DOI: 10.22281/2413-9912-2023-07-04-116-127

Kudlanov K.B.

THE MOTIVES OF THE OFFICIALS IN THE CONQUESTS OF THE SMALLHOLDERS LAND IN THE XVIII-TH CENTURY, AS AN INDICATOR OF CAPITALISM

Bureaucratic involvement in capitalist relations is a topic that is relevant to the present day. The researcher is trying to identify this on the basis of the intention of the government officials in the redistribution of the land fund to one-courtyard people. The purpose of the article is to identify the level of penetration of the «spirit of capitalism» into the thinking of the officials on the basis of the motives with which they seized the smallholder’s land of the Central Chernozem region in the XVIII-th century. The objectives are: a comprehensive study of bureaucratic seizures of one-courtyard people’s land for settlement and sale; determining the level of involvement of those in power in capitalist relations based on a comparison of two types of motives. In the process of the work, analytical-synthetic and comparative-historical methods, as well as retrospective and historiographical analyses. In the study, the author alternately describes two groups of motives for the seizure of one-courtyard people’s land. The first corresponded to the feudal era, and the second to the capitalist era. Each of them was subdivided into adjacent and root subgroups. The latter, in both cases, was the most structured and was divided into three types. Among the supporters of subsistence farming, the division took place according to the principle “who settled what was captured”, and among the capitalists, according to the duration of contact of the official with the selected land. The whole structure is based on historical examples. In the course of working on the article, the researcher concludes that in the minds of the bureaucracy in the second half of XVIII-th century, there was a clash of opinions from different socio-economic formations, with a distinct presence of essential signs of the capitalist way of life. At that time, capitalism did not yet occupy in public opinion an absolutely dominant position. However, it was its wide distribution in the future that led to visible tectonic shifts in the middle of the XIX century. Consequently, the full-fledged establishment of one way or another is preceded by the gradual growth of the social narrative of the era, to which the majority of the active population subsequently inclines.

Keywords: one-courtyard people, smallholders, officials, conquests, possession of land, the genesis of capitalism, Central Chernozem region

The Kursk branch of the ROIA (Russia)

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