Tsarist Agriculture

Figure 1.--This magic latern slide shows Raussian peasant plowing his field whole a boy, presumably his son looks on. It is dated 1910s. The dealer dates it to the 1910s. Based on the way the way the boy is dressed, it would hve bee in the final years of Tsarist rulke if not shortly after. The plowing may look primitive, but t the time, tractors hd not yet entirecly replaced horses and mules on American farms. In the 19th century it was not uncommon for serfs to pull the plows. (During World War II, Russian women might do so again in the desperate conditions after the NAZI invasion.) Note the rich black soil, small size of the horse and endless horizon of the Eur-Asian Steppe.

Long before the United States existed, Tsarist Russia (including the Ukraine) was the European breadbasket for centuries exporting grain to Western Europe. Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 19th century was one of the major European powers. It was the Tsarist Army and Russian Winter that defeated Napoleon's Grand Armée (1812-13). Russia after the Napoleonic Wars did, however, not participate in the Industrial Revolution like Western Europe and thus the balance of power between Russia and Western Europe began to shift back west. This becamne apparent in the Crimean War (1854-56). The Russian economy unlike Western Europe continued to be almost feudal and largely agrarian. Not only was there only limited industrialization, but there had been little investment in agriculture. Systems based on slavery or other formsof forced labor (serfdom) to not incourage investmernt. Agricultural techniques were medieval, some might even say pre-medieval. On some estates and free holdings there were very few tools or other investment in other capital goods.Yields as a result were relatively yields, but the fertility of the black soil zone and the vast size of Russia produced very large grain harvests which were key to the Tsarist ecomomy. Large quantities of grain were exported to Western Europe. Much but not all of the land was owned by the aristocracy which was a major support of the Tsarist state. They were for the most case absentee landlords who had little interest in agricultural technology are improving the life of the serfs who worked them. It was largely unfashionable to invest funds in their holdings or take much interest in them beyomd the income which could be extracted. One author suggests that the great aristocrats saw such concerns derisively as rather 'middle class'. Tsar Alexander II freed the serfs (1861). It was, however, a halfway meassure as the debts resultingfor debts crippled the peasantry and made it difficult for them to fully benefit from their freedom--especially tp ourchase lbdm evn smll plots. Despite these problems, however, Tsarist agriculture produced vast quantities of grain which supported the Tsarist state and helped feed Westrn Europe. Tsarist Russia before the Revolution was the bread basket of Europe. Grain exports were the primary export commodity of Tsarist Russia. The grain harvests before World War I were larger than those achieved by Soviet agriculture until many years after World War II. And the peasantry despite the claims of Soviet propaganda was better off under Tsarist than Soviet rule. It is true that the aristocracy took the lion's share of the production, but under Stalin, the Soviet state would extract and even greater share of the harvest. And no Tsar lunched genocidal myrder like Stalin did in the Ukraine (1931).

Created: 5:34 AM 6/15/2022
Last updated: 5:34 AM 6/15/2022br>