СТАНОВИЩЕ СЕЛЯНСТВА КИЇВСЬКОЇ ГУБЕРНІЇ У ПОРЕФОРМЕНИХ АГРАРНИХ ВІДНОСИНАХ В КІНЦІ ХІХ ст. ЗА ПУБЛІКАЦІЯМИ КИЇВСЬКИХ ГАЗЕТ ПРО УМАНСЬКИЙ ПОВІТ

Abstract

The article, based on the publications of Kyiv newspapers about the Uman district of the Kyiv province, highlights the situation of the peasantry in the last quarter of the XIX ‒ early XX centuries. The provincial Press wrote that a few decades after the agrarian reform of 1861, the land issue worsened, which led to further impoverishment of the majority of the peasantry. Having received personal freedom and the right to buy land, the vast majority of rural workers suffered from lack of land and could not use the services of a peasant bank to buy land. The Press published materials about the complicated system of peasant earnings, insidious traps of conditions for hiring peasants to perform field work in the farms of landlords, which were prepared by economists and tenants to attract cheap workers and enslave the peasants. Reports were also published that despite the ban on physical punishment of rural workers, landlords arranged lynching and punished for economic offenses. In the provincial press, publications were also found that a fairly small part of the peasantry took advantage of the opportunity and bought the land. The most important reasons for this were the lack of funds among the vast majority of peasants and the unwillingness of landlords to sell land, for which the owners resorted to raising the price of land plots. The pages of Kyiv newspapers reflect the public outcry regarding the situation of a fairly large category of the population ‒ quit-rent peasants. The capitalization of land and the legal uncertainty in the Imperial legislation of their state, which was based on customary law, made this category of the population particularly dependent on the will of landowners. A government attempt to legally resolve this issue in 1886 was unsuccessful, as it was delayed for a long time. The intentions of the authorities and the hopes of landless peasants to partially solve the problem of «land famine» by resettling landless and low-land peasants also turned out to be illusory. Thus, the article, based on publications in the provincial press about the events in the Uman district, shows that the situation of the peasantry in the late XIX ‒ early XX centuries remained difficult.