The peasantry of the USSR in the 1920s: trends in economic culture
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Abstract
Abstract. The purpose of the study is to show the features of the economic culture of the Ukrainian peasantry of the 1920s
and their implementation in economic activity.
Methodology. The content of the concept of “economic culture” is based on the research of M.I. Zieber and P.L. Berger.
On their basis, the author of the article interprets the concept of “economic culture” as a set of values, principles and logic of
thinking, which is implemented in the practice of economic activity and determines its results.
In the study of the phenomena of modernisation and transformation of economic life, the theoretical approaches of
V.I. Marochko were used.
Conclusions. The economic culture of the Ukrainian peasantry combined various trends that arose in the previous era.
The dominant position was occupied by the patriarchal worldview focused on the use of traditional means of solving material
problems. At the same time, there was a stratum of peasants – “cultural masters” – who abandoned their ties to patriarchal life
and focused on the use of agricultural knowledge and advanced agricultural technologies. A significant part of the peasantry
was involved in cooperative forms of economic activity, which served as an adaptation to the conditions of modernisation and
commodity production. The involvement of the peasantry in co-operation was an affordable means of forming new ideas and a
culture of behaviour that provided for the ability to solve individual socio-economic problems on a collective basis, applying a
set of principles of activity aimed at achieving fairness in market relations.
In the 1920s, the adoption and implementation of modernisation trends in the peasantry was voluntary and amateurish.
In the following 1930s, it was a directive one that did not contribute to the population’s awareness of the connection between
material well-being and the achievements of education, science and technology. Socio-technological progress did not become
a convincing social value. The latter had fundamental social consequences. The directive process of modernisation after the
1920s was one of the reasons for the economic problems that began in the 1990s. The destruction of the economy and the
associated scientific, technical and educational centres did not elicit a constructive reaction from the population. The absence
of positive economic trends in the current environment is due to the incomplete process of amateur recognition of the high
social value of education, literacy, science and technological progress.
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