PEASANT AGRARIANIST APPROACHES AND PRACTICES OF RESOLVING THE AGRARIAN ISSUE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917 – 1921

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the agrarianist by their content approaches and practices of solving the agrarian issue as a realization in practice of peasants' hopes and ideas about their just future; to establish criteria for clarifying the agrarianist essence of practices for solving the agrarian issue, to determine the types of these practices; show the dynamics of changes in peasant agrarian approaches and practices under different forms of government during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 – 1921. The research methodology is a socio-cultural approach, which allows to explain how Ukrainian peasantry’s mental guidelines, ways of seeing the solution of the agrarian issue affected the practices of solving the land issue and influenced the emergence of domestic agrarianism in 1917 – 1921. The scientific novelty consists in the following: it has been substantiated that during the revolutionary period of 1917 – 1921 there was a dynamic change in peasant agrarianist approaches and practices to solve the agrarian issue: from socialization policy based on the rejection of private ownership of land, free requisition of land from the owners and its transfer to the peasants for cultivation, to the inclination of the peasant community to receive land in private ownership for redemption to the state. The Conclusions. The following criteria for the agrarianist essence of approaches and practices for solving the agrarian issue during the revolution of 1917 – 1921 have been defined: if we consider the Bolshevik-Communist model, it is a denial of the nationalization of land and collective management on it; if we consider the bourgeois and capitalist model, it is a denial of large private ownership of land. Since in the grain growers’ mentality the fundamental principle of land ownership or use was personal work on it, the main peasant agrarian approaches and practices to solve the agrarian question during the revolution of 1917 – 1921 were: 1. preservation of small peasant private ownership of land; 2. transfer of land for life with the right of inheritance (which in the understanding of the peasantry was close to the right of private property in addition to the possibility of selling land). At the same time, a large part of the peasantry saw socialization as a certain transition period to private property, which had to go through the following stages: confiscation of land from landlords – its transfer to peasants for life – legitimization of peasant private ownership of this land.

Key words: peasantry, Ukrainian revolution of 1917 – 1921, agrarian issue, socialization, private property, land, Ukrainian agrarianism.