Stolypin's agrarian reform included two provisions. Stolypin's agrarian reform

When P. A. Stolypin came to power, life in the state changed significantly. The new leader tried to boost the country's economy and promote its further development as a whole, so he immediately released a number of reforms, one of which was Agrarian. The main goals of this reform were:
transfer of allotment lands into the ownership of peasants;
the gradual abolition of the rural community as a collective owner of land;
widespread lending to peasants;
purchasing landowners' lands for resale to peasants on preferential terms;
land management, which allows optimizing peasant farming by eliminating striping.
As we see, the reform pursued both long-term and short-term goals.
Short-term: resolution of the “agrarian question” as a source of mass discontent (primarily, the cessation of agrarian unrest). Long-term: sustainable prosperity and development of agriculture and the peasantry, integration of the peasantry into the market economy.
Stolypin's agrarian reform briefly states that the document is aimed at improving peasant allotment land use and has little impact on private land ownership. It was carried out in 47 provinces of European Russia; Cossack land ownership and Bashkir land ownership were not affected. The idea of ​​agrarian reform arose as a result of the revolution of 1905-1907, when agrarian unrest intensified, and the activities of the first three State Dumas. Agrarian unrest reached a particular scale in 1905, and the government barely had time to suppress them. Stolypin at this time was the governor of the Saratov province, where the unrest was especially strong due to crop failure. In April 1906, P. A. Stolypin was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. The government project on the forced alienation of part of the landowners' lands was not adopted, the Duma was dissolved, and Stolypin was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers. Due to the fact that the situation with the agrarian issue remained uncertain, Stolypin decided to adopt all the necessary legislation without waiting for the convening of the Second Duma. On August 27, a decree was issued on the sale of state lands to peasants. On October 14 and 15, decrees were issued expanding the activities of the Peasant Land Bank and facilitating the conditions for the purchase of land by peasants on credit.
On November 9, 1906, the main legislative act of the reform was issued - the decree “On supplementing certain provisions of the current law concerning peasant land ownership and land use,” proclaiming the right of peasants to secure ownership of their allotment lands.
Thanks to Stolypin's bold step, the reform became irreversible. The Second Duma expressed an even more negative attitude towards any government initiatives. It was disbanded after 102 days. There was no compromise between the Duma and the government.
The Third Duma, without rejecting the government course, adopted all government bills for an extremely long time. As a result, since 1907 the government has abandoned active legislative activity in agrarian policy and moved to expand the activities of government agencies and increase the volume of distributed loans and subsidies. Since 1907, peasants' applications for land ownership have been satisfied with great delays (there is not enough staff for land management commissions). Therefore, the government's main efforts were aimed at training personnel (primarily land surveyors). But the funds allocated for reform are also increasing, in the form of funding the Peasant Land Bank, subsidizing agronomic assistance measures, and direct benefits to peasants.
Since 1910, the government policy has changed somewhat - more attention begins to be paid to supporting the cooperative movement.
On September 5, 1911, P. A. Stolypin was killed, and Finance Minister V. N. Kokovtsov became prime minister. Kokovtsov, who showed less initiative than Stolypin, followed the planned course without introducing anything new into the agrarian reform. The volume of land management work to clear up land, the amount of land assigned to peasant ownership, the amount of land sold to peasants through the Peasant Bank, and the volume of loans to peasants grew steadily until the outbreak of the First World War.
During 1906-1911 decrees were issued, as a result of which peasants had the opportunity:
take ownership of a plot of land;
freely leave the community and choose another place of residence;
move to the Urals to receive land (about 15 hectares) and money from the state to boost the economy;
settlers received tax benefits and were exempted from military service.
This is a rhetorical question when assessing the activities of reformers; it does not have a clear answer. Each generation will give its own answer to it.
Stolypin stopped the revolution and began deep reforms. At the same time, he fell victim to an assassination attempt, was unable to complete his reforms and did not achieve his main goal: to create a great Russia in 20 peaceful years.
During his reign the following changes occurred:
1. The cooperative movement developed.
2. The number of wealthy peasants has increased.
3. In terms of gross grain harvest, Russia was in first place in the world.
4. The number of livestock has increased 2.5 times.
5. About 2.5 million people moved to new lands.

