Evolution of the bolshevik doctrine on the peasant question in 1917–1929

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze the frameworks and views on the peasant question in Soviet Russia over the examined period. Using the historical, descriptive narrative, comparative, and typological methods, the authors look into the 1917 land reform, attempts to organize large-scale socialist agriculture in 1918–1920, the specific features of the temporary solutions to the peasant question in the period of the New Economic Policy, and the subsequent focus on industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture. The authors conclude that the Bolshevik doctrine evolutionized and preserved full strategic continuity, having undergone several timely tactical adjustments. Each of these stages represented the Bolsheviks’ attempts to retain political control over the predominantly agrarian country, for which purpose the “leading” (in other words, the commanding, dictating, or domineering) role of the working class and the poorest layers of countrymen was persistently proclaimed in relation to peasants who produced surplus goods and had a different system of value (worldview) priorities.