E. KISELEV: I greet everyone who is listening to the radio “Echo of Moscow” at this moment. This is truly the “Our Everything” program. And I, its presenter, Evgeny Kiselyov. Our project has reached the letter “H”, let me remind you that we are writing the history of the Fatherland in the twentieth century in persons. We go through the alphabet and choose three, and sometimes more, heroes for each letter. And now, as I said, we have reached the letter “C”. Let me remind you that starting with the letter “H” we will have three heroes. Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev was chosen on the Internet when voting on the Echo of Moscow website, for me it was a bit of a surprise, but why not! Probably, many people want to figure it out, to separate the cinematic Chapaev, the literary one from the true hero, what kind of person he was, about whom boys used to love watching movies so much, and not only boys, Stalin watched this film many times. Already in late Soviet times, for some reason, they began to write jokes. Let's talk about Chapaev, it will be interesting.
I think it will be interesting to talk about Olga Chekhova, this is my choice, I have the right, let me remind you the rules of the game, to choose one of the heroes, as the author and presenter of this program, and when voting live, they chose a scientist, economist, agrarian, writer Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov. A man of absolutely extraordinary destiny, whom we will talk about today. Let me introduce the guest on today's program. Here in the studio, opposite me is Theodor Shanin, a man who himself deserves a separate program about himself. Now he is the rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social Sciences, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester.
Mr. Shanin was born at one time, as they would say, in bourgeois Lithuania, studied in Jerusalem, then worked for many years in Great Britain, in various educational and research organizations. I won't list them all now. In fact, he became one of the most authoritative scientists in the world who dealt with the problems of the Russian peasantry; he is even called in some biographical reference books the founder of peasant studies not only in Russia, but also in many other countries of the world.
And, nevertheless, a certain sense of belonging to Russia brought him here, to us, he has been working in Moscow for many years, and somehow manages to combine this with work at the University of Manchester. I will not torment you, Theodor, with questions about how you manage to do this, but the fact remains that if the reference books do not lie, then in 1988 Theodor Shanin at a meeting of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in the year of Chayanov’s centenary, read the first report on his contribution in agricultural economics. So yes?
T. SHANIN: Yes.
E. KISELEV: Please tell us. When we exchanged what is called a couple of phrases before the start of the broadcast, you said that you were very glad that you chose Chayanov. But many people talk about Chayanov... now a short biographical note has been given about Chayanov, about the time in which he lived and worked, for many people this is the name of the street where the Russian State Humanitarian University is located. But if you start asking students of the Russian State University for the Humanities, not everyone knows who Chayanov is and why, what is his glory.
T. SHANIN: Firstly, Chayanov represents a group of scientists, a brilliant group of scientists, who created Russian peasant studies, because at the beginning of the last century, the most solid work that was done in connection with the assessment and analysis of the peasantry was done in Russia. There were several other countries, but this is not the list we are used to, this is not England, America, France, or Germany and Italy. This is Eastern Europe. And in this sense, the only ones who did work at the same level, but did less, of course, were scientists from Poland and Romania.
And all this development was led by Russian scientists, among whom, I think, Chayanov was the most brilliant representative of something very new both for Russia and for Europe. Therefore, at this moment I agree with you that if you talk to students on Chayanov Street, they will not really know who Chayanov is. But at the same time, Chayanov is quite well known in Brazil, in other places in Latin America, and in India. These are places where, if you name Chayanov, he is well known by educated society, academic society, as a central figure in the analysis of rural societies.
E. KISELEV: If we talk about his system of views on the economics of agriculture, on the role of the peasantry, then what is the point?
T. SHANIN: I would say that the essence of his importance is that he and his colleagues, not only him, worked on a model of a rural economy, a peasant rural economy, which is not capitalist and at the same time not state-owned. That is, this third economy against the normal division, which was often then, began to be used more. It is either Soviet, state, something like that, or capitalist, and such things. In this way, he created, together with his colleagues, thematic elements and theories that became important for different countries, not only for Russia.
And it is especially important today from the point of view of direct application in the countries of large peasant groups of the Third World, i.e. on one side is India, on the other side is Brazil. But also, in my opinion, one can argue with this, what I’m talking about, it is also very important for understanding the informal economy, which exists not only in peasant countries, but determines to a large extent economic development in countries that have almost no that the peasantry.
E. KISELEV: What does “informal economy” mean?
T. SHANIN: This is an economy that is not based on several fundamental canons or facts of the capitalist economy.
E. KISELEV: For example?
T. SHANIN: For example, maximizing income is the goal of economic action. Anyone who works in a capitalist economy will say this. In the peasant, informal economy, this clarity disappears, because very often the goal of economic action is not to maximize income, but to ensure that everyone is employed. That is, the method...