Agrarian question occupied a central place in domestic politics. The beginning of agrarian reform, the inspirer and developer of which was P.A. Stolypin, put a decree on November 9, 1906.

Stolypin reform

After a very difficult discussion in the State Duma and the State Council, the decree was approved by the Tsar as a law from June 14, 1910. It was supplemented by the law on land management from May 29, 1911.

The main provision of Stolypin’s reform was community destruction. For this purpose, an emphasis was placed on the development of personal peasant property in the village by giving peasants the right to leave the community and create farmsteads.

An important point of the reform: landlord ownership of land remained intact. This caused sharp opposition from peasant deputies in the Duma and the masses of peasants.

Another measure proposed by Stolypin was also supposed to destroy the community: resettlement of peasants. The meaning of this action was twofold. The socio-economic goal is to obtain a land fund, primarily in the central regions of Russia, where the lack of land among peasants made it difficult to create farmsteads and farms. In addition, this made it possible to develop new territories, i.e. further development of capitalism, although this oriented it towards an extensive path. The political goal is to defuse social tension in the center of the country. The main resettlement areas are Siberia, Central Asia, the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. The government allocated funds for the migrants to travel and settle down in a new place, but practice has shown that they were clearly not enough.

In the period 1905 - 1916. About 3 million householders left the community, which is approximately 1/3 of their number in the provinces where the reform was carried out. This means that it was not possible to either destroy the community or create a stable layer of owners. This conclusion is complemented by data on the failure of resettlement policy. In 1908 - 1909 the number of displaced people amounted to 1.3 million people, but very soon many of them began to return back. The reasons were different: the bureaucracy of the Russian bureaucracy, the lack of funds for setting up a household, ignorance of local conditions and the more than restrained attitude of the old-timers towards the settlers. Many died along the way or went completely bankrupt.

Thus, the social goals set by the government were not achieved. But the reform accelerated the stratification in the countryside - a rural bourgeoisie and proletariat were formed. Obviously, the destruction of the community opened the way for capitalist development, because the community was a feudal relic.

Basic provisions of the agrarian reform Goals 1. Destruction of the peasant community 2. Creation of farms and cuts 3. Resettlement policy 4. Development of peasant productive cooperation 5. Providing state assistance to peasant farms 6. Ensuring legal equality of the peasantry 1. Relieving social tension in the countryside 2. Forming a broad layer of small owners to ensure political stability 3. Distraction of peasants from the idea of ​​forced alienation of landowners' lands 4. Preservation of all forms of private property (including landowners) Directions

Manifesto November 3, 1905 “On improving the welfare and easing the situation of the peasant population” Decree to the government Senate on supplementing some regulations of the current law relating to peasant land ownership and land use (November 9, 1906) Law on amending and supplementing some regulations on peasant land ownership (June 14, 1910) Decree on land management commissions (May 29, 1911) The main bills regulating the implementation of agrarian reform:

The destruction of the community began the agrarian reform. The government allowed free exit from the community. The plots assigned to the peasant became his property, being consolidated into a single plot. The peasant could go to the farm (while remaining to live in the village), or to the farm. Stolypin sought to create a layer of small bourgeois owners as a support for the autocracy. P.A. Stolypin inspects farm gardens near Moscow in April 1910

But the main goal of the reform was the desire to distract the peasants from the struggle to seize the landowners' lands. But the exit suddenly went in a different direction. 60% of peasants who left the community sold their plots. The number of farmers by 1915 was 10%. The rest of the peasants treated them with undisguised hostility. Stolypin inspects the farmstead.

The most important area of ​​reform was resettlement policy. Struggling with overpopulation in the center of the country, Stolypin began to distribute land in Siberia, the Far East and Central Asia, providing immigrants with benefits (exemption from taxes and military service for 5 years). But local authorities were hostile to this. Almost 20% of the displaced returned back. True, the population of the eastern regions has increased noticeably. Russian settlers in the Samarkand province of the Turkestan general governorship.

