Agricultural type of Ukrainian society of the Naddnipriansk region of the second half of the 19th - early 20th century: grounds for the formation of the fundamentals of domestic agrarism during the period of the revolution of 1917 – 1921

Abstract

Introduction. The urgent task today is to identify the relationships and determination of the way of life of peasants with
revolutionary and state-building processes, the infl uence of the peasantry on the ideology and policy of various forms of statehood
in Dnieper Ukraine, elucidating the origins and preconditions of Ukrainian peasantry.
Purpose. The purpose of the article is to defi ne the essential characteristics of the Ukrainian society of Dnieper Ukraine
of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, to determine its type, to fi nd out what basic elements became the basis for
Ukrainian agrarianism as a peasant-centric phenomenon of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1921.
Methods. The methodological basis of the study is a socio-cultural approach, which allows to explain how ethnic and social
norms, values, ideals, stereotypes, traditions of the Ukrainian peasantry inherent in agrarian society largely determined sociopolitical processes and infl uenced the emergence of domestic agrarianism in 1917-1921.
Results. At the beginning of the twentieth century despite the modernization processes, the Ukrainian society of the Dnieper
region remained largely an agrarian society, which was determined by the following characteristics: the dominance of the
peasantry in the social structure; life in the system of interaction “man-nature”, land as the greatest good and basic value,
dominance in the economy of agricultural production with the use of simple technologies; social organization of the patriarchal
type, the importance of the institution of the family, the existence of the family peasant economy as the main production unit, which
has a natural-consumer character; the importance of the rural community as a social integrator with its economic, administrative
and social functions; solidarity in the community and distrust of the outside world (state, city, gentlemen, etc.); traditional system
of social norms and values, the defi ning place of manual labor as a high value, moral duty, social status and legitimization of
property and wealth; peasant notions of justice and the dominance of customary law; locality of interests, particularism, low social
mobility; conservatism, inertia, low perception of innovations, focus on stability; the peasant consciousness has a patriarchalreligious character, the lack of mass education; low national identity, the relationship of peasant social and national demands.
Originality. The results of the research obtained by the author are scientifi cally signifi cant and new. They signifi cantly
expand and supplement previous knowledge about the grounds for the formation of Ukrainian agrarianism.
Conclusion. The article identifi es the essential characteristics of the Ukrainian society of the Dnieper region and states that
in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries it was a society of a predominantly agrarian type. It was found that the reasons
for the formation of domestic agrarianism in the days of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 - 1921 were: in the economic sphere
- agricultural production, the main subject of labor in which is land and constantly associated with the activities of the peasant;
in the political sphere - peasant democracy in the form of self-government of the rural community; in the social sphere - the
contradiction between the “small local society” of the village and the “big society” personifi ed by the city and the government;
in the legal sphere - the vision of social justice, which existed in customary law, where the right of ownership is associated with
manual labor; in the spiritual and socio-cultural sphere - the traditional patriarchal nature of the peasant consciousness