The Troubled Countryside
Although the Emancipation of 1861 freed the peasants of the Russian Empire from their landlords, it did not improve their economic condition. In fact, any discussion of the condition of the peasant in the postemancipation era reads like an endless and depressing litany of troubles.
Some of these problems stemmed directly from errors in judgment by the architects of the reforms. Their most grievous mistake was to place too great a financial burden on the peasantry, while at the same time providing it with too little land. Thus, in addition to onerous redemption payments, peasants had to pay a head tax and were also indirectly taxed when they bought such goods as sugar, tea, tobacco, cotton, iron implements, and, most important, vodka. Late in the 19th century, when a government commission investigated the matter of financial overload, it reported that – if redemption payments were included – peasants payed ten times more taxes than did the nobles. Even after the government abolished the head tax in 1886 and redemption payments in 1905, indirect taxes soaked up most of the peasants’ meager amounts of cash.To meet their financial obligations, some peasants would borrow money either from other peasants who were better off or, on the Right Bank in particular, from Jews who specialized in moneylending. But with interest rates often exceeding 150%, the peasants would usually only sink deeper into debt. Others attempted to sell what little surplus produce they had, but customers were few, markets too distant, and prices too low to make small-scale business profitable. Finally, the poorest peasants would often hire themselves out to former landlords or rich peasants at extremely low wages.
Obviously, the chronic lack of cash among 90% of Ukraine’s population had serious economic ramifications. Most peasants could not afford to buy either additional land to enlarge their plots or modern implements (not to speak of machines) to improve their productivity.
Indeed, on the Left and Right banks, about 50% of the peasants possessed neither horses nor good steel implements. The sight of a peasant harnessed to a dull, wooden plow was common in the Ukrainian countryside. Lack of cash also spelled weakness in Ukraine’s domestic market, impeding the growth of commerce, industry, and cities and making it an economic backwater of the empire.From the peasant’s point of view, however, the main reason for his woes was not lack of money but lack of arable land. It was, after all, possible to live without money, but how, he would argue, could one survive without land. The tiny land allotments of 1861, smaller in Ukraine than anywhere else in the empire, could hardly satisfy their holders’ already exceedingly modest needs. And natural causes compounded these problems to calamitous proportions. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Russian Empire, like most of Europe, experienced tremendous population growth. Between 1861 and 1897 the population of the empire grew from 73 million to 125 million. By 1917, it had reached 170 million. In Ukraine, the population jumped by 72% in less than forty years.
Because most of the Ukrainians lived in the countryside, it was here that demographic pressures became most evident. In 1890 there were almost twice as many inhabitants per acre of arable land on the Left and Right banks as there had been in 1860. This made the region one of the most densely inhabited in Europe, with twice as many inhabitants per arable acre as in England. Why this sudden jump in population? Paradoxically, improved medical care, brought to the countryside by the zemstva, sharply reduced the infant mortality rate and thereby greatly contributed to population growth. Yet it should be noted that despite these improvements in medical care, the death rate per thousand in the Russian Empire was still twice as high on the average as that in Western Europe.
The consequences of the twin dilemmas of overpopulation and land shortage soon manifested themselves in the Ukrainian countryside in the form of soaring prices for land.
In some regions, most notably the southern steppe, they were three to four times higher in 1900 than they had been in 1861, thus making it even more difficult for peasants to obtain the additional land they so desperately needed. Another consequence of rural overpopulation was unemployment. It has been calculated that in the 1890s Ukraine had an available labor force of almost 10.7 million people. Of these, agriculture required 2.3 million and other sectors of the economy utilized 1.1 million. The remaining 7.3 million, or 68% of the labor force, constituted a surplus that was largely unemployed or underemployed and that virtually led a hand-to-mouth existence. Little wonder that the living standard of Ukrainians fell far behind that of the West. For example, in 1900 an average Dane consumed 2166 pounds of bread annually, a German 1119, and a Hungarian 1264 pounds. In Ukraine, however, where bread was a larger component of the diet than in the West, the average annual consumption was only 867 pounds – and that in a land that was referred to as the breadbasket of Europe. Emigration to the eastDesperate for land, peasants were willing to go to any lengths to get more of it. One way was to work a large strip of land for a landlord for free in return for the use of a smaller strip. Although such arrangements were disturbingly reminiscent of serfdom, many villagers had no choice but to accept them. A more drastic option was to emigrate. But unlike West Ukrainians who had to travel overseas in search of land and employment, East Ukrainians did not have to leave the boundaries of the Russian Empire. They could travel overland (often for distances as great as that between Eastern Europe and America) to the open areas of the Russian east, particularly the Amur basin near the Pacific coast.
Between 1896 and 1906, after the construction of the trans-Siberian railroad, about 1.6 million Ukrainians migrated eastward. Discouraged by difficult conditions, many of these migrants returned to their homes.
Even so, by 1914 about 2 million Ukrainians lived permanently in the Far East. Moreover, proportionately almost twice as many Ukrainians as Russians moved eastward in the search for land. Thus, at exactly the same time West Ukrainians from the Habsburg empire were colonizing the prairies of western Canada, their East Ukrainian counterparts were bringing the plow to Russia’s Pacific coast. This was a telling indication of the lengths to which the Ukrainian peasant was willing to go in order to obtain land. Differentiation of the peasantryDespite the generally dismal condition of the peasantry, some, as usual, did better than others. Consequently, in the post-emancipation era, economic distinctions among the peasantry became more marked. Essentially, the socioeconomic structure of the Ukrainian (as well as Russian) village reflected Aldous Huxley’s famous dictum that humans tend to be divided into the high, the middle, and the low. The Ukrainian peasantry came to consist of the relatively rich, called kulaks (Ukrainian: kurkuli); those of average means, called seredniaky; and poor peasants or bidniaky.