The relationship between local government reform and agrarian reform The electoral system was lowered to the level of the volost and village, giving the grassroots bodies of self-government a semi-official character. “First of all, it is necessary to create a citizen, a peasant owner, a small landowner and ... - citizenship itself will reign in Rus'. First the citizen, and then the citizenship.” Granting the peasant owner civil rights. The grassroots cell of zemstvo representation is the district zemstvo.

First results of reforms. Stolypin did not expect quick results. He once stated: “Give the state 20 years of peace... and you will not recognize today’s Russia.” During the years of reform, sown areas increased by 10%, Russia began to export 25% of the world grain trade, the widespread use of mineral fertilizers began, peasants began to purchase and use agricultural technique.

This again led to the beginning of industrial growth (-9% per year). The peasantry went its own way, unlike the Americans, it began to unite into cooperatives that actively worked both in the domestic and foreign markets. In 1912 The Moscow People's Bank was created to provide loans to peasants for the purchase of equipment, seeds, fertilizers, etc. P Stolypin visiting a kulak.

Reasons for the failure of the P.A. reform Stolypin ExternalInternal Death of Stolypin P.A. Russo-Japanese War (years) The rise of the labor movement in the years. Opposition of the peasantry Lack of allocated funds for land management and resettlement Poor organization of land management work

Conclusions: The beginning of the 20th century for Russia was a time of political instability. A series of riots, war, and revolution affected the entire social structure of Russian society. In such difficult conditions, Russia needed both political and economic reforms that could strengthen and improve the economy. It would have been most expedient to start with agrarian reforms, because even at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia remained an agrarian country with the majority of the rural population. Agrarian reform became the impetus for the development of a series of projects to address a number of issues: labor, cultural and educational, financial and local governance. All these issues were closely related to the new changes that were introduced as a result of agrarian reforms. These transformations in Russia began with the implementation of agrarian reform under the leadership of P.A. Stolypin, whose main goal was to create a rich peasantry, imbued with the idea of ​​property and therefore not in need of revolution, acting as a support for the government.

The agrarian question is always the main one for Russia

Since 1906, the Russian government under the leadership of P.A. Stolypin carried out a set of activities in the field of agriculture. These events are collectively called "Stolypin agrarian reform".

Main objectives of the reform:

• transfer of allotment lands into the ownership of peasants;
• the gradual abolition of the rural community as a collective owner of land;
• widespread lending to peasants;
• purchasing landowners' lands for resale to peasants on preferential terms;
• land management, which allows optimizing peasant farming by eliminating striping.

The reform set both short-term and long-term goals.

Short term: resolution of the “agrarian question” as a source of mass discontent (primarily, the cessation of agrarian unrest). Long-term: sustainable prosperity and development of agriculture and the peasantry, integration of the peasantry into the market economy.

Goals of agrarian reform

The agrarian reform was aimed at improving peasant allotment land use and had little impact on private land ownership. It was carried out in 47 provinces of European Russia (all provinces except three provinces of the Baltic region); Cossack land ownership and Bashkir land ownership were not affected.

Historical need for reform

P.A. Stolypin (third from left) during an acquaintance with a farmstead near Moscow, October 1910.

The idea of ​​agrarian reform arose as a result of the revolution of 1905-1907, when agrarian unrest intensified, and the activities of the first three State Dumas. Agrarian unrest reached a particular scale in 1905, and the government barely had time to suppress them. Stolypin at this time was the governor of the Saratov province, where the unrest was especially strong due to crop failure. In April 1906, P. A. Stolypin was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. The government project on the forced alienation of part of the landowners' lands was not adopted, the Duma was dissolved, and Stolypin was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers. Due to the fact that the situation with the agrarian issue remained uncertain, Stolypin decided to adopt all the necessary legislation without waiting for the convening of the Second Duma. On August 27, a decree was issued on the sale of state lands to peasants. On October 5, 1906, a decree was issued “On the abolition of certain restrictions on the rights of rural residents and persons of other former tax statuses”, dedicated to improving the civil legal status of peasants. On October 14 and 15, decrees were issued expanding the activities of the Peasant Land Bank and facilitating the conditions for the purchase of land by peasants on credit. On November 9, 1906, the main legislative act of the reform was issued - the decree “On the addition of some provisions of the current law relating to peasant land ownership and land use”, proclaiming the right of peasants to secure ownership of their allotment lands.

