«Letters from Steppe Ukraine» by Dokiya Humenna as a source from the history of communisation of the Ukrainian village during the Nep period

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the process of communization of the Ukrainian village during the NEP
period (1921–1928) based on the analysis of the essays «Letters from Steppe Ukraine» by Dokia Humenna.
The scientific novelty of the research results lies in the highlighting of the features of the process of communization of the
Ukrainian village during the NEP period (1921–1928) based on the analysis of the essays «Letters from Steppe Ukraine» by
Dokia Humenna.
Conclusion. An analysis of the essays «Letters from Steppe Ukraine» by Dokia Humenna allows us to conclude that two
types of communes functioned in the steppe region of Ukraine during the NEP period: the so-called demonstration and ordinary
ones. A feature of demonstration communes was that they received large-scale state support. This allowed such collective
associations to develop not only farming, but also other branches of agriculture: cattle breeding, gardening, beekeeping,
and to organize the production and repair of agricultural machinery. The Bolshevik regime used demonstration communes to
popularize the advantages of the collective farm system. For this purpose, excursions were organized for individual farmers
to these collective farms, and the press constantly reported on them. However, the effect of such events turned out to be low,
because the peasants were skeptical about the propaganda demonstration of the advantages of collective farm life. In addition,
the peculiarities of the life of the Communards: eating in a common dining room, keeping children in kindergarten and raising
them separately from their parents, and free sexual relations between men and women led to the spread of various rumors
among the peasants that discredited the idea of communizization of the Ukrainian countryside.
The second type of communes described by Dokia Humenna are ordinary communes, which were organized by the poorest
peasantry. The economy of such communes was formed on the basis of the funds of the peasants themselves. There were more
manifestations of mismanagement іn ordinary communes, and their members lived in poverty. The lack of state support affected the economic specialization of these communes, in which only agriculture was developed, as in the surrounding peasant singleperson farms. There was no significant increase in the number of ordinary communes.
Thus, «Letters from Steppe Ukraine» by Dokia Humenna is a valuable historical source that highlights the peculiarities
of the organization and functioning of communes in the steppe region of Ukraine during the NEP period, and also explains the
reason for the unpopularity of this form of collective farms among the Ukrainian peasantry.