E. KISELEV: Why is everyone busy?
T. SHANIN: Busy with professional work. And the goal is to ensure that the whole family can work, and not so that somewhere in the end, the calculation turns out to be maximizing income here.
E. KISELEV: Wait! Give an example of people who are now representatives and subjects of the informal economy in Russia.
T. SHANIN: In Russia now you will find people who, firstly, have a broad “gray” economy, which is partly informal.
E. KISELEV: Well, for example?
T. SHANIN: Well, let's say they buy and sell tickets in front of the theater. This is not a normal production activity, this is not maximizing income in a normal sense, this is a search for marginal income for the main economy, which can support the majority of the population in certain conditions. This is a situation where the family economy organizes people's lives in such a way that what is more important than maximizing family income is keeping everyone employed. And so that everyone can add something to what is happening.
E. KISELEV: The ultimate goal is the survival of this particular person or family.
T. SHANIN: You have precisely defined the peculiarity of the informal economy. The goal is survival, not maximizing income.
E. KISELEV: Not in order to earn money, but in order to earn enough money to ensure a decent existence at the level at which a person considers acceptable for himself.
T. SHANIN: Most often, such an economy is built on family thinking. It is worked out what to do and who does what in the family, not on the basis that everyone should earn more, but that this unit, the family, it is an economic unit, a special unit creates for itself the optimal...
E. KISELEV: Roughly speaking, in the country cottage of a rich new Russian, a husband and wife work, he is a driver, and she is a cook or a maid or a cleaner. They receive money from the owner for this work in an envelope, do not pay taxes, are probably listed somewhere as pensioners or unemployed and feel great.
T. SHANIN: This is undoubtedly a correct example of the informal economy. But this is only a special category of the informal economy, where it is based on illegality, the purpose of which is to circumvent the tax legislation of the country.
E. KISELEV: I say that they don’t pay taxes not because they want to, they are not used to paying, it doesn’t even occur to them to pay taxes. It’s just that their pension is so small that they can’t live on it. And they go to work.
T. SHANIN: That's why I said that this is a form of the informal economy.
E. KISELEV: A driver who is not a taxi driver, but who gives a lift to someone.
T. SHANIN: Undoubtedly, this is a form of the informal economy.
E. KISELEV: And in the time of Chayanov, what was the informal economy in the Russian village?
T. SHANIN: The peasantry itself, which, let’s not forget, was 85% of the population in the Russian Empire. These are people who worked in family units. And in this family unit, decisions about who does what and whether to do what were made according to the interests of the family, not the interests of the individual. And the goal was very often to survive, and not to become rich. This was not posed as a central task, and therefore the division of labor, the decision to take loans, not to take loans, was to a large extent decided differently than it would have been decided in a capitalist form.
E. KISELEV: Is it possible to estimate the volume of the “gray” economy in Russia today?
T. SHANIN: Very difficult. But I would say that half of rural Russia, more than half, lives this way. Now in the city a large part of the population lives this way. And in this sense, if you carry out...
E. KISELEV: That is, in value terms we are talking about billions of rubles?
T. SHANIN: Yes.
E. KISELEV: About the domestic product, comparable to GDP. Not equal, but comparable.
T. SHANIN: Definitely yes.
E. KISELEV: Now it’s clear why, despite all the crises, the people survive.
T. SHANIN: Absolutely. Once during one of the interviews, when I was asked this question, I said how Russia survives. And he told them that times were more difficult then than now, i.e. crisis of the early 90s. I said that it is impossible to understand how they survive.
E. KISELEV: Millions of people who go to their tiny summer cottages and garden plots in the summer, is this the same thing?
T. SHANIN: Undoubtedly, this is part of it.
E. KISELEV: This is when part of the urban population part-time turns into individual agricultural workers.
T. SHANIN: Absolutely.
E. KISELEV: Those who work for themselves.
T. SHANIN: And not only that. This is an important element of thinking about the informal economy. The problem of family structure is included; this is never pure economics, this is economics through the prism of people’s social life. And that’s why it’s autumn here, they’re driving in small cars, bags of potatoes on top, children are in a great mood inside, and they’re driving.
E. KISELEV: Or baskets of mushrooms.
T. SHANIN: What is this? This means this is a group in which the family not only acts as a narrow family - husband, wife and children, but there is also an older generation who lives in the village very often. So what's going on? Summer begins, these children are transferred to the village, and two young people, husband and wife, help dig up what needs to be dug up, plant potatoes, and leave.
E. KISELEV: And all this was the subject of research for many years by our hero Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov?
T. SHANIN: Him and his assistants, and also highlighting this as a special economy. It was the center of his peculiarity as an economist because he emphasized that there are two forms of economy in Russia, i.e. state, what happened from a process point of view quite quickly under Soviet rule, and capitalist. But there is also a third form of informal, peasant economy, which operates according to different economic and social laws.
