Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861-1914 by Yanni s> Kotsonis (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I65 well-oiledwithbooze) and tumultuousproceedings;thedutiesof local officials, the administrationofjustice (understandablycorrupt,and inclined to deferto private justice in cases of rustling), and relationships of both amity and consanguinity,religiousdifferences,propertyand the statusof women. Some interestingpoints emerge: the early practice, reportedby Rigel'man (Istoriia odonskom kazachestve, I778) about drowningbabies (ofwhich O'Rourke is sceptical); the strength of friendship ties; the effectiveness of concerted resistenceto government -as when the Cossacksthwartedthe government's attempt to introduce the zemstvo. That they retained a measure of autonomy, however, was as much due to the state's concern to minimize its costs as to Cossack resistance; and Cossack egalitarianism survived only because the state intervened to rein in the Cossack elite which had been appropriating communityresources.While Cossacksfoughtall comersduringthe CivilWar, their collective stand against the state, whatever its ideological complexion, was based, not on emerging nationalism, but on traditionalcollectivism and esprit decorps which the tsariststatehad itselfhelped to preserveand promote. Department ofHistory PHILIP LONGWORTH McGillUniversity, Montreal Kotsonis, Yanni. MakingPeasantsBackward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia,i86i -I9I4. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 1999. X+ 245 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. 742.50. IN 1914, between a quarter and a third of all peasant households in the Russian Empire belonged to agriculturalcooperatives. Through them they saved and borrowed money, jointly processed and marketed their produce (dairycooperativeswere the most common), and bought equipmentandother goods. The cooperative movement began in the aftermathof the abolition of serfdom,but did not takeoffuntilthe earlytwentiethcentury,especiallyin the years between 1905 and I914. Cooperativeswere 'the only institutionalmass movement to encompass all estates [sosloviia] on a voluntarybasis' (p. i). It is surprising,therefore,that the cooperative movement has received ratherless attention from historianswritingin Englishthan other aspectsof ruralRussia in this period. Thus, Yanni Kotsonis's monograph is a welcome addition to the literature. The leaders and activists of the cooperative movement came almost exclusivelyfrom educated 'society'(obshchestvo), and believed themselvesto be 'enlightened', 'rational'and 'civilized',in contrastto the people (narod), whom they considered 'benighted', 'irrational' and, above all, 'backward'.It was these perceived differencesin cultural'levels'that informed the participation of educated Russians in the cooperative movement, and their conviction in their abilityto 'transforma population that they believed could not conceive of transformingitself' (p. 95). The attitude of some professionalagronomistsis conveyed by a quotation fromAleksandrN. Chelintsev:'Allin all, the agronomistshouldknownot only the demandsof thepopulation itself,but alsothose of which it isnot conscious, i66 SEER, 79, I, 200I those which exist but are accessible only when the specialist-agronomist uncovers them. The agronomist... should know more than what peasants as non-specialistsin economic and organizationalanalysis -have to say.The agronomist should have his own lighthouse [.. .] visible to the agronomist, but perhapsnot visibleto others'(p. I03). The experiencesof earlycooperativesservedto confirmeducated Russians' stereotypesof peasants. Some peasantsused money they had borrowed from cooperativeloan associations,ostensiblyto investin equipment,to fundvillage celebrations, buy consumer goods and pay their taxes. They then borrowed more to repay their initial loans. In the end they had to turn to local money lenders, whom the associations were supposed to supplant, to repay their loans. In othercases, alltoo predictably,villagemoney lendersborrowedfrom loan associationsand then lent the money, at much higherratesof interest,to othervillagers. On the other hand, not all cooperative activists lived up to their selfperceptions . When S. P. Fridolin took up a post as an agronomist in St Petersburgprovince, he lecturedthe peasantson botanical classifications,but was unable to name any of vegetables they grew. He persevered. He used coloured chartsto teach them the 'correct'way to delivercalves (while trying to conceal his revulsion about the thought of seeing real cows giving birth). He set up a model farm which, unfortunately,failed. The peasants told him not to worry about them any more. 'Allthese occurrences', he noted, 'acted destructivelyon my spiritualcondition' (p. II 3). The main focus of the book, however, is not such conflictsof cultureor how cooperatives operated (or did not operate) in the villages. Rather, Kotsonis engages mostly in a careful, at times painstaking,analysis of discussionsand debates inside educated society, between and among government officials, zemstvo nobles, and professional agronomists, about the best ways to foster ruraldevelopment. A recurringtheme is the issue of whetherpeasantsshould be allowed to...