NORMATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE REGULATION OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS OF SOVIET SOCIETY IN 1910-1920-s: SOME RESULTS OF CONTENT-ANALYSIS OF THE SOVIET POWER DECREES

For the first time the peculiarities of the state power’s perception of demographic and environmental problems in the Russian village at a turning point of transition from a traditional to an industrial type of society are studied. Investigation is based on the complete study of published normative and administrative acts of the first years of Soviet authority (1917-1921s), and on the use of content-analysis, one of the quantitative methods of modern historical science. The analysis of more than a hundred revealed papers on the subject has allowed evaluate objectively the Soviet government’s level of consciousness and interest in the decision of demographic and ecological problems. Eventually, conclusions what environmental issues of use of natural resources in agriculture were resolved by the authorities at one with other economic issues. Demographic problems also were not a separate and were part of a social and economic policy. Immediate objectives were the maximum increase of the cultivated area in order to solve the food problem, restraining the population within the borders of European Russia for cultivation and restoration of agriculture, felling of forests for export. Issues of the reasonable environmental management, as well as in the pre-revolutionary time, were postponed for later.

Russia’s later agrarian society, demographic crisis, environmental crisis, Soviet government decrees, Soviet society, content-analysis, cliometrics