia published by Western historians. A. M. Zavalnyuk carded out an in-depth study of archival sources and found that between 60% and 80% of gentry property in Right-Bank Ukraine was destroyed during 1917. If his calculations are correct this would mean a far greater level of violence than was witnessed elsewhere in Russia or Ukraine. Given the hatred felt by Ukrainian peasants towards the Polish gentry and the large numbers of well-armed but disaffected troops stationed in western areas, this violence is perhaps not surprising. See A. M. Zavalnyuk, Krest'yanskoe agrarnoe dvizhenie na pravoberezhnoi Ukraine. Mart' 1917-yanvar' 1918, Avtoreferat (Kiev, 1980), p. 20. Besides the work of Borys and Graziosi, other general works on the Ukrainian revolution include Taras Hunczak (ed.), The Ukraine 1917-1921: A Study in Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1977); John S. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution 1917-1921: A Study in Nationalism (Princeton, 1952); Arthur Eugene Adams, Bolsheviks in the Ukraine: The Second Campaign 1918-1919 (New Haven, 1963).
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• Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, p. 62. See also Graziosi, Bol'sheviki, pp. 80-81.
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• Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, pp. 60-64.
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• As noted in Volodymyr Volodymyrovych Serheev, Diyal'nist Narkomzemu Ukrainy v 1921-27, Avtoreferat, (Zaporizhzhya, 1993), p. 2.
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• Marcus Wehner, 'The Soft Line on Agriculture: The case of Narkomzem and its Specialists, 1921-1927', in Judith Pallot (ed.), Transforming Peasants: Society, State and the Peasantry, 1861-1930. Selected Papers from the Fifth Worm Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 210-237; James W. Heinzen, '"Alien" Personnel in the Soviet State: The People's Commissariat of Agriculture under Proletarian Dictatorship, 1918-1929', Slavic Review, 56, 1997, pp. 73-100. Wehner and Heinzen concentrate their studies on Narkomzem RSFSR. V. V. Serheev has written on the Ukrainian Narkomzen (see above) but there are few detailed studies of this institution. This article is largely based on the records of Narkomzem in Ukraine in these years.
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• See Borys, The Sovietization, p. 293.
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• An indication of the ideology and discussion that guided Soviet policy can be found in Mikhail Kirichenko (ed.) Rezolyutsii vseukrains'kykh z'izdiv rad robitnykh, selyans'kykh ta chervonoarmiis'kykh deputativ (Kharkiv, 1932), pp. 112-116, 157-160. This source records the resolutions of the annual All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets at which the priorities of policy were resolved. It includes records of the decisions taken at the congresses in February 1921 and December 1922 which reiterated the need to introduce collective agriculture and reform the rural economy. The technical priorities of agricultural reform in Kyiv huberniya in particular are also discussed in A. Slipansky, 'Zemleustroistvo na Kievshchine', Zhurnal Kievskogo gubernskogo ekonomsoveshchaniya, 1921 1, pp. 47-50 at p. 48.
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• The priorities of Soviet agrarian policy and the technical process of land distribution are outlined in P. N. Pershyn, Narysy ahrarnykh problem budivnytstva sotsiyalizmu (Kyiv, 1973), p. 107. Minimum levels of landholding were set as targets aimed to provide peasant households with sufficient land to feed their members. Maximum levels were also set so that no single household could accumulate large holdings of land.
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• Most political forces tried to introduce their own administrative organs into the countryside in these years. In 1917 the Provisional Government had tried to rely on the tsarist zemstvo organisations to organise local areas. However, this institution had no long-standing traditions in the Right Bank, having been introduced only in 1911. The Central Rada, which declared Ukrainian autonomy at the end of 1917, tried to organise villages through peasant unions. Hetman Skoropadsky, who seized power in April 1918, tried to return rural administration to its pre-revolutionary structure. The Directory, which held power in areas of the Right Bank throughout 1919, also tried to organise local peasant unions and zemstvo-type administrative organs. The political programmes of these various governments have attracted a fair degree of study. For an impression of the agrarian programmes of each and the role played by local administrative organs, see H. Klunnyi, V borot'bi za selyanstvo: Zemel'ne zakonodavstvo kontr-revolyutsiinykh uryadiv za chas revoliutsii na Ukraini (Kharkiv, 1926).
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• Black-earth soil (chernozem) was considered the most productive and was found in parts of Kyiv huberniya. Less fertile soil found in other districts meant that more land was required to produce a similar amount of food as one desyatina of chernozem. See B. K. Mihal, Zdiisnennya ahrarnoi polityky na Ukraini u vidbudovyi period 1921-1925 (Kharkiv, 1974), p. 29; R. D. Liakh, Rozv'yazannya ahrarnoho pytannya na Ukraini 1917-1923 (Kyiv, 1975), p. 65.
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• Channon , John . 1987 . 'Tsarist Landowners after the Revolution: Former Pomeshchiki in Rural Russia during NEP' . Soviet Studies , 39 ( 4 ) : 575 – 598 . This phenomenon was noted throughout the former Russian Empire: see
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• These forms of landholding were recorded in Kyiv huberniya by Ternichenko, 'Ocherednye zadachi', p. 6.
