Multivectorality of Hetman Skoropadskyi’s land reform: government, landlords, peasants, and allied occupiers (april - december 1918)
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Abstract
The purpose of the article is to study the multi-vector interests and aspirations of the key “players” of Pavlo Skoropadskyi’s land reform, their influence on its preparation, course and curtailment, as well as to highlight the role of geopolitical factors in the failed attempts to resolve the land issue in Hetman’s Ukraine.
The methodological basis is based on the principles of historicism, scientific, problem-chronological, and personalization of events. Particular attention is paid to the critical analysis of the legislative framework of the reform. The scientific novelty lies in the systematic coverage of the participation of each of the leading participants in the reform of land relations, which ultimately resulted in the failure of one of the most ambitious state-building projects of the Hetman.
Conclusions. The author argues that land reform was one of the main directions of state building in the Hetmanate. The government, ministries, and leading scholars were involved in its preparation, and the idea of reform was supported by the German military and diplomats. At the same time, the legislative absolutization of the primacy of private property rights allowed landlords to recover their property by force, which inspired a sharp confrontation in the Ukrainian countryside. The Germans did not want to make any drastic changes in the agricultural sector until after the harvest. By the fall, the land market had not been established. The small-landed peasantry did not have the opportunity to buy land. The reform came to a standstill. Skoropadskyi’s attempt to resuscitate it in the fall was interrupted by the challenges of the end of the Great War, which decided not only the fate of the land reform but also of the Hetmanate.
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References
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