There are quite a lot of young people in our villages. Hence the following two-sided conclusion: either the exodus of a new generation of peasants has ended, or this is a temporary lull before the mass exodus to large and small industrial cities. Both are equally likely. On the one hand, the surrounding farms are withering away before our eyes, while others are directly looking into the grave, and it seems that nothing hints at a renaissance. On the other hand, there is little work in cities; in ours, for example, district center It is much more difficult for Zubtsov to find a job than to meet a wife destined by God. How six thousand townspeople live and feed there is dark for us.
In general, the peasantry are a cold-blooded, unpoetic people, and yet one would like to think: what if rural youth have finally comprehended poetry agricultural labor... After all, it’s still not like drilling the same hole for eight hours in a row, or hanging around behind the counter, or laying sand-lime bricks with a poke and poke...
Peasant labor is this... After you have risen with the sun, washed your face from a washstand nailed to a birch tree, had breakfast with scrambled eggs and your own lard, the master leaves the village on a tractor with dogs barking and roosters crowing. If plowing is on the agenda, then it’s nice to watch how the ground rises behind you, looking like chocolate butter, and, instead of seagulls, crows circle above it. If it’s haymaking, then the smell of freshly planted clover, tart-sweet, like a good cologne, will take your breath away. If this is cleaning, then all the time you are caressed by the thought that in your bunker you already have buns and rolls stored in some part of Russia.
In a word, if you approach the matter somewhat poetically, then peasant labor is an enviable lot for a serious man. Firstly, it’s beautiful, because you’re plowing, and there’s a blue sky above your head, endless fields on both sides, and quiet ones darkening in the distance. mixed forests. Secondly, it is noble, because the farmer feeds the people, receiving mere trifles for his work. Thirdly, it’s great because it’s diverse and fresh air- It’s not for nothing that there are no crazy people in the villages.
Finally, it is a prejudice that the peasant works on the land full daylight hours. Except that when plowing you have to sweat almost from dawn to dusk, because there is a lot of land, but not enough equipment, and even it starts up every once in a while. During haymaking and the harvest season they work from dew to dew, that is, in our places, from about noon to six.
Just like in the old days, which despite all the current troubles one cannot dare to call good, they don’t drink during the famine, they carry lunch in the field, the bread is no thinner than in the era of work meetings and workdays.
Troubles happen like this: every year, the loans that the region allocates to collective farms for diesel fuel and other utilities disappear somewhere. And then the Rossiya collective farm bought the latest hay harvesting machine, which itself packs rolls of mowed grass into film - it now stands near the chairman’s fence and is only of interest to stray dogs. The reason for this trouble is this: our film, manufactured in St. Petersburg, breaks every now and then, and the Dutch film, which never breaks, cannot be raised given the collective farm poverty. If you buy Dutch film, then a kilogram of hay will cost five rubles, and our collective farms sell milk at three rubles per liter - they don’t give them more.
Peculiarities of peasant labor modern times The problem is that there are far fewer workers than those registered in the countryside. On the collective farm “Ilyich’s Way” there are only sixty farmers, one free tiller and several hundred villagers who live on who knows what. That is, it is known what: a vegetable garden, otherwise they sell milk and meat to the outside, build fences for summer residents, steal, collect non-ferrous metal wherever necessary. As for the free tiller, he grows cabbage on his ten hectares and takes it to Rzhev to sell. This occupation is dangerous for three reasons: because there is a market mafia everywhere, because you can’t get sick - there are only three pairs of hands in a family, because at times you have to hire farm laborers and thereby instill a sense of class in your fellow villagers. Our families are small because, according to the general belief, big family- it’s too labor-intensive; a hole for a latrine will need to be dug at least once a year.
Apparently, the most prosperous category of our peasantry are those who live on who knows what. Judging by the fact that in two months of the summer season in our village they took away: one car, two windshields, four wheels, one gun, one spinning rod and seven refrigerators, we can live.
Some villagers also work in the police, but this is a pure sinecure, because our police officers are mainly engaged in traveling around villages and explaining why they are not able to catch robbers and thieves.
