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Genesis: Historical research
Reference:

On the Historiography of the Stalinist Modernization of the Regional Peasant Society in the USSR (based on the materials of Mordovia)

Nad'kin Timofei Dmitrievich

ORCID: 0000-0002-2677-8529

Doctor of History

Professor, Department of National and Foreign History and Teaching Methods, Mordovian State Pedagogical University named after M. E. Evseviev

430007, Russia, Republic of Mordovia, Saransk, Studentskaya str., 11a

ntd2006@yandex.ru
Martynenko Aleksandr Valentinovich

ORCID: 0000-0002-4701-6398

Doctor of History

Professor, Department of National and Foreign History and Teaching Methods, Mordovian State Pedagogical University named after M. E. Evseviev

430007, Russia, Republic of Mordovia, Saransk, Studentskaya str., 11a

arkanaddin@mail.ru
Mal'chenkov Denis Petrovich

ORCID: 0000-0002-2100-0144

Lecturer, Department of Operational Investigative Activities, Voronezh Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia

53 Patriots Ave., Voronezh, Voronezh region, 394065, Russia

malchenkovdenis@yandex.ru

DOI:

10.25136/2409-868X.2023.10.68774

EDN:

QTBTOK

Received:

22-10-2023


Published:

31-10-2023


Abstract: The object of the study is the historiographical aspects of the modernization of the peasant society of Russia during Stalinism, which is usually identified with the continuous collectivization and dispossession of the late 1920s – early 1930s. The subject of the study is the corpus of scientific works on Stalinist agrarian modernization in the Mordovian region during the first five-year plans, the first of which appeared in the second half of the 1950s, analyzed taking into account the change of ideological paradigms in Russian historical science in the early 1990s. Within the framework of this study, the authors tried to trace the transformation of assessments of Stalin's agrarian modernization in the scientific community of regional historians on the historiographical material of Mordovia. The main conclusions of this study concern sufficiently high degree of elaboration of the issues under consideration in the regional historiography of the Republic of Mordovia. At the same time, despite the growing attention to the pre-war agrarian modernization in the post-Soviet period, a number of problematic issues have been identified that require more in-depth study. Among them: the economic efficiency of collective farms and state farms organized in the late 1920s – the first half of the 1930s, the degree of mechanization of agricultural production, solving the problem of providing the growing urban population with food, changes in the socio-cultural appearance and public attitudes of the multinational and multi-confessional peasantry of the Mordovian Region.


Keywords:

peasant society, Stalinist agrarian modernization, collectivization, dispossession, historiography, Mordovia, interwar period, public education, socio-cultural development, anti-religious struggle

This article is automatically translated.

Today, the study of the "catching up" modernization of the Russian agrarian society of the pre-war decade is a dynamically developing area of Russian historical science. Thanks to the introduction into scientific circulation of a significant array of archival documents, their new reading, socio-economic and socio-cultural shifts in predominantly agrarian regions before the revolution are seen in a more voluminous and multifaceted way. 

The history of the multiethnic peasantry of Mordovia during the first five-year plans as an integral part of the above-mentioned modernization attracted research interest from historians, whose works formed a separate direction in the historiography of the specified subject of the Russian Federation.

For the first time, the problem of the consequences of Stalin's agrarian modernization for the peasant society of the Mordovian ASSR, in relation to the first post-war years, was raised in his monographic study by S. S. Ivashkin [9], who introduced extensive archival and statistical material into scientific circulation. It is this extensive empirical base that made the work of this author quite valuable in informative terms, despite its pronounced (and, let us add, inevitable in the conditions of that era) ideological character.

M. V. Ageev's monographic study [3], written at the turn of the 1950s - 1960s, during the Khrushchev thaw, traces the process of "victory of the collective farm system" in the Mordovian ASSR, that is, reveals the features of Stalin's agrarian modernization, including its technological aspects, in relation to the region under consideration.

It should be noted that the works of S. S. Ivashkin and M. V. Ageev, despite their obvious shortcomings, were the only monographic works on the agrarian history of Mordovia of the pre-war period until the second half of the 1980s.

Some aspects of the pre-war modernization of the village of Mordovia were considered in the works of I. E. Avtaykin on the development of the periodical press [2], M. S. Bukin on the problems of national-state construction [6], V. A. Balashov on the culture and life of the Mordovian collective farm village [4]. The rapid liberalization of the socio-political climate in the country of the notorious era of "Gorbachev's perestroika" gave birth to new interpretations of the topic under consideration in the articles by A. A. Krasnikov [10] and L. G. Filatov [18].

