Siberian agriculture
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (November 2020) |
Agriculture in Siberia was started many millennia ago by peoples indigenous to the region. While these native Siberians had little more than "digging sticks" called mattocks instead of ploughs at their disposal, Siberian agriculture would develop through the centuries until millions of Russian farmers were settled there, reaping significant bounties off this huge expanse of land stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.[1]
The effect of climate and geography on agriculture
Agriculture is inevitably tied up with
In terms of geographical location, there are two main agricultural centers in the fertile areas of
Pre-modern beginnings
The Neolithic period (8,000-7,000 BCE) is often taken to signify the start of land cultivation. However, the native peoples living in Siberia at that moment in history did not join in this global movement because of the difficulties associated with its severe climate.[7] Agricultural stirrings did reach Siberia by the second half of the 3rd millennium, when the peoples of the
Only during the
Siberian agriculture made even more headway during the
The plough was finally adopted during the first independent Siberian state, the Kirghiz Khanate. This state arose during the 8th century AD, also along the Yenisei River, but adopted a larger range than the Tagar culture, stretching from Krasnoyarsk in the north to the Sayan Mountains in the south. While the economy of the peoples living in this area was based on nomadic cattle breeding, they also engaged in arable farming. The chief crops cultivated during this time included millet, barley, wheat, and hemp.[10]
Early Russian settlers in Siberia
The first step to opening up Siberia for Russian settlement and colonization came as early as 1558, when the wealthy landowner Grigory Dmitriyevich Stroganov received a charter from tsar Ivan the Terrible that gave him the right to colonize the "empty lands" beyond the Urals (that were already inhabited by the native tribes of Siberia). He was given the right to bring in settlers to these areas and plough their lands.[11]
This colonization through land expropriation happened largely in gradual west-to-east steps, aided by the many rivers and river valleys that flow through Siberia. Russian settlers started in the westernmost valleys of the
By the late 1600s, Russian settlers started making the long trek to Siberia in greater numbers in order to find new opportunities and lands to claim, away from the densely populated tracts of European Russia.[12] In fact, some peasants chose to move away from their western homes because of poor soil conditions in their native regions, hoping to settle down on some of the chernozem soil that Siberia had to offer. Families also had the chance to improve their standing in society and escape poverty by taking advantage of the more lenient taxing system the Tsar offered in Siberia; for each acre of land that a family tilled for the tsar, they were given permission to plough five acres of government land for their own benefit.[5] In addition to this, early settlers enjoyed a 10-year tax exemption, an incentive for families to migrate eastward.[13]
These settlers brought many of their traditional Russian crops with them. The most important of these crops was rye, but they also brought other grains such as barley, wheat,
The climate of Siberia is not conducive for agriculture, but Siberia during this time was in fact slowly becoming self-reliant. The Siberian Office was therefore gradually able to reduce the amount of food imported to Siberia from European Russia. This was great news for the Russian Imperial government, seeing as the price of shipping such staples as grain those enormous distances was both exorbitantly expensive and slow.[14]
As the wave of Russian settlement crept ever eastward, agricultural success became less and less guaranteed. By the 1730s, this east-west journey had finally reached the Kamchatka Peninsula. The aim was to pursue agriculture just as previous settlers had done in the west, but the climate of this peninsula is extremely inhospitable and these pursuits were unsuccessful.[15] However, there were scattered pockets which could produce grain in the eastern regions of Siberia, like Irkutsk, which grew to be one of the most influential cities east of the Urals. In contrast with other east Siberian cities, Irkutsk residents never experienced periods of hunger and did not have to rely on shipments of grain from the west to survive.[5]
Fur vs. agriculture
During this agricultural progression from east to west, settlers did not encounter the empty lands that Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Grigori Stroganov had been expecting. There were already Russian tracks on the land, marks of the indefatigable fur trade of the 1600s. Sable, Marten, and Fox pelts were harvested by the thousands, while squirrel pelt numbers reached even more tremendous numbers.[16] Fur, in some ways, paved the way for Russia's modernization: furs (or "soft gold," as it was also called) were used as gifts for foreign ambassadors, paid for the expenses of the Tsar's court, and kept his government running smoothly. Furs helped finance the militarization of the Russian Empire, helping to win back lands from the Poles and the Swedes and funding the monstrous engine of expansion and modernization that was Peter the Great's main mission during his rule.[17]
Because profits from the fur trade so fed the Russian machine during this time, it is perhaps no wonder that the Tsar wanted to preserve some lands for hunting purposes rather than for agricultural pursuits. In fact, in 1683, the Siberian Office sent to Yakutsks governors a proclamation that stated there was to be: "a firm prohibition on pain of death that henceforth in sable hunting grounds no forest whatever [was] to be cut or burned, in order that the animals be not exterminated nor flee to distant parts".[18]
As the animals were quickly hunted out of their traditional territory and the fur frontier was pushed evermore to the east, however, the fur trade dwindled and the scale tipped in favor of agriculture. The most resounding win for Siberian agriculture came in 1822, with the reforms of Mikhail Speransky. Whereas before, the native nomads of Siberia had been considered as such, they were now relegated to an artificial "settled" category and put on the same level as Russian settlers. This had two main implications for the region: Siberian natives were kept in conditions of destitution because of the increase in tax burden they were forced to face and large sections of land were freed up for cultivation.[19]
With the influx of Russian peasants into areas that had traditionally been used as pastureland and hunting grounds, many natives decided to abandon their old ways of subsistence and fit themselves into the categories that the government had decreed for them.[19] However, Russian settlers started the habit of seizing native lands if they were especially fertile or lay in advantageous locations. The method for claiming lands was as simple as taking them by force from the Siberian natives, which was a practice that came to be legalized by an official decree in 1879. This could take many forms, one of which being that Russian settlers sometimes simply ploughed up the land around a native family's yurt, forcing them to move.[18] Through similar processes occurring all throughout Siberia, the fur business slowly transitioned to agriculture.
