Novosibirsk. Science. Siberian branch. 1983. 389 p.

With the publication of a peer-reviewed fundamental work, Soviet historiography has been enriched with the first comprehensive study that recreates the history of the multinational peasantry of Siberia during the entire transition period from capitalism to socialism. The work, written by a team of agricultural historians of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR 1, is the third volume of the five-volume publication "History of the Peasantry of Siberia".

The novelty of the work lies in the fact that it reflects in a concentrated form the opre --

1 Authors ' team: V. T. Agalakov, B. B. Batuev, L. I. Bozhenko, A. G. Borzenkov, A.V. Gagarin, L. M. Goryushkin, E. G. Grigorieva, N. Ya. Gushchin, V. I. Dudukalov, Yu. V. Zhurov, V. A. Zibarev, B. V. Ivanov, I. S. Kuznetsov, Yu. V. Kupert Osokina, T. N. Ostashko, M. M. Petrukhina, M. E. Plotnikova, P. K. Redkin, G. L. Sanzhiev, V. L. Soskin, A. N. Soskina, and V. I. Shishkin. Editorial Board of the volume: N. Ya. Gushchin (ed.), L. I. Bozhenko, L. G. Garipova (ed.), L. M. Goryushkin, V. A. Demidov, Yu. V. Zhurov, I. S. Kuznetsov, Yu. V. Kupert, A. S. Moskovsky, M. E. Plotnikova, G. L. Sanzhiev, V. L. Soskin, V. I. Shishkin (Deputy Editor-in-chief).

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a definite turn in the direction of an in-depth study of the social problems of the Soviet countryside, outlined in modern historiography. In this process, the book of Siberian historians took a significant place: It not only absorbed the positive results of the previous decade's research, but also opened a new stage in the study of the history of the Soviet peasantry.

The author's team developed a concept of the history of the Soviet peasantry of the Siberian region, which is huge in scale and complex in the intensity of the class struggle, in the social and national composition of the population. The structure of the work, which is distinguished by its logical coherence and allows us to fully reveal the historical dynamics of the Siberian peasantry, reflects all the main aspects of its social history: the economic foundations of the social structure, the sphere of spiritual life, public consciousness, political moods, culture, as well as everyday life and lifestyle. The use of the book is facilitated by the presence of geographical and name indexes.

The volume is divided into three parts according to the periodization proposed by the author's team. The first part (1917-1920) covers the history of the Siberian peasantry during the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War. The authors give a detailed description of the peasant population of the region and the peasant movement on the eve of the revolution, trace the process of stratification of the peasantry, the correlation of class forces during the triumphal march of Soviet power, when in Siberia a sharp struggle between the forces of revolution and counter-revolution for the peasant masses unfolded. Under these circumstances, their political moods were a kind of barometer of the political climate of Siberia , a region that was important for the country as a whole. These sentiments are analyzed based on the materials of the congresses of provincial Soviets and local correspondence on the results of county and volost congresses. "The decisive stage of Sovietization of the village came after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly," the authors conclude (p.25). They describe the attitude of the peasant deputies to the Soviet government as reflecting the political sentiments of the majority of the Siberian peasantry, while emphasizing that in January-March 1918, the majority of the peasants in Siberia were in the same position. Soviet power was not only recognized and welcomed by them, but was also defined as "the defender of the working peasantry and the rural poor", which is why such an understanding of the class essence of Soviet power, as a rule, was accompanied by an expression of readiness to support it and defend it even by armed means (pp. 25-26).

A reasoned analysis of the political sentiments of the Siberian working peasantry is very important for exposing the bourgeois falsifiers who, based on the publications of Cadet and Socialist-Revolutionary newspapers, characterize these sentiments as anti-Bolshevik, anti-Proletarian and anti-Soviet. The book shows how the Social Revolutionaries tried to direct the revolutionary energy of the Siberian working peasantry against the working class and the proletarian revolution. The mainstay of the" All-Russian " claims of the Siberian Social Revolutionaries, the authors emphasize, was the kulaks, who took advantage of the fluctuations of the middle peasant and the lack of organization of the poor. However, despite these efforts, the Soviet government established itself quite firmly in Siberia during its triumphal march, took deep roots and enjoyed the sympathy of the peasantry.

At the same time, the process of revolutionary transformation of the agrarian system took place here under peculiar conditions of almost complete absence of landlords ' land. As a result of the socialist revolution, the working peasantry of Siberia received undoubted economic benefits (p. 31), but in land use they were not as tangible as in the center of Russia. The incompleteness of socio-economic transformations by the summer of 1918, as well as a lack of understanding of the extent of economic losses in the event of the loss of Soviet power-this primarily explains the fact that the middle peasantry in the tense situation created in connection with the Beloch rebellion turned towards counter-revolution. The book analyzes the factors that determined the new correlation of class forces in the region and the main forms of fluctuations of the middle peasantry (p. 40).