In 1996, a monograph by historian V. K. Abramov "The Mordovian People (1897-1939)" was published, in which three chapters are thematically related to Stalin's agrarian modernization [1]. Thanks to this research, new archival sources, previously unknown to the general reader, were introduced into scientific circulation. At the same time, the author's statements about hundreds of thousands of victims among Mordovian peasants, about the destruction of the peasant elite of Mordovian nationality, etc., may be some kind of exaggeration. On the other hand, it is necessary to unequivocally agree with V. K. Abramov that during the dekulakization, a policy of artificially inciting social conflicts was carried out in the agrarian society of Mordovia of that period.

Since the 1990s, a whole community of scientists has been forming in the Republic of Mordovia (RM), who have made a very important contribution to the development and understanding of the issues under consideration.

Thus, O. I. Mariskin in his works presented the micro-level of Stalin's agrarian modernization in the Middle Volga region, including Mordovia [11].

Historian A. P. Soldatkin revealed the role and specifics of the activities of the Soviet and party organs of the Mordovian ASSR in the analyzed processes of the 1930s [16; 17], and also on the basis of the extracted archival data, actually made the famine in Mordovia 1937-1939 public knowledge. The latter seems to the authors of this article extremely important for debunking the “new Ukrainian mythology of the Holodomor”, which is allegedly the exclusive prerogative of the Ukrainian people as some kind of exceptional victim of social genocide.

Almost a quarter of a century of painstaking long-term work with archival sources is presented in T. D. Nagkin's monograph "Stalin's agrarian policy and the peasantry of Mordovia" [13]. The book focuses on the analysis of the economic and social consequences of the pre-war modernization of agriculture, the implementation of repressive policies in the 1930s. (dekulakization, "The Great Terror of 1937-1938"), the situation of the peasantry of the autonomous Republic during the Great Patriotic War, and the new trials that befell the peasantry of Mordovia during the post-war restoration of the national economy are also considered.

T. D. Nagkin, referring to the pre-war modernization of agriculture, argues about the prevalence of negative and destructive phenomena in peasant society [12].  However, this should not be limited to describing the pre-war period, because there were also noticeable changes in the culture and the growth of education of the rural population.

V. A. Yurchenkov, an outstanding specialist in the regional history of Mordovia, made his contribution to the study of the issues under consideration [19], who, without denying the consequences that T. D. Nagkin writes about, put positive consequences at the forefront, especially the successes of technical modernization of agriculture.

A separate direction of the regional historiography of Stalin's agrarian modernization is the study of the socio-cultural transformation of the Tatar population of the MASSR of the period under consideration.

The first works related to the topic of educational and cultural-educational activities in the Tatar settlements of Mordovia appeared in the late 1920s. In particular, it was the work of P. T. Polibitsyn "Ten years of economic and cultural-social construction of the Penza province" [14], in which one of the chapters was devoted to the public education of the Penza province and general data on the increase in literacy, the development of the school network, the number of reading rooms, educational centers, including among the Tatars of the region.

The work on the history of the origin, settlement and language of the Tatar population of Mordovia, written by the outstanding orientalist M. G. Safargaliev [15], states the further consolidation of the multinational Soviet people, despite the craving of national republics to preserve cultural identity. The scientist speaks negatively about the "bourgeois nationalists" who tried to divide a single people – the Kazan Tatars and the Mishar Tatars and concluded that "with the comprehensive development of the Tatar socialist nation, local peculiarities in language, way of life and other areas of culture disappear," as well as the departure of the name "mishari" into legends.

Thus, in the historiography of the Soviet period, the topic of the socio-cultural development of the Tatars of Mordovia was touched upon only sporadically, in generalized studies, and was distinguished at the same time by its ideologization.

In post-Soviet regional historiography, A. I. Belkin's articles are of great interest [see, for example: 5], in which the author, using the example of Orthodox and Muslim cults on the territory of Soviet Mordovia, touches on the Stalinist period, when state-confessional relations were characterized by large-scale repressions against the clergy and believers, which during the war were replaced by a temporary period of warming, which significantly revived the life of religious communities. At the same time, having made a step towards believers, the state continued to actively interfere in the activities of confessions, and a number of prohibitions continued to operate against cults. A. I. Belkin is one of the first researchers of Mordovia, who in his publications examined the history of the Muslim community of the republic during the Soviet period. It is necessary to note other works of the aforementioned researcher, written by him in the second half of the 2000s - 2010s. A. I. Belkin comes to the conclusion that, despite the anti–religious campaign, persecution and destruction of the clergy in the late 1920s - 1930s, difficulties with the registration of the cult, the level of religiosity among the Tatars of Mordovia remained high. And some softening of anti-religious legislation during the war years helped to strengthen the position of Islam, as a result of which two mosques began to operate legally in Mordovia.

