Toward a Market Economy: Fruit and Vegetable Production by the Peasants of New Russia, 1850–1900

Abstract

At some point in the 1850s, Andrei Gorlov planted several fruit trees on his farmstead. His neighbours in the village of Bol'shoe Kopanoe, situated on the land mass bordered by Crimea to the south and the Dnieper River to the north, responded with disbelief, envy, and ill will. Villagers broke branches off his saplings as they walked by, or otherwise damaged the trees as much as possible. Still others threatened to gather the entire village assembly and destroy his orchard. But sheer perseverance enabled Gorlov to surmount these difficulties and his steady success in planting and production won the grudging respect of his peers. Soon neighbours appeared at his door for advice on how best to plant and manage their own orchards. By the 1880s almost every one of the 457 households had orchards that averaged no less than 60 trees. Such impressive orchards attracted merchants from distant cities to purchase the harvested fruit, a portion of which was also sold in the expanding urban markets of southern Ukraine.' How extraordinary was the village of Bol'shoe Kopanoe in southern Ukraine before 1900? What motivated Gorlov suddenly to engage in commercial fruit production, and what accounted for the initial ill will shown by fellow villagers? Though we cannot answer these questions in Gorlov's specific instance, this article identifies both the obstacles and catalysts to peasant agricultural innovation in southern Ukraine before 1900. I am especially interested in the development of, and motivation behind, market-oriented agricultural specialization in vegetable and fruit production among peasants of New Russia. Until recently, little attention has previously been given to market gardening in Imperial Russia generally, or southern Ukraine specifically, despite its importance to agricultural economies. At first glance, such neglect might seem appropriate. Agriculture in New Russia was successively dominated by sheep breeding and grain cultivation in the nineteenth century, with the latter predominant by the 1850s. Yet beyond the sheep pastures and wheat fields, peasant fruit orchards flourished in the northern hilly reaches of New Russia, lush market gardens in the environs of Odessa and other cities, and vineyards in the Dniester river valley. Apiculture had made rapid gains in counties along the Dnieper river by 1900. In exceptional instances peasant agriculturalists had abandoned grain cultivation altogether. What prompted the development of peasant market oriented fruit and vegetable production, and what does it tell us about the relationship between the region's peasants and colonists, who comprised more than a tenth of the rural population while owning one fifth of all allotment lands? Finally, what role did the access to markets play in peasant agricultural history? The first half of this article explores the role that fruit and vegetable gardening played in peasant economies of New Russia before the late nineteenth century. My findings correspond with James C. Scott's about peasant villages in contemporary Asia: he calls them precapitalist societies in the sense that they are reluctant to risk and introduce innovations and are motivated by a cautious safety-first principle.4 Ironically, much of the initial expansion in vegetable and fruit production in New Russia also reflected this cautious approach. The fact that peasants of New Russia had a conservative attitude toward agricultural innovation does not mean that they maintained static practices. On the contrary, considerable evidence points to steadily expanding contact between peasant producers in New Russia and regional, national, and international markets. This expansion was stimulated by a growing transportation network, the successful modelling of new agricultural practices by the region's foreign colonists and Orthodox sectarians, and increased zemstvo activity in schools and experimental farms. The second half of the article sketches out this interaction, and the resulting transformation in one aspect of peasant agriculture. …