Pre-1917 agricultural growth
During this Russian settlement, as peasants tried to establish themselves in the midst of harsh conditions and all the while battling the fur trade, the population and agricultural output were steadily rising. In the beginning of the 18th century, the entire population hovered around 500,000, while 150 years later, in the middle of the 19th century, it was nearing three million.[20] Hand in hand with population growth came increased agricultural output. For example, in the period from 1850 to 1900, grain production went from 1.4 million tons to over 7 million tons. Indeed, this amounted to 16% of Russia's total grain production.[21]
By 1910, when roughly 80 million acres of farmland were in use producing foodstuffs in Siberia, a million-ton annual surplus of wheat was established.[22] In fact, compared with other areas of the country, around the turn of the century, Siberia's agriculture was quite technologically advanced. In 1911, when their European Russian equivalents were still threshing their grain by hand, Siberian Russians had an impressive collection of 37,000 mowing machines and 39,000 horse-drawn rakes.[23] Siberians were using a full 25% of the Agricultural machinery in the country, which was part of the reason that grain production exploded in this period.[24]
Their animal helpers were also in better supply than in European Russia: Siberian Russians had twice as many
By 1917, the year of the
Siberian butter industry
One facet of Siberian agriculture that may not be common knowledge is its thriving butter industry. By 1912, the
This Siberian industry was so extensive, in fact, that by 1917, half of all butter-producing plants in Russia were to be found in Siberia, and a staggering 90% of butter exportation came originally from this area. In 1907, butter production had reached an astonishing 63,000 tons, almost a tenfold increase over the amounts produced just thirteen years prior, in 1894.[22] By 1914, Siberia had surpassed Australia and the Netherlands (major world suppliers of butter) in butter production and churning out just slightly less than Denmark, the country to which the Siberian butter trade owed its roots.[23] Butter made more revenue than any other good apart from gold, wheat, and furs in that same year.[28] Butter production carried such weight that, coupled with the Siberian grain industry, Lincoln credits it as playing one of the key roles in enticing foreign investment to enter the region around the turn of the century.[27]
These plants were hit hard after this, however, with the internal strife of both the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War, so much so that butter output dropped to a mere 6,000 tons in 1922, dipping below the 1894 levels. A revival came by 1927, however, when the 37,000-ton mark was reached and butter again became an important Russian export.[24] However, the heydays of the Russian butter behemoth were over.
Bolshevik Revolution
Siberian agriculture underwent a tremendous shift as a result of the
In the time leading to the Bolshevik Revolution, there was a substantial amount of distress amongst
The
Specific indications that led to up the Agrarian Crisis were "rising land prices, growing arrears in peasant redemption payments, the famine of the early 1890s, declining per capita land holdings of the peasants and the reports of peasant impoverishment in grain deficit provinces."[29] From the previously reported symptoms leading up to the Crisis, it is logical to deduce that the Agrarian Crisis of 1905 was directly related to peasant unrest in relation to land unrest.
Dekulakization and collectivization
Between the years of 1929 to 1932, the Soviet Communist Party under
Although collectivization is discussed in relation to agriculture, it is quite evident that the Communist Party's Policy was directed not only at collectivizing land, but also at collectivizing people. The thought process and reasoning behind collectivizing agriculture was that having a few larger "mechanized grain or livestock farms" seemed as though it would be much more functional than having several independent farms. In contrast, in regards to people, "the principle aim of collectivization was 'to concentrate the native population as much as possible'" and to scrap nomadism.