Historian R. R. Yusupov in his dissertation research [20] traces the process of displacement of the religious (Islamic) component not only from different spheres of life of the Tatar population, but also public consciousness; shortcomings in the implementation of universal education, which were reduced to achieving, first of all, quantitative indicators, not qualitative; poor quality of teacher training from Tatars-mishars, as well as a shortage of specialists with higher education, etc. 

Researcher A. P. Evdokimov [7; 8] analyzed in some detail and in detail the problem of transformation of the social behavior of the multinational peasantry of Mordovia of the specified period, considering the most diverse aspects of the radical reforms carried out during the first five-year plans.

Despite the seemingly increased attention to the pre-war modernization of peasant society in the regional dimension in the post-Soviet period, the problem of the comparative efficiency of collective and state farm production, the achievements of individual collective farms and state farms in terms of agricultural production growth, the implementation of plans for the mechanization of agricultural production against the background of a decrease in the working livestock, the solution of the problem providing the growing urban population with food. Of particular interest are the changes in the public mood of the peasant society in connection, on the one hand, with the unfolding struggle against religion, and on the other – the increase in literacy and the increase in the general cultural level of the population.

All these problems can become the subject of separate scientific research in the context of "catching up" modernization, which covered the economy and socio-cultural sphere of the Soviet Union and the countries of the East looking at it in the interwar period.

References
1. Abramov, V. K. (1996). Mordovian people (1897–1939 ãã.). Saransk: Izdadelstvo Mordovskogo universiteta.
2. Avtaykin, I. E., & Potapov, P. F. (1988). Periodicals of Mordovia during the years of collectivization in Problemy agrarnoy istoriyi Povolzh'ya v perehodniy period ot kapitalisma k cotsializmu (1917–1937 ãã.). (pp. 115–129). Saransk: Mordovskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.
3. Ageev, M. V. (1960). Victory of the collective farm system in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Saransk: Mordovskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.
4. Balashov, V. A. (1975). Culture and life of the Mordovian collective farm village: a historical and ethnographic essay based on materials from the Zubovo-Polyansky region of the MASSR. Saransk: Mordovskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.
5. Belkin, A. I. (1995). State-church relations in Mordovia in the 20s – early 60s of the XX century: (Based on the materials of Russian Orthodoxy): abstract of the dissertation of the Candidate of Historical Sciences. Saransk.
6. Bukin, Ì. S. (1990). The formation of Mordovian Soviet national statehood. Saransk: Mordovskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.
7. Evdokimov, A. P., & Nadkin, T. D. (2014) Social behavior of the Peasantry of Mordovia in the late 1920s – first half of the 1930s: from confrontation to adaptation. Gumanitarnye nauki i obrazovanie, 4, 153–156.
8. Evdokimov A. P. (2013) Transformation of the way of life of the peasants of Mordovia in the 1920s – 1930s: traditions and innovations. Klio, 5, 50–53.
9. Ivashkin, S. S. (1957). The working class in the struggle for the victory of the collective farm system in Mordovia. Saransk: Mordovskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.
10. Krasnikov, A. A. (1989). Activities of Soviet and party bodies to form the ranks of the working class and change the socio-demographic structure and population of Mordovia (late 20s-30s) in Deyatelnost Kommunisticheskoy Partiyi Sovetskogo Soyuza po formirovaniyu mnogonatsionalnogo rabochego klassa: istoriya i sovremennost (pp. 63–75).
11. Mariskin, O. I. (2004). Sovereign tax. Taxation of the Russian peasantry in the second half of the 19th – first third of the 20th centuries (based on materials from the Middle Volga region). Saransk: Izdadelstvo Mordovskogo universiteta.
12. Nadkin, T. D. (2011). Anti-Church policy of the Soviet state during the pre-war five-year plans (based on materials from Mordovia) in Nauchnyy pravoslavnyy vzglyad na lozhnyye istoricheskiye ucheniya: materialy sovmestnoy konferentsii Russkogo kul'turno-prosvetitel'skogo fonda im. Vasiliya Velikogo i Instituta Rossiyskoy istorii Rossiyskoy Akademiyi Nauk (pp. 482-490).
13. Nadkin, T. D. (2010). Stalin's agrarian policy and the peasantry of Mordovia. Moscow: ROSSPEN.
14. Polibitsin, P. T. (1928). 10 years of economic, cultural and social construction of the Penza province. Penza: without publisher.
15. Safargaliev, M. G. (1963). On the history of the Tatar population of the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (about the Mishars). Trudy Mordovskogo Nauchno-Issledovatelskogo Instituta yazyka, literatury, istorii i ekonomiki, 24, 64-79.
16. Soldatkin, A. P. (2007). Power institutions of Mordovia during the period of modernization of the 1930s. Saransk: Istoriko-Sotsiologicheskiy institut Mordovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni N. P. Ogareva
17. Soldatkin, A. P. (2006). Famine 1937–1939 in Mordovia in Obshchestvo i vlast'. XX vek (pp. 102-112).
18. Filatov, L. G. (1990). Collectivization in Mordovia: Problems, features, completion time in Na perekrestke mneniy : sbornik statey (pp. 188-199).
19. Yurchonkov, V. A. (2011). Agrarian policy of Stalinism in the national republics of the Volga region: general and specific. Tsentr i periferiya, 1, 86–91.
20. Yusupov, R. R. (2009). Socio-economic and socio-cultural development of the Tatar-Mishars of Mordovia during the period of Soviet modernization in the late 1920s–1930s.: dissertation for the degree of candidate of historical sciences.

