The Village of Akura - Past and Present (According to ethnographic materials)

Abstract

The article describes the dynamics of socio-economic changes in one of the villages in the Kakheti region from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, which is more or less characteristic of the Georgian village as a whole. In the 20th century, the village of Georgia has twice altered the fundamental of socio-economic development - the form of ownership; This basic changes have led to a kind of deterioration in the labor, social, cultural, economic and psychosocial relations of rural residents. The goal of our work is to show the dynamics of these changes.
All major agricultural activities - farming, animal husbandry and viticulture were developed in the village. Many so-called “Ojakhishvili”(good families) i.e. wealthy peasants lived in the village. In the 1930s during the global collectivization they were ascribed to Kulaks and were dekulakized. From today's perspective it appears that these “Ojakhishvili” were ordinary, hard-working peasants who used wage labor to do business. This process severely damaged the Georgian village.
According to ethnographic materials, by the 1980s the Akura collective farm was a millionaire, they had all the basic agricultural crops, there were no problems with employment, they worked both on the farm and in the enterprises of the region.
Today, due to employment problems, rural migration is growing. After the land reform of the 1990s, because of the high cost of land cultivation and the lack of agricultural machinery, part of the population sold the land they received after the reform and some bought it; hence today the economic level of the villagers is different. Land reform was carried out with deficiencies that have hampered the development of some traditional agricultural sectors. Today in the village, where livestock farming was once the leading field, there are no pastures; because of the fragmentation of the land it is impossible to grow cereals. Currently, the main direction of agriculture in Akura is viticulture and livestock. Rural residents refrain from working together, because of the unstable situation.