True, the assessments of the political attitudes of the peasantry towards the Soviet government given on p. 25-26 do not lay the foundations for the transition to describing the position of the middle peasantry of Siberia as" passively hostile " (p.40). Requires

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clarifications and the statement (p. 42) that the Kulaks, by their terrorist actions, ensured "the security of the rear of the counter-revolution". This "security" turned out to be temporary and fragile, as evidenced by the material that vividly and convincingly characterizes the partisan movement and the rural revolutionary underground (Chapter 3, section 3). The authors showed an interest in the dynamics of public consciousness and the political mood of the peasantry: these subjects were developed in almost all sections of the book. However, sometimes the classification of political moods of certain groups of the peasantry does not seem sufficiently motivated (p. 44). Nevertheless, the appeal to this problem should be evaluated positively.

The success of the authors ' team is to generalize the experience of the entire Soviet political system in relation to the middle peasantry: reducing the factors that caused its fluctuations at different stages of the transition period, multiplying the incentives for attracting the middle peasant to actively support the Soviet government, involving him in the movement against counter-revolution, in the composition of public organizations, in creative work. The process of strengthening and developing the union of the Siberian working peasantry with the working class is shown in the book from the front.

The authors analyze in depth the particular intensity of the class struggle in the region and the totality of factors that determined this tension. Generalization of the experience of resolving the peasant question in conditions of maximum aggressiveness of the last exploiting class, a high degree of concentration of the remnants of the internal counter-revolution, which received effective support from outside and was able to maneuver on a vast and sparsely populated territory, using the extreme backwardness and religious fanaticism of the peasantry of national minorities, is of fundamental importance for understanding the laws of the victory of socialism, vital interests of the working peasantry.

The second part of the volume is devoted to the period of recovery and the beginning of the socialist reconstruction of the national economy (1921-1927). Here it is shown that Siberia belonged to the group of regions of the RSFSR in which the demand for a change in economic policy was widespread, and peasant discontent, used by the counter-revolution, manifested itself in particularly acute forms. On pages 105-106, convincing statistics are given on the growth of the number of participants in armed mutinies in January-March 1921 and its sharp decline by the summer of the same year, after the introduction of NEP. At the same time, the difficulties of transition to a new economic policy in the conditions of the region are also shown, which somewhat slowed down the normalization of the political climate in the Siberian countryside and the elimination of kulak banditry.

The book traces in detail the process of restoring the productive forces of the peasant economy (Chapter 7), the peculiarities of socio-economic relations of small rural commodity producers in a multi-structured economy (Chapter 8), and the development of the socialist sector of agricultural production (Chapter 9). The authors are justified in introducing the pre-kolkhoz peasant cooperative (consumer and agricultural) into the structure of socialist relations of production (chapters 9, sections 1 and 2). The struggle between two tendencies in the Soviet cooperative system under NEP conditions, the role of the party's cooperative policy and Soviet legislation in ousting capitalist elements from the cooperative system, and in ensuring the socialist development of the cooperative sector of the economy are convincingly shown. Attempts at comparative historical analysis of the development of cooperative and non-cooperative peasant farms deserve a positive assessment (p. 153).

Although not all of the authors ' conclusions can be agreed with, however, they correctly identified the main trend. A special feature of the Siberian peasantry on the eve of mass collectivization was a higher degree of cooperation (approximately 80% of peasant farms were covered by various forms of cooperation). Therefore, the conclusion that the majority of the Siberian peasantry went through the school of agricultural cooperation even before joining the collective farms, and this facilitated the beginning of the mass collective farm movement (pp. 226 and 374), is quite reasonable. The book provides a reasoned assessment of the erroneous orientation of land and cooperative bodies in Siberia towards the preferential development of communes (p. 227).-

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their higher indicators include concessional lending and preferential supply of equipment (p. 240).

One of the strengths of Truda is its consistent coverage of the progressive growth of the social and political activity of the Soviet peasantry in Siberia (Chapters 10 and 18). This is a significant contribution of the authors ' team to overcoming the chronic lack of our historiography, which has been repeatedly noted in the literature. The active role of the peasantry in socialist construction is shown not only in the sphere of social and political life of the Siberian countryside, but also in the sphere of cultural construction, the reorganization of everyday life (Chapters 11 and 19), the establishment of socialist forms of labor organization, the development of social competition, and the movement of innovators of production (Chapters 16, § 3). At the same time, the leading role of the working class is emphasized, which passed on to its ally the experience of organizing large-scale socialist production, political culture, and enthusiasm for social activity of the builders of socialism. A special section is devoted to the patronage of the city over the countryside (Chapter 10, Section 4). The previous work of Siberian historians on this topic allowed, however, to reveal more thoroughly the experience of the influence of the working class on the formation of socialist features of the social consciousness of the Siberian peasantry.