A combination of hard work, initiative, luck, and, quite often, exploitation of their fellows – hence the negative connotations of kulak meaning a grasping, tightfisted person – allowed about 15–20% of peasants to enlarge their plots and accumulate wealth, while others sank deeper into poverty. Intermarriage among the kulaks helped them to further expand and retain their holdings for generations. On the average, this stratum of villagers possessed between sixty-five and seventy-five acres, several horses, and farming machinery. Often they hired labor and engaged in commercial farming. Following the lead of Lenin, Soviet scholars have been particularly harsh in their condemnation of these successful peasants, viewing them as a rural bourgeoisie and an exploitive class. However, many Western scholars argue that the socioeconomic distinctions between kulaks and other peasants should not be exaggerated.
Although it is true that the kulaks often took advantage of poorer peasants and the latter were frequently resentful and envious of the former, the kulaks considered themselves and were still perceived by others as peasants, not related in any way to city people or nobles. Indeed, the dream of poor peasants was not to eliminate kulaks, but to become one of them.The middle stratum of the peasantry was relatively large, constituting about 30% of the village population. Usually, seredniaky owned eight to twenty-five acres, which was enough to feed a family. In addition, they often possessed several horses and some livestock. Only very rarely could they afford any type of farm machinery. This solid, hardworking village “middle-class” – whose neat, whitewashed cottages bespoke pride of ownership and self-sufficiency – was particularly widespread on the Left Bank.
Most numerous by far were the bidniaky. Making up about 50% of the peasantry, they either had no land at all or only a few acres that were insufficient to provide a living. To survive, the bidniaky hired themselves out to richer peasants and nobles or they left the village in search of seasonal work. A family could slip into poverty in a variety of ways. Often, misfortunes such as sickness, death, or natural calamity would force peasants to sell some or all of their land, thereby depriving themselves of a secure economic base. At times, they would deplete their resources through imprudent farming techniques. Not infrequently, laziness and heavy drinking would push a family to the brink of disaster. In any case, as the already high percentage of poorest peasants increased, an undercurrent of tension and disaffection began to permeate the seemingly peaceful countryside. Thus, for many observers, it seemed that if revolution was to come to the Russian Empire, it would have to begin in the village. Decline of the nobility
Despite the generous land settlement, financial support from the government, and a variety of social advantages and privileges, the nobility also experienced a sharp decline in the post-1861 period.
It was a result mostly of the fact that nobles were incapable, by and large, of running their estates efficiently as profitable commercial ventures. Rather than investing capital in machinery, they wasted it on ostentatious living; accustomed to the free labor of the serfs, they could not adjust to hiring help; and the discipline, initiative, and hard work required to run a profitable business were foreign to many nobles.To solve their financial problems, they borrowed. By 1877 about 75% of them were heavily mortgaged. Consequently, many sold their land, usually to the ambitious and industrious kulaks, with the result that between 1862 and 1914 noble ownership of land in Ukraine declined by 53%. But not on the Right Bank, however, for there the extremely wealthy Polish landowners found it easier to weather their difficulties and retain their vast holdings.
The plight of the nobility indicated that the traditional elite in Ukraine and the empire as a whole was gradually moving into oblivion. After they sold their lands, nobles usually moved into cities where they became bureaucrats, officers, or members of the intelligentsia. True, they still enjoyed great social advantages, and as late as 1917 most of the arable land was still in their hands. But as a class, deprived of its dominance over the peasantry and gradually losing its control of the land, the nobility was living on borrowed time. Commercial agriculture
Paradoxically, although the Ukrainian countryside was haunted by stagnation and decline, its role as the “granary of Europe” continued to grow. This circumstance occurred because a small segment of the nobility, along with entrepreneurs from other classes, had succeeded – contrary to the general trend – in transforming their estates into large, bustling agribusinesses that supplied imperial and foreign markets. The anomaly of the situation was caught by Vyshnegradsky, the imperial minister of finance, who remarked that “We may go hungry, but we will export.”1
The export of food had, however, a limited and regional character. Only certain parts of Ukraine and a relatively small percentage of the population were involved in it. It was the steppe region, with its open land and easy access to the Black Sea ports, that became the center of commercial wheat and bread production early in the 19th century. Even before emancipation, estate owners in the region were busily expanding the acreage under cultivation, investing in machinery, and using hired labor. After 1861, when labor became mobile and plentiful in the south and transportation improved, Ukraine in general and the steppe region in particular expanded its food production more rapidly than the rest of the empire. Thus, in the early 20th century, as much as 90% of the empire’s main export – wheat – came from Ukraine. Even on the global scale Ukraine’s food production was impressive: it accounted for 43% of the world’s barley crop, 20% of its wheat, and 10% of its corn.
Wheat, however, was not Ukraine’s primary cash crop. This distinction belonged to beets, which were the main source of sugar for the empire and much of Europe. In all of Europe there was no area as well suited for large-scale production of sugar beets as the Right Bank. Consequently, by the 1840s sugar-beet production was well established in the region. As might be expected, it was Polish families, such as the Branicki and Potocki, who owned the largest sugar enterprises. But Russians like the Bobrinsky family; Ukrainians like the Tereshchenkos, Symyrenkos, and Iakhnenkos; and Jews like the Brodskys and Halperins also belonged to the “sugar barons” of the Right Bank. Meanwhile, on the Left Bank, the most important cash crop was tobacco, which accounted for over 50% of total imperial production. On both sides of the Dnieper, the distillation of alcohol was a widespread and profitable industry. With the crucial contribution it made to the economy of the empire, it is little wonder that Ukraine was regarded as an indispensable and an inseparable part of it.