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Ecological Environment and Climate |
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The
influence of the harsh and inhospitable climate on the life of
the people inhabiting the vast expanses of the snow-bound
Eurasian landmass is recognized by most commentators who have
studied characteristics of the Russian historical process.
Historians note, for instance, that in Central Russia which
constituted the historical core of the Russian state, the annual
cycle of agricultural work was unusually short: just 125-130
working-days from mid-April to mid-September.
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The soil
was poor and required careful cultivation, for which the Russian
peasant simply did not have enough time.
Constrained by time, weather and primitive agricultural methods, the
peasant had to work day and night with little sleep or rest, using the
labor of all available members of his family, including children, women
and the elderly. |
And even at the best of times the soil yielded a harvest
which barely covered his basic needs.
By contrast, his Western
European counterpart enjoyed the advantage of a much longer farming
season. The winter break in farming in some countries of western
Europe was fairly short (December-January), and therefore the
arable land could be cultivated more thoroughly.
This
fundamental difference in farming conditions between Russia and
western Europe prevailed throughout the centuries until modern
times. Poor crop yields and the dependence of peasant labor on the
weather conditioned the extraordinary tenacity of communal
institutions in the Russian countryside, which provided a
collectivist safety net and guarantee of survival for the mass of
the rural population. Centuries-long experience of life and work in
such adverse conditions had taught peasants to devise a whole set of
measures to help those members of the peasant community who were on
the brink of ruin. Together, as a community, it was easier to find
protection from natural calamities, or to meet obligations imposed
by the squire and the State. It was advantageous for the village to
have common pasture and woodland, a common place for watering the
cattle. The village community looked after orphans and childless
old people. At regular intervals the land was redistributed among
the peasant households in the village to ensure that each family had
the amount of land commensurate with its size.
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The measures
of collectivist relief of this kind survived in the countryside
right into the early twentieth century. They outlived the tsarist
regime which collapsed in 1917. Rural egalitarian traditions still
existed in the 1920s and up to the start of Stalin’s forced
collectivization of agriculture at the end of that decade. Stalin’s
collectivization drive itself, with its imposition of the
collective- and state-farm system on peasants, was achieved partly
owing to the sheer brutally and terror with which it was enforced by
the State and partly due to the survivals of communal traditions and
egalitarian attitudes in the countryside.
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Tsarist Russia |
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