The peasant revolution in the Dnieper Ukraine in 1902–1922: the main approaches to the formulation of the concept

Economical and socio-political transformations in the Dnieper region of the first part of the twentieth century are connected with such socio-political phenomenon as the peasant revolution. For a long time, the concept of peasant revolution was addressed from the lens of class struggle and was on the periphery of research attention. The development of peasant studies and the attraction of new theoretical and methodological approaches make a contemporary rethinking of the problem and the identification of the peculiarities of the peasant revolution in the Dnieper Ukraine. The purpose of the study is to define the concept of “Peasant Revolution”, its essence and character in the Dnieper Ukraine. There was proposed an author's formulation of the concept. The Peasant Revolution in the Dnieper Ukraine of 1902 – 1922 was a socio-political phenomenon in the Ukrainian village due to the contradictions of the economic development of the modernization period and the reaction of the peasantry to the legal, cultural, educational and national oppressions in the Russian Empire, as well as the need to protect its interests in the conditions of the Ukrainian revolution and the formation of Soviet power. The peasant revolution came against the background of the political revolutions of that time: 1905 – 1907, the February Revolution, the Ukrainian Revolution. The political program and the ideology of the peasant revolution could not be developed, although the slogan “rights, land and freedom” was the unifier for the peasantry. Political parties played a significant role in formation of public sentiments and political convictions of the peasantry, but the state system of the Russian Empire and the political changes of 1917 and further period did not promote to the establishment of a stable political system with the participation of parties. After 1917, the peasant revolution came against the background of numerous changes in power, played the organizing role in the peasant struggle and had the real impact on the situation pertained to the rural community. Development of the Peasant Revolution in the Dnieper Ukraine in 1917 – 1922 provides evidence of such special aspects: the national character of peasant activity, the nonviolent tactics of Ukrainian political parties, the coexistence of peasants with the owners of landed economies, the longterm absence of a Bolshevist factor in the Ukrainian village. For the first time, an attempt was made to formulate the definition of the “peasant revolution”. In contradiction to the concept of M. Pokrovskiy in the 1920's and V. Danilov in the early 1990's, the concept of “peasant revolution” is defined as a socio-political phenomenon. The specificity of the peasant struggle in the Dnieper Ukraine was revealed the absence of a program and ideology of the peasant movement in the existence of political slogans of the peasantry; the culturaleducational and national activity of the peasantry within the rural community were described; the mechanics of social processes was characterized. The main approaches to the determination of the peasant revolution were formed in the 1920's (from the class struggle point of view) and in the early 1990's (in the context of the military-political confrontation of the peasantry and the authorities). The current state of peasant studies requires rethinking of many aspects of the peasant revolution, discourage of its status of the peripheral problem, and allows formulating the definition of the term “peasant revolution”. Classically it was not a political revolution, with a welldeveloped program, ideology and leaders. In our opinion, the peasant revolution should be regarded as a socio-political phenomenon, since it has changed social relations, influenced the economic development of the Russian Empire and the Dnieper region in particular, and the development of political processes of the first part of the twentieth century.