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Conclusion Russian farming has always been unstable because of its complex climatic conditions. Russia’s records of the difficulties caused by weather vagaries are impressive. During the last hundred years the country went through at least 30 years of severe drought. Some years were also problematic due to severe frosty winters or summers that were too rainy and cold. Thus, an average decade in the history of Russian agriculture comprises two or three years of large droughts (sometimes occurring in a row) and one year of crop failure caused by other unusual weather conditions. In the 1970s, for example, there were three large droughts in 1972, 1975, and 1979, while the year 1977 was unfavorable because of very rainy and cold weather. Then, after the drought of 1979, two more years with adverse weather followed in a row (1980 and 1981). Such unstable weather conditions should be recognized as making agriculture difficult. As with any farming in marginal climate conditions, Russian agriculture should have been developing according to a “survivor” rather than an “advancer” model. The behavior of a “survivor” should differ from that of an “advancer”: for the former, success means being able to reproduce the basic living cycle, while the latter aims to raise the standard of living. This means that the “survivor” would choose one strategy for farming and the “advancer” another. Some features of pre-revolutionary Russian agriculture were considered by many Russian agricultural experts to be archaic—for example , the domination of cereal crops in both forest and steppe zones. These experts emphasized that more labor-intensive and market-valuable crops, such as potatoes, vegetables, and sugar beet, were needed to make the country a modernized Western-style state. Emphasis was also placed on increasing livestock breeding. The introduction of grass rotation was meant to open up the opportunity for progress in the livestock Conclusion sector, which still provided negligible input in terms of the food consumption of Russian peasants. The experts noticed that there was some movement in the right direction but insisted on the rejection of traditional cereal-oriented farming. This was the typical position of the “advancer” . However, the Russian peasants moved rather in the opposite direction . They continued to sow cereals in any available areas and were not keen to sow other crops. They reduced grasslands in favor of cereals and fed livestock in such a way that the animals were merely given the chance barely to survive until the following spring. The Russian peasants tilled their arable land carelessly and applied little manure and no mineral fertilizers . A striking example of this strategy was the ploughing up of most hayfields and grassland in the Central Black Earth region at a record rate. The disappearance of the grassland led to continued problems for livestock breeding in this region until quite recently. However, it would be incorrect to say that Russian peasants did all these things because they favored subsistence farming—quite the opposite. Russian peasants were trying to sell their produce on the market. The monetary proportion represented by agriculture and handicrafts in a family’s budget reached 40 to 50 percent for peasants in many agricultural regions of the Russian Empire. Moreover, they preferred to sell grain than to feed it to their cattle, and only if the market was restricted or not accessible did they allow themselves and their animals to feed on the home grain reserve. This was simply another strategy of the “survivor” . Although Russia has a colossal territory, the European part of the country has been overpopulated since the beginning of the twentieth century. The problem was how to feed an overpopulated country in a very unstable climate. The Russian peasants, first of all, were not overloaded by problems of breeding livestock. It was too big and risky a business to increase the herd as this required much greater fodder reserves for wintering. By limiting livestock numbers the peasants did not have to worry about acute fodder shortages if a poor harvest occurred. Indeed, Russian farmers received only small amounts of manure and had to rely mostly on the size of the crop area rather than raising productivity . Cereals were a more suitable crop for this as they were extensively farmed. Peasants were able to sow large areas, even if this caused the quality of the soil to deteriorate. The Russian peasants knew that there were new, unploughed lands located somewhere in the south and east of their homeland. 336 [3.144.252.140] Project MUSE...

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