Thanks to Stolypin’s bold step (the publication of laws under Article 87. This article allowed the government to pass urgent laws without approval by the Duma during the break between the dissolution of one Duma and the convening of a new one), the reform became irreversible. The Second Duma expressed an even more negative attitude towards any government initiatives. It was disbanded after 102 days. There was no compromise between the Duma and the government.

The Third Duma, without rejecting the government course, adopted all government bills for an extremely long time. As a result, since 1907 the government has abandoned active legislative activity in agrarian policy and moved to expand the activities of government agencies and increase the volume of distributed loans and subsidies. Since 1907, peasants' applications for land ownership have been satisfied with great delays (there is not enough staff for land management commissions). Therefore, the government's main efforts were aimed at training personnel (primarily land surveyors). But the funds allocated for reform are also increasing, in the form of funding the Peasant Land Bank, subsidizing agronomic assistance measures, and direct benefits to peasants.

Since 1910, the government policy has changed somewhat - more attention begins to be paid to supporting the cooperative movement.

Peasant life

On September 5, 1911, P. A. Stolypin was killed, and Finance Minister V. N. Kokovtsov became prime minister. Kokovtsov, who showed less initiative than Stolypin, followed the planned course without introducing anything new into the agrarian reform. The volume of land management work to clear up land, the amount of land assigned to peasant ownership, the amount of land sold to peasants through the Peasant Bank, and the volume of loans to peasants grew steadily until the outbreak of the First World War.

During 1906-1911 decrees were issued, as a result of which peasants had the opportunity:

• take ownership of a plot of land;
• freely leave the community and choose another place of residence;
• move to the Urals to receive land (about 15 hectares) and money from the state to boost the economy;
• settlers received tax benefits and were exempted from military service.

Agrarian reform

Have the goals of Stolypin's reform been achieved?

This is a rhetorical question when assessing the activities of reformers; it does not have a clear answer. Each generation will give its own answer to it.

Stolypin stopped the revolution and began deep reforms. At the same time, he fell victim to an assassination attempt, was unable to complete his reforms and did not achieve his main goal: create a great Russia in 20 peaceful years .

However, during his activities the following results were achieved:

1. The cooperative movement developed.
2. The number of wealthy peasants increased.
3. In terms of gross grain harvest, Russia was in first place in the world.
4. The number of livestock increased 2.5 times.
5. About 2.5 million people moved to new lands.

Stolypin reform

The reform of 1861 is the first stage of the transition to the individualization of land ownership and land use. But the abolition of serfdom did not lead to the progress of private property. In the 80-90s, the government sought to establish communal structures in the countryside, which contradicted the future of free peasant property. The reforms started by P. A. Stolypin could overcome these difficulties. His concept “proposed a path for the development of a mixed, multi-structure economy, where state forms of economy had to compete with collective and private ones.” The components of his programs are the transition to farms, the use of cooperation, the development of land reclamation, the introduction of three-stage agricultural education, the organization of cheap credit for peasants, the formation of an agricultural party that actually represented the interests of small landowners.

Stolypin puts forward a liberal doctrine of managing the rural community, eliminating through strips, developing private property in the countryside and achieving economic growth on this basis. With the progress of the market-oriented peasant economy, in the course of the development of land purchase and sale relations, there should be a natural reduction in the landowner's land fund. The future agrarian system of Russia was presented to the prime minister in the form of a system of small and medium-sized farms, united by local self-governing and small-sized noble estates. On this basis, the integration of two cultures - noble and peasant - was supposed to take place.

Stolypin relies on “strong and strong” peasants. However, it does not require widespread uniformity or unification of forms of land ownership and land use. Where, due to local conditions, the community is economically viable, “it is necessary for the peasant himself to choose the method of using the land that suits him best.”

Agrarian reform consisted of a set of sequentially carried out and interconnected measures. Let's consider the main directions of reforms.

ACTIVITIES OF THE PEASANT BANK.

