Policy of the land liberal party of northern Ukraine in the field of agriculture (70s of the 1970s)

Abstract

Abstract. Purpose. The publication is devoted to the coverage of the ideology and content of the Zemstvo liberal party's policy in the field of agriculture in the 1970s. The task of intelligence is to continue the formation of a general idea in the national historical science about the fundamental principles of the agrarian policy of the Zemstvo liberal front of northern Ukraine in the 60s - 80s of the 19th century.

The scientific novelty lies in the fact that on the basis of primary sources introduced for the first time into the international scientific circulation, the main parameters of the position of the members of the opposition aristocratic front of the Northern Left Bank regarding the development of agriculture and the peasant issue in the north of Left Bank Ukraine in the studied period have been clarified.

Conclusions. The author comes to the conclusion that the agrarian issue in the system of coordinates and practical activities of the members of the Zemstvo liberal front of northern Ukraine until the middle of the 70s of the XIX century. did not occupy a leading place. The specified metamorphosis had a complex of reasons: the oppositional attitude to the abolition of the slave system in the Russian Empire among the great conservative nobility, and therefore demonstrative public absenteeism and indifference to symbolic procedures; the specificity of the content of the legislative provisions on the abolition of serfdom in the Chernihiv province - the application of "Little Russian" articles in one half of the region, and "Great Russian" articles in the other, and as a result - the progressive landlessness of the peasantry, its colossal migration to urban agglomerations, the concentration of the land fund of the region in the ownership of medium-sized private owners and the beginning of the formation of an agricultural proletariat in provincial communities. The essence of the abolition of serfdom by the Russian autocracy, the long term of redemption operations with the land fund of the region significantly restrained the representatives of the Zemstvo Liberal Party in their efforts to fundamentally address the problems of the development of the agrarian sector of the state economy during their activities in the institutions of city and Zemstvo self-government. Only in the mid-70s of the XIX century, when the main contours of the post-reformed financial and economic intentions in agriculture became clear, liberal zemts began to initiate a complex of progressive initiatives in the district and provincial zemtsky assemblies, the ideology of which was to reorient the activities of the peasantry from agriculture to the sphere of artisan cooperative production Taking into account the new realities in land ownership and land use of the region, the oppositionists considered it necessary to ensure the independence of former slaves from success in agriculture, through zemstvo credit and banking assistance in the creation and development of industrial and craft industries. In general, it can be argued that the policy of the Zemstvo Liberal Party of Northern Ukraine in the 1970s. in the field of agriculture was palliative and dual. Not wanting a radical problem of the functioning of the agrarian sector in the post-reform Russian Empire, representatives of the opposition aristocratic front of the region did everything possible to preserve the achieved revolutionary gains in the economic life of the country until the moment when a favorable and appropriate opportunity would appear again to declare the fateful need for new, modern transformations in the agricultural sector.