Peasant farms of the Chernozem Center during the period of the new Economic Policy of the 1920s, main sources

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-4-1065-1082

For citation

Petrishina, Irina D., Nikolashin, Vadim P. (2025). Peasant farms of the Chernozem Center during the period of the new Economic Policy of the 1920s, main sources, Herald of an Archivist, no. 4, pp. 1065-1082, doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-4-1065-1082

Petrishina, Irina D., Lipetsk State Pedagogical University named after P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, Lipetsk, Russia

Nikolashin, Vadim P., Tambov State University named after G. R. Derzhavin, Tambov, Russia

Peasant farms of the Chernozem Center during the period of the new Economic Policy of the 1920s, main sources

Abstract

In the article, the authors evaluate the research potential of the Russian central and regional archives for studying the individual peasant economy of the Chernozem center during the years of the new economic policy. In the 1920s, the growing bureaucratization of the party and Soviet system was accompanied by an increase in the number of documents. The authors focused on the analysis of office documents in terms of the informative content of their content. The value of the 17 foundation documents in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) and its Secret Department) lies in the fact that they allow us to establish a system of state measures regulating agriculture both in the Central Chernozem region and in comparison with the RSFSR and the USSR, which ensures the identification of features in the development of peasant farms of the Central Chernozem region. The funds in the State Archive of the Russian Federation 1235 (Central Executive Committee of the USSR) and fund 1066 (Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture under the Central Executive Committee of the USSR) contain a huge layer of documents on the transition of peasant farms from surplus to surplus tax, on the extremely poor, hungry situation of the peasants of the provinces of the Central Administrative District in 1921 and 1924, the difficulties of tax collection, on the results of sowing campaigns, about the agricultural achievements of peasant farmers, about grain procurement plans. The documents of the archives reflect the local features of the state agrarian policy and the specifics of peasant life. The reports and reports of the district executive committee of the Central Agricultural Commission make it possible to determine not only the factors affecting the peasant economy – land management, resettlement, the simplest agricultural improvements, the index of procurement prices, lending, incomes of the agricultural population, but also to identify the main trends in the development of peasant farms in the Chernozem center. The value of the reports of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee as a source lies in the fact that they contain an analysis of the development of agriculture in the Central Committee in comparison with the RSFSR. The authors concluded that the period of the late 1920s It is marked by an increase in documents on the production, economic and socio-political situation of the peasantry. Based on a variety of materials, a number of specific historical plots from the history of peasant farms in the Central Chernozem region are considered. The documents show that in the late 1920s, most issues of peasant production were considered exclusively through the prism of collectivization. Due to the difficulties of grain procurement and the transition of the state to the application of administrative and repressive measures against the peasantry to seize all grain stocks, the secrecy in the circulation of documents has significantly increased.

Keywords

Agriculture, Chernozem center, agriculture, state policy, office documents, agricultural statistics.

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About authors

Petrishina Irina D., PhD in History, Associate Professor, Lipetsk State Pedagogical University named after P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shan, Institute of History, Law and Social Sciences, Department of National and Universal History, Associate Professor, Lipetsk, Russia, +7-905-682-25-73, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Nikolashin Vadim P., Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Tambov State University named after G. R. Derzhavin, Faculty of History, World Politics and Sociology, Department of History and Philosophy, Professor, Tambov, Russia, +7-905-121-95-13, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The article was received in the editorial office on 28.06.2024, recommended for publication on 20.06.2024.