Economic and sociological theories of agrarian development: history and the present[Экономические И Социологические Теории Аграрного Развития: История И Современность]

The relevance of the study is determined by the special importance of the agricultural sec- tor and rural areas for the economic organization and social life in Russia as a great agrarian power, whose science made a huge contribution to agricultural economics and sociology. The study aims at an analytical synthesis of economic and sociological theories on the “agrarian question” in the context of the contemporary transformations of the agricultural sector. The subject of the study is those ideas of the economic-sociological thought that are important for our time. The study combines methods of historical, economic and social sciences. The results of the study include an analytical reconstruction of economic and sociological theories that are relevant for understanding the transformation of historical and regional contexts of agricultural development. The paper concludes that the so-called “agrarian question” has not been resolved yet and still requires a clear definition (with cor- responding practical consequences) of the agricultural sphere – as a special economic and social world that needs special theoretical and empirical scientific approaches or as an “object” that should be studied by a standard conceptual and methodological set of economic and social disciplines. The novelty of the study is determined by the assessment of the heuristic and predictive potential of those sections of the Russian agricultural economic and sociological theories of the past and present that can be applied for the study of the relationship between large and small agricultural production, optimal forms of agricultural enterprises, spatial distribution of agricultural production sectors, and so on. The paper pro- vides some recommendations such as a refusal to give up theories of pre-capitalist agri- culture in order to use their ideas and methods for the study of multiple paths of agrarian capitalism development both on a global scale and in different countries.