The Concept of the Stolypin Land Reform

Abstract

The Stolypin Land Reform was a series of actions taken by the Russian Imperial government during the years 1905-17 to cope with the social and economic problems of the European Russian peasants. The basic part of any analysis of the Reform, therefore, should be a description of these actions as a coherent historical development in themselves. This essay presents such a description. The discussion is divided into four topics: general interpretation, the problems the Reform had to cope with, the general outline of its evolution, and the role of force in its execution. Related topics, such as the historical forces or events which produced the Reform, its results, or its significance in larger developments, are mentioned only incidentally.

Terrible” Appearance of Political Center in Russia: A Historical Investigation on the Basis of Political Culture

“…Stolypin reformlarının sonucunda 1914'e kadar komünlere bağlı köylerin %25'i özel mülke dönüşmüş, üretim %79,5 oranında artmıştır (Strakhovsky, 1959: 362). Fakat başbakanın bu köklü reformları zamanla orta üstü köylülerin komün topraklarını ele geçirmesiyle sonuçlandığından (Yaney, 1964) milyonlarca yoksul köylünün Sibirya, Kazakistan, Türkistan ve Uzak Doğu'ya yönelik kitlesel göçünü başlamıştır (Kurat, 2014: 420-421). Birinci Dünya Savaşı Rusya'yı, artık klasik merkezçevre ilişkilerinin berhava olduğu böylesi bir zeminde ayakta durmaya çalışırken yakalamıştır.…”

Territory, enclosure, and state territorial mode of production in the Russian imperial periphery

“…Most communes underwent yearly land repartitioning to meet changes in the demographic composition or to adapt to economic instabilities. This right to communal territorialization defined the very essence of obshchina and was seen by many as one of the critical functions of peasant economy, with little or no analog found in world history (Nafziger, 2016;Pallot, 1999;Zyrianov, 1992).…”

“…Peasant relations prior the reforms were "neither subject to nor protected by the laws of the tsarist government" and followed local customs of land organization rather than state law (Yaney, 1964:279). Without the means of legal contract, little or no land organization was controlled or recognized by the state and the police filled the institutional gap (Yaney, 1964). Sergei Witte, an econometrician and prime minister of the Russian Empire under Alexander III, assigned problems of the Russian economic development to the political-legal and not political-economic organization of the peasant economy.…”