Peer Review

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Although more than three decades have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest in the Soviet past remains at a consistently high level in Russian society. And this applies not only to the professional community of historians, but also to ordinary lovers of the native past. Among those topics that have long been the subject of dispute, and not only in our country, is the solution of the agrarian issue in the 1920s and 1930s. Often this topic is also the subject of outright manipulation, such as the Holodomor theme. But in addition to the agrarian history itself, changes in the peasant community are also an important aspect. These circumstances determine the relevance of the article submitted for review, the subject of which is the historiography of the Stalinist modernization of the regional peasant society in the USSR on the example of Mordovia. The author sets out to analyze the Soviet and post-Soviet literature on this topic, to show the study of the socio-cultural transformation of the Tatar population of the Mordovian ASSR of the period under review. The work is based on the principles of analysis and synthesis, reliability, objectivity, the methodological basis of the research is a systematic approach, which is based on the consideration of the object as an integral complex of interrelated elements. The author also uses a comparative method in his work. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the very formulation of the topic: the author, using the example of Mordovia, seeks to characterize the "catching up" modernization of Russian agrarian society in the 1920s and 1930s. Considering the bibliographic list of the article, its scale and versatility should be noted as a positive moment: in total, the list of references includes 20 different sources and studies. From the sources attracted by the author, we will point to the works of both historians of the Soviet period (M.V. Ageev, V.A. Balashov, A.A. Krasnikov) and modern (T.D. Nagkin, A.P. Soldatkin, V.V. Yurchenkov). Note that the bibliography is important both from a scientific and educational point of view: after reading the text of the article, readers can turn to other materials on its topic. In general, in our opinion, the integrated use of various sources and research contributed to the solution of the tasks facing the author. The style of writing the article can be attributed to a scientific one, at the same time understandable not only to specialists, but also to a wide readership, to anyone interested in both the history of the Soviet village as a whole and the changes taking place in it in the 1920s and 1930s. The appeal to opponents is presented at the level of the collected information received by the author during work on the topic of the article. The structure of the work is characterized by a certain logic and consistency, it can be distinguished by an introduction, the main part, and conclusion. At the beginning, the author determines the relevance of the topic, shows that "the history of the multiethnic peasantry of Mordovia during the first five-year plans, as an integral part of the above-mentioned modernization, attracted research interest from historians, whose works formed a separate direction in the historiography of the specified subject of the Russian Federation." It is noteworthy that the author notes not only the ideologization of Soviet historians: speaking about the work of V.K. Abramov in 1996, he believes that his statements about "hundreds of thousands of victims among Mordovian peasants, about the destruction of the peasant elite of Mordovian nationality, etc., may be some kind of exaggeration." The work shows that "in the historiography of the Soviet period, the topic of the socio-cultural development of the Tatars of Mordovia was touched upon only sporadically, in generalized studies, and was distinguished by its ideologization." The main conclusion of the article is that today "despite the seemingly increased attention to the pre-war modernization of peasant society in the regional dimension in the post-Soviet period, the problem of comparative efficiency of collective and state farm production, the achievements of individual collective farms and state farms in terms of agricultural production growth, still requires a deeper study." The article submitted for review is devoted to an urgent topic, will arouse readers' interest, and its materials can be used both in lecture courses on the history of Russia and in various special courses. In general, in our opinion, the article can be recommended for publication in the journal Genesis: Historical Research.