Agrarian Socialism

"The land will be returned to those who work it with their hands."
Emiliano Zapata

Agrarian Socialism is an ideology that combines an Agrarian lifestyle with a Socialist economic system. It is usually culturally Conservative, but not always and inhabits a moderate position in the Left-half of the political compass. Agrarian socialism promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Unlike most other forms of Socialism, it believes that the peasant class should form the basis of Socialist society instead of the workers. As such, while not explicitly opposing technological progress, it prefers a simpler agriculture-based society over the industrial one.

History

America

Greeleyism

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, who won by a landslide.

Greeley was born to a poor family in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in Vermont and went to New York City in 1831 to seek his fortune. He wrote for or edited several publications, involved himself in Whig Party politics, and took a significant part in William Henry Harrison's successful 1840 presidential campaign.

The following year, Greeley founded the Tribune, which became the highest-circulating newspaper in the country through weekly editions sent by mail. Among many other issues, he urged the settlement of the American Old West, which he saw as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. He popularized the slogan "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." He hired Karl Marx because of his interest in covering working-class society and politics, attacked monopolies of all sorts, and rejected land grants to railroads. Industry would make everyone rich, he insisted, as he promoted high tariffs. He supported vegetarianism, Feminism, Socialism and opposed the consumption of alcohol.

Greeley's alliance with William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to his serving three months in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper. In 1854, he helped found the Republican Party. Republican newspapers across the nation regularly reprinted his editorials. During the Civil War, he mostly supported President Abraham Lincoln but urged him to commit to the end of slavery before Lincoln was willing to do so. After Lincoln's assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with the Radicals and with Republican President Ulysses Grant because of the party's corruption and Greeley's view that Reconstruction-era policies were no longer needed.

Greeley was the new Liberal Republican Party's presidential nominee in 1872. He lost in a landslide despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party. He was devastated by the death of his wife five days before the election, and he died one month later, before the meeting of the Electoral College.

Cesar Chavez Thought

Cesario Estrada Chavez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta and lesser-known Gilbert Padilla, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined left-wing politics with Catholic social teachings.

Born in Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican-American family, Chavez began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the U.S. Navy. Relocating to California, where he married, he got involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO), through which he helped laborers register to vote. In 1959, he became the CSO's national director, a position based in Los Angeles. In 1962, he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA, based in Delano, California, through which he launched an insurance scheme, a credit union, and the El Malcriado newspaper for farmworkers. Later that decade, he began organizing strikes among farmworkers, most notably the successful Delano grape strike of 1965–1970. Amid the grape strike, his NFWA merged with Larry Itliong's AWOC to form the UFW in 1967. Influenced by the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez emphasized direct nonviolent tactics, including pickets and boycotts, to pressure farm owners into granting strikers' demands. He imbued his campaigns with Roman Catholic symbolism, including public processions, Masses, and fasts. He received much support from labor and leftist groups but was monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In the early 1970s, Chavez sought to expand the UFW's influence outside California by opening branches in other U.S. states. Viewing illegal immigrants as a significant source of strike-breakers, he also pushed a campaign against illegal immigration into the U.S., which generated violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and caused schisms with many of the UFW's allies. Interested in co-operatives as a form of organization, he established a remote commune at Keene. His increased isolation and emphasis on unrelenting campaigning alienated many California farmworkers who had previously supported him. By 1973, the UFW had lost most of the contracts and membership it won during the late 1960s. His alliance with California Governor Jerry Brown helped ensure the passing of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. However, the UFW's campaign to get its measures enshrined in California's constitution failed. Influenced by the Synanon religious organization, Chavez re-emphasized communal living and purged perceived opponents. Membership of the UFW dwindled in the 1980s, with Chavez refocusing on anti-pesticide campaigns and moving into real estate development, generating controversy for his use of non-unionized laborers.

Chavez described his movement as promoting "a Christian radical philosophy". According to Chavez's biographer, Roger Bruns, he "focused the movement on the ethnic identity of Mexican Americans" and a "quest for justice rooted in Catholic social teaching". Chavez saw his fight for farmworkers' rights as a symbol for the broader cultural and ethnic struggle for Mexican Americans in the United States.