Virgin Lands Campaign
By the 1950s, increases in the standard of living prompted a move by the state to increase the quantity and quality of foodstuffs for the general population. To meet this goal, the
Agricultural revival 1970 - 1989
Prior to the decades of the nineteen seventies and eighties, developing and expanding the agricultural
The rural demographic shift to urban areas that plagued most rural counties did not tremendously affect peri-urban areas in Russia. In fact, these areas seemed to experience population increase and at minimum a stabilization in population size. The agricultural and labor supply mirrored the activity of population growth in that it experienced stabilization or a rise in productivity. The proliferation observed in peri-urban communities during this time was not a universal trend. During the nineteen seventies and eighties, the west, conversely was thrown into disorder by the "disruptive influence of urbanization on agriculture."[37]
During the mid-1980s, agricultural output suffered a lag in productivity that directly correlated with distance from an urban center. The so-called "rural periphery" or the land that was located outside a two-hour radius from an urban center was being cultivated inefficiently and ineffectively. The way in which the land was cultivated was done so unwisely—too much of the land was farmed at one time in contrast to using a structure like that of crop rotation, which uses modern irrigation techniques and a variance of crops. In other words, what was going on can be simplified as "the greater the amount of land under cultivation, the lower the productivity",[38] which led ultimately led to a lack in fertility.
Landowners began to abandon their land and failed to report the actual size of their property to the
In the 1990s, with the onset of market reforms, agricultural output collapsed, and rural agricultural areas continued to decline in productivity, though they were not alone in this lack of output as urban centers began to suffer in terms of manufacturing, but at an even higher rate. This was not only alarming because never had such a statistic revealed itself, but also because the agricultural realm was so dependent on the consistency of the urban realm for its own survival that such a decline would prove harmful to both spheres. The dramatic crop failure of 1998 that Siberia experienced did not help the situation either. Subsidiary farming, a form of farming executed by small-town inhabitants in their private yards, began to rise during this period further proving a regression in rural production. The institution of subsidiary farming represented a serious step back in terms of modern development.
A severe cut in the number of cattle head was also a major signifier of the agricultural difficulties occurring at the time. Although it was acknowledged that it was more economical to import meat to Russia as opposed to raising and feeding cattle as it had normally done in previous decades, the massive number of cattle head that had vanished was too significant to ignore.
A solution to the late 20th century agricultural crisis
A solution to the succession of problems that had snowballed for decades was threefold: "contraction of agricultural space, demographic revival and vertical integration of food producers".
Alexsandr Chaianov is credited for hypothesizing the theory of "agricultural cooperation in which he distinguished between vertical and horizontal forms of cooperative arrangements".[43] The horizontal cooperation was described as a much more dysfunctional model in which small farms were identified as units that formed links with each other. The vertical cooperation was described as a much more practical model in that it involved linking "farms with food processors and retailers"[43] in a hierarchical and feasible trend.
References
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 22.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 3.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 4.
- ^ Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 45.
- ^ a b c Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 88.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. pp. 136, 138.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 15.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 17.
- ^ Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia. Boulder: Westview Press. p. 34.
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 40.
- ^ Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 29.
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 76.
- ^ Nicholas Breyfogle, ed. (2007). Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History. New York: Routledge. p. 26.
- ^ a b Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 43.
- ^ Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 141.
- ^ Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 57.
- ^ Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 86.
- ^ a b Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 64.
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 157.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 100.
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 137.
- ^ a b Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 261.
- ^ a b c Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 281.
- ^ a b c Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 136.
- ^ Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 103.
- ^ Forsyth, James (1994). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 186.
- ^ a b Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 270.
- ^ Lincoln, W. Bruce (1994). The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 282.
- ^ a b c Confino, Michael (2011). Russia Before The "Radiant Future". Berghahn Books. p. 163.
- ^ Alexeyev, Veniamin (1989). Siberia in the 20th Century. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House.
- ISBN 978-0195051803.
- ^ a b Schmemann, Serge (28 October 1984). "The Soviet Farm Still Produces Shortages". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c Evtuhov, Catherine (2004). A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 736.
- ^ a b Naumov, Igor V. (2006). David N. Collins (ed.). The History of Siberia. Norfolk: Routledge. p. 208.
- ^ Evtuhov, Catherine (2004). A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 745.
- ^ JSTOR 149159.
- ^ a b c d e f O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 70.
- ^ O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 71.
- ^ a b O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 72.
- ^ Wood, Alan (1989). The Development of Siberia. London: The MacMillan Press LTD.
- ^ O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 76.
- ^ a b O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 78.
- ^ a b O'brien, David (2002). Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 81.