Peasant Question Research Articles

Evolution of the bolshevik doctrine on the peasant question in 1917–1929

The objective of this research is to analyze the frameworks and views on the peasant question in Soviet Russia over the examined period. Using the historical, descriptive narrative, comparative, and typological methods, the authors look into the 1917 land reform, attempts to organize large-scale socialist agriculture in 1918–1920, the specific features of the temporary solutions to the peasant question in the period of the New Economic Policy, and the subsequent focus on industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture. The authors conclude that the Bolshevik doctrine evolutionized and preserved full strategic continuity, having undergone several timely tactical adjustments. Each of these stages represented the Bolsheviks’ attempts to retain political control over the predominantly agrarian country, for which purpose the “leading” (in other words, the commanding, dictating, or domineering) role of the working class and the poorest layers of countrymen was persistently proclaimed in relation to peasants who produced surplus goods and had a different system of value (worldview) priorities.

PEASANT PROBLEMS IN THE WORKS OF THE OUN IDEOLOGIST AND THEORETIST PETER FEDUN-"POLTAVA"

Summary. The purpose of the article is to analyze the peasant issues in the ideological-theoretical and epistolary heritage of Peter Fedun-"Poltava". Research methodology – the principles of science, objectivity, historicism, methods of external and internal criticism of sources. The scientific novelty – P. Fedun’s vision concerning the solution of the peasant question in the future Ukrainian state is studied for the first time. Conclusions. Having analyzed the works of Petro Fedun-"Poltava", we claim that all of them are marked by the depth and breadth of the issues raised, some have not even lost their relevance to this day. The style of writing, the clear presentation of opinions, the processing of various literature (including foreign language) indicate to the author’s high intellectual level. Developments required an immediate response to them, therefore much attention was paid to refining the program principles and their popularization as well as refuting the myths created by the Soviet propaganda machine. In his works P. Fedun-"Poltava" wrote about the development of the future Ukrainian state, refinement of the program principles of the OUN, the problem of various social strata, justified its position on the confrontation among the Ukrainian political emigration and more. When considering the problems of different social strata, the question of the peasantry was among the central ones in the works of Peter Fedun. The researcher substantiated the OUN’s position on the peasantry, in particular: forms of land ownership and tools, collectivization (methods and forms of involvement in collective farms, the consequences for the peasantry and resistance to this policy), elections etc. "Poltava" considered the peasantry to be the foundation of the whole nation, emphasizing its contribution to the assimilation and denationalization policy of the occupiers, sacrifice, loyalty to national traditions, the presence of healthy morals and spirit. According to P. Fedun, the economic basis of this society was to be public, national-state or social-cooperative ownership of tools and means of production in all major sectors of the economy, as well as planning and social control of all economic life. P. Fedun saw the solution of the land issue in the formation of national-state ownership of land in the future Ukrainian state, in parallel with individual or collective use of land. At the same time, in the future state, a parliamentary form of government should be established in the future state.

West–Russia–West: The circulation of economic ideas

The paper serves as an introduction to the RuJE special issue on the circulation of economic ideas between Russia and the West. This circulation is a contentious issue, especially among Russian economists. In this article a specific pattern of West–Russia–West transfer is investigated. The pattern suggests that experiencing strong influence from the West, leading Russian economists developed and modified Western economic theories, adapting them to specific Russian political, ideological and cultural circumstances. As a result, they exerted a certain influence over the next generations of Western economists. Among these circumstances the paper mentions moral and religious factors, the peasant question, the special influence of Marxism, the development of mathematics and statistics in Russia in the 1890s–1920s, and the unique experience of building a planned economy.

