Peasantry in the context of "Socialist Revolutionary Party"

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⭐ Core Definition: Peasantry

A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright (fee simple), or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.

In some contexts, "peasant" has a pejorative meaning, even when referring to farm laborers. As early as in 13th-century Germany, the concept of "peasant" could imply "rustic" as well as "robber", as the English term villain/villein. In 21st-century English, the word "peasant" can mean "an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person".The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s–1960s as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of developing countries in general, as the "semantic successor to 'native', incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones".

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👉 Peasantry in the context of Socialist Revolutionary Party

The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR; Russian: Па́ртия социали́стов-революционе́ров, romanizedPártiya sotsialístov-revolyutsionérov,, lit.'Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries') was a major socialist political party in the late Russian Empire, during both phases of the Russian Revolution, and in early Soviet Russia. The party members were known as Esers (эсеры, esery, from "SRs").

The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants. The SRs boycotted the elections to the First Duma following the Revolution of 1905 alongside the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but chose to run in the elections to the Second Duma and received the majority of the few seats allotted to the peasantry. Following the 1907 coup, the SRs boycotted all subsequent Dumas until the fall of the Tsar in the February Revolution of March 1917. Controversially, the party leadership endorsed the Russian Provisional Government and participated in multiple coalitions with liberal and social-democratic parties, while a radical faction within the SRs rejected the Provisional Government's authority in favor of the Congress of Soviets and began to drift towards the Bolsheviks. These divisions would ultimately result in the party splitting over the course of the fall of 1917, with the emergence of a separate Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Meanwhile, Alexander Kerensky, one of the leaders of the February Revolution and the second and last head of the Provisional Government (July–November 1917) was a nominal member of the SR party but in practice acted independently of its decisions.

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Peasantry in the context of Edged and bladed weapons

An edged weapon, or bladed weapon, is a hand-to-hand combat weapon with a cutting edge. Bladed weapons include swords, daggers, knives, and bayonets. Edged weapons are used to cut, hack, or slash; some edged weapons (such as many kinds of swords) may also permit thrusting and stabbing. Edged weapons contrast with blunt weapons such as maces, and with pointed weapons such as spears.

Many edged agricultural tools such as machetes, hatchets, axes, sickles, sling blades, and scythes, have been used as improvised weapons by peasantry, militia, or irregular forces – particularly as an expedient for defence.

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Peasantry in the context of Land Reform Movement (China)

The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi (土改), was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War and in the early People's Republic of China, which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants, with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.

By 1953, land reform had been completed in mainland China with the exception of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Sichuan. From 1953 onwards, the CCP began to implement the collective ownership of expropriated land through the creation of Agricultural Production Cooperatives, transferring property rights of the seized land to the Chinese state. Farmers were compelled to join collective farms, which were grouped into people's communes with centrally controlled property rights.

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Peasantry in the context of Permanent revolution

Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850. Since then different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), have used the phrase to refer to different concepts.

Trotsky's permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that have not achieved an advanced capitalist mode of production. Trotsky's theory also argues that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat; and that the proletariat can and must therefore seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry. Trotsky also opposed Joseph Stalin's principle of socialism in one country and stated that socialist revolutions needed to happen across the world in order to combat the global capitalist hegemony. According to Russian historian Vadim Rogovin (1937–1998), the success of Stalin's theoretical position had a significant and negative impact on the entire course of the international revolutionary process.

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Peasantry in the context of Peasants' Party (Romania)

The Peasants' Party (Romanian: Partidul Țărănesc, PȚ) was a political party in post-World War I Romania that espoused a left-wing ideology partly connected with Agrarianism and Populism, and aimed to represent the interests of the Romanian peasantry. Through many of its leaders, the party was connected with Poporanism, a cultural and political trend in turn influenced by Narodnik ideas. In 1926, it united with the Romanian National Party to form the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ).

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Peasantry in the context of Uniformity policy

The uniformity policy was the concept of implementing Swedish law to the dominions of Sweden during the latter's time as an empire. It is symbolized by the slogan unus rex, una lex et grex unus ("one king, one law, one people") possibly coined by Johan Skytte, governor-general in Swedish Estonia, Ingria and Livonia. However, the phrase is also found in the debates on the possible union of Scotland and England in 1607, when Sir Edwyn Sandys noted King James VI & I's view that for a perfect union there should be unus rex, unus grex, una lex.

Most notably, the uniformity policy aimed at abolishing serfdom then common in Estonia, Livonia and the Swedish dominions in the Holy Roman Empire (Ingermanland naturally had a free peasantry). It was implemented in Livonia against the will of the local Baltic German nobles, which led many of them, under the leadership of Johann Patkul, to side with Peter the Great and the Russian Empire during the Great Northern War. The Estonian and Pomeranian peasants remained serfs: Estonia had voluntarily submitted to Sweden and thus had been given leeway in keeping the traditional local law code, while Swedish Pomerania had retained its traditional law code when, on behalf of the then ruling Swedish high nobility, the Peace of Westphalia granted it to the King of Sweden while remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire, and not in a formal cession which would have resulted in the implementation of Swedish law. Swedish law was thus only introduced to Swedish Pomerania after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and then by a coup d'etat organized by King Gustav IV Adolf.

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