E. KISELEV: Very interesting. Let me remind you that today’s guest on our program is the famous economist in Russia and the West, Theodor Shanin. We will now take a break, because the time has come for the mid-hour news, and literally in a minute or two we will continue our conversation with Theodor Shanin about the hero of today’s episode of the “Our Everything” program, Alexander Chayanov.
NEWS
E. KISELEV: We continue the next episode of the “Our Everything” program, we have reached the letter “H”, the first hero starting with this letter is the person you chose, dear radio listeners, this is your choice, don’t say later that Kiselyov imposed it on you this hero. When voting live, you chose Alexander Chayanov, a scientist-economist, agrarian, the man after whom a street in Moscow is named, over all possible heroes, and there was a large list. This name returned to us quite recently, during the years of perestroika, when they began, as they say, to “cover up the blank spots” both in the history of the country, and in encyclopedias, and in biographical dictionaries.
And one of the first people talked about then was Alexander Chayanov. And our guest today is the scientist-economist Theodor Shanin, rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social Sciences, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, who works here in Russia, and is widely known in the West, where he worked until the end of the 80s, he was in 1988 year, in the year of Chayanov’s centenary, we already recalled this at the beginning of the program, he spoke at a meeting of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences with a report on the life and work of Chayanov, on his life in science.
This is what I would like to ask you, Theodore. Still, Chayanov dealt with the problems of agriculture in the years when very turbulent events took place in Russian history. For example, the Stolypin reform. How did Chayanov feel about Stolypin’s reform?
T. SHANIN: He didn’t write much about the Stolypin reform. Let us remember that he was a very young man when the Stolypin reform began.
E. KISELEV: Well, he was already an adult.
T. SHANIN: He was an unusually young scientist. Among Russian scientists, despite his leading position, he was unusually young. And therefore, the Stolypinism, I don’t think, was an important event for him from the point of view of personal experience.
E. KISELEV: But did he comprehend it later?
T. SHANIN: I never worked on the Stolypin reform. I searched quite a bit because I was interested to see how much he got back to it. He didn't return to this. He dealt with the modern, and therefore the central element for him in the years when he became famous was collectivization. And he created a systematic theory, a counter-theory of collectivization, which determined, if not collectivization, then what? If not Stalinist collectivization, then what? He defined this in a book that was published in both Russian and English, and is better known in England than in Russia, as often happens in such cases. This is the theory of cooperative agricultural development.
E. KISELEV: Excuse me, but before collectivization began, there was a period of cooperation, there was a period when Lenin proclaimed a new economic policy - NEP, when the tax in kind was introduced, according to the biographies of Chayanov, which are easy to find on the Internet, he was then working on the theory of the tax in kind , he worked in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the RSFSR, in the State Planning Committee. Can he be considered one of those people who were theorists of the NEP?
T. SHANIN: It is possible, with a certain stretch, he undoubtedly raised the same questions that were raised by 1926, when the Stalinist collectivization program, if you like, began to be determined. He published his book on the theory of cooperative development. This book, which defends the NEP, is against the NEP's proposals to stop and begin collectivization in Stalin's style. But he suggests doing this without holding on to what you have. He proposes further development of the NEP as a central cooperative development. And he emphasizes that this does not follow the socialist development of the country, if someone considers this important. It is clear that the government believed.
But this is an alternative. Stalin's collectivization within the country, which is moving towards socialism.
E. KISELEV: Nevertheless, after Chayanov came up with what you call a counter-theory, he was accused of being a defender of the interests of the kulaks, and from there it was literally one step to, like this happened, he was declared an enemy of the people, he was credited with participating in the so-called. labor peasant party, which in fact did not exist, it was an absolute falsification, just as there was no industrial party, just as there were no many other counter-revolutionary organizations that were created by the sophisticated imagination of OGPU employees.
First, as we already briefly said at the beginning, he was convicted and ended up in a camp, and then, like so many people who fell under, so to speak, mild repressions of the early 30s, their cases were then reviewed, and in 1937 Chayanov died after being sentenced to death. My question is, did he really not understand where he was going? That entering into a debate with Stalin on such a fundamental issue as the vector of the main development of agriculture is suicide, is it life-threatening?
Or did people still not understand then, in your opinion?
T. SHANIN: You used a word that decides everything. You said "central". The question was the central vector of development of what Chayanov devoted his professional life to. And he, I think, understanding the danger, preferred to take the blow of this danger rather than remain silent. And in this sense, he was not the only one, because there was a whole series of the best representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, who, when it came to the things on which they lived, their professions, their way of serving Russia, were ready to expose themselves to the fist.
E. KISELEV: Well, yes, we probably need to first of all remember Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev, who was also repressed in the case of the Labor Peasant Party, however, he had more troubles, which began soon after the October revolution, because he was a fellow minister in the Provisional government. Chayanov found it in 1920 and pulled it out for the first time. He was involved in one of the counter-revolutionary cases, but thanks to the efforts of Chayanov, who was then in a relationship... At Lenin's... Chayanov met with Lenin.
