LAND REGULATION IN KUBAN IN THE 1920 s

Abstract

The article discusses the practice of regulation of land relations in the Kubania region in the 1920s and the key aspects of its implementation. The study of the topic allows one to analyze the implementation of the 1922 Land Code at the local level within the framework of microhistorical research. The establishment of Soviet power in the Kubania launched a systematic modernization of all spheres of activity. The especially painful changes affected the land issues, while the pursued land management campaign led to the crisis of traditional forms of agricultural production. The 1922 Land Code was a controversial document confirming the variety of forms of land use and farming, like the community, the district (farmstead) and cooperative ones. However, preference was given to collective farms. There is strong evidence in the Code of conciliatory attitude towards private and collective farms, traditionalist view of the peasant community organization and equality of collective socialist forms. This has contributed not only to the spontaneous development of market relations, but it is also inextricably linked to the social differentiation. In Kubania, during the implementation of the Code and land surveying company, there had been particularly acute relations between the Cossacks and non-resident population being expressed in constant conflicts on this basis. Non-residents were personified as an enemy of the Cossack land ownership and the threat to the traditional Kuban stanitsa society. Mass migration to the fertile lands of Kubania region as a consequence of long war, famine and devastation became one of the causes of land management and reallocation drive. Due to new settlers, the percentage of hamlet-based individual farms was quite high, and the release of the 1922 Land Code not only preserved but also promoted individualistic attitudes. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time in the regional history, consideration is given through the introduction of a complex of archival documents to the implementation of the 1922 Land Code and the transition from the individual to the collective forms of land farming.