Peasant farming in the European North of Russia in the second half of the 1920s: the experience of typologization

The aim of this article is to study the evolution of the industrial infrastructure of parcel farming in the European North of Russia (Arkhangelsk, Vologda, North-Dvinskaya guberniyas, Karelian and Komi autonomous republics) in the second half of the 1920s, and to identify the prospects for the development of the main types of peasant households. The analysis is based on the materials of the budget statistics of the peasant economy as containing the most complete information on the peasant economy. If necessary, the author supplemented his analysis with mass statistical material. The methodological dominant of the study was the epistemological positions of the Russian agrarian science of the late 19th-20th centuries, in particular, the theory of the family organization of peasant farming, which were formulated within the organizational and production line of research. By the mid-1920s, there was an erosion of the consumer-natural foundations of the economy in the region. Conditions for changing the production factors of the yard and the formation of its income, the correlation of the basic elements of the economy with capital and labor funds and the efficiency of financial investments in basic production were created. Analysis of budgetary materials provides a basis for conclusions that the economic development of the region led to the fact that in the northern regions of the guberniya agricultural income in larger amounts than it was earlier was being replaced by highly paid articles of commercial income. Agriculture in these areas was increasingly becoming an auxiliary sector that provided only the consumer budget of the family. It is only natural that, depending on the compatibility of the elements of production, the field-agrarian type of peasant farming had many modifications. The author characterizes the economic process and distinguishes: 1) the model of a developed field farm with various non-agricultural earnings; 2) the model of suburban economy with developed sales of fishery products and earnings in sawmills in Arkhangelsk; 3) the model of the seaside Pomorie economy with developed fish and sea seal hunting fisheries; 4) the model of a commercial logging yard with developed agriculture; 5) the model of a cattle-breeding yard with commercial fishing; 6) the model of a dairy farm with commercial income; 7) the model of a dairy commodity economy. Regardless of the model of production in a relatively large peasant industry by the standards of the region, the organization of economic elements provided a greater effect. However, the basis of peasant production in the region was the peasant economy of medium and low level, labor-consuming and costly in nature, and thus very far from the optimal parameters of interaction of the basic elements of production.

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