Rural life in Russia: modern and historical discourse

The problems concerning the development of rural areas and their key productive force - peasants - are not central to the sociological discourse of modern Russian science. At present, there are not many scientists focusing on socio-structural processes in Russian villages, including the changes in the social status, life world, and existential self-awareness of peasants. Meanwhile, some fundamental changes have taken place there over the post-Soviet period. They have had an impact on the society in general and altered the cultural, demographic, and anthropogenic landscape of the country. According to statistical data, the rural population has increased in Russia, while the number of those employed in agriculture has substantially reduced. We see the asymmetry of urbanistic processes with the high unemployment rate in rural areas of individual regions. There has occurred redistribution of land, including reduction of farming lands and concentration of land in the hands of agricultural holdings and large farm enterprises. The number of functioning small private farms has decreased, while their owners gradually join the group of wage employees or «precarium». These processes result in increasing social desertification: medical, educational, and cultural institutions rendering services to local population are being liquidated, while the transport accessibility of villages is reducing. The scale and consequences of this phenomenon have been insufficiently studied in sociological literature, especially with regard to the development of self-government in rural areas. We consider it timely to recall the practice of zemstvo (local municipal administration in Tsarist Russia) and achievements of zemsky (territorial) statistics that studied the life of peasants in post-reform Russia. Territorial statistical investigations played an important role in the development of scientific and theoretical framework for studying villages and peasants, as well as laid the foundation for sociology of rural areas in Russia. In practical terms, these studies brought transparency into the perception of issues associated with socio-economic differentiation in villages, distribution of land, labor migration, as well as meeting the needs of peasants in healthcare, educational institutions, etc. Territorial statistical specialists mastered the expeditionary method of data collection, a prototype of modern «field» surveys used in sociology. The activities of territorial councils as self-government bodies can provide an example of successful local initiative aimed at the development of Russia’s rural areas at the present stage.