From a peasant “world” to a collective farm: How the preconditions of the catastrophe in a peasant environment ripened

Abstract

A Russian peasant worldview was built on the basis of interaction and counteraction of two internal alternatives: “worldly” (communal) and national. A peasant community had been arising in Russia in the 13–14th centuries and had occupied a central place in all spheres of peasant life. It has become a self-governing autonomous “world”, an economic institution and religious unity – a church parish. And the state itself was perceived by peasants as a large community. The community became the only source of legitimacy in the peasants’ minds when, in the era of serfdom, it was legally deprived of any protection. It has its own image of a proper state. It fights for self-government and “black repartition” as fair land management. And then peasant riots in Russia do not cease. The shortage of land was partially mitigated by the colonial movement to the eastern regions of the Russian Empire, but the tension between the peasant community and the state was continuing. By the beginning of the 20th century the religiousness of peasants had considerably weakened, which was the reason for a certain distortion of a parish basis of the community. Therefore, the “worldly” alternative turned into an end in itself, and at the turn of the 21–20th centuries peasants were more strongly influenced by the propaganda of provocateurs-revolutionaries who called for a violent “black repartition”. The peasant community lost its ideal meaning, when it had accepted the “black repartition” from the godless Soviet state after 1917. And the balance between “worldly” (communal) and national alternatives in the peasant worldview was violated. As a result, the community, having accepted the Soviet state as its own in the 1920’s, and the state atheism as a “state religion”, is not ready to resist collectivization. For the first time in centuries, peasants do not expect antagonistic acts from the state, and it is then when they receive a stab in a back.