The Extent to Which Sources Agree that Russian Government Policy on Agriculture Constantly Fails and Peasants Resisted it Under the Tsarist

The Extent to Which Sources Agree that Russian Government Policy on Agriculture Constantly Fails and Peasants Resisted it Under the Tsarist

The definition of a peasant remains the same throughout the period

studied; 'A peasant is a person who permanantly lives and works on the

land'. The peasants resistance was either a physical or mental

movement where they opposed and refused to comply with new

agricultural reforms passed. The initial impressions gathered from

sources one to six is that consistant failure of agricultural policy

is dominant throughout, yet peasants resistance is not so easy to

detect.

The period covered by the sources, begin and end with consistant

agriculture failure. Sources 4, 5 and 6 show consistant policy failure

during the communist rule of Khrushchev. Source 6 written by Alex Nove

describes 'the picture as a whole was very disappointing', this

description agrees with the account given in source 4 that the Virgin

Lands Scheme was 'Poorly organised, with stupid decisions and

ill-concevied strategies',therefore supporting consistant failure.

Source 6 disagrees with source 4 as Nove believed that the failure of

the Virgin Lands Scheme was due to Krushchev inheritance of a

generation of 'neglect and impoverishment'. The source shows very

limited evidence of peasants resistance, except that they were treated

'with instintive suspicion', implying that if previous resistance had

not occured they would not have been treated this way.

Source 4, an extract from Edward Shevardnadse, describes Khrushchev's

Virgin Land Scheme. The source has a negative tone; 'we watched

helplessly', 'as the country began to break down'....

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...dership. The

peasants resistance continued to be a predominant problem for all

rulers when attempting to enforce new agricultural ideology, however

the sources only support the question to a slight extent due to lack

of evidence. The main factor of the failure of the agricultural

reforms was the inability of the rulers to meet the peasants needs and

compromise with them to realise their contribution to the success of

their plans. All of the sources show consistant failure, however the

extent of the failure depends on each source, and the sources show

higher incidents of agricultural failure rather than peasants

resistance. Although all of the sources are helpfull, their

reliability is limited and therefore more sources must be analysed to

discover the extent of the peasants resistance and the agricultural

failures.