THE PRINCE, THE BAILIFF, AND THE MIR:
POWER, POLITICS, AND AGENCY ON A RUSSIAN SERF ESTATE, 1810-1858
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate School
of the University of Notre Dame
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Monica B. Bykowski
Alexander Martin, Director
Graduate Program in History
Notre Dame, Indiana
September 2017
© Copyright 2017
Monica B. Bykowski
THE PRINCE, THE BAILIFF, AND THE MIR:
POWER, POLITICS, AND AGENCY ON A RUSSIAN SERF ESTATE, 1810-1858
Abstract
by
Monica B. Bykowski
The Prince, the Bailiff, and the Mir: Power, Politics, and Agency on a Russian
Serf Estate, 1810-1858 argues that Russian serfs practiced economic agency even before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. This agency was possible, despite serfs’ legal status as the property of others and place in the soslovie, social estate, hierarchy, because of local social dynamics. Although landlords had authority over their serfs, large magnates such as Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn did not live on their provincial estates. Consequently, they relied on local institutions – namely the mir, or peasant commune, and estate bailiff – to fulfil their directives and inform them of estate affairs.
The unique intermediary position between serf and landlord empowered the mir and bailiff, giving them their own authority on the estate. These groups did not necessarily share the interests of the landlord, being part and parcel of the peasant community themselves. And yet, within the larger social system of serfdom, they needed each other to operate. The landlord, bailiff, and mir, therefore, negotiated their interests. Monica B. Bykowski
Within this arena of competing interests, serfs found the space to pursue their own interests. They used the administrative apparatus created by the landlord and local institutions to secure their private transactions, including extending credit, renting, and buying property. Moreover, they used one or another interest group to advance their goals and minimize risks. When they wanted to build counter to Prince Sergei’s estate designs, they turned to the bailiff or mir for permission. When they opposed the actions of the bailiff, they appeared before the mir or petitioned Prince Sergei himself. When the mir conscripted their sons, they appealed once more to Prince Sergei.
The case studies presented in this project demonstrate the importance of social dynamics in the functioning of institutions on the ground. Moreover, they help us understand how unfree people could exhibit economic agency. This project begins by investigating Prince Sergei’s designs on an estate in Iaroslavl’ province, Rostov district, showing that planning did not succeed without local cooperation. Intermediaries are added to the dynamic in the following chapters. Case studies examining foresting and army conscription delineate the extent and limits of the bailiff and mir’s authority while also illustrating how the landlord, bailiff, and mir interrelated. The final two chapters consider peasant economic agency within this social system, examining how serfs interacted with estate authorities to secure their own private transactions as well as household divisions. The Economic Agency of Russian Peasants Under Serfdom closes by acknowledging the importance of local processes when evaluating macro social structures such as the Russian soslovie system and serfdom.
For my mother, the memory of my father, my brother, and my dearest sister who said the
moon was not good enough
ii
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ...... vi
Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Historiographical Considerations ...... 4 1.2 The Economic Environment and the Estate ...... 8 1.3 The Soslovie System, Landlords, and the Enlightenment ...... 23 1.4 Peasant Agency and Social Structures ...... 29 1.5 Dissertation Plan ...... 33 1.6 A Note on Transliteration ...... 35
Chapter 2: The Landlord and His Estate ...... 36 2.1 Landowners ...... 41 2.2 The Golitsyns ...... 43 2.3 Prince Sergei and His Estate ...... 48 2.4 Enlightened Estate Design ...... 51 2.5 Instructions ...... 54 2.6 Estate Design in Practice ...... 59 2.7 Estate Design and the Church ...... 62 2.8 Obrok versus Barshchina ...... 68 2.9 Landlord Management ...... 70 2.10 Obrok and the Market ...... 74 2.11 Obrok and Mobility ...... 82
Chapter 3: The Power of Intermediaries ...... 91 3.1 The Bailiff ...... 96 3.2 Estate Dynamics and the Limits of the Bailiff’s Authority ...... 103 3.3 Contested Space, Administrative Solution ...... 111 3.4 Foresting Instructions ...... 118 3.5 Conclusion ...... 126
Chapter 4: Recruitment, the Mir, and the Community ...... 127 4.1 The Mir ...... 128 4.2 The Mir: Historiographical Debates ...... 133 4.3 Conscription and the Community ...... 138 4.4 War and Recruitment: 1853 ...... 152 4.5 Conclusion ...... 164
iii
Chapter 5: Serf Economic Activities and the Soslovie System ...... 166 5.1 Institutional Support for Private Transactions ...... 167 5.2 Justice: A Local Matter ...... 180 5.3 Serfs’ Private Transactions ...... 182 5.4 Conclusions ...... 186
Chapter 6: Serf Economic Activity and Household Divisions ...... 188 6.1 Households and Economic Development ...... 190 6.2 The Peasant Household ...... 197 6.3 Amicable Household Divisions ...... 203 6.4 Contentious Household Divisions ...... 222
Chapter 7: Conclusion ...... 232
Bibliography ...... 234
iv
TABLES
Table 4.1 Recruitment Families, 1953 ...... 155
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This journey would not have been possible without the support and advice provided along the way. I am indebted to the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Dominica and Frank Annese and Katie Murphy
McMahon families for supporting my field research in Moscow. For support of preliminary research conducted in Russia, I would like to thank the Notre Dame Graduate
School, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame, and the Nanovic Institute. I would also like to thank the Nanovic Institute, the Center for the Study of Languages and Culture, and the Department of State for helping provide me with the language skills necessary to fulfil this project. Finally, I would like to thank the
Department of History and the Union of Graduate Historians for their support during the entire process.
I would especially like to thank Alexander Martin for sharing his depth of knowledge and expertise and consistently pushing me to become a better scholar. I am additionally indebted to John Deak, Semion Lyandres, and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for reminding me that there are many different angles from which to approach a problem. I would also like to thank David Gasperetti for helping me develop the Russian language skills needed to conduct archival research in Russia. For priceless feedback, I would like to thank the members of Notre Dame’s European Reading Group, the 2016 cohort of
Global Domes, especially Patrick Griffin and Elliott Visconsi, and the participants in the
International Graduate Student Workshop Exchange with Bielefeld University, especially
Stephan Merl and Bettina Brandt. And, for support on the ground during my field work in vi
Russia, I would like to thank my host the International University in Moscow, the staff of the Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts, Jon Smith of American Councils for
International Education, Vladimir Supik, Emily Elliott, and Aleksandr Arkhipov.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my family. I would not be the person I am today if not for the constant support of my parents Barbara and Thomas Bykowski. I would not have enjoyed graduate school as much without the companionship of Forrest
Mendelsohn. And, I would not be the searcher of knowledge I am today if not for my sister who would wake up early with me to study when our parents thought we were sleeping. Thanks, Misha, for reaching for the stars with me.
vii
CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
In his memoirs, Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii describes his life under serfdom between 1800 and 1868. His story defies conventional accounts of serfdom. Far from eking out an existence on the field, Purlevskii was educated, rented land for commercial profit, borrowed credit to invest in his business, and traded in Moscow. Purlevskii’s experience was not unique. In his village, he writes, “we never engaged in agriculture but for generations had dealt in trade and commerce.”1 Indeed, this village, Velikoe, was located in the Central Industrial Region of Russia in Iaroslavl’ province. There, poor soil and a cold climate made agricultural activities unprofitable. Consequently, serfs like
Purlevskii turned to trade and industry to provide for their families and pay obrok, monetary feudal dues. Nonetheless, Purlevskii’s success was limited because of his legal status as a serf: he and his fellow villagers were forced to pay high rents to compensate for his landlord’s debt, he was often taken away from his business for the landlord’s, he faced seizures of property without recourse to law, and he could only trade with the
1 Savva D. Purlevskii, A Russian Life Under Serfdom: The Memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, 1800-1868, trans. and ed. Boris B. Gorshkov (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005), 106. 1
express permission of his landlord. In the end, Purlevskii fled from these conditions, finding refuge in an Old Believer village.2
Purlevskii’s memoir brings into sharp focus a side of serfdom not often encountered in the popular imagination: the participation of serfs in enterprises outside of agriculture. Tracy Dennison argues that a “peasant myth,” emanating from the work of nineteenth-century Romantics and influenced by the foundational scholarship of historian
A.V. Chayanov, has shaped the historiography and the way we view the peasantry.
According to this myth, serf behavior was “collective, redistributive, and market-averse” as they relied on the land for their subsistence. Dennison’s work challenges this narrative, indicating peasant participation in labor, credit, land, and commercial markets.3
Nonetheless, serfs like Purlevskii were still the property of others. They had to navigate this social reality in order to pursue their economic activities. This project argues that Russian peasants exercised economic agency under serfdom through social relations on the ground. I investigate these social dynamics by conducting a case study of
Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn’s estate in Iaroslavl’ province, Rostov district.
Prince Sergei owned many different estates and primarily resided in Moscow; consequently, he ruled his Iaroslavl’ estate from afar. The majority of serfs in Russia experienced an absentee landlord, like Prince Sergei. Although 84% of serfowners owned fewer than 101 males, they owned only 19% of the total serf population. The top 16% of
2 Ibid.
3 Tracy Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 2
landlords owned 81% of serfs while the top 1% owned 33% of all serfs.4 Despite this common situation, Tracey Dennison contends that there was no single experience of serfdom. Rather, she argues for a “continuum of serfdoms” informed by landlord policies and local practices. Because landlord policies differed, so too did the experience of serfdom on the estate.5 The Russian Empire also encompassed a vast territory with different climatic and environmental conditions. Northern territories had poor-quality soil and long winters while those in the south had rich soil and milder weather. Consequently, agriculture was more productive in the latter region while peasants in northwestern
Russia turned to industry, trade, and handicrafts to supplement agricultural work.6
Proceeding from a local vantage point, this study appreciates the heterogeneity of
Russian serf experiences. Nonetheless, this case study also offers lessons that are broadly applicable as it shows the value of local social relations within the larger social system and the ability of serfs to act as agents within this system.
To rule from afar, Prince Sergei had to rely upon an administrative apparatus to enforce his orders and initiatives in situ. This apparatus included the centralized Moscow office which oversaw all estates, a local bailiff, and the mir, or peasant commune. Prince
Sergei’s reliance on these institutions, however, also diluted his authority and empowered local bodies, creating interest groups with negotiating power. Peasants used these
4 Jerome Blum, Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Prince: Princeton University Press, 1972), 367-368.
5 T.K. Dennison, “Did Serfdom Matter? Russian Rural Society, 1750-1860,” Historical Research 79, no. 203 (2006): 74-89.
6 David Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 37-65. 3
different groups to their advantage. If they disagreed with a landlord policy, they appealed for the mir to grant an exception. If the mir or bailiff acted against their interests, they petitioned the landlord for justice. The flexibility of the social system locally allowed serfs like Purlevskii to act as economic agents and to pursue their interests in the face of serfdom.
1.1 Historiographical Considerations
The development of economic agency among serfs has been largely unexplored due to an assumption that economic modernization could only occur after the emancipation of the serfs. The historiography implicitly expresses this assumption by focusing on modernization among the peasantry only after the emancipation, effectively dividing the pre-and-post emancipation into two distinct periods.
During the era of serfdom, state and society underwent a process of change as the government expanded its control, cities expanded, and individuals became cultured members of society. As early as the reign of Peter the Great, James Cracraft argues that naval, military, diplomatic and bureaucratic changes culminated in a cultural revolution, which completely transformed the manners and customs of the nobility. While Peter the
Great transformed the culture of the capital, John Randolph explains, Catherine the Great strove to create enlightened centers in the provinces. Catherine freed the nobility from compulsory service, allowing them to reside in their provincial homes and bring the culture of the cities to the countryside. These cultural changes did not only affect the nobility. Although historians have traditionally held that the nineteenth-century
4
intelligentsia was composed of educated noblemen who felt alienated from the state,7
Laurie Manchester complicates the picture, implicating the sons of priests, popovichi, who left the countryside to work in the capital and fill the ranks of the ever-expanding bureaucracy. Subsequently, many became radicalized members of the intelligentsia.
These men brought a unique point of view to the equation, even as their experience in the city influenced their belief systems and, in many cases, radicalized them.8
Historians have also studied other groups. David Ransel delved deeply into social changes occurring among the merchant class with the aid of one merchant’s comprehensive diaries. Ransel found that his merchant was connected to the newest trends and strove to reach greater wealth, standing and culture. He visited museums when in St. Petersburg, invested in the newest gadgets, and even lived in a mansion fit for a nobleman. Furthermore, he made sure his children were highly educated and acquainted with the arts, such that one of his sons even became an actor. Ransel’s merchant was part of a dynamic, not stagnant, provincial society that reached to the culture of the capital.
Catherine Evtuhov’s work likewise shows the dynamism of local society. She portrays an educated, cultured, and active provincial society that extended beyond the nobility. Urban people, and the cities in which they lived, similarly evolved. Elise Wirtschafter investigates the relationship between state building, social structures, and everyday life.
7 Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966).
8 James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); John Randolph, The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). 5
She demonstrates that although there were official legal and administration categories in which people belonged, reality was more complex and social boundaries more porous.
Raznochintsy, “people of various ranks” from the middling layers of society such as professionals, commercial and industrial elites, and the intelligentsia, did not precisely fit into official categories; but, they participated in an ongoing process of social and cultural self-definition. Cities and towns were likewise subject to transformation. Alexander
Martin shows that leaders strove to transform Moscow into an “enlightened metropolis” with European institutions, a middle estate, and a cultured population.9
Richard Stites argues that, although limited by serfdom, peasants, too, contributed to the growth of the arts in Russia. Serfs were actors and actresses in estate performances or in traveling troupes touring the provinces, they sang in estate choruses, and they were trained as artists and commissioned by landowners. Because of their participation in the arts, these serfs accessed and contributed to elite culture. Stites cautions, however, that, as serfs, these artists were still subject to the whims and constraints of their landowners. It would not be until after the Great Reforms that these people, unfettered, would have the freedom to reach their potential as artists.
Much more work has considered peasant initiative, innovation, and role in
Russia’s social and economic transformation following the Great Reforms. Ben Eklof charts the growth and development of peasant schools in Imperial Russia and shows that,
9 David L. Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on his Diary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pitsburgh Press, 2011); Elise K. Wirtschafter, Social Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997); Alexander M. Martin, Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762-1855 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 6
initially, peasants were largely the founders and managers of local schools. One result of the growth of education was the rise in literacy. Jeffrey Brooks demonstrates that peasants and workers helped determine the form and substance of popular literature through their consumer preferences and active participation in the production of popular literature. These historians show that peasants were agents of change who had their own interests and agendas. Indeed, Daniel Field demonstrates that peasants even manipulated official discourse to serve their own purposes. Peasants also transformed their environment in more subtle ways. Jane Burbank argues that peasants used courts to press their individual claims and, in doing so, demonstrated knowledge of the legal system and a market orientation. Furthermore, by increasingly participating in this legal system, peasants supported a state-backed system, which diminished traditional communal control. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Burds indicates that the mir devised adaptive strategies to face the challenges posed by the encroachment of a market economy in the village.10
While these works focus on the post-emancipation era, peasants had interests, and pursued those interests, even before they were freed. Tracy Dennison’s recent work challenges what she calls the “Peasant Myth,” and indicates that the Russian peasantry participated in land, property, labor, credit, and retail markets even before the emancipation. Dennison’s study builds on the work of social historians, such as Edgar
10 Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1976); Jane Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Jeffrey Burds, Peasant Dreams & Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998). 7
Melton, Richard Rudolph, and Rodney Bohac, whose case studies show peasant economic enterprising within the provinces. My work aims to expand upon the idea of peasant agency and to illuminate the local social dynamics that made peasant possible during the era of serfdom. 11
1.2 The Economic Environment and the Estate
According to Jan de Vries, even before the “Industrial Revolution,” peasants in
Western Europe were inclined toward the market during the course of the eighteenth century. As the population grew, and the amount of arable land remained constant, more people worked the same amount of land for less individual profit. Consequently, a domestic system developed in which individuals contributed to the production of goods, coinciding with a rise in consumer demand. De Vries’s work demonstrates that notions of peasant backwardness are misplaced as peasants industriously adapted their work to fit the economic environment. 12
De Vries’s work does not specifically address the situation in Russia. Indeed, many historians have questioned the very possibility of industrialization in a land of unfree laborers, arguing that free labor is a necessary prerequisite for economic growth and modernization. Recent work, however, has challenged the notion that
11 Melton, “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure: Two Estates in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” Past & Present, no. 115 (1987): 69-106; Richard Rudolph, “Agricultural Structure and Proto-Industrialization in Russia: Economic Development with Unfree Labor,” in The Journal of Economic History, 45, no. 1 (1985): 47-69; Rodney D. Bohac, “Peasant Inheritance Strategies in Russia,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16, no. 1 (1985): 23-42; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom.
12 Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 8
industrialization was impossible in a land of serfs. To historian Richard Rudolph, key to proto-industrialization was the development of kustar’ or peasant handicrafts, increased productivity in agriculture, and the role of peasants in the development of local trade networks, markets, and transportation, as, for example, carters. With these considerations,
Rudolph concludes, “it was within the serf system, and with a basis of serf labor, that we see the primary movement toward an industrial economy.”13 Similarly, while Jerome
Blum notes the overall absence of peasants in the grain market, he argues that “In the last century of the old order, more and more them turned to [rural industry] to help piece out their livelihoods,” especially in areas of marginal agriculture. He continues, asserting that rural cottage industry “became the most important sector in the entire manufacturing industry” of Russia.14 Edgar Melton corroborates Rudolph and Blum’s conclusions by demonstrating the commercial foundation of Mstera, an industrialized town. Melton argues that “the serf system not only accommodated itself to capitalist elements, but in some cases even encouraged their emergence.”15
Considering migrant work, Edgar Melton notes three major networks of rural industry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the Moscow textile region network; the Vladimir-Kostroma textile region network; and the tanning and metalworking region network in Nizhnii Novgorod.16 Serfs could be granted special
13 Rudolph, “Agricultural Structure and Proto-Industrialization in Russia,” 68.
14 Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 172-173.
15 Edgar Melton, “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure,” 73.
16 Melton, “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure,” 74-75. 9
passports in order to migrate to these regions. Morrison estimates that from 1778 to 1802, the government issued 55,000-75,000 passports annually.17 According to Jerome Blum, most factory workers were peasant migrants who came from the Center and Northwest, where agriculture was relatively unprofitable. He estimates that in 1804, there were
224,882 factory workers. Of these, 61,600, or 27%, were hired workers and 163,282,
73%, were forced laborers. Meanwhile, in 1825, there were 340,568 factory workers,
114,515, 34%, as hired workers and 226,053, or 66% as forced labors. These numbers show an absolute growth in hired workers and forced workers, however, a relative decline in forced labor. This trend continued, as in 1860 there were 862,000 total workers, of which 479,000, 56%, were hired laborers, and 383,000, 44%, were forced laborers.18 Factory work was just one of many options for migrants: migrants could work as day laborers on other estates, as boat haulers on the Volga, as servants, construction workers, craftsmen, or traders in towns or the capital cities. Serfs who worked as migrants were expected by both their family and community to use their earning to contribute to obrok and taxes, a trend that continued in the post-emancipation era.19
Despite the growth of manufactories noted above, Blum argues that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries “the largest part of the domestic market demand for manufactured goods was met not by factory production, but by the output of peasant
17 Morrison, “Trading Peasants.”
18 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 324.
19 Burds, Peasant Dreams & Market Politics, 51-88. 10
artisans working in their own homes or in their shops.”20 Blum even hypothesizes that handicraft industry out-produced the empire’s factories.21 In a case studied by Melton, handicraft work even outpaced agricultural labor. The peasant village of Mstera became a
“proto-industrial” village as its population successfully mass produced and commercially sold religious icons.22
In addition to production, peasants also participated in trade and commerce.
Because towns in the Russian Empire were relatively sparse, peasants “seized the opportunity to fill the gap between producers and consumers.”23 While, legally, townspeople held exclusive rights to trade, in reality, peasants and peasant commerce were protected by landlords who could expect a piece of the pie. Blum notes that while we cannot decisively count the number of peasants engaged in commerce, the numbers must have been large, as “in 1857 an estimated 100,000 travel passes were issued to peasant peddlers in just two province, Vladimir and Nizhnii Novgorod.”24
Concurrent with Russia’s growth in the industrial sector, Russia emerged as a major grain supplier to Europe. Catherine the Great’s acquisition of ports on the Black
Sea facilitated this growth. In 1790, cereal exports reached 400,000 chetverts, or
2,380,000 bushels, and, at the end of the century, about 1,000,000 chetverts, 5,950,000 bushels. By 1860, cereals, and predominantly wheat, accounted for 35% the value of all
20 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 30.
21 Ibid., 303.
22 Melton, “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure,” 69-106.
23 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 289.
24 Ibid., 291. 11
exports, compared to 16% in 1805.25 These were primarily produced in the rich and fertile black-earth region of Russia.
In fact, there were two dominant agrarian structures in Russia during the course of the nineteenth century: the desmesne and the proto-industrial village. In the former, agricultural work was the peasant’s primary occupation, and, in the latter, handicrafts, rural industry, trade, and migrant work helped sustain peasant livelihoods. Landlords in the black-soil region, where rich soil and a warmer climate created good conditions for agriculture, intensified cultivation to meet the demands of the European market, relying on barshchina from serf labors.26 Landlords in regions with poor-quality soil took advantage of greater economic differentiation, converting their serfs from barshchina, labor dues, to obrok, monetary dues. This change offered landlords greater profits, as they did not have to rely solely on agricultural output. I argue that serfs also had something to gain. Peasants had choices: they could work the land or in various industries, at home or in the city. And, they could save money. Consequently, their behavior changed: they began to act as economic agents.
When analyzing peasants as economic agents, it is worth clarifying the value of nineteenth-century Russian money. This task is complicated by the various rubles in circulation during the period under investigation. From the time of Peter the Great, silver and copper rubles were minted. Later, Catherine the Great also introduced paper assignats. In 1840, the government declared silver rubles standard, but assignats
25 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 287-288.
26 Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 72-77. 12
continued to be used as legal tender. Then, in 1843, credit paper rubles replaced assignat paper rubles. Additionally, growing gold production in Russia contributed to the rising production of the gold rubles during the nineteenth century and in 1897 Russia was put on the gold standard. The presence of silver, copper, paper assignats, paper credit, and gold rubles meant that multiple currencies simultaneously circulated. The value of these various rubles was not equivalent and fluctuated during the nineteenth century, especially as the government increased printing of assignats or credit rubles in order to meet state demands. This project primarily considers silver rubles and assignats because those rubles were used by the peasants under investigation. When referring to currency, I notate the sums and type of currency as written by the original actors. If the documents lacked specification, then I revert to the more nebulous “ruble.”27
According to business historian Thomas Owen, the silver ruble largely maintained its value during the reign of Alexander I and his successor, Nicholas I, between 1801 and
1855 Meanwhile, the assignat declined in value during this period. After the Crimean
War, ending in 1856, the value of the silver ruble and the credit ruble also faced decline.
Owen estimates that in 1801 one assignat ruble equaled 65.36 silver kopeks. By 1810 the value of the assignat declined such that one assignat ruble equaled 33.33 silver kopeks.
Between 1810 and 1842, the value of the assignat ranged from 23.75 silver kopeks, at its
27 Thomas C. Owen, “A Standard Ruble of Account for Russian Business History, 1769-1914: A Note,” The Journal of Economic History 49, no.3 (1989): 699-706; Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 304-305. 13
lowest value in 1815, to 28.57 silver kopeks in 1842. Therefore, the silver ruble was worth about three and a half times the value of the assignat during this period.28
How did these currency values translate into prices and wages? Considering grain,
Blum indicates that its price varied significantly depending on where it was sold: prices were lower in grain-producing regions and higher in regions that imported grain. In 1835 a sack of rye flour cost 6-8 rubles in Orenburg, but 30 rubles in Pskov. A year later, it cost 1.60 rubles in Poltava and 22 rubles in Lifland. These price differentials not only reflected supply and demand, but the high cost of transporting goods in Russia.
Meanwhile, he estimates that a pud, about 36 lbs¸ of iron cost 80-90 kopecks in the Urals, but 2 rubles to the west. And, a sazhen of wood, about 2.13 meters, earned forest owners
20-30 kopeks but cost Peterburgers 3 rubles.29 Conducting a local study on an in
Iaroslavl’ province, Rostov district, Dennison indicates the sales price of goods at the local market. In 1831, the average price per pud, 36 lbs, of hay was 0.80 rubles; rye flour,
1.30; salt, 2.30; beef, 5.50; hemp oil; 9.50; and butter, 15.00 rubles.30 These grain prices, she notes, would have been affordable to all but the poorest on the estate.31 Hoch provides local prices for products found on the estate of Petrovskoe, a village in Tambov province in the Central Black-Earth Region known for agriculture. There, he found that a pud of hay cost 0.55 assignats, rye, 0.57; rye flour, 1.00; salt, 1.22; beef, 2.26; hemp oil,
28 Ibid.
29 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 286.
30 Dennison does not specify whether these were silver rubles or assignats.
31 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 204-205. 14
14.27; and butter, 10.00 assignats in 1817-1818. Hoch argues that these low prices would have allowed serfs to balance their diets with meat and oil products. Indeed, he notes that meat prices were more favorable here, with meat at two to three times the cost of rye flour, than in Western Europe, where meat prices soared 12 times higher than cereal prices32. Despite these favorable prices, Boris Mironov demonstrates that prices of grain actually rose during the course of the nineteenth century, totaling a rise of 69% from
1800 to 1914. Mironov argues that this rise resulted from the gradual convergence of
European and Russian markets driven by Russia’s integration into the world grain market.33 Placing this rise in perspective, Kolle indicates that in 1830, the yearly wages of a cotton printer could buy 27 puds, or 972 pounds, of rye flour. By 1860, they could only purchase one third of that amount.34
Mironov’s scholarship further indicates how prices related to wages. In the 1850s, he calculates that agricultural workers earned between 16 silver kopeks and 40 kopeks daily, for a period of six and a half months during spring and summer, depending on the productivity of the region. Comparing agricultural work to industrial work, he estimates that factory workers made 75 silver rubles and agricultural workers 50 per year around the Moscow area. In the provinces, wages were lower: in Vladimir province, agricultural workers made 30 silver rubles per year, and construction workers 55 while in Samara the
32 Steven L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 21-22.
33 Boris Nikolaevich Mironov and Carol S. Leonard, “In Search of Hidden Information: Some Issues in the Socio-Economic History of Russia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Social Science History 9, no. 4 (1985): 339-359.
34 Kolle, Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia, 140-141. 15
former earned 26 rubles and the latter 35. Just as prices rose during the nineteenth century, so too did wages, 1.5 times from the beginning of the century. Mironov contends that, despite the rise in prices, wage increases represented real growth in workers’ purchasing power.35 He estimates that the majority of wages, 52% for unmarried men and
45% for married men, went to food, alcohol, and tobacco. Rent accounted for 15 to 21%; clothing, shoes, and linens, 15 to 17%; and religious items, 5 to 7%. Workers additionally sent some wages, 2% for married men and 11% for unmarried men, back to the village.
Mironov finds this pattern consistent throughout Russia.36
This study investigates an estate owned by Prince Sergei in the north-central heartland of European Russia, where inhabitants relied on both agriculture and industry.
Two villages (sela), Sulost’ and Nikol’skoe, and several smaller hamlets (derevni),
Dubrovo, Petrushino, Strely, Khozhino, and Kuzmitsyn, comprised the estate. According to a land revision in 1834, Sulost’ held a population of 382 souls, or male serfs,
Nikol’skoe 129, Dubrovo 43, Petrushino 43, Strely 43, Khozhino 30, and Kuzmitsyn 24 souls, for a total of 694 souls and roughly double that number of serfs.37 The estate consisted of 2254 and a half desiatina 947 sazhen’38 of arable and hay-making land, roughly 6,088 acres, and 541 and a half desiatina 27 sazhen’ of forestland, roughly 2,005
35 Boris N. Mironov, “Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia, 1703-1913,” The Russian Review 69, (2010): 47-72.
36 Ibid., 53.
37 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.199.
38 1 desiatina is approximately equal to 2.7 acres while 1 sazhen is equal to 7 feet. There are 2400 sazhen in 1 desiatina. 16
acres.39 According to social historian Boris Mironov, the average population size of
Russian villages in the 1850s was 161 persons, but case studies show great diversity among village sizes.40 Dennison calculated that the estate of Voshchazhniko in Iaroslavl’ province held 30 villages, totally a population of 3,553 peasants in 1858, but village size ranged from two to over 200 households.41
The estate was only one piece of Prince Sergei’s patrimony. His property included factories, salt works, diamonds, and multiple estates comprising about 25,000 souls.
Together, these holding provided Prince Sergei with a sizeable income. Indeed, only the top 1% of landowners owned over 1,000 serfs, and only a handful over 10,000.42. Prince
Sergei, himself, lived on the estate of Vlakhernskoe, also called Kuz’minki, located outside of Moscow.
Because of Prince Sergei’s residence in Moscow, he managed his estates from afar and relied on administrators and institutions to follow his directives in situ. This situation created paperwork, preserved today in the Russian State Archive of Ancient
Acts, which serve as the basis of this study. The primary materials used include correspondence from Prince Sergei to the estate bailiff, mir resolutions, peasant petitions, and other documents including books of service and census records. Though Prince
Sergei’s father died in 1804, leaving the estate to him and his brother, correspondence is
39 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.199.
40 Boris Mironov, “Rural Social Institutions,” trans. Christine Worobec, in A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917, vol. 1, ed. Ben Eklof (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 2000), 296.
41 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 31-32.
42 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 367-368. 17
only preserved from 1810, mir documents from 1827, and peasant petitions from 1831.
All extend to 1858. These dates mean that archival sources present a fuller picture of the second half of Prince Sergei’s tenure than the first. Nonetheless, the combination of these sources allows me to chart connections between different interest groups: the landlord, mir, bailiff, and peasant. These connections, in turn, reveal local social dynamics.
Prince Sergei’s villages of Sulost’, Nikol’skoe, Kumitsyn, as well as several smaller hamlets, were located in the Central Industrial Region of Russia, about 150 miles north of Moscow. While industry could be pursued for profit, it was also a safety net given the environment of the Iaroslavl’ region. Initially coniferous or mixed forests, these forests were cleared over time by peasants to cultivate land. Winter in this region was both long and cold, with less than four months without frost. Additionally, the quality of the soil was poor, because of high acidity and clay content.43 Baron August von
Haxthausen, visiting Russian in the 1840s, places these environmental constraints into perspective. As an agriculturalist himself, Haxthausen compares the costs and benefits of farming in Iaroslavl’ with his own lands near Mainz: “
Around Orléans and Mainz and in the lands along the Danube…the farm work is spread out over seven months, whereas in [Iarolslavl’] this same work has to be performed in four months because of the short summer. The work that I can accomplish there with four people and four horses here requires, on a field of equal size and quality, seven men and seven horses.44
43 Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 37-43.
44 Baron August von Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, trans. E.L.M. Schmidt, ed. Fredrick Starr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 38. 18
Haxthausen continues, showing that, in addition to the extra costs of farming in
Iaroslavl’, the province was also at an infinite disadvantage during the winter because it was “covered in an impenetrable blanket of snow.”45 Whereas farmers near Mainz could still cover fields in manure, dig ditches, or irrigate fields, these tasks were impossible during Iaroslavl’s long winters. Furthermore, while Haxthausen’s comparisons assume that the land in Iaroslavl’ was of equality fertility to that in Mainz, in the end he notes that “for every six of seven bushels’ yield in Mainz one would in fact get scarcely three bushels on an equal area in Iaroslavl’.”46 Haxthausen concludes that “if someone were given a tract of land near Iaroslavl’ on the condition that he set up and run a farm there and purchase the appropriate stock and equipment as is the custom in Central Europe, he would have to express his polite thanks and decline.”47
Historians corroborate Haxthausen’s observations. Daniel Morrison notes that that although “it supported a relatively dense rural population, Iaroslavl’ [province] was considered one of the least fertile provinces of Central Russia and one chronically afflicted with a grain deficit.”48 Dennison’s case study in the region indicates that seed/yield ratios for the estate of Voshchazhnikovo ranged from 1:2 to 1:5 for rye while oat yields ranged from 1: 1.5 to 4 between 1841 to 1854.49 These yields compared to a
45 Ibid., 39.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Daniel Morrison, “Trading Peasants” and Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Central Industrial Region (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1987), 275.
49 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 35. 19
1:5 yield of oats and a 1:6 yield of rye found by Hoch in the southern Central Black Earth
Region and a high yield of 1:20 in England and the Netherlands.50 Because of unfavorable farming conditions, and the necessity of paying dues that exceeded the agricultural capacity of the land, serfs had to devise other strategies for survival, whether by a establishing a community of manufacturers specializing in a specific product, or by migrating seasonally to seek work. Haxthausen himself attributed the growth of industry in Iaroslavl’ to the poor soil and harsh climate in the region, the rivers that ran through the province, a history of commercial of activity in the Middle Ages through the
Hanseatic cities, and the need to pay obrok to landlords. Because agriculture was not profitable in this region, peasants had to search for other means to pay taxes and dues.
Thus, it became an “industrial and commercial center.”51
Owing to relatively poor land and a short growing season, many families in
Iaroslavl’ province supplemented agricultural work by producing handicrafts, becoming migrant workers, or by participating in trade. Studying the estate of Voshchazhnikovo,
Dennison found that only 11 percent of households made their earnings from agriculture alone. Instead, households participated in multiple spheres of activity. 16 percent of households made earnings from day labor, 14 percent from rural service (as servants), 37 percent contained migrant laborers, 5 percent contained craftsmen, and 20 percent participated in trade or manufacturing.52 Herdis Kolle found a similar pattern studying the
50 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 29.
51 Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, 37.
52 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 151. 20
village of Bun’kovskoe, located in a proto-industrial region east of Moscow.
Consequently, she argues that “the proto-industrial household economy depended on the ability to successfully alternate between the agricultural and industrial sphere.”53 Kolle indicates that peasant households participated in a “dual economy,” occupied with both agriculture and industry. Peasants adapted two different strategies to maintain this system. In some cases, peasants migrated seasonally: they participated in agriculture during spring and summer and in the textile industry in fall and winter. Alternatively, households divided occupations among household members. In these cases, younger family members typically worked in industry while older members worked in agriculture.
Proto-industrial families, therefore, continued to utilize communal arable land and see value in agriculture, as it provided both a safety net and supplementary income.54
Vital to peasant commerce was river transport, which, in turn, created employment opportunities for peasants as burlaki, boat carters, and opened local fairs to river traffic. Indeed, river access allowed the serfs of this study access to commercial and industrial networks as the Kotorosl’ River ran along the estate, connecting it to the towns of Rostov and Iaroslavl’. This access supported commercial vegetable trading in the region. L.V. Milov demonstrates that commercial vegetable gardening was an important aspect of Rostov district’s economy from the eighteenth-century onward. The town of
Rostov, itself, was a center of commerce, with total earnings as high as 700,000 rubles per year. However, Milov argues that it specialized in vegetable trading. Boats would
53 Herdis Kolle, Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Family Development in a Proto- Industrial Community (Bergen: University of Bergen, 2006), 147.
54 Ibid. 21
travel from Rostov along the Kotorosl’ river, supplying vegetables to Iaroslavl’ as well as to villages and towns along the way, while barges from Iaroslavl’ brought Rostov lumber.
The town of Rostov was located less than 9 miles away from the estate’s villages, allowing Prince Sergei’s estate to participate in this commercial enterprise. Peasants on
Prince Sergei’s estate cultivated vegetables, especially onions, in kitchen gardens connected to their farmstead (dvor) or on land rented or purchased outside of the estate.55
Trade and commerce was also facilitated by local fairs and markets. Analyzing surveys of Iaroslavl’ province, Daniel Morrison found that 16 villages held weekly markets and over 60 held annual markets in the province. In Rostov district, the annual fair in Velikoe village lasted a week, with 200,000 rubles worth of business conducted.
The town of Rostov, meanwhile, hosted a major fair lasting three weeks. While Milov calculates that Rostov had earnings as high as 700,000 rubles per year, Morrison cites a much higher figure. He estimates that the fair brought up to 700 merchants with total business worth more than three million rubles. Trade in Rostov continued outside the duration of the fair. Morrison indicates that there were 400 to 600 shops in Rostov at the end of the eighteenth century, or roughly one store for every nine town inhabitants. In addition to trade, Rostov was a growing industrial center, with four major textile mills producing linen and cotton and smaller manufactories selling bricks, leather, tallow, and chemicals. These industries made Rostov a destination for migrant workers, as well as
55 L.V. Milov, “On the So-Called Agrarian Towns of Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Soviet Studies in History 21, no. 1 (1982): 10-31; V.A. Fedorov, “Voznikovenie torgovogo ogorodnichestva v rostovskom uezde Iaroslavskoi gubernii: konets XVIII-pervaia polovina XIX veka,” Vestnik moskovskogo universiteta 6 (1962): 49-68. Daniel Morrison also references Rostov’s vegetable commerce in “Trading Peasants,” 279. 22
traders. Proximity to Rostov, local fairs and markets, and access to the Kotorosl’ River gave Prince Sergei’s serfs opportunities to engage in commerce and industry.
Furthermore, because their estate paid obrok as opposed to barshchina, they could earn their dues as they saw fit. This flexibility gave serfs the ability to act as economic agents, despite their legal status as serfs.56
The shift to obrok together with the growth of manufactories, handicraft industries, and commercial networks gave peasants the choice of how to work, allowing them to accumulate savings. They further used these savings to rent land, reinvest in industrial and commercial enterprise, and participate in credit markets. This study analyzes how serfs acted as economic agents within this economic environment.
However, despite new economic opportunities, serfs still had to act within a larger social system which constrained their actions.
1.3 The Soslovie System, Landlords, and the Enlightenment
Despite changes in economic conditions, serfs were part of the soslovie system which not only placed them at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but which also made them the property of others. The state legally consolidated serfdom with the Sobornoe
Ulozhenie, a law code promulgated in 1649. In exchange for military support, the tsar gifted land to men; however, the land was useless without peasants to work it. The state, therefore, legally bound the peasantry to the land, creating serfdom. Owing to the expansive yet relatively sparsely populated nature of the Russian Empire, the state
56 Morrison, “Trading Peasants,” 270-271, 278-279. 23
needed the nobility to expand its reach into the countryside. The state granted the nobility privileges over the peasantry, but, in turn, demanded that they administer the local populace. Landlords were responsible for collecting the poll, or “soul,” tax from their serfs, levying recruits, administering justice, and providing for peasants’ basic needs.57
Gained their freedom from the state in 1762, landowners envisioned their new raison d’être as service to their estate. This shift, conveniently, also justified the continuation of serfdom. Motivated by the ideas of the Enlightenment and encouraged by the state, they turned to the provinces. At the core of Enlightenment thinking was a fundamental belief in reason and its ability to create a more ordered, better society.
Enlightened landlords turned to rational planning, seeking to increase the efficiency of their estates and becoming, as one historian calls them, “enlightened seigneurs.”58 The works of Catherine the Great served as their model.
Catherine the Great embraced the Enlightenment’s ideals and provided a model of rational planning which later generations of noblemen would emulate on their estates and within local society. Catherine was learned in the works of the philosophes. She maintained a 15-year correspondence with Voltaire and supported Denis Diderot, one of the authors of L’Encyclopédie, even purchasing his personal library.59 More difficult was
57 For more information on the enserfment of the Russian population, see: Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 247-276; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); R.E.F. Smith, The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
58 Edgar Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia, 1750-1830,” The Journal of Modern History, 62, no. 4 (1990): 675-708.
59 Inna Gorbatov, Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment: Montesqueiu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and Grimm (Bethesda: Academic Press, LLC, 2006). 24
applying ideas of the Philosophes to eighteenth-century Russia. Here, Catherine was aided by the concept of the “well-ordered police state,” which acted by “promoting and protecting the productive potential of society.”60 These ideas, emanating from Germany, gave the state a mandate to action in an environment that lacked a developed civil society. Catherine took up the mantel to create a modern, European Russia. To that end, she established the foundation of Russia’s modern court system. She passed legislation founding a nation-wide school system. She issued charters to the nobility and to the towns, endowing them with group privileges and the potential for development. She initiated public building, including redesigning whole towns in the rational and ordered image of the Enlightenment. Through these measures, she sought to both strengthen the state and create an active civil society.61
While Catherine worked to create a modern state, she looked to the nobility to spread the Enlightenment to the provinces. Elites founded the Free Economic Society in
1765, creating a forum to discuss solutions to the backwardness of the rural economy.
Their journal published studies of the countryside, “instructions” written by landlords to
60 Marc Raeff, “The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach,” The American Historical Review 80, no. 5 (1975): 1224.
61 For works on Catherine the Great and the Enlightenment see: Boris Mironov, “The Law: Courts, Crimes, and Punishments,” trans. Bradley D. Woodworth, in A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700- 1917, vol. 2, ed. Ben Ekloff (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), 223-365; George K. Epp, The Educational Policies of Catherine II: The Era of Enlightenment in Russia (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984); Dmitry Shvidkovsky, “Catherine the Great’s Field of Dreams: Architecture and Landscape in the Russian Enlightenment,” in Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present, ed. James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 51-65; Priscilla Roosevelt, “Russian Estate Architecture and Noble Identity,” in Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present, ed. James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 66-79.; Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga ed. Roger Bartlett and Janet Hartley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); G.M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). 25
improve estate functioning, and essays designed to solve the “peasant problem,” at this time envisioned as peasant backwardness.62 Instructions were a means by which absentee landlords could bring order and efficiency to their estates. Landlords did not necessarily live on their land, especially large magnates who owned multiple estates and spent their time in the capitals. Indeed, the majority serfs were owned by such magnates: in 1834,
16% of landowners owned 81% of serfs.63 Instructions, therefore, provided a guide through which hired stewards or bailiffs could run the estate. Instead of administering to estates via ad hoc measures, instructions provided an orderly, pre-determined system, based on rational planning, with the aim of improving efficiency and productivity. The
Free Economic Society’s message proved appealing and many landlords began implementing their ideas on their estates, acting as “enlightened seigneurs.”64 Meanwhile, other landlords took up the call of service by returning to their estates, creating enlightened centers in the provinces around their households.65
Prince Sergei was a large magnate owning multiple estates, comprising 25,000 serfs, as well as several factories and salt works.66 An important and active figure in
Muscovite society, Prince Sergei lived on the estate of Vlakhernskoe, also called
62 Colum Leckey, “Patrons and the Peasant Question,” in Patrons of Enlightenment: The Free Economic Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Newark: University of Delaware Press; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefied Publishing Group, 2011), 61-100.
63 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 367-368.
64 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708.
65 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708; Randolph, The House in the Garden.
66 Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, v. 5 supplement, s.v. “Golitsyn, Sergei Mikhailovich,” ed. N.P. Chylkov (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2001), 194-195. 26
Kuz’minki, located outside of Moscow. Nonetheless, he had an active role on his estates which he established through a developed administrative framework. This framework included the centralized Moscow office, an estate bailiff, and the local mir. While the
Moscow office coordinated efforts across estates, the estate bailiff and mir handled day to day management on the estate. Prince Sergei and the bailiff corresponded regularly: the bailiff was his eyes and ears on the estate. The bailiff was also his connection to the mir.
The bailiff and mir were responsible for carrying out Prince Sergei’s orders and initiatives locally. As we will discuss in this dissertation, these directives included redesigning the village, managing forest resources, collecting dues and taxes, levying recruits, supervising household divisions, redistributing land, and handling contracts.
In its role as enforcers of the landlord’s will, Steven Hoch argues, the mir was complicit with the landlord for exercising social control. Cooperating with the landlord allowed communal officials to maintain social hierarchies within the village, solidifying their own authority.67 Similarly, Dennison argues that a communal oligarchy used its social capital to collaborate with the landlord, thereby giving it more power within the village.68 However, Dennison also argues that it was the administrative framework created by the landlord that allowed serfs to participate in labor, land, property, and credit markets. Serfs could rely upon the system to enforce its rules, giving them stability, consistency, and protection. Therefore, according to Dennison, a system that extended
67 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control.
68 T.K. Dennison and Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Serfdom and Social Capital in Bohemia and Russia,” Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2007):513-544. 27
magnates’ power into the countryside gave serfs the institutional support to take advantage of economic opportunities.69
My project seeks to expand our understanding of estate institutions by examining how the social system functioned locally. My findings indicate the value of social relations between interest groups. Although the landlord developed an administrative apparatus connecting him to his estate, his plans did not always succeed. Failure resulted from a disjunction between Prince Sergei’s interests and local interests, including the interests of the mir or serf households. If the mir did not enforce an order from the landlord, individuals could easily skirt it. Similarly, if Prince Sergei did not support the mir’s resolutions, peasants could petition the landlord for justice. Landlord, mir, and household negotiations created space for individual initiative. A power hierarchy, however, also played into the equation. Technically, the landlord held absolute power over his serfs. However, this power was diminished by the need of local administrators to enforce his directives. Prince Sergei therefore delegated authority to the bailiff and mir.
These officials were part and parcel of the community, but they also stood at the top of the village’s social hierarchy. As a result, their interests both merged and diverged from that of the landlord and that of the “ordinary” peasant. These conflicting interests played out on the estate and gave peasant space for individual agency. By focusing on social relations between interest groups, this project extends beyond the role of the landlord’s policy and the workings of his central administration as demonstrated by Dennison and
Hoch.
69 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 216-218. 28
1.4 Peasant Agency and Social Structures
James C. Scott shows us that rational planning does not necessarily work on the ground.70 Reality is complex. Abstract plans cannot account for all factors that shape lived experience. Planners are often distanced from the local conditions they seek to fix, resulting in projects that prove unfeasible in a specific context. Furthermore, planners have to contend with local inhabitants. Although a project might benefit a landlord, it was not necessarily better for the peasantry. Peasants had their own interest and, as economic agents, they acted on those interests. They did not simply follow orders passed from on high, they knew what would help or hinder them and acted accordingly.
The idea of peasant agency that this work espouses builds on the concept of resistance established by scholars of the peasantry. In his important work on state formation, Charles Tilly posits that peasant uprisings and non-violent resistance in
Europe were political acts during the nineteenth century, arising due to the creation of a capitalist world. The peasantry resisted the transition to a market economy which threatened traditional rights and practices. James C. Scott’s influential work on the peasantry in Southeast Asia and E.P Thompson’s work on the “English crowd” point to a
“moral economy” within the peasant community that recognized the right of subsistence and served as the foundation for community action against the will of landowners or administrators. Since these works have been published, scholars have applied a resistance framework to studies of the peasantry around the world.71
70 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
71 Charles Tilly, “Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe,” in The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); James C. Scott, Weapons of the 29
Specialists on Russia have similarly adopted this concept to explain failures of agricultural reform imposed from above. Analyzing peasant-landlord relations on serf estates, Rodney D. Bohac argues that peasants used theft, flight, and subterfuge to resist gentry exactions. Considering the twentieth century, Sheila Fitzpatrick and Lynne Viola show how peasants practiced forms of everyday resistance – hiding grain, destroying equipment, dragging their feet while working – after collectivization in the countryside, effectively pushing back against state coercion. In the post-Soviet era, Myriam Hivon has used resistance to understand peasants’ relationship to privatization, arguing that resistance took the form of maintaining collective practices in the face of de- collectivization and expressing discontent, sometimes through sabotage of private farms.
Meanwhile, Carol Scott Leonard draws a comparison between the post-Soviet and post- emancipation periods. She argues that peasant resistance during these periods formed an individually rational response to unclear property rights and lack of financial and legal infrastructures. And, as recently as one year ago, Natalia Mamonova has used the rural resistance paradigm to explain the behavior of peasants in southern Russia. She argues that “naïve monarchism” – a rhetorical reverence for the country’s leader and proclaimed
Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century,” Past & Present 50 (1971): 76-136; For examples of global reach of resistance studies, see: David Hardiman, Peasant Resistance in India, 1858-1914 (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Kathryn Bernhardt, Rents, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); Amalia Pallares, From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: the Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002); Ligaya Lindio-McGovern, Filipino Peasant Women: Exploitation and Resistance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Steve J. Stern, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World: 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); Susan M. Thomson, Whispering Truth to Power: Everyday Resistance to Reconciliation in Postgenocide Rwanda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). 30
belief that he would help the people if he knew of their trials – continues to constitute a form of resistance in contemporary Russia. The peasant use of “naïve monarchism” as a tool of resistance was first articulated by Daniel Field, investigating peasant revolts during the Imperial era. By claiming to revolt for the tsar against corrupt officials, Field’s peasants successfully avoided punishment and reprisals for their actions.72
While investigating privatization in post-Soviet Russia, Stephen K. Wegren has contested the resistance paradigm, arguing that it arose to explain why reform in the countryside failed to meet expectations while assuming that peasants could only be conservative resisters. Wegren shows that, in fact, change did occur, just not the expected change. He argues that the rural response was not “resistance,” but a rational response to incentive structures. Consequently, he suggests that adaptation versus survival, not resistance versus survival, would be a better mechanism to understand what is and was occurring in the Russian countryside. Elaborating on this concept, he delineates four variables that he measures to ascertain adaptation in the post-Soviet countryside: the use of credit, employment in alternative occupations, purchase of additional household land, and displaying “entrepreneurial” attitudes, including planning for long-term results.
72 Rodney D. Bohac, “Everyday Forms of Resistance: Serf Opposition to Gentry Exactions, 1800- 1861,” in Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921, ed. Esther Kingston- Mann, Timothy Mixter, Jeffrey Burds(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 236-260; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Myriam Hivon, “Local Resistance to Privatization in Rural Russia,” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 2 (1995): 13- 22; Carol Scott Leonard, “Rational Resistance to Land Privatization: The Response of Rural Producers to Agrarian Reforms in Pre- and Post-Soviet Russia,” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 41, no. 8 (2000): 605-620; Carol Scott Leonard, Agrarian Reform in Russia: The Road from Serfdom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Natalia Mamonova, “Naïve Monarchism and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Russia,” Rural Sociology 81, no. 3 (2016): 316-342; Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar. 31
While these measures do not necessary equate to the changes desired by the state, they also do not fit into the category of resistance. Instead, they demonstrate adaptation within a new economic environment. Wegren’s approach changes the emphasis from backwards-looking peasants to forward-looking peasants, but adaption is still a reaction to reform introduced from above. 73
This project shifts the focus from reaction to action. I argue that peasants acted as agents, promoting their own economic interests. Peasants pursued economic opportunities even under the constraints of serfdom. They found jobs outside of the village, rented and purchased land to work, and engaged in handicraft industries. They sought positions of influence in the local administration, participated in credit markets, and divided their households to promote individual interests. When landlords tried to impose plans from above that conflicted with the goals of peasants, they contested these plans, promoting their own agenda instead. Nonetheless, the question arises: How could peasants have agency under serfdom? I argue that social dynamics on the estate proved key. Competition between different interest groups – the landlord, bailiff, and mir – created a space in which peasants could exercise personal agency. Peasants took advantage of competing interest groups by using one to negotiate against another. This mechanism worked because of the expansive and relatively sparsely populated nature of
Russia which meant that the state delegated authority over serfs to landlords. The absentee landlord, then, fragmented his power by delegating authority to the local bailiff
73 Stephen K. Wegren, “Rural Adaptation in Russia: Who Responds and How Do We Measure It?” Journal of Agrarian Change 4, no. 4 (2004): 553-578. 32
and mir. Considering a case study of one estate, this project examines peasant agency as a function of social relations between conflicting institutional interest groups. This approach illustrates how serfs could be economic agents by illuminating how the social system worked at the local level.
1.5 Dissertation Plan
This project examines serfs’ economic agency under serfdom within the dynamic of the social system. Chapters two through four deconstruct this dynamic by considering the relations between different institutions and interest groups: the landlord, bailiff, and the mir. The following two chapters analyze how serfs worked within this social system to act as economic agents in their own right.
Chapter two considers the landlord and his estate. Despite being an absentee landlord, Prince Sergei sought to use his power to create a more ordered and efficient estate. The chapter analyzes his plans to redesign the estate. These plans, however, were contested by the mir, the clergy, and peasants. Prince Sergei’s plans were not simply integrated because he ordered it. Rather, he had to negotiate with local inhabitants and institutions. While redesigning the estate failed, the replacement of barshchina, labor dues, with obrok, monetary dues, was not only implemented but would have a rippling effect on the economic activities of peasants.
Next, this project examines Prince Sergei’s administration. It investigates the role of proxy officials, such as the bailiff, who served as the landlord’s eyes and ears and the enforcer of his orders and initiatives. The bailiff, however, was also part of the peasant community, elected from among the village inhabitants by the mir. Consequently, he
33
faced pressures from above and below. This point is demonstrated by a case study investigating how forest overseers balanced their roles as administrators, who served to protect the landlord’s interests, and as members of the local community.
The fourth chapter studies the mir. In order to remain in power, the mir collaborated with the landlord, collecting obrok and levying recruits. However, their interests did not necessarily correspond with those of the landlord. Instead, they negotiated power on the estate. Conducting a case study on recruitment, we see these dynamics in play, demonstrating how relations and negotiated power created an interactive social system and space for individual peasant to push their own claims.
While the first few chapters use case studies to investigate relations between specific institutions – the landlord, administration, and mir –the last two chapters demonstrate how peasants navigated this social world to pursue their own economic interests. Chapter five focuses on the interactions peasants initiated with administrators, communal officials, and the landlord when their involvement with land and credit markets went awry. Serfs looked to the estate administrative apparatus to serve justice when borrowers defaulted on loans or when parties infringed on rental agreements.
Meanwhile, in chapter six, we investigate how peasants pursued household divisions in the face of landlord and communal policies limiting division.
Together, these chapters indicate the dynamic nature of the social system.
Landlords could not simply pursue their interests unilaterally, for they relied on administrators and officials from the mir to enforce their orders. These groups not only had their own interests, but also had to respond to pressure from below, since they were part and parcel of the peasant community. Power and authority on the estate, then,
34
became negotiated between different interest groups. Serfs found a space between these groups, sometimes using one group against another, to pursue their own economic goals.
1.6 A Note on Transliteration
This project translates Russian words according to the Library of Congress system except where a conventional usage exists in the English language.
35
CHAPTER 2:
THE LANDLORD AND HIS ESTATE
In Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood, young Kolia observed that whenever his father gave instructions, his steward, a serf, would frantically move his hands behind his back, intensifying or weakening these motions in relation to his master’s instructions. These motions belied his respectful demeanor as “It seem[ed] to [Kolia] one might have guessed Iakov’s most secret thoughts from their motions; but his face was always calm, expressing simultaneously a consciousness of his own worth and of his subservience to my father, much as to say: I’m right, but then you’re the boss!”74 When Kolia’s father calculated that a thousand rubles were due from the mill, eight thousand on mortgages, and three thousand for hay, Iakov pointed out that the miller had twice asked him for postponements, that he would not receive his mortgage settlement for at least another two months, and that if they sold the hay now they would make a loss. In the end, the master of the estate yielded to the practical knowledge of his steward. Despite Kolia’s family’s residence on the estate, the master of the house was still separated from the conditions of his subjects. As a result, Iakov, a serf, stood as a liaison between village and household and practiced a degree of control in the estate’s management.75
74 Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, trans. Michael Scammell (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 12.
75 Ibid. 36
Tolstoy repeats this trope of landlord management in “In the Days of Serfdom.”
Here the steward, a former domestic serf, stands at attention, listening to his mistress patter on while knowing full well that in the end his own decision will triumph. “The report, from the lady’s point of view, meant listening to a statement of the business done on her estate, and giving instructions for further business.”76 Meanwhile, from the steward’s point of view, “‘reporting’ was a ceremony of standing straight on both feet, with turned-out toes, in a corner facing the sofa, and listening to all sorts of chatter unconnected with business, and by different ways and means getting the mistress into a state of mind in which she would quickly and impatiently say, ‘All right, all right!’ to all that Egor Mikhailovich proposed.”77 The landowner was in a position of power, as an estate owner and because of his place within the soslovie system. Nonetheless, he relied on intermediaries to overcome the gap between landlord and serf. A living social example of this type was Prince Sergei.
This chapter investigates Prince Sergei’s interests on his estate and how they competed with local interests. Especially important were the social structures and relationships connecting landlord and serf and the mutual obligations that linked the two soslovie. Under serfdom, the state gifted power, and thereby administration, over serfs to landowners. Landowners, as state intermediaries, had a duty to collect state taxes, levy recruits, provide courts of law, and build village parishes. In return, landlords had a sure supply of workers, bound to the land, which they could rely upon to provide their income.
76 Leo Tolstoy, “In the Days of Serfdom” and Other Stories, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (Philadelphia: Pine St. Books, 2002), 2.
77 Ibid. 37
It was in the landlord’s interest to increase this income, putting his interests necessarily at odds with those of his serfs. However, landlords could not administer their estates and collect their income without the help of local administrative units such as the bailiff and the mir. These local institutions provided an intermediary between the landlord and the serf; but, as Tolstoy indicates, they did not simply execute the landlord’s orders. They, too, had interests. These groups – the landlord, local administration, mir, and serfs – participated in a dialectic, albeit one in which each group possessed different ratios of power. Each sought to promote their own interests, but had to navigate around the interests of others. Consequently, their authority was not final, but negotiated with other groups. Meanwhile, serfs, at the bottom of the social hierarchy, were not simply subject to the will of the landlord, administrator, or communal official; rather, they asserted their own agency navigating between these groups and using the interests of one group or another to further their own goals.
This chapter focuses on the landlord, at the apex of the local social hierarchy, with subsequent chapters devoted to the local administration, the mir, and serfs. I investigate how Prince Sergei’s plans to improve his estate worked by conducting two case studies.
The first examines Prince Sergei’s plans to redesign the village based on Enlightenment ideals of order and efficiency. This plan largely failed as peasants circumvented Prince
Sergei’s directives, sometimes with the help of the mir, because they did not suit their own economic interests. The second case study reveals the implications of a shift from barshchina to obrok. In contrast to the attempt at village design, a shift in dues had far- reaching effects on the serf community, changing the very definition of peasant labor.
Nonetheless, despite the “freedom” that the obrok system purportedly offered to serfs,
38
they were still limited by estate policies, leading to contestations between landlords and serfs. Before turning to the case studies of this chapter, we will first consider landlords as a social type in Russia. Then I will introduce the specific landlords that we examine in this study and the intellectual and economic trends that motivated them during this period.
This approach differs from that of historians who view the landlord’s power as decisive. The influential historian Jerome Blum argues that the “serf lived at the mercy of the whims, appetites, and temper of his owner.”78 According to this model, the landlord asserted his will, and his serfs had to obey. More recently, Tracy Dennison acknowledges the power of institutions in the lived reality of serfs. This institutional framework was created by the landlord. Consequently, to Dennison, “what serfdom amounted to was the policy of the landlord, both its explicit official framework and its actual day-to-day, year- to-year implementation.”79 Soviet historians like E.I. Indova view such institutional structures as controlled by top-down processes.80 Similarly, Steven Hoch views local institutions such as the mir as units of social control complicit with the landlord, as opposed to representative of serf interests.81
John Bushnell’s study of serf marriages casts doubt on the control landlords had on the everyday life of their serfs. He shows that despite Prince Orlov’s directives
78 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 437.
79 Dennison, “Did Serfdom Matter?” 77.
80 E.I. Indova, Krepostnoe khozisistvo v nachale XIX veke: po materialam votchinnogo arkhiva Vorontsovykh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1955), 56-57.
81 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 133-159. 39
ordering young single women to marry on his estate, these women continued to avoid marriage, with the support of their families.82 Meanwhile, Alison Smith explicitly challenges the degree of influence that landlord’s “whim, appetites, and temper” exerted on the village arguing that “for a large serf-owner those whims were filtered by a sometimes extensive administrative apparatus.”83 Moreover, Smith contests the top-down nature of this apparatus, instead asserting that in most cases “there was some degree of back and forth communication and complaint.”84 While recognizing the importance of institutions demonstrated by Dennison, this project approaches the functioning of these institutions from a social framework. Like Smith, I view contestations as vital to the way that policy was implemented in situ; however, I argue that the estate administration – the bailiff and mir – also sought to further their own interests. Therefore, power was not a dialectic between landlord and serf but involved negotiations between these other interest groups as well. This situation arose because, as an absentee landlord removed from the estate, Prince Sergei had to rely upon these groups to execute his orders therefore giving them authority. Their local authority, meanwhile, gave them a say in the governing of the estate. Individuals recognized these diverse interest groups and both navigated between them and even used one against the other to achieve their own goals.
82 John Bushnell, “Did Serf Owners Control Serf Marriage? Orlov Serfs and Their Neighbors, 1773-1861,” Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (1993): 419-443.
83 Alison Smith, “Authority in a Serf Village: Peasants, Managers, and the Role of Writing in Early Nineteenth Century Russia,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 1 (2009): 159.
84 Ibid. 40
2.1 Landowners
Russian landowners were a diverse group with different approaches to estate management. Some were absentee landlords who owned many estates but managed them from afar, delegating authority to stewards. They, meanwhile, pursued more lucrative careers in state or military service.85 Others owned one estate, lived on it, and personally managed it. This style of management was made possible by Peter III, who freed the nobility from state service in 1762. Consequently, many turned to their estates as a form of service. The Enlightenment also inspired landlords to extend order and reason into the provinces. Some penned instructions, applying a rational approach to agriculture, what
Edgar Melton calls “enlightened seigniorialism,” while others used their estate to create provincial centers of enlightenment.86
While absentee landlords ruled from afar, some chose to live in the countryside, manage their estates personally, and become part of provincial society. Mary Cavender argues that these landlords “saw their commitment to the provinces as an active choice and believed the provinces had benefits that amply compensated for estrangement from the society, culture, and luxuries of Moscow and St. Petersburg.”87 They acted on “an ideal of paternalism and of reciprocal obligations.”88 No longer serving the state through
85 Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), 103-156.
86 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708; Randolph, The House in the Garden.
87 Mary Cavender, Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate, and Local Loyalties in Provincial Russia (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 14.
88 Ibid., 19. 41
military service, they found another way to serve the state: by serving their estate. This new form of service justified their privileged status and the continued existence of serfdom.
Katherine Pickering Antonova takes paternalism seriously, arguing that the village was seen as an extension of the family: “order expanded upward from the male and female parental roles to the village as family, and finally to the nation as a family of villages.”89 The emperor stood at the top of the hierarchy, as the father, or batiushka, as the serfs affectionately called him, of the fatherland (otechestvo). Although the landlord acted as father on the local level, Antonova’s work also shows the importance of women in estate management. Contrary to Western European notions of domesticity, Russian women actively managed estates. Because the village and its peasants were seen as an extension of the family, and a woman’s role was to manage the household, the larger estate also fell under the jurisdiction of the maternal household head.90 While Antonova and Cavender show the importance that small landowners gave to notions of paternalism and responsibility over the peasantry, my work indicates that absentee landlords like
Prince Sergei likewise turned their attention to their estate. They created new forums such as the Free Economic Society to discuss estate issues and journals to disseminate new
89 Katherine Pickering Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 6.
90 Ibid. 42
understandings of estate management from afar. They then applied these ideas to their estates by penning estate instructions to be followed by bailiffs or stewards.91
The nobility, like the peasantry, was not a homogenous mass; rather, it was a heterogeneous group, explaining different styles of management and models of behavior.
Antonova and Cavender, for example, analyze middling landowners, while Kolchin and
Melton study large magnates. Considering the distribution of the nobility at large, Jerome
Blum shows us that in 1834, 84% of serfowners owned fewer than 101 males, which accounted for only 19% of the total serf population. The top 16% owned 81% of serfs while the top 1%, landlords with over 1000 serfs, owned 33% of all serfs. A lucky few families owned over 10,000 serfs, included the Sheremetevs, Vorontsovs, Iusupovs,
Stroganovs, Orlovs, and Golitsyns.92 Therefore, a small minority of noblemen controlled the vast majority of serfs and the range of ownership among landlords differed widely.
Next, we will consider how the Golitsyn family fared among landlords and introduce the personalities present in the case studies investigated below.
2.2 The Golitsyns
The Golitsyns were a noble family whose lineage dated back to the fourteenth- century Grand Duke Gediminas, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They became important boyars in the Russian court during the Muscovite period, even assisting in
Peter I’s successful coup for the throne. The main protagonist of this study is Prince
91 Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment, 61-100; Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708.
92 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 367-368. 43
Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn. Prince Sergei was born on July 9, 1774 to Prince Mikhail
Mikhailovich Golitsyn, a Lieutenant-General, and Baroness Anna Aleksandrovna
Stroganova. As a youth, he was registered in the Izmailovskii Regiment. There, he rose through the ranks, achieving the rank of Captain before departing the regiment in 1796.
Thereafter, Prince Sergei proved himself to be an important figure in Muscovite society and was called by contemporaries the “last Muscovite grandee” because of his deep involvement in Moscow’s social and civic life.93 In 1807 he was named Honorary Trustee on the Moscow Board of Trustees, member of the Moscow School of the Order of St.
Catherine as well as the Aleksander School, and Head Director of the Golitsyn Hospital.
His role in society continued to grow. He was named President of the Imperial
Philanthropic Society’s Board of Trustees in 1818, Vice-President of the Moscow Trustee
Committee on Prisons in 1828, and in 1830 became Chairman of the Moscow Board of
Trustees and Trustee of the Moscow School District. Then, in 1837, Prince Sergei became a member of the State Council and the Vice-President of the commission to build the, now famous, Christ the Savior church in Moscow. Continuing his public service, he became Head Director of the Pavlovskii Hospital and in 1845 and became Chairman of the Moscow section of the Head Council of women’s educational institutions and a member of the educational part of the Moscow School of the Order of the St. Catherine and the Alexander School. Commemorating fifty years of service, Prince Sergei was awarded with a portrait of the emperor, diamonds, and a golden snuffbox in 1847. In
93 Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, 194-195. 44
1852, Prince Sergei was named an Active Privy Councilor, the second highest rank in the
Table of Ranks. He held this position until his death in February 1859.94
Prince Sergei’s status in Muscovite society was reinforced by his sizeable assets, inherited especially from his mother. This study focuses on an estate in Iaroslavl’ province, Rostov district, but this estate was only one part of his patrimony. His property included factories, salt works, diamonds, and multiple estates comprising about 25,000 souls in total. Together, these holding would provide Prince Sergei with a sizeable income. Prince Sergei, himself, lived on the estate of Vlakhernskoe, also called
Kuz’minki, located outside of Moscow. Living there he was able to maintain his public work in the Empire’s second capital; however, his residence in Moscow also meant negotiating the management of his estates.95
Prince Sergei’s family life was less successful than his public life. On June 19,
1799, he married Avdotiia Ivanovna Izmailova, known as the “Princesse Nocturne.”
Sadly, their matrimony did not result in marital bliss. The two separated, but remained married, and when Prince Golitsyn sought to remarry in 1829, his wife refused to divorce. Considering his luck in love, it is perhaps unsurprising that he never had any children. As Lev Tolstoy claims, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But, perhaps it was this specific unhappiness that drove his public service in Moscow, especially his work with orphans. His service, in turn, endeared him to Empress Maria
94 Ibid.
95 Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, 194-195. 45
Fedorovna, the chief patroness of imperial schools and charitable institutions, with whom he maintained a steady correspondence.96
In addition to Prince Sergei, this dissertation also considers several other
Golitsyns, particularly in regard to the instructions they penned for their estates. Because
Prince Sergei’s own instructions have been lost to posterity, theirs provide a glimpse into the policies of landlords from a similar social background. In this chapter, we examine instructions written by Prince Fedor Nikolaevich Golitsyn and his sons Mikhail and Ivan.
Prince Fedor was born in Moscow in 1751. In 1768, Prince Fedor traveled to Rome,
Geneva, Germany, Holland, England, and Paris. Abroad, he participated in high society, visiting such figures as Voltaire and Queen Marie Antoinette. In 1777, Prince Fedor returned to Russia where he served in the Senate and later as a diplomat. Twenty years later, he achieved the rank of Privy Councilor (one rank below Prince Sergei) and soon after was named a curator of Moscow University, a position he filled until his death in
Moscow in 1827. During his life, he also had five sons, including Princes Mikhail and
Ivan. Like Prince Sergei, Prince Fedor stood at the height of Moscow society, both holding a high rank and occupying an important position within the city. His sons, too, benefitted from this pedigree.97
Like his father, Prince Mikhail, born in 1800, achieved the rank of Privy
Councilor. During his early life, Prince Mikhail largely served in the military, retiring from military service in 1847. In 1859, he was named Head Director of the Golitsyn
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid., 200-201. 46
Hospital, a position that Prince Sergei also once held. He occupied this position until his death in 1887. During this time, he was also awarded the Order of Saint Anne for his service. In his life, Prince Mikhail was particularly fortunate in that he was ill and sequestered in his apartments on December 14, 1825, during the Decembrist Revolt.
Nonetheless, he was arrested under suspicion on December 23rd, though later cleared of charges. Less is known about his brother, Prince Ivan. These Golitsyns were connected to
Prince Sergei not only in name, but also in the way they experienced life. They were absentee landlords, part of Moscow high society, and privileged in wealth and status.98
Prince Sergei had many different identities. To the peasants of this study, and to the 25,000 souls that he owned, he was an absentee landlord. To the workers in his factories and mines, he was the owner. To the Muscovite elite, he was a public figure of high standing, large income, and powerful connections. And to the Emperor and
Empress, he was a diligent state servitor. While these various identities show the nobility’s reach within the Russian state, they also indicate the limits of a system that relied upon the same person to fill so many different roles. As we shall see, Prince Sergei did not do it all alone. Indeed, his absence from Sulost’ and the neighboring villages gave serfs, the mir, and the local administration room to maneuver. Nonetheless, Prince Sergei had plans for his estates and sought to bring them to fruition.
98 Ibid., 177-178. 47
2.3 Prince Sergei and His Estate
Although Prince Sergei governed his estates from afar from his father’s death in
1804 to his own death in 1858, he took an active approach to management and turned to social structures on the estate to execute his orders. He depended on the mir and the bailiff, a representative elected by the mir and approved by him, as intermediaries through which to run his estate. 99 The archival documents reveal that Prince Sergei expected constant reports from the bailiff, updating him on all estate developments.
Moreover, he disapproved of unilateral decisions made without his consent. In one instance, hearing about unsanctioned activities, Prince Sergei warned his bailiff: “And as
I have noticed that you all act on your own…I strongly warn you to refrain from this, under threat, otherwise, of my personal order, being displeased by such, your management, and the unjust proceedings.”100 Prince Sergei liked to be apprised of the goings on on his estate and to participate personally in the decision-making process. He corresponded regularly with the estate bailiff, weighing in on village affairs. He censured those who took liberties while acting under his authority or who acted without consulting him first.
Prince Sergei applied principles of “enlightened seigniorialism” to his estate: he sought to bring about order through rational management.101 Management, however, required balancing various responsibilities. First, Prince Sergei had to fulfil his duties to
99 See Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 for more information on the bailiff and mir.
100 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.60, l.6.
101 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708. 48
the state, including collecting taxes, adjudicating disputes, punishing crimes, and sending recruits. Secondly, it was in his own interest to improve his estate revenue. Lastly, he was responsible for the wellbeing and livelihood of his serfs. Prince Sergei’s directives to his bailiff reflect these responsibilities.
Much of Prince Sergei’s correspondence, which extends from 1810 to his death albeit with some gaps between years, directly treats the collection of obrok from the estate. These dues provided both Prince Sergei’s income and the sums to pay state taxes.
Other directives stemmed from these concerns, including land revisions and estate planning. During revisions, the male population of the estate was counted and a base amount of land per soul calculated. Based upon these calculations, Prince Sergei and his administration reallocated land among villages, in order to allot resources equally. While land revisions regularized the relations of serfs to agricultural land, estate planning created “optimal” layouts for serf villages. An ordered and rational estate would, in turn, produce greater yields while simultaneously improving the condition of the serfs. As we will discuss below, these plans did not necessarily reach fruition, as serfs had different ideas of what constituted their best interests.
Prince Sergei’s orders also give due attention to recruitment. Russian estates were required by the state to fulfill recruitment quotas. Prince Sergei gave the mir the power to choose recruits, though he had to approve their choices. Prince Sergei also participated in the process by purchasing recruitment waivers (kvitantsii) or replacement serfs, financed by the serfs. This practice benefited households that would no longer have to sacrifice a
49
working man; the village, which was responsible for fulfilling obrok; and Prince
Golitsyn, who could count on a healthier income from a higher-capacity estate.102
Prince Sergei also intervened in the lives of families and individuals. Families were required to petition him before dividing households, marrying members off to different estates, or seeking work outside the village. 103 Restricting household divisions,
Prince Sergei acted as patriarchal father figure preserving the ability of households to function. These restrictions, however, also guaranteed that households could continue paying dues, should tragedy befall them. Meanwhile, while families could marry their daughters outside of the estate, such marriages meant that the estate lost human capital, taken literally since serfs were considered property. Consequently, families had to pay
Prince Sergei a fee, evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on their wealth. And, if an individual wanted to leave the village and pursue seasonal or industrial labor, he or she needed a passport granted by Prince Sergei.
Despite Prince Sergei’s authority, his serfs pursued their own interests within the system and pushed back when their objectives did not correspond with his. When he revised land allotments, serfs requested that he amend certain changes and, when that failed, conducted private land-rental deals.104 When obrok was too high, they petitioned him to lower it. When they wanted to build outside of the estate “plan,” they turned to the mir for support. Their lived realities did not necessarily correspond to the abstract ideas
102 For more information on recruitment, see Chapter 4.
103 For more information on household divisions, see Chapter 6.
104 For examples of private land deals, see Chapter 5. 50
sought to order a complex reality. Nor were group interests equal. Consequently, grass roots pressures modified top-down orders. These dynamics will be considered in detail in the next sections, investigating estate planning and estate dues, respectively.
2.4 Enlightened Estate Design
The state acted as both model and impetus for the landed class in the realm of estate design. As Priscilla Roosevelt demonstrates, Catherine the Great “initiated a flood of public and private building…Not only were imperial palaces remodeled and new ones built; she embarked on large-scale town planning producing a network of over two hundred new provincial towns.”105 She encouraged imitation by the landed estate, constructing Tsarskoe Selo as a model.106 Architecture played a key role in Catherine’s designs to “mold Russia metaphorically and actually into the enlightened state of which she dreamed…of establishing a civilization in Russia equal to that found in the most developed states in Europe.”107 Richard Wortman argues that Russian tsars engaged with these sorts of “scenarios of power” in order to communicate the regime’s goals.108
Architecture, then, served as a model for Catherine’s political ideals – for Russia to become an enlightened state – and as a tool by which to achieve these ideals.
105 Roosevelt, “Russian Estate Architecture and Noble Identity,” 67.
106 Ibid.; Shvidkovsky, “Catherine the Great’s Field of Dreams,” 51-65.
107 Shvidkovsky, “Catherine the Great’s Field of Dreams,” 52.
108 Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton and Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2006). 51
When the nobility was freed from obligatory state service in 1762, serving the estate proved a new justification for the nobility to preserve their traditional rights.
Indeed, Roosevelt argues that landowners’ identities were formed based on their position to the state and “ownership of, and sole control over, a personal kingdom.”109 While the emperor provided a model kingdom for his subjects based on the ideals of the
Enlightenment, landowners created iterations of this model in the countryside, with
Palladian classicism becoming the main architectural idiom on the estate.
John Randolph, studying the Bakunin family, shows how landlords created enlightened centers in the provinces; but even absentee landlords took up the call of duty.110 Some participated in the newly founded Free Economic Society in Saint
Petersburg while others wrote detailed instructions, applying rational principles to estate management.111 Both sought to create a more ordered and productive countryside.
The Free Economic Society was founded independently of the government in
1765, by a group of wealthy aristocrats and civil servants. Colum Leckey argues that the
Society “aimed to reverse centuries of stagnation through a revolution from above comparable to the dramatic reforms of Peter the Great.”112 They, therefore, sought to
109 Roosevelt, “Russian Estate Architecture and Noble Identity,” 66.”
110 Randolph, The House in the Garden.
111 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 675-708; Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment, 61-100.
112 Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment, 2.
52
“bridge the gap” between town and country by bringing “Petrine principles of order and rationality to Russian agriculture.”113
While the Society aimed to improve the agricultural development of the provinces, ironically, most of its members and contributors were high-ranking elites who lived and served in the capitals. Nonetheless, the Society sponsored a journal to discuss agricultural affairs which was more widely distributed. This journal included studies of the countryside, instructions written by landlords, and interestingly, essay contests designed to solve the “peasant problem,” at this point the problem of a backward peasantry. Instructions were means by which individual landlords could implement the
Enlightenment’s, and the Society’s, dictates of order and reason. Melton argues that in the eighteenth century, “a small but important group of serfowners formulated and tried to implement a new relationship to their peasants…Their goal was to establish and maintain an administrative order on their estates that would promote the moral and economic welfare of their peasants while making their own incomes more secure.”114
Inspired by the Enlightenment, these “enlightened seigneurs” sought to introduce a system based on law and order, subscribing to what Melton describes as the cameralist ideals of the “welfare estate.”115 They created instructions that outlined how the estate should run while also regulating relationships between peasants, the administration, and the landlord.
113 Ibid., 12.
114 Melton, “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia,” 679.
115 Just as the cameralist ideals of the “welfare state” influenced state policy. See: Raeff, “The Well-Ordered Police State.” 53
Leckey holds that the Society’s great impact was to offer “serf owners of all stations a coherent worldview, one that combined morality, agronomy, and reason into a justification of serfdom.”116 By claiming to serve through their estates, in particular spreading Enlightenment ideals to the provinces, landlords reaffirmed their traditional control over the serfs. Estate planning was one way in which Prince Sergei proved to be a man of his time. Although his precise plan has been lost to posterity, reports to his bailiff provide us access to his designs and how these designs worked in practice. Furthermore, extant instructions show us the form and nature of enlightened estate design.
2.5 Instructions
Prince Mikhail Fedorovich Golitsyn’s designs for the village of Buchalok in Tula province demonstrate the spirit of the time. His schema is reminiscent of Catherine the
Great’s plans to rebuild Tver’ after it was destroyed by fire.117 Catherine’s architects sought to lend order to space, and, thus, impress upon its inhabitants the rational principles of the Enlightenment through their physical environment. With the freeing of the nobility from service, the nobility was able to continue the state’s mission by transporting the Enlightenment into the provinces. While Catherine’s reign ended in
1796, the imperative to order the countryside continued. Prince Mikhail’s instructions, written in 1856, show that he took up this call to arms.
116 Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment, 170.
117 Nathan Gerth, “A Model Town: Tver’, the Classical Imperial Order, and the Rise of Civic Society in the Russian Provinces, 1763-1861,” (doctoral dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2014). 54
Prince Mikhail relates his construction designs in painstaking detail, paying particular attention to the ordering of space. He arranged his village in two lines of up to six farmsteads (dvory). Each farmstead was spaced at 120 square sazhen’, about 5880 square feet, intervals and fenced in. Meanwhile, farmstead houses were six sazhen’ long, about 42 feet, six and a half arshin high, about 15 feet,118 with a roof four and a half arshin high, about 10 and a half feet. Additionally, three windows and a façade would face the street. Outbuildings could also be found in the farmstead and the entire farmstead would be surrounded by a solid stone fence with acacias, birch, or willows planted in front. Additionally, there would be a street extending from one side of the village to the other, three sazhen’, 21 feet, away from the façade of the houses, and 14 sazhen’, 98 feet, in width.119
Prince Mikhail Fedorovich was not solely concerned with utility: his plan follows a precise, regular pattern that is also aesthetically pleasing. This aesthetic quality is most clearly seen in his order to plant acacias, birch, or willows in front of the fences surrounding the farmsteads. The ordering of space lends itself to an ordered village, similar to Catherine’s designs for Tver’.120 Catherine’s design, however, failed to account for the lived realities of the town. Moreover, whereas Tver’ had burned to the ground, requiring complete rebuilding, Buchalok, in fact, existed. Prince Mikhail recognized the issues involved in redesigning a town by including a section with exceptions. The village
118 One arshin equals about 2.333 feet.
119 [M. Golitsyn], “Ob ustroistve selenii,” in Materialy dlia istorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, ed. M.V. Dovnar-Zapol’skii (Kiev, n.d.), 281-283.
120 Gerth, “A Model Town.” 55
inhabitants would not be coerced into rebuilding; rather, they would rebuild by design when moving or fixing a dilapidated house.121
In addition to creating order on the estate through design, Prince Mikhail also sought to use rational planning to alleviate the village’s woes. Fire, for example, was a concern that perennially plagued the countryside. Accordingly, Prince Mikhail ordered that banyas, forges, and threshing barns be built away from the farmsteads, on the banks of a river, by a ravine, or well. These measures would prevent fires from spreading to serf buildings from those that used fire. Moreover, placement near water meant that these buildings could more easily be extinguished in case of fire. Mikhail also planned for crop failure: he stipulated the building of a grain reserve, to be built away from the village.
Lastly, Mikhail cared for the sick and instructed that a hospital be built downriver and clarified that it should not be cramped or low. The location downriver would prevent villagers from using water contaminated by hospital patients. Prince Mikhail’s preoccupation with a hospital reflects the destruction wrought on the population during major cholera epidemics in 1830, 1831, and 1847.122 Together, these orders show a concern with real village problems and a belief that rational planning could conquer all.123
Prince Mikhail devised a complex plan for ordering his village, but as an absentee landlord, he placed the “duty and responsibility” of fulfilling this plan on the shoulders of
121 Ibid.
122 Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 14.
123 [Golitsyn], “Ob ustroistve selenii,” 281-283.
56
the estate steward. Nonetheless, his physical distance did not mean that he distanced himself from estate management. Building construction or destruction still had to be approved by him, personally.
Like Prince Mikhail, Prince Sergei had a personal hand in the ordering of his estate. Although his precise instructions have been lost to posterity, we can get an idea of his plans through correspondence sent to his estate bailiff and through petitions sent to him. These types of sources have an additional benefit: they allow us to see how estate planning worked on the ground. Although landlords may have believed that their plans represented the most rational and enlightened system imaginable, the people that these plans affected often had different ideas. James Scott argues that plans from above often fail because of the difficulty of abstractly ordering a complex reality with planners not taking into account local knowledge and “rules of thumb.”124 On the estate, we see that people contested changes that harmed their own interests and, in some cases, even thwarted the plan’s fulfilment. Estate management was not a series of orders or instructions handed down from a landlord and blindly followed by the masses: landlords interacted with institutions and individuals in situ to execute their orders. Moreover, peasants also pushed their own agendas, creating bottom-up pressure.
Prince Sergei aspired to make his estate more efficient and orderly, but also more beautiful. As a result, he, like Prince Mikhail ordered that all new construction be approved by him and conform to his “plan.”125 Accordingly, when the widow Natalia
124 Scott, Seeing Like a State.
125 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 1.
57
Andreeva petitioned for a household division in 1816, Prince Sergei readily agreed stating that a new house constructed by her son, Dmitrii, would make the village “better and more beautiful.”126 Similarly, when the peasants Fedor Petrov Samodurov, his brother, and Dmitrii Vlisov petitioned to build in 1817, Prince Sergei agreed so long as
“the building would be in a line and without any ugliness.”127 Like Prince Mikhail, Prince
Sergei sought to improve the estate by creating an ordered environment, aligning houses in symmetric lines, and creating an aesthetically pleasing, “more beautiful” village
“without any ugliness.”
Not all projects, however, were readily approved by Prince Sergei, nor did all villagers support Prince Sergei’s plan. The above-mentioned request by Fedor Petrov
Samodurov, his brother, and Dmitrii Vlisov, to build meant disenfranchising the elderly
Grigorii Matveev Konanov whose “dilapidated house” was located at the desired location.128 Consequently, Konanov and his nephew, Fedor Vasil’ev, appealed to Prince
Sergei. In response, Prince Sergei reasoned that if Samodurov and Vlisov build on
Konanov’s space, then they should give him 200 rubles, but under the condition that afterward he receive no further petitions.129 While Prince Sergei had the power to create a plan reorganizing his estate, serfs challenged this plan when it opposed their own interests. This case was settled with a payment to Konanov for his space, but in his reply
126 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 59, l. 6.
127 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 61, l. 3.
128 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 1.
129 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 6 ob.
58
Prince Sergei also recognized the disruptive power of disputes, thus disallowing further petitions.
2.6 Estate Design in Practice
The above case indicates that, according to Prince Sergei’s plan, decrepit buildings could not simply be renovated; instead, they had to be cleared away and new buildings constructed how and where Prince Sergei thought meet. Although Prince Sergei stipulated the terms for building, the serfs were left with the additional costs and labor necessary to fulfil “the plan.” Konanov received some reimbursement, but what about serfs who simply needed to make their living space more livable?
Serfs petitioned Prince Sergei, beseeching him to allow them to repair
“dilapidated” houses or build new ones in their place. Petitioning meant participating in a negotiating process, but one in which Prince Sergei held most of the cards. In April 1851,
Fedor Pavlov Baranov petitioned Prince Sergei, pleading with him to “allow me to build a house on the former location for I do not have the strength to transfer all of the building to a new location.”130 Baranov’s supporting arguments show the difficulties that peasants faced when dealt orders from on high that did not work well with local realities. First and foremost, Baranov needed to build a new home, arguing “there is no possibility to even live” in his “dilapidated house.” 131 Consequently, he began construction. Only afterward did Prince Sergei issue an order preventing the building of single houses. By that point,
130 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 12 ob.
131 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 12.
59
Baranov had already hired carpenters and cut down logs to renovate the front of his dwelling. Prince Sergei’s order would require Baranov to relocate his construction project to a new space, not only negating the work already completed, but also requiring him to build new outbuildings in the new space. The order created more work for Baranov at a higher cost in terms of resources and physical labor. These costs would prove prohibitive for Baranov given his stated poverty and advanced age, at 57 years old. Additionally, he only had one married son to aid his household and an elderly spinster sister, at 60 years old, to look after. Finally, Baranov could not move to the designated location for a very practical reason: where it should have been, a large road stood on one side, and a lane on the other.132
In many ways, Baranov’s petition shows the impracticality with which landlords approached estate design. While “the plan” may have looked lovely on paper, in reality, it was difficult to implement. Bringing the plan to fruition meant an additional burden placed on serfs’ shoulders. They could not simply renovate their dwellings, but had to build anew. And, building anew often required moving to a sanctioned location.
Renovating itself was costly, building in a new location, even more so as serfs had to pay workers and transport materials. To make matters worse, if they moved, peasants would also have to build new outbuildings, such as banyas, sheds, barns, etc. Baranov’s family could not afford all of these additional costs. But, they also could not afford to leave their
“dilapidated house” as it was. The earlier discussed instructions did not consider how the plan would tax the serfs for whom the estate was designed.
132 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 12 ob.
60
Overlooking the extra burden placed on serfs’ shoulders was not the extent of the plan’s failings. Reminiscent of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fictional town governor who would have the inhabitants of Foolov raze their entire town to the ground and then attempt to reconstruct over a rushing river, Prince Sergei also overlooked the physical environment when designing his plan.133 This time, however, it was not a river but a road that stood in the way. Prince Sergei’s abstract ordering of a complex locality failed to account for the very environment in which the estate was situated. These problems help explain why in the 34-year gap separating Konanov and Baranov’s cases, 1817 and 1851, respectively,
Prince Sergei’s “plan” had not been realized. Individual serfs, however, were not the only ones who stood in the way of the plan’s fulfillment; institutions also had a say.
Some serfs turned to the mir for support, gaining extra leverage from an institution representing the village at large and vital to the administration of the estate.
The mir was composed of household elders, the patriarchal heads of households, who then elected local officials such as the estate bailiff and village elders.134 Petr Sem’ev and
Dmitrii Stafev appeared before the mir in 1833 when they sought to repair their houses counter to Prince Sergei’s order. In this case, the mir sided with the serfs, stating that,
“from pity towards these peasants,” “we, the peasants of all villages…agree to allow those peasants the completion of their repairs.”135 Knowing the conditions that the peasants faced, the mir supported Sem’ev and Stafev against Prince Sergei’s plan.
133 M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, The History of a Town, trans. Susan Brownsberger (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982).
134 See Chapter 4 for more information on the mir.
135 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 190.
61
2.7 Estate Design and the Church
The church also contested “the plan” out of its own self-interest. In the spring of
1816, Prince Sergei ordered his bailiff to reallot land to the clergy and to redistribute a portion of their former land to his peasants according to “the plan.” Moreover, he specified that the bailiff not allow any private transactions directly between the peasants and the clergy.136 Indeed, in an earlier letter, he ordered his bailiff not to “enter into any agreement with them…under threat of punishment.”137 Prince Sergei was serious about fulfilling his estate plan. In this case, that meant providing the minimal required land to the estate’s churchmen and redistributing the rest of the land to his peasants. While peasants practiced private land transactions on the estate, they were forbidden from doing so with the church, and so was the bailiff.138
This land transfer had a number of practical benefits for Prince Sergei and his estate. Most importantly, it shifted productive land to the hands of serfs who paid obrok.
With an increase of production, Prince Sergei could then justify raising the obrok imposed on serfs, which, in turn, would increase his own income. All the while, he could claim to be helping the serfs by giving them more land. Considering Prince Sergei’s stake in the plan, it is not surprising that he forbade the bailiff and serfs from conducting private transactions with the churchmen. At the same time, the clergy relied entirely upon allotted land and emoluments to support them and their families. Gregory Freeze
136 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 16.
137 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 1.
138 See Chapter 5 for more information on private land transactions.
62
demonstrates that the monetary income received from emoluments was inadequate to support the clergy for several reasons. First, he argues, parishes were often too small to provide adequate support. Secondly, serfdom left little monetary surplus in the countryside. Finally, he contends that the state fixed low sums for service and disallowed clergymen from soliciting higher sums. Moreover, these sums also had to be shared across the clergy. What resulted was clergymen earning a pittance in emoluments, making land allotments ever more important. Indeed, at the same time that the state regulated service payments to clergy, in the mid eighteenth century, they also issued a minimum land requirement, set at 33 desiatina. Though this order was initially meant to protect clergymen, Prince Sergei later used this official figure to justify reducing church land allotments. Nonetheless, despite conforming to state policy, conflict resulted from
Prince Sergei’s order, not least because of the influence the church held locally. 139
Churches were located on the estate in the villages of Sulost’, Nikol’skoe, and
Kuzmitsyn. Parish conditions varied from place to place, as the parish was rooted within the local community, largely beyond the reach of central church and state apparatuses.
Nonetheless, several state directives sought to standardize practices and ameliorate parish conditions. In the 18th century, these included regularizing service payments for the main sacraments, setting a minimum land allotment for parishes, establishing a clerical table of organization (shtat), roughly relating parish sizes to the number of clergy members, and limiting the ability of bishops to found new parishes.140 Within the parish clergy, there
139 Gregory L. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter- Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 54-57.
140 Ibid. 52-55. 63
were several ranks. At the top of the hierarchy stood the ordained clergy: archpriests, then priests, and then deacons. Priests and archpriests, constituting 31% of Russia’s parish clergy, were responsible for administrating sacraments, conducting mass and private prayers, and largely overseeing parish documentation and clergy members. Next, deacons made up 14% of the clergy, and were largely notable for “improving the aesthetics of the service.”141 Meanwhile, non-ordained sacristans composed 55% of the clergy. They assisted the priest in service and also maintained the church. By 1824, there were 34,095 priests and archpriests in Russia, 15,081 deacons, and 57,740 sacristans serving 27,492 parishes.142 While Prince Sergei’s estate documents do not indicate the total number of clergymen on his estate, they do indicate that there were enough priests and deacons to conduct mass daily in Sulost’ for the period of a year after his mother died in 1816. In contrast, it was held only three times a week in Nikol’skoe and Kuzmitsyn, because they only had one priest who traveled between the villages’ churches.143
The clergy played an important role in the Orthodox peasant’s life cycle, starting with baptism. During baptism, priests not only removed original sin, but also named the child in accordance with the calendar of saints (a large tip spared the child from unpopular or obscure names). Furthermore, while it was beneficial for peasants to marry early, priests had to approve these marriages.144 The priest’s role also extended beyond
141 Ibid., 53.
142 Ibid., 53-55.
143 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 15.
144 For role of marriage in agricultural societies see Steven L. Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia: Demographic Insights,” in Essays in Russian Social and Economic History (Boston: American Studies 64
the church’s sacraments. Given their unique position as educated men with standing in the community, priests were called upon to teach peasants reading and basic numeracy,145 to assist the landlord in administering smallpox vaccinations,146 and even to keep track of migrant workers.147 At the end of a peasant’s life, he, once more, turned to the church for last rites.
That Prince Sergei’s serfs valued the church is attested by their many endeavors to improve it. In 1851, the elders of Nikol’skoe sent a petition to Prince Sergei requesting that the bailiff sell the house of a deceased serf in order to fund church renovation. In the meanwhile, the serfs sponsored the project, creating a new iconostasis and decorating the bare interior walls with paintings.148 These renovations were deemed imperative because to the peasant the church was, literally, the home of the miraculous. Indeed, Mikhail
Petrov Gur’ichev witnessed the appearance of Saint Vasilii the Great (Vasilii Velikii) and
Nikita the Martyr (velikomuchenik Nikita) in the church of Sulost’. Because of these sightings, the mir agreed to build two niches in the church to commemorate these saints.
They were funded by peasant donations.149 The peasants cared about the church, sought to improve it, and literally saw it as a holy place.
Press, 2015), 84-109; for church control over marriages, see Daniel H. Kaiser, “Church Control over Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” In Russian Review 65, no. 4 (2006): 567-585.
145 For example, see :Purlevskii, A Life Under Russian Serfdom, 54-56.
146 For example, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 2, d. 160 l. 50.
147 Burds, Peasant Dreams & Market Politics.
148 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 5-6.
149 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 318, l. 2-3.
65
Prince Sergei also turned to the church at key moments in his family’s lifecycle.
When his mother, Anna Aleksandrovna, passed away at 77 years of age in 1816, he ordered a service for the dead to take place in the Sulost’, Nikol’skoe, and Kuzmitsyn churches with all of the elders and peasants gathered. Thereafter, a prayer for the dead and a mass for the peace of Anna Aleksandrovna’s soul was held in Sulost’ every day and three times a week in Nikol’skoe and Kumitsyn for a year-long period.150 These services reinforced the centrality of the Golitsyn family on the estate through an institution that was integral to peasant life and connected to God. Symbolically, the services also supported the soslovie system at large, indicating the divine order that sanctioned the tsar’s rule and the institutions emanating from him.
The standing of the church and its role on the estate rendered Prince Sergei’s plan untenable. Although the serfs would technically gain in land and profit from “the plan,” it would pit them against an institution they needed. Consequently, an argument erupted between Prince Sergei and the church over the land issue. Prince Sergei wrote to his bailiff claiming that although the church controlled over 36 desiatina, about 97.2 acres, of land, they did not use it all. He charged the bailiff with overseeing the church’s land usage and determining whether or not they actually used the land or, say, rented it to peasants for an income. Prince Sergei continued, arguing that the priests and the sacristans had approved of the land demarcation and had signed to that effect; but, now, they were arguing because the deacons wanted rights to the land and its income. To make matters worse, they brought the matter to the bishop. Like the peasantry, the church
150 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 15.
66
needed land to support its servitors. If there was excess land, then the servitors could lend the land to peasants, making an income from the rent. Prince Sergei, however, would benefit if the serfs who paid his obrok directly wielded control over the surplus land.
Consequently, he ordered that his bailiff oversee that the church be given only 33 desiatina, about 89.1 acres, while he personally wrote to the bishop about the “unjust” conflict.151
In 1817, a year after the conflict began, Prince Sergei received a letter from the bailiff reporting that they had finished demarcating the new church land. Prince Sergei replied, asking whether or not it was conducted “with justice.”152 The problem was that
“justice” was defined differently based upon the interest group. While Prince Sergei may have considered it just to redesign the village, the village inhabitants thought otherwise.
They petitioned Prince Sergei or appealed to the mir to allow them to repair their decrepit houses without having to entirely build anew, in a different location, according to “the plan.” The mir gave weight to these peasants’ interests, allowing them to repair their houses against Prince Sergei’s order. The church also contested Prince Sergei’s plan as it would decrease their land and income. Unfortunately, “the plan” did not take into account lived realities and interest groups on the estate. The prince’s personal authority and legal control over the land were not enough to fulfill his estate designs because local social institutions and individual actors opposed them. In other words, both top-down and bottom-up forces mattered.
151 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 17-18.
152 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 61, l. 16-17.
67
Another area in which landlords exerted their interests was in the system of manorial due by which they ran their estates. As we will see in the next section, different types of due systems could have profound effects on the daily life of peasants. Within the system, however, serfs similarly asserted their interests.
2.8 Obrok versus Barshchina
Ivan Turgenev’s 1852 collection of short stories, Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, aptly captures the distinction between barshchina, labor dues, and obrok, monetary dues, in the lives of peasants. Returning home from Moscow, Vlas, a poor peasant, encounters the narrator and his companion, Foggy. Upon their inquiry, Vlas explains that he visited his landlord to “Ask ’im so as I’d pay less rent or did unpaid labour, you know, or got resettled…My boy died, see. So it’s hard for me on my own to get by.”153 Previously,
Vlas’s son paid his family’s obrok with the earning he made working in Moscow. After his son’s death, Vlas could no longer afford to pay with his earnings alone; instead he sought to switch to barshchina, or even get resettled. The matter was complicated by
Vlas’s location. Foggy explains that “it’d be all right like if it were outside Moscow, but it’s right here he’s on quit-rent…Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you – just a little bit o’ land and all the rest’s the master’s woodland.”154 Vlas had to pay his dues in obrok, but the master’s estate could not support these dues. Likewise, Vlas could not easily couple agricultural work with seasonal migration to an industrial center because the estate
153 Ivan Turgenev, Sketches for a Hunter’s Album, trans. Richard Freeborn (Penguin Books, 1990), 49.
154 Ibid., 51. 68
was not close to an industrial center like Moscow. He may have been able to pay the quitrent with the support of his son, but once his son died, Vlas could no longer support himself. As for the landlord’s response: he refused to help Vlas. Vlas was supposed to see the bailiff before he could petition his landlord and, even so, he could not resettle because he owed the landlord money.155
Turgenev’s work portrays concerns originating in the real world. Landlord instructions demonstrate how landlord intervention and oversight differed based on whether the estate was run on obrok or barshchina and how these changes, in turn, affected the everyday life of serfs. This section investigates peasant agency within landlord policy by considering the use of an obrok duty system. First, it will elucidate how a shift from barshchina to obrok affected landlord management and, consequently, life on the estate. Next, it will address the relationship between obrok and the market, showing that peasants came to rely on the market to sell their produce. Nonetheless, obrok levels did not respond to the market, burdening peasants when the purchasing price of their produce fell relative to the price of grain. This disconnect led to negotiations undertaken by the peasant community to lower their duty payments. Then, I investigate the connection between obrok and mobility. Though a shift to obrok theoretically freed peasant to work outside of the estate in industry or trade, their mobility continued to be limited by an internal passport system that gave landlords and their officials control over peasant movement. Peasants, therefore, negotiated with administrators for documents and
155 Ibid., 50-51. 69
even petitioned the landlord when that failed. Serfs, then, had to navigate the social system in order to benefit from a shift from the barshchina to the obrok system.
2.9 Landlord Management
In 1796, Prince Fedor Nikolaevich Golitsyn married Varvara Ivanova, née
Shipova, and, in the process acquired Shipov villages in Efremov district, Tula province.
Having acquired these villages, Prince Fedor wrote instructions to set his new estates in order. Roughly thirty years later, his son Ivan inherited the estate and also wrote instructions to manage his acquired property. While both sought to order their land, a generation apart, they had different ideas about how an estate should be run.
Consequently, they turned to different systems of duty payment to realize their goals.
Prince Fedor managed an estate that collected dues in kind, barshchina. With this system, serfs were required to work plots of land that contributed directly to the landlord’s coffers. The rest of the arable land was divided among the serfs for their own purposes. On barshchina, state taxes and landlord profits were derived directly from estate agriculture. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prince Fedor’s Instructions began by stressing that the estate should “use all means by which the land brings a good harvest, in which all seigneurial incomes consist.”156 As these words hint, Prince Fedor deeply involved himself in his estate’s agricultural business, despite being an absentee landlord.
156 [F.N. Golitsyn], “Prikazanie prikashchiki s. Liubashevki, Mikhailovskago tozh” (Efrmovsk. u., Tul’skoi gub.) 1796 g.” in Materialy dlya ustorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, ed. M.V. Donvar- Zapol’skii (Kiev, nd), 245. 70
A generation later in 1823, Prince Ivan claimed that his goal was to “improve the condition [of the peasants] even more and to provide every freedom available to use any method and means to make gains in arable farming and industry.”157 While Ivan’s stated goal was to improve the condition of the peasants, his method was to convert all of his serfs to obrok and to convert his arable land, formerly used for barshchina, to peasant land. In practice, Prince Ivan’s serfs would have to pay a fixed rate of money, as determined by him; consequently, Prince Ivan’s income was no longer contingent on the agricultural profitability of the land within a given season. Thus, during times of scarcity, drought, and famine, he maintained his decreed level of income. Peasants were left without the natural safety net found in the barshchina system, where dues were based on labor and not income; however, the obrok duty system gave serfs the freedom to choose how to pay their dues.
The differences between obrok and barshchina had far-reaching implications on the management of the estate. The ways in which Prince Fedor and Prince Ivan organized and even perceived their own dues differ markedly based upon the system in use. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prince Ivan began his Instructions by clarifying the monetary relations between village and landlord. He set the sum of obrok, based on the current number of tiaglo, or agricultural partners of husband and wife. He indicated how and when the sum would be paid: in two installments in September and on December 15th. And, he included instructions for handling future arrears: the community would provide the deficiency. The
157 [I.F. Golitsyn], “Polozhenie dlia krest’ian Efremovskoi votchiny sela Mikhailovskago i derevni Varvarovki 1823 g.” in Materialy dlya ustorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, ed. M.V. Donvar- Zapol’skii (Kiev, nd), 276. 71
attention to detail in these points and their strategic placing at the beginning of the instructions leave no doubt that Ivan’s primary concern was the income he could derive from his estate, despite his stated goal of improving the condition of his serfs.158 Because
Fedor’s estate was on barshchina, instead of concentrating on payments, he outlines the days during which peasants would work on his arable land; however, these stipulations do not occur until later in the text.159
Prince Fedor’s instructions largely outline how agricultural production should proceed. He begins by noting the provisions that should be taken when transitioning from winter into spring, continues describing how to thresh the grain, notes that peasants should be given loans before threshing, counsels that care should be taken during threshing so that the grain remains clean and undamaged, and warns against peasant theft of grain. Considering the farmstead, he discusses different methods of managing farm animals including horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, and birds. Although he focuses on agricultural matters, Prince Fedor does not neglect his manor and also describes his house serfs’ dues.160
Considering Ivan’s shift to obrok, he delineated what would be turned over to peasant use, and what would remain his personal property: arable land, meadows, and haying land were converted to peasant land while the mill, garden, produce gardens, and the forests remained under his control. This land turnover coincided with the
158 Ibid., 276.
159 [Golitsyn], “Prikazanie prikashchiki,” 245-252.
160 Ibid., 245-252. 72
aggrandizement of the mir’s power and authority. The mir held the duty of dividing the newly acquired land. Additionally, they were to manage estate affairs, recruitment, the communal coffers, grain reserves, and even court judgments. A bailiff and an elder, however, headed the village administration and remained a vital link to the landlord.
Therefore, Ivan’s turn to obrok distanced him from estate affairs, but it also empowered the serf community.161
Prince Fedor’s and Prince Ivan’s instructions indicate the far-reaching implications of organizing an estate according to barshchina or obrok. On obrok, serfs gained the freedom to work in trades outside of agriculture on or off the estate.
Meanwhile, Prince Ivan was freed from strict agricultural management while continuing to turn a profit from obrok leveled on his serfs. Prince Sergei’s estate in Iaroslavl’ province followed a similar pattern as Prince Ivan’s as both were run by absentee landlords on an obrok system. As a result, serfs had options over how to pay their dues, although peasants’ choices continued to be limited by the state’s internal passport system and the estate administration’s control over peasant movement. Peasants on obrok could earn money through agriculture, or they could turn to industry, working as migrants, as commercial traders, or as handicraft producers. This exposure to outside trade networks and markets, in turn, influenced the way in which these serfs made economic decisions.
161 [Golitsyn], “Polozhenie dlia krest’ian,” 276-280. 73
2.10 Obrok and the Market
The obrok system offered peasants greater choice in terms of their occupations while also delegating authority over estate matters, such as everyday estate management, recruitment, the communal coffers, grain reserves, land repartition, and even court judgments, to the mir. Nonetheless, obrok was not without its downsides. As illustrated by Turgenev’s anecdote earlier, serfs from villages far from centers of manufacture, i.e., outside the Moscow textile region network, the Vladimir-Kostroma textile region network, and the tanning and metalworking region network in Nizhnii Novgorod, were at a disadvantage because they were less able to supplement or replace agricultural work with other occupations. Jerome Blum argues that the “predominance of [obrok] in the northern provinces and [barshchina] in the Central Agricultural district, reflected the development of the increase in regional economic specialization brought about by the economic expansion of the eighteenth century. The growth of trade and industry enabled more people to earn all or part of their livings in non-agricultural pursuits.”162 Industrial and trade networks were key to the success of the obrok system. The location of these networks explain why obrok was more prevalent in the Central Industrial Region of
Russia, while barshchina was more common in the Central Black Earth Region further south: by the emancipation of the serfs, 60 percent of serfs in the Central Industrial
Region paid obrok and only 30 percent from the Central Black Earth Region.163
Considering particular provinces, Blum shows that up to 87 percent of serfs in provinces
162 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 394-395.
163 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 32; I. I. Ignatovich, Pomeshchich’ i krest’iane nakanune osvobozhdeniia (Leningrad: Mysl’,1925), 70-76. 74
such as Iaroslavl’ and Kostroma provinces in the Central Industrial Region were on obrok in the mid-nineteenth century compared to only 22 percent of serfs in Tambov province, in the Black Earth Region.164 While the Central Industrial Region provided conditions suitable for obrok, however, vagaries in the market or agricultural crises could lead to discrepancies between what serfs could afford to pay and what they had to pay. These discrepancies, in turn, led to contestations between landlords and peasants.
During times of famine, the barshchina system automatically adjusted to low levels of output, as dues were collected by means of labor on the landlord’s designated land. The landlord, therefore, also shared in the peasants’ losses. Conversely, obrok remained constant or even increased based on the whims and desires of the landlord, even during times of crisis. Such a disconnect between landowner policies and local conditions led to dispute. The memoir of the serf Savva Purlevskii illuminates such an occurrence.
Purlevskii recounted troubles arising between the landlord and his serfs due to increases in dues during the years of 1817 and 1820 on his estate in Iaroslavl’ province,
Rostov district. In 1817, the landlord sent a directive requiring the estate administration to collect obrok two years in advance. For Purlevskii, this order meant paying a sum of
100 rubles. He remarks that he could only meet this sum after his mother sold a cherished pearl necklace. Soon after, the landlord died. In 1820, the husband of one of the landlord’s female heirs came to the estate and, according to Purlevskii, stated, “We, fellows, need to be more meticulous in the future. We need to discuss something. For example, from the entire village we collect only twenty thousand in rent a year. The
164 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 396. 75
deceased lord, the father of my wife, gave you privileges for many years, and we too, since his death, have continued to indulge you for the last two years. We expected you to be appreciative and yourselves raise the rent you pay, in keeping with contemporary costs. We don’t want to talk about the past – let it pass – but you should understand our kindness and try to value us for it in the future.”165 After this speech, the news landlords requested that the village of 1,300 souls collect 200,000 rubles immediately with the promise that they would not have to pay further dues for the next ten years. The peasants vehemently opposed these exactions, arguing that they only had 1,130 desiatinas, roughly
3,051 acres, for 1,300 men. As a result of this paucity of land, they claimed that they had to support themselves by trade and commerce. Their protestations seemed to be successful until two months later when they learned that the landlord took out a twenty- five year loan from the Council of Trustees and that the estate would, henceforth, have to pay the yearly interest of 30,000 rubles on top of their annual dues of 20,000 rubles.
Those who failed to pay would be conscripted into the army or sent to metallurgical mills in Siberia. Purlevskii attributes the inability of serfs to succeed in their own enterprises to such exactions.166
In fact, obrok payments ranged considerably from one estate to another. Boris
Gorshkov estimates that on average serfs paid 30 to 50 percent of their annual income, but the amount actually ranged from 17 to 86 percent.167 Edgar Melton found relatively
165 Purlevskii, A Life Under Russian Serfdom, 75.
166 Ibid., 71-76.
167 Boris B. Gorshkov, “Introduction,” in A Life Under Russian Serfdom, 10. 76
low levels of obrok on Countess Lieven’s Baki estate in Kostroma province. There obrok was leveled at a rate of 7.3 silver rubles per male in 1800. Indeed, considering inflation, he estimates that the real cost of obrok declined from 7.3 silver rubles in 1800 to 4.1 silver rubles in 1835.168 Melton compares this estate to one owned by Elizaveta
Filosofova. There, obrok stood at 70 rubles per year. Like the Baki estate, Filosofova’s estate economy was also based on timber. Melton indicates that during profitable years, male souls could expect to earn 350 paper rubles, meaning that obrok payments would have comprised about one fifth of a man’s income. In contrast, he might earn 100 paper rubles during a bad year, making then payments a real burden on families. Indeed, this situation occurred in 1826, resulting in an uprising on the estate. The 1826 uprising illustrates the desperate straits in which serfs on Elizaveta Filisofova’s estate found themselves when the timber industry was not performing well but obrok remained constant. Furthermore, the difference between obrok levels on Filosofova’s and Countess
Lieven’s estates shows the decisiveness of individual landlord’s policies on serf dues. 169
Tracy Dennison argues that because landlord policies were not integrated into a larger legal or administrative framework, serfs experienced a “continuum of serfdoms” based on localized practices. Studying the estate of Voshchazhnikovo, she found an idiosyncratic duty system which included both the leveling of obrok and an asset tax. While obrok was
168 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 46.
169 Ibid., 45-46. 77
set at 15 silver rubles per year per tiaglo of communal land, households were also required to pay 0.5% on combined asserts over 500 rubles.170
Prince Sergei and his bailiff frequently corresponded about the collection of obrok. He instructed the bailiff how and when to collect obrok. In February of 1815, he ordered his bailiff to collect 16,000 rubles in two installments of 8,000 rubles based on the 630 souls on the estate.171 Oddly, a census conducted the following year, in 1816, indicated that there were only 594 souls on the estate.172 Basing the payments on the population of 630 men, each adult man would pay approximately 25 rubles. However, the missing 36 souls meant a deficit of 900 rubles that the rest of the community would have to pay. The mir divided the dues among households and the bailiff sent the sum either directly to Prince Sergei or to his Moscow administrative office. Prince Sergei wrote to the bailiff reminding him when obrok was due and again to inform him when the payment was received. If sums were missing or some of the paper money fake, Prince
Sergei notified the bailiff. Although Prince Sergei set obrok at 16,000 rubles in 1815, correspondence between Prince Sergei and his bailiff indicates that in 1814, half a year’s payment of obrok stood at 6,300 rubles, meaning that obrok payments would have totaled
12,600 rubles. This rise in obrok was contested by serfs right after implementation and again later.173
170 Dennison, “Did Serfdom Matter?” 74-89; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 107-110.
171 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 10-11.
172 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 9.
173 See, for example: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 2-3, 12, 16, 34, 37; d. 58, l. 10-11, 17, 12-14, 18, 19; d. 59, l. 6; d. 60, l. 3, 4, 19-20. 78
In March of 1815 the estate petitioned Prince Sergei to lower obrok, then at
16,000 rubles for the estate’s entire population, and to postpone payment from March to
June. Considering that the estate held 594 souls, or adult males, in 1815 the average cost of obrok per soul approximated 27 rubles.174 Prince Sergei agreed to postpone payments for several months, but expressed apprehension over lowering obrok “judging by prices having risen for all the produce being sold [by the peasants].”175 Because market prices were favorable for the peasants, with the price of their produce rising, Prince Sergei deemed that his serfs should be able to afford the designated sum. Nonetheless, perhaps in a show of goodwill, he did lower obrok by 500 rubles, or less than 1 ruble per soul.176
Petitions sent to Prince Sergei demonstrate the sensitivity to the market that serfs on obrok felt. On November 10, 1833, the villagers of Sulost’, Nikol'skoe and Kuzmitsyn together with the smaller hamlets sent a petition to Prince Sergei’s administrative office, requesting that he lower obrok. In this petition, they argued that the price for their produce – onions, seeds, and others – had dropped; meanwhile, the price for grain rose unusually high to 2 rubles and 50 kopeks per pud, or 36 lbs. Additionally, they noted the burden placed on them by billeted soldiers.177 As a result, they humbly petitioned Prince
Sergei to lower obrok payments to reflect earlier levels.178
174 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 9.
175 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 12 ob.
176 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 12-14.
177 An additional duty placed on peasants by the state.
178 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 193. 79
Like Prince Sergei’s earlier directive, this petition’s argument emphasizes market prices: the market price of grain rose higher than the market prices of the peasants’ produce. Therefore, as a result of market fluctuations, they could not afford to both buy grain and pay obrok. Awareness of and interaction with the market underpins the serfs’ central argument. Alternatively, they could have claimed to be hungry and living in abject poverty or illustrated their misfortunes through tall tales. Instead, these serfs chose to plead their case by appealing to quantifiable data: market prices.
In addition to citing market prices, the villagers note the heavy burden placed upon them by billeted soldiers. Although we do not know the specific cost of billeting these soldiers, we know from later documents that the toll on the community was considerable. For example, in 1858 the village mir noted that 35 soldiers arrived for billeting, one of whom was an officer, the rest of lower rank. The community provided the officer with an apartment and for the soldiers in farmsteads belonging to three separate families. Additionally, the soldiers brought with them 45 horses, which also had to be looked after.179 In addition to an uncooperative market, then, the community also faced higher expenses because of the billeted soldiers.
Challenges to obrok were not always in a community’s favor. In 1839 peasant
Dmitrii Smyslov sent a petition to the estate bailiff Andrei Ivanov Kurbakov asking him to lighten his family’s obligations. In response, Smyslov claimed, the bailiff reported to the landlord that he had disobeyed his orders and incited the entire estate against the payment of obrok. Consequently, Prince Sergei ordered Smyslov to appear before the mir
179 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 408. 80
for judgment. Smyslov denied these accusations and appealed to Prince Sergei for justice.
Earlier we saw that the landlord postponed and lowered payments, although by only 500 rubles, after being petitioned. Meanwhile, Smyslov was censured by the bailiff and sent before the mir for inciting unrest. 180 Because the estate was responsible for the entire sum of obrok, a decrease in Smyslov’s household’s payments would have meant that other households would have had to pay more to cover the deficit. Commonly held obligations therefore dis-incentivized the mir from lowering a household’s payments. In contrast, when the entire community petitioned Prince Sergei, they all had something to gain.
While the community used an analysis of market conditions to lower obrok, they used the same reasoning when making economic decisions during times of prosperity. In
1857, the mir decided to sell a higher share of the community’s spring-crop reserves: instead of selling 100 chevert’, about 595 bushels, of oats, they decided to sell 150. They explained this sale by arguing that “at this time the price for grain is very decent, and in the future in may be lower than the proceeding sum.”181 While prices for grain were high, they wanted to sell their reserves, knowing they would make a greater profit than if grain prices fell. In one instance the cost of grain, as decided by the market, made paying obrok prohibitive for the peasants; in another case, the peasant community decided to use current market conditions to their benefit, selling more grain and making a greater profit.
180 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 233.
181 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 393. 81
Switching an estate from barshchina to obrok changed the way that the landlord managed his estate which had a profound effect on the daily life of peasants. No longer bound to work the landlord’s desmesne, peasants instead paid a fixed monetary sum. As a result, peasants on Prince Sergei’s estate were obligated to sell their produce and grain on the market to meet their dues. Profits and losses became tied to market values. Obrok levels, however, did not adjust to the market, placing an additional burden on households when their produce prices dropped relative to grain. Because grain cost more than the produce they sold, peasants found it difficult to both purchase grain and pay obrok. This situation led to contestation with the landlord. While tying peasants’ fates to the market, however, the switch to obrok also ostensibly gave serfs the freedom to work outside of agriculture, in industry or trade. But, just as obrok levels led to peasant contestations with the landlord, so too did the question of mobility.
2.11 Obrok and Mobility
On obrok, serfs were no longer required to work the landlord’s plot of land a certain number of days a week and, instead, could chose to work in industry, trade, as boat haulers on the Volga, etc. Of course, these peasants still legally belonged to the estate: after all, they were serfs. As such, potential migrants had to petition for documents in order to leave the estate. Thus, Ol’ga Petrova found herself petitioning Prince Sergei in
1837 for a pass (bilet) to work in a village 16 versts, roughly 10 and a half miles, away from her home in Nikol’skoe. Ol’ga, an unmarried, older woman, had spent the last twelve years living in the house of the peasant Ivan Semov, taking care of his elderly parents. Following their death, Ivan Semon fired Ol’ga, leaving her to fend for herself in
82
her old age. Ol’ga was able to “feed herself through her own labor,” and despite her “old age” and “weak health” found a job weaving linen. But, the village would not allow her to live there without a pass. Although Ol’ga was able to find a job, even as a single, older woman, she was not free to simply pick up and leave Nikol’skoe: in order to live or work in a different village, serfs needed the appropriate documents.182
While Prince Ivan purportedly switched his estate to obrok to “provide every freedom available,” to serfs, in fact both the state and the estate limited the movement of peasants. The state introduced legislation and policies mandating the use of internal passports for any sort of peasant movement. Furthermore, the state empowered the local estate landlord and administration to decide who should be issued passports. Estate policies and the administrators who oversaw them, therefore, proved consequential.
Considering state policies, a system of internal passports was regularized by Peter the Great and his successors. Eric Lohr connects the appearance of passports to the process of enserfment, arguing that “The entire social and legal order came to be center upon the goal of bonding serfs to their masters and to their villages.” During the course of the seventeenth century, the state gifted land to noblemen who served the state. The land, however, was useless without people to work it. Consequently, the state restricted the movement of peasants, ultimately tying them to the land in the Ulozhenie, Law Code, of
1649.183 Nonetheless, problems with run-aways, fugitives, vagrants, and deserters
182 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 221, l. 1 ob.
183 For more information on the enserfment of the Russian population, see: Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 247-276; Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy.; Smith, The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry. 83
persisted. An internal passport system answered the need to monitor and restrict movement.
While Lohr connects Russia’s internal passport system to serfdom, Simon
Franklin sees the introduction of the poll tax as key. The state needed to control the movement of people to be able to collect taxes effectively. As Franklin elucidates,
“Uncontrolled, unmonitored internal travel was a threat to the State’s income, since it might enable unspecified numbers of people to evade the census and hence to avoid taxation.”184 Consequently, the state introduced passports to mitigate losses in revenue.
David Moon expands upon the connection between the state’s needs and population control, arguing that the internal passport system “was part of Peter’s constant struggle against fugitives, vagrants, deserters, and anyone he felt was escaping his demands for men to serve in his armed forces, for laborers for his construction projects, and for taxes for his treasury.”185 The needs of the state, then, pushed it to create technologies to monitor the population. V.G. Chernukha thus views passports as an instrument of social control. Chernukha identifies a tension between the state and its subjects and contends that “unlimited supreme power would mean a state of possessing no civil rights before it, of all subjects operating only with permission and existing under suspicion and control.”186 Nonetheless, while the state implemented the use of passports and other
184 Simon Franklin, “Printing and Social Control in Russia 1: Passports” Russian History 37, no. 3 (2010): 215.
185 David Moon, “Peasant Migration, the Abolition of Serfdom, and the Internal Passport System in the Russian Empire, c. 1800-1914,” in Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives ed. David Eltis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 324-357.
186 V.G. Chernukha, “Pasport v Rossiiskoi imperii: nabliudeniia nad zakonodatel’stvom,” Istoricheskie zapiski 122 (2001): 91. 84
internal migration documents, it also benefitted landlord and, to an extent, the mir. The state’s internal migration policies provided a means for landlords to monitor and restrict the movement of their property, protecting their income as well as the state’s. Meanwhile, because the peasant community was collectively responsible for paying dues, migration policies prevented individuals from skirting their share of the burden. Several different types of documents were implemented to answer the needs of the state as well as needs on the estate.
Peter the Great first mandated the use of internal passports in a decree of 1719 and he and his successors continued to refine both legislation and operation procedures.
In the 1830s, passport legislation was summarized in the Digest of Regulations concerning Passports and Fugitives in the new Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire.
These laws outlined three types of internal migration document based on the distance and length of travel. A permit (pis’mennyi vid) was a written document issued by a landlord, steward, or village elder for peasants traveling less than 30 versty, roughly 20 miles, within their home district. If traveling more than 30 versty, for less than six months, then a pass (bilet) was issued. These passes had to be written on official stamped paper, costing 15 or more kopecks, depending on the length of time requested. Finally, if a peasant was traveling further than 30 versty away for more than six months, he needed a printed passport (pasport or pashport). These documents were issued by district offices of the Treasury. In reality, landlords and managers also had blank printed forms which
85
they also issued to peasants. Printed passports ranged from 85 kopecks to 4 rubles and 35 kopecks depending on the length of time away.187
Extant travel documents give us a sense of what these documents looked like. For example, the pass for Egor Ivanov consisted of an official piece of paper, marked with the imperial crest, the double-headed eagle, and the paper value of 15 kopecks at the top.
The left-hand side of the paper indicated the physical attributes of the bearer. This one noted that Ivanov was fourteen years old, was two arshin, about 4 feet, 6 inches, in height, had curly blond hair and eyebrows, grey eyes, a medium nose and mouth, a round chin, and a clean face.188 The text of the document indicated the subject’s place of residence, including: the province and district, estate, and village. Ivanov was from
Vladimir province, Suzdal’ district, Posveshchitsa estate, and the village of Uvarov.189
The document then listed who granted the passport, where the bearer would travel and for how long. In this case, the elder (starosta), Pavel issued the passport to Ivanov for a period of a year, to be used in various provinces. The passport concluded with the landlord’s personal stamp. To be issued an official state pass, however, peasants like
Ivanov had to navigate estate administrative policies.190
Serfs could request documents through the estate administration, including the bailiff and communal officials, though some directly petitioned Prince Sergei. Like
187 Moon, “Peasant Migration,” 326-328.
188 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 256.
189 Ibid.
190 Ibid. 86
Turgenev’s landlord, however, Prince Sergei was not fond of oral petitions. In a directive to his bailiff in 1813, he noted the arrival of Ivan Nikitin Paramonov, his son Aleksei
Ivanov, and his family requesting a passport to spend a year in the province of Tiumen’.
Although he granted the necessary documents in this situation, Prince Sergei ordered his bailiff not to send another petitioner, but to order them to appear before the estate administration instead.191 After peasants appeared before the administration, the bailiff reported to the landlord and the landlord replied to him with instructions, in this case whether or not to grant the passport. Thus, on May 24, 1815, Prince Sergei ordered his bailiff to grant the peasant Aleksei Paramonov and his family a passport to live in
Tiumen’ for three years, under the condition that Paramonov return to the estate if and when called during that period. In another case, on January 9, 1815, Prince Sergei wrote that his bailiff should issue a passport to the peasant Iakov Petrokov, “without any oppression and without diverting him from industry.”192 This order suggests that it was in
Prince Sergei’s best interest for his peasants to work in industry, as his personal income depended on the economic success of his serfs.
Although it was in Prince Sergei’s interest for his serfs to work where it was most profitable, it was important to him that only the right peasants work outside of the estate.
A good serf contributed his earnings to the estate: he paid obrok, provided for his elderly parents and unmarried sisters, and maintained his family’s home. A bad serf gambled or drank away his earnings. To distinguish one from the other, Prince Sergei ordered his
191 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 14.
192 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 1. 87
bailiff to determine, preferably through police witness, whether the potential migrant had debts and how he conducted himself. Indeed, these conditions were also important for keeping or renewing documents.193
Documents could easily be denied or revoked, especially because of “drunken behavior,” unpaid dues, crime, and other infractions against the community. For example, the widow Ul’iana Gracheva’s son Aleksandr was denied leave to work in Saint
Petersburg because of “rebellious transgressions,” “drunken behavior,” and for not paying obrok.”194 In another case, the widow Proskov’ia Borbuskina petitioned Prince
Sergei because of a “misunderstanding” that culminated in her son being denied leave to work in Saint Petersburg. According to the widow, during autumn there was a division of forestland. Come winter, her son began to cart off the chopped wood but, because of the snow, accidently took two carts of a different family’s wood. The family reported this theft to the bailiff who thereafter refused to grant Borbuskina’s son documents.195
Similarly, after Petr Mikhailov Pulev’s son was accused of intentionally harming himself to avoid recruitment, he was no longer allowed to leave the village to work, much to the chagrin of Pulev.196 Working outside of the village was not a right, but a privilege that was granted and could be taken away.
193 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 14.
194 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 378; see also RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 385 for an example of drunken behavior.
195 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 384.
196 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 220. 88
While converting an estate to obrok theoretically offered serfs “every freedom available to use any method and means to make gains in arable farming and industry,” in reality, serfs were still limited because of their inability to move about freely.197 Serfs could petition to work outside the estate, but it was not guaranteed that they would receive or hold on to this privilege in the long run. The opportunity to travel could easily be lost if a person owed money, behaved poorly, or committed a crime. As the above cases demonstrate, a community’s perception of an individual could also threaten his ability to receive documents. Therefore, because Borbuskina’s son was perceived as a thief for accidentally taking someone else’s wood and Pulev’s son was perceived as intentionally harming himself to avoid recruitment, both were denied passports, no matter the truth of the situation.
While switching an estate from barshchina to obrok purportedly gave serfs every freedom to thrive, their freedom was modulated by estate and state policies. The market may have spelled out profits and losses for peasants based on the relative value of sold produce to purchased grain, but obrok levels did not respond to the market. When the market was bad for peasants, they were doubly burdened by dues. Although, theoretically, they could have sought work in other industries, mobility too was limited.
An internal passport system gave landlords and their administration the authority to allow or disallow movement. Serfs, therefore, negotiated within this social system to pursue their economic interests. They requested passports from local authorities and, when that did not work, petitioned the landlord himself. They even contested obrok payments when
197 [Golitsyn], “Polozhenie dlia krest’ian,” 276. 89
the market was poor, to moderate success. Serfs asserted their economic agency while within a legal category that made them the property of others. In the next chapter, we will introduce the local administration and examine its role in these dynamics of negotiation and contestation.
90
CHAPTER 3:
THE POWER OF INTERMEDIARIES
Describing his estate to Turgenev’s protagonist in Sketches from a Hunter’s
Album, Arkady Pavlych Penochkin remarks, “The bailiff I’ve got there is a good chap, une forte tête, statesman-like!”198 The narrator observes for himself the bailiff’s
“statesman-like” nature. Visiting the village, he describes, “We looked around the threshing-floor, the barn, the store-houses, the outbuilding, the windmill, the cattle-shed, the vegetable allotments and land planted to hemp: everything was undoubtedly in splendid order.”199 Sofron even takes care of the village’s appearance: “all the banks of the ditches had been planted with broom paths had been made between the ricks on the threshing-floor and spread with sand, a weathervane had been fixed to the windmill,” and so forth.200 And yet, despite the village’s comely appearance, the peasants’ despondent faces gives the narrator pause. Indeed, when he and Penochkin exit the threshing-barn, two roughhewn peasants approach them, pleading: “Help us, lord and master!”201 He continues, “Good master, ruined us he has, utterly. Two sons, good master, he’s sent off to be recruits, and now he’s taking away my third son…Yesterday, good master, he led
198 Turgenev, Sketches, 144.
199 Ibid., 150.
200 Ibid.
201 Ibid., 152. 91
away the last little cow from my yard and gave my wife a beating.”202 Penochkin shrugs off these complaints and blames the peasants for their, undoubted, laziness. After all, as
Penochkin brags to the narrator, “since Sofron had taken charge of the Shipilovka peasants there had been not so much as a farthing’s-worth of [obrok] arrears.”203 Later, a friend of the narrator swears that the bailiff was “a dog, not a man. You won’t find another dog like him this side of Kursk.”204 And yet, complaints are useless, as long as the landlord’s affairs are in order.
On the provincial estate, the landlord stood at the apex of power. However,
Penochkin, like Prince Sergei, as a large magnate, could not reside on all of his estates at the same time. Therefore, Penochkin’s bailiff, Sofron, managed the estate. Occupying an intermediary position between landlord and peasant afforded the bailiff power within the community. Although this authority was meant to fulfill the landlord’s orders, Sofron demonstrates that it could also be abused. Intermediary actors like Sofron sought to advance their own interests while contending with pressures from above, from the landlord, and from below, from the peasantry. Despite Sofron’s apparent omnipotence in
Turgenev’s story, documents from Prince Sergei’s estate indicate that the bailiff was not all-powerful. Rather, he had to negotiate his interests with those of the mir on the estate, and those of the landlord from afar. Enterprising serfs took advantage of these competing interest groups to push for their own interests.
202 Ibid.
203 Ibid., 149.
204 Ibid., 154. 92
This chapter considers the bailiff’s power on the estate and how it was limited by the landlord and mir. Correspondence, peasant communal records, and peasant petitions indicate that these disparate groups used their power to pursue their own interests, but challenged and checked each other along the way. Ultimately, they had to work together to preserve the balance of power and the social system that held it all in place.
The estate bailiff was one element of Prince Sergei’s estate’s administrative system. He communicated with the Prince regularly and executed his orders on the estate.
The bailiff, himself, was elected by the mir. The mir was a local administrative institution consisting of a village assembly, which was attended by household patriarchs, and an executive elected by the assembly. The main mir was located in the village of Sulost’, the estate’s largest village, although there was another local mir in Nikol’skoe.
The mir kept a book of service, which was updated yearly from 1820 to 1904, providing us with information about the estate’s administrative apparatus. Positions included the bailiff who was head of the estate administration and charged with the management of the estate. Next came: the clerk (zemskii), who often served as scribe; two foremen (starshina), who headed the communal assembly; two elders (starosty), who exercised local police power; and a dozen or so constables (desiatskie, piatidesiatskie, or sotskie), who fulfilled social and administrative functions, for example, as police officers or administrators of distant farmsteads.205 From 1824 on, the book also lists foresters
(lesniki). And, from 1830 on, three additional foremen and one elder were chosen from
205 Iurii Fedosiuk, Chto neponiatno u klassikov, ili Entsiklopediia russkoro byta XIX veka (Moscow: Flinta, Nauka, 2001); Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 200-207. 93
each village besides Sulost’: Nikol’skoe, Dubrovo, Petrushino, Strely, Khozhino, and
Kuzmitsyn.206 The mir assembly chose who would fill these positions for yearlong periods and forwarded their decisions to Prince Sergei for approval.207
Sometimes, when there was a need, the mir created additional positions. In 1840, they chose an overseer to manage the collection of seeds for sowing.208 In 1851, they chose surveyors to measure hay-making and arable land for the 9th Census.209 And, in the same year, they chose an overseer to administer emergency grain stores.210
Meanwhile, in Moscow, an office (kontora) aided Prince Sergei in the management of all of his estates. Clerks from this office visited estates to investigate petitions and corresponded with bailiffs about essential matters, such as dues and recruitment, when Prince Sergei was unavailable.211
Considering that Prince Sergei owned over 25,000 souls on various estates, his control over these estates would not have been possible without the aid of local institutions. Tracy Dennison argues that “what serfdom amounted to was the policy of the landlord, both its explicit official framework and its actual day-to-day, year-to-year implementation.212 According to Dennison, local officials, were in constant contact with
206 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 70.
207 For example, RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 99.
208 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 238.
209 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 318, l. 4-5.
210 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 322.
211 For example: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 1, 13, 14, 24, 25-26, 37; d. 60, l. 5; d. 61, l. 9.
212 Dennison, “Did Serfdom Matter?” 77-78. 94
the home office. The bailiff, she argues, could not act without their authorization. To
Dennison, the local administration simply served the landlord. Edgar Melton’s work on the estate of Baki tells a different story. On Countess Lieven’s estate, the bailiff and clerk enjoyed considerable authority. Melton argues that while Countess Lieven was an
“enlightened seignior” who “attempted to establish and maintain legal norms in Baki that would protect the peasants against arbitrariness and oppression,” factional competition abounded, as different groups competed for local authority held by the bailiff and clerk.213 Although Countess Lieven, like the landlord in Dennison’s study, produced instructions ordering her estate and employed a central administrative office to oversee affairs, local administrators did not simply follow the policies set forward by the landlord. Instead, they used their authority to pursue their own interests.
My work on Prince Sergei’s estate suggests that neither the landlord nor local officials had absolute power. Rather, power was negotiated between different interest groups. This situation, in turn, gave enterprising individuals space to assert their own interests. We will examine the mir’s role in this dynamic in the following chapter. This chapter focuses on the bailiff as an intermediary. It begins by examining the person of the bailiff, his role on the estate, and his connections to other estate actors. Then, it investigates the extent and limits of his power by observing local social dynamics. In the final section, a case study is conducted, exploring an area of contention on the estate – foresting – and how the administration dealt with this issue. Together, these sections
213 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 54. 95
demonstrate how the bailiff’s power was both extended and limited by social dynamics in situ.
3.1 The Bailiff
Extant correspondence indicates that the bailiff and landlord communicated regularly.214 The bailiff informed Prince Sergei about what was occurring on the estate and any issues that needed to be resolved. Prince Sergei, in turn, offered solutions, asked him specific questions, and issued orders. The mir and landlord also communicated to each other through him.
The bailiff was chosen by the mir and ratified by the landlord. On December 29,
1827, a communal resolution stated, “we… by general agreement and approval, have chosen for the year 1829 as bailiff Abram Andreev Okoemov, as a man of good and sober behavior and capable in the fulfillment of this commissioned duty.” It continued, declaring that the bailiff was due all “obedience” given to him by “the power of the established rules of his Excellency.”215 The wording of the resolution indicates a number of established norms employed when choosing the bailiff and the powers the bailiff obtained upon appointment. The individual chosen had to be approved by a general agreement of all members of the mir because of the awesome authority invested in him.
Indeed, the mir was even obligated to be obedient to the bailiff. This authority, however, did not only derive from the mir’s appointment, but also directly from the landlord and
214 Although few bailiff reports are preserved in the archives, the landlord’s responses remain, indicating a rich correspondence.
215 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.99. 96
his “established rules.” Considering the prestige and power invested in the position,
Prince Sergei’s also had to give his stamp of approval.216
According to the estate’s book of service, documenting estate service positions each year from 1820 until 1904, the bailiff’s tenure varied by the individual. Between
1820 and 1827, a different individual served as bailiff each year. Starting in 1828, Abram
Andreev Okoemov served for 3 years, but his successor, Andrei Ivanov Kurbakov, served for twenty years, the longest period of time recorded. In all likelihood, Kurbakov would have served even longer if not for his untimely death.217 Following Kurbakov, Vasilii
Golitsyn served for one year, followed by Vasilii Vasil’ev Nefed’ev for six years, from
1852 to 1857. No bailiff was listed between 1858 and 1860.218
Length of tenure could be influenced by a number of factors. Initially, when bailiffs were replaced yearly, the landlord or the mir may have sought to limit the power concentrated in one man’s hands. As indicated in the previous chapter, Prince Sergei liked to be informed of everything occurring on his estate and to participate in decision- making processes. And, when bailiffs overstepped their bounds, Prince Sergei confronted them.219 Meanwhile, the mir was duty-bound to be “obedient” to the bailiff, thereby limiting its own authority. The serf Purlevskii remembers how his village bailiff abused his authority: “I frequently heard complaints from my fellow-villagers about the bailiff’s
216 For example, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.61, l. 1; d. 54, l. 2-3.
217 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.61, l. 1; d. 367.
218 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.61, l. 1; d. 70.
219 For example, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.60, l.6. 97
abuses of power. Since I was a relative of his and got on well with him, I told him many times informally to improve the way he carried out his duties…This offended him, and he began to treat me unfairly. Either he would delay the issuing of a travel document for me, on the pretext that the landlord needed me there, or he would persecute me with anything else he could think up.”220 Being chosen as a bailiff elevated an individual within the community through his direct connection to the landlord. In this position, he carried out the landlord’s orders, but could also control what the landlord knew about the estate.
Control of information coupled with empowerment through the landlord allowed the bailiff to manipulate local conditions to his liking, and to the chagrin of his fellow villagers.
Melton describes just such a situation on Countess Lieven’s estate in Baki.
Because the village clerk there controlled the flow of information, peasants “depended
[on him] for access to timber, passports, and preferential treatment in matters of recruitment.”221 When the clerk became aligned with a powerful timber family through marriage, it created a “ruling faction” which decided “how all estate and seigniorial obligations would be distributed among individual households, and also decided which households would have access to timber, employment, and land.”222
Alternatively, the bailiff may have chosen to limit his tenure. Peasant memoirs indicate that such a position carried a heavy weight of responsibility without necessarily
220 Purlevskii, A Life Under Russian Serfdom, 103.
221 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 52.
222 Ibid. 98
offering any rewards. Purlevskii gives a sense of the cost-benefit relationship involved in the position of bailiff when recalling his father’s experiences: “relations between my father and the landlord were the best. The lord even empowered my dad to administer the estate and represent him in courts and juridical institutions…This caused our family much trouble and drew my father away from his own business.”223 Ironically, being empowered meant that Purlevskii’s father’s business suffered. Purlevskii also expressed his own unhappiness when chosen (against his will) to be bailiff: “The honor of being entrusted to conduct this business was very unwelcome to me.”224 While working for the estate administration may have held benefits for serfs, there were also costs involved.
As the communal resolution stated, the bailiff also had to be “capable” of fulfilling his duty.225 He was expected to be able to read, write fluently and legibly, and carry out Prince Sergei’s orders to the letter. Additionally, he had to be of high enough standing in the community to be elected by the mir and to manage the estate effectively.
Finally, the resolution indicated that the mir sought individuals with proven “good and sober behavior,” further narrowing the pool of possible bailiffs. 226
Kurbakov’s twenty-year-long commission, from 1831 to 1851, stands at odds with the short tenure of his predecessors. Although the estate administration, i.e., the main mir, was located on the estate’s largest village, Sulost’, comprising some 382 souls,
223 Purlevskii, A Life Under Russian Serfdom, 63.
224 Ibid., 104.
225 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.99.
226 Ibid. 99
or male serfs, Kurbakov was from Nikol’skoe, the second largest village with 129 souls.227 This separation of power between Sulost’ and Nikol’skoe, located roughly 10 miles apart, would have limited Sulost’s power over the other villages, but also that of the bailiff over the Sulost’ administration. The mir, therefore, traded some of Sulost’s authority for less oversight by the bailiff. These limits may have seemed more palatable to Prince Sergei, who negotiated with local institutions to fulfil his own agenda, as well as the other villages, allowing Kurbakov to serve for an extended period of time.
Kurbakov himself was married to Tatiana Osipova and by the end of his life they had three sons: Vasilii, who was married and had 6 children (3 sons aged 22, 15, and 12, and three young daughters); Pavel who was married; and Grigorii. Together, they lived with his brother, Il’ia Ivanov, who was married with three sons: Petr (who was married with five children, a 13-year-old, 4-year-old, and an infant son, and two young daughters); Sergei, who was married, and Nikolai who was seven years old. Il’ia Ivanov also had underage daughters. All of these members formed one household, with
Kurbakov as patriarch. After Kurbakov s death, the household was divided, forming two new households: one with Kurbakov’s brother as head, and the other headed by his son,
Vasilii. Although Andrei’s household was based in Nikol’skoe, some of his kin lived outside of the village, working in industry. The size of Andrei Ivanov’s household, and the number of working sons and grandsons within it, would have lent the family relative
227 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.199. 100
wealth and stability, perhaps allowing Andrei to devote his time and energy to his position as bailiff.228 Estate documents reveal what, exactly, that position entailed.229
Prince Sergei and the bailiff frequently corresponded about the collection of obrok. He instructed the bailiff how and when to collect obrok: a sum total was placed upon each village based on the number of souls it held, according to the latest Census.230
The mir then divided dues among households. Twice a year, the bailiff sent the dues either directly to Prince Sergei or to the Moscow office. Prince Sergei wrote to the bailiff reminding him when obrok was due and again to inform him when the payment was received. If sums were missing or some of the paper money fake, he notified the bailiff.
The bailiff was the person on the estate responsible for making sure that the landlord received his dues in full and on time.231
Peasant recruitment was another issue of import. Estates were required by the state to provide a certain quota of recruits. These quotas stressed communities as families not only lost a loved one, but also a valued producer.232 Conscription quotas were met through several strategies: by recruiting in the village, purchasing or earning receipts
(kvtantsii) gained from having sent peasants into recruitment outside of recruitment periods, or by buying an outsider for recruitment. Prince Sergei related recruitment
228 See Chapter 6 for more information on household sizes and wealth.
229 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.367.
230 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 10-11.
231 See, for example: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 2-3, 12, 16, 37; d. 58, l. 10-11, 17, 12-14, 18, 19; d. 59, l. 6; d. 60, l. 3, 4, 19-20.
232 See Chapter 4 for more information on recruitment and its effects on the peasant household. 101
quotas to the bailiff, and the mir was then required to select individuals. If Prince Sergei received petitions related to recruitment, he ordered the mir, through the bailiff, to explain complaints. Alternatively, Prince Sergei collected payments for receipts or stand- ins, to minimize the number of recruits taken from the estate. The bailiff was responsible for collecting this sum. Recruitment will be discussed further in the following chapter.233
The bailiff was also responsible for managing village and family affairs, regulated by the landlord. Estate design, discussed in the previous chapter, was one such example.
Prince Sergei planned the layout of his estate; however, he relied upon the bailiff to execute it.234 Similarly, the bailiff regulated household divisions, which required landlord consent. Landlords sought to limit household divisions, believing that larger households were better capable of coping with the vicissitudes of peasant life in the nineteenth century, including high mortality rates and conscription. Serfs petitioned Prince Sergei to divide their households. He then approved or disapproved these divisions through the bailiff.235
Peasants also turned to the bailiff for aid, knowing his connection to the landlord.
He granted passports to migrant workers and documents to women marrying outside of the estate, after procuring Prince Sergei’s permission first, of course.236 If a crime occurred, the bailiff notified the Prince and coordinated and the mir’s efforts to settle the
233 See, for example: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 4-5, 10, 17-18, 22-23, 24, 25-26, 29-30.
234 See: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 6-7, 16; d. 61, l. 2-3, 10-11, 16-17, 23.
235 See: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 3-4, 5-6; d. 59, l. 6; d. 60, l. 6-7.
236 For migrant passports, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 2-3, 14; d. 58, l. 1-2, 15. For marriages, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 1-2, 3-4, 7-9, 16; d. 60, l. 10, 11-12; d. 61, l. 4. 102
case.237 Only the most serious crimes, such as murder, were handled outside of the estate by the state court system. Moreover, when peasants were involved in interpersonal disputes, whether involving debts or breached business deals, they approached the bailiff for conflict resolution.
The bailiff was the one person on the estate with whom Prince Sergei had to communicate in order to run his estate. Ideally, he would represent the prince, executing his orders, maintaining his plans, and guarding his interests. In reality, the bailiff also considered his own interests. Furthermore, he was a member of the peasant community, sharing its needs, concerns, families, and friends. These pressures would have influenced how he fulfilled and even interpreted his duties as bailiff. Peasant petitions indicate different ways the bailiff used his position on the estate, but also the forces that kept the bailiff from becoming a Sofron Yakovlich. Social dynamics – the relations between bailiff, landlord, mir, and individual serfs –determined the extent and limit of the bailiff’s power. The next section investigates this dynamic with an analysis of the social constraints limiting the bailiff’s power in situ.
3.2 Estate Dynamics and the Limits of the Bailiff’s Authority
In 1851, the foremen of Nikol’skoe, Gavrila Sukhanov and Ivan Smyslov, sent a petition to Prince Sergei criticizing the bailiff, Vasilii Vasil’ev Nefed’ev. According to their petition, Nefed’ev allowed a tavern keeper to build an extension (pristroika) to the public house (kabak) in Nikol’skoe. The resulting structure was 2 sazhen in length by 4
237 See: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 1-2, 12-14; d. 60, l. 10-11. 103
sazhen, 14 feet by 28 feet.238 This extension left too little space between the public house and the neighboring house, owned by Ivan Ivanov Shipkov, placing the village at risk of fire. To add insult to injury, the owner of the public house was an outsider. Before sending in their petition, the foremen went to Sulost’ and appeared before the mir to contest the building. Although the bailiff visited Nikol’skoe the following day, he continued to allow the contested building. Next, they complained that Nefed’ev began to lend (arendoe soderzhanie) fishing privileges, thus depriving the villagers of Nikol’skoe of the right to fish in the river. Finally, they protested the transfer of Shipkov’s house to a different location, following the public house extension. For these offenses, they sought to replace the bailiff. They wanted someone, they wrote, like the former bailiff, Andrei
Ivanov Kurbakov.239
Through this petition, these foremen protested the transfer of power from their neighbor Kurbakov to Nefed’ev in Sulost’. Under Kurbakov, Nikol’skoe was able to retain its local autonomy. Though the administration was housed in Sulost’, the bailiff lived in Nikol’skoe and consequently made decisions with local conditions in mind. After
Kurbakov’s death, the reins passed to Nefed’ev, in Sulost’. Suddenly, Nikol’skoe’s village matters were decided by outsiders, all the way in Sulost’. This transfer of power led to changes of which the locals did not approve, such as the location of new buildings or revised fishing policies. Nonetheless, the peasants of Nikol’skoe were not powerless in
238 1 sazhen is equal to 7 feet.
239 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.326, l. 3-4. 104
this situation. As the petition indicates, serfs voiced their complaints, in person, at communal gatherings. And, if that failed, they petitioned the landlord directly.
Receiving this petition, Prince Sergei turned to the mir in Sulost’ to explain the allegations raised against the bailiff. Considering the first allegation, the mir explained that the targeted individual had lived with his family in the public house for over nine years. Moreover, the former bailiff, Kurbakov, had approved the building project in order to have space for cows, barrels of wine, and other foodstuffs. The builder had also asked to cover the building with boards instead of straw, which would make the building safer and more attractive. As for the size of the building, from the public house, it extended 5.
5 arshin in width, about 12 feet and 9.6 inches, and 14.75 arshin in length, about 34 feet and 4.8 inches.240 The distance from the neighboring peasant’s house was 9 arshin, about
20 feet. Although the mir deemed that this distance did not prove a large risk, they nonetheless asked the bailiff to bring down the extension. But the district police officer
(upravnik) would not agree without the permission of the landlord. Foreman Smyslov appeared before the district police officer to explain the situation and was counseled to abandon the affair or submit a petition. Consequently, the affair was abandoned.241
The mir then turned to the petition’s second complaint, that the bailiff started leasing fishing privileges. The mir claimed that Nefed’ev actually appeared before the mir to approve a fishing lease for Andrei Petrov Kapustin and Petr Andreev Kapralov of
Sulost’ for one summer at a cost of 15 silver rubles. They defended this action, arguing
240 1 arshin is equal to about 2 feet and four inches.
241 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.318, l. 8-9. 105
that in the past the Kotorosl’ river, a tributary of the Volga connecting the towns of
Rostov and Iaroslavl’, had been used by the entire estate and only within the last 13 years had it fallen under the control of Nikol’skoe. They noted, however, that they had not rented fishing privileges in the river beyond that year because they did not know to whom the river would belong after the 9th Census, whether to Nikol’skoe or to the entire estate.242
Next, they considered the transfer of Shipkov’s house to a different location.
Shipkov had occupied the house, located near the public house, for twenty years. The mir implied that, because of this long tenure, he would have had to rebuild soon anyway, to avoid complete dilapidation. Consequently, it was unnecessary to move his home to a different location. 243
The mir’s resolution cleared the bailiff of all blame. The contested building had been approved by the previous bailiff, Kurbakov, whom the peasants of Nikol’skoe, incidentally, revered. Nonetheless, the mir investigated the building and ordered it to be taken down; but, from there, the affair ended, requiring further permission from the district police officer and landlord. As for the fishing privileges, Nefed’ev had received permission from the mir and was returning to past practices. Indeed, a mir resolution from 1847 indicated that the mir had leased Kurbakov rights over communal fishing for eight years, for the price of 100 rubles per year.244 Finally, although the mir admitted that
242 Ibid.
243 Ibid.
244 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.297. 106
the bailiff need not have moved Shipkov’s house, that was only because the house was reaching “complete dilapidation” and would have had to be rebuilt anyway.
Having explained the allegations brought forth by the foremen of Nikol’skoe, the mir began to defend the bailiff. Responding to the request that Nefed’ev be relieved of his position, the mir stated that this demand was “not in conformity with common sense.”245
They argued that they had long known Nefed’ev’s good nature and contended that the foremen and peasants of Nikol’skoe did not even have a right to complain because they, too, had participated in the bailiff’s election. They continued, stating that during a general meeting, the foremen and all the peasants of Nikol’skoe had sworn before an icon of the
Virgin Mary that they had not participated in the petition. Finally, they contended that jealousy was the real reason behind the complaints. The mir defended the bailiff against complaints raised against him, preserving the status quo and the concentration of authority in Sulost’. Indeed, Nefed’ev continued to serve through 1857.246
The case of the foremen versus the bailiff indicates that individuals did have certain avenues of recourse when the bailiff overstepped his bounds; however, they had little hope of supplanting him. As Stephen Hoch shows us in his work on Tambov, local institutions worked together with the landlord to exert social control and preserve their authority.247 The bailiff, mir, and landlord each had an interest in preserving the system in which they held power. Therefore, they collaborated to protect that power. An attack on
245 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.318, l. 9.
246 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.318, l. 8-9; d. 70.
247 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 91-159. 107
one link would weaken the whole chain. Nonetheless, I argue that they also had different, competing interests. While the landlord lived in Moscow, the bailiff and members of the mir lived and labored in the village and shared ties with fellow inhabitants. Individuals took advantage of these competing interests, appealing to one group or another to fulfill their own goals. The foremen first turned to the mir when protesting the public house’s extension. When that measure led to naught, they petitioned the landlord. The mir then became responsible for explaining the bailiff’s behavior, not just to the foremen, but also to the landlord. Indeed, the mir did not agree to the extension or to the transfer of
Shipkov’s house. Nonetheless, they vehemently supported the bailiff himself.
The one case presented in the archives in which the mir strove for the removal of the bailiff seems to have been exceptional. In 1831, the mir wrote a petition to Prince
Sergei in which they admitted, “similar petitions have never been given to his
Excellency.”248 They complained about the bailiff Pavel Emel’ianov’s “unjust” and
“insulting” deeds, especially his use of the mir’s funds. Emel’ianov’s actions hurt not just individual peasants, but the mir. As such, they sought to remove him from the position of bailiff. However, although the bailiff was elected by the peasant, they needed Prince
Sergei’s permission before they could replace him.249
The above petitions demonstrate how social dynamics limited the power of the bailiff. Individuals like the foremen appealed to the mir and Prince Sergei to contest the bailiff’s actions. The mir could also appeal to the landlord to remove a bailiff. Another
248 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.173.
249 ibid. 108
petition sent during Nefed’ev’s tenure shows the limits of the bailiff’s power on the estate. On September 9, 1851, elder Kozlov and peasants Ivan Mikhailov Pomalotov and
Dmitrii Nikolaev Moshin of Nikol’skoe petitioned Prince Sergei for justice. According to the petition, Prince Sergei had supported the construction of a new iconostasis in the village church in Nikol’skoe and the decoration of its bare walls. This project was supposed to be paid for by selling the homes of deceased villagers. One such home was being used by Petrushino native, Ol’ga Petrova Semova and her illegitimate (nezakonno) son. Semova had petitioned former bailiff Kurbakov to use the house, but now the sums were needed for the church. The villagers turned to the bailiff for satisfaction. Nefed’ev, however, could not resolve the problem. He responded that, although Prince Sergei had ordered the land sold, the land was not sold and “only God knows when it will be sold.”250
Unlike the earlier petition, which pitted the Nikol’skoe community against the bailiff, this one set the community in opposition to an individual, an outsider at that.
Here, representatives from Nikol’skoe approached the very bailiff that they had petitioned against earlier that year, to gain funds due them for their church’s renovation.
The sale of the house occupied by Semova should have supplied the funds. The bailiff, however, was unable to meet their demands: although the landlord had ordered Semova to sell, she had not done so. Consequently, Nikol’skoe petitioned the landlord.
Whereas the earlier petition indicates the bailiff’s ability to dictate events on the estate, this petition shows the limits of the bailiff’s control. The community wanted the
250 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.326, l. 5 ob. 109
bailiff to do something about Semova but he could not. She was ordered to sell, but she did not.
Like the Nikol’skoe community, individual actors also navigated the spaces between the bailiff, mir, and landlord in order to forward their interests. In 1837, when bailiff Kurbakov refused to issue Semova a ticket (bilet) to work in the linen industry outside of the estate, she petitioned Prince Sergei.251 And, in 1858 when the bailiff demanded 10 silver rubles from Semen and Ivan Maslenikov and Mikhail Gerasimov, they, too, petitioned Prince Sergei. Although the bailiff held power on the estate, he was ultimately answerable to Prince Sergei.252
The bailiff gained power through his election by the mir and consequent proximity to the landlord. This authority, however, was limited by the mir, which asserted its own local prerogatives, and the landlord, who sought to control the estate from afar. Within this competition, individual peasants found a space in which they could promote their own interests. They alternately approached the bailiff, mir, or landlord to achieve their goals, sometimes pitting one group against another. These groups, however, also worked together to maintain the social system and preserve their power within that system. Other elements within the local administration likewise display this dynamic: as intermediaries between the serf population and the landlord, they maintained control on the estate but had to navigate pressures from above, below, and sideways.
251 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.221.
252 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.411. 110
While this section specifically considered the bailiff’s role and power within the social system, the next section conducts a case study examining an area of conflict between different interest groups: foresting. It explores the administrative solution developed to moderate conflicts of interest and determines how the administration operated within the greater social system. As in this section, the following demonstrates the value of social dynamics.
3.3 Contested Space, Administrative Solution
Forestland was a contested space, fought over by landlord and peasant. While wood was an important resource for peasants, landlords wielded control over it. Stephen
Hoch shows us that the Gagarin estate of Petrovskoe had a forest, which was 1,200 desiatina, or 4,320 acres, in size.253 In order for serfs to use lumber, however, they had to perform extra service dues for the landlord.254 On Golitsyn estates, the landlord commissioned an overseer to regulate use of forestland, whereas the mir regulated use of arable land, meadows, and even rivers. At stake was the renewability of resources, and the landlord’s ability to control those resources and profit from them.
Prince Mikhail Fedorovich Golitsyn claims in his instructions that oversight was necessary “to preserve the estate forest from unauthorized cutting and complete destruction.”255 Anton Chekhov’s Astrov bemoans the destruction of Russia’s natural
253 1 desiatina equals about 3.7 acres.
254 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 57.
255 [Golitsyn], “O smotritele za lesami,” 284. 111
resources in Uncle Vanya: “Russian forests are toppling beneath the axe, the habitats of birds and beasts are dwindling, tens of thousands of trees are perishing, rivers are running shallow and drying up, gorgeous natural scenery is disappearing irretrievably…you all recklessly chop down forests, and soon nothing will be left on earth.”256 Although
Chekhov wrote after the emancipation, contemporary memoirs give credence to the prevalence of this concern among the nobility.
The house serf Avdot’ia Grigor’eva Khrushchova recounted the tension between landlord and serf over forest resources when describing a letter written by her landlord in
1859. The landlord claimed that the peasants had divided the entire forest, consisting of
250 desiatina, or 925 acres of land, into parts, sparing nothing. They traded timber and used it however they thought fit. Then, when a highway was built past the village, the peasants asked permission to build lodger houses with timber from the forest. They ended up building eight lodger buildings, using, according to this account, about 2000 trees on each. Avdot’ia Grigor’eva noted that when her landlord saw the destruction, he opined that it would take a century for the forest to recover its former state.257
The destruction of forest resources was an outcome that landlords sought to avoid.
According to Colum Leckey, the depletion of Russia’s timber supplies was a concern for many contributors to the Work of the Free Economic Society, the Free Economic
256 Anton Chekhov, “Uncle Vanya,” in Anton Chekhov’s Selected Plays, trans. Laurence Senelick (New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.), 204-205.
257 A.G. Krushchova, “Vospominaniia,” in Rossiia v memuarakh: Vospominaniia russkikh krest’ian XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX veka, ed. V.A. Koshelev (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006), 94-107. 112
Society’s journal. 258 This awareness and concern for the natural environment arose concurrently with the growth of naturalism in the 18th century and of the scientific profession in the 19th century. Naturalists and scientists looked to the provinces to put their methods into practice and saw in their science a way to modernize Russia.259
There is something to be said for these concerns. David Moon argues that, “In the process of making a living from the land, peasants chopped down millions of acres of trees to convert forest into arable land, meadows and pasture, and to provide timber for construction and craft production.”260 Peasants used a slash-burn-technique to convert the forest-covered central heartland of Russia into agricultural space. When the relatively infertile soil was exhausted, they simply converted new territory. Even into the nineteenth century, with the population steadily growing, peasants continued to work extensively, rather than intensively, migrating to newly conquered territory to the south and east, and adapting their environment rather than adapting to the environment.261 Peasants also used forestland to make sedentary life in the central heartland of Russia livable. Because soil in this region was poor, they developed handicrafts to supplement their agricultural income. Moreover, they needed timber to build houses and used wood as fuel during
Russia’s cruel, long winters.
258 Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment, 154.
259 David Moon, The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 46-88.
260 Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 61.
261 See: Moon, The Plough that Broke the Steppes, 92. 113
The need for wood was so acutely felt that in 1852, foremen from the village of
Nikol’skoe, with the backing of all the peasants, petitioned Prince Sergei for more firewood. According to the petition, the serfs of Nikol’skoe received a certain quantity of timber from a forest lying near the village of Sulost’. This amount was divided equally among all households and constituted their yearly supply. The foremen sought to supplement their share with wood gathered along marshes and haying land, land not readily used. Before submitting their petition to Prince Sergei, the serfs first turned, in
1851, to the estate bailiff, Vasilii Vasil’ev Nefed’ev in Sulost’. Nefed’ev, however, responded that he did not possess the right (prava) to allow them to use forestland.
Instead, he advised them to petition Prince Sergei directly. Only he held authority over his forestland; therefore, use of it could only by authorized by him. Hearing this reply, the peasants penned a petition to their landlord, but they received no response. In 1852, they tried once more to secure additional firewood by petition. These serfs’ continued efforts indicate the need that drove their requests. Sadly, this was really the only legal option they had; some turned to thievery as an illegal alternative.262
Need for lumber was also felt within the serf community, causing conflict not only between serf and landlord, but also among serfs. Conflict erupted between the family of widow Proskovia Bobrushkina and the Grachev family when Grachev accused
Bobrushkina’s son of stealing his firewood in 1854. According to Bobrushkina’s account, the forest had been divided for serf use in autumn; however, she was unable to cart the
262 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.337, l. 3-4. 114
wood which was located seven to eight verst, 4.6 to 5.3 miles, away from her dwelling.263
Unfortunately, of her three sons, one was called for recruitment and another died.
Meanwhile, her youngest son had been living in Saint Petersburg with his uncle and, after his uncle’s death, worked as a vegetable gardener (ogorodnik) at the Trinity-St. Sergius
Monastery. Upon hearing of his brother’s death, he returned to his mother’s home.
Nonetheless, his late return meant that he only began to cart the timber home in winter, when a thick layer of snow covered the ground. As a result, he purportedly accidentally took two cartloads of Grachev’s wood. Seeking justice, Grachev turned to the bailiff,
Nefed’ev, who thereafter refused to issue Bobrushkina’s son paperwork to work outside of the village because of his crime. In response, she penned a petition to Prince Sergei, detailing the accidental nature of the theft and beseeching him to allow her son to continue working outside of the village.264
Wood was an essential resource for peasants, but its quantity was restricted.
Therefore, when a household’s supply was diminished through theft, whether accidental or not, that household risked more than simple inconvenience: it risked not having enough fuel to get through the winter or supplies to cover necessary building or repairs.
This interpersonal conflict, however, ended up involving the administration, as Grachev sought recompense by appealing to the bailiff. Bobrushkina then tried to circumvent the local administration and clear her son’s name by petitioning Prince Sergei directly. This discord was precipitated by a timber dispute.
263 One verst is about .66 miles.
264 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.384. 115
To peasants who were trying to survive, timber was a resource they needed and, therefore, used. Landlords and state officials, who had the benefit of statistics and a more comfortable existence, were far enough removed to see the dangers of such rapid deforestation. The destruction of the forest, however, was not the sole concern evinced by landlords. Prince Mikhail’s forest instructions stated that they were meant to preserve the estate from unauthorized cutting. Stephen Frank argues that illegal cutting was the most prevalent crime in the countryside.265 Penalty books on the Gagarin estate of Mishino indicate that illegal cutting was, indeed, a problem. For example, on November 2, 1820, a peasant by the name of Iakov Shlein was charged with stealing wood from the birch forest. He was punished by the rod, ironically, a birch rod.266 Meanwhile, Prince Sergei frequently encouraged his bailiff to observe that the forest was not encroached upon.267
The loss of natural resources was only one piece of the puzzle; the landlord’s control over his resources was also at stake. Additional income was one privilege of control. As noted earlier, Prince Gagarin had his serfs perform additional labor to pay for forest use. Serfs who needed wood had no choice but to comply. The satirist Saltykov-
Shchedrin sketches how a conniving landlord takes advantage of a down-on-his-luck peasant to fatten his coffers. Landlord Porphyry Vladimiritch, alternatively known as
Iudushka, lies in wait, shrouded by a thicket of birches, as an unfortunate peasant, his cart overturned with a broken axle, ruefully contemplates his options. Finally, the peasant
265 Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1999), 109-114.
266 RGADA f. 1262, op. 2, d.122.
267 For example, see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.59, l. 1-2; d. 60, l. 17-18. 116
looks both ways, choses a tree, and pulls out his ax. On cue, Porphyry ambushes him and declares, “It’s not I but the law condemns you. Take to my house the birch you’ve cut down for the axle, and you may as well bring a ruble’s fine with you; and meanwhile I’ll keep your ax!”268 Observing how this situation could benefit him, Porphyry allows the peasant to cut down a branch, only to fine the thief and confiscate his belongings. He cares not for the destruction of the forest, but for using it to his own enrichment. To this end, Porphyry exerts his authority when would-be thieves encroached upon his resources.
How did other landlords exert their authority over their forests? Landlords like
Prince Mikhail wrote instructions to manage the use of their resources, just as they ordered their estates through abstract plans and designs. These instructions created local administrators – forest overseers (smotriteli) – who supervised foresting. Forest overseers were serfs, members of the local community, who gained prestige, monetary compensation, and a greater degree of power due to their control of a prized resource.
They served as a bridge between Prince Mikhail and his serfs. But, they also held local ties, as they were embedded in the social life of the peasant community. In their role as forest overseers, they had to balance Prince Mikhail’s will and the pressures placed upon them by the local peasant community. These dynamics and tensions are seen when comparing written instructions to local events.
268 Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov, The Golovlyov Family, trans. Natalie Duddington (New York: New York Review of Books, 2001), 282-283. 117
3.4 Foresting Instructions
Prince Mikhail’s instructions discuss a number of topics: the purpose of a forest overseer, how he is chosen, his benefits and privileges, the extent of his power, his duties, and situations deserving punishment. By far the lengthiest section concerns the overseer’s duties. It underscores Prince Mikhail’s preoccupation with unauthorized wood cutting.
Prince Mikhail instructed the overseer to keep constant vigilance, preventing peasants or neighbors from stealing wood. The overseer had to carefully observe woodsmen (lesniki) for carelessness or abuse of timber and, in particular, prevent them from selling wood to peasants. If a transgression did occur, he had to report it. He had to be especially vigilant at times that peasants might think they were safe to steal wood: during the night, on holidays, and on rainy days. And, if he noticed anything awry, he had to report directly to the administration. He could not allow anyone into the forest unless he had direct permission from the landlord or administration, and even then he had to make sure the landlord’s instructions were carried out to the letter.269
The overseer had to be present during the entire tree-chopping process. He was responsible for making sure that trees were felled in a particular area, not all around the forest; that peasants did not pile up woodchips and litter; and that the tree stumps were a certain height. After this procedure was completed, he had to undergo an even lengthier administrative process. First, he made sure that all the chopped trees were stamped and recorded in a book. Then, he sent the book to the estate steward who ordered the village mir or scribe to write about the tree felling in “the book.” Independent of this book, the
269 [Golitsyn], “O smotritele za lesami,” 284-288. 118
administration would send the overseer a special bound, stamped statement book about the trip. Then, the book would be stored in a locked box, with both the overseer and the cashier present, and with the cashier in charge of the key. After a year, the steward, village elder, and woodsmen would observe the entire forest, noting the number of stamped tree stumps. Afterward, they would compare this number to the number in the book. If the numbers were not equal, the overseer would be questioned by the administration. 270
Besides these duties, the overseer was also bound to pick up dry boughs and small, fallen trees and bring them to the administration. Ostensibly, these measures would limit forest fires and create use for damaged trees, but it also meant keeping track of all timber, no matter how mean, and keeping it in the hands of the administration.271
These instructions demonstrate the administration’s oversight over estate forests.
Authorized wood chopping involved the landlord granting permission, the overseer supervising the chopping and sending an account to the administration, the mir writing an additional account, the administration sending a special statement, the cashier and overseer locking the estate book, and the stewards, woodsmen, and elder conducting an annual survey. While these bureaucratic steps showed the heavy involvement of the administration, they also indicate the forest’s importance to both the landlord and the peasantry. Such measures would ensure Prince Mikhail’s control over his resources, preventing theft and ensuring the sustainability of the forest.
270 Ibid.
271 Ibid. 119
Prince Sergei’s interests mirrored those of Prince Mikhail. According to a census conducted in 1834, the estate possessed a “small” (melkii) and a “large” (krupnyi) forest, comprising a total of 541.5 desiatina and 27 square sazhen, about 2,003 acres and 189 square feet of land.272 This forestland was used by all of the villages and hamlets of the estate, save Kuzmitsyn: Sulost’, Nikol’skoe, Dubrovo, Petrushino, Khazhino, and
Strely.273 Local officials oversaw and maintained these forests. Unlike Prince Mikhail,
Prince Sergei did not personally appoint overseers; rather, the mir chose foresters, with
Prince Sergei’s approval. Extant communal papers, extending from 1827 to 1858, show what this role entailed.
In 1842, the mir passed a resolution naming several serfs as foresters. From
Sulost’, they chose Dmitrii Mikhailov Starev, Kipriian Petrov Demidov, Abram Nikolaev
Zhuzhlov, and Petr Alekseev Bolnov; from Petrushino, Ivan Andreev Sokov; from
Khokhino, Aleksandr Iakovlev Komanov; and from Strely, Nikolai Semenov Gorelov.
The mir commissioned these men to observe the forest each day, rotating this task among the villages weekly. If they saw cutting, the foresters reported to their village elders, who then reported to the Sulost’ elders. The Sulost’ elders reported to the estate bailiff each week. The bailiff himself was Prince Sergei’s direct link to the estate and he expected to be updated regularly. If the Sulost’ elders noticed that new cutting appeared but was not reported by the elders of the village that was on duty that day, the responsible forester
272 1 desiatina is about 3.7 acres, 1 sazhen is about 7 feet.
273 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.199. 120
would be held accountable to the bailiff and to Prince Sergei and faced the threat of harsh punishment.274
The mir’s directive divided responsibility over forest cutting among the estate’s villages. Dividing responsibility meant that Sulost’, where the bailiff and the mir resided, could not take advantage of its position of power to reward its own inhabitants. The smaller hamlets checked Sulost’s potential by engaging in foresting themselves.
Meanwhile, the Sulost’ administration made sure that others villages did not transgress established rules by requiring village elders to report to them. Moreover, they held foresters personally responsible if unreported cutting had been found. While Prince
Sergei was kept apprised of the situation through correspondence with the local bailiff, actual monitoring and management of the forest was overseen through administrative units on the estate: first the foresters, then the village elders, followed by the Sulost’ elders, and finally the bailiff. Of course, these administrators did not necessarily share
Prince Sergei’s interests when it came to forest management. They were also serfs for whom wood was a basic necessity. Moreover, they remained members of the serf community, sharing ties of friendship and kinship with their fellow villagers. Pressures on the estate, then, competed with orders from above, influencing these administrators’ actions and behaviors.
Turgenev demonstrates the competing pressures that foresters encountered in
Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. One stormy night, Turgenev’s narrator approaches a peasant homestead seeking shelter. After gaining admittance, he soon learns that its
274 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.256. 121
owner was none other than the infamous forester, Foma, called Loner by the local peasants who “feared [him] like fire.”275 According to them, “there wasn’t a better master of his job in the world: ‘He won’t let you take so much as a bit o’brushwood! It doesn’t matter when it is, even at dead o’night, he’ll be down on you like a ton o’snow, an’ you’d best not think of puttin’ up a fight – he’s as strong and skillful as a devil! An’ you can’t bribe him, not with drink, not with money, not with any trickery.”276 As it so happens, the narrator soon witnesses the forester in action when a peasant tries to take advantage of the inclement weather to fell a tree for his family. Living up to the lore, Loner soon apprehends the individual and brings him back to his cottage. There, the peasant pleads with Foma, “Let me go…It’s bein’ hungry…Let me go.”277 Loner denies his appeal, calling the peasant a thief. The peasant does not give up, “By God, it’s bein’ hungry…an’ the babes cryin’, you know what it’s like. It gets real hard, just you see.”278 Seeing
Foma’s obstinacy, the peasant begins to berate him “you bloody bastard, bloody animal you, animal, animal!”279 Knowing Loner’s history and observing his anger, the narrator begins to fear the means to which Foma would resort to quiet the peasant. Then Loner does something completely unexpected: he lets the peasant go.280
275 Turgenev, Sketches, 175.
276 Ibid.
277 Ibid., 179.
278 Ibid.
279 Ibid., 180.
280 Ibid., 173-181. 122
Turgenev’s forester understood the hardships of peasant life. He himself lived in a one-room, smoke-blackened cottage and alone cared for his young daughter and infant child. Although he objected to thievery and earned his livelihood by protecting the forest, in the end he let the peasant go. The needs of the very real and desperate peasant standing in front of him outweighed the orders of a distant landlord. Nonetheless, the forester had to weigh his options carefully as the landlord ultimately held him responsible for the integrity of the forest.
While a large responsibility was placed on the shoulders of the overseer, there were also benefits to holding the position. According to Prince Mikhail’s instructions, the overseer was chosen by the landlord and exempted from recruitment, communal administration, social work, and dues, as were his wife and children. Additionally, he received a salary and the use of a saddle horse to deliver messages.281
These benefits made the position appealing for peasants like Vasilii Ivanov
Kuzhetsov who petitioned to manage the forest office in the Golitsyn village of
Elizavetino in Tver’ province. This letter was not Kuzhetsov’s first attempt to secure the position: he first appealed to the Moscow office but his request was denied. As a result, he penned a letter, requesting to plead his case in person. He described the oppression he felt since hearing back from the main office and argued that he had always fulfilled any commission assigned to him and made sure that peasants make timely due and arrear payments. Kuzhetsov’s efforts to become a forest manager, starting with a request sent to the main office followed by a letter sent to the landlord with a request to plead his case in
281 [Golitsyn], “O smotritele za lesami,” 284-288. 123
person, not only show his personal determination but also indicate the attractiveness of the position.282
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. An overseer could be punished for transgressions such as exceeding designated powers, pandering to woodsmen, failing to report unauthorized wood chopping, allowing secret trips into the woods because of money or friendship, and receiving other reproaches. Prince Mikhail recognized that an overseer could take advantage of his position. He could provide or sell forest privileges to family, friends, or associates, thereby enriching himself or, more altruistically, providing for his community, at the expense of his landlord. Consequently, he threatened overseers with Siberian exile or military recruitment for wrongdoing.283
Overzealousness, too, could have negative ramifications for the community. On
May 13, 1816, the peasant Il’ia Grigor’ev was shot and killed. According to court records, en route to a dacha to survey sowed rye, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin’s serfs Grigor’ev and Egor Petrov cut brushwood from a field owned by Prince
Dolgorukov. Investigators discovered that, at the time of the murder, his forest overseers,
Ivan Ustinov, Fedot Mironov, Ivan Maksimov, and Antip Minaev, were patrolling the forest with a gun. Witnesses claimed they saw Ustinov chase Grigor’ev and start a fight.
Grigor’ev managed to get away, but shortly thereafter a shot was heard. According to
Ustinov, Prince Dolgorukov himself had urged them to patrol with the fateful gun.284
282 RGADA f. 1263, op. 5, d.100.
283 [Golitsyn], “O smotritele za lesami,” 284-288.
284 RGADA f. 1262, op. 5, d.705. 124
In addition to this damning evidence, Ustinov failed to appear at court, casting further suspicion on his character. As it turns out, he had run off to Moscow. His godfather, who had connections with the court, warned him of his impending arrest, allowing Ustinov to abscond undetected. In the end, however, he could not escape judgment. Ustinov was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia, while his nostrils were cut as a sign of his moral depravity. The other overseers escaped a similar fate because of the lack of evidence condemning them personally. 285
The murder of Grigor’ev by Ustinov, a forest overseer, shows the very real conflict over scarce resources that peasants experienced. Indeed, wood theft culminated in Grigor’ev’s murder. While the direct cause of murder was a conflict between an overseer and peasant, strict policies implemented by landlords increased tensions on the estate. Adding to this tension, Prince Dolgorukov purportedly advised his overseer to carry a gun while patrolling the forest. While this case occurred on a Dolgorukov estate, the Golitsyn instructions indicate the interest landlords had in curbing illegal cutting.
Through these instructions, landlords sought to control their resources, coming into conflict with serfs who needed these resources in their everyday lives. Overseers served as an intermediary between these two groups. On the one hand, the landlord commissioned them to protect his interests. On the other hand, they themselves were part of the peasantry. They therefore also experienced pressure from below to serve the interests of their community, friends, and family. In this situation, this tension came to the fore in the form of murder.
285 ibid. 125
3.5 Conclusion
While landlords were the highest authority on the estate, large magnates were removed from the physical locality and from the serfs they governed. Consequently, they needed an administration to oversee affairs locally. Members of this administration gained power from their intermediary position between the landlord and peasant community; however, they also had ties to the community, being serfs themselves.
Therefore, as a bridge between landlord and serf, they had to juggle the demands of the former with pressures from the latter. They also had their own, personal interests to consider. The mir and the landlord checked the authority of officials like the bailiff because their own competing interest. Nonetheless, these groups also worked together to preserve the very system that gave them control. Meanwhile, individual peasants used these competing groups to their advantage when pursuing their goals.
126
CHAPTER 4:
RECRUITMENT, THE MIR, AND THE COMMUNITY
During his travels through Russia in 1843, Baron August von Haxthausen witnessed a mir meeting taking place in Iaroslavl’ province. The village men formed a circle, with the communal headman, village elder, and household patriarchs in the center.
The young men stood “perfectly quiet” while the elders discussed community matters and the head settled individual pursuits. Then, “[with] tears and cries of woe” a man pleaded with them to spare his son from military conscription.286
According to Edgar Melton, “Recruitment selection was one of the most powerful control levers in the hands of the clerk and other communal officials.”287 These officials used their positions to help their friends and family and hurt their foes, as conscription deprived households of valuable workers. My research indicates that the mir’s power did not exist in a vacuum; rather, it had to contend with interest groups exerting pressure from above and below.
Serf families contested communal decisions and petitioned Prince Sergei to spare their sons. Similarly, Alison Smith shows in a case study of the village of Chutmotovo that the “process of deciding which peasant to send, and then the aftermath of that decision, showed the limits of authority when contested by particularly canny
286 Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, 63.
287 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 52. 127
individuals.”288 These individuals, like Smith’s Pelageia Iakovleva, sent petitions to the landlord’s Moscow administrators to successfully compete against the power of the local mir.
While serfs petitioned Prince Sergei, he, in turn, questioned the workings of the mir. Ultimately, the mir was answerable to him. Therefore, while the mir held power over conscription, the use of this power was negotiated through social interaction with competing interest groups. Power on the estate was not held sovereign by any of them: it was negotiated through interactions between social groups. Individuals took advantage of this competition to create a space to pursue their own interests and goals, even using one group against the other when circumstances seemed propitious.
This chapter investigates the mir’s power dynamic. First, we will consider the structures and composition of the mir and how these factors contributed to the mir’s role and authority in the countryside. Then we will turn to a case study of recruitment on the estate to illuminate the power dynamic in which the mir participated. This case study shows us that the mir’s power, like that of the landlord and bailiff examined earlier, was negotiated socially.
4.1 The Mir
The mir served as an administrative body on the estate. Like the position of the bailiff, this body occupied an intermediary position between serf households and the landlord; but, it was also a peasant institution with members elected by household
288 Smith, “Authority in a Serf Village," 161. 128
patriarchs, theoretically representing the community’s interests. This institution was not unique to Prince Sergei’s estate; rather, it was a ubiquitous institution with a rich history going back to the fifteenth century. Boris Mironov argues that by “the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries almost all peasants in European Russia…lived in a social organization that the peasants called the mir.”289 By 1905 there were 170,500 in
European Russia.290 From its beginnings as an organization based on customary law, the mir became an administrative unit utilized by both the landlord and the state. In 1797 and
1798, the mir became a legal administrative institution governing state and crown peasants. Later, the mir would be written into the legislation for the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, officially administering all peasants.291
On Prince Sergei’ estate, a composite mir, representing all villages, was located in
Sulost’, the estate’s largest village. The mir consisted of a village assembly, which was attended by household patriarchs, and an executive elected by the assembly. Communal resolutions (mirskie prigovory) documented the conclusions reached by the assembly.
This chapter uses extant communal resolutions, extending from 1827 to 1858, in conjunction with correspondence between Prince Sergei and his bailiff and peasant petitions, from the duration of Prince Sergei’s tenure, to understand the social dynamic between landlord, mir, and peasant.292
289 Mironov, “Rural Social Institutions,” 294.
290 Ibid., 295.
291 Ibid.; Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 199-236.
292 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 70. 129
The village mir had a variety of functions vital to the survival of the community.
Tracy Dennison outlines nine major responsibilities in her recent work investigating
Voshchazhnikovo: providing governance, overseeing land repartition, collecting dues and taxes, maintaining village infrastructure, providing welfare provisions, selecting recruits, resolving conflicts, and preserving the social order.293 To these functions, Mironov adds policing and cultural, educational, and religious roles, including the maintenance of churches, arrangement of village holidays, and the provision of schools and libraries.294
Most famously, and economically important for peasants, the mir redistributed arable land. In the village community, land was not owned by individual peasant households; rather, it was held in common and occasionally redistributed by the mir. It is generally understood that the working power of households determined the amount of land allocated. Typically, when sons came of age, they received a half allotment of land and, when they married, a full allotment.295 Dennison, however, found that on the proto- industrial estate of Voshchazhnikovo, land allocation was instead based on the ability of households to pay taxes. There, land allocation was not correlated with the quantity of laborers in a family. Indeed, some households did not have access to land at all, despite having laborers. Instead, land distribution in Voshchazhnikov was a form of tax distribution, as taxes were tied to the land and land distributed to middling and wealthy
293 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 93-131.
294 Mironov, “Rural Social Institutions,” 287-355.
295 Ibid., 300-302; 130
households, capable of paying the associated dues. 296 Even so, Herdis Kolle shows that even on proto-industrial estates, agriculture was important. Agriculture provided security for households in the face of variable industrial incomes. Indeed, Kolle found that most households in the industrial region east of Moscow participated in a “dual economy,” with agricultural and industrial positions divided among family members. Important in the lives of peasants, the process of land redistribution has also played to the imaginations of contemporaries and historians alike.
Observing the mir firsthand in the 1840s, Haxthausen claimed that the mir,
“having developed out of the organization of the family, constitutes the basis of the entire social structure.”297 Haxthausen noted a real benefit in the institution of the mir, especially their joint ownership and distribution of land. Because land was repartitioned based on families’ ability to work, he argued, the mir prevented the “social evils” of proletarianization, pauperism, and even revolutionary communism and socialism from infecting the Russian populace; however, he also thought that it stunted agricultural
296 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 93-131.
297 Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, 275. 131
development.298 Dennison credits Haxthausen with the founding of a “peasant myth” that has persisted to this this day, coloring scholars’ perceptions of the Russian peasantry.299
Just like the mir allocated land to households, they also distributed tax and obrok obligations. While taxes were individually assessed with the introduction of the poll tax by Peter the Great, they were levied on the entire community. The mir then distributed obligations to households. The community, however, was collectively responsible for the entire sum. The inability for one household to pay dues, then, stressed the entire community, which had to make up the amount. Collective responsibility also held repercussions for negligent households, as the mir would conscript family members or confiscate land in retaliation. This concept of “collective responsibility,” then, is an important factor when considering communal recruitment decisions, as will be discussed later.300
298 For alternative views of the connection between the mir and agricultural development see Esther Kingston-Mann, “Peasant Communes and Economic Innovation: A Preliminary Inquiry,” in Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921 ed. Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1991), 23-51; Robert Bideleux, “Agricultural Advance Under the Russian Village Commune System,” in Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society ed. Roger Bartlett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 196-218.
299 T.K. Dennison and A.W Carus, “The Invention of the Russian Rural Commune: Haxthausen and the Evidence,” The Historical Journal 46, no. 3 (2003): 561-582; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 6-17.
300 On collective responsibility, see: L.S. Prokof’eva, Krest’ianskaia obshchina v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII- pervoi polovine XIX v. : na materialakh votchin Sheremetevykh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981): 147-151; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 107-110; Mironov, “Rural Social Institutions,” 302-303; V.A. Aleksandrov, Sel’skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX v.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1976): 3-46; N.A. Gorskaia, Russkaia feodal’naia derevnia v istoriografii XX veka (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli: 2006): Chapter five; S.G. Pushkarev, Krest’ianskaia pozemel’no- peredel’naia obshchina v Rossii (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1976): part 1 and 2. 132
4.2 The Mir: Historiographical Debates
Considering the important functions carried out by the mir, its relationship to power has been of particular interest to scholars. Three main interpretations have emerged.301 The first argues that the mir was an autonomous institution representing and standing up for the interests of the peasant community. Mironov, for example, argues that the mir was a “patriarchal-egalitarian democracy.” While representation in the communal assembly was limited to household patriarchs, they, nonetheless, were responsible to the peasantry. He shows that when “communal officials neglected the peasantry’s interests, as happened mainly on serfowners’ estates, the peasants retaliated, subjecting these officials to another election; or if higher authorities defended the officials against reelection, the peasants rebelled outright.”302 The mir was also a bastion for peasant solidarity. E.P. Thompson and James C. Scott see “moral economy” lying at the center of community relations. This moral economy recognized the right of subsistence and formed the foundation for community action against landowners or administrators.303 Though
Scott’s work focuses on Malaysia, historians of Russia have likewise linked the mir to acts of peasant solidarity.304
301 Summaries of this debate can be found in: Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930, 230-236; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 93-98, 127-131.
302 Mironov, “Rural Social Institutions,” 309.
303 Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd,” 76-136; E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New Press, 1993); Scott, Weapons of the Weak.”
304 Aleksandrov, Sel’skaia obshchina v Rossii, 125-127; N.A. Gorskaia, Krest’ianstvo v periody rannego i razvitogo feodalizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 280; Prokof’eva, Krest’ianskaia obshchina, 185- 209. 133
In contrast to the “autonomous” mir, other scholars have viewed the mir as an extension of manorial control. Instead of representing peasant interests, it enforced the landlord’s will locally. For instance, Peter Toumanoff argues that the repartitional serf mir was “designed to reduce the costs both of monitoring labor effort and of maintaining the productive capacity of the serf.”305 In theory, more effort is required to extract labor from slaves than from free peasants. The Russian landlord offset these costs through the use of the repartitional mir and labor dues. Consequently, Toumanoff views the development of the mir as integral to the enslavement of the Russian serf. Rather than an autonomous institution, the mir served as an administrative body, and coercive force, functioning on behalf of the landlord.306
Well-known Soviet historian V.A. Aleksandrov has reconciled these two opposing positions by arguing that the mir was characterized by “dualism.” On the one hand, he argues, it functioned as an element of the estate administration. But, on the other hand, it also supported the peasantry. Because the landlord relied on it, it could push peasant interests.307
Since Aleksandrov, other historians have also interpreted the mir both as an estate, administration institution and one with its own interests. However, unlike
Aleksandrov, they have not viewed it as representing “peasant” interests, but the interests
305 Peter Toumanoff, “The Development of the Peasant Commune in Russia,” The Journal of Economic History 41, no. 1 (1981): 180.
306 See also: Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), 66-70; Aleksandrov, Sel’skaia obshchina v Rossii, 9-15.
307 Aleksandrov, Sel’skaia obshchina v Rossii, 314-315. 134
of the oligarchs who controlled it. Stephen Hoch argues that communal representatives sought to preserve the patriarchal hierarchy because they held power and, therefore, a stake in the system. The mir, thus, served an institution of social control, complicit with landowners. 308 Similarly, Dennison contends that the mir used “social capital,” consisting of shared norms, information, and collective sanctions, to collaborate with the landlord, facilitating tax collection, land redistribution, and demographic control. These actions benefitted the oligarchs who controlled the mir, but hurt ordinary peasants.309
While these works have examined the relationship between landlord and mir,
Melton makes the case for focusing on intra-community conflict. Melton argues that the mir possessed power in provincial Russia because of its “intermediary” position within a
“peasant state.” The state, as well as the governing elite, depended upon the peasantry to provide labor and revenue. But, “despite the formal power vested in bureaucratic officials and/or seigniorial elites, actual control over the local population often rested with the intermediate authorities.”310 This situation resulted from Russia’s vast size, the state’s administrative inability to penetrate to the local level, and the landlord’s delegation of administrative functions to the mir. Thus, “the primary source of conflict within Baki was peasant competition for favorable treatment at the hands of the communal leaders.”311
308 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 91-132.
309 Dennison and Ogilvie, “Serfdom and Social Capital in Bohemia and Russia,” 513-544; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 127-131.
310 Edgar Melton, “Household Economies and Communal Conflicts on a Russian Serf Estate, 1800-1817,” Journal of Social History 26, no. 3 (1993): 561.
311 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 52. 135
Similarly, Rodney Bohac has pointed toward dynamics between the mir and peasant community to understand military conscription on the estate of Manuilovskoe.312
This chapter contributes to these studies by considering both intra-community conflict and dynamics between landlord and estate. It considers power as mediated by social relations between landlord, mir, and peasant. These social relations created different forms of action. In some cases, the peasant community and mir worked together to resist landlord exactions. In other cases, peasants appealed to the landlord to override communal rulings. And, in still other cases, the landlord and mir worked together to enforce either landlord or communal resolutions. Each group had their own interests, but had to negotiate their interests with the interests of the other groups.
The importance of communal control gains nuance when considering the modernizing goals of nineteenth-century elite reformers. While Slavophiles may have supported the mir as an expression of the “Russian soul” and, later, populists as an egalitarian system, Westernizers and liberal reformers saw a stultifying system that prevented individual initiative, especially because of its control of the village’s land.313
What was in question was not just how the mir exercised power, but also how its form informed action.
The implication that the mir behaved in a particular way because of its structure has been widespread in the historiography. Particular attention had been paid to the restraint, or lack thereof, this structure imposed on economic development in the
312 Rodney D. Bohac, “The Mir and Military Draft,” Slavic Review 47, no. 4 (1988): 652-666.
313 See: Ester Kingston-Mann, In Search of the True West: Culture, Economics, and Problems of Russian Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 136
countryside. While Daniel Field argues that the mir restricted stratification in villages,
Dorothy Atkinson finds the opposite.314 Addressing assertions that the mir stunted growth and innovation, Carol Leonard shows that proto-industrial growth occurred in both managed and communally run estates and Robert Bideleux demonstrates that Russian agriculture experienced growing output and yields.315 These works suggest that, although the mir redistributed land and may have prevented wide stratification, there was still economic growth, contrary to the assumptions of contemporary liberal reformers.
Furthermore, while the mir has gained a reputation as a conservative force, Kingston-
Mann shows that the mir did innovate agricultural techniques, introducing grass cultivation and improved crop rotation. She argues that while the mir may have been slower to adopt new techniques than independent landowners, first conducting years of trials, when it did adopt a new technique, the entire village community adopted it.
Therefore, innovation spread more quickly in a village community that redistributed land than among independent owners within a community. Kingston-Mann’s findings explain how economic growth was achieved within an equalizing communal system. 316
314 Daniel Field, “Stratification in the Russian Peasant Commune: A Statistical Enquiry,” in Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, ed. Roger P. Bartlett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 143-164; Dorothy Atkinson, “Egalitarianism and the Commune,” in Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, ed. Roger P. Bartlett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 7-19.
315 Carol S. Leonard, “Landlords and the Mir: Transaction Costs and Economic Development in Pre-Emancipation Russia (Iaroslav Guberniia),” in Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, ed. Roger P. Bartlett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 121-143; Bideleux, “Agricultural Advance Under the Russian Village Commune System,” 196-218.
316 Kingston-Mann, “Peasant Communes and Economic Innovation,” 23-51. 137
The contradictory conclusions on whether the mir stunted or promoted economic development can perhaps be explained by the rigidity of a structural approach. My research indicates that there was flexibility. This flexibility resulted from the social nature of the mir: it competed with other interest groups all of whom had to negotiate with one another. Consequently, diverse circumstance led to varied results.
This chapter goes beyond earlier studies by considering the power exercised by the mir as social and interactive. The mir did not act within a vacuum, curtailing or promoting innovation, and restricting or stimulating growth. Instead, it had to negotiate with other interest groups exerting pressure from above and below. These negotiations help explain how the mir could at one time be innovative and at other times conservative.
Their structure did not simply imbue them with a set character and mandate. We will investigate the mir’s power dynamic by conducting a case study of recruitment on Prince
Sergei’s estate. By delving into the workings of conscription, we see that the mir’s power was not autonomous but an interactive process of negotiation. First, however, we will consider the process of recruitment as it descended from the state to the countryside.
4.3 Conscription and the Community
Peter the Great transformed Russia’s army into a professional force. He recognized that in order to compete militarily he needed a well-trained, standing force.
Russia’s defeat by Sweden at the Battle of Narva drove this lesson home. While the nobility would serve in positions of rank, he looked to the peasantry to supply his
138
infantry.317 According to John L.H. Keep, this new army would serve as “the principal bulwark of the absolutist state” for the next 150 years.318
Based on military need, general levies conscripted would-be soldiers according to quotas allocated to provinces, districts, and small rural districts (volost’). Levies occurred irregularly, but often. From 1796 to 1815, eighteen levies occurred, conscripting
1,616,199 recruits. And from 1816 to 1855, forty levies conscripted 3,158,199 recruits.319
Almost every year, the state would issue an order (ukaz) raising a levy. This order was accompanied by an Imperial manifesto detailing the number of recruits to be taken from a given number of souls.320 Just as the rate of occurrence was irregular, so too was the size of the quota, with greater numbers required during times of war. In the late eighteenth century, the state required one or two recruits for every 600 souls, but during war levies recruits ranged from one to five out of 100. After 1831, the state often demanded up to seven men out of 1,000, even 10 out of 1,000 when it was at war.321
Provincial recruitment offices received recruits and examined their “fitness” for service. Fitness was based on three general criteria: age, height, and health. As of 1808, the minimum age of recruits was 19 and the maximum was 37, but, like recruitment itself, the minimum and maximum age of the recruit varied according to the needs of the
317 For information on Peter the Great’s reforms see: Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great.
318 John L.H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 143.
319 Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, 3.
320 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 144.
321 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 466. 139
state. The next criterion, height, faced the same tension. Generally, the state sought men 5 feet 3 inches or taller, but accepted men as short as 5 feet 1inch in 1812. As for health, doctors excluded men with missing teeth, eye and ear diseases, consumption, mental illness, and physical handicaps. After ascertaining a recruit’s fitness, his forehead was shaved (the back of his head was shaved if he was unfit), he swore an oath, and he was given over to a squad officer.322
Actual recruits were chosen at the local level. On serf estates, the mir selected recruits whom the landlord then approved. Initially, the recruitment process was dictated by local customary practices, but during the nineteenth century the state sought to standardize military conscription and, in 1831, it promulgated recruitment regulations.
According to the “line system” (ocherednaia sistema) the number of men age 18 to 60 were counted within a household. Larger households then provided recruits. If households were the same size, they looked at the number of laborers, then the age of laborers, and, if those measures failed, drew lots. Not all men within a household, however, were treated equally. Age, height, and physical conditions applied. Father and single son households were exempt. Bachelors were preferred and if that was not possible, married men without children. If all household men were married with children, the family faced a hard decision, which they determined internally. Correspondence, communal reports, and peasant petitions indicate that this line system was used on Prince
322 Ibid., 465-468; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 143-174; Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, 3-25. 140
Sergei’s estate. However, the mir also looked outside of the “line,” choosing recruits with
“bad behavior,” poor working habits, or debt, with the landlord’s tacit approval. 323
In contrast to the line system, the state instituted a “lottery system” (zhereb’evaia sistema) to recruit state peasants beginning in 1838. According to this system, during a levy men aged 20 and 21 were called up and divided into three groups based on the number of laborers in their families. Recruits from the first group, with the highest number of household laborers, were conscripted first, and those with the fewest number of laborers, last. In 1854 this system replaced the line system by law. The promulgation of laws regulating conscription was meant to both standardize the practice of recruitment and equalize its burden. As we will see, however, there were ways around recruitment of which landlords and powerful peasants could take advantage.324
Initially, recruits served in the military for life. From 1793, this term decreased to
25 years, though few could expect to outlive their service. In 1834, the requirement was lowered again, this time to 20 years, with an additional five years in the militia. And, in
1855, service was limited to 12 years, with three years in the militia.325 These long terms meant that families mourned the loss of recruits as they mourned the death of loved ones.
Families paid a heavy price for recruitment, losing a son, husband, or father of working age. To use historian Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter’s words, “Of all the obligations imposed on the poll-tax population, none was more terrible or feared than military
323 Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, 20-21.
324 Ibid., 22-23.
325 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 466. 141
service.”326 A petition sent in 1856 by the serf Vasilii Dmitriev Lovilov to Prince Sergei shows the hardships experienced by his family following the recruitment of his son.
According to Lovilov, his family consisted of him, at 57 years old, his 60-year-old wife, a
62-year-old unmarried woman, and a 24-year-old son, Aleksei, his wife, and their young son. Aleksei’s right leg, however, had been injured since childhood, a disability making him “unequal to others.” Additionally, Lovilov had an older son who was chosen for recruitment in 1854 and left behind a wife, who died in February of 1855, and three young daughters between the ages of 5 and 8. Lovilov had one more married son, who died in April of 1855. These circumstances left eight women and children under his care, with only one son to help, albeit one with a hurt leg.327
As Hoch demonstrates in his work on peasant demographics, a balanced ratio of men to women was most suitable for agricultural work, as husband and wife teams formed tiagla, work units that were given land by the mir. With a poor ratio of household consumers to workers, or “dependency ratio,” Lovilov’s family would have had difficulty providing the basic needs of all, let alone paying their family’s allotment of obrok and other dues. As such, he asked for the mir to return 159 rubles and 50 kopecks of the 500 rubles remaining from the estate’s recruitment duty – a sum that villagers paid Prince
Sergei to provide for the purchase of recruitment substitutes, with the understanding that not paying would put your own family members in danger of conscription – to his family.
326 Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Solider, 3.
327 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 368. 142
Because of the loss of laborers, through recruitment and also natural causes, the household had to turn to the mir for support.328
Because recruitment was so contentious, it could also cause long-term social damage to a family within the peasant community. Serf Petr Mikhailov Pulev demonstrates the hardship his family faced after falling into the mir’s disfavor during recruitment. Pulev’s family included him, his wife, and their two sons. The elder,
Aleksandr was married with a young daughter. The younger son Fedor was unhealthy, periodically having “fits” (pripadok). While Aleksandr was a bachelor, he worked for eight years in industry. During that time, he developed a leg condition, precluding him from recruitment. The mir, however, accused Aleksandr of intentionally hurting himself to avoid conscription. Although Aleksandr was cleared in court of these accusations, the estate still held him under tight oversight. Pulev pleaded with Prince Sergei to free his son. He insisted that without his son, household and agricultural work could not be completed. Consequently, there was “no hope” of feeding his family. He feared that his household would end in ruin without the means to pay for obrok and other dues.329
Pulev relied upon his son, Aleksandr, to conduct manual labor that other members of his family could not. This work, particularly working the family’s kitchen garden
(ogorodnaia zemlia), provided for the family’s subsistence and the earnings needed to pay communal dues. Because of the mir’s accusation of foul play, however, Aleksandr could not provide for his family. Meanwhile, the mir may have looked at this situation as
328 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia”; RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 368.
329 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 220. 143
a dangerous precedent: if they simply let Aleksandr go, they risked facing cases of intentional injury in the future, complicating recruitment and throwing their authority in doubt. Wirtschafter indicates that self-mutilation to avoid military service was a problem to which the state’s Recruitment Committee devoted serious attention and responded to with repeated legislation. Those convicted were subject to severe punishment. According to Jerome Blum, the would-be self-mutilated recruit was forced to run a gauntlet of 500 soldiers with whips three times. He then still had to enter the army or, if that was impossible due to the nature of his wounds, he was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia.330
While families suffered from recruitment, Prince Sergei also had something to lose: conscripting successful workers threatened a serf community’s ability to pay his dues, supplying his income. Consequently, he sought other ways to fulfil his estate’s recruitment quotas. By doing so, he also entered into estate politics, limiting the power of the mir. When an Imperial manifesto ordered the estate to gather eight recruits for every
500 souls in 1813, Prince Sergei’s Moscow office wrote to the estate bailiff telling him to send a messenger to the town of Iaroslavl’, the provincial capital, to discover whether a
“receipt” (kvitantsiia) or an “outsider” could be sent in replacement.331 Recruitment receipts were received when men were sent into recruitment outside of a levy period.
These receipts could then replace a recruit during levies. Landlords could earn receipts or purchase them from other landlords. Another option was to buy a substitute to send into recruitment.
330 Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, 6-8; Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 467-468.
331 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 17-18. 144
Prince Sergei disposed of both of these methods to minimize harm to his estate; but, these methods also came at a cost for estate serfs. In order to purchase receipts,
Prince Sergei collected a “recruitment duty” from his serfs. In May of 1813, he received
3,500 rubles to purchase receipts.332 In fact, he bought three receipts in June of that year for 3,600 rubles, or 1,200 rubles each.333 According to a land revision in 1834, the estate had a total of 694 souls, or roughly double that number of serfs.334 If we assume that the estate’s population was similar in size in 1813, then each soul would have needed to pay about 5 rubles for the 1813 recruitment duty. 335 But, this sum paid for three receipts, and in 1813, they needed 8 recruits for every 500 souls, or about 1 for every 62 souls.
Therefore, about 11 men would have to be recruited. If the peasant population paid for all recruits, they would have to pay a total of 13,200 rubles, or about 20 rubles per soul.
Poorer families would find this sum prohibitive. The mir then targeted for recruitment households that failed to pay. Meanwhile, wealthy households could use their means to pay in full, protecting their families.
Alternatively, Prince Sergei sometimes sent his serfs into recruitment for other estates belonging to him or for future receipts. In 1817, he sent serf Andrei Petrov to the town of Iaroslavl’ to be counted for future recruitment. He deemed this move necessary because of Petrov’s alleged “bad behavior,” “solitary lifestyle,” and “complete
332 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 14.
333 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 16.
334 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.199.
335 For more receipt examples see: RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 19, 22-24; d.60, l. 12; d. 61, l. 1. 145
hopelessness in household management.”336 At the same time, he sent 26-year-old household serf Viktor Iakovlev from his estate in Kaluga Province to be recruited in
Sulost’.337 In another case, after the serf Iakov Petrakov stole money belonging to Count
Orlov’s serfs, he was sent for recruitment as punishment.338 This peasant, however, petitioned Prince Sergei following this decision. He claimed that he had rented land from
Prince Orlov’s peasants for five years, at a rate of 500 rubles per year. However, they did not want him around, so they framed him for theft, resulting in his recruitment. The story, however, did not end with Petrakov’s recruitment: he petitioned Prince Sergei to be freed from the unjust punishment, thereby negotiating in the recruitment process. We will
339 further discuss the agency exhibited by serfs later in the chapter.
In addition to purchasing receipts and conscripting peasants outside of levies,
Prince Sergei also bought recruitment substitutes, with funds collected from the peasantry. In March of 1813, Prince Aleksandr, Sergei’s brother and co-owner of the estate until his death in 1821, sent correspondence inquiring about the purchase of a man from the family of Aleksei Dunaev for 700 rubles.340 Then, in October of 1813, Prince
Aleksandr reported the arrival of two substitutes. The first, Pavel Mart’ianov, was a 24- year-old house serf purchased from the village of Putbola. The second, the son of Vasilii
Iakovlev, was a 19-year-old serf from one of the Golitsyns’ other estates. A third
336 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 61, l. 19-20.
337 Ibid.
338 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 27-28.
339 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 32-33.
340 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 10. 146
substitute was expected from their Peravetskii estate.341 In November of that same year, the Golitsyn Moscow office sent the estate correspondence about yet another substitute, a man from Tula Province. Unlike the other recruits, this peasant was married with a three- year-old son; nonetheless, he was an outsider. As an outsider, the hardships his family would face could be ignored, burdening, instead, another community. Because Prince
Sergei and his brother owned multiple estates, they could use serfs from other estates as substitutes. But, they also bought replacements, such as Mart’ianov and a member of
Dunaev’s family. The Golitsyns’ serfs, therefore, paid short-term monetary costs to reduce long-term costs to the household, the community, and the estate. The Golitsyns, meanwhile, facilitated the purchase of substitutes with the community’s funds.
Specific rules governed the purchase of substitutes: they had to be free men, purchases registered with state authorities, and only one man could be purchased at a time. These regulations existed to limit abuse and speculation. In the same vein, the state restricted the sale of serfs for three months after declaring a levy and even fixed the cost of substitutes, first at 360 and then 500 rubles.342 Nonetheless, abuse existed. Keep describes one case in which peasants from a village in Iaroslavl’ province purchased another village and henceforth used the serfs there as their recruits.343 Wirtschafter documents middlemen who purchased and then sold serfs as substitutes at an inflated rate
341 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 20-21.
342 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 151.
343 Ibid. 147
and others who sold runaway serfs or deserters.344 Prince Sergei’s own purchasing and substituting practices seem to have operated within a legal gray space: his substitutes were not free men, but serfs.
By purchasing or transferring substitutes and buying receipts, Prince Sergei and his Moscow office actively participated in the conscription process. This participation limited the recruitment burden on the estate, but also the mir’s power over recruitment.
Some estates eschewed such involvement. Studying the estate of Baki owned by
Countess Lieven in Kostroma province, Melton demonstrates that when the estate manager tried to purchase replacements or receipts with sums levied on the entire community, a wealthy faction appealed to Countess Lieven in St. Petersburg. The offending manager was removed from his position and recruitment returned to “normal.”
These peasants opposed the practice of purchasing replacements for two reasons: the burden of paying these sums fell on the wealthy and purchasing recruits deprived wealthy, well-connected, families of the power to protect friends and family from recruitment, thereby limiting their influence within the community. This system served as a double blow to wealthy families, divesting them both of their wealth and of the mechanism by which they maintained and exerted social power in the village.345 The mir on Prince Sergei’s estate bypassed the first problem by choosing families for recruitment who had not contributed to the “recruitment duty,” a fund used to purchase substitutes or receipts. This method, however, was not infallible. As we will see, some families
344 Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, 19.
345 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 40-55. 148
petitioned Prince Sergei and successfully avoided recruitment even after failing to pay recruitment dues.
While wealthy families could, theoretically, also purchase receipts or substitutes,
Rodney Bohac describes the practice as uncommon due to the costs involved. He found that peasants on the Gagarin estate of Manuilovskoe paid Prince Gagarin 2,000 rubles for a receipt, when the highest household income earned on the estate was 1,000 rubles.
Bohac argues that these costs restricted a family’s ability to capitalize on their wealth and could even bring them to financial ruin in the future.346
In addition to the substitutes and receipts it acquired, the estate still had to provide a certain number of recruits of its own. The burden, and opportunity, of choosing these recruits fell on the shoulders of the mir. Melton argues that this privilege constituted “one of the most powerful control levers in the hands of the clerk and other communal officials.”347 Through recruitment, communal officials could protect their friends and avenge themselves on their foes. While ostensibly following the line system described earlier, they also, explicitly, singled out men or families for “vices” or “debt.” And, they used this rationale to justify their decisions to their landlord. Indeed, Prince Sergei explicitly urged the mir to rid the estate of troublemakers. The nebulous character of
“vices” or “troublemaking,” however, gave the mir certain latitude when choosing recruits. After all, they decided what sort of behavior was inappropriate, what constituted vices, and what defined troublemaking.
346 Bohac, “The Mir and the Military Draft,” 652-666.
347 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 52. 149
Nonetheless, my research indicates that the mir’s power was not absolute on the estate, even in matters of conscription. Prince Sergei took an active role in protecting his interests. On the one hand this meant procuring substitutes and receipts for his serfs; on the other hand, he contested decisions made by the mir and responded to serf petitions. In these cases, he held the mir accountable: he turned to them to explain themselves and rectify their behavior. Just such an occurrence happened in 1813 when the mir conscripted a 48-year-old peasant, Riabov. Prince Sergei argued that this choice was
“unjust” and demanded that the mir provide their rationale with the next mail.348 The response he received left him unconvinced. He ruled against the mir, maintaining that it was “unjust” to send a 48-year-old for recruitment, and ordered them to send a different man.349 As in this case, so in others, the mir had to negotiate their power over recruitment with Prince Sergei. In some cases, they justified and upheld their choices; in others, they freed the contested recruits from conscription by their own choice or by order.
Serf families petitioned Prince Sergei when their names were called, exerting pressure from below on recruitment choices. In these cases, Prince Sergei called on the mir to account for the villagers’ accusations, exerting pressure from above. The mir was then required to prove the worth of their choices. In 1830, the mir penned a resolution, responding to a petition sent by Grigorii Vasil’ev Lapshin to Prince Sergei about the recruitment of his son, Mikhail. The mir claimed that the petition, which argued that a member of the family of Abram Afanas’ev Telenkov was the rightful recruit, was not
348 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 29-30.
349 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 31. 150
well founded. They upheld that, though the Telenkov family was also called for recruitment, the Lapshin family had one and a half recruit to the Telenkovs’ one according to the line system. The mir continued, stating that the Telenkov family paid
425 rubles for a recruitment substitute and for a recruitment receipt, had consistently paid recruitment dues in the past, and would continue to pay. Finally, they asserted that four men from the Telenkov family assiduously worked in industry. In contrast, the Lapshin family did not contribute to that year’s recruitment duty, and they held little hope that the family would pay in the future.350
Replying to the landlord, the mir first appealed to the “fairness” of the line system: Lapshin stood closer to the front of the line than Telenkov, therefore, he should serve. Nonetheless, we see that “fairness” was not the mir’s sole consideration. They specifically noted the payment of recruitment dues as a contributing factor. This consideration privileged wealthier members of the community. The Telenkov family had four working men and could afford to pay 425 rubles. They had consistently paid in the past and would likely continue to pay in the future. The Lapshin family, on the other hand, had not contributed to the recruitment duty that year, and was unlikely to contribute henceforth. The entire community benefitted from the Telenkovs’ payments, and they punished those who did not contribute commensurably. The fact that they shared this argumentation with Prince Sergei further suggests that it was a practice that they expected him to support.
350 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 148, 149. 151
While the state required recruits, the actual process of recruitment was delegated to the mir. This role empowered the mir at the local level, giving its members control of a selection process that had the power to break families. Nonetheless, the mir had to contend with pressures from above and below. Prince Sergei actively participated in the process, purchasing recruitment substitutes or receipts with funds provided by the peasant community. It was also his prerogative to accept or reject choices. He took advantage of this privilege and called the mir to account for their choices. Meanwhile, individuals and families participated in the process by petitioning him, thereby appealing to an authority outside of local politics. He, then, turned to the mir to explain or alter their decisions.
Turning to a case study of recruitment on Prince Sergei’s estate during the Crimean War in 1853, we witness this dynamic at work, pointing to negotiations of power between different interest groups.
4.4 War and Recruitment: 1853
In October of 1853 the Crimean War erupted. For the next three years, Russia was pitted against the forces of France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire, ostensibly defending the interests of Christian minorities. While the powers that be pursued state interests, Russian peasants were recruited and died in great numbers. Lev Tolstoy commemorates these forgotten heroes in his short story “Sevastopol in December”: “You comprehend clearly, you figure to yourself, those men who you have just seen, are the very heroes of those grievous times, who have fallen, but have been raised by the spirit,
152
and have joyfully prepared for death, not for the sake of the city, but for the country.”351
To Tolstoy, the everyday Russian peasant was the real hero in Sevastopol. Meanwhile, in the countryside, peasants tried to avoid the fate of Tolstoy’s heroes and save themselves from the perils of recruitment. To do so, they had to negotiate between the powers of the landlord and mir.
On September 20, 1853, the mir passed a resolution responding to Prince Sergei’s order to choose men to be conscripted. They named eleven families in line for recruitment: from Sulost’, the sons of Ivan Dmitrev P’ianov, the brothers and nephew of
Abram Baldin, Vasilii and Nikolai Nikolaev Paramonov, Ivan Alekseev Popikhin, the family of Chirkin, Feodor Pavlov Boranov; from Nikol’skoe, Pavel Morozov and his brothers, the sons of Ivan Ivanov Shipkov, Petr Denisov, Aleksei and Grigorii Shchekin; from Kuzmitsyn, Mikhail Belyshev.352
This resolution was refined less than a month later by another resolution on
October 15, 1853, committing men from seventeen family, purportedly for vices and standing in the recruitment line. The men included: from Sulost’, Vasilii Nikolaev
Bobrushkin, Petr Aleksandrov Zhil’tsov, Petr Vasil’ev Verevkin, the family of Ivan
Dmitrev Kurkin, the family of Abram Vasil’ev Baldin, Andrei Feodorov Borankov,
Aleksei Andreev Petrokov, Aleksandr Nikolaev Paramonov, Ivan Ivanov Chirkin, Vasilii
Dmitrev Lovilov; from Nikol’skoe, Vladimir Ivanov Shipkov, Feodor Andreev Kunikin, the family of Andrei Ivanov Morozov, Aleksei Ivanov Rosin, Petr Iakovlev Denisov, the
351 Leo Tolstoy, Sevastopol, trans. Isabel F. Hapgood (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1888), 34.
352 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 6-7. 153
family of Gavrilo Abramov Shchekin; and, from Khoshino, Aleksei and Mikhail Petrov
Tabakov.353
On November 1, 1853, yet another resolution addressed the issue, this time committing five individuals: from Sulost’, Vasilii Nikolaev Bobrushkin, Petr
Akelsandrov Zhil’tsov; from Nikol’skoe, Vladimir Ivanov Shipkov; and from Khoshino,
Mikhail Petrov Tabakov. They claimed that these men were chosen above all because of their vices. They, then, added Abram and Ivan Vasil’ev Baldin, for failing to pay recruitment dues, used to purchase recruitment receipts.354
The next day, on November 2, 1853, another resolution added Ivan Ivanov
Chirkin to the recruitment roster because his uncle refused to pay the recruitment duty.355
The table below indicates the overlap between these resolutions.
353 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 4-5.
354 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 2-3.
355 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 10. 154 TABLE 4.1
RECRUITMENT FAMILIES, 1953
Recruitment Families, 1953
20-Sep 15-Oct 1-Nov 2-Nov Baldin Baldin Baldin Belyshev Bobrushkin Bobrushkin Boranov Boranov Chirkin Chirkin Chirkin Denisov Denisov Kunikin Kurkin Lovilov Morozov Morozov Paramonov Paramonov Popikhin P’ianov Petrokov Rosin Shchekin Shchekin Shipkov Shipkov Shipkov Tabakov Tabakov Verevkin Zhil’tsov Zhil’tsov
155
All of the families named in the final two resolutions had also been named in the
October 15th resolution. But, not all of the families listed on September 20th were relisted on October 15th, and not all those listed on the 15th ended up on the final lists.
Considering these different resolutions, we can see that the mir returned multiple times to the question of recruitment, knowing that their decisions would place a burden on families and alter the composition of the community for better or worse. What, then accounts for the observed changes and the final choice? The mir did not hold complete control over recruitment: they were responsible to the landlord and the peasant community. Serfs did not simply sit idly by, allowing the mir to decide the fate of their families. Peasants petitioned Prince Sergei, appealing for his mercy, and Prince Sergei challenged the mir to answer for their choices. The historical paper trail surrounding recruitment shows us the relations between these groups, illustrating the power dynamic on the estate, and indicating how something as important as recruitment was decided.
After the mir chose recruits, peasants strove to free their family members and protect their households by petitioning Prince Sergei. On October 17, 1853, the widow
Anna Petrova Rosina petitioned Prince Sergei after her family was chosen for recruitment on October 15, 1853. According to Rosina, her household consisted of eight women and children and three men. She herself was 46 years old. Her eldest, a stepson, was 29 years old with a 24-year-old wife. Another stepson was 24 years old with a 22-year-old wife.
And her biological son, at 18, was a bachelor. Additionally, her household included four stepdaughters and an unmarried older woman who was 60.356 A poor ratio of working
356 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 3. 156
men to women and children placed a burden on the household, as there were more consumers than providers.357 Why, then, was her household included for recruitment?
According to Rosina, the mir chose her family because they failed to contribute to the purchase of a recruitment receipt. These circumstances explain why the family did not appear in the first list, but appeared in the second: they were only added only after they failed to pay. The practice of sending men into recruitment from families who could not afford to pay benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor, though also discouraging the wealthy from shirking on their own financial contributions. Already burdened families would find themselves additionally burdened after a family member was recruited. Alternatively, if the mir did not consider receipt payments when choosing recruits, then the extra monetary dues would burden wealthier peasants, whose payments would be used to obtain receipts for the entire community. Although the mir sided with the wealthier peasants, the paper evidence indicates that Prince Sergei sided with Rosina in this case.
Rosina argued that, by Prince Sergei’s order, the mir was supposed to choose people with vices. Her son did not fall in this category. Additionally, she claimed that her family had always paid obrok and other dues on time and that the reason they had not paid for the receipt was that her son had been underage, although he was now 18, old enough to be recruited. It appears that her argument was convincing: the family was excluded from the recruitment list on November 1st and 2nd. However, it should be noted that the Baldin brothers were explicitly included on the November 1st list for failing to
357 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 84-109. 157
pay recruitment dues. Although Rosina won her case, the mir considered failing to pay recruitment dues as a legitimate reason to recruit an individual, even citing that reason to
Prince Sergei. Families, already impecunious, were, therefore, more likely to be additionally burdened by recruitment because it was in the mir’s, i.e. wealthy and connected families’, best interests. But, as Rosina’s case illustrates, that does not mean they did not put up a fight, challenging and sometimes overturning the decision of the mir.
Other petitions followed Rosina’s. Petr Vasil’ev Tabakov petitioned Prince Sergei on December 31, 1853 about the choice of his son for recruitment. He argued that the mir chose his son not for his son’s vices but for his own crime. Interestingly, like Rosina,
Tabakov began his petition by recounting the composition of his family, thereby indicating the family’s need for the chosen man. He himself was 72 years old. His children included: Aleksei, 40 years old with a wife of the same age, an unmarried, 17- year-old daughter, and 6 underage sons, 16,14,11, 8, 3, and 1 year old; his second son was 35, also married, with six underage daughters, 14, 12, 10, 5, 3, and 1 year of age; finally, he had a 38-year-old unmarried daughter. The mir resolved to recruit Tabakov’s
35 year-old son, Mikhail, leaving his six daughters without a father. Indeed, not counting the 72-year-old patriarch, the family had only two men of working age with an additional
17 mouths to feed. Tabakov claimed that the mir chose Mikhail because his own advanced age prevented him from being recruited, but argued against this choice on the grounds of Mikhail’s many young children.358
358 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 4-5. 158
He next explained the charges leveled against him. Tabakov rented land in
Petrovskoe, roughly 22 miles from Sulost’, from a state peasant named Ivan Mikhailov
Sinitsyn for 15 rubles. However, when he arrived to mow the hay, Sinitsyn had already mowed it. A dispute ensued, but the head of the village sided with Sinitsyn. Sinitsyn next appeared before Tabakov’s own bailiff and convinced him of Petr’s wrongdoing. After this series of events, Tabakov’s family was considered for recruitment. Here is where the plot thickens: the village bailiff then presented him with an option to remove his family from the list by paying 1,600 rubles. Tabakov claimed that “with great regret and damage to the wellbeing of the family,” he paid the demanded sum.359 And yet, his payment was evidently not enough. Although he had paid the demanded fee, his offense had tarnished his family’s name in the eyes of the bailiff and the peasant community. Consequently, his family was called up for recruitment, despite paying the exorbitant sum. He then turned to Prince, as a powerful authority outside of estate politics, to protect his family.360
In the end, Tabakov prevailed. Receiving the petition, Prince Sergei turned to the mir to explain the decision to recruit Tabakov’s son, as well as the circumstances surrounding the 1,600-ruble sum. They explained that they received 1,600 rubles from the family and agreed to free them from recruitment. However, they held that this decision was made in consideration for Mikhail’s six young daughters, ranging from thirteen years old to two months old, and for his own age of thirty-six, not because of the
359 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 5.
360 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 4-5. 159
amount paid.361 Although the mir, and especially the bailiff, seem to have had it in for
Petr Vasil’ev Tabakov, he was able to overcome the power of the mir and overturn their decision by involving Prince Sergei in the recruitment process. The mir then had to negotiate their power with that of their landlord.
These petitions were not the only ones received by Prince Sergei during the 1853 conscription year. Recruitment posed a heavy burden on families, which would lose not only loved ones but also working hands. Families relied on producers to support consumers, particularly the elderly and the young. Consequently, families resisted the mir’s attempts to conscript their men. Worse, the very families who could not afford to pay the recruitment duty would be further damaged by the loss of a working member.
Thus, we see one widow protesting the recruitment of her son, on whom the family was dependent, her only other son being hunchbacked.362 In another case, a father protested the recruitment of his son, recruited, purportedly, based on trumped up charges by his own brother.363 Knowing the cost of recruitment, families and individuals took charge of their fate and forced their voices into the process by petitioning their landlord.
Although the mir possessed great power in their ability to choose recruits, their power was not final. Serfs contested their choices by appealing to the estate’s highest authority, Prince Sergei. Because of his distance from the estate, Prince Sergei stood outside of and above local politics; moreover, local institutions were ultimately
361 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 347, l. 1-2.
362 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 8-9.
363 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 6-7. 160
answerable to him. However, he also relied upon these local institutions to fulfill his orders and even turned to them when he received petitions.
On December 18, 1853, Prince Sergei turned to the estate mir after the wives of recruits Vasilii Nikolaev Bobrushkin and Ivan Vasil’ev Baldin appeared at his Moscow office in protest and after receiving several written petitions. Bobrushkina claimed that the bailiff, Vasilii Vasil’ev Nefed’ev, gave her “blameless” and “moral” husband up for recruitment, despite a payment of thirty rubles, demanding forty rubles instead. Because of this petition, the mir now had to justify their decision to Prince Sergei. In a communal resolution, they attested that Bobrushkina gave “false witness” both about the money and about her husband’s purported “good behavior.” They argued that his poor behavior had been presented at the October 15th communal session and reaffirmed by estate records.
Moreover, Kolchin, a communal elder residing in Saint Petersburg, further attested to
Bobrushkin’s bad behavior, refusing to give him a passport to work there. Therefore, the mir concluded that choosing him for recruitment was “completely right.”364
As for Baldin, the mir actually wanted to recruit his brother, Abram. But, Abram had been named and freed twice before because of his age, at 36 years old, and his short height. They claimed that Baldin, who had good behavior, did not deserve to be recruited, but his family was also “in line” for recruitment. The mir did not show the same kindness towards Chirkin, who they discussed next, claiming that the entire estate knew of his poor behavior and, moreover, his family was in line for recruitment. However, they did free
Petr Vasil’ev Verevkin, chosen for recruitment on October 15th. In the same resolution,
364 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 347, l. 1-2. 161
the mir also addressed Tabakov’s petition, described above, freeing him. In total, two of the five serfs were freed from recruitment by this communal resolution after their families petitioned Prince Sergei.365
During this communal hearing, the assembly had to explain their selection of five different families after they had appealed to Prince Sergei. Additionally, they had to respond to attacks made on the character of the bailiff, citing “ties with rich peasants” and the “coercion of the poor.” They refuted these claims calling the evidence “unjust” and affirming that the bailiff had not carried out any orders without permission. What does the evidence show us?366
The November 1st and 2nd resolutions explicitly stated that certain men were chosen for recruitment because their families failed to pay recruitment dues. Rosina claimed that her family was chosen for failing to pay. Moreover, the mir admitted that the bailiff had requested and received 1,600 rubles from the Tabakov family, although they claimed it made no difference to their decision. It was only after Tabakov and Rosina petitioned Prince Sergei and indicated the hardship that recruitment would present to their families that the mir released them. A wealthier family could have adapted better to the loss of a working member, but they also would have had the means to pay the recruitment duty, other fees imposed by the bailiff (like that imposed on the Tabakov family), as well as obrok in full and on time, taking them off of the mir’s recruitment radar.367
365 Ibid.
366 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 347, l. 1-2.
367 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 2-3, 10; d. 357, l. 3, 4-5. 162
Rosina claimed that Prince Sergei first wanted individuals with “vices” chosen for recruitment, and it seems as though the mir too sought to rid the community of unsavory individuals. During the November 1st hearing, they wrote that the first five men were chosen above all because of their vices. They continued to justify their choice of
Bobrushkin and Chirkin, after their families petitioned Prince Sergei, by pointing to their bad behavior. Of course, it was the mir that decided in their correspondence with Prince
Sergei. The mir did not limit itself to choosing “immoral” individuals, but extended their reach to members of an offending family. While Tabakov may have committed a crime, it was his son who was chosen for recruitment. Additionally, the mir admitted that they did not want to recruit Ivan Baldin, but his brother, Abram. Another detail, however, enters into the narrative here: a family’s place in line for recruitment.368
The September 20th and October 15th communal resolutions not only included families with “vices,” but also those in line for recruitment. Justifying their decisions to
Prince Sergei, they claimed that both the Baldin and Chirkin families were in line for recruitment. This claim lent the recruitment process an air of “fairness.” Yet, even within this process, social factors proved influential. Men were not just chosen because their families were in line; rather, the mir preferentially chose men with poor behavior, as defined by them, or those whose families owed money.369
Although it is tempting to the see the mir’s exercise of power as wrong, it is also important to remember that the mir was responsible for fulfilling a duty imposed upon it
368 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 2-3; d. 347, l. 1-2.
369 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 347, l. 1-2, 4-5, 6-7. 163
from above. The state mandated a draft of recruits and the landlord delegated this duty to the mir. The mir demonstrated its own difficulties in a petition they sent in 1853, after it was reported that they had not sent enough recruits for the levy. According to the all- estate petition, the mir sought to send people who were in debt or were morally depraved, as by the landlord’s instructions. Unfortunately, they claimed that they could not find such an individual. As a result, they had to turn to the next family in line for recruitment.
This recruit resided in St. Petersburg and was called back to the village, but they still awaited his arrival and, therefore, could not yet levy him for recruitment.370
Here, the petitioners stressed their difficulty in finding proper recruits: debtors or those who had committed vices. They insisted that they did not want to “commit harm,” and even that they held a “heartfelt pity,” for recruits. After all, committing an individual for recruitment meant risking the integrity of a family which would have to function without one more working male. Meanwhile, the entire community relied upon households to meet dues. While this petition was written to justify the delay in choosing recruits, the delay indicated the very real difficulties the estate faced when selecting who to permanently sever from their community.371
4.5 Conclusion
The mir possessed the job of choosing village recruits. The mir’s power, however, was not final. Individual serfs contested the mir’s choices and forced themselves into the
370 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 355.
371 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 355. 164
decision-making process by petitioning their landlord, Prince Sergei. Prince Sergei, himself, held the mir accountable for their decisions and turned to them to justify their choices. The mir, therefore, faced pressures from above and below and had to respond accordingly, negotiating their power with that of other interest groups. This situation allowed individual serfs a space to assert their own interests, between, and sometimes using, different interest groups. Consequently, serfs like Tabakov and Rosina were able to free their sons from recruitment.
165
CHAPTER 5:
SERF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES AND THE SOSLOVIE SYSTEM
In the preceding chapters, we saw that peasants challenged orders from above when it conflicted with their own interests. When Prince Sergei sought to redesign the estate, they contested his directives, appealing to the estate bailiff, mir, and even petitioned the prince himself. Likewise, when the mir chose recruits, they opposed their decisions and petitioned Prince Sergei for justice. Peasants, however, did not only display their agency by resisting decisions from above; they also used the estate to support their private economic activities. This chapter investigates the economic activities that serfs on
Prince Sergei’s estate pursued and the social institutions they used to support these activities. The first section analyzes petitions that peasants sent to Prince Sergei asking him to intervene in private transactions gone wrong. These sources elucidate how serfs navigated the social system in order to pursue their economic interests. The following section considers how “justice” was rendered in these cases, demonstrating how local social interactions informed the larger soslovie system. The final section reviews the types of economic activities that they could and did pursue within the framework of serfdom and the limits that bound them.
Documents indicate that serfs on Prince Sergei’s estate saved capital, borrowed and lent money with interest, and rented or bought land and they used the estate’s administrative apparatus to support these activities. Since they could not purchase land themselves, they petitioned Prince Sergei for documents to purchase it in his name. Later, the land title was transferred to them. When they concluded private transactions, such as 166
renting land or lending money, they signed contracts at gatherings of the mir. And, when parties did not respect private transactions, they turned to the estate bailiff, mir, and even
Prince Sergei himself.
Nonetheless, these economic activities occurred within a soslovie system, where the majority of the population was unfree and all men were not considered equal under the law. “Law and order” in the countryside was based on the customary law of the village mir and the landlord’s idiosyncratic view of justice. Local power, however, could only extend so far. While the landlord and his administration largely encouraged economic development at home, they had less say in transactions between serfs from different estates or between serfs and members of other soslovie. Serfs lacked the security that corresponds to a universal law code and an independent judiciary. Macro social structures therefore limited serf enterprising, even as local social structures promoted it.
5.1 Institutional Support for Private Transactions
In 1831, the serf Vasilii Vasil’ev Verevkin petitioned Prince Sergei about a breached contract. Verevkin had lent 3,000 rubles to Andrei Gavrilov and Andrei
Grachev, who since died, under the condition that they pay interest and lend him their arable and haymaking land in the village of Sulost’ for an unfixed period. This agreement was concluded with a letter written in Gavrilov’s “own hand.” According to Verevkin, he received his due interest for the first year only “with great difficulty.” Then, the following year, Gavrilov completely refused to pay. To make matters worse, Gavrilov ceded control
167
over the land he had lent to Verevkin to the church in Sulost’, thus preventing Verevkin from using it. Consequently, Verevkin turned to Prince Sergei for justice.372
Verevkin must have been able to amass quite a sum of money in order to lend
3,000 rubles. Lending it to Gavrilov and Grachev, he had the prospects of earning even greater profits, through yearly interest payments and the use of Gavrilov’s land. This deal was an economic decision that he made in order to further increase an already impressive sum.
Despite the fact that Gavrilov was a serf, he held property. Verevkin referred to the rented land as land “belonging” to him.373 He used this property to his economic advantage, renting it to Verevkin. Even in a serf community, these peasants preserved a sense of ownership and used “their land” to their economic advantage. This case was not an anomaly. Soviet historian V.N. Kashin provides evidence that serfs purchased, sold, and willed land throughout European Russia.374 Soviet historians V.A. Fedorov and N.A.
Rubinshtein, and pre-Soviet historian V.I. Semevskii also cite serfs’ private land holdings and purchases.375 Peasant land ownership has been interpreted in these cases as an uncommon experience only available to the wealthiest peasants. On the other end of the
372 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 177, l.
373 Ibid.
374 V.N. Kashin, Krepostnye krest’iane-zemlevladel’tsy (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1935), 12-28.
375 V.A. Fedorov, Pomeshchich’i krest’iane tsentral’no-promyshlennogo raiona Rossii kontsa XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX v. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1974), 32-41; N.A. Rubinshtein, Sel’skoe khoziaistvo Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII v. (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1957), 43-44; V.I. Semevskii, Krest’iane v tsarstvovanie imperatritsy Ekateriny II, vol. 1, (St Petersburg: Tip. M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1881-1901), 338-339. 168
spectrum, Richard Pipes argues that all land in Imperial Russia ultimately belonged to the tsar. He categorically states, “from the late Middle Ages until the middle of the nineteenth century, the peasants of Great Russia owned no land: the soil they tilled belonged to the crown either directly or indirectly.”376 He attributes the historical lack of property rights in Russia to the underdevelopment of parliamentary bodies, legal institutions, and individual rights.377 While other historians do not go this far, they generally accept that an understanding of private property was weak in rural Russia.378
Case studies, however, cast doubt on such a blanket description. Tracy Dennison argues that peasants participated in real property and rental land markets. She finds that in 1858, 38% of land holdings among Voshchazhnikovo serfs was privately owned land, the majority of which were located more than 30 miles away from the estate. Holdings were not limited to wealthy households, nor were they used primarily to supplement insufficient communal lands. Dennison argues that “serfs’ private holdings were used primarily as a form of savings, investment, and loan collateral.”379 Serfs used property and land rental markets to pursue their economic interests, asserting their economic agency. Rodney Bohac also notes the widespread participation of serfs in land markets in his work on a Gagarin estate in Tver’ province. Although peasants were allocated
376 Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 185.
377 Ibid., 160.
378 Steven L. Hoch, “The Serf Economy and the Social Order in Russia,” in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, ed. M.L. Bush (London and New York: Longman, 1996), 311-322; Christine Worobec, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 28.
379 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 138. 169
communal land, he found that “the majority of peasant land…did not come from the
Gagarin holdings.”380 Instead, from 1700 to 1821, “Manuilovskoe serfs purchased additional land as individuals, in groups, and, perhaps, as a community and used the land as meadows and supplementary plowland.”381 While earlier aggregate studies indicate that peasants participated in land markets, but view this participation as a peripheral phenomenon, studies on the local level show that such participation was actually commonplace.
Dennison’s and Bohac’s findings raise the question of how serfs were able to purchase and own land given their social status and an absence of laws protecting their personal property. Indeed, it was illegal for serfs to purchase land until 1848.382 Petitions to Prince Sergei demonstrate that serfs used the estate’s administrative apparatus to protect their private transactions, including land purchases, rental agreements, and credit extensions. In some cases, they needed the apparatus to even undertake these transactions. To purchase land, for instance, they relied upon their landlords. Dennison explains that the landlord would issue serfs a legal document (doverennost’) giving them the power to purchase land in his name. In the document, the landlord also renounced his use rights to the land. The signing of the document was witnessed and notarized and the sale registered with provincial courts.383 In a directive to his bailiff in 1816, he charged a
380 Rodney D. Bohac, “Peasant Inheritance Strategies in Russia,” 25.
381 Ibid.
382 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 143.
383 Ibid., 143-144. 170
serf 39 rubles and 10 kopecks for this notarized document and, after receiving payment, ordered that the bailiff oversee the transaction.384 Serfs turned to the administration in order to both pursue and safeguard private transactions. In addition to land ownership, these transactions included rental agreements and credit extensions. At
Voshchanhnikovo, formal loan contracts were completed and registered by the administration.385 Contracts were also used on Prince Sergei’s estate. Although lacking legal rights, serfs used these documents when transactions went awry and petitioned the administration and Prince Sergei for justice.
In the case of the dispute between Verevkin and Gavrilov, the transaction did not turn out to be all that Verevkin had hoped. Gavrilov refused to pay the interest owed on his debt and denied Verevkin the use of his land. Nonetheless, Verevkin did have recourse in this situation: he could petition the landlord. When concluding his contract,
Gavrilov wrote a letter “in his own hand,” providing proof of the transaction. He could, then, present this contract as evidence to Prince Sergei.386 As someone holding power over both men, the prince could be used as an impartial arbiter whose authority had to be recognized not only by the parties involved, but also by the community as a whole.
Prince Sergei also had a paternal duty as a landlord to make sure that his serfs fulfilled the terms of their contract. In an era in which market interactions were becoming increasingly common, even in the countryside, Verevkin turned to institutions within the
384 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 59, l. 6.
385 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 183-186.
386 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 177, l. 1. 171
soslovie system, in this case the person of the landlord, to safeguard his economic transaction.
The landlord was not the only safeguard protecting serfs’ economic ventures. The estate administration also acted to protect private transactions. When the townsman
(meshchanin) Dmitrii Grigor’ev sought to retrieve money owed him, he first turned to the bailiff of the estate. In 1845, Grigor’ev purportedly lent Victor Sergeev Terent’ev and his sons 40 silver rubles on the condition that they repay it in yearly installments. When
Terent’ev and sons failed to live up to these terms, Grigor’ev approached the bailiff,
Emel’ianov, in 1849. The bailiff ordered Terent’ev’s sons to pay Grigor’ev back in installments of 25 paper rubles per year, to which they signed an agreement.387
Unfortunately, despite the intervention of the bailiff, the family continued to default on its debts. Consequently, in 1850, Grigor’ev directly petitioned Prince Sergei.388
Grigor’ev took an economic risk when lending his capital savings to Terent’ev and sons. He took this risk knowing that he had options should the loan fail. When it did, he first approached the bailiff of the estate for justice and, indeed, matters could have been settled there. The Emel’ianov, sided with Grigor’ev and ordered Terent’ev’s sons to pay him. The fact that the bailiff had the brothers sign a contract was also notable. This transaction was no longer an oral agreement that could easily be disputed; rather, it was a written contract that brooked no argument. It was with this very contract in hand that
Grigor’ev next turned to Prince Sergei after Terent’ev’s family once more defaulted. As
387 In this and the following documents, the words rospiska, podpiska, and kontrak are used in the original documents, referring to a written agreement, all of which I render as contract.
388 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 21-22. 172
this case indicates, monetary agreements did not simply rely on the honor of the participants. Grigor’ev could turn to the estate administration to plead his case and, if push came to shove, he could petition the landlord himself. Furthermore, his cause was supported by the written word: a contract.
In addition to the landlord and the bailiff, the mir provided another support for private economic transactions, as the case of widow Avdotia Egorova Kustova indicates.
This case began with a loan of 600 paper rubles made by Kustova’s husband to her uncle,
Petr Mikhailov Milov. In 1826, Milov appeared before the Moscow administrative office and paid 325 rubles of the loan. Then, after Milov’s untimely death, Prince Sergei ordered his son, Il’ia, to pay the remainder of the loan, 275 paper rubles. The mir settled the terms of this new agreement with a contract stipulating that Il’ia and his sons pay 10 rubles each year until the debt was settled. When Kustova sent her petition to Prince
Sergei in 1851, 25 years had passed since the original agreement and more twists and turns had been introduced. Although only 45 rubles remained of the original debt, after
“seeing [Il’ia’s] poverty,” she generously loaned an additional 178 rubles to her cousin, which she added to the original document. 389 Tragedy struck again in 1841, with the death of Il’ia. Despite this hardship, she noted that Il’ia’s sons “began to correct themselves and live in good order.” 390 Consequently, she sought to collect the rest of the debt. Abram, Il’ia’s son, paid 20 rubles but thereafter refused to pay because, despite the fact that the agreement had been written, it had not occurred before a gathering of the
389 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 16.
390 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 16 ob. 173
mir. Rather, the terms had simply been agreed upon “before God,” who apparently had little influence in the administration of the village.391 Before writing her petition to Prince
Sergei, Kustova first turned to the bailiff and showed him her written contracts. However, because Abram’s account contradicted Kustova’s, the bailiff told her to petition Prince
Sergei directly.392
As Kustova’s case indicates, although Prince Sergei was a final arbiter, he relied on local institutions to settle disagreements and carry out his orders. Kustova concluded her agreement with Il’ia and his sons through the mir. Then, when she tried to resolve the debts owed her, she first turned to the bailiff. Only after the bailiff’s intervention failed did she petition Prince Sergei.393 Similarly, we saw earlier, in Grigor’ev’s case, that he first concluded a repayment agreement through the bailiff. When those terms failed, he wrote to Prince Sergei.394 This process also worked in the other direction: when Prince
Sergei was petitioned, he forwarded his orders to the bailiff or the mir.
Estate institutions – the mir, landlord’s administration, and the landlord himself – supported peasants’ economic activities by confirming agreements and enforcing them.
These institutions did not work on their own; rather, they interacted with one another.
This is clear from the details of a rental agreement undertaken by the villages of Strely and Petrushino.
391 Ibid.
392 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 16.
393 Ibid.
394 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 21-22. 174
In 1852, Strely and Petrushino sent a petition to Prince Sergei about land that they had rented from the village of Nikol’skoe following a census and land revision in 1851.
The census, undertaken by the estate administration, was a mechanism by which the government kept track of its peasant population and determined tax obligations. The estate also took the opportunity to calculate ratios of arable and hay-making land to village populations and redistribute land among villages based upon these calculations.395
However, the serfs that these redistributions affected did not necessarily agree with the calculations. Consequently, for example, in 1834 the villages of Dubrovo and Petrushino sent in a petition arguing that the administration had made a mistake when evaluating their land in comparison with Nikol’skoe. They argued that the administrator erred first, because he valued arable land more than hay-making land and, secondly, because he only considered the amount of land and not its quality. Underscoring these points, they argued that in Nikol’skoe there were 31 desiatina, roughly 83.7 acres, that were worth 50 rubles each per year. Meanwhile, their land was worth 10 rubles per desiatina per year. Their analysis did not only include arable land, used for crops, but also land used to grow hay.
Continuing, they maintained that in Nikol’skoe they could mow 10 carts of hay per soul, while in Dubrovo and Petrushino, they could only mow two carts per soul. According to their calculations, then, the redistribution of land was inaccurate and harmful to their villages.396
395 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 191; 195; 197; 198; 318, l. 1; 318, l. 4-5; 318, l. 6-7; 318, l. 10; 326, l. 14-15; 326, l. 17-18; 326, l. 19-20.
396 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 198. 175
Villagers once more voiced their discontent after the census and redistribution of land in 1851. While in 1834, Dubrovo and Petrushino argued that the administration miscalculated by considering land quantity over quality, in 1851 villagers of Nikol’skoe argued that the administration erred by basing redistribution on a village’s distance from arable land instead of on land quality. They argued that their allocated land did not even compare by half to the quality of land farther away.397 While petitioning Prince Sergei was way in which villagers sought to right the wrongs of land redistribution, they also turned to private agreements.
Following the census, elders from Strely and Petrushino concluded an agreement with those of Nikol’skoe to use their arable land at a rate of three rubles per year per desiatina, 2.7 acres, until the next land revision. The two sides confirmed these terms in writing with the estate administration. These arrangements resulted in conflict, leading peasants of these villages to turn to the estate administration for support. On June 15,
1852, a peasant from Nikol’skoe appeared before the mir claiming that the village peasants were suffering because of the land agreement, to which they had not agreed.
Breaching the agreement, they passed a communal resolution promising to work the land themselves. As can be imagined, the inhabitants of Stely and Petrushino were not pleased with this turn of events. They contested the breach of terms, petitioning Prince Sergei and arguing that they had already improved the land with manure and brought everything to order. Furthermore, they maintained that Nikol’skoe’s use of the land was impractical anyway because of the village’s considerable distance from the land and because long
397 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 19-20. 176
periods of rainfall would prevent Nikol’skoe villagers from traveling there with livestock.398
The villagers of Nikol’skoe, Strely, and Petrushino worked agriculturally, but also within a market system. Although the land, technically, belonged neither to Nikol’skoe nor to Strely and Petrushino, but to the landlord, the villagers viewed the land as their own, at least for the period between the 9th and 10th land revisions. Consequently,
Nikol’skoe, initially decided that it would be in their best interest to rent their arable land in exchange for money. Strely and Petrushino reached an agreement with Nikol’skoe, using their savings to rent land. While using market practices to pursue their economic interests, the villagers of Strely and Petrushino also possessed the practicality of agriculturalists. They recognized that Nikol’skoe held an unfavorable position vis-à-vis the land and used this knowledge to argue their point. After Nikol’skoe breached the agreement, Strely and Petrushina did not argue for the contract’s inviolability, but for the time and resources they had already invested into the land. We can see in this case that the value of contracts laid not in the idea of a binding agreement supported by the rule of law; rather they served as evidence, proving that a deal occurred. As a paper “witness,” contracts could be used by the community, administration, or landlord to “justly” settle a disagreement. It was this sense of justice that the landlord, mir, or bailiff used to justify their decisions, and which individuals appealed to when approaching them for aide.
The communal resolution further demonstrates the structures in place protecting peasants’ interests and providing them with recourse when deals were violated. After
398 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 332. 177
Prince Sergei received the petition from Strely and Petrushino, he sent orders on June 3 and 10, 1852, for the mir to settle the matter between the villages. According to the communal resolution, the mir agreed with Prince Sergei that the villages of Strely and
Petrushino should be allowed to plough and plant the land that they had already worked and improved through the use of manure. Based on the same rationale, the mir concluded that Strely and Petrushino should harvest rye from the land that they had sowed and plough spring crops there afterward. The last remaining unplowed land should be ploughed by the fall of 1855.399
After receiving a petition from the villagers of Strely and Petrushino, Prince
Sergei ordered the mir to settle the case, although he also included his own judgment in the directive. The mir then agreed with his decision that Strely and Petroshino should continue to work the land. While the landlord was a figure that the villagers of Strely and
Petroshino could turn to for justice, he did not rely upon his own order alone. Instead, he turned to the mir, as local representatives possessing social capital, to settle the case.
Prince Sergei could have sent an order to the bailiff of the estate with explicit instructions, but he did not: he ordered that the mir have the final say, though not without his guidance. By using the mir, Prince Sergei involved a local institution, which would ultimately also be responsible for carrying out his orders, in the decision-making process.
Serfs used these estate institutions to support their economic activities. If an agreement turned into a disagreement, they turned to the estate bailiff. Chosen by the mir and confirmed by the landlord, the bailiff was the landlord’s direct connection to the
399 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 8-9. 178
estate. Thus, Avdotia Egorova Kustova and Dmitrii Grigoreev first approached him when attempting to retrieve money owed them.400 The mir was another institution that serfs turned to, both when establishing agreements and when these agreements failed. As an institution comprised of elected officials from each village, its resolutions represented the will of the entire community. In fact, Hoch demonstrates that the mir’s power extended beyond its representative role; it also exerted social control and preserved the social order.401 The landlord was the peasant’s final recourse. Prince Sergei held ultimate legal power over the estate. Peasants, therefore, looked to him to mete out justice, or to subvert local authorities and reach a more favorable resolution. He, in turn, relied upon the bailiff and mir to actually carry out his orders. Consequently, he ordered the mir to settle the case between the villages of Strely, Petrushino, and Nikol’skoe, but also made no secret of his own views.402
These institutions were limited to the estate, making economic transactions outside of the estate riskier. Iakov Andreev’s story delineates the extent of these institution’s authority. Together with serfs belonging to Count Vladimir Grigor’evich
Orlov, Andreev rented land for five years, at a rate of 500 rubles per year. Things turned for the worst, however, when his partners turned against him. According to Andreev, they did not want to share management of the produce garden with him; consequently, he argued, they devised a plot to frame him for stealing. With his conviction, they could
400 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 21-22.
401 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 133-159.
402 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 8-9. 179
manage the land on their own and share profits with one less man. To his chagrin, the scheme worked and as punishment for his purported crimes, he was sent for recruitment.403
Theoretically, serfs, even those owned by different landlords, could rent and manage land together. Unfortunately, there were added dangers to making deals with outsiders because estate administrative jurisdiction did not extend to them. Whereas a community could regulate the actions of its members through institutions such as the mir or, less formally, through kin and social networks, these mechanisms of regulation were absent in Andreev’s case as the parties involved belonged to different estates owned by different landlords. The situation quickly devolved in an “us versus them” relationship in which Andreev was considered an outsider and actions against him, therefore, justified for the sake of the in-group. “Justice,” then, became sending Andreev for recruitment.
According to Andreev, however, he was the wronged party, a victim of his partners’ machinations. While the bailiff, mir, and landlord served as guarantors for economic transactions on the estate, their local nature limited the extent of their power.
5.2 Justice: A Local Matter
Considering the role of local institutions in settling economic cases, it is worth asking how, exactly, cases were resolved. The landlord, mir, bailiff, and serfs relied on a vague concept of “justice” or “fairness” (spravedlivost’) when seeking redress or arbitrating cases. While the word “justice” may evoke notions of legality and due process
403 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 32-33. 180
of law, justice had a different meaning in a society that had different legal systems and courts of law depending on soslovie. Although statutory law increasingly bound elites and urban dwellers over the course of the nineteenth century, serfs continued to experience justice in terms of customary law, judged by the mir or landlord.404 On his estate, Prince Sergei liked to be kept abreast of all affairs and he forwarded his decisions to the bailiff or mir to be executed. “Justice” here was dependent on Prince Sergei’s own idiosyncratic sense of the term. When the widow Guseva petitioned Prince Sergei about retrieving land that her father-in-law and late husband had lent, Prince Sergei cited the lack of justice (nespravedlivost’) in her demand stating, “she understood and saw the unjustness of her petition.” Why her claim was unjust, Prince Sergei did not elaborate.
How, then, was it decided what was or was not just?
In the land dispute between Strely, Petrushino, and Nikol’skoe, Prince Sergei and the mir’s decision was based “on the work and improvement of the land” achieved before
Nikol’skoe reneged on the deal.405 It was considered just that Strely and Petrushino continue to work the land and receive its yield because they had already invested their resources, in the form of time, labor, manure, and seeds. In contrast, the landlord and mir
404 Beatrice Brodsky Farnworth, “The Litigious Daughter-in-Law: Family Relations in Rural Russia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Slavic Review 45, no. 1 (1986): 49-64; Mironov, “The Law: Courts, Crimes, and Punishments,” 223-365; Cathy Frierson, “Crime and Punishment in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Criminality at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Slavic Review 46, no. 1 (1987): 55-69; Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court, 2-5. Peter Czap, Jr., “Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1861-1912,” Journal of Social History 1, no. 2 (1967): 149-79; Richard S. Wortman, “The Composition of the Russian Legal Administration in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 51-88; Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 36-50.
405 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 8. 181
could have supported Strely and Petrushino because an agreement had been set. In that case, they would have been protecting the sanctity of contractual arrangements. But, they did not. Instead, they considered the practicalities of the case and judged it on an individual basis, here favoring parties that had already contributed work and resources into the land. This conclusion correlates to our earlier observation that while written contracts helped a petitioners’ case, it was not because contracts were viewed as inviolable and having force of law; rather, they provided proof to arbiters such as the landlord, bailiff, or mir that terms had been concluded between conflicting parties.
5.3 Serfs’ Private Transactions
While the earlier examples indicate the social institutions that supported individuals’ economic choices, they also show the types of economic transactions that peasants made with one another. Serfs from Prince Sergei’s estate conducted credit transactions and rented property in exchange for monetary compensation. When making such transactions, many peasants wrote contracts, which served as witness to an agreement. These agreements could follow peasants around for decades, as we saw when
Dmitrii Girgoreev lent Victor Sergeev Terenteev forty silver rubles and Avdotia Egorova
Kustova lent her uncle and nephews over 700 rubles over the course of twenty odd years.
Debts were not simply the responsibility of the individual, but of the entire family.
Consequently, when Kustova’s uncle passed away, his sons inherited responsibility for paying her back.406
406 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 21-22; 16. 182
Andrei Fedorov Gorkov and Dmitrii Vlasov’s case demonstrates the familial nature of transactions.407 According to Gorkov’s petition, his parents, now deceased, lent money to Vlasov in 1832 and sealed the deal with a contract. Of this debt, 105 rubles remained in 1857, when the petition was written. Why did Gorkov wait so long to claim his family’s money? It turns out that in 1838 Vlasov passed away, leaving behind three under-aged children: one boy and two girls. To make matters worse, the orphans’ home burned down in a fire that consumed Sulost’. Twenty years later, Gorkov claimed that
Vlasov’s son, Vasilii, who worked in industry, earned a good salary and was doing well for himself. He, therefore, had the capability to pay back the remaining 105 rubles of his family’s debt.408
Neither Gorkov nor Vasilii made the deal. Nonetheless, Gorkov still felt that
Vasilii personally owed him. A contract helped Gorkov’s case: he had written proof that an agreement had been concluded between his father and Dmitrii Vlasov. The way in which he presented his case also undoubtedly helped his cause: he only pressed his claim once Vasilii possessed the ability to repay his family’s debt. Gorkov ostensibly sympathized with Vasilii, knowing about his father’s death, the sisters for which he was responsible, his own young age, and the destruction of their house; at least, that is what he claimed. Alternatively, he may not have broached the subject earlier because he knew that Vasilii would not have been able to pay anyway. Later, seeing his prosperity, Gorkov may have felt entitled to a piece of the pie, spurring him to pen a petition. Whatever the
407 For another example, see RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 9-11.
408 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 397. 183
case, Andrei did have the right, according to the norms in place, to claim the debt owed his family.
In addition to lending money, serfs also rented land. For example, Vasilii Vlasov rented his arable land in Sulost’ for an indefinite period of time, in exchange for 3,000 rubles.409 Iakov Andreev, together with serfs from a different estate, rented produce land for a period of five years, for 500 rubles per year.410
Not only individual families, but also the community rented out land. Earlier, we saw that Strely and Petrushino rented arable land from Nikol’skoe.411 Similarly, communities rented out empty huts within the village. In 1831, the mir resolved to lend an empty hut to the dyer Ivan Nikitin as a workshop. This agreement was concluded for a three-year period, at a rate of sixty rubles per year. The income, in turn, contributed to the mir’s coffers. The agreement was concluded with a contract signed by the bailiff, “so that no one among the estate peasants could contradict it.”412 Communal transactions followed the same pattern as individual transactions in that they delineated the terms of exchange, here a contract as witness, as this communal resolution makes clear, so that no one could “contradict” it.
Surprisingly, serfs also bought land. Prince Sergei used his privileged position to help his serfs acquire property, no doubt bolstering his own profits. For example, in 1852
409 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 177.
410 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 32-33.
411 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 332.
412 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 173a, l. 1 ob. 184
Iakov Fedorov Dumaev sent a petition to Prince Sergei in order to purchase a house and land in Finland. Because he was a mere serf, he completed the transaction in the name of his landlord. He petitioned Prince Sergei to send him a warrant (doverennost’), allowing him to purchase the house and land under Prince Sergei’s name.413 With the help of a landlord, enterprising serfs like Dumaev could, and did, complete land purchase transactions despite their standing in Russia’s soslovie system.
Buying land, however, could also hold risks for serfs, as the inhabitants of
Nikol’skoe learned. In June of 1851, the elders and villagers of Nikol’skoe sent a petition to Prince Sergei about land that they had purportedly owned and run for over 70 years.
According to the petition, they had given the acquisition documents to Prince Aleksandr
Mikhailovich Golitsyn’s bailiff, at the time when he ran the estate. Unfortunately, they no longer knew where these documents were stored and now their land was being included in Prince Sergei’s land revision. As a result, they petitioned Prince Sergei to restore to them their rightful land.414
Because the serfs of Nikol’skoe could not legally own land, they had to rely upon
Prince Sergei’s sense of justice to return the contested land. If the acquisition documents could be found, then the peasants would have written evidence supporting their claim.
Without the documents, the administration would have to rely solely on the word of the serfs. Simply because of his soslovie, Prince Sergei held all of the power in this situation.
In many cases, Prince Sergei supported his serfs’ economic endeavors and acted as a
413 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 337, l. 2.
414 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 17-18. 185
safety net for their economic transactions, but against their landlord, serfs had no recourse. Serfs acted as economic agents, but their opportunities were, nonetheless, limited by the soslovie system.
5.4 Conclusions
Serfs conducted credit transactions, rented, and bought land. Such agreements were passed down to family members and were supported by written contracts. Peasants used their estate’s administrative system to support these activities. In the event that the terms of private transactions were breached, they turned to the estate bailiff, mir, or even the landlord himself for justice. The mir and the bailiff were also important for establishing agreements, not just contesting them. Peasants concluded contractual agreements at communal gatherings, relying on the social power of community and the authority of the mir to safeguard their transactions.
Nonetheless, these transactions were not protected by the force of law overseen by an independent judiciary. Consequently, protections, and therefore opportunities, took on a local form. Despite avenues of recourse on Prince Sergei’s estate, the system failed when peasants came up against the landlord himself or anyone outside of their physical estate or soslovie. While the landlord may have possessed legal authority on his estate, this power did not extend to estates controlled by other landlords. Therefore, transactions conducted with serfs from different estates, with townspeople, or with merchants were riskier as Prince Sergei and his administration he had no direct authority over them.
Furthermore, if a serf conflicted with his landlord, then he relied on the beneficence of the landlord to issue a directive opposed to his own interests. Although serfs used the
186
estate administration to support their economic activities, the larger soslovie system also limited their actions.
187
CHAPTER 6:
SERF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND HOUSEHOLD DIVISIONS
In his memoirs, the former serf Aleksandr Nikitenko describes an idyllic childhood home: a “small, white-washed hut with a thatched roof” and with a kitchen garden sloping to the water’s edge.415 “How strikingly beautiful were the luxuriant carnations and gigantic sunflowers, the poppies in a riot of colors, the aromatic tansy, marigolds, bluebells, ginger, and cornflowers,” he reminisces.416 He recalls his forays to the kitchen garden; the cherry orchard, his grandmother’s paradise; a dense grove, where apple, cherry, and pear trees bore decadent fruit through the summer and autumn. He remembers this as the “joy of [his] childhood.”417 While the household provided the setting for Nikitenko’s fond childhood memoirs, it also functioned as the foundation for the peasant family economy. It was a space of agrarian economic production as well as a unit of economic activity.
A peasant’s household did not simply consist of the family home; it included outbuildings, a kitchen garden, livestock, and other resources that supported peasant activity. It also included household members, which could extend to the double digits in complex, multi-generational households. These members contributed to the economic success of the household, as married couples formed work units and were allotted land by
415 Aleksandr Nikitenko, Up From Serfdom: My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824, trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 13.
416 Ibid., 13-14.
417 Ibid., 14. 188
the commune and adult sons sought migrant work in industry or trade. Considering the centrality of the household in the economic life of peasants, it became the setting of negotiation and conflict as growing households divided into smaller units.
This chapter investigates how serfs divided their households. I investigate petitions sent to Prince Sergei outlining terms of agreement, in cases of amicable divisions, or petitions arguing for better terms, in cases of contentious ones. Viewing household divisions as economic choices, I analyze the elements that were included in divisions –family members, houses, outbuildings, livestock, and cash, and occasionally produce, land, and goods – and the factors that led to the terms of their division. I found that although these peasants were primarily agriculturalists, they also participated in the market and used market rationale when deciding the fate of the household. Rather than subsistence farmers operating within a cashless village economy, they were attuned to the market, using it to trade produce, rent land, and hire labors. Some families even amassed considerable profits. The landlord and mir had their own interests. They exerted pressure on peasants, shaping their decisions through their policies and oversight.
Household divisions brought together competing interests. Because dues were levied on the entire community, and the mir distributed these payments to households, both the landlord and the mir sought to maintain the ability of households to pay their allotments. An inability for one household to pay, after all, would stress the entire community. Meanwhile, families had to make sure that the new households were still economically viable units. Each household needed enough contributing members to support the entire family and enough livestock, outbuildings, and capital to support agriculture or industry. As for the individual, he had to guarantee his survival in an
189
uncertain world, but he was helped in this task by the support of his family, the community, and even the landlord. Reasons for division were diverse, but no matter the reason, families still had to make sensible economic decisions to support their households.
This chapter begins by considering the connection between households and economic development in Russia. It demonstrates that household economies were intimately connected to the wider economy: changes in household size, structure, and function reflected larger economic developments. A discussion of the physical and social realities of the household follows, providing the fundamentals necessary to understand household divisions. Following this discussion, we will delve into amicable household- divisions petitions, then contentious petitions, and investigate the strategies that peasants used and the factors that they considered when organizing their household economies.
6.1 Households and Economic Development
Since V.I. Lenin, household divisions have been used to understand the dynamics of social differentiation on the assumption that increased household stratification indicates capitalism’s penetration into the countryside. A.V. Chayanov offered a different paradigm for understanding households in his influential work On the Theory of Peasant
Economy. He argued that household structures differed not because of permanent stratification but because of cyclical household dynamics. The underlying assumption was that agriculture was the basis of the rural economy. Peasants lacked access to markets and market behaviors were anathema to their very culture. As a result, access to land determined a household’s wealth. Arable land was distributed by the mir based on
190
the number of working units, comprised of a married couple. As families developed, they entered different stages of the household life cycle, giving them more or less access to land and, consequently, more or less wealth. Family labor input, then, served as the key to wealth in the countryside. Thus, while Lenin saw stratification in the Russian village,
Chayanov argued that all households were essentially the same, but at different stages in their life cycles. To him, the data Lenin cites only represented a snapshot of a household’s complete lifecycle, making stratification appear where none existed. Tracy
Dennison argues that this Chayanovian framework has since become hegemonic in our understanding of the Russian peasantry, obfuscating peasant economic activities outside of this “norm.”418
What was at stake in these arguments was not simply the composition of the village household, but the state of the Russian economy at large. The household served as a window through which to analyze economic developments in the provinces. Macro- economic changes corresponded to behavioral changes on the local level, even affecting the size and organization of family households. Various modes of economic behavior, then, produced different household formations. Consequently, historians could study household patterns to understand the economic behaviors of peasants, and vice versa.
John Hajnal outlines two such household patterns, one associated with pre-
Industrial Northwestern Europe and another associated with rural economies in China,
India, and Russia. The pattern that emerged in Northwest Europe was a “simple
418 V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, in Lenin: Collected Works, 4th ed., vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 70-190; A.V. Chayanov, On the Theory of Peasant Economy, trans. R.E.F. Smith, ed. Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay, R.E.F Smith (Homewood: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1966), 53-59. Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 6-17. 191
household system” in which couples delayed marriage until they could form an independent nuclear family. On the other hand, couples married earlier and remained part of the husband’s natal household in the “joint household system.” Not only were these households a sign of the larger economy, but Hajnal argues that they “reacted in fundamentally different ways to economic difficulties and particularly to difficulties resulting from population growth.”419 They were also a factor, then, in the larger economy. What mechanisms, however, determined this relationship?
Steven L. Hoch explains household formations in terms of demographic patterns.
To Hoch, peasants used divisions to limit households to their “biological” limits: a three- generation, multi-family household. This biological limit was coupled with universal marriage at an early age, high birth rates, and low life expectancy, to produce large, complex households. It was this demographic pattern that was most suitable to an agricultural livelihood in Russia, especially given that land was allocated to households based on household size, and especially conjugal units.420
Rodney Bohac approaches the question from a different angle, considering household strategies. He argues that serfs used various strategies to protect the household’s economic standing. Studying the Gagarin estate of Manuilovskoe in Tver’ province, he shows that household size was an important consideration for economic survival. In a small household, the loss of a laborer to death or recruitment could mean the unviability of the entire household and, of concern to the mir and landowner, the
419 John Hajnal, “Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System,” Population and Development Review 8, no. 3 (1982): 481.
420 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 95-101. 192
inability to pay dues. Peter Czap argues the Gagarin family sought to limit household divisions on their estates for this very reason.421 Bohac demonstrates that households used different strategies not only to ensure their survival, but also to improve their economic standing. He found that those with large holdings of land and livestock postponed or limited partitioning whereas poorer ones “disinherited” members by sending them into other families as adopted members or sons-in-laws. Bohac’s analysis indicates that household stratification was developing in Russia during the nineteenth century; however, communal and landlord intervention served as a check to household differentiation as they sought to maintain the viability, and tax-paying ability, of all households.422
Dennison rejects the notion of a broad “Russian” household pattern and argues that patterns “reflected rational responses to local constraints.” Because of Russia’s extensive size, it offered diverse local conditions, to which peasants had to adapt.
Studying a village in the central industrial region, Dennison notes smaller household sizes than those witnessed by Hoch and Peter Czap, whose works focused on the black- earth agricultural region. 423 An industrial economy altered the inputs that affected both household size and structure: the average age at marriage, the birth rate, and life expectancy. Hoch indicates that because the mir allocated land according to the number
421 Peter Czap, Jr, “‘A Large Family: The Peasant’s Greatest Wealth’: Serf Households in Mishino, Russia, 1814-1858,” in Family Forms in Historic Europe, ed. Richard Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 143-145.
422 Bohac, “Peasant Inheritance Strategies,” 23-42.
423 Czap, “’A Large Family,” 122-126; Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 84-109; Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 79. 193
of married couples (tiagla, also a land distributive unit), peasants were incentivized to marry young. Additionally, marriage was universal. This pressure to acquire land was less profound in industrial regions, where peasants often worked in industry or trade.
What resulted was higher ages at marriage, lower birth rates, and smaller, less complicated, households. For households in the region studied by Dennison, it made more sense to have less communal land and to focus on other forms of labor, such as trade, migrant, or handicraft work. Household sizes and structures reflected these differences. Nonetheless, these households were still larger than those found in
Northwest Europe. Dennison attributes this disparity to landlord policies that favored large families and the institution of serfdom which subjugated peasants to the dictates of landlords. Frierson’s work on household divisions shows higher rates of fission after the emancipation.424
Herdis Kolle’s work on examining a proto-industrial district east of Moscow, complicates Dennison’s findings. Like Dennison, she finds smaller household sizes in this region. Though complex-household type continued to dominate in this region, there were greater numbers of simple households than found in the central agricultural region of Russia. She argues that “the proto-industrial household economy depended on the ability to successfully alternate between the agricultural and industrial sphere.”425 Kolle indicates that peasant households participated in a “dual economy,” in both agriculture and industry. Peasants adopted two different strategies to maintain this system. In some
424 Dennison, “Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia,” 395-429; Cathy A. Frierson, “Razdel: The Peasant Family Divided,” The Russian Review 46, no. 1 (1987): 35-51.
425 Kolle, Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia, 147. 194
cases, they migrated seasonally: they worked in agriculture during spring and summer and in the textile industry in fall and winter. Alternatively, households divided occupations among their members. In these cases, younger family members typically worked in industry while older members worked in agriculture. Proto-industrial families, therefore, continued to utilize communal arable land and see value in agricultural work, as it provided both a safety net and supplementary income.426
In his impressive social history, Mironov also looks toward economic conditions, and particularly household economies, to explain household size and structure:
“Agricultural work influenced the maintenance of large, complex families; work in commerce and industry in its various formed encouraged the growth of smaller family units.”427 Complex family structure maintained the stability of households during times of death, sickness, and recruitment. It also ensured higher output through higher labor inputs. Counterintuitively, Mironov finds that peasants in Iaroslavl’, Perm, and Nizhnii
Novgorod provinces, who were occupied in handicraft industries and trade in addition to agriculture, also predominantly had complex family structures. In Iaroslavl’ province, the area of our investigation, 43.4% of households were complex, 10.6% were extended, and
34.2% were small. The end of serfdom, however, corresponded with a massive increase of household divisions. 428
426 Ibid.
427 Mironov, “The Family,” trans. Willard Sunderland, in A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917, vol. 1, ed. Ben Eklof (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 2000), 125.
428 Ibid. 195
By 1897 60.3% of households in this region were small and 31.6% were complex.
At the same time, a total of 52.6% of households in the Central non-black earth region were small and 38.1% complex. Complex households were more common in the fertile central black-earth region where 44.6% were small and 44.4% were complex. Mironov explains the prevalence of complex family structures on the basis of their economic role in Russian agricultural societies: more labor inputs meant more allocated land, higher output, and greater economic stability. The landlord, administration, and mir, however, also restricted household divisions. These institutions were also driven by the belief that this structure was best for peasant households, notwithstanding “stability” or
“productivity.”429
These works suggest that economic developments can be gauged by analyzing households statistically. This chapter will consider peasants’ decisions by analyzing petitions to divide. How were family decisions calculated? Were they market-oriented choices that were meant to increase a household’s wealth and led to greater economic stratification in the countryside? Or, were decisions driven by concerns about mere survival and without any expectations of changing one’s economic position? I argue that peasants sought wealth, not stability, when dividing their households. First, however, I will discuss the peasant household, to indicate what, exactly, a household division entailed.
429 Ibid. 196
6.2 The Peasant Household
In his study of serf households on the estate of Mishino in Riazan’ Province, Czap describes the conventional layout for a farmstead (dvor) and peasant hut (izba) in that province. The farmstead was square in shape, with its shape delineated by the hut and outbuildings. These included barns, sheds, a threshing floor, haycocks, and gardens, all of which were vital to the functioning of the farmstead and were typically made of wood with straw roofs. Additionally, there was space for kitchen gardens, trees, and livestock.
The hut itself usually consisted of one room, with a large stove, although some had two rooms. The village, in turn, consisted of farmsteads grouped closely together. Arable land would be found around the village. 430
Haxthausen’s found the same layout on a farmstead in Iaroslavl’ province, the region of our study, and provides further details:
The [hut] contained no furniture other than a bench which ran along the entire room. Standing in the corner opposite the door was the icon illuminated by a lamp. Some shelves had been built along the walls for keeping dishes and various utensils. Spinning wheels and a loom were evidence of the very widespread linen industry in this region. An enormous brick stove, which serves as a sleeping place in winter, occupied one-third of the room. Next to the stove a small staircase leads to the… lower room of the house which is used as a storage room and where small animals…spend the night.431
In addition to this main house, there were other buildings that were necessary for the peasants’ livelihoods. Attached to the hut was a barn. Behind it stood a shed for storing
430 Czap, “A Large Family,” 112-114.
431 Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, 66. 197
agricultural equipment, other buildings included a cellar and building for keeping fruit and cabbage, a drying barn, and finally a bathhouse.432
Dennison indicates how houses in Voshchaznikhovo also differed depending on the wealth of its inhabitants: “there were large, two-story stone houses with tiled roofs valued at several hundred rubles (a few at over a thousand), as well as small wooden houses with thatched roofs worth only 20 or 30 rubles.”433 These differences pointed to economic stratification in the village.
While the mir redistributed arable land, the serf farmstead was the personal property of serfs and could be bought or sold. Consequently, the main house and the outbuildings came under negotiation in the household division process. Because they were vital for life in the countryside, families had to devise strategies to provide these facilities during a division. In some cases that meant building new houses or outbuildings; in others, families continued to hold outbuildings in common. On the other hand, families that relied upon migrant, commercial or handicraft work often did not mention outbuildings in their petitions. We will investigate these strategies in the next section.
Household divisions split not only buildings but also people. The number of working males could make or break a family, especially when tragedy struck in the form of death or conscription. This was no little concern considering that the expectation of life at birth was 24.8 for women and 29.8 for men, according to Steven Hoch’s recent
432 Ibid., 66-67.
433 Dennison, “The Invention of the Russian Rural Commune,” 579. 198
estimates.434 Families had to consider the ratio of producers to consumers, that is, the number of workers who would provide for the young and aged. Too many consumers would lead a family towards poverty; hence, Bohac’s findings that households could preserve their wealth by limiting partitions. The number of workers was especially important for families that relied on agricultural labor, as more labor inputs meant more land, according to the mir’s own calculus when allocating arable land. Mironov and
Dennison show that household sizes were smaller in villages more connected to industrial networks which relied less on agriculture. This size differentiation may have resulted from greater economic choices, leading to practices that resulted in different household structures. If a family relied on agriculture, they were incentivized to marry their sons as early as possible in order to receive an extra land allocation from the mir. Alternatively, young men in Iaroslavl’ did not necessarily rely upon land allotments. They may have chosen to pursue migrant or commercial work instead and to delay marriage. A delayed marriage would, in turn, impact the size and structure of the household as children were born later and fewer in number.
The optimal size of households varied according to the type of economy in which they participated. In the non-black earth region, Dennison, finds that the mean household size in Voshchaznikhovo was 5.0 members, while Kolle finds a range of 6.1 to 6.7 members in Bun’kovskoe, east of Moscow. In the black-earth, agricultural, region, Hoch found a mean between 7.7 and 9.0 in Petrovskoe and Czap between 8.7 and 9.7 in
Mishino. In Voshchaznikhovo the largest households ranged between 14 and 20
434 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 86-87. 199
members. In Bun’kovsko, the maximum ranged between 21 and 29 members and there were several households consisting of only one member. In Mishino, households consisting of 14 members were not out of the ordinary and there were even some with up to 30 members!435 In Iaroslavl’ province in 1762-1763, according to Michael Mitterauer and Alexander Kagan calculated that the average household size was 5.2 members.
Considering these households’ structures, 47.1% were single family households, 21.3% were extended, and 31.6% were complex.436 In the first half of the nineteenth century,
Mironov calculated that the average household held 1.95 families, forming multi- generational complex or extended family structures with more than one family in residence comprising 6.49 persons, 3.01 males, 3.48 females, and 3.48 adults versus 3.01 children.437 These calculations give us a standard by which to understand the household divisions we will examine below.
Within the household, the family patriarch (bol’shak) stood at the top of the family hierarchy. Hoch finds that, in Petrovskoe, the average new household head was forty years old. A new head generally took over after the death of a father, as sons typically remained in their fathers’ homes. When the patriarch died, a new head would replace him, or else the household would divide into two new households with new
435 Dennison, “Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia,” 405-407; Kolle, Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia; Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 79; Czap, “A Large Family,” 122-126.
436 Michael Mitterauer and Alexander Kagan, “Russian and Central European Family Structures: A Comparative View,” Journal of Family History 7, no.1 (1982): 108-109.
437 Mironov, “The Family,” 125. 200
heads, often brothers.438 Widowed women could also occupy the position. On the estate of Manuilovskoe in Tver’ province, Rodney Bohac finds, a total 33.9% of households had a widow as head at some point between 1813 and 1861. The highest percentage at any one time occurred in 1851, at 14.6%. Unlike their male counterparts, these women gained headship, on average, at 54.9 years, after the death of their husbands. In some cases, they served as heads over families with underage sons; but, Bohac finds, over 80% actually had sons who were married and 44.1% had sons over the age of 30. He cautions, however, that these widows’ role may have been less clear-cut as heads of households.
While estate documents officially registered a household patriarch, for widows, the title may have been honorific. In other case, these widows may have ruled in the home while their sons represented the household in the mir and community.439 Generally, the patriarch represented the family in the peasant communal assembly, was responsible for managing household labor, paid the family’s taxes, handled transactions, settled intra- household disputes and dealt punishment. To the village, he or she was the representative of the household, and to the household, the central authority under which all members were subordinate.440
A hierarchical structure guided all relationships within the household. Women were subordinate to men and the younger to the older. The wife of the patriarch
438 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 100-101.
439 Rodney D. Bohac, “Widows and the Russian Serf Community,” in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, Christine D. Worobec (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), 109-110.
440 Mironov, “The Family,” 123-178. 201
(bol’shukha) stood first among the household’s women.441 To Hoch, the hierarchical structure of Russian peasant society gave patriarchs a stake in the system, making them complicit in the system of serfdom and the coercion of serfs.442 If so, larger households may have seemed advantageous from the perspective of the household head, the mir, and the landlord, because they provided the patriarch with resources and economic stability and the mir and landlord with the assurance that the patriarch would pay taxes and dues.
Subordinate members may have balked at this system and preferred to head their own households and make decisions as they saw fit. This system of interests helps explain the prevalence of multi-generational households and suggests why divisions occurred more rapidly after the emancipation, when the hierarchical system was cut off at its head. It was the household head who would initiate divisions, creating two, or more, new households with new patriarchs, and thus a new social hierarchy. Because of his authority within the household, and the recognition of this authority by the community, households could not divide without his permission. The exception occurred when households divided after the patriarch died. Even the patriarch’s authority, however, was not unlimited: he had to appeal to the landlord and convince him that two independent households would function, and pay dues, just as well as one.
Petitions to divide households served as appeals to the landlord, demonstrating peasants’ rationalizations for why their households should divide. This practice was not a mere formality, Prince Sergei, for example, had rejected requests. Petitioners, therefore,
441 Ibid.
442 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 133-159. 202
had some convincing to do. Petitions captured an optimal size calculus. Each member was described in terms of age and sex, to show the mir and the landlord that the future households could survive and thrive. The size of the household was not the only consideration. Each new household had to have the means to continue its livelihoods, whether in agriculture, trade, or industry. Just as this consideration was important for the prosperity of families, it also mattered to the mir, which allocated taxes and dues and was responsible for the collective sum, and the landlord who profited from these dues. By analyzing these petitions, we will investigate the rationalization that families employed when dividing their households.
6.3 Amicable Household Divisions
On February 20, 1858, the serf Aleksei Ivanov and his two nephews, Sergei and
Pavel, sent Prince Sergei terms to divide their household in two. The original household consisted of eleven members: four men and seven women. These included Ivanov, who was 50 years old, his wife of the same age, their twelve-year-old son and three daughters, aged 20, 18, and 13. Additionally, the household included Ivanov’s nephews, Sergei and
Pavel Iakovlev, aged 33 and 37, their sixty-year-old mother, and both nephews’ wives, aged 33 and 27. Following the division, Ivanov would live with his nuclear family while his nephews lived together with their wives and mother, creating two households with six and five members, respectively. Dividing the household in this way would split the extended family into more closely-related units that fell between mean household sizes for the region calculated by Mitterauer and Kagan’s (5.2 members) and Mironov’s (6.49
203
members).443 It also guaranteed that both households had two working men and an approximately equal number of women. The division, prevented either family from having an undue hardship in terms of numbers and producer-to-consumer ratio, the number of providers compared to the number of dependents.444
In addition to dividing family members fairly evenly, Ivanov and his nephews also divided resources equitably. While the nephews kept the house, they gave their uncle
150 silver rubles to build a new home. As for the family’s forestland, Ivanov received sixty trees. Ivanov held onto the one and only horse and two of the four cows while his nephews received the other two. Land, too, was split into two parcels. Even produce, including onions, potatoes, and others, were divided in half. The outbuildings, such as the bathhouse and drying-house, were the only exceptions: they were held in common, until new ones could be built. By dividing property and resources into equal parts, while continuing to share outbuildings, the families could each maintain their viability. Both had enough land and livestock to support them agriculturally and resources to sustain them physically. These families understood the precariousness of life in the countryside and the need to allocate resources wisely, even if that meant continuing to share them.
Moreover, an equal division minimized the risk of disputes over the fairness of allocations, preserving goodwill between them and showing the value of strong community and familial ties. From Prince Sergei’s perspective, equitable distribution also
443 Mitterauer and Kagan, “Russian and Central European Family Structures,” 103-131; Mironov, “The Family,” 125.
444 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 400, l. 1. 204
meant that he was unlikely to be petitioned about disputes relating to the property in the future.445
Although most of this division involved material goods, Ivanov also received capital, 150 silver rubles. To put this figure into perspective, Mironov estimates that in
Iaroslavl’ province during the 1850s, agricultural laborers earned 18 silver rubles for 6.5 months’ worth of work, during spring and summer, while construction workers earned 24 rubles.446 In other words, 150 rubles was a significant sum. Such earnings were made possible by a number of larger economic developments: the conversion to obrok on estates, the growth of factory and handicraft industries, and the corresponding development of markets and trade. The shift from barshchina to obrok, “freed” peasants to engage in economic activities outside of the manorial field. They took advantage of this change by working as seasonal migrants, laborers, or traders. Even peasants who continued working in agricultural, had to convert their produce or grain into cash and, therefore turned to local and regional markets. Indeed, evidence suggests that serfs often engaged in more than one economic activity.447 In other words, they acted as economic agents within an environment that offered new opportunities, even under serfdom. The
150-ruble sum in this petition indicates that Ivanov and his family were such actors. The petition could have promised building of a new house for Ivanov. That it offered cash instead indicates the pervasiveness of money in the countryside, such that the value of a
445 Ibid.
446 Mironov, “Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia,” 69.
447 See the Introduction and Chapter 2; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 150-171. 205
resource, such as a house, could be defined in recognizable and precise monetary terms.
The existence of markets in the provinces facilitated and developed these economic behaviors.448
In a separate case sent to Prince Sergei on January 18, 1854, Feodor Andreev
Markov petitioned to divide his family in three: the first household included him, his unmarried daughter, his youngest son, his son’s wife, and his two grandsons; the second,
Markov’s eldest son, that son’s wife, and two sons; and the third, the middle son and his wife and daughters. Therefore, the first family would maintain an extended family of seven members, four males (including two younger grandsons) and three females. The second and third families, meanwhile, would become nuclear families. The second consisted of four members: three males (including two younger sons) and one female.
The last family consisted of at least four members: one man, his wife, and an unknown number of daughters. The first two new households each had two producers and two future producers (the younger boys). The last household relied upon one man to provide for the whole family. While the third household’s consumer-to-producer ratio was not ideal, perhaps they reasoned that the risks would be mitigated by the wealth of the family and the fact the brothers’ households would continue to share a physical home, as we will see below.
While the petition from Aleksei Ivanov’s family described everything and how it would be divided, the Markovs listed household belongings, but stated only that they would be divided equally. For example, Markov indicated that his family had four horses,
448 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 400, l. 1. 206
five cows, four calves, and seven sheep. He claimed he would divide these animals equally into three parts. Unfortunately, he did not explain exactly how the twenty animals would be divided in three. If we take him at his word, each new household would have at least six animals, a considerable number. Likewise, the outbuildings, threshing barn, shed, two granaries, hen house, and the baking house, would be divided equally in three parts, but the “how” was not discussed. As for the house, Markov promised to build his sons a new house, to be shared by the two families.449
Instead of arguing his case by showing, in detail, the division process, Markov appealed to his role and duties as a father: “I am the father and am obliged to build them a new, well-built, home.”450 He repeated this claim later, adding that he would build the house “without error,” and continued “I, the father, am equal in my heart towards all my sons.”451 Because of a father’s love and sense of duty towards his sons, Prince Sergei could be assured that all three sons would receive an equal and fair share of the family property. He based his argument on the very bedrock of state and society: the patriarchy.
It is not an accidental that the root word of the Russian otechestvo, fatherland, was the otets, father. The tsar was considered the head of the country, as a father was the head of his household. A father held power and authority over his family members and, in exchange, protected and provided for them. Landlords also had a place in this system, as the head of their estates. Consequently, petitions often appealed to the landlord’s paternal
449 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 363, l. 1.
450 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 363, l. 1 ob.
451 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 363, l. 1 ob. 207
sentiments, both reinforcing the paternal system and using its rhetoric to invoke appropriate behavior from its beneficiaries. Petitions commonly included the phrase “we ask Your Excellency, as our patron and father...”452 Prince Sergei could trust Markov not only because he was a father supporting his children, but also because that was his duty within society.
While the terms of this division stressed the role of the father, they also indicated that these households would survive after the division because of the total resources available. While Aleksei Ivanov’s family had five animals in total, Markov’s had twenty!
Markov also described another form of wealth: cash. He claimed that he had hidden cash which he would use to support him in his old age (he was already 66). While the previous family discussed a monetary payment, this family specifically noted “capital” (kapital)453
This term referred to the cash savings that families had accumulated. Moreover, this term was not unique to this petition; rather, other household divisions and petitions echoed it.
To be successful, petitioners had to demonstrate that post-division households would be sustainable. Families accomplished this task by maintaining beneficial producer-to-consumer ratios and by dividing property evenly among households. Equal divisions also meant that unfair allocations would not strain family and community relationships. Markov specified that his division would be conducted “without offense,”
452 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367, l. 2.
453 Ibid. 208
meaning that the sons would not attempt to seek redress for unjust treatment in the future.454
The petitions sent by the Markov and Ivanov families, though different in style, shared key features. Both families referred to capital and money, indicating the existence of markets in the countryside along with clear ideas of how capital could be used. Indeed, because the estate issued obrok, peasant had to participate in the market to pay their dues.
Although capital was mentioned in these divisions, it was not the only consideration.
These petitioners described who would comprise the new households, thus indicating the consumer-to-producer ratio of new households. They also noted that outbuildings and livestock would be divided, as well as land and produce in the first petition. These factors determined a family’s agricultural wellbeing and sustainability. The administrative record repeats this household-division pattern.455
Petitions to divide households followed a general pattern. They began by naming individuals and indicating their new household. At the least, they listed the males and specified their age, marital status, and whether they had children. More detailed petitions listed women and children, and their ages. These descriptions demonstrated the households’ producer-to-consumer ratio, indicating the labor inputs responsible for sustaining the household. The sex and age of children represented the number of mouths the family was responsible for feeding, but also the family’s future capabilities as sons and daughters would eventually come of age. Adult sons continued to live with their
454 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367, l. 4.
455 For example, see RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 185, 217, 230, 343, 344, 345, 363, 364, 365, 376, 377, 395, 399, 401-406, 415, 444; f. 1262 op. 8, d. 269; op. 1.1, d. 372, 569, 703, 1123, 1724, 2040, 2133. 209
families. When they married, their wives became part of the household and the husband- wife team received an allotment of communal land. Because sons stayed with their natal family, they could be relied upon to support their parents and unmarried sisters in their old age. However, men could also be recruited, putting the economic health of families at risk.456 By contrast, married women usually joined their husbands’ households.
Household-division petitions illustrate these dynamics. 457
In 1852 brothers Andrei and Vasilii Andreev decided to divide their household into two, one with each brother as head. According to the petition, the older, Vasilii, had a wife and a 35-year-old son, who in turn had a wife and 2 daughters, one 13 years old and the other 12. Andrei had a wife and three sons, one 30, another 17, and the youngest,
16 years old. Andrei’s first son was married, without children. Once divided, Vasilii’s household would be an extended family with six members: two adult men, two adult women, and two young women. Andrei’s family would have six members too: two adult men, two adult women, and two young men who were almost of age. With this arrangement, both households would have multiple grown men to rely upon. Andrei’s family also promised future growth once his sons came of age, married, and had children of their own. 458
When the widow Nataliia Nikitina sought to divide her household into two, she also listed her family members. The family consisted of seven men and ten women,
456 For more information on recruitment see Chapter 4.
457 Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia.”
458 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 4. 210
including her three grown sons. The oldest, Feodor, was 40 years old, as was his wife, and together they had three sons (20, 12, and 8 years), and two daughters (18 and 14).
This son started a new household while Nataliia’s two younger sons stayed with her. Her new household included Andrei, 39, together with his wife and two daughters (18 and 8), and Nataliia’s youngest son, at 32, married with one son (8), and two daughters (11 and
2). Feodor’s household, comprised of a nuclear family, contained seven members: four men, two of which were underage sons, and three women, including two daughters. The other household remained a complex, multi-generational family, including the nuclear families of two brothers. This family included two adult men, three women, and five children (four girls and one boy). It made sense for the second household to remain complex, as opposed to splitting into nuclear units, so that the household would have two male laborers. This division maintained the viability of both households by providing both families with two adult working males. If something happened to one of these men, if one fell ill, died, was recruited, or exiled, then the family could still rely upon the other.459
Petitions indicate what happened when families divided without a sufficient safety net. In 1852, the Kurbakov family divided into three parts. However, the village mir still appraised the family as one unit for the recruitment duty. Consequently, in 1854, the family was called for recruitment. Il’ia Kurbakov (the brother of Andrei Kurbakov, the longtime bailiff) argued that if a recruit was taken from any of the new households, then
459 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 3. 211
that family would “forever live in poverty.”460 Il’ia was already 75 years old and in poor health. His oldest son, Petr, did all of the household’s agricultural work while his younger son, Sergei, worked in St. Petersburg in industry. When the Kurbakov household had divided, Andrei had also become a patriarch. He had numerous under-age children for which to provide and although two of his older sons worked in St. Petersburg, only one of them helped the family with payments. After dividing, these new households did not have the capacity to endure recruitment.461
Similarly, in 1852, brothers Dmitrii and Petr Vasil’ev Semov divided their household into two. Soon after, in 1854, Dmitrii’s son, Abram, married. The cost of the wedding and of building a new house, amounted to 600 silver rubles. Since the division,
Petr’s 20-year-old son, Ivan, had died, as had the 24-year-old brother of Dmitrii and Petr, also Ivan. Now Abram and Petr’s remaining sons, Andrei and Nikolai were both called for recruitment. Consequently, Dmitrii asked Prince Sergei to spare his son, in order to feed Dmitrii and his wife in their old age. He paid 115 rubles as a recruitment duty, to free his son, but 143 rubles still remained unpaid to secure Petr’s family. After a household division, this family faced two deaths and the potential recruitment of their sons and nephews. Such recruitment would further threaten the productivity and stability of each household, as it would deprive them of working members. 462
460 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367, l. 1 ob.
461 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367, l. 1.
462 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 369. 212
The number of family members could indicate the viability of households after division, but it could also explain the necessity for division. The brothers Aleksandr and
Iakov Dmitriev argued that the size of Aleksandr’s family placed a heavy burden on
Iakov and his wife. Aleksandr had a pregnant wife and six daughters, whereas his brother was married without children, so Iakov and his wife were working to support his older brother’s many children. Because all of the children were girls, they could be expected to marry one day and leave their parents without support. In contrast with the first two examples, this entire family weighed heavily on one side. If Iakov had a child while sharing a household with his brother, assuming that all children received the same resources and that the brothers contributed equally to the household, Iakov’s child would receive less than if Iakov had his own household and only one child to support. Such a division, however, also meant that each family had little recourse in times of scarcity or tragedy. 463
A detailed listing of household members could tell a landlord, at a glance, how viable a family was at a given moment by indicating the household’s consumer-to- producer ratio. It also indicated how necessary a division was based on the household’s total size and the division of labor. The fact that this information was included in every division petition attests to its importance to petitioners, but also to the landlord to whom they wrote.464 Prince Sergei required the inclusion of this information. Writing to the estate’s bailiff a in 1815, Prince Sergei refused to allow Egor Selov’s family to divide,
463 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357.
464 See RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 185; 217; 343; 344, l. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 337, l. 5-6, 7-9; 343; 344; 357; 363; 364; 367; 369; 376; 396; 399; 400; 401-406; 410; 415; 444. 213
arguing that he would “need to know, what number of souls would remain in one home or enter the other.”465 Some petitions did not include any other information besides listings of members.466
After dividing family members, the petitions next divided property. Serfs technically belonged to the landlord and worked his land, but they possessed their own property. It included the physical home; out-buildings, including sheds, granaries, threshing barns, and bathhouses; belongings within the home; clothing; produce grown in kitchen gardens; trade goods; livestock; and private capital, in the form of silver or paper rubles. Not all petitions included all of these elements, but together they expand our idea of peasant property. The divisions indicate what property peasants deemed necessary to found a new household.
The house was always mentioned in petitions. Usually one branch of the family remained in the old house and the terms of the division provided a new house for the others. These terms took a number of forms. Nataliia Nikitina, for example, specified that she, and those remaining with her, would stay in the old house, while her oldest son would build a new house from the family’s shared capital. Any remaining capital would then be split equally among Nataliia’s sons.467 When Aleksei Ivanov and his nephews divided their household, the nephews kept the house and Aleksei was given 150 rubles.468
465 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 3.
466 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 337, 1. 5-6.
467 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 3.
468 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 400. 214
When brothers Vasilii and Andrei Andreev Shkarin divided their household, the elder kept the home while the younger received capital, 100 silver rubles and 320 paper rubles; but, Andrei also received 70 logs for building.469 Feodor Markov claimed that he would build his sons a new house, “without error,” without providing further details.470
In addition to possessing real value as a living place, the home was also a physical representation of the household. The household, not the family, was responsible for its members’ obligations to the community, landlord, and state. For instance, although the poll tax was levied on individual “souls,” adult men, it was distributed by the mir to households. The household was responsible for the landlord’s taxes and recruitment dues.
Heads of households were representatives in the mir. Although a household division would not change the familial ties binding members, it did affect their standing within the community. Thus, the brothers Vasilii and Ivan Mikhailov Utkin clarified that they would separately pay half of the original household’s obrok and recruitment duty, and therefore be assessed by the mir separately.471 In a petition written after a division, Il’ia Kurbakov stated “[we] live separately, even pay all mir dues separately.”472 When Dmitrii and Petr
Semov separated they claimed that “the division of our household into two homes [was undertaken] in order to not only live in our own particular home, but also to pay obrok, dues, and every duty, separately, by ourselves.”473 Households established units that were
469 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 4.
470 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 363.
471 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 1-2.
472 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367, l. 1 ob.
473 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 369, l. 1. 215
collectively responsible for individual family members and for the family’s dues to the community.
While the physical home established a family unit, other pieces of property were necessary to maintain a family’s viability. Outbuildings, such as barns and granaries, and livestock were vital in agricultural work. Peasants used arable land, distributed by the mir, to grow grain. Rye, a winter crop, was the predominant crop grown in European
Russia, and peasants’ main food supply. Spring-sown crops included barley, wheat, oats, and millet, which was also used to feed livestock.474 Peasants from Rostov district were well known for cultivating vegetables for the market. They cultivated them in kitchen gardens or on rented or purchased land.475 L.V. Milov demonstrates that commercial vegetable gardening was an important aspect of Rostov’s economy from the eighteenth- century onward. The town of Rostov, itself, was a center of commerce, with total earnings as high as 700,000 rubles per year. Industry was little developed there; instead, it specialized in vegetable trading. Rostov was located less than 9 miles away from
Sulost’ and Strely, allowing Prince Sergei’s estate to participate in this commercial enterprise. The Kotorosl’ River, which linked the towns of Iaroslavl’ and Rostov and ultimately connected to the Volga River, ran along the villages of the estate. Boats would travel along this river and supply vegetables to Iaroslavl’ and the villages and towns along the way, while barges from Iaroslavl’ brought lumber to Rostov. Participation in this market, as well as the farming of communal land, would have made agricultural
474 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 23-44; Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 32-40.
475 For more information on land renting and purchasing, see Chapter 5. 216
paraphernalia, such as outbuildings, livestock, and kitchen gardens, important to households on Prince Sergei’s estate.476
Livestock holdings, according to Hoch’s study of Petrovskoe in Tambov province, were the best indicator of serf wealth in the fertile, black-earth region of
Russian. As he explains, it was a critical component of peasant life: “Without a horse or an ox, a serf could not work his fields; without sheep, he could not clothe himself or his family; without cows, pigs, and domestic poultry, he could not break the endless monotony of a cereal diet and have access to high-protein foods.”477 Hoch shows that in
Petrovskoe as of May 1810, there were .40 working horse per capita, .17 colts, .24 cows and .17 calves, 1.56 sheep, and .69 pigs. In November of 1856, there were. 38 working horse per capita, .12 colts, .18 cows, .11 calves, 1.36 sheep, and .43 pigs. These numbers match figures showing that in the province at large, households had between two and seven horses, one and five cows, five and ten sheep, as well as pigs and poultry.478
Hoch’s figures demonstrate the importance of livestock in the lives of his serfs; however, these serfs engaged primarily in agriculture in a fertile region of Russia. Studying an estate in Iaroslavl’ province, Dennison finds a different pattern. Of 203 households, 46 had no livestock at all in 1832. 117 had a least one cow, and only 53 owned horses, including 14 that had more than one horse. Only 5 households had sheep. Dennison attributes the small quantity of livestock Voshchazhnikovo to the diverse occupations of
476 Milov, “On the So-Called Agrarian Towns of Eighteenth-Century Russia,” 10-31; Fedorov, “Voznikovenie torgovogo ogorodnichestva v rostovskom uezde Iaroslavskoi gubernii,” 49-68.
477 Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 44.
478 Ibid., 45-48. 217
its inhabitants. Unlike peasants in Petrovskoe, who were primarily occupied with agriculture, only 10% of serfs in Voshchaznikovo lived on agriculture alone. Many engaged in trade, manufacturing, craftwork.479 The number of livestock a household owned, then, did not simply indicate the wealth of the family, as Hoch’s work suggests, but also the type of work that engaged household members. Craftsmen did not necessarily need livestock, but agricultural workers did. Household divisions illustrate this dynamic as families with livestock sought to divide it equally, while other families did not own livestock at all and instead divided trade goods. Kolle suggests that even proto-industrial households would have found use in agriculture. The majority of families in her study maintained dual-economy households, with only a small fraction of households relying upon industry alone.480
When Aleksei Ivanov and his nephews split their household, they made sure to divide livestock and outbuildings equally. They divided livestock — four horses, five cows, four calves, and seven sheep — into three “equal” parts. The outbuildings — a threshing barn, shed, two granaries, hen house, and baking house — were also divided
“equally,” although how is not mentioned.481 The number of animals this family possessed, 21 in total, approximates the numbers Hoch found for the black-earth region, and departs from Dennison’s figures. The total livestock, together with the outbuildings, indicate the family’s investment in agriculture, as well as their agricultural success.
479 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 37-38.
480 Kolle, Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia, 100-148.
481RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d.400. 218
Similarly, when Nataliia Nikitina divided her household, she specified the division of livestock and outbuildings, indicating her family’s occupation in agriculture.
She gave her eldest son two horses, three cows, and two sheep. She did not state the total number of livestock; but considering that such petitions generally claimed that livestock would be divided equally, we can hypothesize that the total amount approximated 14 animals. She indicated that they had already built one shed, two barns, one threshing barn, a barn to dry grain, a hen house, and a bathhouse, and any work for additional buildings would be divided. Unlike, Aleksei Ivanov, Nataliia Nikitina also divided land.
She stated that the family’s seven “souls” would be divided in half, at three and a half souls per house. When she used the word “soul,” a term for adult men used by the state in censuses and by the mir to allocate land and taxes, she likely meant arable land distributed to the family by the mir in order to grow grain. We know, however, that this family did not only grow grain because they also allocated seeds and vegetables. These could have been used by the family, or sold in commercial markets, as was common in the region. Such trading would have contributed to family’s capital savings which, although unspecified, were divided equally. 482
Livestock and outbuildings were also the focus of Vasilii and Andrei Shkarin’s petition. Andrei, received a shed and barn, while the brothers continued to share the bathhouse and threshing barn. As for the livestock, while Andrei received a 5-year-old horse and four cows, Vasilii received an older horse, a foal, and four cows. Livestock and
482 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 3,5. 219
outbuildings were essential for families participating in agriculture. Therefore, the brothers continued to share outbuildings, rather than do without.483
In contrast to these examples, Aleksandr and Iakov Smyslov’s household-division petition focused on their shared capital and commercial enterprise. They divided their goods in half but Iakov also left 500 silver rubles and 500 paper rubles for Aleksandr’s six daughters.484 The difference between the details of this petition from those described earlier could be attributed to the differing occupations of the petitioners. Working in agriculture, the other families needed to maintain each household’s livelihood after the division: depriving a family of the tools necessary to engage in agricultural production would cripple its ability to thrive. Livestock and outbuildings where not accessories; they were integral to the process of farming, harvesting, and the preparation of grain and produce. Therefore, the breakdown of material goods, especially livestock, resemble findings by Hoch in the black-earth region of Russia. By contrast, the Smyslov brothers lived in Saint Petersburg and worked in trade. Accordingly, when they divided their household, they divided capital and goods, approximating Dennison’s findings in the central, industrial region.
While the mention of livestock and outbuildings in household-division petitions indicated that the household engaged in agriculture, capital was held by families regardless of occupation. Nataliia Nikitina divided her family savings among her sons,
Aleksei Ivanov gave his nephews money to build a new house, Feodor Markov had a
483 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 4.
484 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 2. 220
secret store of capital, which he kept hidden for himself, Vasilii Shkarin gave his brother
Andrei 100 silver and 320 paper rubles to build a new house.485 Capital was in the countryside, whether gained through the sale of produce, household industry, trade, or migrant work.
Families considered several variables when dividing a household. One was the consumer-to-producer ratio of the household. Too small a family, or too imbalanced a ratio, could stunt the agricultural potential of a family. Numbers were important because communal land was distributed based on the number of married working pairs within a household. Once men reached maturity, they married, bringing a wife into their natal household, and enlarging the household’s arable land allocation. Women, on the other hand, joined the households of their husbands, leaving their family without a laborer. The number of female and male children in a household, then, foretold the family’s future: an ample number of sons predicated that parents and unmarried sisters would have support in their old age. However, men and women also died young and families could easily be left without a provider. A further risk was recruitment, which similarly separated a man from his family, in effect, for the rest of his life. Understanding these factors, we can comprehend why Prince Sergei required the inclusion of households’ members’ distributions in petitions and why households chose to divide when they did, i.e. after they had already developed large, multigenerational, complex families: they had to make sure that the new households would be sustainable.
485 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 3,5; d. 400; 363; 334, l. 4. 221
Livestock and outbuildings were also important. Both were essential for agricultural work. Some families, however, did not participate in agriculture. In those cases, instead of dividing livestock and outbuildings, they focused on money and goods.
These families were not the only ones that owned capital; agriculturally oriented households also had savings. In other words, they did not solely rely upon what they produced from the sweat of their brow. Indeed, they had to have monetary savings as they paid their estate dues in the form of obrok. Whereas Prince Sergei specifically requested information about the distribution of family members into their new households, he never offered specific instructions on how households and belongings should be divided, save that conditions should be reached “according to voluntary agreement and with all equality on the estate.”486 His serfs were free to decide for themselves what should be divided and what, exactly, a fair division meant. The petitions indicate that these peasants were operating within a market system, albeit on varying levels. Though agriculturalists were concerned with family size, consumer-to-producer ratio, and new households’ viability on the land, they also considered monetary savings.
Some households supplemented agricultural labor with work in commercial enterprises or industry. Others were entirely engaged in these ventures.
6.4 Contentious Household Divisions
The divisions described above were amicable household divisions. However, considering what was at stake, divisions could also prove quite contentious. They were
486 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 3. 222
not simply a family matter: the mir and the landlord were also interested in the process. It was the mir’s collective responsibility to pay landlord dues, collected from households.
One family’s inability to pay stressed other members of the community, who had to cover the shortfall. As the ultimate beneficiary of obrok, the landlord had a personal interest in maintaining a households’ ability to pay. Because he was not part of the local community, his distant oversight also provided a mechanism for individuals to contravene local institutions, such as the family or mir. Prince Sergei, himself, warned his bailiff that household divisions could lead to greater problems and further petitions. One reason for his desire for divisions to be conducted “according to voluntary agreement and with all equality on the estate” was to prevent a “petition from anyone, or an affair” from arising.487 Nonetheless, “affairs” did arise, indicating the complex relationship between individual, family, community, and landlord over the household economy and shedding further light on the economic behaviors of serfs.
In 1858, the serf Mikhail Il’ich Paramonov sent a petition to Prince Sergei about an “illegal” (nezakonno) act committed by the mir which divided his household in favor of his elder brother following the death of their father. The petition indicates that the case involved many twists and turns before Paramonov petitioned Prince Sergei. First, he wrote, his elder brother sent a petition to Prince Sergei regarding the household division.
Prince Sergei, in turn, wrote to the village bailiff, commissioning the mir to reach a “just decision.” Not satisfied with the results, Paramonov returned to the prince, to counteract the mir’s decision. Since the parties could not settle this household division peaceably,
487 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 3. 223
the community, Moscow administration, and landlord all became involved. But, it was
Paramonov who navigated through these institutional channels to find a solution that best suited his interests.488
Paramonov wrote that Prince Sergei ordered the mir to reach a “just”
(spravedliveishii) decision by determining: how much the shared kitchen garden was worth, the amount of capital bequeathed by the patriarch, and whether the elder brother contributed to or sponged household gains. By including these parameters, Paramonov purportedly carried out Prince Sergei’s original commands, but he also indicated how he thought his own case should be judged. Capital, and individual profits are the economic terms by which he pleaded his case. He combined an economic analysis with legal language. In the beginning of the petition he stated that the mir’s verdict was “illegal” and that the landlord’s goal was to reach a “just” decision. He embedded his economic analysis within the terminology of justice. Here we see the connection between nascent civil suits and a market system.489 Although he explicitly used the term illegal here, as we discussed in the preceding chapter, “justice” was not necessarily tied to the law, but rather to “fair” judgment.490 While statutory law bound elites and urban dwellers, peasants experienced justice in terms of customary law. Serfs were tried in courts on their landowners’ estates, which were often run by the mir. Even after the emancipation of the
488 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 410.
489 For the rise of legal culture in Russia see: Czap, “Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia,”149-178; Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court, 82-118; Brodsky Farnworth, “The Litigious Daughter-in-Law,” 49-64; Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 36-50; Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness, 242-267.
490 See Chapter 5. 224
serfs in 1861, customary law continued to operate in the countryside.491 What, then, did
Paramonov consider “unjust”?
According to him, the mir “unjustly” ordered him to give his brother their house, outbuildings, livestock, and 1,500 paper rubles. He challenged this verdict by showing some of the allowances he had given his brother, quantified in monetary form. These allowances included: recruitment payments, totaling 600 silver rubles, 300 rubles of which had been his brother’s share;492 obrok for the last 32 years, amounting to no less than 1,600 silver rubles, his brother’s half, 800; wedding and dowry costs for his brother’s son and four daughters, 500 silver rubles; the cost of building the family’s home, 700 silver rubles; and the cost of two horses, 80 silver rubles. Total expenditures amounted to 2,380 silver rubles. He added that these expenditures did not include additional allowances for food stores, hired workers, and aid to his brother’s family. The vegetable garden they worked cost an additional 3,000 silver rubles.
He broke down his contributions to his brother in monetary terms. He could have based his argument on the drunken and lazy conduct of his brother; on his own suffering to provide for the survival of the household during times of scarcity; or on his benevolent support of his brother. Instead, he solely referred to specific costs that he had paid on behalf of his brother. In that sense, his analysis of the case was strictly economic. The rhetoric of his petition, however, also included appeals to legality and justice, indicating a
491 Mironov, “The Law: Courts, Crimes, and Punishments,” 223-365; Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 36-50.
492 Peasants could pay for recruitment substitute avoid sending their own recruits. For more information see Chapter 4. 225
larger system in which social interactions operated. He also referred to the mir’s decision as a “sin” (grekh), thus conflating law and order with religious morality. This points towards interacting layers – economic, legal, and moral – within an already diverse, heterogeneous, social system.
Sadly, Paramonov’s story was not unique; other family disputes also appear in the record. One particularly protracted trial followed the battle between a widow and her stepson. This family dispute began, in the records at least, in 1851 with the division of landed property in St. Petersburg between the widows Nastasiia Iakovleva and Ul’iana
Iakovleva after the death of their husbands Il’ia and Dmitrii Andreev Grachev. This land was not the primary residence of Ul’iana; instead, she resided Sulost’ with two underage sons, an underage daughter, a stepson, from her husband’s first marriage, and her stepson’s wife, three sons, and daughter. Because the household was not residing in St.
Petersburg during the time of the division, Ul’iana traveled to the city to conduct the transaction, leaving behind her stepson. Its seems that her stepson, Igor’, objected both to the terms of the division and to being left behind. Consequently, he petitioned Prince
Sergei, thus beginning the family drama. 493
Igor’ described the division as flawed in many ways. First, his stepmother deceived him: she went to Saint Petersburg under the pretext of looking after her son’s education, but also conducted the household division without Igor’s knowledge. Second, according to Igor’, she knew nothing about the land, as this was her first visit there.
Third, Nastasiia, who knew the land because she resided in Saint Petersburg, deceived
493 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 1-2; d. 337, l. 7-9. 226
Ul’iana. Nastasiia allegedly chose the best land, leaving the worst for Ul’iana’s family.
Consequently, Igor’ claimed this division did not “follow the law, righteousness, and goodness.”494 He asked Prince Sergei to be allowed to travel to St. Petersburg and conduct the household division himself. And, since he was already writing a petition, he also brought up the suspicion that, after his father’s death, Ul’iana put all 10,000 rubles of the family’s savings under her name, leaving none for Igor’ and his four young children.495
Igor’s petition raises the question of why a serf family from Iaroslavl’ province would hold land in St. Petersburg. As discussed in the previous chapter, serfs on Prince
Sergei’s estate leased and purchased land. This practice was not a peculiarity of the estate; rather, it was extensively practiced in Russia.496 Considering the estate’s participation in commercial vegetable gardening, this land could have been used to grow produce. Alternatively, it may have housed family members working as migrants in trade or industry. Since Igor’ mentioned that Ul’iana’s first visited the capital to divide the household, we can assume that she was not a migrant worker there. However, her relative
Nastasiia lived there permanently. Igor’ also may have been a seasonal migrant. Although these serfs were part of Prince Sergei’s estate in Iaroslavl’, they could travel and work in industrial centers, such as St. Petersburg, with permission. Seasonal migration gave serfs the opportunity to live and work other than as a peasant and put them in range of
494 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 7 ob.
495 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 7-8.
496 For a more extensive discussion on peasant rental or purchase practices see Chapter 5. 227
manufacturing networks and commercial markets.
We also know that this family was quite wealthy, amassing the sum of 10,000 rubles. This sum, although high, was not impossible. Dennison finds that 30% of the peasants at Voshchazhnikovo had over 1,000 rubles worth of assets between 1832 and
1838 and some families possessed assets valued between 10,000 and 20,000 rubles.497
Melton finds that the wealthiest family on Princess Lieven’s estate of Baki in Kostroma province held 50,000 rubles capital and the second wealthiest family, 25,000 rubles.498
Serfs were able to save these sums because they acted as economic agents. They supplemented and replaced agricultural work with trade or industry. They rented and purchased land, above and beyond their communal allotments. They lent and received credit. For some peasants, these risks paid off, allowing families to amass capital.
Despite owning property and capital savings, Igor’ still felt a certain instability in his life and fortunes: he worried that he and his four young children would be left with nothing. To protect against that fate, he turned to a higher authority, Prince Sergei. He sought to guarantee his livelihood by ensuring that he had a share of his family’s savings.
Although residing in a largely agricultural, peasant society, Igor’ did not try to ensure his family’s future through agricultural land or livestock, but through money. With money he could always buy land and livestock. These interests reappear in the continuance of the family saga.
497 Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom, 86; Dennison, “Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia,” 422.
498 Melton, “The Magnate and her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia,” 44. 228
Ul’iana apparently reciprocated Igor’s ill feelings. In 1851, she sent a petition to
Prince Sergei seeking a household division to separate her and Igor’s families. She claimed that her stepson constantly insulted her and that his harsh behavior was even recognized by the bailiff, who sentenced Igor’ to corporal punishment on multiple occasions. She accused him of demanding everything while doing nothing, save disparage her. She argued that, since Igor’ was of age and had his own family, a wife and four children, they should run their own households. She claimed that she would divide the households evenly and provide Igor’ with 540 silver rubles to build a new home.
Sadly, this division did not solve the family’s problems, but created new opportunities for argument. 499
Igor’ sent another petition to Prince Sergei in 1853, this time requesting 150 rubles from his and his stepmother’s shared capital, which was held by her in Saint
Petersburg. He wanted to use the money to acquire a household, pay off debts, build a new bathhouse, and purchase livestock. He added that these additions were “essential to the life of peasants.”500 These funds, were above the capital that he had already received from his stepmother through a decision by the mir.501 Apparently, this request was unsuccessful because in 1854 he sent yet another petition. In contrast to the one sent a year earlier, this one painted a bleaker picture of his situation. He described how he needed to support his children, including two, newborn, twin boys, three addition under-
499 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 337, l. 7-9.
500 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 362, l. 1.
501 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 362. 229
age sons, and two daughters. None of his children were old enough to work and his wife could not work while pregnant or in her post-pregnancy condition. Because he could not work the land alone, he had to hire hands and he also needed to pay for a land lease, town expenses, taxes, and dues. These expenses left little to support his family. Hence, he requested a piece of the capital he shared with his stepmother.502
Igor’ made his living agriculturally, but he still needed cash to support his livelihood. He did not live within a closed system, subsisting solely on what he produced.
He participated in markets and used cash to support his work and pay his dues.
In both cases, the inability of the family to settle a household division amicably meant that other institutions became involved. On the one hand, this intervention was a result of the mir’s and landlord’s general oversight over divisions because of their interest in maintaining reliable, tax-paying, households. On the other, Mikhail Paramonov, Igor’
Grachev, and Ul’iana Iakovleva also turned to the powers-that-be in response to local intractability. Paramonov sought to subvert the authority of both his elder brother and the mir and promote his own interests by petitioning Prince Sergei directly. Grachev turned to Prince Sergei when he could not get enough money from his stepmother through the mir. Individual, family, communal, and estate interests diverged leading to conflict.
How these families argued revealed their economic behaviors. When Paramonov petitioned Prince Sergei to counteract the mir’s resolution dividing his household in favor of his brother, he expressed an orientation towards the market: renting land for the commercial production of vegetables, hiring workers, and listing monetary contributions
502 RGADA f. 1263, op. 4, d. 370. 230
to the family’s expenses. Grachev also sought money to support his agricultural livelihood. Both serfs operated within a market system even as agriculturalists in the countryside.
Contentious and amicable family petitions alike indicate that peasant households operated within a market system, even as they pursued agricultural interests. When a family divided, they considered the family’s size and consumer-to-producer ratio in order to preserve the productive potential of the household, even in the face of unforeseen tragedy. They took care to divide livestock and outbuildings which were essential to agricultural. Nonetheless, these families also valued capital: they had monetary savings and fought over it. They used this capital to rent land, hire labor, purchase livestock, and build homes and outbuildings, thereby participating in labor, land, and commercial markets and acting as economic agents. These behaviors were indirectly encouraged by the landlord, who collected obrok from his serfs, as opposed barshchina, giving peasants greater latitude in their economic behaviors. With obrok came the freedom to participate in migrant work, to work in trade or factories. On this estate, peasants especially engaged in commercial vegetable production, benefiting from the Kotorosl’ River’s connections to
Rostov and Iaroslavl’. Some families, like Ul’iana Iakovleva’s, were able to save substantial sums, in her case, 10,000 silver rubles. These savings, however, could not have been possible without the larger development of Russian commercial and industrial networks. These developments provided peasants with opportunities to benefit from the estate’s shift to obrok.
231
CHAPTER 7:
CONCLUSION
Russian serfs were constrained by their position within a soslovie system in which all men were not equal under the law. Their legal status made them the property of others.
And yet, serfdom was not a monolith in which the serf was oppressed and the landlord the oppressor.503 What mattered was the local practice of serfdom. Local practices were informed by social dynamics and the relations between institutions such as the landlord, bailiff, and mir.
The landlord was the highest authority on the estate. However, large magnates like Prince Sergei relied on intermediaries to oversee their estates in situ. These intermediaries did not share Prince Sergei’s interests. The bailiff was a serf elected by the mir, and communal officials, by village patriarchs. These officials were part and parcel of the peasant community: they shared friends and family and participated in local intrigues.
Just as Prince Sergei relied on them to oversee his estate, they relied on him to maintain their status and power within the community. As a result, they negotiated their interests with the landlord.
Serfs recognized these connections and used them to their advantage, thereby asserting their own agency. Examining Prince Sergei’s attempts to design the estate, we saw that his endeavors failed because they did not take into account local conditions.
503 Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 437. 232
Serfs did not simply acquiesce to the landlord’s demands. Instead, they appealed to the bailiff and mir to continue building as before. Peasants also used these tactics when dealing with the mir and bailiff. Although the mir was in charge of recruitment, peasants petitioned Prince Sergei, contesting decisions. Peasants also contested the bailiff’s actions by appealing to the mir or directly to Prince Sergei. Peasants knew what was and what was not economically advantageous to them. They used the social system and the conflicting interests of different actors to challenge directives conflicting with their own interests.
Serfs did not only use the social system to contest the actions of the landlord, bailiff, and mir, but also to support their own economic activities. They appeared before the mir to broker contracts extending credit or renting land. To purchase land, they turned directly to the landlord for his assistance securing the proper documents. If private transactions went wrong, peasants appealed to the bailiff or the landlord for justice. They had recourse through this local social system, making their transactions more secure. This security, however, only applied on the estate. The landlord only had jurisdiction on his estates over his serfs. If a serf from another estate or someone from a different soslovie, such as a merchant, defaulted on an agreement, then the serf had no legal recourse.
Different soslovie experienced different courts and legal systems, with village justice governed by customary law. Peasants navigated serfdom through a localized experience determined not only by the landlord’s policy, but also by social dynamics in situ.
233 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscripts
Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), Moscow, Russia
Petitions
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 177
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 193
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 198
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 214
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 220
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 221
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 230
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 233
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 326, l. 1-22
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 332
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 333, 1-2
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 334, l. 1-5
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 337, l. 1-9
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 355
234 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 357, l. 1-9
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 362
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 367
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 368
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 369
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 370
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 381
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 384
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 395
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 396
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 397
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 410
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 411
Mir Resolutions
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 99
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 145
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 148
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 149
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 150
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 172
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 173
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 173a
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 183 235 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 189 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 190 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 195 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 209 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 236 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 237 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 257 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 262 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 297 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 318, l. 1-15 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 321 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 322 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 341, l. 1-10 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 346 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 347 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 365 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 372 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 373 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 374 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 385 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 389 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 393 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 408 f. 1263, op. 4, d. 441
236 Landlord Directives
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 54, l. 1-37
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 58, l. 1-22
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 59, l. 1-5
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 60, l. 1-18
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 61, l. 1-23
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 127
Miscellaneous
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 50
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 70
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 144
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 166
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 171, l. 1-2
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 191, l. 11-17
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 197, l. 5
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 199
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 363
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 371
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 378
f. 1263, op. 4, d. 400
f. 1262, op. 2, d. 122
f. 1262, op. 5, d. 705 237 f. 1262, op. 8, d. 269
Printed Primary Sources
Chekhov, Anton. “Uncle Vanya.” In Anton Chekhov’s Selected Plays. Translated by Laurence Senelick, 196-243. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.
Four Russian Serf Narratives. Translated by John MacKay. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.
Materialy dlia istorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, edited by M.V. Dovnar- Zapol’skii. Kiev, n.d.
Nikitenko, Aleksandr. Up From Serfdom: My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804- 1824. Translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Purlevskii, Savva D. A Russian Life Under Serfdom: The Memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, 1800-1868. Translated and edited by Boris B. Gorshkov. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005.
Rossiia v memuarakh: Vospominaniia russkikh krest’ian XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX veka. Edited by V.A. Koshelev. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006.
Rostislavov, Dmitri Ivanovich. Provincial Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: The Memoir of a Priest’s Son. Translated by Alexander M. Martin. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002.
Tolstoy, Leo. “In the Days of Serfdom” and Other Stories. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Philadelphia: Pine St. Books, 2002.
——. Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Translated by Michael Scammell. New York: The Modern Library, 2002.
——. Sevastopol. Translated by. Isabel F. Hapgood. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1888.
Turgenev, Ivan. Sketches for a Hunter’s Album. Translated by Richard Freeborn. Penguin Books, 1990.
238 Secondary Sources
Atkinson, Dorothy. “Egalitarianism and the Commune.” In Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, edited by Roger P. Bartlett, 7-19. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Bernhardt, Kathryn. Rents, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
Bideleux, Robert. “Agricultural Advance Under the Russian Village Commune System.” In Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, edited by Roger Bartlett, 196-218. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Prince: Princeton University Press, 1972.
——. The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Bohac, Rodney D. “Everyday Forms of Resistance: Serf Opposition to Gentry Exactions, 1800-1861.” In Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921, edited by Esther Kingston-Mann, Timothy Mixter, and Jeffrey Burds, 236-260. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
——. “Peasant Inheritance Strategies in Russia.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16, no. 1 (1985): 23-42.
——. “The Mir and Military Draft.” Slavic Review 47, no. 4 (1988): 652-666.
——. “Widows and the Russian Serf Community.” in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, edited by Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, 195-112. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991.
Brodsky Farnworth, Beatrice. “The Litigious Daughter-in-Law: Family Relations in Rural Russia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” Slavic Review, 45, (1986): 49-64.
Brooks, Jeffrey. When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861- 1917. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Burbank, Jane. Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905- 1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
239 Burds, Jeffrey. Peasant Dreams & Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.
Bushnell, John. “Did Serf Owners Control Serf Marriage? Orlov Serfs and Their Neighbors, 1773-1861.” Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (1993): 419-443.
Cavender, Mary. Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate, and Local Loyalties in Provincial Russia. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007.
Chayanov, A.V. On the Theory of Peasant Economy. Translated by Christel Lane and R.E.F. Smith. Edited by Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay, and R.E.F. Smith. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1966.
Chernukha, V.G. “Pasport v Rossiiskoi imperii: nabliudeniia nad zakonodatel’stvom.” Istoricheskie zapiski 122 (2001): 91-131.
Cracraft, James. The Revolution of Peter the Great. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Crisp, Olga. Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976.
Czap, