Transfer of the Italian Technology of Modernization and Birth of the Russian “Public Agronomy” Project

Abstract

The rise of agrojournalism and the public concern for agriculture in the first years of the twentieth century was prompted not only by the paradigm shift in the mindset of the Russian obshchestvennost’ but also by the deteriorating performance of Russian agriculture. Overshadowed by the stormy political events of 1905–07, crop yields all over the empire decreased dramatically, and the land under crops diminished significantly. In 1905, the land under winter crops averaged only 76.5 percent of that area in 1904.¹ In 1906, the rye yield in 50 European provinces was only 71.5 percent of the average yield.² With a statistically calculated norm of 15 poods of grain a year per person as a threshold of starvation, the cumulative harvest of 1906 provided an average of 15.7 poods per person, putting the country on the brink of famine.³ Only in 1907 did the situation gradually begin to improve, with the crop yield lagging behind the average for the five-year-period 1902–06 by only 6 percent.⁴ In 1908, the crop yield of almost all cereals was up,⁵ and again in 1909, when for the first time since 1904 the area under crops began to expand.⁶ But it was too late to avert a humiliating blow to the national myth of “Russia—the granary of Europe.” In 1909, many local periodicals reprinted the information published in the central Economic Gazette:

Ekonomicheskaia gazeta reports that steamships loaded with grain are sailing from Argentina … to Russia … to deliver American wheat to the mills on the Volga. This is not accidental: for a number of years already, due to constant crop failures, our export of grain has decreased … in 1902–5, various cereal products, chiefly rye and wheat, were imported into Russia with a value exceeding 2 million rubles; in 1906, almost 6.5 million rubles; in 1907, 12 million [rubles]; in 1908, by December 1, just three major cereals—wheat, rye, and oats—more than 13 million rubles.⁷