Demolished by the whirlwind of revolution

Abstract

The purpose of the article: to study the process of elimination of large landholdings from the agricultural sector of Ukraine throughout the revolutionary transformations of 1917 – early 1920s. Research methods: historical-typological, historical-genetic, historical-comparative. Main results. It is shown that the destruction of large landowner households, beginning in 1917, lasted until the early 1920s and was part of the agrarian policy of the bolsheviks. Agro-industrial complex on the landed estates were under a devastating blow: вuildings were destroyed, working cattle and grain were dismantled by the peasants, the property of the recent owners of the estates was looted, and industrial facilities were destroyed. Liquidation of landowners’ holdings was accompanied by extreme cruelty justified by revolutionary goals. The paper demonstrates M. Shcherbatova’s and S. Falz-Fein’s tragic fate as victims of revolution. Despite attempts to give this process a form of legitimacy and a whole series of legal acts to regulate the process in the countryside, peasants’ spontaneous movement to redistribute land and property in their favour was of great importance. Centuries-old wounds and hatreds, exacerbation of the feeling of social injustice, revolutionary expediency and desire to get rich at the expense of others floated to the surface as a result. In the revolutionary years of 1917–1921 and afterwards, the last page in the history of the landowners’ economy unfolded, when, despite attempts to settle the “land question”, a radical approach prevailed. As the outcome, recent agrarian elite was uprooted by force with material, moral and psychological damage. Scientific novelty: a study of the destruction of large farms through the perception of their owners based on the study of personal archival funds of the Grokholsky, Linke, Tereshchenko, Shcherbatova and others. Type of article: analytical.