Searching for the Alternatives to Russian Development: Rethinking V.P. Danilov’s Agrarian Heritage

Abstract

Alexandre Nikulin — Director, Agricultural Research Center, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). Address: 82, Vernadskogo Ave., Moscow, 119571, Russian Federation. E-mail: nikulin@rane.ru.

This article examines the intellectual heritage of the Russian agrarian historian, V. Danilov (1925–2004), and is particularly centered on the discussion of the alternatives to Russia’s historical development in the past 150 years. Danilov identified a series of attempts to reform the agrarian sector that were made in 20-30 year cycles, in which several pathways of the country’s development were made available. Precisely, these include the agrarian reform of the 1860s; N. Bunge’s reforms in the first half of the 1880s; the first Russian revolution and P. Stolypin’s reforms of 1905-1914; the agrarian revolution of 1917-1922; the collectivization of the early 1930s; N. Khrushchev’s reforms of late 1950s and early 1960s; and, finally, Gorbachev-Yeltsin’s agrarian reforms of the 1990s.

Although Danilov’s analytical grasp extended over a vast historical retrospective, his deepest concern was in the period of the first half of the 20th century. It is exactly in this period that he investigated the possibilities of establishing a farmer-based agrarian economy in Russia. From this point of view, he criticized the Stalinist path to collectivization of the agrarian sector, and claimed that the alternatives developed by Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Chayanov might have been the optimal path to its development in Soviet Russia.

Finally, the author regards Danilov’s heritage in a far broader perspective by linking his insights on agrarian reforms with alternatives to socioeconomic development, which have existed throughout Russia’s history.