The Myth of the Urban Peasant

Abstract

This paper explores , the 'myth of the urban peasant' , the widespread belief that urban Russian households are surviving the collapse of employment and money incomes by turning to subsistence agriculture. On the basis of the analysis of official and survey data the paper shows that although many urban households grow food in their garden plots, those with low money incomes are the least likely to do so, while subsistence production is a complement rather than an alternative to paid employment. Moreover, those who do grow their own food work long hours for very little return, spending no less of their money income on buying food than do those who grow nothing. The implication is that dacha use is a leisure activity of the better-off rather than a survival strategy of the poor. Regional data suggests that urban agricultural production persists in those regions in which commercial agriculture and monetised relations are least developed which, it is surmised, retain memories of past shortages By the end of 1998 the average money income of Russian households had fallen to the level of 1970, a decline of two-thirds since 1990. Employment had fallen by around 25 per cent, with a further 5 per cent laid-off at any one time, and the real value of wages and pensions had fallen to less than half the 1985 level, while survey data indicated that only a quarter of those employed were actually receiving their wages in full and on time (Clarke 1999a; Clarke 1998). Such a dramatic and sustained fall in money incomes raises the question: how do Russian households survive? While there has been very little systematic research into the survival strategies of

Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe's productive gardeners

“…FSP is read as an index of path dependency, an economic coping strategy or as a faintly embarrassing cultural remnant. This perspective has developed over the course of more than a century of othering of Eastern Europe but has combined with a more recent western myth of the Russian 'urban peasant' (see, for example, Clarke et al, 2000). Influential research in public policy, development and economics (e.g.…”

Differentiating farmers: opening the black box of private farming in post-Soviet states

“…As a result, academic attention is drawn toward tiny farms, recognized by the state to represent people who see themselves as pensioners (55%) or unemployed (15%) (NSPRD 2007) and acting to supplement their incomes. In this study, these are termed reluctant farmers, to reflect clear stated preferences to not be engaged in producing and selling agricultural goods, and to avoid debates about the extent to which these individuals represent peasants (Kitching 1998;Clarke et al 2000;Leonard and Kaneff 2002) or subsistence-oriented farmers (Caskie 2000;Kostov and Lingard 2002). However, within smallscale production, two other types can be identified: pluriactive farmers, who utilize restituted land to supplement household income from paid employment, and minority horticulturalists, who represent a distinct ethnicity-based cultural subtype.…”

Food Self‐provisioning in Europe: An Exploration of Sociodemographic Factors in Five Regions

“…A strong counterargument against the simplified economic interpretation that “poor people produce more food because they lack income for buying the food in shops” is that the lowest social groups with the lowest incomes usually do not participate in food self‐provisioning to the same extent as middle or higher income groups. This is a common phenomenon, apparent in Russia (Clarke et al ; tho Seeth et al ), the Czech Republic (Jehlička et al ), and rural Canada (Teitelbaum and Beckley ). For example, only 19 percent of respondents of the lowest income group in rural areas of Canada grow vegetables, while the share is between 34 and 47 percent in the higher income groups (Teitelbaum and Beckley ).…”

“…Food self‐provisioning had a supplementary character in countries like Czechoslovakia and Hungary while it had been an important source of food in more “Stalinist” countries like Romania, Albania (Jehlička et al ; Swain ), and the Soviet Union. This was often due to the failures of their production and distribution systems (e.g., Clarke et al ; Rose and Tikhomirov ).…”

“…The importance for food security and nutrition has been emphasized (Galhena et al ; Kortright and Wakefield ; Morton et al ) as well as the potential of social inclusion and the strengthening of social and family networks and community development (Gray et al ; Jehlička and Smith ; Larder et al ; Torsello ). Apart from the economic motivation (e.g., Alber and Kohler ), the role of lifestyles, tradition, and leisure is increasingly being emphasized (Brown, Xu, and Toth ; Clarke et al ; Domene and Saurí ; Jehlička et al ). Additionally, there are positive health and psychological outcomes related to food self‐provisioning (Domene and Saurí ; Gray et al ; Kortright and Wakefield ).…”