Cooperatives and Caste: The Debate on Property in the Stolypin Era, 1906–14

Abstract

To officials involved in agrarian policy, the rural uprisings of 1905–7 made the need for an active agrarian policy seem urgent and directly connected with the survival of the regime. The image of conflagration in which peasants burned estates, seized gentry property, and attacked symbols of authority seemed to confirm Witte’s warnings on the eve of the uprisings: peasants had little interest in preserving the state order because they were not made a part of it, were unable to respect the private property of other estates because they were subject to different property laws, and were driven to extremes by socio-economic dislocation. Property relations — or the absence of peasant private property — had been a central theme in agrarian debates since the 1860s, but even Witte had avoided the issue due to the lack of consensus within the central government and his own lingering doubts over the capacity of peasants to adjust to change.