This paper owes much to Clive Dewey, not only for his editorial role, but because his work prompted me to think more widely about these issues.
1 Lenin, V. I., ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1972) (all subsequent references are to this edition), p. 70.
3 Labour service, Lenin commented, ‘presupposes and requires the middle peasant’. Ibid., p. 186.
5 Lenin, V. I., ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905–1907’, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (Moscow, 1972), p. 229.
6 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 329.
7 Lenin, V. I., ‘New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One. Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America’, Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow, 1974), p. 87.
8 For wider treatment of the Populists, see Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant (London, 1951), Ch. 3.
9 For a study of different views about indebtedness, see Dewey, Clive, ‘The Official Mind and the Problem of Agricultural Indebtedness in India, 1870–1914’, (Cambridge Ph.D., 1973).
10 Chayanov's major works, ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, of 1924 and ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, of 1925 have been translated in Thorner, Daniel, Kerblay, Basile and Smith, R. E. F. (eds), A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Illinois, 1966) (all subsequent references to the two works are to this edition). Of the large and growing literature on Chayanov's ideas, I find the following the most interesting: Daniel Thorner, ‘Chayanov's Concept of Peasant Economy’, and Basile Kerblay, ‘A. V. Chayanov: Life, Career, Works's, in ibid.; Kerblay, Basile, ‘Chayanov and the Theory of Peasantry as a Specific Type of Economy’, in Shanin, Teodor (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies (London, 1971), pp. 150–60;Millar, James R., ‘A Reformulation of A. V. Chayanov's Theory of Peasant Economy’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 18, 2 (01 1970), pp. 219–29;Harrison, Mark, ‘Chayanov and the Economics of the Russian Peasantry’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2, 4 (07 1975), pp. 389–417; reviews by Domar, Evsey D., The American Economic Review, 58 (06 1968), pp. 632–4, and Clark, Colin, Soviet Studies, 19, 2 (10 1967), pp. 292–3.
11 ‘A very wide area of economic life’, Chayanov began, ‘is based, not on a capitalist form, but on the completely different form of a non-wage family economic unit’. Chayanov, ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, p. 1.
12 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 58.
13 Shanin, Teodor, ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, Soviet Studies, 23 (1971–1972), pp. 222–35 and The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972), Pt 2.
14 For a discussion of recent ideas on the Indian peasantry, see Stokes, Eric, ‘The Return of the Peasant to South Asian History’, South Asia, 6 (12 1976), pp. 96–111; on Tokugawa Japan, see Smith, T. C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, 1959).
15 Washbrook, David, ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The “Dry Region”, 1878–1929’, Dewey, Clive and Hopkins, A. G. (eds), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London, 1978), pp. 68–82.
16 Rajat, and Ray, Ratna, ‘The Dynamics of Continuity in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 2 (1973).
17 Kessinger, Tom G., Vilyatpur, 1848–1968: Social and Economic Change in a North Indian village (Berkeley and London, 1974).
18 Kessinger, Tom G., ‘The Peasant Farm in North India, 1848–1968’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), pp. 303–23 and Dewey, Clive, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification amongst the Punjab Peasantry: Some Hypotheses’, I.C.S. seminar paper, 2 March 1976. Both papers discuss favourably Chayanov's ideas and their value for Indian studies.
19 Dewey, , ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry’, p. 6.
20 Kessinger, , ‘The Peasant Farm in North India’, p. 320.
21 For example, the general idea of whether the peasant economy forms a valid separate economic category. For a recent discussion of this, see Ennew, Judith, Hirst, Paul and Tribe, Keith, ‘“Peasantry” as an Economic Category’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 4 (07 1977), pp. 295–322.
22 Mitrany, , Marx Against the Peasant, pp. 47–52.
23 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 39.
24 Lenin, , ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution’, p. 243.
25 Harrison, Mark, ‘The Peasant Mode of Production in the Work of A. V. Chayanov’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 4 (07 1977), p. 335.
26 For example, he says of Chayanov's theory of the way the peasantry acts: ‘by studying it we learn more about the processes of ideological formation within which he developed his work, than about the peasantry as such’. Ibid., p. 324. Yet Chayanov's school compiled an invaluable mass of empirical data about the Russian peasantry.
27 I.e. ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, of 1924 and ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’ of 1925.
28 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 266.
30 Kremnev, Ivan (pseud, A. V. Chayanov.), ‘The Journey of my Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia’, (translated by Myskow, T. M. and Smith, R. E. F.), The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 1 (10 1976), pp. 63–116.
31 For example, the argument that certain forms of indirect taxation, the major means of revenue raising in the Peasant Utopia, prove more egalitarian in impact that direct taxation reflects a growing view in contemporary political discussions about taxation policy.
32 Chayanov argued here that socialism had grown up as a reaction of the working classes to the especially harsh conditions of industrial capitalism. As such, it was an unbalanced creed, with few lessons for the rural situation.
33 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 324 n.
34 Male, D. J., ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, Soviet Studies, 14, 3 (01 1963), pp. 225–48.
35 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 44.
