This paper owes much to Clive Dewey, not only for his editorial role, but because his work prompted me to think more widely about these issues.Google Scholar

¹ Lenin, V. I., ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1972) (all subsequent references are to this edition), p. 70.Google Scholar

² Ibid., p. 174.

³ Labour service, Lenin commented, ‘presupposes and requires the middle peasant’. Ibid., p. 186.

⁴ Ibid., p. 181.

⁵ Lenin, V. I., ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905–1907’, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (Moscow, 1972), p. 229.Google Scholar

⁶ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 329.Google Scholar

⁷ Lenin, V. I., ‘New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One. Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America’, Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow, 1974), p. 87.Google Scholar

⁸ For wider treatment of the Populists, see Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant (London, 1951), Ch. 3.Google Scholar

⁹ For a study of different views about indebtedness, see Dewey, Clive, ‘The Official Mind and the Problem of Agricultural Indebtedness in India, 1870–1914’, (Cambridge Ph.D., 1973).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Chayanov's major works, ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, of 1924 and ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, of 1925 have been translated in Thorner, Daniel, Kerblay, Basile and Smith, R. E. F. (eds), A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Illinois, 1966)Google Scholar (all subsequent references to the two works are to this edition). Of the large and growing literature on Chayanov's ideas, I find the following the most interesting: Daniel Thorner, ‘Chayanov's Concept of Peasant Economy’, and Basile Kerblay, ‘A. V. Chayanov: Life, Career, Works's, in ibid.; Kerblay, Basile, ‘Chayanov and the Theory of Peasantry as a Specific Type of Economy’, in Shanin, Teodor (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies (London, 1971), pp. 150–60;Google ScholarMillar, James R., ‘A Reformulation of A. V. Chayanov's Theory of Peasant Economy’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 18, 2 (01 1970), pp. 219–29;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHarrison, Mark, ‘Chayanov and the Economics of the Russian Peasantry’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2, 4 (07 1975), pp. 389–417;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reviews by Domar, Evsey D., The American Economic Review, 58 (06 1968), pp. 632–4Google Scholar, and Clark, Colin, Soviet Studies, 19, 2 (10 1967), pp. 292–3.Google Scholar

¹¹ ‘A very wide area of economic life’, Chayanov began, ‘is based, not on a capitalist form, but on the completely different form of a non-wage family economic unit’. Chayanov, ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, p. 1.Google Scholar

¹² Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 58.Google Scholar

¹³ Shanin, Teodor, ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, Soviet Studies, 23 (1971–1972), pp. 222–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972), Pt 2.Google Scholar

¹⁴ For a discussion of recent ideas on the Indian peasantry, see Stokes, Eric, ‘The Return of the Peasant to South Asian History’, South Asia, 6 (12 1976), pp. 96–111;CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Tokugawa Japan, see Smith, T. C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, 1959).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Washbrook, David, ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The “Dry Region”, 1878–1929’, Dewey, Clive and Hopkins, A. G. (eds), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London, 1978), pp. 68–82.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Rajat, and Ray, Ratna, ‘The Dynamics of Continuity in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 2 (1973).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Kessinger, Tom G., Vilyatpur, 1848–1968: Social and Economic Change in a North Indian village (Berkeley and London, 1974).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Kessinger, Tom G., ‘The Peasant Farm in North India, 1848–1968’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), pp. 303–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dewey, Clive, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification amongst the Punjab Peasantry: Some Hypotheses’, I.C.S. seminar paper, 2 March 1976. Both papers discuss favourably Chayanov's ideas and their value for Indian studies.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Dewey, , ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry’, p. 6.Google Scholar

²⁰ Kessinger, , ‘The Peasant Farm in North India’, p. 320.Google Scholar

²¹ For example, the general idea of whether the peasant economy forms a valid separate economic category. For a recent discussion of this, see Ennew, Judith, Hirst, Paul and Tribe, Keith, ‘“Peasantry” as an Economic Category’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 4 (07 1977), pp. 295–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Mitrany, , Marx Against the Peasant, pp. 47–52.Google Scholar

²³ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 39.Google Scholar

²⁴ Lenin, , ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution’, p. 243.Google Scholar

²⁵ Harrison, Mark, ‘The Peasant Mode of Production in the Work of A. V. Chayanov’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 4 (07 1977), p. 335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ For example, he says of Chayanov's theory of the way the peasantry acts: ‘by studying it we learn more about the processes of ideological formation within which he developed his work, than about the peasantry as such’. Ibid., p. 324. Yet Chayanov's school compiled an invaluable mass of empirical data about the Russian peasantry.

²⁷ I.e. ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, of 1924 and ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’ of 1925.Google Scholar

²⁸ Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 266.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., p. 267.

