The Participation of Non-proletarian Population in the Establishment of Agricultural Labour Communes in 1918 (with Reference to the Maryinskaya (Maklinskaya) Commune, Kaluga Province)

Abstract

This article discusses the history of establishment of an agricultural labour commune in Kaluga Province in 1918 by a private landowner with the involvement of individuals who had had a privileged position prior to 1917. The author describes the way in which the most well-educated, enthusiastic and well-off representatives of the population of Maloyaroslavets district established the commune and their interaction with the new local authorities. Among the members of the commune, there was a private landowner, a son of a nobleman and landowner, a member of the Uyezd Land Department, a former financial Commissioner of the Uyezd Commission, a former hereditary honorary citizen, a granddaughter of a large landowner, etc. Referring to archival materials, the author reveals that the factor which had a dominant role in the decision on the establishment of the commune was the desire to find an adaptation survival model for the non-proletarian strata of the population within the new socialist reality. It is established that the reason for the elimination of the commune as a “counterrevolutionary organisation” was not only its inconsistency with the proletarian doctrine of the new government, but the use of old communicative practices and patterns by the founders of collective farms, as well as their desire to restore the former financial prosperity through a new form of economic organisation and their unpreparedness for hard peasant labour. The latter caused a collision of personal and material interests among the members of the commune (which had informal connections with some local managers with a low level of proletarian consciousness) with representatives of the Bolshevik government and led to open conflicts, which were not ideological debates, but personal and social hostility, greed, and often actions of criminal nature.