ALEXANDER CHAYANOV’S THEORY OF PEASANT FARMING AND PERSONAL SUBSIDIARY FARMS IN THE SOVIET VILLAGE (MID-1930s – 1980s)

Abstract

The paper analyzes the possibility of applying the theory of peasant farming by Alexander Chayanov to personal subsidiary farms (LPH) of collective farmers and state farm workers. It is noted that the significant factors affecting their functioning were rural urbanization and the demographic evolution of the rural family, as well as the policy of severe administrative restrictions on individual households. Despite the unfavorable conditions for development, personal part-time farms have demonstrated stability over time. The relations between family size and farm size noted by Chayanov were distorted by a system of repressive taxation, active off-farm employment of farm members, and natural processes of family deformation under the influence of urbanization. The author characterizes why LPH have lost their function of the main source of livelihood. It is concluded that ideological restrictions led to an artificial archaization of production within part-time farms and limited their evolution along the farm route, i.e. the labor-consumer balance in the budget of a rural family was achieved at an extremely low level. On the other hand, it is the spread of non-mechanized manual labor in personal part-time farms that allows the author to largely apply the provisions of Chayanov’s theory of peasant farming.