SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE UKRAINIAN PEASANTRY IN THE 20-S OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The article examines the ways and methods of applying changes in socio-economic relations in the agrarian sector of the Ukrainian economy associated with the urgent need to rapidly increase the overall productivity and closely related marketability of peasant farming in the 20s of the twentieth century, during the period of implementation of the new economic policy. The article highlights the crisis situation in the Ukrainian village on the eve of the NEP and, first of all, in the basic branch of Ukrainian agriculture – arable farming. The situation with sown areas and grain yields is analysed, since this was the main branch of economic activity of almost every peasant household. It is established that the beginning of the NEP was characterised by a significant overall decline in the production process, and hence the economic impoverishment of peasant households. In the context of the dominance of the agricultural sector in the country's economy, this led to a decrease in the tone of national economic life. Based on the analysis of documents from the 1920s, the author argues that although the constant pressure of ideological models of building Soviet relations in the countryside remained an integral element of social life, under the new economic policy peasants had certain opportunities for the production and economic development of their farms. Assessing the period under study, the article proves that even under the NEP, the Ukrainian peasantry had to face both objective difficulties caused by the military and political turmoil and subjective obstacles caused by socio-economic factors, associated with the gradual strengthening of the command and control system, which was especially evident in the constant growth of the state's tax pressure. However, even in these unfavourable conditions, the peasantry gradually built up their farms, feeling once again like masters and being able to work freely on their land. In those conditions, the productivity of agricultural production was not only an extremely important economic factor, but also the cornerstone of the entire domestic political life.