T. SHANIN: Not only. We have books that were on Lenin’s table when he died, one of them is “The Theory of Peasant Economy” by Chayanov.
E. KISELEV: When Lenin wrote a work on cooperation, which we, in my school childhood and in my college youth, were forced to learn almost by heart, although a lot of things were not explained and remained incomprehensible, because it was not customary to talk about many things, after all, in essence, the cooperation that Lenin wrote about was not the first stage in the development of agriculture, after which... that’s what we were taught, there was first cooperation, and then cooperation passed into a higher form, from cooperatives they went to collective farms, although in fact, they simply turned agriculture in a completely different direction.
T. SHANIN: This is not a question of Chayanov’s influence on Lenin, it is when Lenin came up with certain questions, when some of what he himself said was put under question, he did what every scientist would do. He said, give me the materials, I want to review them. And here is one of the four books that lay near Lenin’s bed when he was dying. This undoubtedly influenced these last five very short works of Lenin.
E. KISELEV: At the same time, how did Chayanov relate to the Bolsheviks and October? Kondratyev was a member of the Constituent Assembly, not only a fellow minister under the Provisional Government, but also a member of the Constituent Assembly, and his attitude towards October was more or less clear.
T. SHANIN: Chayanov believed that the Constituent Assembly was thrown aside. There are no signs of what he said. But in my opinion, there is no doubt that he really enjoyed it. Because he, like every Russian intellectual, wanted to see a constituent assembly creating a new government. But he never considered himself a politician. I didn't really want to get involved in this matter. And so he shrugged his shoulders and began to work on his own business, the cause of the Russian peasantry, the cause of developing cooperation.
E. KISELEV: I found this quote while preparing for this program, he expresses an interesting thought. Stalin has already begun to criticize him, speaking at one of the conferences devoted to agricultural problems.
T. SHANIN: Conference of Marxist Agrarians.
E. KISELEV: He spoke about the harmful influence of economists like Chayanov, Chayanov was forced to justify himself. He said that he proceeded from the fact that Jean Jaurès, a French socialist, once said that the revolution can either be completely rejected or accepted as it is. There is no subjunctive mood in history.
T. SHANIN: Chayanov accepted Soviet power.
E. KISELEV: This is a kind of fatalism.
T. SHANIN: Not fatalism. The fact is that he was a very professional specialist who was interested in what he was doing, and for whom Russia was central and the very idea of leaving Russia did not exist. Chayanov was released to the West several times, especially to Germany. He spoke German as well as Russian, and was in close contact with German scientists who were leading at that time.
E. KISELEV: It’s good that you, Theodor, touched on this topic. In our programs we try to talk not only about specific figures, but also about the time in which they lived. It's a curious thing. Indeed, in the 20s, especially in the early 20s, when the war had already ended and the period of foreign political isolation ended, when the Rapallo Agreements were signed, Germany turned out to be the country that was the most open, the most accessible for Soviet Russia, people we went to Berlin, which was then the center of Russian emigration culture.
And when the philosophical ship left, he was not alone, there were several of them, when the decision was made to expel a large group of scientist-philosophers, they ended up mainly in Berlin, and at the same time representatives of the scientific mine, representatives of the intelligentsia traveled and communicated, continued to communicate with those people who lived in Berlin as emigrants. This is extremely interesting. During the NEP there was sort of censorship, but there were private publishing houses, small private publishing houses, which published everything!
T. SHANIN: I would add to this that the article in which Chayanov developed a systematic theory of peasant farming as a different economy when compared with capitalist or socialist, he wrote an article on this topic, he wrote this article in German and published it in Germany. And it has never been published in Russia until our times. In our time, of course, they dug it up. When Chayanov was discovered in England, it was a discovery for us and quite a strong shock, surprise, it was something very new and unusually interesting. This book about the theory of peasant farming, when published in Anglo-Saxon countries, had this article as an additional article to the book.
This is the first time this article has found its way anywhere into the Western scientific community. After the first Russian edition of Chayanov was published, this article was already published.
E. KISELEV: You discovered Chayanov. What surprised you most?
T. SHANIN: I was struck by the fact that here for the first time I saw a systematic alternative theory of economics, which is alternative both in the sense of capitalism and socialism. That is, for the first time my fellow workers and I saw that this is not good, and this is not good, no, completely different, systematic, analytical work that gives the answer to how differently you can look at the economy and development of third world countries.
E. KISELEV: And in this sense, was Russia then a third world country?
T. SHANIN: Undoubtedly in my eyes. And that’s why I said that in Brazil, among the intelligentsia, people recognize the name Chayanov much faster than in Russia. This is due to the character of Brazil. Now it is somewhere at a stage of development that resembles the development of Russia somewhere in the 20s.