³⁰ Kremnev, Ivan (pseud, A. V. Chayanov.), ‘The Journey of my Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia’, (translated by Myskow, T. M. and Smith, R. E. F.), The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 1 (10 1976), pp. 63–116.Google Scholar

³¹ For example, the argument that certain forms of indirect taxation, the major means of revenue raising in the Peasant Utopia, prove more egalitarian in impact that direct taxation reflects a growing view in contemporary political discussions about taxation policy.Google Scholar

³² Chayanov argued here that socialism had grown up as a reaction of the working classes to the especially harsh conditions of industrial capitalism. As such, it was an unbalanced creed, with few lessons for the rural situation.Google Scholar

³³ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 324 n.Google Scholar

³⁴ Male, D. J., ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, Soviet Studies, 14, 3 (01 1963), pp. 225–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 44.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 185.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Chayanov, , ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’, p. 5.Google Scholar

⁴¹ For a discussion of the ‘hali system’ and its evolution in modern times see Breman, Jan, Patronage and Exploitation. Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974).Google Scholar

⁴² Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 112.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 237.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 241.

⁴⁶ Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 101.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Munting, R., ‘Outside Earnings in the Russian Peasant Farm: Tula Province 1900–1917’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 3, 4 (07 1976), pp. 428–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ Lenin, , ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, p. 140.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 135.

⁵¹ For example, the argument has recently been reasserted by Perlin in his review of Kessinger's Vilyatpur. See Perlin, Frank, ‘Cycles, Trends and Academics among the Peasantry of North-West India’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2, 3 (04 1975), pp. 360–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵² Domar makes this point well: if it is remembered that, strictly speaking, the capitalist maximizes utility, not profit, then Chayanovian actions seem hardly very different for ‘it turns out that a peasant family…maximizes its utility by equating its marginal disutility (‘drudgery’ in the English translation) of labour with its marginal utility of income’. Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy by Domar, Evsey D., The American Economic Review, 58 (06 1968), p. 633.Google Scholar

⁵³ Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 107.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See Munting, ‘Outside Earnings in the Russian Peasant Farm’.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Chayanov, , ‘Peasant Farm Organisation’, p. 108.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Harrison seizes on this problem when he remarks: ‘there is no satisfactory answer to the question of how peasant families expand their reproducible assets over the family life-cycle’. See Harrison, , ‘Chayanov and the Economics of the Russian Peasantry’, p. 403.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Quoted in Lewin, M., Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (London, 1968), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ These qualifications, too, were not very exclusive: for example, one was ownership of three or more draught animals. Lewin, M., ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, Soviet Studies, 18, 2 (10 1966), p. 195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 203.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 204.

⁶¹ Lewin, , Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, p. 77.Google Scholar

⁶² Male, , ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, p. 231.Google Scholar

⁶³ Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy, by Domar, , p. 634.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, p. 223.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Lewin, , Russian Peasants and Soviet Power.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Hsiao, Kung-chuan, Rural China. Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, 1960), p. 441.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ A recent study of the famine of 1891–92 paints a more favourable picture of the Tsarist government's response than is customarily presented. Even so, the evidence of gross administrative inefficiency, for example in the initial organization of the railway'srole, is striking. See Robbins, Richard G. Jnr, Famine in Russia. The Imperial Government Responds to a Crisis (N. York and London, 1975).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ The following details can be read and are amplified in: Falkus, M. E., The Industrialization of Russia 1700–1914 (London, 1972), Chs 8 and 9;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCrisp, Olga, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (London, 1976), Ch 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerschenkron, A., ‘Agrarian Policies and Industrialization, Russia 1861–1917’, Postan, M. and Habbakuk, H. J. (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1966), Vol. 6, Pt 2, Ch 8;Google ScholarCarson, G. B., ‘Russia 1890–1939’, Aitken, H. G. J. (ed), The State and Economic Growth (N. York, 1959), pp. 115–47;Google ScholarDobb, Maurice, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (5th edn, London, 1960), Pt 1;Google ScholarNove, Alec, An Economic History of the USSR (London, 1969), Ch. 1.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ She argues that ‘the taxed commodities were only sporadically consumed by peasants while for the urban population they were articles of necessity. Even the consumption of spirits…was in the village occasional rather than regular’. Crisp, , Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914, p. 28.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, August 1914 (London, 1972); a devastating account of military muddle.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Nove, , An Economic History of the USSR, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁷² This is Robbins' estimate, pointing out how much greater was the mortality in this and in the post-collectivization Ukraine famine of 1932–33 than in 1891–92. See Robbins, Jnr, Famine in Russia, p. 172.Google Scholar

⁷³ Bol'shakov, A. M., ‘The Soviet Countryside 1917–1924. Its Economics and Life’ (translated by Myskow, T. M. and Smith, R. E. F.), The Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 1 (10 1976), p. 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 31.

⁷⁵ ‘The peasant economy was increasingly confined to in-kind forms by the breakdown of the economy, the nationalization of industry, the abolition of free trade, the extreme restriction of movement within the country, the rapid fall in the value of paper money and so on’. Ibid., p. 45.

