On the Factors of Economic Modernization in the Development of Agricultural Production in Siberia in the Early 20th Century

In the early XX century Siberia was the country’s agricultural periphery which was undergoing a rapid development and colonization. The pivot of its historical evolution was the sociocultural and economic modernization of a peasant household. It became a decisive factor of the rapid growth of regional agriculture. The problem of the modernization and development of the agricultural production received a wide coverage in Siberian studies. Siberian historiography connected the growth of agriculture with the capitalist entrepreneurial activities of well-to-do peasantry. Its main objective is to define the origins, modernization factors and the development dynamics of agricultural production in Siberia in the early 20th century in the light of the sociocultural concept of economic modernization of the traditional regional peasant household. This paper relies on the published data of Russia’s state and ministerial statistics as well as on the published and primary archive materials of the Tomsk Region’s agricultural census of 1901 and 1916. In Siberia, annual average gross harvests of grain increased by 90% in 1901-1917.Cattle increased by 50%. Meat production increased by 45%. Sales of Siberian butter beyond the Urals increased from 50 thousand poods in 1897 to 5.7 million poods in 1913, including the 4.5 million poods exported abroad. The rapid growth of capitalist agricultural production made Siberia one of the country’s leading bread-producing regions. Having 6% of population, Siberia provided 10% of Russia’s gross grain harvests. The wide and dynamic development of agriculture was driven by the prevalence of the peasants’ type of agricultural evolution in Siberia. The integration of Siberian family-based peasant’s household into the system of the all-Russian market gave a strong impetus to its modernization. The economic modernization of the West Siberian countryside in the early XX century was reflected in the deepening of its market specialization, rationalization of its production and technical basis, greater capitals disposed by the peasant households and economic innovations. The traditional community-based nature of peasants’ economic culture conditioned the dominance of the cooperative way of the economic evolution of Siberian peasantry. As of 1916, 55% of peasant households in Siberia were covered by various forms of cooperatives. Thus, the economic development of the Siberian countryside in the early XX century constituted mainly the community-cooperative type of peasant’s agricultural evolution. In Siberia, cooperatives were the main vector of peasants’ agricultural evolution.

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