How successful were Stolypin’s agrarian reforms? The matter is the subject of considerable controversy. One school of historians claims that they led to rapid changes in the village which would have prevented revolution were it not for Stolypin’s death and the disruptions of World War I. Another school dismisses them as a reform foisted upon unwilling peasants and undone by them immediately after the collapse of the Imperial regime.59
The facts of the case are as follows.60 In 1905, the fifty provinces of European Russia had 12.3 million peasant households cultivating 125 million desiatiny; 77.2 percent of these households and 83.4 percent of this land were under a communal regime. In the Great Russian provinces, communal land-holding embraced 97–100 percent of the households and land. Notwithstanding claims of the opponents of the commune that repartition was falling into disuse, in central Russia it was universally practiced.
Between 1906 and 1916, 2.5 million (or 22 percent) of the communal households, with 14.5 percent of the acreage, filed petitions to take title to their allotments. As these figures indicate, those who availed themselves of the new legislation were the poorer peasants, usually with small families, who had difficulty making ends meet: whereas the average household allotment in European Russia was around ten desiatiny, the households that withdrew from the commune averaged only three desiatiny.61
In sum, slightly more than one communal household in five took advantage of the law of November 9. But this statistic ignores one important fact and, by doing so, makes the reform appear still more successful than it actually was. The economic drawback of the commune lay not only in the practice of repartition but also in that of strip farming, or cherespolositsa, which was an essential corollary of communal organization. Economists criticized this practice on the grounds that it forced the peasant to waste much time moving with his equipment from strip to strip and precluded intensive cultivation. Stolypin, well aware of the disadvantages of cherespolositsa, was eager to do away with it, and to this end inserted in the law a clause authorizing peasants wishing to withdraw from the commune to demand that their holdings be consolidated (enclosed). The communes, however, ignored this provision: the evidence indicates that three-quarters of the households which took title to their allotments under the Stolypin law had to accept them in scattered strips.62 Such properties were known as otruba; khutora, independent farmsteads with enclosed land, which Stolypin wanted to encourage, existed mainly in the borderlands. Thus, the pernicious practice of strip farming was little affected by the Stolypin legislation. On the eve of the 1917 Revolution, a decade after Stolypin’s reforms had gone into effect, only 10 percent of Russian peasant households operated as khutora; the remaining 90 percent continued as before to pursue strip farming.63
On balance, therefore, the results of Stolypin’s agrarian reforms must be judged as exceedingly modest. No “agrarian revolution” occurred and no Russian yeomanry emerged. When asked why they claimed title to their allotments, one-half of the respondents said that they did so in order to sell and get out of the village: only 18.7 percent took title in order to farm more efficiently. In effect, the reform encouraged the exodus of the poorer communal elements: the better-off peasants remained in the commune, often with enlarged allotments, and nearly every peasant, communal or not, continued to practice strip farming.
Overwhelmingly, Russian peasants rejected the very premise of Stolypin’s agrarian reforms. Surveys conducted after the reforms had been introduced show that they resented those of their neighbors who pulled out of the commune to set up private farms. Communal peasants were unshakable in the belief that the only solution to their economic difficulties lay in communal appropriation of all privately held lands. They opposed the Stolypin legislation from fear that withdrawals would worsen communal land shortages and in some cases refused to allow them, in contravention of the law.64 In the eyes of their neighbors, those who availed themselves of the Stolypin reform ceased to be peasants: indeed, under the terms of the electoral law of June 3, 1907, peasants owning 2.5 or more desiatiny qualified as “landlords.” They lived, therefore, on borrowed time. In 1917, once the old regime broke down, the otruba and khutora would be the very first objects of peasant assault: they were in no time swept away and dissolved in the communal sea like sand castles.
Even so, significant changes did occur in Russian agriculture during and after Stolypin’s ministry, although not in consequence of his legislation.
The gentry, having lost “taste for the land,” continued to abandon the countryside. Between 1905 and 1914, gentry landholding in European Russia declined by 12.6 percent, from 47.9 to 41.8 million desiatiny. Most of the land which the landlords sold was acquired by peasants either communally or privately. As a result, on the eve of the Revolution Russia was more than ever a country of small, self-sufficient cultivators.
During this time, agricultural yields improved:
CEREAL YIELDS IN 47 PROVINCES OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA65 (kilograms per desiatina) Rye Wheat 1891–1895 701 662 1896–1900 760 596 1901–1905 794 727 1906–1910 733 672 1911–1915 868 726
Russian yields were still the lowest in Europe, bringing in one-third or less of the crops harvested in the Low Countries, Britain, and Germany—the result of unfavorable natural conditions, the virtual absence of chemical fertilizers, and the communal system. Improved yields made possible increased exports of foodstuffs: in 1911, Russia sold abroad a record 13.5 million tons of cereals.66
Stolypin’s vision of “Great Russia” required, in addition to the restoration of public order and changes in agricultural practices, political and social reforms. As with agrarian measures, his political reforms grew out of projects formulated by the Ministry of the Interior before his arrival on the scene: a good part had been anticipated in Witte’s proposals to Nicholas II.67 Stolypin adopted and expanded these ideas, whose purpose was to modernize and Westernize Russia. Very little of this program was realized: Stolypin declared that he required twenty years to change Russia and he was given a mere five. Even so, its provisions are of interest because they indicate what the liberal bureaucracy, which was far better informed than either the Court or the intelligentsia, saw as the country’s most pressing needs. As formulated in public addresses, notably his Duma speech of March 6, 1907, and the program which he dictated privately in May 1911.* Stolypin intended the following:
Civil rights: Protection of citizens from arbitrary arrest; abolition of administrative exile; bringing to trial officials guilty of criminal abuse of authority.
Police: Abolition of the Corps of Gendarmes as a separate entity and its merger with the regular police; gendarmes to be deprived of the authority to conduct political investigations; an end to the practice of employing agents provocateurs to infiltrate revolutionary movements.
Administration: Creation of a Ministry of Self-government; replacing the peasant volost’ with an all-estate, self-governing unit whose officials would combine administrative and police functions; major reform of zemstva which would endow them with powers comparable to those enjoyed by state governments in the United States; elections to zemstva to be based on a democratic franchise; the bureaucracy’s authority over zemstva to be confined to ensuring the legality of their actions; the introduction of zemstva into the western provinces of the empire.