In 1918, the Soviet Union adopted the "Basic Law on the Socialization of the Earth", which became a significant fact of the Soviet agricultural policy of the country.
History, or rather, historians, still cannot give a concrete, accurate and unified description of this law and the phenomenon of “socialization” itself. Below we will consider the socialization of the earth - its description, requirements and interesting facts.
Scientific definition
The socialization of land is the process of transferring land into the property of the country from the hands of landowners. During socialization, peasants were endowed with land without the right to purchase and sell it. This process was a fundamental principle of the agrarian policy of the Social Revolutionaries.
The reason for carrying out such a reform was the initiative of the peasants themselves, who believed that the land was common, "God's". People were not satisfied with the fact that someone had the right to use it, while someone was not.
The Party of Social Revolutionaries (Socialist Revolutionaries) supported the peasants and first adopted the decree "On Land", and then the corresponding law. This Socialist-Revolutionary program for the socialization of the land was primarily the confiscation of estates from the landlords in favor of small farms.
Social Revolutionary Program
The socialization of the land by the Social Revolutionaries was carried out in order to:
- land was handed over to peasant communities;
- landowners deprived of their land;
- to carry out an equal distribution of land in accordance with trawl or consumer norms among the peasants;
- to abolish private ownership of land.
Socialization requirement
The demand for the socialization of the land has become the main agrarian program of the Social Revolutionary Party. They developed the ideas of community socialism, and as early as 1906 wrote that in the struggle against bourgeois-proprietary principles, they would fight for the removal of land from commodity circulation in favor of the public property.
The land socialization program was based on its transfer to local authorities. The program also provided for the distribution of land depending on the hands working on it, or consumers in the family.
And before the adoption of this law, a decree "On Land" was issued, which included various forms of land use, confiscation of land of landowners. He abolished the right of private ownership of land, and also prohibited wage labor. Roughly speaking, this decree was the beginning of the application of the socialization of the land, and taking into account all the inaccuracies, the law itself was already adopted.
As the historians of the CPSU say, the formulations of the socialization program became the basis of the Bolsheviks agrarian program for neo-religious collectivization (uniting farms into collective farms).
Difficulties in applying the law
The first months after the adoption of the above law, peasants began to have problems in its implementation. Peasants often received seasonings, but to use them was often problematic. Most of them (cuttings) were located far from the estate. In historical literature, there are indications that the land was 50-60 miles from the user's place of residence. Of course, this created difficulties for the peasants in cultivating the land. The peasants tried to use at least some small plots of land near their villages. Residents used almost everything, including industrial land, plots near peat bogs, land, railways, as a result of which the width of the latter decreased by about 10 fathoms.
In the Tambov villages, a problem arose regarding the new way of peasant farming. It would seem that everything was good when the farm benefited the farmers (helped by seeds, had a blacksmith, etc.). But if the cultivation of the fields of neighboring farms required the horses of the landowners, their equipment, or the matter concerned with labor service, then in this case the peasants behaved rather hostile to the farm.
And another difficulty in applying the law on socialization was the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the size of the distributed land. Peasants believed that it was unfair for a family of 3-4 adult workers and 6-7 consumers to give the same allotment of land as a family of 3-4 workers with 1-2 eaters. Such disputes were resolved in the rural municipality and county land departments. But the final decision was given by the county land department of the Council.
Reform Outcomes
The land socialization program, unfortunately, did not bring the expected results for some regions of the country.
So, in the Tambov region, the crop in the first year of the law "On Socialization" was the lack of winter and spring crops in 19759 acres. As a result, next year, stocks of shifts sharply decreased.
The gross domestic crop production fell, which led to a reduction in the number of cattle and livestock.
During the approval of this law, forced labor again began to be applied (as it was before the abolition of serfdom). Such a phenomenon began to manifest itself in the uprising of the peasants, which was directed against conditions resembling military communism. The peasants did not oppose the power of the Soviets, which gave them land, they were against a military-communist policy, identified with hunger, violence and power alien to the village people.
This law was in force until 1922, until the Land Code was adopted.
Conclusion
The socialization of land for Soviet-era Russia, despite some difficulties in its application, nevertheless had a pretty good result.
When state lands became popular, the state inevitably began to take care of the life of its people. Of course, not immediately, but gradually - year after year, the situation of the peasant economy improved. Yes, there was such a fact that the lands of the Black Earth Region are not rich in water enough, and in other places, on the contrary, there are more swamps, something needs to be irrigated and something drained, but if you work hard, it is quite possible to improve agriculture and move it off the ground .
And the socialization of the land, suggested by the social revolutionaries, became a grandiose experiment in the systematic construction of socialism in the RSFSR. It was socialization that gave collective farms and state farms the legal basis for their activities.
The socialization of the land operated in Russia until the 90s of the twentieth century. Probably, this land ownership was not so bad, since so many decades it has taken place. Perhaps now this is not enough for us.