Interaction of Community and Family Patterns of Life in Southern Villages (Based on Research Materials of 2018)

Abstract

There is a combination of two and more household practices – collective and family ones in a modern village. The author of the article describes the changes of collective farms in the South of Russia in the early 21st century. During the transformations of the 1990s, the collective way of life supported the village, rural society in the struggle for survival, thereby preventing social cataclysms. Former Soviet state farms and collective farms turned into agricultural organizations (agricultural associations) or gradually disappeared. The author analyzes the fate of collective farms in such South Russian regions as the Republic of Kalmykia, Astrakhan and Volgograd regions, Stavropol region, which are large agricultural producers. Collective farms in these regions could not avoid the disastrous consequences of the agrarian reforms of the 1990s, which resulted in a huge number of "abandoned" villages left without village-forming enterprises. The researcher analyzes some results of sociological research conducted in summer–autumn 2018 in the studied South Russian regions. 400 rural residents, 100 people in each subject were interviewed. The results of the study demonstrate that the way of private farms (36 %) is common in all analyzed regions. This is followed by PFEs (peasant farm enterprises) (15 %), agricultural enterprises (9 %). The number of agricultural associations and the number of their employees have significantly decreased. Small farms of the population are the basis of the agricultural society of the regions under consideration. The author defines three urgent problems of four regions. They are the following: a decent wage, a good leader suggesting the way out of a difficult situation, consolidation of young people in the countryside. The analysis shows that interaction between collective and family patterns of life is gradually dimming. The owners of private farms are becoming more autonomous, their dependence on the farm is gradually disappearing.