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The Village Question: Trends in Contemporary Research on Rural Russia and Ukraine

6th Floor Board RoomJessica Allina-Pisano, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Colgate University, and Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute; Kate Brown, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Liesl Gambold Miller, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax; Margaret Paxson, Senior Associate, Kennan Institute, and former Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute

Date & Time

Tuesday
Jun. 14, 2005
3:30pm – 5:30pm ET

Overview

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Kate Brown of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Jessica Allina-Pisano of Colgate University and the Kennan Institute; Liesl Gambold Miller of Dalhousie University; and Margaret Paxson of the Kennan Institute, discussed their research on rural Russia and Ukraine and how this research has an impact on the fields of Russian and Ukrainian studies. The panelists agreed that there has been a tendency to ignore the role that village societies play in the larger political, economic, and social contexts of Russia and Ukraine. Their research demonstrates that the failure to consider the realities of village life has had serious consequences in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

Kate Brown's research focused on rural communities in right-bank Ukraine during the early 20th century. She argued that the rural societies of the region were highly complex. Various languages, including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Yiddish, were spoken in the region. Every village had its own local dialect, and many residents were multi-lingual. Right-bank Ukraine was characterized by diverse religious practices, including Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Judaism, and a variety of informal, sectarian groups. Villagers shared traditions across religious and ethnic boundaries. According to Brown, the Bolshevik government seriously underestimated these rural societies and their attachment to their cultures and economies. Right-bank Ukraine was the site of some of the fiercest resistance to collectivization, which was only overcome with mass violence. Brown contended that villagers are today resisting the market economy, just as they opposed collectivization 70 years ago.

Jessica Allina-Pisano discussed how and why resistance to privatization occurs in villages in the border areas of Russia and Ukraine. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, collective farms were to be divided and small parcels of land were to be given to all of the farm's employees. However, according to Allina-Pisano, this allocation of land proved to be useless to farm employees. Most lacked the capital to farm the land-and many were never informed of where "their" land was located-but due to the simultaneous implementation of privatization and economic liberalization, they were unable to make use of their property rights. The majority had no choice but to lease their land to the former collective farm, receiving lease payments that were of less value than the entitlements they had received under the collective farm system. Allina-Pisano argued that the privatization of the collective farms was a failure that hurt farmers in both Russia and Ukraine and did not provided the incentives for increased efficiency that economists believed it would.

Liesl Gambold Miller argued that, in addition to economic constraints, there were emotional factors that led many people to retain their association with former collective farms rather than become private farmers. The people that she spoke with during her fieldwork in a village in Russia's Nizhegorodskaia region were almost universally nostalgic for the Soviet Union and believed that everything was better before privatization. Farmers felt that they had lost both the material prosperity that they had enjoyed as collective employees and the cultural and social advantages of being part of a community. Miller added that one family in the village had separated from the former collective farm in order to farm their privatized land for themselves. Financially, the family farm was quite successful, but the family was socially isolated from the rest of the village.

Margaret Paxson concluded by elaborating on the role that culture plays in rural society, based on her fieldwork in a village in northern Russia. She argued that there are two opposing views that shape the way that scholars and policymakers understand Russia. The first view is that Russia's cultural heritage is irrelevant—with political and economic reforms, Russia will become just like America with a few minor cultural accents. The second view is that Russia's culture is immutable, and that the country will be forever locked into an authoritarian government and backward economy because of the nature of Russian culture. Paxson argued that we need to develop a new understanding of Russia—one that allows for the important role of tradition and continuity with the past that she observed in her fieldwork, but at the same time allows for an understanding of Russian culture that is fluid and changeable. She contended that the only way to develop such an understanding is through extensive fieldwork.

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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more

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