⁷⁶ Lewin, , ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, p. 201.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Bol'shakov at any rate suggests this of Tver province: ‘… the present-day peasant lives exclusively from the income of his farm. Yet, before the war and the revolution,…agriculture gave the peasant only 64 per cent of his annual income; the remaining 36 per cent came from off-farm and local crafts and trades’. Bol'shakov, , ‘The Soviet Countryside 1917–1924’, p. 43.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Male, , ‘The Village Community in the USSR: 1925–1930’, p. 229.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Nove, , An Economic History of the USSR, p. 48.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Ibid., 123.

⁸¹ Lewin, , ‘Who Was the Soviet Kulak?’, pp. 189–212.Google Scholar

⁸² Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia 1905–1930’, p. 234.Google Scholar

⁸³ Clark, Colin, Review of A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy in Soviet Studies, 19, 2 (10 1967), p. 293.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Shanin, , ‘Socio-Economic Mobility and the Rural History of Russia, 1905–1930’, p. 231.Google Scholar

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⁸⁸ Charlesworth, Neil, ‘Trends in the Agricultural Performance of the Bombay Presidency, 1900–1920’, Paper read at the SSRC Conference on Indian Economic and Social History, Cambridge, 24 July, 1975.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Here, according to Rajat Ray, population increased by 10.8 per cent between1901 and 1921 at a time when the cultivated acreage was actually contracting. Ray, Rajat, ‘The Crisis of Bengal Agriculture 1870–1927—the Dynamics of Immobility’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 3 (09 1973), p. 249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹⁴ See Tokmakoff, George, ‘Stolypin's Agrarian Reform: an Appraisal’, The Russian Review, 30 (1971), pp. 124–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹⁶ Kumar, Dharma, Land and Caste in South India. Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1965), p. 190.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay, Revenue Dept Papers, Vol. 258 of 1892, No. 749, Brief memorandum on the material condition of the people of the Bombay Presidency, 1881–1891, para. 1.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, 1926–28 (Govt of India, 1929), Vol. 2, Pt 1, para. 3567, Evidence of Harold H. Mann, Director of Agriculture, Bombay Presidency.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relationships in South Gujarat, Ch 5.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Kessinger, , Vilyatpur 1848–1968, p. 92.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁴ See Charlesworth, Neil, ‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants in Late Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra’, Dewey, and Hopkins, (eds), The Imperial Impact, pp, 97–113.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁶ See Hurd, John, ‘Railways and the Expansion of Markets in India, 1861–1921’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), pp. 263–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Kessinger, , ‘The peasant farm in north India, 1848–1968’, p. 319.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Dewey, Clive, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry: some Hypotheses’, ICS seminar paper, 2 March 1976, p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Eric Stokes, in a recent wideranging essay on the Indian peasantry, comments: ‘there seems general agreement that the “golden age” of the rich peasant in India spanned the period 1860–1900’. Stokes, Eric, ‘The Return of the Peasant to South Asian History’, p. 102.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Stokes gives a good example of such groups: the lesser Kunbis in mid-century Gujarat attempting to gain Patidar status. See ibid.

¹¹¹ Keatinge, G., Rural Economy in the Bombay Deccan (London, 1912), p. 72.Google Scholar

¹¹² Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relationships in South Gujarat, p. 74.Google Scholar

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¹¹⁴ Breman, , Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, p. 75.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ SRBGNS, No. 647, Settlement Report on Bardoli taluka, Surat District by Jayakar, M. S., 30 06 1925, para. II.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Ibid., A. M. Macmillan to M. S. Jayakar, 18 October 1925.

¹¹⁷ Broomfield, R. S. and Maxwell, R. M., Report of the Special Enquiry into the Second Revision Settlement of the Bardoli and Chorasi talukas (Bombay, 1929), para. 24.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ As in Ravinder Kumar's Maharashtra. See Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century (London and Toronto, 1968).Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ As in Rajat and Ratna Ray's Bengal. See Rajat and Ratna Ray, ‘The Dynamics of Continuity in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ See Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Smith, , The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan.Google Scholar

¹²² See Washbrook, , ‘Economic Development and Social Stratification in Rural Madras: The “Dry Region”, 1878–1929’, Dewey, and Hopkins, (eds), The Imperial Impact, pp. 68–82;Google Scholar Charlesworth, ‘Rich Peasants and Poor Peasants in Late Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra’, ibid, pp. 97–113.

¹²³ See Dore's, R. P. highly suggestive article, ‘Land Reform and Japan's Economic Development—a Reactionary Thesis’, Shanin, (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies, pp. 377–88.Google Scholar

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¹²⁵ Thus Clive Dewey concedes that special factors, particularly the effects of Sikh rule, are involved in what he calls ‘the flatness of peasant society in the Punjab’. See Clive Dewey, ‘Social Mobility and Social Stratification Amongst the Punjab Peasantry’.Google Scholar