Agricultural practices of Russian settlers in early 20th century Tuva

Abstract

The article deals with the issues and aspects of agricultural practices of Russian peasant settlers in Tuva. Since the start of their mass resettlement in the region at the end of the 19^th century, they did more than just cultivating new lands – the settlers introduced a new culture of husbandry in the region.

Some historians have claimed that the settlers were mostly well-to-do peasants – the kulaks, as they were known. However, recent research based on archival studies and field observations of historians and ethnographers, as well as personal memories, do not confirm this theory. Settlers, on the contrary, were mostly poor but aimed to prosper. Now permanently residing in Tuva, Russian farmers found themselves in a region populated by people with a very different – nomadic – lifestyle and almost no skills in crop farming. This led to an encounter between two opposing types of agriculture, which revealed their cultural and economic contrast:  the environment-friendly indigenous nomadic ethics vs. that of Russian farmers aimed at using natural resources to the full. These two lifestyles were so different that it rendered impossible any close economic contact or cultural interaction between the Russian and Tuvans. For a while, they lived as if in two parallel worlds.

Russian settlers in Tuva managed to adapt to the new environment and optimize their practices and skills. They were the first to till thousands of desiatinas of virgin soil, introduced such previously unknown agricultural tools as the plough, harrow, cutter and winnower – the use of all of which was in due time picked up by the Tuvans as well. A new system of agriculture arose, which was relevant to the local natural and climatic conditions.

On the whole, agrarian colonization of Tuva by the Russians did not aggravate the ‘land issue’ in Tuva, as the indigenous population and the settlers utilized differing strategies of agriculture, and the newcomers slowly adapted their practices to match the difference.

Our sources include the memories of the older generations of Russians in Tuva, as these memoirs were collected and published by their authors, - as well as archival materials from the State Archives of the Republic of Tuva and Krasnoyarskii Krai, the Research Archive of the Tuva Institute for the Humanities, - and finally, reports and other texts written by the Russian travelers in the region in late 19^th and early 20^th century.