E. KISELEV: What was the real state of Russian agriculture on the eve of the First World War? There is a point of view that was imposed on people of my generation, who studied at school under the Soviet regime, under the communist regime. That the village truly began to prosper only when the Bolsheviks organized collectivization, when people joined collective farms, when they began to plow the land with tractors. There is also a completely different point of view, post-Soviet, a point of view that began to be voiced during perestroika times, that in fact in Russia there was a thriving agriculture that fed and watered almost the whole of Europe. What is it really like?
T. SHANIN: I would say that if at one time the view was imposed that only collectivization saved the Russian rural population from horrors, and the entire country, now there is a reverse view, a reverse tendency to impose a different picture, according to which Stolypinism solved all these issues In practice, agriculture flourished.
E. KISELEV: In fact, Stolypin did not complete his reform; the bureaucracy, the class that already existed, resisted it...
T. SHANIN: Landowners.
E. KISELEV: The landowner class was not the same as under Catherine II or under Alexander I. Many landowners...
T. SHANIN: There was undoubtedly resistance. But that's not the point. I think that the very idea that the issues have been resolved is proven by the fact that in the last three years before the war there was undoubtedly a rapid increase in agricultural development indices. Agriculture is a structure in which nothing can be determined in three years. This is fundamentally wrong, as every specialist in this field knows.
E. KISELEV: Depending on where and what crops are grown, is that what you want to say?
T. SHANIN: Not only. Things don't move that fast at three years old. Since the weather interferes and all sorts of things that are not connected...
E. KISELEV: But Russia exported grain?
T. SHANIN: Yes, of course.
E. KISELEV: She exported grain because consumption was low within the country?
T. SHANIN: Without a doubt.
E. KISELEV: Was consumption low due to poverty?
T. SHANIN: Yes, specialists from Chayanov’s group often called it starvation exports. And it is right. There was a situation in which part of the village was starving. They did not starve to the point of what happened in 1921-1922. on the Volga, a famine in which villages died out. But they were systematically malnourished. And this export was built on this basis. In any case, part of this export. In addition, Russian bread at that time, which came to Europe, was considered the lowest in quality. So, due to the low quality and due to the semi-starvation of the villages, this undoubtedly happened.
Although there were areas where it went differently. The problem with Russia is that it is such a large country, and therefore different processes can occur differently in different areas. In the new Russia there was the development of a capitalist economy. And it was quite blooming. But in other regions of Russia things happened differently.
E. KISELEV: We have not yet said that Chayanov was also a writer. Have you read his books?
T. SHANIN: Yes, of course.
E. KISELEV: And how, is this good literature?
T. SHANIN: This is good literature. What was special about his approach to economics was that he was an alternative in economics. It was the same with writing. This is science fiction. But only this science fiction was written in advance at that time; for 300 years they saw how it would be. He wrote this fiction ago, i.e. what happened during the time of Catherine or something like that. The book was built according to principles very close to science fiction books, but backwards, not forwards. And of course, with brilliant knowledge and understanding of the history of Russia's past.
E. KISELEV: He was an expert on history, in addition to the fact that he was an agricultural scientist, in addition to the fact that he wrote socio-fiction stories, he also studied the history of Moscow, he had books about Petrovsko-Razumovsky, he collected icons, he was in a sense an encyclopedist. He was the hero of our today's program, we talked about him today with our guest, Theodor Shanin, professor at the University of Manchester and rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social Sciences, the man who, in a sense, returned Chayanov to Russia, since he was the first to talk about him back in the years of perestroika , delivering a report on the centenary of Chayanov at a meeting of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Thank you very much, Theodore, because, thank God, then true heroes began to return to us, if you will, the lights of our history, our science, our culture. Thank you very much.
T. SHANIN: Thank you. I'd like to add two things. Think about whether this should be included somewhere in the course of what will be shown. There are two things there. At the center of this fight for Chayanov's return were two Russian colleagues. One is the president of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences of that time, Academician Nikonov, and the second is the best specialist on the Russian peasantry, Viktor Danilov. These are people who need to be remembered, because the Englishman didn’t bring it, I brought it. But there was this. And the second is that I gave up my rectorship a year ago, I am now the president, there is a new rector.
E. KISELEV: This is an important clarification. The President of the Moscow Higher School of Social Sciences Theodor Shanin was a guest of our program. That's all, I say goodbye to you, see you next Sunday.
Chayanov Alexander Vasilyevich - Soviet economist and sociologist, science fiction writer and utopian, author of the concept of labor peasant farming and moral economics. He is a prominent representative of the generation of Russian intelligentsia of the early 20th century. Chayanov Alexander Vasilyevich, whose photo is located below, devoted his entire life to the study of the organization of agriculture. His concept was not accepted by the Soviet authorities. However, since the 1990s, scientists increasingly began to turn to Chayanov’s conclusions. Let's try to figure out what is the relevance of the concept of labor peasant farming.