Chavez utilized a range of tactics, drawing on Roman Catholic religion, including vigils, public prayers, a shrine on the back of his station wagon, and references to dead farmworkers as Falangism"martyrs". His point in doing so was not necessarily to proselytize, but to use the socio-political potential of Christianity for his campaigns. Most of the farmworkers his union represented shared his Roman Catholicism and were happy to incorporate its religious practices into their marches, strikes, and other UFW activities. Chavez called on his fellow Roman Catholics to be more consistent in standing up for the religion's values. He stated that:

"in a nutshell, what do we want the Church to do? We don't ask for more cathedrals. We don't ask for bigger churches or fine gifts. We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us. We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and love of brother."

Ospino stated that "The combination of labor organizing strategies with explicit expressions of Catholic religiosity made Chavez's approach unique" within the U.S. labor movement. However, some of his associates, non-Catholics, and other parts of the labor movement were critical of his use of Catholic elements.

Chavez abhorred poverty, regarding it as dehumanizing, and wanted to ensure a better standard of living for the poor. He was frustrated that most farmworkers appeared more interested in money and did not appreciate the values that he espoused. He was concerned that, as he had seen with the CSO, individuals moving out of poverty often adopted middle-class values; he viewed the middle classes with contempt. He recognized that union activity was not a long-term solution to poverty across society and suggested that forming co-operatives might be the best solution. In Chavez's view, workers' cooperatives offered a middle ground economic choice between the failed system of capitalism and the state socialism of Marxist-Leninist countries. His son Paul recalls, "My father's basic premise was that capitalism was not going to work because it was too harsh and always took advantage of those least able to defend themselves". He also embraced ideals about communal living and saw the La Paz commune he established in California as a model for others to follow.

Chavez kept a large portrait of Gandhi in his office, alongside another of Martin Luther King and busts of both John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Influenced by the ideas of Gandhi and King, Chavez emphasized non-violent confrontation as a tactic. He repeatedly referred to himself as the leader of the "non-violent Viet Cong", a reference to the Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist militia that the U.S. was combating in the Vietnam War. He was interested not only in Gandhi's ideas on non-violence but also in the Indian's voluntary embrace of poverty, his use of fasting, and his ideas about community. Fasting was important for Chavez. He saw it not as a tactic to pressure his opponents, but rather to motivate his supporters, keeping them focused on the cause and on avoiding violence. He also saw it as a sign of solidarity with the suffering of the people. Chavez was also interested in Gandhi's ideas about sacrifice, noting that "I like the idea of sacrifice to do things. If they are done that way they are more lasting. If they cost more, then you will value them more."

Apart from Catholic social teaching, the movement of Chavez was also based on liberation theology, emphasizing the liberation of the poor and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of justice. Liberation theology sought to centralize Catholic faith on the perspective and plight of the excluded, marginalized, poor, and oppressed; a basic point of liberation theology was the belief that God speaks directly for and to the poor, and that socioeconomic systems that oppress the poor are morally unacceptable. Gustavo Gutierrez, who provided much of the theoretical basis for liberation theology, stated that the "theology of liberation represents the right of the poor to think". Frederick John Dalton argues that Chavez was the reflection of liberation theology, writing: "The moral vision of Cesar Chavez is the moral vision of a Mexican-American migrant farm worker and labor organizer with no formal education beyond the eighth grade. It is the moral vision of a man who knew the indignities of being impoverished and excluded. A field laborer of Mexican descent, he experienced life as a nonperson, as little more than an agricultural implement, a cost to be minimized." Similarly, Mark R. Day, a member of UFW, remarked that "in many ways we were practicing liberation theology in Delano in the late 1960s."

Many of the UFW's protests have been interpreted as representing not only farmworkers but the Mexican-American community more broadly, making a statement that Anglo-Americans must recognize Mexican-Americans as "legitimate players in American life". Chavez saw parallels in the way that African Americans were treated in the United States to the way that he and his fellow Mexican Americans were treated. He absorbed many of the tactics that African American civil rights activists had employed throughout the 1960s, applying them to his movement. Chavez recognized the impact that his farm-worker campaigns had had on the Chicano Movement during the early 1970s, although he kept his distance from the latter movement and many of its leaders. He condemned the violence that some figures in the Chicano Movement espoused.

