A. A. Fet and D. A. Stolypin: A dialogue on the peasants’ land ownership (On the material of unpublished letters)

The article presents an analytical review of D. A. Stolypin’s unpublished letters to A. A. Fet, dated back to 1889–1892. The article considers the relationship between the authors, defi nes the reasons for their bonding and further friendly communication. Discussing the issues of agricultural development in Russia is central in Stolypin’s letters to Fet, both correspondents having dedicated opinion articles to these questions. They were likeminded people: they saw the right way of the development of the post-reform Russia in destroying communal ownership of land and creating farmstead establishments, in switching the whole country to the entrepreneurship. Stolypin’s letters to Fet help restore the creative history of the brochure “Agricultural sketches” (1998) written in collaboration. The brochure consists of three articles: two written by Fet (“On the article ‘Family plots of land’” and “The answer to the piece of Vestnik Evropy (European Bulletin)”) and one written by Stolypin (“Some words on the household and economic organization of peasants about A. A. Fet’s article”). The brochure is consolidated by the theme unity – a conversation about the issues of agricultural development in Russia on account of the governmental decree of July 13, 1889, and discussions this decree caused in periodical press. Fet was certain that the laws of life are unalterable, therefore, the obsolete community ownership would be inevitably replaced by partial peasants’ land ownership; this process would be accompanied by the stratifi cation within peasantry into “rich peasants” and “day laborers”, by the increase in the number of rented homesteads and the share of private households. Fet and Stolypin considered this as the only way where the agriculture of Russia would have an opportunity for future economic prosperity.

A. A. Fet, D. A. Stolypin, letters, opinion journalism, peasant land ownership, farmstead establishment