Debates on the Peasant Question in the Nikolaevan Era

A large scholarly literature exists about plans for a peasant reform in the reign of Nicholas I. However, the most important archival documents about the debates on the peasant question remain unpublished. The new book by T. V. Andreeva “The distant approaches to the Great Reform: The peasant question in Russia in the reign of Nicholas I” seeks to fill this lacuna. The book begins with a historical survey of the six government committees that were tasked with planning reforms, followed by an extensive collection of archival documents of both official and private provenance. In the debates under Nicholas I, the specific problem of serfdom was folded into the larger question of the social position of the peasants, which the government regarded as a source of both political instability and economic backwardness. The solution that officials envisioned was a reform that was comprehensive, multi-faceted, and gradual. Step-by-step, the evolution that had led to creation of serfdom from the 17th century onward was to be reversed: the landlords were gradually to lose their power over the person of the serfs, who were to be attached only to the land itself. Eventually, the serfs were to be emancipated with land; in the meantime, restrictions on the power of landlords and a comprehensive reform of the state peasants were to serve as preparatory steps. According to Andreeva, the vision of Nicholas and his advisors was too limited and conservative, and premised on the mistaken belief that it was possible to modernize the country without touching the core of the sociopolitical system.

“…The Noblemen who are Kind to the People”: Representation Reform of 1861 in the Beginning of the Emancipation Reform of 1861 in the Letters of Vasyl Tarnovsky Sr. to Hryhoriy Galagan

The article refers to the letters of Vasyl Tarnovsky Sr. (1810–1866) to Hryhoriy Galagan (1819–1888) as a source for the research of the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which became one of the most important events in the history of Ukraine in the 19th century, as it stimulated socio-economic modernization, and the concepts of “pre-reform period” and “post-reform period” are still relevant to historiographical discourse. The aim of the article is to publish Vasyl Tarnovskys letters to Hryhoriy Galagan, written during February–May of 1861. Due to this, it is possible to investigate more deeply the implementation of the reform in the Left-Bank Ukraine, considering that Tarnovsky and Galagan were named as members from Government to provincial presence of peasant affairs (the first — in Poltava, and the second one — in Chernihiv). The biographical information which was given in the article show that Vasyl Tarnovsky and Hryhoriy Galagan, who belonged to the top of the Ukrainian local nobility, were interested in the “peasant question” for a long time, also were principled supporters of the abolition of serfdom and together took an active part in preparing the Emancipation Reform. As members of the Chernihiv Provincial Committee for Peasant Affairs, and then as members of the Editorial Commissions in St. Petersburg. Vasyl Tarnovskys epistolary heritage, which refers to the first half of 1861, helps to characterise the network of social communications, which played a key role in the implementation of the Emancipation Reform in Poltava and Chernihiv. This correspondence reveals the attitude of local officials and local nobility to the reform, and shows what problems the reformers had to face at this time. The texts of the letters given in the article are accompanied by comments, which were aimed at contextualization these epistolary materials (regarding the characteristics of the personalities mentioned in them, etc.)

The Novelesco Realism of the European Peasant Question

The Novelesco Realism of the European Peasant Question

CONTRIBUIÇÕES DE ÉLISÉE RECLUS AO DEBATE SOBRE A QUESTÃO AGRÁRIA

The purpose of this article, is to analyze the contribution made by the French anarchist-geographer (Élisée Reclus) on specific issues related to the agrarian question. For this, from the vast work of the libertarian intellectual, the political and geographic texts were selected, which he approached with greater private appropriation of the land and the peasant question based on the atrocious assumptions. Among the results, the importance of unity and the centrality of the struggle of workers (rural and urban) against the State and capital and the potential of peasants as agents and protagonists of this process stand out.

The Commodification of Food, Farming and Farmers: A Critical Review of Farm Laws, 2020

The recently enacted Farm Laws in India has led to widespread and vigorous protests across the country. It has been hailed as a watershed moment by the neoliberal market analysts and is compared to the 1991 economic reforms, based on the notions of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. A critical review of these laws and amendments needs to be situated in the larger narrative of commodification, wherein certain essential goods and services are appropriated and standardised and traded at market-determined prices. The present review intends to place these new laws in the broader policies and ‘projects’ of neoliberalisation of nature. A critical look at these laws shows that they have profound implications for social justice and environmental sustainability. It seeks to cross-question the food question and the peasant question by revisiting the ontological questions of what constitutes food and farming. It considers the new debate and the old vision of ‘food as commons’, and find that the new laws are, in fact, a continuation of attempts by neoliberal markets and states to commodify food and farming activities. Nevertheless, such attempts, for various reasons, face active resistance in the form of countermovements by the peasantry and enter the arena of political economy. The review argues that the present peasant resistance should be considered as part of the larger environmental justice movements.