On organization and leadership Chavez placed the success of the movement above all else; Pawel described him as "the ultimate pragmatist". He felt that he had to be both the leader and the organizer-in-chief of his movement because only he had the necessary commitment to the cause. He was interested in power and how to use it; although his role model in this was Gandhi, he also studied the ideas about power by Niccolò Machiavelli, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong, drawing ideas from each. Mao's Cultural Revolution influenced his use of purges to expel people from his movement, and he opened a June 1978 board meeting by reciting a poem by Mao. Chavez repeatedly referred to himself as a community organizer rather than as a labor leader and underscored that distinction. He wanted his organization to represent not just a union but a larger social movement. He was ambivalent about the national labor movement. He disliked many of the prominent figures within the American labor movement but, as a pragmatist, recognized the value of working with organized labor groups. He opposed the idea of paying wages to those who worked for the union, believing that it would destroy the spirit of the movement. He rarely fired people from their positions, but instead made their working situation uncomfortable so that they would resign.

Chavez's leadership style was authoritarian; he stated that when he launched his movement, he initially had "total, absolute power" over it. Bruns characterized the UFW under Chavez as an "autocratic regime". Ex-members of the group, such as Bustamante and Padilla, described Chavez as a dictator within the union. Chavez felt unable to share the responsibilities of running his movement with others. In 1968, Fred Hirsch noted that "one thing which characterizes Cesar's leadership is that he takes full responsibility for as much of the operation as he is physically capable of. He makes all decisions." Itliong noted that "Cesar is afraid that if he shares the authority with the people [...] they might run away from him." Pawel noted that Chavez wanted "yes-men" around him. He divided members of movements such as his into three groups: those who achieved their goals, those who worked hard but failed, and those who were lazy. He thought that the latter needed to be expelled from the movement. He highly valued individuals who were loyal, efficient, and took the initiative. Explaining his attitudes toward activism, he told his volunteers that "nice guys throughout the ages have done very little for humanity. It isn't the nice guy who gets things done. It's the hardheaded guy." He admitted that he could be "a real bastard" when dealing with movement members; Chavez told UFW volunteers that "I'm a son of a bitch to work with." He would play different people against each other to get what he wanted, particularly to break apart allies who might form an independent power bloc that would threaten his domination of the movement.

Chavez became a controversial figure. UFW critics raised concerns about his autocratic control of the union, the purges of those he deemed disloyal, and the personality cult built around him. At the same time, farm owners considered him a communist subversive. He became an icon for organized labor and leftist groups in the U.S. Posthumously, he became a "folk saint" among Mexican Americans. His birthday is a federal commemorative holiday in several U.S. states, while many places are named after him, and in 1994, he posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Belarus

Masherovism

Pyotr Mironovich Masherov( 26 February [O.S. 13 February] 1919 – 4 October 1980) was a Soviet partisan, statesman, and one of the leaders of the Belarusian resistance during World War II who governed the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1965 until he died in 1980. Under Masherov's rule, Belarus was transformed from an agrarian, undeveloped nation that had not yet recovered from the Second World War into an industrial powerhouse through the use ofTechnoSocialism; Minsk, the capital and largest city of Belarus, became one of the fastest-growing cities on the planet. Masherov ruled until his sudden death in 1980, after his vehicle was hit by a potato truck.

Born to a peasant family in what is today the Vitebsk Region during the early stages of the Russian Civil War, Masherov was a teacher of mathematics and physics in his youth. Following his father's arrest and death during the Great Purge, Masherov joined the Red Army following the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and rose to the rank of major general. With the end of the Second World War, Masherov turned to politics, becoming First Secretary of the Brest Regional Committee in 1955 and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia ten years later.

Masherov was known for his down-to-earth demeanour and his humility, separating him from much of the rest of the upper echelons of Soviet government during the Era of Stagnation, a period in which corruption and resistance to reform ran rampant. Masherov was closely affiliated with reformists in the Soviet Union, such as Alexei Kosygin, and was, before his death, considered a possible successor to Yuri Andropov in the case that he were to succeed Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Brazil

Landless Workers' Movement

The Landless Workers' Movement is a social movement in Brazil aimed at land reform and inspired by Marxism, with an estimated informal membership of 1.5 million across 23 of Brazil's 26 states.

