Nature in the service of socialism: the socio-natural aspects of the activities of the people's commissariat for agriculture in 1917-1939s

The purpose of the article is to study the socio-natural aspects of nature management in the agrarian policy of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture of the RSFSR / USSR. By socio-natural aspects is understood the relationship of late agrarian society and the environment in the process of economic use of natural resources. The ecological aspects of the activities of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture have been the subject of special research for the first time. They allow us to trace the continuity in the state regulation of the issues of nature management with the preceding period, identify certain trends and matrices laid for further development. The ecological direction in the activities of this People’s Commissariat in our present understanding did not exist then, but some of its elements were identified by us. The sources of the study were the records of the funds of the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE) and the published materials of the activity of the Commissariat, in particular, the “Works of Zemplan”, the printed organ of the Planning Commission. The results of the study are presented in chronological order with an indication of the problematic issues of discussion and activities of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture in the following periods: in 1917-1921, 1921-1929, 1930s. They correlate with the traditional periodization of the Russian history, which includes the stages of “War Communism”, New Economic Policy and Collectivization. The work of the department for the restoration of the country’s rural, forestry and water economy destroyed in the military-revolutionary period, the discussion of the causes and consequences of the drought of 1920s, the specific measures to combat them were studied. The central place in the article is given to the work of the Narkomzem’ Planning Commission, which accumulated the human and intellectual potential of pre-revolutionary Russia. It is noted that due to the involvement of old agricultural specialists in the commissariat, the country’s agriculture was restored, continuity in the policy of nature management was maintained. It is concluded that the Soviet party and political leadership represented by the central agricultural department clearly not only caught, but also deeply realized the scale of the socionatural problems of the country’s agriculture. Meliorative and agro-cultural measures of the Soviet Central Agrarian Department in most cases were a response to the periodically exacerbated ecological crisis in the agrarian sphere. At the same time, the Soviet authority pursued the goal of obtaining stable and abundant harvests. In the 1930s nature restoration was replaced by nature conquest, which fixed the consumer attitude to natural resources.

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