The evolution of the agricultural sector in the era of Peter the Great transformations

Abstract

Considering that the bulk of domestic and foreign literature is devoted to reforms in the field of state administration, the creation of regular army and navy, and much less attention is paid to the analysis of the evolution of the agricultural sector of Russia during Peter the Great period and the impact of reforms on this — the most important at that time — sector of the economy, this work aims to contribute to overcoming the said limitation. The article traces the changes in the agricultural sector caused by the reform activity of Peter the Great. It is proposed to divide all the consequences of his reforms into two major groups: intentional consequences, that is, originally conceived by the reformer, and unintended ones, which were side effects of the reforms carried out by the government. Traditionally, Peter's agricultural initiatives are considered either in chronological order or on an industry-by-industry basis. In this article, it is proposed to consider them from the point of view of the tasks that these innovations were designed to solve. It is shown that most of the innovations initiated by Peter were caused either by the increased demand for raw materials and food from industry and new cities or were solving problems related to the on-going wars and therefore were mostly of a short- term nature. Also in the article, from the point of view of modernization theory, the institutional consequences of Peter the Great's reform activities for agriculture in the Russian Empire are considered. It is shown that institutional reforms had long-term unintended consequences and formed an institutional framework that was not completely destroyed even by the abolition of serfdom. The work provides evidence that the restriction of land ownership rights took place long before Peter's reforms. The data demonstrating rather weak development of the land market in the first half of the XVIII century are given. The article concludes that most of the reforms undertaken during the reign of Peter the Great were a continuation of the trend of previous periods consisting in property rights restricting for both landowners and peasants.