The MST defines its goals as access to land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, and activism around social issues that hinder land ownership, such as unequal income distribution, racism, sexism, and media monopolies. The MST strives to achieve a self-sustainable way of life for the rural poor.

The MST differs from previous land reform movements in its single-issue focus; land reform for them is a self-justifying cause. The organization maintains that it is legally justified in occupying unproductive land, pointing to the most recent Constitution of Brazil (1988), which contains a passage saying that land must fulfill a social function (Article 5, XXIII). The MST also notes, based on 1996 census statistics, that a mere 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable land in Brazil.

In 1991, MST received the Right Livelihood Award "for winning land for landless families, and helping them to farm it sustainably."

China

Agriculturism/Nongjia

The School of Agricultre, Agricultrism or NongJia, proposed by Xu Xing (about 372-289 BCE) in the State of Chu during the Warring States period believed that Chinese society should be modeled around that of the early sage king Shennong, a folk hero who was portrayed in Chinese literature as "working in the fields, along with everyone else, and consulting with everyone else when any decision had to be reached." They encouraged farming and agriculture and taught farming and cultivation techniques, as they believed that agricultural development was the key to a stable and prosperous society.

Peng Paism

Peng Pai (October 22, 1896 – August 30, 1929) was a pioneer of the Chinese agrarian movement and a leading revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during its early years. He was born in Haifeng, Guangdong Province, China. Peng Pai was one of the few Chinese intellectuals who were aware in the early 1920s that the peasantry and land issues caused the most critical problems for Chinese society. He believed that the success of any revolution in China must depend on the peasants as its base foundation. After his death, Peng was praised by Mao Zedong as "the king of the peasant movement".

Mexico

Villismo

Francisco "Pancho" Villa (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) was a Mexican revolutionary and prominent figure in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President and dictator Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero came to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, Villa joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power.

At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate president. In Mexico, Villa is generally regarded as a hero of the Mexican Revolution who dared to stand up to the United States. Some American media outlets describe Villa as a villain and a murderer.

In November 1915, civil war broke out when Carranza challenged Villa. Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist general Álvaro Obregón in summer 1915, and the U.S. aided Carranza directly against Villa in the Second Battle of Agua Prieta. Much of Villa's army left after his defeat on the battlefield because of his lack of resources to buy arms and pay soldiers' salaries. Angered at U.S. support for Carranza, Villa conducted a raid on the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, to goad the U.S. into invading Mexico in 1916. Despite a major contingent of soldiers and superior military technology, the U.S. failed to capture Villa. When Carranza was ousted from power in 1920, Villa negotiated an amnesty with interim president Adolfo de la Huerta and was given a landed estate, on the condition that he retire from politics. Villa was assassinated in 1923. Although his faction did not prevail in the Revolution, he was one of its most charismatic and prominent figures.

In life, Villa helped fashion his image as an internationally known revolutionary hero, starring as himself in Hollywood films and giving interviews to foreign journalists, most notably John Reed. After his death, he was excluded from the pantheon of revolutionary heroes until the Sonoran generals Obregón and Calles, whom he battled during the Revolution, were gone from the political stage. Villa's exclusion from the official narrative of the Revolution might have contributed to his continued posthumous widespread acclaim. He was celebrated during the Revolution and long afterward by corridos, films about his life, and novels by prominent writers. In 1976, his remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in a vast public ceremony.

England

Diggers (17th century)

Poland

Polish People's Party "Liberation" (1915-1931)
Peasant's Front (1926-1931)
Polish People's Front of Czechoslovakia (1922-1937): An Agrarian party formed by Protestant Poles living in the Czech part of Silesia.
Polish People's Front "New Liberation" (1946-1947)
United People's Front (1949-1989): A satellite party of the PZPR.

Russia

Narodniks (c.1870-c.1890)
Socialist Revolutionary Party (1902-1921)

Narodnichestvo

The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology was a form of agrarian socialism, though it is often misunderstood as populism.

