Publishing House SB RAS:

Publishing House SB RAS:

Address of the Publishing House SB RAS:
Morskoy pr. 2, 630090 Novosibirsk, Russia



Advanced Search

Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2020 year, number

THE CONCEPT OF "AGRICULTURAL COMMUNE" IN THE IDEOLOGICAL TEXTS OF THE EARLY SOVIET SOCIETY (1917-1919)

O.M. SEMERIKOVA
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, 19, Mira Ave., 620002 Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation
Keywords: agricultural labor commune, early Soviet society, Utopian socialism, Bolshevik ideology, communist project

Abstract

The “commune” concept is one of the main definitions of the ideological doctrine of the victorious party. It became the basis to create special theoretical constructs in the various spheres of the society. In the agricultural sector, this is the “agricultural commune”. The article objective is to consider the stages of forming, developing and correcting this concept in ideological texts of 1917-1919. The research methodological base is the theory of social construction, which makes it possible to consider the theoretical justification, program settings and the socialist idea’s embodiment in the early Soviet Russia as an integral process. When studying the topic, it has been revealed that the “agricultural commune” concept was formulated and began to be introduced in the village in the early 1918 as a result of using the theory and experience of Utopian socialists and Russian socialists. The created collectives were considered as the practical base to disseminate socialist ideas in the countryside, acquaint peasants with large collective production, and form a “new” man of labor. Before 1918, V.I. Lenin reacted negatively to the possibility of realizing the commune’s idea in practice at the initial stage of the proletarian dictatorship era, but by the spring of 1918 had changed his mind for tactical reasons. The same year, in the party and government circles a discussion started on the appropriateness of the financial and administrative support by the state based on the current dynamics of their activity. Several options were proposed for the concept existence within the general line of the Party. As a result, by the late 1919, the agricultural communes partially lost the status of privileged collectives. Meanwhile, the authorities’ interest in continuing this experiment preserved the inclusion of the studied construct with a special position in the general ideological field and allowed developing the initiative “from below” until the early 1930s.