In 1918, the Soviet Union adopted the "Basic Law on the Socialization of the Land", which became a significant fact of the Soviet agrarian policy of the country.
History, or rather, historians, still cannot give a specific, accurate and unified description of this law and the very phenomenon of "socialization". Below will be considered the socialization of the land - its description, requirements and interesting facts.
Scientific definition
Socialization of the land is the process of transferring the land into the property of the country from the hands of the landowners. During socialization, the peasants were given land without the right to buy and sell it. This process was the fundamental principle of the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian policy.
The reason for such a reform was the initiative of the peasants themselves, who believed that the land was common, "God's". People were not happy with the fact that someone has the right to use it, and someone does not.
The Party of Social Revolutionaries (SRs) supported the peasants and first adopted the decree "On Land", and then the corresponding law. This Socialist-Revolutionary program of land socialization was primarily a confiscation of estates from landlords in favor of small peasant farms.
SR program
Socialization of the land by the Social Revolutionaries was carried out in order to:
- land was handed over to peasant communities;
- landlords were deprived of their land;
- carry out an equal distribution of land in accordance with trawl or consumer norms among peasants;
- to abolish private ownership of land.
Requirement for socialization
The demand for the socialization of land has become the main agrarian program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. They developed the ideas of community socialism, and as early as 1906 they wrote that in the struggle against bourgeois property principles they would fight for the withdrawal of land from commodity circulation in favor of the public property.
The land socialization program was based on its transfer to the disposal of local governments. The program also assumed the distribution of land depending on the hands working on it, or eaters in the family.
And before the adoption of this law, a decree "On Land" was issued, which included various forms of land use, the confiscation 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 land socialization, and taking into account all the inaccuracies, the law itself was already adopted.
As historians of the CPSU say, the formulations of the socialization program became the basis of the agrarian program of the Bolsheviks for neo-serf collectivization (unification of farms incollective farms).
Difficulties in applying the law
The first months from the date of adoption of the above-mentioned law, the peasants began to have problems in its implementation. Peasants often received cuts, but it was often problematic to use them. Most of them (cuts) were located far from the estate. In the historical literature, there are indications that the land was located 50-60 miles from the user's place of residence. Naturally, 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 the lands of industrial enterprises, areas 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 the peasant economy. It would seem that everything was fine when the economy benefited the farmers (helped with seeds, had a blacksmith, etc.). But if the horses of the landowners and their equipment were required to cultivate the fields of neighboring farms, or if it was a matter of labor service, then in this case the peasants behaved rather hostilely towards the farm.
And another difficulty in applying the law on socialization was the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the size of the distributed land. The peasants believed that it was unfair to give a family of 3-4 adult workers and 6-7 eaters the same plot of land as a family of 3-4 workers with 1-2eaters. Such disputes were resolved in the volost and county land departments. But still, the final decision was made by the county land department of the Council.
Results of the reform
The land socialization program, unfortunately, did not bring the expected results for some regions of the country.
So, in the Tambov region, the harvest in the first year of the law "On socialization" was a shortfall in winter and spring crops in 19759 acres. As a result, next year's reserves have been sharply reduced.
The domestic gross crop production fell, which led to a reduction in the number of cattle and working livestock.
During the approval of this law, forced labor was again used (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 reminiscent of war communism. The peasants did not oppose the power of the Soviets, which gave them land, they were against the military-communist policy, identified with hunger, violence and the power of people alien to the village.
This law was in effect until 1922, until the Land Code was adopted.
Conclusion
The socialization of the land for Soviet Russia, despite some difficulties in its application, still had quite a good result.
When state lands became public, 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 peasantryfarming improved. Yes, there was such a fact that the lands of the Chernozem region are not rich enough in water, and in other places, on the contrary, there are more swamps, something needs to be irrigated, and something needs to be drained, but if you work hard, it is quite possible to improve agriculture and get it off the ground.
And the socialization of the land, proposed by the social revolutionaries, became a grandiose experiment in the systematic construction of socialism in the RSFSR. It was socialization that gave collective and state farms the legal basis for their activities.
Socialization of land operated in Russia until the 90s of the twentieth century. Perhaps this land ownership was not so bad, since it has been in place for so many decades. Perhaps we still lack this now.