The Going to the People campaigns were the central impetus of the Narodnik movement. The Narodniks were in many ways the intellectual and political forebears and, in notable cases, direct participants of the Russian Revolution—in particular of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which went on to greatly influence Russian history in the early 20th century.

Socialist Revolutionarism

The Socialist Revolutionary Party 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.

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 throughout 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.

By November 1917, the Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution, leaving the soviet councils in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks thus moved to hand power to the 2nd Congress of Soviets in the October Revolution. After a few weeks of deliberation, the Left SRs ultimately formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks – the Council of People's Commissioners – from November 1917 to March 1918, while the Right SRs boycotted the Soviets and denounced the Revolution as an illegal coup. The SRs obtained a majority in the subsequent elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. Citing outdated voter rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the Assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik-Left SR government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly by force in January 1918

The SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement's anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them. A small SR remnant continued to operate in exile from 1923 to 1940 as a member of the Labour and Socialist International.

Agrarian Communism/Kolkhoz Model

A kolkhoz was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917, as an antithesis both to the feudal structure of impoverished serfdom and aristocratic landlords and to individual or family farming.

Initially, a collective farm resembled an updated version of the traditional Russian obshchina "commune", the generic "farming association" (zemledel’cheskaya artel’), the Association for Joint Cultivation of Land (TOZ), and finally the kolkhoz. This gradual shift to collective farming in the first 11 years after the October Revolution was turned into a "violent stampede" during the forced collectivization campaign that began in 1928.

Kharitonovism

Nikolay Mikhailovich Kharitonov(born 30 October 1948) is a Russian communist politician who has served in the State Duma since 1994, and as Chairman of the Committee on the Development of Far Eastern and Arctic regions since 2011. Kharitonov was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation's candidate for the 2004 Russian presidential election and the 2024 Russian presidential election, but was defeated in both by the incumbent president, Vladimir Putin.

Kharitonov was previously a member of the Agrarian Party until he quit in protest of their cooperation with the ruling United Russia party. He is best known for his unsuccessful bid to unseat incumbent President Vladimir Putin in the 2004 presidential election, and came in second place. He ran for president again in the 2024 election and lost again to Putin.

Philippines

Luis Taruc (1913-2005) was a Filipino revolutionary known for organizing the Hukbalahap (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon, English: People's Anti-Japanese Army) armed guerrilla movement of the Philippine Communist Party formed by the peasant farmers of Central Luzon, in the Philippines. After the Japanese invasion, peasant leaders met on March 29, 1942, to form a united organization.

Though the Huks fought the Japanese, they also tried to thwart the US, and therefore were not accorded U.S. recognition or benefits at the end of the war.

By 1954, the Huks numbered less than 2,000, and without the protection and support of local supporters, active Huk resistance no longer presented a serious threat to Philippine security. In 1954, Operation Thunder-Lightning was conducted, resulting in the surrender of the Huk leader in May.

Ukraine

Hrushevskyism

Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky (29 September [O.S. 17 September] 1866 – 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. Hrushevsky is often considered the country's greatest modern historian, the foremost organiser of scholarship, the leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, the head of the Central Rada (Ukraine's 1917–1918 revolutionary parliament), and a leading cultural figure in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s.

Soon after the February Revolution, on 17 March 1917, Hrushevsky, still living in Moscow, was elected head of the revolutionary parliament, the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kyiv. After returning to Ukraine, he gradually guided it from national autonomy within a democratic Russia through to complete independence. During that time, he also chaired the Congress of the Peoples of Russia. As a politician, Hrushevsky supported radical democratic and socialist positions. On February 17, 1918, The New York Times published an article by Hrushevsky that outlined Ukraine's struggle for self-government. Following the German-supported coup of General Pavlo Skoropadskyi, he went into hiding. Hrushevsky felt that Skoropadsky had perverted the cause of Ukrainian statehood by associating it with social conservatism. Hrushevsky returned to public politics after the overthrow of Skoropadsky by the Directory. He did not, however, approve of the Directory and soon found himself in conflict with it. In 1919, he emigrated to Vienna, Austria, having acquired a mandate from the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries to coordinate the activities of its representatives abroad.

