Peasantry in the First Years of Ukrainian Revolution (1917-1918): Evolution of Value Orientations and Protest Activity

Keywords: peasantry, land reform, agrarian question, Ukrainian Revolution, Ukrainian Central Rada

Abstract

The purpose of the research paper is to highlight the system of views of the peasantry as a class, in particular, changes in legal awareness and attitudes towards state institutions; outline the complex of problems of the peasantry, transformation of attitudes, social and political organization; uncover the prerequisites of the peasant movements of 1917-1918 (during the period of the Ukrainian Central Rada’s nation-building), their organizational forms, quantitative, and territorial dimensions.

The scientific novelty. The transformation of the peasantry as a separate social group, its legal awareness, changes in the interpretation of the agrarian question, and, after all, its attitude to specific changes on the way to land reform are comprehensively traced. Peasant protests are analyzed through the prism of social and cultural approaches, which helps to analyze comprehensively the quantitative and qualitative forms of peasant struggle.

Conclusions. After World War I and during the Ukrainian Revolution, the peasantry experienced a number of social, political, and value changes. Those changes were manifested, first of all, in the attitude to the solution of the land question. The aspirations of the peasantry were aimed at the redistribution of land ownership in such a way that those who worked on it – acquired it.

The first half of 1917 was a relatively calm stage of the Ukrainian Revolution. The peasantry associated their hopes for solving urgent problems with the new state institutions. A vertical of power and various departments were being formed to organize local self-governing, including land management. The peasant protests of that period were peaceful, the landlords continued to own their property and manage it. However, in the summer of 1917, on the initiative of land committees, low rental prices began to be set, and peasants were able to lease land and a share of the harvest on favorable terms just about for the first time.

Contradictions against the background of the further distribution of leased land, and later the property of large landowners, combined with the demoralizing effects of the war, economic devastation, food shortages, and destabilization of the financial and power vertical led to the escalation of the confrontation. From September 1917 to the winter of 1918, the peasant movement took threatening forms with pogroms and the burning of landowners’ estates.

Funding. The study was prepared based on the results of fundamental research “The Socio-cultural Space of Ukraine in the Second Half of the Nineteenth – First Third of the Twentieth Century: the Peasant-centric Dimension” (state registration number: 0123U101600) with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

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Published
15.10.2024
How to Cite
Soliar, I., & Ilnytskyi, V. (2024). Peasantry in the First Years of Ukrainian Revolution (1917-1918): Evolution of Value Orientations and Protest Activity. Eminak: Scientific Quarterly Journal, (3(47), 166-184. https://doi.org/10.33782/eminak2024.3(47).734
Section
Modern History