Predposylki reform v Rossijskoj imperii 1860-h gg.: istoricheskij analiz

The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the reforms of the Russian Empire of the sixties of the nineteenth century, their features, contradictions: the imperial status of foreign policy and the lagging behind the countries of Western Europe in special political, economic relations. The authors studied the activities of reformers and the nobility on the peasant question, as well as legitimate conservatism.

The Tudeh Party of Iran and the peasant question, 1941–53

This article will examine the Tudeh Party of Iran’s (TPI) attitude and agency towards the peasant question between its foundation in 1941 and the end of the party’s ability to operate in the domestic political scene in 1953. Based on a close reading of party printed material and other relevant primary sources from those dozen years, the study will analyse the TPI’s attempt to formulate a coherent and practicable stance on the pressing issue of the amelioration of the peasant condition during the early stages of its formation and develop a lasting presence, with varying degrees of success, within the large peasant contingent of the Iranian population of the time until the August 1953 coup d’état which brought an end to the activities of the party’s front organisations, including the body devoted to the peasant question. Besides focusing on the formations through which the Tudeh sought to engage directly with rural communities and formulate a platform based on their grievances and requests, this article will also compare the Tudeh’s agency within this segment of the Iranian population with its efforts across other strata of the Iranian society at the time as well as the party’s reactions to peasant-oriented initiatives carried out by both local and national administrations during this period.

Briefwechsel. Band 1: Texte by Merkel Garlieb Dirk Sangmeister Thomas Taterka Jörg Drews (review)

SEER, 98, 2, APRIL 2020 374 nevertheless desired to bolster ‘the collective rights’ of the Muslim community inside Russia (p. 180). Finally, two chapters analyse the impact of constraints on religious freedom imposed by the Russian church and state. Daniel Scarborough examines the ‘oppressive influence of state protection of state religion’ (p. 159) within the work of professional missionaries established in Orthodox dioceses from 1886 to oppose sectarianism and preserve the purity of Orthodoxy. Instead of strengthening the church by regulating interfaith relations, these official missionaries ‘exacerbated interfaith tensions’ (p. 158) and negatively affected the ability for Orthodox voluntary associations to attract non-Orthodox members and meaningfully join emerging civil society. Finally, J. Eugene Clay assesses the impact of the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations on religious communities in contemporary Russia. Tracing how two Buddhist denominations, a Presbyterian movement and the new Orthodox Church of the Sovereign Mother of God (OCSMG) adapted their religious histories and alliances to fit within the proscribed boundaries of acceptable confessions, Clay concludes that the law ‘may have the unintended consequence of weakening, rather than strengthening, the “traditional” religions of Russia’ (p. 212). Thisbriefsummarydoesnotdojusticetotheconsistentlyimpressiveresearch and analysis — as well as the diversity of voices, positions, and experiences — that these eight chapters bring to the discussion of ‘freedom of conscience’ in Russia. This book should be welcomed by scholars in the fields of religious history, intellectual history and the history of the Russian Empire. Department of History Barbara Skinner Indiana State University Merkel, Garlieb. Briefwechsel. Band 1: Texte. Edited by Dirk Sangmeister, with Thomas Taterka and Jörg Drews. Presse und Geschichte — Neue Beiträge, 133. Philanthropismus und populäre Aufklärung — Studien und Dokumente, 16. edition lumière, Bremen, 2019. 547 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Index. €44.80. The German writer and publicist Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850) has had, historically, an unjustifiably bad press. His name belongs in the history of German literature and journal publishing, and also in the social and cultural history of his native Latvia and the Russian Empire. His political writings attracted the hostility of the Baltic German establishment, and he deliberately courted controversy as a literary writer and publisher. REVIEWS 375 Born in Riga, the son of an immigrant Lutheran pastor from Danzig, Merkel made a name for himself first with a flaming attack on serfdom and the Baltic German serf-owning landowners of Livonia, Die Letten, vorzüglich in Liefland, am Ende des philosphischen Jahrhunderts (The Latvians, principally in Livland, at the end of the Philosophical Century), Leipzig 1797, which was banned in Russia. This publicistic masterpiece had significant influence on the peasant question in the Russian Baltic states, but brought him lasting hostility among the Baltic German establishment. Merkel also has other claims to fame. Compelled to go to Germany to publish his book, and to earn a living by his pen, he settled in Berlin in 1802 and became an pugnacious and widely-read literary commentator, a notorious participant on the losing side of tradition in the ‘literary fisticuffs’ which raged between the new German Romantics, including Goethe, and the defenders of older literary norms. He also went into newspaper and journal publishing, and is credited with the invention of the feature article (Feuilleton) in German papers. After his return to Riga in 1806 Merkel became for many years one of the leading Baltic journalists and journal publishersofhisgeneration,writingforbothaBalticGermanandamainstream German audience. At the same time he maintained his interest in the economy and the local peasantry, celebrating the abolition of Baltic serfdom in 1816–19 with Die Freien Letten und Esthen (The Free Latvians and Estonians), 1820, for which he was awarded a pension by Tsar Alexander I. After his death in 1850 his early pro-Latvian writings became an inspiration for the first ethnic Latvian university graduates who formed the ‘Young Latvian’ movement: in 1869 they erected a memorial ‘from the grateful Latvians’ over his burial place outside Riga. Die Letten was translated into Latvian after independence in 1920, but there is no full biography in any language. Merkel’s bad literary reputation followed him into the twentieth century, and in the Soviet Latvian period his championing of Latvian nationhood made him suspect...