Emigration and return to Ukraine

Plaque in Vienna marking the home in which Hrushevsky lived during his exile. While an émigré, Hrushevsky began to become pro-Bolshevik. Along with other members of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, he formed the Foreign Delegation of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which advocated reconciliation with the Bolshevik government. Though the group was critical of the Bolsheviks, mainly because of their centralism and repressive activities in Ukraine, it felt that the criticisms had to be put aside because the Bolsheviks were the leaders of the international revolution. Hrushevsky and his group petitioned the Ukrainian SSR government to legalise the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries and to allow the members of the Foreign Delegation to return. The Ukrainian SSR government was unwilling to do so. By 1921, the Foreign Delegation of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries had ended its activity, but all of its members returned to Ukraine, including Hrushevsky, who did so in 1924.

Later life and death

Back in Ukraine, Hrushevsky concentrated on academic work. Above all, he continued writing his monumental History of Ukraine-Rusʹ. Although political conditions prevented his return to public politics, he was caught up in the Stalinist purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In 1931, after a long campaign against Hrushevsky in the Soviet press, he was exiled to Moscow, where his health deteriorated due to difficult conditions and persecution. In 1934, while vacationing at the Academy of Sciences resort in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus, he died soon after a routine minor surgery at the age of 68. He was buried at the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.

At the time of his death, he was being shadowed by the Soviet GPU secret police after reports (probably fabricated by the GPU in Ukraine) were sent to Moscow that had been considering defection to the West, and afterwards the government resolution and approval of his official obituary were published remarkably promptly, as if already prepared: the suspicious circumstances effectively made him a martyr for the Ukrainian caus

Variants

Agrarian Social Democracy

Agrarian Social Democracy (also known as Social Agrarianism) is a center-left political ideology which combines Agrarianism with Social Democracy. He stresses widespread ownership of wealth-generating property, political decentralization, and a preference for small communities in the context of a well-regulated market economy with generous welfare programs. Despite having similar goals to Christian Democracy and Distributism, he tends to support Secularism and other progressive causes. (The ideology itself is culturally variable, however.) He can also be seen as a moderate form of Agrarian Socialism.

Tenants

Though not to the extent of Socialism, Agrarian Social Democracy is more radical in his opposition to economic inequality than SocDem. Especially after the latter adopted a pro-growth neoliberal stances in the late 20th century. He believes excess inequality, monopoly, and monopsony is a threat to democratic institutions and human rights; through lobbying and bribery the wealthiest have the loudest voices, breeding avraice and corruption. AgSocDem prefers local-level production and consumption.

This contempt for inequality and preference for localism manifests in the form of suppressing wealth concentration in favor of widespread property ownership. He has various means of achieving this, although not universally accepted by his followers, including:

Policies designed to increase competition.
The breaking up of large industries and trusts (e.g., Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Banking, and Big Oil).
Limiting business size directly through other anti-trust legislation (e.g., outlawing vertical integration).
Decentralizing currency through community banks and credit unions, while also limiting or prohibiting interest or usury.
A tax on the unimproved value of land to deprive the landed elites of a tool to suppress unlanded commoners.
Wealth caps (like the maximum wage).
Subsidies and tax incentives for family-owned small businesses and farms (e.g., self-employment assistance, tax breaks, and loans for aspiring entrepreneurs and start-ups).
Removing or reforming unfair business privileges—like limited liability, patents, and ineffective regulations—to level the playing field.
Protection of local industries and farmers.

AgSocDem supports locally-owned businesses, worker-owned enterprises (which are usually small-scale), collective farms, and smallholdings. He sees small-scale producers as more innovative, accountable, greener, and a stepping stone towards autonomous local communities. Loans for entry-level farmers, tax incentives for agricultural co-ops, and discouraging land speculation also empowers rural areas.

However, in cases of natural monopoly and necessary economies of scale like electricity and aircraft manufacturing, AgSocDem usually supports state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). Profits generated will go towards safety nets, infrastructure, education, and subsidies for local entrepreneurs. A great example of this is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)—a for-profit state-owned enterprise which sells alcohol in shops. LCBO's profits, ranging in the billions, go towards Ontario's provincial programs and functions. As of 2019 they sell hard liquor, wine, and beer.

AgSocDem also supports decentralized welfare programs and regulatory agencies. Canada's Medicaid is a great example of the former—it is mandated and funded primarily by the federal government, but provincially and locally supplied. Most welfare programs in Denmark are coordinated and financed on the municipal level. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the United States is a regulatory agency; though having a federal office which sets minimum standards, the rest is handled by regional, state, and local offices with autonomy.

AgSocDem is culturally variable. In the West he's usually a civil libertarian; others are progressive, seeing urban inequality as holding back positive scientific, medical, and technological advances. Followers tends to like direct democracy and a constitution protecting human rights. Many AgSocDem followers may see a strong central government as necessary for creating their ideal system. Others may champion achieving their reforms on the local or provincial level instead.

Personality and Behaviour

WIP

How to Draw

Draw a ball,
Colour the bottom-half of the ball in red (#FF0100),
Colour the top-half of the ball in green (#009900),
Draw a yellow (#ECE710) bundle of wheat in the center
Add the eyes
(optional) Add a straw hat (either the round Western one or the conical Eastern)
You're done!

	HEX	RGB
Red	#FF0100	rgb(255, 1, 0)
Green	#009900	rgb(0, 153, 0)
Yellow	#ECE710	rgb(236, 231, 16)

Relations

Friends

Agrarianism - FARM TIME; ALL THE TIME!
Socialism - The rural farmers should collectively own the grain they're entitled to.
Conservative Socialism - You seem to understand me. Just be a little more progressive.
Castroism - You liked cows and so do we.
Ho Chi Minh Thought - Honestly, Uncle Ho was really based!
Neozapatismo - A federation of rural peasant communes sounds like paradise to me.
Liberal Socialism - Kerensky, is that you?
Market Socialism - He'll bring the cream to all of us.
Sewer Socialism - Your variant in Oklahoma was based. Shame it no longer exists anymore. ~~What do you mean the city and sewers is where it's at?~~
Pol Potism - My grandson. I really appreciate your focus on Agrarianism but oh lord are you psychotic.\
Populareism - My Roman Republic ancestor.
Caesarism - Caesar was truly great.

Frenemies

Marxism - Socialism can be achieved in agricultural societies, in fact, it's ideal in them!
Marxism-Leninism - Your kolkhoz system is interesting, but many innocent people died during collectivisation.
Maoism - You’re really great, but JUST QUIT HANGING OUT WITH STALIN!
Agrarian Anarchism - Hello fellow agrarians, please be more organized.
National Agrarianism - Misguided brother.
Reactionary Socialism - Your support for traditionalism is based but tone it down. WAY, WAY down.
National Bolshevism - Look above.
Anarcho-Communism - Modern followers are too urban for my liking but Kropotkin and Makhno were based and agro-pilled!
Labour Zionism - The Kibbutzim were based, shame many of them went for privatization.
Georgism - Hmmm, your heart is in the right place but still too cappie.
Imperialism - You have caused nothing but pain and suffering. But Greeley supported Manifest Destiny and I like Caesar.

Enemies

Optimateism - Landlords and their greed was the real reason why Rome fell.
Feudalism - Strange women lyin' in ponds and distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government!
Authoritarian Capitalism, Kleptocracy, & Corporatocracy - COME HERE, YA BITCHES!
Banana Republicanism - With folk like you, is it any wonder I'm a socialist.
Agrarian Capitalism - You betrayed the egalitarian intentions of our father with your greater demands from the serf class.
Neoconservatism - Fake conservative, the tool of imperialism!
Neoliberalism - Calls me a redneck Nazbol.
Pink Capitalism - Disgusting lazy urbanite!
Fordism - This is what capitalism leads to!
Tsarism - You waited for a century to emancipate the serfs, and even when you did, you made them pay for the fields they toiled on for generations, and now you are wondering that peasants are dissatisfied? Land and Freedom!
Black Hundredism - If your dear Tsar really cared about peasants, they wouldn't have deserted his army at the first opportunity.