Alexander Chayanov
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Alexander V. Chayanov (russian: Александр Васильевич Чаянов; 17 January 1888 – 3 October 1937) was a Russian, then
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
agrarian
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
, scholar of
rural sociology Rural sociology is a field of sociology traditionally associated with the study of social structure and conflict in rural areas. It is an active academic field in much of the world, originating in the United States in the 1910s with close ti ...
, and advocate of
agrarianism Agrarianism is a political and social philosophy that has promoted subsistence agriculture, smallholdings, and egalitarianism, with agrarian political parties normally supporting the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants ag ...
and
cooperatives A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...
.


Personal life

Chayanov was born in
Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, the son of a merchant, Vasily Ivanovich Chayanov, and an agronomist, Elena Konstantinovna (born Klepikova). He attended a Realschule (1899–1906) and the Moscow Agricultural Institute (1906–1911), becoming an agronomist; he taught and published works on agriculture until 1914, when he began working for various government institutions. In 1912 he married Elena Vasilevna Grigorieva, a marriage that lasted until 1920.Чаянов Александр Васильевич (1888–1937)
sakharov-center.ru
In 1921 he married Olga Emmanuilovna Gurevich; they had sons Nikita (born 1922) and Vasily (born 1925).


After the Russian Revolution

After the
October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...
, he served on several Soviet committees for agrarian reform and was a member of
Narkomzem The People's Commissariat for Agriculture, abbreviated as ''Narkomzem'' was established in the USSR in 1929. Its headquarters building was located at Orlikov Pereulok, 1, Moscow, designed by Aleksey Shchusev in 1928. ''Narkomzem'' was reformed as ...
as well as "holding lecturing and administrative posts at several universities and academies." He was a proponent of agricultural cooperatives, but was skeptical about the inefficiency of large-scale farms. Chayanov's skepticism was rooted in the idea that households, especially
peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasa ...
households which practice subsistence farming, will tend to produce only the amount of food that they need to survive. He believed that the Soviet government would find it difficult to force these households to cooperate and produce a surplus. These views were sharply criticized by
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
as "defence of the kulaks".


Show trial

In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the "Case of the Labour Peasant Party" (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
. The name of the party was taken from a
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
book written by Chayanov in the 1920s. The process was intended to be a
show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so ...
, but it fell apart, due to the strong will of the defendants. Nevertheless, on a
secret trial A secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public or generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally, no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment. ...
in 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to five years in
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...
s. In 1937 he was shot on false charges after his name appeared on an execution list signed by Stalin and Molotov.


Aftermath and rehabilitation

His wife Olga was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labour camps; she was released in 1955 and died in 1983. Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.


Published work

Chayanov's major works, ''Peasant Farm Organisation'' (originally published in Russian in 1925) and ''On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems'' were first translated into English in 1966. Chayanov's theory of the peasant household influenced economic anthropology. The substantivist
Marshall Sahlins Marshall David Sahlins ( ; December 27, 1930April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguishe ...
drew on Chayanov in his theory of the domestic mode of production, but later authors have argued that Chayanov's use of
neo-classical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...
supports a formalist position. His book ''Puteshestvie moego brata Alekseia v stranu krest’ianskoi utopii'' y brother Alexei's journey into the land of peasant utopia(Moskva: Gosizdat, 1920) predicted a rapid transfer of power into peasant hands; its hero wakes up in 1984, "in a country where the village has conquered the city, where handicraft cooperatives have replaced industry." Like
Evgeny Zamyatin Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fictio ...
's ''We'', it contains theosophical elements. Between 1918 and 1928 he also wrote five Gothic stories which he published at his own expense under the pseudonyms Anthropologist A, Phytopathologist U, and Botanist Kh (russian: Ботаник Х), with illustrations by his friends; three of them have been translated into English.


Consumption-labour-balance principle

The higher the ratio of dependents to workers in a household, the harder the workers have to work. Chayanov proposed that peasants would work as hard as they needed in order to meet their subsistence needs, but had no incentive beyond those needs and therefore would slow and stop working once they were met. The principle, which is called the ''consumption-labour-balance principle'', is therefore that labour will increase until it meets (balances) the needs (consumption) of the household. This view of peasant farming implies that it will not develop into capitalism without some external, added factor. Furthermore, the peasant's way of life is seen as ideologically opposed to capitalism in that the family work for a living, not for a profit. Evidence for this principle is found in the actions of Turkish peasants after the collapse of cereal prices in 1929.


In practice

In practice, the consumption-labour-balance principle means that accounting is not as precise on a farm than in a regular financial capitalist company. This, as there is no separation between capital and labour. Accounting works with an artificial cost structure which charges all kinds of costs which in reality, a farm does not have. For example, wage and farm-grown animals as well as organic fertiliser and animal feed are charged against commercial (artificial) fertiliser and composed animal feeds. A bought tractor is written off in four years against the bought value while the farmer often buys a second hand tractor and carries along with it for another 15 years.


Chayanov's influence

Chayanov's ideas have survived him. His work was rediscovered by Westerners in the mid-1960s. Agricultural sociologists, anthropologists and ethnologists working in developing countries, where the peasant economy remains a predominant factor, apply his theory to help understand the nature of the family labour farm.
Halil İnalcık Halil İnalcık (7 September 1916 – 25 July 2016) was a Turkish historian. His highly influential research centered on social and economic approaches to the Ottoman Empire. His academic career started at Ankara University, where he completed hi ...
, the leading historian of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...
, applied his ideas to peasant land tenure in the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the mid-1990s,
Vladimir Megre Vladimir Megre ( rus, Влади́мир Никола́евич Мегре́; né Puzakov; rus, Пузако́в; born 23 July 1950) is a Russian entrepreneur and writer best known as the author of the ''Ringing Cedars of Russia'' (also known a ...
's ''Ringing Cedars'' series have many points in common with Chayanov.Leonid Sharashkin (2008
The socioeconomic and cultural significance of food gardening in the Vladimir region of Russia
Phd Dissertation, University of Missouri–Columbia. p. 237


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chayanov, Alexander 1888 births 1937 deaths Writers from Moscow Economic historians Agricultural economists Systems scientists Complex systems scientists Soviet sociologists Soviet anthropologists Soviet economists Soviet historians Soviet orientalists Geopoliticians Development specialists Anthropologists of religion Great Purge victims from Russia People executed by the Soviet Union Soviet rehabilitations 20th-century Russian historians 20th-century anthropologists