SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY OF COMPREHENSIVE LAND CAPTURES WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF THE SMALLHOLDERS ESTATE

This article systematizes the attitude of the authors of the Soviet era to one of the most studied issues in the history of the one-courtyard estate – the seizure of land with their participation. The main reason for this study, in addition to the real existence of such a phenomenon, lay in the fact that this issue was used to substantiate the theory of «class struggle». The purpose of the article is to study the Soviet historiography of comprehensive land seizures with the participation of one-courtyard people in the XVII-th – XIX-th centuries. The objectives of the study are to identify the difference in the interpretations of various authors regarding the issues of taking possession of the land of smallholders, as well as the seizure of land by them of other estates. Using these comparisons as an example, the author tries to determine whether the «class struggle» really existed or whether it was an ideological utopia of Marxism. In the research process, the author used analytical-synthetic and comparative-historical methods, as well as retrospective and historiographies analysis. The author describes all the key works where the issue of land seizure with the participation of the one-courtyard estate was mentioned. All studies are divided into two groups: politicized and more objective. In the course of considering the announced topic, the author comes to the conclusion that the fundamental difference of the Soviet era in the interpretation of the issue of land seizure is «negative approach», which differs sharply from the methods of describing similar phenomena in the pre-revolutionary and post-soviet eras. The researcher concludes that the whole versatility of the process of land seizures with the participation of the smallholders estate does not fit into the Marxist framework of the «class struggle». In his opinion, this methodology not only narrows the historical reality under consideration, but also distorts it.