The Ideas And Practices Of Russianco-operatives Before The October Revolution

In mid-19th century, the turning period of the development of Russia, standing at a historical crossroads of choice, the Russians were uneasy. How to get rid of the social crisis and to save most of poverty people from death were the problems solved urgently to the tsarist government as well as were the doubts puzzled the advanced Russian. In this context, the cooperative movement emerges as the times require. The purposes studying the ideas and practices of Russian co-operatives before the October Revolution are as follows:The first is to investigate the spread and development process of co-operative ideals in Russia and to describe the famous cooperative theories of cooperative thinkers.About 1840, the co-operative thought was coming into Russia, initially with a fantasy likes utopian socialism, and the representative figures are Petra Tomasevski and Chernyshevsky. They were longing for socialism and opposed the serf system and the capitalist system; also they imagined that Russian farmers villages can be directly transit to socialist villages by the cooperative without capitalism. Their activities opened the door of Russian cooperative theory. If the ideas of the utopian socialists failed to achieve, this was tried to jump across the stage of capitalist development directly into the socialist cooperatives. Then the concepts of cooperatives advocated the noble intellectuals were the sources of theory to produce the Russian cooperative movement, and they think of co-capitalist society as an effective tool for democratic reform, also consider that the cooperatives can reduce the suffering brought by the capital plunder for the serfs in the process of capitalist development and extreme poverty in the process that serfs became citizens thus prevent proletarianization in rural.The second is to describe the whole picture of the cooperative movement in Russia before the Revolution. The Russian cooperative movement can be divided into four stages:embryonic stage,cradle stage,development stage and perfect stage since the first cooperatives established in 1865 to the October revolution in 1917. During this period, the cooperative system has been initially established, it experienced from the basic-level organization to the cooperative alliance, then to the All-Russian Cooperative Committee. In terms of the number of cooperatives and the number of participants, Russia is the forefront in the world.The third is to analyze the attitude of tsarist government to the cooperative movement. Tsarist government had dual attitudes; both want to solve economic problems through cooperatives, but also worried about the development of cooperatives would threaten its rule. Because of this contradictory state of mind, the ruling class always wobbled for the policies of the cooperative movement. On the one hand, they hold cautious attitudes for the propaganda of the cooperatives thoughts and monitored the cooperative activities severely, on the other hand, they supported the cooperatives by provided them with loans and the tax preferential policy. Into the 20th century, with the spreading of the cooperative movement the ruling class worried that the cooperatives became the free position and the anti-government activities of"some have ulterior motives"by using cooperatives. So they began monitoring of cooperatives all-round and restricted their activities by delaying and hindering establishment of the cooperative alliance on the formalities. The purpose was to control the leadership of the cooperative movement and its ultimate goal is to maintain the stability of autocratic system.The fourth is to analyze the role of cooperatives. It was that the members had reduced the dependence on middlemen and loan sharks to some extent and increased their living standards and cultural level; also their independent consciousness had been improved after they joined the cooperatives.For aforesaid purposes, the author made a systematic study of the cooperative movement in Russia before the October Revolution and by combed the existing research results and analyzed deeply a large number of information domestic and foreign collected carefully came to the following conclusions:First, the establishment of cooperatives cannot do without the promotion of the people with lofty ideas. The founder and disseminators of cooperatives thought had run and cried for the establishment of cooperatives such as Owen, Fourier, Saint Simon, Shu Limining, gold Rafah and so on, who had different even conflicting ideas. These thoughts were to provide assistance for poverty and unemployed and to perfect the capitalist system, to create conditions for the small producers into the economic market, to develop the middle class for easing the social conflict, to do fundamental changes in society. Though the cooperative fantastical ideas of Petra Tomasevski and Chernyshevsky ultimately failed to achieve, their activities in Russia opened the door of cooperative theory. Subsequently, the Russian co-operatives were established with unremitting efforts of Vassilitch Cove and Yakovlev.Second, the establishment of cooperatives in Russia is closely related with the"great reform"in 19th century 60s. On the one hand, the farmers were liberated from the shackles of serfdom and had became village freeman in the reform, so they could make all kinds of deeds and contracts, and could have the rights to do business freely, to set up factories, to join various guild. The private enterprise had a encourage development, and the local autonomy institutions began to be built, and the trial had been opened after the reform, the all shows that Russia had entered a new era of development. These social developments created the conditions for the establishment of cooperatives.On the other hand, the reform was promoted the development of the capitalist economic also had been retained the serf system largely. The economic activities and legal rights of farmers were still subject to the villages, even every movement of their lives had been monitored by the village community officers. The essence of the reform is a large-scale plundering for the peasants by the landlord class. The farmers not only lost a lot of lands, but also were heavily in debt for paying huge ransom. They had to form the labor union to work in cities forced to survival pressure, but they often gained nothing. How to improve the farmers'living and to prevent them to be proletariat had became a social problem urgently. In this case, co-operatives caused concerning.Third, the important factors affected on the development of cooperatives are commodity money relations, the autonomy and education of the general public, and the government attitude treated cooperatives.Fourth, the cooperative activities obtain the following results. On the economic aspect, improved the living conditions of the members, and reduced the dependence of small producers on loan-sharking business, brokers and large industrial capital, saved the farmers and small producers out from losing money state. On the culture and education aspect, the member's independence and independent consciousness and responsibility were improved to a certain extent; owing to the cooperatives workers established libraries, museums and offered exhibitions and the training school for members. At the same time cooperatives opposed autocracy all-round monitoring, and strived for the government legal rights struggle, what was actually ascending citizen consciousness; promote the establishment course of civil society. It had become a civil society in the process of forming a force that cannot be ignored. With the development of the achievements of cooperatives, it also has many deficiencies, such as cooperative system was not perfect, the fund was not sufficient, it was lack of co-leading cadres, and the members'consciousness is still not high. These were still the problem of cooperative development troubled.At present, there is not the systematic research of cooperative movement for pre-revolutionary Russian in the domestic academic circle. These problems need to be discussed deeply including the reasons for the establishment of cooperatives, the cooperative movement in its totality, and the role of cooperatives etc. This dissertation expounds the development process of the cooperative movement before the October Revolution, and analyzes deeply the internal and external factors affect on the development of cooperatives and illustrates the important role played in the economic, cultural and in the formation process of the civil society, based on the in-depth investigation and analysis that the cooperative ideas spread in Russia, the cooperatives were established, and the attitude that tsarist government treated it.This dissertation got some valuable first-hand information, and gathered a lot of Chinese and Russian data reference, in order to be able to analyze the problem by comprehensive perspective.