Moscow Society of Agriculture

After the Free Economic Society , founded in 1765 in St. Petersburg , the Moscow Agricultural Society became the second in Russia in its creation and the first created in Moscow . The choice as the location of the organization of Moscow, not Petersburg, is due to the greater proximity to the main agricultural regions of the country. Historians note that MOSH opened, “when Moscow had just recovered a little after the pogrom of 1812 . She again became the center where the noble landowners came for the winter. Many of them visited abroad, and there agriculture was at that time a subject of special attention ” ^[2] .

The idea of ​​creating a society in Moscow is attributed to Prince S. I. Gagarin . He invited Fisher von Waldheim , president of the Society of Naturalists , to become the director of the company, and S. A. Maslov - the secretary of the society. The practical department was headed by the rich landowner D.M. Poltoratsky , known for his agricultural innovations. Prince D.V. Golitsyn , who was appointed the Moscow Military Governor-General on January 6 (18), 1820 , was elected the first president of the company.

For the dissemination of knowledge MOSH founded the "Agricultural Journal", S. A. Maslov became its editor. This helped establish relations with landowners from different parts of Russia, and then with foreign agricultural societies. The company began to regularly organize meetings at which more and more interested people came. Many entered society, and the number of its members constantly arrived, and thus the best representatives of agricultural thought and practice began to group around MOSH. At lively meetings of the society, a variety of requests from the provinces from the hosts were considered.

In 1822, the society decided to establish an agricultural school and an experienced farm. An active member of the Society, Professor of Moscow University M. G. Pavlov , a former student of Teer, took up this business. He himself lived in this school and taught in it, along with two assistants and a law teacher. In 1825, the number of students in the school reached 82. However, then things began to decline. While the Society from 1828 to 1832 spent up to 32 thousand rubles on the school banknotes, the number of students began to decline, and in 1832 fell to 54. For a long time, the first experimental farm of prof. Pavlova.

Wishing to have a farmstead as close as possible, the Society removed a boggy bog at 210 dessiatines near Moscow. The construction of buildings and the establishment of an economy absorbed all the donations of members, without bringing any profit. Until 1826, the society spent 80,496 rubles on the farm. allocated., barely having time to cut 36 dess. for crops and to build several school buildings ^[2] .

In 1835, they decided to hand over the farm to prof. Pavlov for 7 years, while at the same time providing him with resources for the first 5 years in a total amount of 20,000 r. to cover the rent so that by this time he has brought his economy to self-sufficiency. In the same 1835, at the request of the Minister of Finance Count E.F. Kankrin , he managed to receive a one-time subsidy for the construction of an experienced farm in the amount of 162 thousand rubles. The same document allocated 98 thousand rubles for the construction of buildings at an agricultural school. In addition, an annual allocation of 25 thousand rubles was established for the maintenance of the school. and a farm - in the amount of 10 thousand rubles. bank notes. Finally, in 1838, Prince Golitsyn bought a large stone house for the School, in which it was located for many decades. These timely gifts and state assistance saved the "first real agricultural school in Russia" ^[2] .

Minister of Finance Earl Kankrin provided financial support from the budget and in relation to MOSH. In 1835, the new states of the society were highly approved, according to which the Moscow Union of Artists began to receive annually 11 thousand rubles. bills for the maintenance of an indispensable secretary, his assistants, a library, etc. By issuing these funds, the government, at the same time, provided the public with "the rest of their affairs completely independently" (that is, the government did not limit the right of MOSH to organize independent sources of income and spend revenue from them at their discretion).

One of the reasons for the lack of success in some good agricultural undertakings of the society in the 1820-1850s was the feudal system of land use and labor, which impeded the implementation of the achievements achieved in the West in a completely different political and economic system. Finding out the reasons for the Society’s financial failures, the prominent Russian agronomist A. V. Sovetov stated at the end of the 19th century: “Under the influence of Teer's theories that prevailed at that time and the translation of his works in Russian, the society sought to impose a fertile system in Russia, but soon had to make sure that the time has not come yet for this: the system of freedom, what is the system of fruit-bearing, could not be strengthened on the basis of serf labor ” ^[2] .

