Chernysheva N.V., Brovtsin A.V. Soviet policy of agricultural resettlement and its implementation in the 1920s (on the materials of the Vyatka province). Bulletin of the Udmurt University. Series History and Philology. 2023. Vol. 33. No.3. Pp. 580-589.

Abstract

The article examines the Soviet policy of agricultural resettlement in the 1920s through the example of the Vyatka province as one of the agricultural regions. The authors identify the factors contributed to the activation of the resettlement movement during the formation of Soviet power. Residents of the Vyatka province (including refugees and displaced people who were living temporarily in this territory as a result of the closure of their resettlement) were in an extremely difficult situation. Agricultural resettlement to the Urals, Siberia and the lands of the colonization fund of the North Dvina province was complicated by civil confrontation, hunger, and spontaneity of resettlement processes. Separately, it is necessary to single out the resettlement to the Don region, carried out within the framework of the policy of decossackization. The spontaneous nature of resettlement, on the one hand, was determined by vital necessity (land shortages, crop failures, mass famine, economic devastation), and, on the other hand, by a deep socio-political crisis that plunged the country into a civil conflict. By the end of the 1920s the demand for resettlement from the Vyatka province increased with the growth of agrarian overpopulation, but its scale was still small. The resettlement did not solve the problem of agrarian overpopulation, considering the fact that the Soviet government had to overcome the extensive nature of agriculture.