The budgets of peasant farms - a kind of selective household censuses of peasant farms . They were carried out mainly by zemstvos, as well as by statistical offices of the Ministry of Land Management and Agriculture and the Ministry of State Property.
The first mass budgets of peasant farms were collected in the 1870s — in Novgorod (1874–1879), Samara (1874–1879), Chernihiv (1875–1876), and other provinces. However, it has begun to collect widely since 1885 . Recent budgets were collected in 1917 in the Irkutsk province .
In total, from the 1870s to 1917, 11500 budgets of peasant farms were collected, including 9822 in the European and 1733 in the Asian part of Russia. By type they were divided into single ones - a total of 201 budgets were collected, or 1.7% and mass 11,354 budgets, or 98.3%. According to the method of collecting material - for questionnaire (correspondent) 1008 budgets, or 8.7%, and expeditionary 10547 budgets, or 91.3%.
Collection Methods
The questionnaire collection method was carried out by sending questionnaires to the studied farms. Such a method, due to its cheapness, compared with the expeditionary method, made it possible to cover a larger number of objects with research. But the negative side of the questionnaire method was the lower accuracy of the information than with direct questioning.
The expeditionary method consisted in a direct survey of peasants according to a specific program for the past year, or over a number of years (according to the Voronezh programs).
They are sample surveys , and the sample size was small - no more than 1% of the total population (usually - on a county or province scale). This was due to the high complexity and, consequently, the high cost of budget surveys.
Typical and mechanical samplings were used to select the described farms (mechanical ones only when surveyed in the Kaluga province in 1896–1897, where 2417 farms were described — 20.9% of all budgets collected in Russia). The average number of budgets examined by provinces is about 145, if we consider only mass budgets - 270.
The main goal of all budgets was to obtain data on income and expenses in the peasant economy and on their general socio-economic situation.
As a rule, budget description programs included questions about the size and distribution of labor resources, the balance of labor, the material and technical base (land tenure and land use, livestock, implements, tools, buildings), agricultural production (sown area, productivity, gross harvest of products agriculture and livestock breeding), field cultivation techniques, production costs, etc. Many budgets very carefully took into account the value and composition of property - buildings, livestock, agricultural implements and machinery, tools nt, clothes, household items. The positive point is that many indicators are given in value terms. The cash balance was taken into account in almost all budgets, but with varying degrees of completeness.
Budgets provide information on the main in-kind and monetary items of income and expenses for production and personal needs, allowing to study the budget structure, the profitability of individual sectors and crops of agriculture and the total profitability of the peasant economy. Especially valuable are the indicators of the size of alienated agricultural products, which allows us to judge the level of marketability of the peasant economy. For some territories (Voronezh province), budgets were collected twice: 1884-1891 and 1900, which makes it possible to study the dynamics of the peasant economy.
The budgets of the peasant farms of the Penza province of 1913 in value terms took into account the balance of labor in the peasant farm, which allows us to clearly distinguish the various social types in the peasant farm.
Budget descriptions are unparalleled among other mass sources in depth and the details of the description of the peasant economy. Many budgets contain over a thousand features. The richest choice of indicators makes it possible to widely use the methods of multivariate statistical analysis when grouping peasant farms, as well as various methods of mathematical and statistical analysis of budget survey data.
They contain a lot of original direct information allowing to determine the socio-economic structure of the peasant economy. They are one of the main sources in the study of such crucial issues as property differentiation, horizontal social mobility, the structure of income and property of peasant farming, etc.
Weaknesses
As a historical source, they have a number of shortcomings: firstly, when drawing up budgets, I had to deal with more or less well-off owners, which somewhat distorts the real picture; secondly, the requirement of quantitative accounting of factors that are not amenable to assessment and accounting led to the introduction of a certain number of conditional ratios and approximate calculations into the budgets; thirdly, this is not representativeness (too small a sample) of these budgets; fourthly, when selecting “typical” farms, the sample was often formed not according to scientific criteria, but on the basis of subjective selection by statisticians.
The involvement of budgets in scientific circulation did not correspond to their informational potential. Only part of the best budgets was satisfactorily developed - Voronezh (1887–1896), Kaluga (1896–1897), Vyatka (1900), Vologda (1903–1911), Kharkov (1910), Poltava (1910), Moscow (1911), Penza (1913) and others.
Repeatedly became the subject of special scientific research. Among the most famous works on analysis are the studies of F. A. Shcherbina, A. V. Chayanov and I. D. Kovalchenko.
Literature
- Shcherbina F.A. Peasant budgets. - Voronezh, 1900;
- Chayanov A., Studensky G. History of budget research. - M., 1922;
- Chayanov A.V. Budget Studies: History and Methods. - M., 1929;
- Korenevskaya N. N. Budget surveys of peasant farms in pre-revolutionary Russia. - M., 1954;
- Kovalchenko I. D. The Agrarian System of Russia in the Second Half of the XIX - Early XX Centuries M., 2004.