On the contrary, where there were no such obstacles, and it was not a question of improving the old agricultural technologies, but of introducing new hitherto nonexistent ones, it was possible to achieve success. This applies, for example, to the sugar beet industry. In 1833, a sugar committee was established under the society. For 6 years, this committee published its “Notes ...”, which highlighted the problems of sugar beet introduction. With the introduction of sugar beet production in Russia, the publication of "Notes ..." ceased, and the "Agricultural Journal" continued to publish new articles on this department.

In 1833-1834 under MOSH, the Main Society for Improved Sheep Breeding was established. As a separate organization with a special staff, it existed, that is, more or less independently, until 1848, when it was included in the Moscow Union of Artists on the basis of the rights of its special branch, which lasted until 1851. N. I. Chernopyatov puts the whole history of fine-haired sheep breeding in Russia as a merit of the Main Sheep Breeding Society. Maintaining constant relations with Russian sheep breeders, “it wrote out blood sheep from Germany, arranged their exhibitions in Kharkov, published a magazine for sheep breeders, collected information about the shepherds existing in Russia, observed the woolen trade, etc.” ^[3] .

The 25th anniversary of society coincided with the death of its first president, Prince D.V. Golitsyn (1845). Prince S. I. Gagarin, who came to his place, “at first also dealt with the affairs of society with energy, but then this was hindered by his greatly weakened vision” ^[2] . Even during his presidency, in the autumn of 1857, the Moscow Society of Agriculture recognized the need to establish a higher agricultural school in the Petrovsko-Razumovskoye estate, since, opened in 1823, the agricultural school on the Butyrsky farm did not “produce any prominent figure in the field of rural economy ". However, its discovery was delayed for 8 years: only on November 21 (December 3), 1865, finally, the order to open the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy followed. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of society, in 1859, Prince S.I. Gagarin died. Throughout all these years, his secretary, the editor of the Agricultural Journal, S. A. Maslov, worked tirelessly, but in 1860 he was forced to “leave the society behind poor health”.

In 1861, serfdom was finally abolished. This year, A. I. Koshelev was elected to the post of president of the Moscow Agricultural Union. The years of his management of the company were not the easiest, and in 1864 Koshelev was "recalled to serve in Warsaw." The election of the new president of the Moscow Agricultural Society I.N. Shatilov marked the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the activities of society.

The abolition of serfdom entailed the need for a transition from corvee labor and other forms of compulsory labor to wage labor. Many landowners were "unprepared for such a change." Along with the abolition of the previous lending system, this also affected the activities of agricultural companies. Requests to them have also changed. Before the peasant reform, they mainly focused on the agrotechnical side of the issue: cultivating different crops, arranging proper crop rotations, organizing various agricultural production, etc. All this, writes A. Sovetov, “It was quite easy to carry out sometimes, since labor was under the arms, in the face of serfs. "

After the reform, however, “matters of the day” were not technical, but economic issues: “about hiring workers, about the closest unity of rural communities with zemstvo institutions , about rewards and rewards for successes in agriculture, about relations that it is desirable to establish between the administration and by the farmers ”, etc.

I.N. Shatilov - himself a "famous host" from the Tula province - was able to rebuild the work of the Moscow Union of Artists and adapt it to new demands of the time. The work of the company was revived, commissions were created to discuss issues and prepare the necessary communications and petitions addressed to the government. I.N. Shatilov was among the first to express the idea of ​​the need to create a special ministry of agriculture in Russia. For 25 years of the presidency of I. N. Shatilov, the Moscow Union of Artists submitted petitions to the government ^[4] :

• on the development of land credit
• on specific measures for the development of forms of lending to agriculture (loan offices, loan- saving partnerships , etc.)
• about the reform of the grain trade, in connection with the establishment of warehouses, elevators, and generally about the possibly profitable staging of export bread business in Russia;
• on the reduction of impassability, on the laying of highways and the development of a narrow gauge railway network, on the facilitation of obtaining permits for the construction of access roads;
• the abolition of grain tariffs on October 1, 1888 and their replacement with new ones, and the subordination of railway measures to the influence of a government agency;
• about the possible widespread development of populated tariffs on agricultural machinery and implements and the addition of import duties on them;
• addition of excise duty with salt;
• on assistance to the artel peasant cheese making;
• on measures to combat epizootics;
• about the need to study Russian dairy cattle breeding through experimental dairy stations;
• on measures to improve working horse breeding in Russia;
• the need for a device at the Ministry of Finance for a congress of distilleries;
• on measures for forest conservation in Russia;
• on the approval of the charter of libraries for public reading worked out by the Moscow literacy committee at elementary public schools.