38 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 185.
40 Chayanov, , ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, p. 5.
41 For a discussion of the ‘hali system’ and its evolution in modern times see Breman, Jan, Patronage and Exploitation. Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974).
42 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 112.
44 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 237.
46 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 101.
47 Munting, R., ‘Outside Earnings in the Russian Peasant Farm: Tula Province 1900–1917’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 3, 4 (07 1976), pp. 428–46.
48 Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 140.
51 For example, the argument has recently been reasserted by Perlin in his review of Kessinger's Vilyatpur. See Perlin, Frank, ‘Cycles, Trends and Academics among the Peasantry of North-West India’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2, 3 (04 1975), pp. 360–70.
52 Domar makes this point well: if it is remembered that, strictly speaking, the capitalist maximizes utility, not profit, then Chayanovian actions seem hardly very different for ‘it turns out that a peasant family…maximizes its utility by equating its marginal disutility (‘drudgery’ in the English translation) of labour with its marginal utility of income’. Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy by Domar, Evsey D., The American Economic Review, 58 (06 1968), p. 633.
53 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 107.
54 See Munting, ‘Outside Earnings in the Russian Peasant Farm’.
55 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 108.
56 Harrison seizes on this problem when he remarks: ‘there is no satisfactory answer to the question of how peasant families expand their reproducible assets over the family life-cycle’. See Harrison, , ‘Chayanov and the Economics of the Russian Peasantry’, p. 403.
57 Quoted in Lewin, M., Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (London, 1968), p. 42.
58 These qualifications, too, were not very exclusive: for example, one was ownership of three or more draught animals. Lewin, M., ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, Soviet Studies, 18, 2 (10 1966), p. 195.
61 Lewin, , Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, p. 77.
62 Male, , ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, p. 231.
63 Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy, by Domar, , p. 634.
64 Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, p. 223.
65 Lewin, , Russian Peasants and Soviet Power.
66 Hsiao, Kung-chuan, Rural China. Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, 1960), p. 441.
67 A recent study of the famine of 1891–92 paints a more favourable picture of the Tsarist government's response than is customarily presented. Even so, the evidence of gross administrative inefficiency, for example in the initial organization of the railway'srole, is striking. See Robbins, Richard G. Jnr, Famine in Russia. The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis (N. York and London, 1975).
68 The following details can be read and are amplified in: Falkus, M. E., The Industrialization of Russia 1700–1914 (London, 1972), Chs 8 and 9;Crisp, Olga, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (London, 1976), Ch 1; Gerschenkron, A., ‘Agrarian Policies and Industrialization, Russia 1861–1917’, Postan, M. and Habbakuk, H. J. (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1966), Vol. 6, Pt 2, Ch 8;Carson, G. B., ‘Russia 1890–1939’, Aitken, H. G. J. (ed), The State and Economic Growth (N. York, 1959), pp. 115–47;Dobb, Maurice, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (5th edn, London, 1960), Pt 1;Nove, Alec, An Economic History of the USSR (London, 1969), Ch. 1.
69 She argues that ‘the taxed commodities were only sporadically consumed by peasants while for the urban population they were articles of necessity. Even the consumption of spirits…was in the village occasional rather than regular’. Crisp, , Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914, p. 28.
70 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, August 1914 (London, 1972); a devastating account of military muddle.
71 Nove, , An Economic History of the USSR, p. 67.
72 This is Robbins' estimate, pointing out how much greater was the mortality in this and in the post-collectivization Ukraine famine of 1932–33 than in 1891–92. See Robbins, Jnr, Famine in Russia, p. 172.
73 Bol'shakov, A. M., ‘The Soviet Countryside 1917–1924. Its Economics and Life’ (translated by Myskow, T. M. and Smith, R. E. F.), The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 1 (10 1976), p. 45.
75 ‘The peasant economy was increasingly confined to in-kind forms by the breakdown of the economy, the nationalization of industry, the abolition of free trade, the extreme restriction of movement within the country, the rapid fall in the value of paper money and so on’. Ibid., p. 45.
76 Lewin, , ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, p. 201.
77 Bol'shakov at any rate suggests this of Tver province: ‘… the present-day peasant lives exclusively from the income of his farm. Yet, before the war and the revolution,…agriculture gave the peasant only 64 per cent of his annual income; the remaining 36 per cent came from off-farm and local crafts and trades’. Bol'shakov, , ‘The Soviet Countryside 1917–1924’, p. 43.
78 Male, , ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, p. 229.
79 Nove, , An Economic History of the USSR, p. 48.
81 Lewin, , ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, pp. 189–212.
82 Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia 1905–1930’, p. 234.
83 Clark, Colin, Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy in Soviet Studies, 19, 2 (10 1967), p. 293.
84 See Shanin, , The Awkward Class, Pt 2.
85 Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, p. 231.
86 See, for example, Thorner's comments. Thorner, , ‘Chayanov's Concept of Peasant Economy’, in Thorner, , Kerblay, and Smith, (eds), A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy, p. xxi.
