Abstract: The subject of this article is the agrarian policy of Russia, conducted after the abolition of serfdom. Specifically, we are talking about the modernization of agriculture in Russia at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. It is no secret that, despite the lingering remnants of feudal-serfdom relations, the peasant reform of 1861 gave a noticeable impetus not only to the development of agriculture, but also to the economic development of Russia as a whole for several decades. The object of the study is the analysis of the state of agriculture in Russia, the level of development of which largely determined the state of the economy as a whole. The authors place special emphasis on the comparison of the American and Prussian ways of developing the agrarian system, as well as on the analysis of P.A. Stolypin's policy. The article presents two ways of developing the agrarian system – the Prussian and the American. If the Prussian way was typical for Russian agriculture in the first two decades after 1861, the American way became a reality in the early twentieth century. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that in modern historiography there is no consensus on the question of the correlation of types of agrarian evolution in Russia. In the "old", serf-like areas, of course, the "Prussian" way of development prevailed. The "American" way of developing capitalism in rural areas, or rather, its potential, has become a historical reality where the level of development of landed proprietorship was low or it was absent as such. Despite the fact that the reforms initiated by P. A. Stolypin were curtailed, the trace of Stolypin's evolution of peasant farming on capitalist principles turned out to be quite noticeable in the agrarian policy of some regions. So, in those provinces where the remnants of serfdom did not have a significant impact on the socio-economic development of the village, there was a lot of free land and there was an active process of colonization, the colonists created separate farms. Modernization was actively underway in these regions: the most developed, mature forms of capitalism in agriculture emerged – using large capital, mass wage labor and improved tools and machines. It is no coincidence that after 1917, bran and farmsteads often existed until complete collectivization.