Проблемы изучения крестьянского движения 1902–1907 гг. в Российской империи в трудах отечественных и зарубежных исследователей

The article considers the main research on the peasant question, peasant uprisings in 1902–1907 in the Russian Empire. It is proposed to identify 3 main areas of interest for researchers whose works are devoted to peasant movements: Political, social, and economic. This approach will not only give a more objective view of the object of research, but also allow a better understanding of the context of works on the peasant movement.

Крестьянский вопрос и пути его решения в зеркале деловой прессы рубежа 50-60-х гг. XIX в.

Крестьянский вопрос и пути его решения в зеркале деловой прессы рубежа 50-60-х гг. XIX в.

Thomas Hardy's Modern Peasant

Abstract This article reads Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles as one instance of the way literary engagements with the peasant question in late nineteenth-century Europe at once shed light onto the lived experiences of rural populations and elaborated the theoretical preoccupations pertaining to peasants' status in their contemporary society. It makes a case for Hardy's lucid awareness of the continuing nature of primitive accumulation in England and demonstrates that the text aptly explores its effects on various rural social classes. To do so, the article closely examines the chronopolitics that underpin the troubled encounter between Tess and Angel to argue that their divergent temporal orders both enable and preclude an alliance between the two worlds they stem from. Ultimately, the article investigates the dynamic between modernity and peasanthood to argue for their metonymic, as opposed to antonymic, relationship.

Sam Moyo and Samir Amin on the Peasant Question

This second Sam Moyo Lecture was delivered in Harare, Zimbabwe, on 22 January 2019, during the Annual Agrarian Summer School organized by The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies and the Agrarian South Network. The lecture celebrates the life and legacy of two great Pan-Africanists and world intellectuals, Samir Amin and Sam Moyo, who were close friends with mutual respect and admiration for each other, and who passed away in quick succession in the last 3 years. The lecture addresses three areas that were close to both Amin and Moyo: first, trajectories of accumulation on a world scale; second, the contestations over the agrarian question and third, the contradictions of the national question. Sam’s and Samir’s works were mutually complementary. Sam’s empirical research was thorough and conscientious; his research site was Zimbabwe, but he trained his sight on the continent. Samir painted in broad strokes on the world canvas; his theory was global, his vision was epochal. In Sam and Samir, we had a fine ‘glocal’ pair. They have left us a wealth of writings from which we will continue to draw for many years to come.