During the same time, the society arranged:

• All-Russian exhibition of rural works in Moscow in 1864;
• Agricultural Department of the Polytechnic Exhibition in 1872 ;
• annual auction exhibitions of breeding cattle at the cattle breeding committee since 1867;
• two congresses of farmers:
  • in 1864 - during the All-Russian exhibition in Moscow,
  • in 1870, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Moscow Society of Rural Owners;
• congresses of cattle producers in 1884 and 1885;
• congress of hop growers and brewers in 1887

Under MOSH, committees were created during this time: To this should be added the special works of society on its committees:

• sericulture;
• literacy (created in 1845);
• cattle breeding;
• on rural loan-saving and industrial partnerships (established in 1871) ^[5] .;
• acclimatization of animals and plants (created in 1856 on the initiative of Professor of Moscow University A.P. Bogdanov ) - in 1865 it was transformed into an independent Imperial Russian Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants .

A special committee under the Moscow Union of Artists coordinated the publication of the Proceedings of the Society, various brochures, monographs, and reports, as well as conducted competitions on essays on agricultural topics. The printed organ of the society was published in 1820-1840 under the name "Agricultural Journal"; in 1841–1850 - “Journal of Agriculture and Sheep Breeding”, in 1851–1862 - “ Agriculture ”, the editor of which until 1858 was S. A. Maslov , and from 1860 - N. I. Annenkov . The magazine was intended for landowners and was devoted to the development of cost-effective methods of conducting landlord agriculture based on civilian labor. The meeting minutes and company reports, scientific and practical articles on agriculture, agricultural bibliography, economic review and the mixture were placed. In 1863 it was renamed the " Journal of the meetings of the Imperial Moscow Society of Agriculture ", in 1869 - the " Russian Agriculture ". The magazine lasted until 1877 , then it was replaced by separate issues of the “Works of the Society,” of which there were up to 40.

MOSH created its own museum, and also formed its own department at the Polytechnic Exhibition. MOSH handed over these museum and exhibition funds to the newly established Polytechnic Museum of Applied Knowledge in Moscow, thereby laying the foundation for the agricultural department of this museum. Moreover, since 1873, for the further development of this department, the company began to allocate 500 rubles to the Polytechnic Museum. annually from their own funds.

The new president of the company, Prince A. G. Shcherbatov, who took the place of I. N. Shatilov, continued his line in the development of both economic and technical issues.

The bold projects and undertakings being developed in Moscow sometimes encountered on the ground the harsher realities of life on the ground than they had seen from the center.

So, in the spring of 1871, the Moscow Union of Artists, in order to introduce a more progressive method of cultivating the land with a plow, recommended the Kursk Provincial Zemstvo to conduct a plow plow competition in the counties. The provincial zemstvo reacted positively to this recommendation and a directive of June 2, 1871 obliged counties to hold such a competition.

The Shchigrovsky district zemstvo on September 17, 1872, responded to the provincial authorities: "It is impossible to hold a plow plowman contest in a county because of a lack thereof." The same was the answer of the Tim authorities: "The competition for plow plowmen cannot be held, since the land in the county is cultivated by sokhs." Plows among the Kshen peasants appeared only at the beginning of the 20th century. More complicated agricultural implements — seeders, mowers, horse threshers, fan drills, even iron-wagon carts — were all the more lacking ^[6] .

From 1873, the provincial departments of society began to be established; the first was organized the Voronezh department, by 1889 there were already ten of them.

MOSH celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1895 with the organization of the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition and the third congress of rural owners. As before, the materials and decisions of the congress were presented to the government - already in the person of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, and a special commission was created for further work on them at the Moscow Union of Artists ^[7] . The first exhibition of agricultural implements and machines was held at the Butyr farm owned by the company, with their simultaneous working demonstration and examination. In particular, kerosene and oil engines, cream separators and churns, seeders, dryers and graders were exhibited and tested. The report on the first machine exhibition was edited by the director of the agricultural school of the company, A.P. Perepelkin .