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich: biography
But is it possible to consider a scientist’s conclusions without understanding how he came to them? So let's start with the biography. Chayanov Alexander Vasilyevich was born in 1888 into a merchant family living in Moscow. Under the influence of relatives, in 1906, after graduating from Voskresensky College, he entered the Moscow Agricultural Institute. Already in his first year he showed interest in scientific activities. He was interested in Mencera. As is known, the latter is the founder of the theory of marginal utility. In 1908, Chayanov visited Italy, and in 1909, Belgium. It should be noted that already at such a young age he gets to know these countries as a real scientist, and not an ordinary tourist. Impressed by his first trip, Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov, whose bibliography would later consist of many not only scientific but also artistic works, formulated a program to familiarize himself with foreign experience in organizing agriculture. The first article by the future scientist was devoted to cooperation in Italy. During his studies at the university, Chayanov published 18 scientific articles. He was offered a position in the department of agricultural economics, and he accepted. In 1912, Chayanov received the title of master. Then he went abroad for a year of internship. During this time he had the opportunity to work in Paris and Berlin. During the internship, he completed his first important work, “Essays on the Theory of Labor Economy.”
Chayanov Alexander Vasilyevich, whose contribution to economics was the development of the concept of peasant studies, was not a theorist and always sought to apply his conclusions in practice. He was a participant in various initiatives, a member of the Council of Cooperative Congresses. Chayanov was even nominated for the post of Minister of Agriculture, but he held this position only for two weeks. Ultimately, the cooperators had to make reconciliation with the Soviet regime. Since 1919, Chayanov has worked at the People's Commissariat of Agriculture. Around then he also began to engage in literary creativity. In 1922, Chayanov was appointed director of the research institute at the seminary for agricultural economics. That same year he marries and goes on a two-year business trip abroad. In 1923, his main work, “Organization of Peasant Farming,” was published. They begin to consider him a bourgeois professor. In 1930, Chayanov was arrested. He was charged with organizing the Labor Peasant Party. A public hearing in this case never took place. In prison, the scientist continues to work on his concept. Chayanov is then exiled to Alma-Ata, where he continues to work at the agricultural commissariat. In 1937, on an absurd charge, the scientist was sentenced to death. The decision was carried out immediately; Chayanov was only 49 years old.
Origins of the concept
The creative heritage of the founder of peasant studies is extremely diverse. It includes not only scientific works, but also artistic works. However, they are all united by a common theme. Works of fiction illustrate complex scientific findings in an accessible manner. Chayanov brought something new to all areas of the agrarian-economic direction. The following stages can be distinguished in the development of the theory of peasant labor economy. Among them:
- The existence of family peasant farms.
- Creation of agricultural cooperatives.
- Development of the agricultural sector as a single whole.
Family-labor theory
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich is the founder of a whole movement. At the end of the 19th century, a crisis arose in the landed estates. This led to an agrarian crisis. didn't work, and he went deeper. Unsolved problems in the agricultural sector required the emergence of a new theory of agricultural organization. Chayanov felt the spirit of the times. He believed that the main feature of the Russian economy is nepotism. Chayanov’s studies at the institute also influenced such views. Indeed, among Chayanov’s teachers, prominent agricultural specialists, professors N.N. Khudyakov, A.F. Fortunatov, D.N. Pryanishnikov, stood out.
Organization of peasant farming
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich was not a Marxist. However, he was in many ways close to the views of the author of Capital regarding the essence of peasants as both workers and masters. The outstanding Russian economist of the early 20th century understood the need for fundamental changes. He placed the personal labor activity of the peasant family at the forefront. Based on the study of foreign experience and empirical data, the scientist puts forward the idea of an organization plan and the concept of labor balance. They formed the core of peasant studies. According to the economist, the optimal size of an agricultural enterprise depends on the size of the family.
Planning
The purpose of a peasant family's work is to satisfy its own needs. The more optimally the management is organized, the more this happens. Therefore, it is necessary to draw up a plan. If this is done correctly, the sustainability of the enterprise and the highest labor efficiency are ensured. Each peasant farm must be considered as part of the system. Therefore, it depends on the stage of development of society. The family as an economic entity must use all the possibilities of the current situation. An organizational plan helps to understand the internal structure of the economy, the relationship between individual industries, financial turnover and labor costs for various types of activities. It includes:
- Labor balance. It shows the relationship between agriculture and crafts.
- Production balance. It reflects the relationship between livestock and equipment.
- Cash balance. It characterizes income and expenses.
Specifications
Chayanov believed that the key to drawing up a plan is not a certain sequence of reasoning, but the application of criteria. Among them:
- The family's labor capabilities and their relationship with its consumer needs should be at the forefront.