Peasant labor as portrayed by N.A. Nekrasova
I. Introduction
The work of a peasant gives rise to conflicting feelings in Nekrasov. On the one hand, it is in labor that the strength of the people and their rich capabilities are manifested. The peasant loves and knows how to work; idleness is alien to him. It is peasant labor that will create what is good in Russia. On the other hand, the work of a peasant is forced labor, which brings him suffering.
II. main part
1. Labor as joy and creation. In many of Nekrasov’s works, peasant labor is described precisely from this side. With the labor of the peasant, everything is created - from bread to the railway, which was built not by “Count Kleinmichel”, but by ordinary people. (" Railway"). Labor is the basis of a man’s self-respect, even his pride. In the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” it is not for nothing that Yakim Nagoy asks Pavlusha Veretennikov: “Our fields are vast, // And not much generous, // Tell me, by whose hand // They will get dressed in the spring, // And in the fall they will undress? " Not white-handed gentle ones.
And we are great people // In work and in revelry!” Savely’s proud words echo these words: “Do you think, Matryonushka, // A man is not a hero?” Even a child feels this pride in his work (“Peasant Children”, “Little Little Man”). Labor is the basis of a peasant’s life. It’s not for nothing that the seven wanderers, yearning for work, in “Who Lives Well in Russia” take up mowing so cheerfully: “Woke up, flared up // A forgotten habit // To work! Like teeth from hunger, // Works for everyone // A nimble hand.” Nekrasov was one of the first to poeticize peasant labor, considering it as the basis of existence and contrasting it with the idleness of the ruling classes.
2. Labor is suffering. Under the conditions of an exploitative system, the labor of a peasant is forced labor, not for himself, but for “God, the king and the master”; This is labor through force, exhausting and gradually killing a person. Nekrasov’s lyrics (“Railroad”, “On the Volga”, “Uncompressed Strip”, etc.) and especially the poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” are filled with pictures of such work. Yakim Nagoy, telling Veretennikov about how “the peasant’s navel is cracking” in backbreaking work, says about himself: “He works himself to death”; in the same episode, Nekrasov also paints an impressive portrait of a peasant exhausted from work. Savely literally talks about hard labor. Nekrasov especially feels sorry for women and children who are straining themselves at work (poems “The Cry of Children”, “In full swing of the village suffering ...”, the story of Matryona Timofeevna in “Who Lives Well in Russia”, etc.).
III. Conclusion
The theme of labor in Nekrasov’s work is one of the most important. It combines pride in the Russian peasant, deep sympathy for him, and denunciation of the ruling classes who made labor the basis human life- literally hard labor.
The whole life of the peasants was spent in constant work and worries. Day after day, year after year, the peasant worked from morning until late at night.
Plowing his own and his master's land took most of his time and effort. Plowing was followed by sowing, and sowing followed by harvest.
The harvest was harvested by hand using a sickle. The ears were tied into sheaves and threshed with flails to extract the grain.
After this, it was necessary to winnow and separate the wheat from the chaff.
No less effort had to be spent on processing agricultural products into bread, butter, cheese, sausage, and preparing food for the winter.
The garden, where beans, peas, cucumbers, radishes, pumpkins, and cabbage were grown, took up a lot of the peasant’s time. Almost all peasants kept livestock, and in swampy and mountainous areas, cattle breeding played an even greater role than agriculture.
Every household had Domestic bird.
The forest was a great help for the peasants, where they collected mushrooms, berries and nuts, chopped firewood and collected brushwood. The forest provided wood, which was used to make furniture, barrels and dishes.
This household craft was dedicated for many years. winter evenings.
Peasant women did not do arable work, but they had no less worries. Everything was on their shoulders Homework, they fed livestock and poultry, milked cows and goats.
The production of yarn and household linen, from which they sewed clothes for the whole family, took especially much time and effort.
