Метаморфози аграрної еліти українських губерній на зламі ХІХ–ХХ ст.

Abstract

In the Ukrainian provinces, for the agrarian elite represented mostly by the nobility landowners, the modernization process, which itensified in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did not pass unnoticed. The paper seeks to analyze the transformations among the agrarian elite at the turn of two centuries. The latter serves as the conceptual foundation of research enriched with the data of statistical, clerical, publicist character as well as those in private ownership of landowners.Upon the abolition of serfdom, the agrarian crisis of the late nineteenth century, the largescale peasant movement at the beginning of the 20th century, the Stolypin reform, and the First World War, the agrarian elite, which consisted of nobles until the midth of the nineteenth century, was subjected to sweeping transformations. Among the most noticeable shifts were the rapid reduction of the nobility's land ownership, the replenishment of the agrarian elite by the «new» landowners, and the entrepreneurial reorientation of part of the landlords. The professionalization of the household management, the application of new technologies in agriculture, the development of industrial enterprise, active charity, the rights protection through membersship in various organizations became part of the new reality. In this period, the agrarian elite moved from a privileged state to a class of agrarian entrepreneurs, who found themselved in the conditions of free competition and had to respond to the demands of society. The transformation was interrupted by the revolutionary 1917-1921s, after which the agrarian elite was liquidated. The present research would be further developed through studying of the narrative sources by the agrarian elite on the overcoming of the crisis.