On the Path to Reform: The State Peasant Question in the Secret Committees of Nicholas I

This article considers the background of state peasant reform, its ideological sources, and practical outcome. The Great Reforms are not described as a single act but as a long process reflecting the complex character of Russian modernisation. With reference to previously unstudied documents, both official and private, the author analyses Nicholas I’s policy regarding the peasant question. It was based on the principle of gradual social change and the rejection of a single abrupt abolition of serfdom. It also focused on laying the foundations for future emancipation. The committees of 6 December 1826 and 1828 maintained the idea of a complex reform based on transforming the management of state peasants through a gradual and controlled change of their status. The committee of 1835 also drafted a programme of changes in state-owned villages. The author regards the reform of state peasants as a comprehensive process reflecting the progressive character of the social and economic development of Russia: it was aimed at rationalising income-generating systems of land management and use, taxation, and the administration of state-owned villages. Despite the differences between the drafts worked out by the secret committees of 1826, 1828, and 1835, they can be characterised by certain similarities, i. e. their strategic aims (the strengthening of the Russian state). Thus, they included the development of the legal status of state peasants and state control of all the spheres of their lives. The article pays close attention to the model of the two-pronged reform formulated by M. M. Speransky and perfected by P. D. Kiselev. Although the methods proposed to solve the peasant question did not rely on the peasant population, they were aimed at eliminating the extreme features of serfdom, thus illustrating the desire of the autocratic government to nurture bourgeois social relations. The official reform of the agrarian sphere of the second half of the 1820s and the early 1830s was characterised by its consecutive incremental nature and the modernisation of the social structure and state management at the central and local levels.

Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia by Susan Smith-Peter

Reviewed by: Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia by Susan Smith-Peter Colum Leckey (bio) Susan Smith-Peter. Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Leiden: Brill, 2018. ISBN 978-90-04-35351-0. The entangled histories of provincial Russia and serfdom have stimulated a long line of scholarship. From the 1960s through the 1980s, monographs by P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Terrence Emmons, and Daniel Field established the narrative framework for exploring the political, economic, and ideological factors driving the emancipation of the Russian serfs. Since then, notable works by John Randolph, Katherine Pickering Antonovna, and Catherine Evtuhov, to name a few, have applied the methods of microhistory to examine the family, gender, and local dimensions of the peasant question that engaged Russia's national intelligentsia. In Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Susan Smith-Peter examines the equally complex intersection of local knowledge and experience with Russia's expansive network of rural public associations in the three decades preceding the end of serfdom in 1861. Focusing on the town of Vladimir and its adjacent districts, her research skillfully links the well-known debates transpiring in the capitals to the mental and physical spaces of one of Russia's most ancient historical regions. The result is a comprehensive portrait of a dynamic public sphere rooted in Vladimir's local particularities that envisioned a postemancipation civil society independent of the Russian state. For her part, Smith-Peter utilizes the methods of spatial history and the Enlightenment's own theories of civil society to highlight "the interplay between the state, estates (soslovie), and what was coming to see itself as society" (27). In the first two chapters, she recreates in expert detail the administrative, institutional, ecological, and socioeconomic spaces of the province. Based on extensive archival materials from Vladimir and other cities, her analysis confirms the existence of a robust protoindustrial and market-based economy centered on the textile towns of Iur´ev-Pol´skii and Ivanovno as well as a network of public spaces dating back to Catherine II's Statute on the Provinces. Although the stimuli for these social and economic developments came from the Russian state, by the mid-point of Nicholas I's reign Vladimir displayed the traits of an autonomous public sphere, including a public library, museum, statistical committee, and a newspaper whose "unofficial section" offered its local readers "a new mental picture of Vladimir province" (137). More intriguingly, Smith-Peter's archival digging has uncovered numerous examples of informal associations and obscure writers who together comprised and imagined the local public: seminarians with their handwritten samizdat-style journals; district [End Page 261] agricultural societies inspired by the Slavophiles; subscription lists filled with the names of men and women who formed civil society's personal networks; and the Old Believer V. A. Borisov, whose study of his native district was the first in Vladimir "to present workers as a complex group" (114-15). All told, Smith-Peter methodically and persuasively demolishes the outdated image of provincial Russia as a cultural backwater. Aside from rummaging through Vladimir's forgotten public spaces, Smith-Peter also chronicles the role of local intellectuals in forming visions of postemancipation society. Chapters 3 and 4 plot the trajectories of two parallel "modes of civil society" that evolved as the peasant question came to dominate public discussion in the 1850s. The first, inspired by Adam Smith's stadial theory of history and promoted by the Slavophiles, held that serfdom should be abolished "organically" and in concert with modernizing landowners as Russia inevitably advanced to the commercial stage of social development. By contrast, the second model endorsed the Hegelian notion of civil society based on shared property rights. Applied to postemancipation conditions, the latter envisioned a vigorous public sphere whose stakeholders—nobles, freed serfs, clergy, and merchants—would rise above estate interests to represent "society." Although Smith-Peter's analysis pretty much follows the reigning narrative established by Emmons and Field, her archival work does expand the depths and parameters of the national dialogue beyond noble assemblies to include provincial agricultural associations in Vladimir and elsewhere. Her rediscovery of...

