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From the first part of the 19th century up to now, the problem of village community as one of the pivotal historical universals continues to be a subject of fervent historiographical as well as ideological battle. This paper is a kind of reflection concerning the recent monograph by Leonid B. Alaev, an outstanding Russian orientalist, devoted to problems of a rural community (see reference 2). According to Alaev, the idea of primordial village communities existing so far in many respects seems to be a kind of intellectuals’ and politicians’ mystification of the real history of statehood, power, village economy and peasantry itself through the ages. Ideological struggles concerning the concept of primordial peasant community are described as a part of actual politics in many developing countries as well as in the present-day Russia. Partly, these struggles are related to the actual state of Western societies.
Е. Рашковский (Mon,) studied this question.