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• (n44) This phenomenon was noted by V. Yakimansky, K itogam agrarnoi revolyutsii na Ukraine: Po dannym anketnogo obsledovaniya 1922 goda (Khar'kov, 1924), p. 30.
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• There existed a perception among Soviet leaders that the kulak class was somehow more influential in Ukraine. See, for example, Graziosi, Bol'sheviki, pp. 172-173.
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• Mace , James E. 1983 . 'The KNS and the Structure of Soviet Rule in the Ukrainian Countryside, 1920-1933' . Soviet Studies , 35 ( 4 ) : 487 – 503 . The Komitety nezamozhnykh selyan or KNS were the Ukrainian Committees of Poor Peasants established in 1920. They were similar to the Committees of Poor Peasants introduced in Russia in 1918 and abolished shortly afterwards because of the strong peasant reaction. The only work in English to have studied the KNS as a separate phenomenon is
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• Mihal , B. K. 1969 . 'Konfiskatsiya zemel'nykh lyshkiv u kurkul's'kykh hospodarstvakh na Ukraini v 1920-1923 r.r.' . Pytannya istoriya narodiv SRSR , 6 : 109 – 119 . (n51) The decrees which called for the expropriation of kulak property are discussed in Pershyn, Narysy, pp. 112-116; at pp. 110-111
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• Markevich , E. 1923 . 'Ocherk po istorii zemel'nykh otnoshenii na Kievshchine' . Zhurnal Kievskogo gubernskogo ekonomsoveshchaniya , 7 : 66 – 93 . 88
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• (n68) Channon notes that black repartitions in Russia were actually quite rare despite being held as the ultimate aim of any peasant movement. See John Channon, 'The Peasantry in the Revolutions of 1917', in Edith Rogovin Frankel, Jonathan Frankel & Baruch Knei-Paz (eds), Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 105-129 at pp. 118-119.
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• See Yakimansky, K itogam, pp. 31-32.
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• Rendered in Ukrainian as Wash pan, nasha zemlya', as quoted in N. I. Ksenzenko, Revolyutsionnye agrarnye preobrazovaniya na Ukraine (dekabr' 1919-mart' 1921) (Khar'kov, 1980), p. 72. This was similar to the peasant beliefs discussed by Orlando Figes, 'The Russian Peasant Community in the Agrarian Revolution, 1917-18', in Roger Bartlett (ed.), Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society (London, 1990), pp. 237-253 at p. 237.
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• This idea was supported in the writings of Soviet officials. See for example Dmytro Manuils'ky, Shcho dae novyi zemel'nyi zakon selyanstvu? (Kharkiv, 1920), p. 1. For a discussion of the change in Soviet policy see I. V. Khmel', Agrarnye preobrazovaniya na Ukraine 1917-1920 (Kiev, 1990), p. 202.
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• Khmel' outlines a number of forms of collective organisation which varied from temporary agreements to collectively cultivate certain areas of land to organised labour communes. See Khmel', Agrarnye preobrazovaniya, p. 185. Delegates at the first conference of representatives of the All-Ukrainian Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, convened in Kharkiv in March 1922 and addressed by Manuils'ky, voiced the opinion that cooperative farming could become a transitional stage in the development of collective agriculture. See Vseukrains'kyi soyuz sil's'ko-hospodarskoi kooperatsii "Sil's'kyi hospodar"', Protokol 1-ho zibrannia upovnovazhenykh vseukrains'koho soyuzu sil's ko-hospodars'koi kooperatsii, 18-23 bereznya 1922 r. v Kharkovi (Kharkiv, 1922), pp. 9-10.
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• Figures from Pershyn, Narysy, p. 109.
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• Ksenzenko, 'Reshenie agrarnogo voprosa', p. 29; TsDAVO, f. 27, op. 2, spt. 219, ark. 5, 'Vydelenii zemel'nogo fonda sakharnykh zavodov', 25 May 1921. In Kyiv huberniya around 150 000 desyatiny were earmarked for the sugar industry. This figure constituted 6% of pre-revolutionary non-peasant land. Figures from Ternichenko, 'Ocherednye zadachi', p. 8.
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• (n126) Markevich, 'Ocherk', p. 87.
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• The continued threat posed by armed peasant attacks in Ukraine severely impeded the progress of a number of Soviet political campaigns. See for example Sbornik otchetov, pp. 1, 12. The importance of the bandit movement in Ukraine after 1920 is discussed in Mikhail S. Frenkin, Tragediya krest'yanskikh vosstanii v Rossii, 1918-1921 (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 206-215.
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• A number of historians have commented on these cultural differences. One of the more recent studies is Adrian Jones. Late-Imperial Russia, An Interpretation: Three Visions, Two Cultures, One Peasantry (Berne, 1997). Hanzha has also interpreted the relationship between government and peasants in these stark terms. See Hanzha, Opir, pp. 35-37.
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• Danilov , V. P. 1988 . Rural Russia Under the New Regime Edited by: Figes , Orlando . 142 – 172 . London
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