87 See Smith, R. E. F., The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 1–27.
88 Charlesworth, Neil, ‘Trends in the Agricultural Performance of the Bombay Presidency, 1900–1920’, Paper read at the SSRC Conference on Indian Economic and Social History, Cambridge, 24 July, 1975.
89 Here, according to Rajat Ray, population increased by 10.8 per cent between1901 and 1921 at a time when the cultivated acreage was actually contracting. Ray, Rajat, ‘The Crisis of Bengal Agriculture 1870–1927—the Dynamics of Immobility’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 3 (09 1973), p. 249.
90 See, for example, S(elections from the) R(ecords of the) B(ombay) G(overnment) N(ew) S(eries), No. 632, Settlement Report on Alibag taluka, Kolaba District, by Hood, J. R., 30 April 1924, para. 18.
91 Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, pp. 235–7.
92 Gerschenkron, , ‘Agrarian Policies and Industrialization, Russia 1861–1917’, p. 729.
93 Crisp, , Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914, p. 21.
94 See Tokmakoff, George, ‘Stolypin's Agrarian Reform: an Appraisal’, The Russian Review, 30 (1971), pp. 124–38.
95 I.e. Tom Kessinger and Clive Dewey.
96 Kumar, Dharma, Land and Caste in South India. Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1965), p. 190.
97 Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay, Revenue Dept Papers, Vol. 258 of 1892, No. 749, Brief memorandum on the material condition of the people of the Bombay Presidency, 1881–1891, para. 1.
98 Kumar, Dharma, Land and Caste in South India, p. 189.
99 See Ali, M. Wazed, ‘Jute in the Agrarian History of Bengal, 1870–1914: a Study in Primary Production’ (Glasgow M. Litt., 1975), Ch 4.
100 Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, 1926–28 (Govt of India, 1929), Vol. 2, Pt 1, para. 3567, Evidence of Harold H. Mann, Director of Agriculture, Bombay Presidency.
101 Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relationships in South Gujarat, Ch 5.
102 Kessinger, , Vilyatpur 1848–1968, p. 92.
104 See Charlesworth, Neil, ‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants in Late Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra’, Dewey, and Hopkins, (eds), The Imperial Impact, pp, 97–113.
105 See my ‘Agrarian Society and British Administration in Western India, 1847–1920’, (Cambridge Ph.D., 1974), Ch 7.
106 See Hurd, John, ‘Railways and the Expansion of Markets in India, 1861–1921’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), pp. 263–88.
107 Kessinger, , ‘The peasant farm in north India, 1848–1968’, p. 319.
108 Dewey, Clive, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry: some Hypotheses’, ICS seminar paper, 2 March 1976, p. 8.
109 Eric Stokes, in a recent wideranging essay on the Indian peasantry, comments: ‘there seems general agreement that the “golden age” of the rich peasant in India spanned the period 1860–1900’. Stokes, Eric, ‘The Return of the Peasant to South Asian History’, p. 102.
110 Stokes gives a good example of such groups: the lesser Kunbis in mid-century Gujarat attempting to gain Patidar status. See ibid.
111 Keatinge, G., Rural Economy in the Bombay Deccan (London, 1912), p. 72.
112 Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relationships in South Gujarat, p. 74.
113 See McAlpin, Michelle B., ‘The Effects of Expansion of Markets on Rural Income Distribution in Nineteenth-Century India’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), pp. 289–302.
114 Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, p. 75.
115 SRBGNS, No. 647, Settlement Report on Bardoli taluka, Surat District by Jayakar, M. S., 30 06 1925, para. II.
116 Ibid., A. M. Macmillan to M. S. Jayakar, 18 October 1925.
117 Broomfield, R. S. and Maxwell, R. M., Report of the Special Enquiry into the Second Revision Settlement of the Bardoli and Chorasi talukas (Bombay, 1929), para. 24.
118 As in Ravinder Kumar's Maharashtra. See Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century (London and Toronto, 1968).
119 As in Rajat and Ratna Ray's Bengal. See Rajat and Ratna Ray, ‘The Dynamics of Continuity in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’.
120 See Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century.
121 Smith, , The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan.
122 See Washbrook, , ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The “Dry Region”, 1878–1929’, Dewey, and Hopkins, (eds), The Imperial Impact, pp. 68–82; Charlesworth, ‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants in Late Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra’, ibid, pp. 97–113.
123 See Dore's, R. P. highly suggestive article, ‘Land Reform and Japan's Economic Development—a Reactionary Thesis’, Shanin, (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies, pp. 377–88.
124 See Stokes, Eric, ‘The Structure of Landholding in Uttar Pradesh, 1860–1948’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 12 (1975), pp. 113–32; and Kumar, Dharma, ‘Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency: 1853–54 to 1946–47,’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 12 (1975), pp. 229–61.
125 Thus Clive Dewey concedes that special factors, particularly the effects of Sikh rule, are involved in what he calls ‘the flatness of peasant society in the Punjab’. See Clive Dewey, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry’.
