Petr Stolypin, excerpts from On Peasants Leaving The Land Commune
Petr Stolypin chaired Russia's Council of Ministers from 1906 to 1910. According to Hosking "the most remarkable statesman of the Duma period," the oft-maligned Prime Minister sought to turn the Empire into an Imperial nation. Combining Russification and the suppression of radicals with the construction of civil society, he attempted to broaden the monarchy's base by turning subjects into participatory stakeholders. Among other things, this meant endorsing the principle of private property-- which in turn led to agrarian policies designed to undermine peasant communes and create independent farmers. The so-called Stolypin Reform, of which this Decree was a part, was a calculated "wager on the strong." It began by granting all peasants the right to claim as personal property the land they held under communal ownership. It allowed households that were working more land than egalitarian redistribution suggested they should have (i.e. had become relatively better off) to buy the "surplus." And it allowed these peasants to buy out property not at current prices but at much lower 1861 prices. This discount gave industrious peasants a powerful financial incentive to borrow money from the state-sponsored Peasant Land Bank, exit the commune, and farm individually. Later decrees clarified the land-registration process and linked it to assisted-migration policies. A wave of "Stolypin separators" (as peasants who had left their communes under the reforms were called) began settling the sparsely populated wilderness of Siberia, particularly designated homestead areas along the new Trans-Siberian Railway.
1. How did Stolypin's Ukaz attempt to undermine peasant communes?
2. How did the Ukaz deal with the possibility that communes might resist demands to create individual property holdings?
3. How did the Ukaz deal with the problem of consolidating fragmented pieces of individual property?
4. What (if anything) does the table Progress Of The Reform suggest about peasant response to Stolypin's policies?
Ukaz (Decree) of 9 November 1906
By our Manifesto of 3 November 1905, new redemption schedules for peasant land allotments will stop being established as of 1 January 1907. From this time afterwards, such land will be exempted from the restrictions previously put on it by the redemption process. Peasants will receive the right to exit their Land Commune freely, and to acquire personal-ownership rights (as individual householders) to allotments from their commune's holdings. We now command...that the following rules [governing this] shall be established:
1. At any time, any householder who has an allotment of communally owned land may ask for that portion to be confirmed as his individual property.
2. In communes where there has been no redivision of the land for the past 24 years, individual householders seeking to change their allotments from communal to individual ownership shall be allocated property. This shall include not only their kitchen gardens, but also all holdings of communal land in their permanent possession (including rented land)....
6. Demands to have areas of communal land registered as individual property (see Article 1) are to be made to the commune through its Elder. Within a month of receiving the application, the commune is obliged to confirm (by a simple majority vote) those portions of communal land that are the individual property of the householder.... If the commune does not render this verdict within this time period, then at the request of the householder making the application, all measures necessary to confirm the property shall be taken on the spot by the Land Captain. He is to resolve all quarrels arising from the application, and his decision on the subject shall be final....
12. Under these rules, each householder entitled to allotments of communal land...has the right at any time to demand that his commune give him, if possible, an equivalent amount of land in one place.
PROGRESS OF THE REFORM
| Year | Households applying to leave the Land Commune | Households leaving the Land Commune |
| 1907 | 211,922 | 48,271 |
| 1908 | 840,059 | 508,344 |
| 1909 | 649,921 | 579,409 |
| 1910 | 341,884 | 342,245 |
| 1911 | 242,328 | 145,567 |
| 1912 | 152,397 | 122,314 |
| 1913 | 160.304 | 134,554 |
| 1914 | 120,321 | 97,877 |
| 1915 | 36,497 | 29,851 |
| 1907-1915 | 2,755,633 | 2,008,432 |