- Land tenure must be taken into account. It can act as a limiting factor.
- An important criterion is also the organization of the territory. Poor location has a negative impact on the efficiency of peasant farming.
- It is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of labor organization. It is imperative to pay attention to transport costs.
Labor balance
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich is an economist who developed a model that allows one to determine the natural limit of any economic entity. He said that the result must always be determined by the factor of production that is available in the most limited volume. To family farms, Chayanov applies such general economic categories as rent, interest, income, and prices. He identifies two groups of factors of their profitability: internal and national economic. The first includes labor resources and the intensity of their application.
Differentiation of peasant farms
The last period of the scientist’s work occurred in 1927-1930. Together with other economists, he dealt with the problem of differentiation of the peasantry. He showed that it arose due to the disharmony of natural and simple commercial farming. The former gravitated towards the central regions with fertile chernozem soils, the latter - towards the largest ports. Perestroika led to an increase in migration flows, which is the reason for differentiation. Therefore, the stratification of society, according to Chayanov, was not associated with social-class processes, but with the splitting off of new types of farms. The latter included farming, credit and usury, fishing and auxiliary. To solve the problem, the scientist considered it necessary to carry out cooperative collectivization. It and lending were supposed to help rural proletarians return to the traditional family-work model.
The importance of the concept for the development of science
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich is a sociologist and economist, whose work is well known to modern scientists studying the agricultural system. However, it was precisely for these views that he suffered. Stalin personally criticized the theory. For her, Chayanov was first exiled and then executed at the age of 49. However, despite all this, the theory continued to live. In the 1980s, interest in it began to renew. Today, many agricultural economists still turn to it and find inspiration in it.
Chayanov Alexander Vasilievich: books
The scientist wrote many works. It should be noted that during his studies at the institute alone, he published 17 articles. His main work is considered to be the book “Essays on the Theory of Labor Economy.” In 1989, selected works of the scientist were published in one volume. Among the most famous works of art by Chayanov is “The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Drowning.” Some of them were published after the author’s death in 1980-2010.
Even in the pre-revolutionary period, in connection with the rapid growth of peasant cooperatives, an organizational and production school arose (N.P. Makarov, A.V. Chayanov, A.N. Minin, A.A. Rybnikov, etc.). The leader of this school was a prominent Russian economist Alexander Vasilievich Chayanov(1888-1937). His main works: “Organization of Peasant Farming” (1925), “Short Course in Cooperation” (1925).
The main subject of Chayanov’s research was the family-labor peasant economy, aimed at meeting the needs of family members. Chayanov was interested in the natural-consumer features of this economy and, to a lesser extent, its commodity-market features. He believed that such research is important when studying the agrarian system not only of Russia, but also of China, India and other countries with weak development of market relations. The main concepts here are the organizational plan and the labor-consumer balance of the peasant economy.
The organizational plan, or the peasant’s subjective reflection of the system of goals and means of economic activity, included the choice of the direction of the economy, the combination of its industries, the linking of labor resources and volumes of work, the division of products consumed and sold on the market, the balance of cash receipts and expenses. The concept of labor-consumer balance was based on the fact that the peasant does not strive for a maximum of net profit, but for an increase in total income, production and consumption, respectively, a balance of production and natural factors, and an even distribution of labor and income throughout the year.*
* Chayanov A.V. Peasant farming. M., 1989.
Chayanov contrasted the “kulak - middle peasant - poor” scheme, widespread in Soviet economic literature, with his own classification, including six types of farms: 1) capitalist, 2) semi-labor, 3) prosperous family-labor, 4) poor family-labor, 5) semi-proletarian, 6 ) proletarian. Chayanov put forward a plan for resolving social contradictions in the village through cooperative collectivization of various types of farms (from 2 to 5) and cooperative credit.
Chayanov saw the path to a radical increase in the efficiency of the agricultural sector in the massive spread of cooperation, its anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic content. He opposed the nationalization of cooperatives. The benefit of cooperation, according to Chayanov, lies in the relatively low prices for products and the additional income of its members.
Chayanov believed that cooperatives should include those types of activities whose technical optimum exceeds the capabilities of an individual peasant farm. He proceeded from the fact that individual peasant farms are capable of effective soil cultivation and livestock raising. Other types of activities are subject to gradual and voluntary cooperation.
In the summer of 1917, the scientist put forward a plan for the reconstruction of the agricultural sector: the transfer of land into the ownership of the working peasantry, the introduction of labor ownership of land (without the right to buy and sell plots), the transfer of landowners' farms and estates to the state, the introduction of a single agricultural tax for the partial withdrawal of differential rent. Chayanov opposed the equal distribution of land to peasants. He proceeded from the dual criteria of agrarian restructuring: increasing labor productivity and democratizing the distribution of national income.
