DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN INNOVATIONS: DEVELOPING AGRICULTURE IN THE ENTREPRENEURS FARMS OF WESTERN SIBERIA IN THE LATE XIX - EARLY XX CENTURIES
I.I. Krott
Omsk state pedagogical University, Russia, 644099, Omsk, Tukhachevskogo quay,14
Keywords: modernization, socio-cultural changes, commercialization of the local community, rural entrepreneurial households, diffusion of innovations, rationalization of agriculture, agricultural machines and implements, technological innovations, Western Siberia
Abstract
Based on the archival and published sources the article discusses the issues of innovations in agriculture in Western Siberia in late XIX - early XX centuries emphasizing activities of rural entrepreneurs who not merely borrowed but transformed knowledge and technology. Theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the concept of “diffusionism” that characterizes historical process in terms of diffusion, contact, borrowing, transfer and interaction of cultures. The article concludes that the need for eradication of outdated patriarchal attitudes was objectively caused by economic and cultural «backwardness» of Russia compared to Western Europe as well as by modernization processes occurring at the regional level. «Commercialization» changed everyday life, consciousness and behavior of the rural society, that became increasingly involved into economic activity. The author concludes that in the Siberian region innovations infiltrated and spread in two projections - «downwards» and «from the center to the periphery». Rationalization of entrepreneurial agriculture was stipulated by the rural entrepreneurs’ farming experience and exposure to the ideas of advanced scientific thought. Local peasants actively concerned themselves with agrotechnology and modernization in the rural entrepreneurs’ arable farms; moreover, they even borrowed some of these innovations.
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