In 1896, a similar competition was held for sheaves, complex threshers, locomobiles and other machines. For 1897, an exhibition and examination of all exhibits that were not included in the exhibition of 1895 was supposed, after which it was planned to repeat the expositions in the same sequence in the next three years.

Since October 1896, MOSH resumed publishing its journal, discontinued in 1877.

На протяжении последней половины XIX века в России возникли и другие региональные сельскохозяйственные общества. Однако в этом ряду Московское общество сельского хозяйства имело особое право — создавать, с разрешения министра земледелия и государственных имуществ, сеть региональных учреждений, называвшихся особыми отделами. К концу XIX века таких отделов было создано по России 13: тверской , курский , воронежский , томский, уфимский, кирсановский, темниковский, владимирский, даниловский, острогожский, козловский, костромской и красноярский. Члены этих отделов МОСХ пользовались всеми правами, присвоенными Московскому обществу. Круг их деятельности включал обсуждение сельскохозяйственных запросов и нужд (преимущественно местных), сообщение в Москву «сведений о предметах, заслуживающих особого внимания», исполнение поручений, возложенных на них обществом, и ежегодное предоставление в центр подробных отчётов о своей деятельности.

К 1898 году число всех сельскохозяйственных обществ в России доходило до 300, считая специализированные общества-садоводства, плодоводства, птицеводства, пчеловодства, рыболовства и рыбоводства и т. д.

В 1898 году правительство приняло стандартный устав сельскохозяйственного общества. По этому уставу обществам предоставлялась возможность изучать положение различных отраслей сельского хозяйства и выяснять хозяйственные нужды и потребности, распространять теоретические и практические сведения по сельскому хозяйству; заботиться о выработке наиболее правильных способов ведения хозяйства; производить испытания новых культур; снабжать хозяйства нужными предметами и материалами; устраивать выставки и аукционы; издавать справочную литературу и т. д. http://www.kraeved.ru/taxonomy/term/69?page=7

В 1905 году в связи с избранием президентом общества кадета И. И. Петрункевича общество было лишено права называться Императорским ^[1] .

В годы нэпа общество продолжало действовать; его научно-прикладные учреждения (контрольно-семенная станция, мастерские наглядных пособий и пр.) предоставляли свои услуги на коммерческой основе. В 1929 году ряд общественно-профессиональных организаций на своих съездах и пленумах высказался за ликвидацию МОСХ. В ноябре 1929 года коллегия Наркомвнудела (как орган, осуществлявщий в то время регистрирацию общественных организаций в СССР) приняла решение о роспуске Московского общества сельского хозяйства ^[8] .

• 1820—1845 князь Д. В. Голицын
• 1845—1859 князь С. И. Гагарин
• 1861—1864 А. И. Кошелев
• 1864—1889 И. Н. Шатилов
• 1892—1905 ^[9] князь А. Г. Щербатов
• с 1905 И. И. Петрункевич ^[1]
• OK. 1917 А. И. Угримов

Одним из первых почётных членов общества стал в 1820 году А. Т. Болотов . Основателю агрономии и помологии в России было к тому времени уже 82 года, но он продолжал работать, и успел после этого написать ряд статей по садоводству в «Земледельческий журнал». Этот удивительный человек прожил 95 лет.

Членом общества был университетский профессор М. Ф. Спасский ^[10] . Его работы в области метеорологии способствовали более надёжному ведению сельского хозяйства.

В 1871 г. в Московское общество сельского хозяйства вступил Д. И. Менделеев ^[11] . Одним из первых его практических дел в МОСХ стало содействие Н. В. Верещагину в создании Школы молочного хозяйства в с. Едимоново Тверской губернии. А в 1889 году Н. В. Верещагин — старший брат художника В. В. Верещагина , прославившийся в России как «отец вологодского масла » — возглавил в МОСХ комитет по скотоводству. Комитет содействовал организации ежегодных выставок племенного скота ^[12] .

В 1834 г. за организацию отечественного производства высококачественных кос П. П. Аносов был избран действительным членом общества ^[13] .

• Kurenyshev A. A. The agricultural capital of Russia: Essays on the history of the Moscow Society of Agriculture (1818-1929) / Assots. researchers of the Russian island. - M .: Airo-XX, 2012. - 404, [12] p. - 500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-91022-119-6 .