Chayanov's major achievement is the theory of differential optima of agricultural enterprises. The optimum exists where “all other things being equal, the cost of the resulting products will be the lowest.”* The optimum depends on natural-climatic, geographical conditions, and biological processes. Chayanov divided all elements of cost in agriculture into three groups: 1) those that decrease with the consolidation of farms (administrative expenses, costs of using machines, buildings); 2) increasing with the consolidation of farms (transport costs, losses from deteriorating control over the quality of labor); 3) independent of the size of farms (cost of seeds, fertilizers, loading and unloading operations). The optimum comes down to finding the point at which the sum of all costs per unit of production is minimal.
* Chayanov A.V. Optimal sizes of agricultural enterprises. M., 1928.
During the years of organizing state farms (1928-1930), Chayanov proposed to evaluate their activities according to the degree of implementation of the state plan from the point of view of taking into account the interests of the region and according to the level of profitability of the enterprise itself. However, the problem of individual labor motivation, which previously occupied one of the central places in the scientist’s work, in 1928-1930. has not been studied.
See also:
Chayanov Alexander Vasilyevich is an economist and theorist of family-peasant farming, the creator of agrarian economic theory in Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Born in 1888 to a merchant-philistine family who came from peasant backgrounds. After graduating from a real school, in 1906 he entered the Moscow Agricultural Institute (MSHI; later - Petrovskaya, now - Timiryazevskaya Agricultural Academy). After completing the course, he was left at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Organization A.F. Fortunatov for preparation for teaching and research work. Since 1913 A.V. Chayanov is an associate professor, and since 1918, a professor at the Department of Organization of Agriculture at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, where he worked until 1930. At the same time, he teaches at the Moscow People's University. A.L. Shanyavsky and actively participates in the Russian cooperative movement.
During the First World War, he worked in various commissions of the Special Conference on Food, in food organizations of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and the economic department of the All-Russian Union of Cities, participating, in particular, in the preparation of the General Plan for Providing Food to the Population (1916).
In 1915, with a group of prominent cooperators, he created the Central Partnership of Flax Growers. Chayanov was appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the latest Provisional Government. In 1918, the Higher Economic Seminary on Agrarian Issues was created at the Petrovsky Academy, the head of which was A.V. Chayanov.
After the October Revolution, the scientist began to develop an independent theory of cooperation. In 1919 The fundamental work of A.V. was published. Chayanov “Basic ideas and forms of organization of peasant cooperation”, in which his analysis of the practice of the cooperative movement was further developed. One of the most important components of the cooperative theory of A.V. Chayanov is the principle of differential optima. Firstly, this is a question of the optimal size of certain specific enterprises and, secondly, the question of the optimum for various branches of agriculture. Chayanov was an outstanding economist and mathematician. In a number of works, he substantiated the rational boundaries of land management and the optimal size of agricultural holdings. Having put forward the principle of differential optima, the scientist showed that different branches of agriculture and different regions may have their own optimal sizes of agricultural farms, but the general principle is to achieve the minimum cost for each type of product produced.
In the center of scientific interests of A.V. Chayanov was also involved in the development of problems of agricultural construction. Among the latter, we note the agrarian question, public agronomy, water economics, accounting (taxation) in agriculture, the organization of state farms and agricultural complexes, the development of individual regions, in particular the Non-Black Earth Region, etc.
Since 1919, Chayanov has been very active in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, preparing a plan for the restoration of agriculture, and heading a scientific seminary on agricultural economics and policy. In 1922, a large research institute was organized on the basis of the seminary, the leadership of which was entrusted to A.V. Chayanov.
After the discussion about the differentiation of the peasantry (1927) and in connection with the beginning of the policy of curtailing the NEP, the first unfair persecution fell on Chayanov. He is accused of seeking to perpetuate the ineffective small peasant economy; later he will be called a “neo-populist” and an ideologist of the kulaks. In 1928, the scientist was forced to resign as director of the Institute of Agricultural Economics.
On June 21, 1930, Chayanov was arrested; on January 26, 1932, the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to 5 years in a camp in a fabricated case of the Labor Peasant Party; On October 3, 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death. Rehabilitated in 1987.
Works: 1. Chayanov A.V. On the issue of the theory of non-capitalist economic systems // Chayanov A.V. Peasant farming. M.: Economics, 1989; 2. Chayanov A.V. A short course in cooperation. Barnaul: Alt. books publishing house, 1989-; 3. Chayanov A.V. Peasant farming. M.: Economics, 1989-(Series “Economic Heritage”); 4. Chayanov A.V. Basic ideas and forms of organization of peasant cooperation // Chayanov A.V. Selected works. M.: Moscow worker, 1989; 5. Chayanov A.V. Basic ideas and forms of organizing agricultural cooperation // Chayanov A.V. Selected works. M.: Kolos.