The Bank carried out large-scale purchases of lands with their subsequent resale to peasants on preferential terms, and intermediary operations to increase peasant land use. He increased credit to the peasants and significantly reduced the cost of it, and the bank paid more interest on its obligations than the peasants paid it. The difference in payment was covered by subsidies from the budget, amounting to 1,457.5 billion rubles for the period from 1906 to 1917.

The Bank actively influenced the forms of land ownership: for peasants who acquired land as their sole property, payments were reduced. As a result, if before 1906 the bulk of land buyers were peasant collectives, then by 1913 79.7% of buyers were individual peasants.

DESTRUCTION OF COMMUNITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.

To transition to new economic relations, a whole system of economic and legal measures was developed to regulate the agricultural economy. The decree of November 9, 1906 proclaimed the predominance of the fact of sole ownership of land over the legal right of use. Peasants could now allocate land that was actually in use from the community, regardless of its will. The land plot became the property not of the family, but of the individual householder.

Measures were taken to ensure the strength and stability of working peasant farms. Thus, in order to avoid land speculation and concentration of property, the maximum size of individual land ownership was legally limited, and the sale of land to non-peasants was allowed.

The law of June 5, 1912 allowed the issuance of a loan secured by any allotment land acquired by peasants. The development of various forms of credit - mortgage, reclamation, agricultural, land management - contributed to the intensification of market relations in the countryside.

In 1907 - 1915 25% of householders declared separation from the community, but 20% actually separated - 2008.4 thousand householders. New forms of land tenure became widespread: farms and cuts. On January 1, 1916, there were already 1,221.5 thousand of them. In addition, the law of June 14, 1910 considered it unnecessary for many peasants who were only formally considered community members to leave the community. The number of such farms amounted to about one third of all communal households.

RESETTLEMENT OF PEASANTS TO SIBERIA.

By decree of March 10, 1906, the right to resettle peasants was granted to everyone without restrictions. The government allocated considerable funds for the costs of settling settlers in new places, for their medical care and public needs, and for building roads. In 1906-1913, 2792.8 thousand people moved beyond the Urals. The scale of this event also led to difficulties in its implementation. The number of peasants who were unable to adapt to new conditions and were forced to return amounted to 12% of the total number of migrants.

The results of the resettlement campaign were as follows. Firstly, during this period there was a huge leap in the economic and social development of Siberia. Also, the population of this region during the years of colonization increased by 153%. If before the resettlement to Siberia there was a reduction in sown areas, then in 1906-1913 they were expanded by 80%, while in the European part of Russia by 6.2%. In terms of the pace of development of livestock farming, Siberia also overtook the European part of Russia.

COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT.

Loans from the peasant bank could not fully satisfy the peasant's demand for money goods. Therefore, credit cooperation has become widespread and has gone through two stages in its development. At the first stage, administrative forms of regulation of small credit relations prevailed. By creating a qualified cadre of small loan inspectors and by allocating significant credit through state banks for initial loans to credit unions and for subsequent loans, the government stimulated the cooperative movement. At the second stage, rural credit partnerships, accumulating their own capital, developed independently. As a result, a wide network of small peasant credit institutions, savings and loan banks and credit partnerships was created that served the cash flow of peasant farms. By January 1, 1914, the number of such institutions exceeded 13 thousand.

Credit relations gave a strong impetus to the development of production, consumer and marketing cooperatives. Peasants on a cooperative basis created dairy and butter artels, agricultural societies, consumer shops and even peasant artel dairies.

AGRICULTURAL EVENTS.

One of the main obstacles to the economic progress of the village was the low level of farming and the illiteracy of the vast majority of producers who were accustomed to working according to the general custom. During the years of reform, peasants were provided with large-scale agro-economic assistance. Agro-industrial services were specially created for peasants, who organized training courses on cattle breeding and dairy production, democratization and the introduction of progressive forms of agricultural production. Much attention was paid to the progress of the system of out-of-school agricultural education. If in 1905 the number of students at agricultural courses was 2 thousand people, then in 1912 - 58 thousand, and at agricultural readings - 31.6 thousand and 1046 thousand people, respectively.