Отражение творчества М. Е. Салтыкова-Щедрина в исследованиях В. И. Семевского о крепостном праве и крестьянском вопросе в России

The study of the literary and journalistic image of serfdom and the peasant question in the works by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, conducted by the prominent historian of the Russian peasantry V. I. Semevsky, is considered. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that it is devoted to the analysis of the first attempt to study the anti-serfdom content of the works of the outstanding Russian satirist and publicist as a historical source on the history of the Russian peasantry. The long-term process of V. I. Semevsky’s work on this topic is covered. It is shown that M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s consideration of the peasant question is connected with the acute internal political struggle in the course of preparation and implementation of the peasant reform. The authors dwell on V. I. Semevsky’s assessments of the socio-cultural image of the Russian peasantry and nobility in the “Poshekhonskaya starina.” The proximity of the world outlook positions of the historian and the writer is revealed. Special attention is paid to the legal status of peasants in the process of preparation and implementation of the peasant reform. It is concluded that the brochure and articles by V. I. Semevsky about M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin can be regarded as tools of ideological polemics with representatives of the conservative community, who sought to form nostalgia for pre-reform mores in Russian society and to rehabilitate them to some extent.

The Enlightenment and Social Emancipation under Catherine II: From “Cultural Shock” to Modernisation Practices

Referring to an analysis of published and archival sources, this article demonstrates that starting with the reign of Catherine II, the positive solution of the peasant question began to be closely connected with the development of Enlightenment both among the population and the ruling class. The cultural shock the empress-to-be experienced upon her arrival in Russia (being struck by backwardness, the lack of freedom, and state disorder) played a decisive role in the situation. Not daring to take direct action to abolish serfdom, she began to prepare the cultural and moral ground to make it possible in the future. From the point of view of modernisation theory and intellectual history approaches, the school reform of the late eighteenth century most fully corresponded to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the modernisation prospects of the country of all the measures implemented during the reign of Catherine II. This reform paved the way for the establishment and development of a state educational system. The establishment of the Russian comprehensive school was an indispensable condition for the modernisation of the country; it was also necessary to secure the results and continue the development of changes in public, intellectual, and cultural life. When developing and implementing the reform, the country relied on the experience of Austria, one of the “enlightened monarchies” of Europe: Emperor Joseph II himself took part in this matter. Catherine II’s school reform was supported and promoted by representatives of the international scholarly community working in Russia, including academicians F. U. Aepinus and Au. L. Schlözer. The school reform relied on the most progressive principles; for example, the coeducation of children of all classes and both sexes and free education. These principles significantly outpaced the readiness of Russian society to perceive them and could not be fully realised; historically speaking, however, the country took a step in the right direction. It played an important role in cultivating an “enlightened bureaucracy”, laying the groundwork for the future abolition of serfdom and the reformation of Russian society as a whole. Considering national peculiarities and problems together with other educational initiatives, Catherine II’s school reform was an example of a largely successful implementation of a modernisation project on the path towards cultural Westernisation.

MEDAL WORKS ON HISTORICAL THEMATICS IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM OF ODESA (END OF THE 19th – BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY)

MEDAL WORKS ON HISTORICAL THEMATICS IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM OF ODESA (END OF THE 19th – BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY)