Transformation versus Tradition: Agrarian Policy and Government-Peasant Relations in Right-Bank Ukraine 1920-1923

• Published in: Europe-Asia studies 2000-07, Vol.52 (5), p.915-937
• Main Author: Tan, Graham
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agrarian Societies; Agribusiness; Agricultural cooperatives; Agricultural history; Agricultural land; Agricultural policy; Agricultural production; Agriculture; Bolshevism; Collective farms; Farms; Governance; Government; Historians; History; Land distribution; Land resources; Land surveying; Land tenure; Land use; Nationalism; Peasant agriculture; Peasant class; Peasants; Political History; Politics; Rural population; Russian Revolution; State Society Relationship; State-society relations; Ukraine; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Villages
• ISSN: 0966-8136; 1465-3427
• DOI: 10.1080/713663096

Focuses on the semi-friendly relationship between government & peasants during the early period of Soviet rule (1920-1923) in right-bank Ukraine. The theory that the establishment of the Soviet regime in Ukraine was the result of military occupation by the Red Army under orders from Moscow is dismissed as being too simplistic. Instead, it is argued that the distribution of agricultural land, the introduction of collective farming, & the protection of natural resources helped garner the peasants' initial support for the Soviet regime. These conciliatory attempts are thought to have resulted from two sources: the threat of peasant uprisings & the abject failure of Soviet regimes in Ukraine during 1918 & 1919. Despite early Soviet efforts to appease the peasants, the peasants continued to observe traditional rural practices, threatening the Soviet government's reform plans. As a result, conciliatory Soviet attempts toward the right-bank peasants were abandoned after only a few short years. This example supports the theory that an urban, intellectual political philosophy is unsuitable for governing a largely rural region. 2 Tables, 133 References. K. A. Larsen