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The Russian Stratification Debate and India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Neil Charlesworth
Neil Charlesworth
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

To debate about patterns of economic and social mobility within peasant societies is hardly a new game. In particular, our modern discussions are the heirs of a Russian heritage, inevitably mirroring, in some aspect, the great arguments about agrarian change which raged there between the late nineteenth century and collectivization. Two elements ensured for the Russian literature a special cogency and the potential for widespread application. Firstly, the mass of zemstvo statistics provided a more reliable empirical base to theoretical discussions than in any other equivalent society. Secondly, the debate over the peasantry was at the very forefront of the economic and political struggle over Russia's future. Russia between 1890 and 1930 was a society uniquely torn between the advanced and the less developed worlds, bouts of extensive, feverishly quick industrial growth coexisting with an agriculture where Malthusian crisis seemed inexorably to be gathering. The economic performance of the peasantry, three-quarters of the population, clearly provided the key to Russia's developmental fate. In addition, understanding agrarian society was crucial to the political battle for the country. If a large and powerful rich peasant class existed or, as Stolypin hoped, could be created, then the countryside's loyalty could be secured for a conservative régime. Alternatively, Lenin's interpretation of an impoverished, embittered majority within the peasantry seemed to promise a much sounder basis for political revolution than the support of the tiny Russian industrial proletariat. This immediate, practical importance of the Russian peasant debate sharpened the cut and thrust of the arguments.

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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1979 , pp. 61 - 95
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

This paper owes much to Clive Dewey, not only for his editorial role, but because his work prompted me to think more widely about these issues.Google Scholar

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