Currently, there is an opinion that Stolypin’s agrarian reforms led to the concentration of the land fund in the hands of a small rich stratum as a result of the landlessness of the bulk of the peasants. Reality shows a reverse increase in the share of the “middle strata” in peasant land use. This can be clearly seen from the data given in the table. During the reform period, peasants actively bought land and increased their land fund annually by 2 million dessiatines. Also, peasant land use increased significantly due to the rental of landowners and government lands.

DISTRIBUTION OF LAND FUND BETWEEN GROUPS OF PEASANTS - BUYERS

The results of the reform are characterized by rapid growth in agricultural production, an increase in the capacity of the domestic market, an increase in the export of agricultural products, and Russia's trade balance has become increasingly active. As a result, it was possible not only to bring agriculture out of the crisis, but also to turn it into a dominant feature of Russia’s economic development. The gross income of all agriculture in 1913 amounted to 52.6% of the total GDP. The income of the entire national economy, due to the increase in value created in agriculture, increased in comparable prices from 1900 to 1913 by 33.8%.

Differentiation of types of agricultural production by region led to an increase in the marketability of agriculture. Three quarters of all raw materials processed by the industry came from agriculture. The turnover of agricultural products increased by 46% during the reform period.

Exports of agricultural products increased even more, by 61% compared to 1901-1905, in the pre-war years. Russia was the largest producer and exporter of bread and flax, and a number of livestock products. Thus, in 1910, Russian wheat exports amounted to 36.4% of total world exports.

The above does not mean at all that pre-war Russia should be represented as a “peasant paradise.” The problems of hunger and agricultural overpopulation were not resolved. The country still suffered from technical, economic and cultural backwardness. According to the calculations of I. D. Kondratyev, in the USA, on average, a farm had a fixed capital of 3,900 rubles, and in European Russia, the fixed capital of an average peasant farm barely reached 900 rubles. The national income per capita of the agricultural population in Russia was approximately 52 rubles per year, and in the United States - 262 rubles.

The rate of growth in labor productivity in agriculture has been comparatively slow. While in Russia in 1913 they received 55 poods of bread per dessiatine, in the USA they received 68, in France - 89, and in Belgium - 168 poods. Economic growth occurred not on the basis of intensification of production, but due to an increase in the intensity of manual peasant labor. But during the period under review, socio-economic conditions were created for the transition to a new stage of agrarian reforms - the transformation of agriculture into a capital-intensive, technologically progressive sector of the economy.

But a number of external circumstances (the death of Stolypin, the beginning of the war) interrupted the Stolypin reform. Stolypin himself believed that it would take 15-20 years for his endeavors to succeed. But during the period 1906 - 1913, a lot was done.

What lessons can we learn from the experience of the Stolypin reform? Firstly, Stolypin began his reforms very late (not in 1861, but only in 1906). Secondly, the transition from a natural type of economy to a market economy under the conditions of an administrative command system is possible, first of all, on the basis of the active activity of the state. In this case, the financial and credit activities of the state should play a special role. An example of this is the government, which was able, with amazing speed and scope, to reorient the powerful bureaucratic apparatus of the empire towards energetic work. At the same time, “local economic profitability was deliberately sacrificed for the sake of the future social effect from the creation and development of new economic forms.” This is how the Ministry of Finance, the Peasant Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture, and other state institutions acted.

Thirdly, where administrative principles of economic management and egalitarian methods of distribution dominated, there will always be strong opposition to change. Therefore, it is necessary to have social support in the form of proactive and qualified segments of the population.

LITERATURE

1. Kovalchenko I. D. “Stolypin agrarian reform”; "History of the USSR" No. 2 1992.

2. Glagolev A. “Formation of the economic concept of P. A. Stolypin”; "Economic Issues" No. 10, 1990.

3. Rumyantsev M. “Stolypin agrarian reform: prerequisites, tasks and results”; "Economic Issues" No. 10, 1990.

4. Stolypin P. A. “Collection of speeches by P. A. Stolypin, delivered at meetings of the State Council and the State Duma of 1906-1911” (Reprint reproduction).

Arkhyz water delivery.