Lives Of The Peasants Flashcards
Alexander II
Housing for the average peasant remained the same, single room wooden hut (izbas) heated by an oven. Overcrowded and animals housed in there too.
Alexander IIl
End of serfdom made lives worse for most peasants as they now had less land and money to buy things. Poll tax was a heavy burden. Peasants allowed to own their own property.
Poll tax was abolished
Peasants land bank was created to help peasants buy land from their landlords. Successful: peasants had purchased one third of all landlord estates by 1904.
Plots became smaller
1891 famine due to increasing price of consumer goods to raise revenue but peasants couldn’t afford it so to afford what they needed they were forced to sell more and more grain leaving them with no reserves of seed corn for them to use in a bad year
Nicholas
Story pins land reform; land was made available for purchase by enterprising peasants. They were able to leave the Mir, extend their land, and build up their own consolidated farms. They could grow what crops they wanted. (New encouragement for peasants to improve their land, by 1914, over 1/3 of peasants had left the Mir. ) Best land still owned by the tsar or gentry, produced a growing class of alienated peasants
Lenin
War communism- grain requisitioning. And increased conscription of peasants into the red army to fight in the civil war.
NEP POLICY encouraged peasants to grow crops to create a surplus which could be sold at markets for profit.
Lenin promised the peasants ‘peace, bread and land’ but this failed to deliver but kulaks seemed to benefit through the NEP.
Repressed peasant disturbances through the Cheka mainly over grain requisitioning
1921 famine, he was slow to respond which made it worse for peasants.
Stalin
Stalins collectivisation led to a famine in 1832-34. They weren’t allowed to eat their own seed corn and were shot if they did. Stalin didn’t do anything about it. There was a horse shortage which slowed down the ploughing of fields. They were under strict control.
Collectivisation meant they moved into communal living and worked together.
Kulaks were targeted and were forced to do labour during five year plans.
Khrushchev
The Virgin land scheme did little to address peasant concerns about rights over the land. It was designed to utilise land that had been left alone.
Some easing of harsh treatment when they complained
He ordered the construction of is self contained ‘agro-towns’ for peasants but they were built cheaply and quickly and were of poor standard.