Medieval village labor of peasants
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The work of a real peasant, just like a real artisan, is solitary creativity: in quiet absorption he devotes himself to his occupation. He lives in his creation, just as an artist lives in his; he most likely would not have given it to the market at all. With bitter tears in their eyes, the peasant women take their beloved pawn out of the stall and take her to the slaughterhouse; an old artisan is fighting for his pipe, which a merchant wants to buy from him... The peasant, just like the artisan, stands behind his work, he vouches for it with the honor of the artist.
Under feudalism, the division of peasant labor into necessary and surplus appeared in an open form: during the necessary working time, the peasant ensured the existence of himself and his family. During surplus time, he created a surplus product, which was appropriated free of charge by the feudal lord in the form: eat.
The landowners, deprived of the free labor of the peasants, were forced to rebuild their farms in accordance with the new conditions. However, the transition from the feudal system of farming to the capitalist one could not be carried out immediately, since the old system was only undermined, but not destroyed. Therefore, the landowner economy was based on a combination of two systems - labor and capitalist.
The labor of peasants is used to an even lesser extent in various crafts. The erroneous attitudes that existed at one time led to the fact that handicraft industries gradually fell into decline and were eventually almost completely eliminated. This had a detrimental effect on financial situation sat down, and socially led to the country losing large quantity products that satisfy the household needs of the population. Let us also note that the labor resources of the village were not fully used, and there were great losses in the income that these trades brought when selling products both within the country and abroad.
During the 15th century, while the labor of independent peasants and agricultural workers, who were engaged in independent work along with hired work at the same time, went into their own benefit, the farmer's standard of living was as insignificant as his scope of production.
What conditions should be created to make the peasant’s work easier? There must be machines, and machines can only be used effectively in a cooperative. As a communist, I am interested in people, regardless of what nation they are, what language they speak, what faith they worship, to live well. Working people the same everywhere. The working people earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and I want them to shed less sweat working man, and received more products from his labor. This is what I am interested in as a person. I am also interested in you achieving the same thing that we have achieved, soviet people, and even more best results, taking advantage of the experience of our peasants.
The theoretical reflection of the economic productivity of the land (along with the labor of the peasants) was the teaching of the French physiocrats (Quesnay, Boisbilguera, Turgot) that only Agriculture has a productive nature, allowing not only to reimburse its costs, but also to obtain a surplus product. In other branches of handicraft and industrial production who do not cultivate the land, supposedly only their costs are reimbursed, nothing more, and therefore no surplus product is created by them.
Similar problems arise in socialism - whether the peasant’s labor on his plot should be taken into account.
This acceleration, which was based on the principle of material stimulation of peasant labor, in the second half of the 20s. began to slow down, but not through the fault of the rural worker.
The transformation of the nobles into a privileged class was accompanied by an expansion of their rights to the personality and labor of the peasant.
Under feudalism, the source of land rent was the surplus (partially necessary) labor of personally dependent peasants.
This means that the landowner's land is cultivated with the same peasant implements, the labor of a ruined, impoverished, enslaved peasant. This is what it is, the culture that the deputy Svyato-polk-Mirsky spoke about and about which all the defenders of landowner interests talk. The landowners, of course, have the best livestock, which live better in the master's stable than the peasant in peasant hut. The landowner, of course, has the best harvests, because the landowner committees took care back in 1861 to cut off best lands from the peasants and write them down to the landowners.
Social politics party, the Soviet state is to, on the basis modern technology and science to bring closer and closer the nature of the work of the peasant and the work of the worker, to improve the life of the village, to improve the culture of rural life. All this practically leads to the gradual elimination of socio-economic, cultural and everyday differences between city and countryside, between the working class and the peasantry.
Over time, the monasteries from labor communities, where everyone worked for everyone and everyone spiritually supported each of their brethren, turned into large land owners who used the forced labor of peasants.
The reduction in the sources of recruitment for slaves, as well as the blurring of the lines between them and the peasants, entailed the elimination of the archaic form of exploitation: the labor productivity of a slave per month was lower than the labor productivity of a peasant who cultivated his allotment.