The third part, covering the period 1928-1937, reveals the processes of socio-economic and technical reconstruction of the Siberian countryside on the eve and during the years of collectivization of agriculture, the elimination of the kulaks as a class, and changes in the social structure of the village as a result of the victory of the collective farm system. This thematic complex is aimed at revealing the process of formation of the collective farm peasantry as a class of socialist society. The book also reflects the process of labor re-education of former kulaks (pp. 269-274). It is analyzed using significant concrete historical and statistical material that shows the complexity and intensity of this process at its initial stages, which indicates that the simplistic interpretation that took place in the literature, based on the thesis of conflict-free, has been overcome.

The authors ' discussion of the issues of class struggle and the elimination of the kulaks as a class proves the full validity of their main conclusion: the increased aggressiveness of the Siberian kulaks, their attempts to unleash a civil war made it historically inevitable to eliminate them by expropriation (p. 274), and the policy of the Soviet state aimed at creating conditions for the labor activity of former exploiters, According to the degree of their loyalty to the Soviet government, the gradual restoration of their political rights accelerated the turn of the representatives of the class defeated in the struggle to the path of socialist development. It is of considerable interest to highlight the changes in the social structure of the Siberian countryside and the formation of the collective farm peasantry (Chapter 17), and to identify the features of these transformations. The process of urbanisation of the rural population of Siberia was more intense than in the country as a whole (pp. 296-297). The authors give a detailed description of the process of changing the social nature of the peasantry as a result of the victory of the collective farm system (pp. 299-300). Comparison of data on the social structure of the Siberian countryside and the internal structure of the collective farm peasantry with the average all-Union data of the late 1930s led the authors to conclude that with the victory of socialism, many specific features of the social structure of the population of Siberia were leveled (p.303).

As a particularly noteworthy reflection of the modern requirements of the historiographical process, we should note the thematic allocation (Chapters 5, 12, 20) of the history of the peasantry of the national regions of Siberia. In the development of this complex aspect, the authors ' team turned out to be well prepared by a series of previous works, which made it possible to achieve a new level of generalization in the work under consideration. The corresponding chapters are written on the basis of a comparative historical analysis of the common and special features of the Siberian peasantry, represented by nations and nationalities that were at different levels of socio-economic development. The reader gets a complete picture of the historical dynamics of the peasantry of Yakutia, Buryatia, Khakassia, Gorny Altai, and the small peoples of the North. The article summarizes the most interesting experience of the transition to socialism of peoples who have not passed the stage of class-antagonistic formations at all.-

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The positive and negative aspects of using community relations and tribal institutions are shown, as well as overcoming difficulties and mistakes in this complex process (pp. 203-205, 369-370).

At the same time, the complexity of the problem has given rise to some ambiguities in its interpretation. For example, is it correct to speak of pre-capitalist relations as remnants of peoples that have not even entered the stage of capitalist development? This is how the title of section 1 of Chapter 20 (p.349) treats this question, while the text (p. 350-351) asserts that these relations characterized the entire structure of the national village. The statement about the growth of not only Kulak but also feudal elements by the end of the 1920s looks contradictory (p.349), despite the fact that as a result of the land reforms of the 1920s, they were intensively ousted.

The work done by the authors ' team is generally highly appreciated. This suggests the need for a polemic on only one issue of a fundamental nature, concerning periodization. The year 1927 is objectionable as a milestone. What qualitative changes have taken place in the Siberian peasantry this year? The course of collectivization meant a turn in politics. A milestone year in the history of the Soviet peasantry was 1929, when a turn in the consciousness and social psychology of the middle peasantry was manifested, when the mass collective-farm movement began, and when the question was raised from below about the need to revise the class policy towards the kulaks.

An inaccurate definition of the milestone year led to an artificial division of the unified process of socio-economic development of the Siberian village in the 1920s and the need in Part III to return to the plots of Part II, essentially repeating them (Chapter 13 and Section 3 of Chapter 7, section 4 of Chapter 8, Section 2 of Chapter 9). It turned out that that both the patronage movement of the working class and its influence on the peasantry (Section 4 of Chapter 10) were artificially interrupted in 1927, while, as is well known, their strongest phase was in 1929. At this point, the periodization chosen by the author's team needs to be clarified.

The first generalizing work on the history of the Siberian peasantry during the construction of socialism is a significant phenomenon in our historiography. He is already actively working in historical science: he helps in creating a multi-volume history of the Soviet peasantry, has an effective influence on the development of historiography on agrarian and peasant topics, equips the propaganda of the historical experience of solving one of the most complex social problems of our time in the USSR, an experience of international significance, with a new argumentation.

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