Book
Rural Community : A Novel Inserted into History. Critical Analysis of the Theories of Community, the Historical Evidence of its Development and Role in Stratified Society
Москва, 2016, 480 p.
Rural Communities was functioning in many countries during the Ancient and Medieval periods, sometimes even in the modern times. In the monograph the discussions, held in Russia and Germany on the essence of this institution, its origin and way of evolution are investigated; the contemporary state of community studies in Russia are produced; the recent conceptions of state formation are analysed. The data of different types and forms of rural communities in ancient societies, in Black Africa, in the countries of Middle East, in China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are summarized. The information about rural community in India is looked into at greater length, as this country is reputed as a civilization with especially strong and stagnant community life. In chapters devoted to Indian rural communities there are used historical ancient and medieval data, as well as materials collected by British colonizers in the end of the 18th and in the 19th centuries. The Indian rural community was a unique institution, as it was uniting in itself not personages, but castes, and was ensuring not so much economic as ritual needs. The author discloses the steady myths of isolation, primitiveness and democratic spirit of Indian local communities and shows their diversity in various regions of the Indian sub-continent. The author comes forward against the widespread opinion that the rural community is the remnant of the primordial structure, and argues that it comes into existence in the so called class (heterogeneous, stratified) society and it is developing under the influence of geographical, social, political, economical conditions, in which rural population find itself in different epochs and in different countries. The book is meant not only for specialists in history of any concrete country, but also for everyone, who is interested in general tendencies of evolution of the humanity, and especially in destiny of Russian peasantry.
РУССКАЯ ВЕРСИЯ: Сельская община: «Роман, вставленный в историю». Критический анализ теорий общины, исторических свидетельств ее развития и роли в стратифицированном обществе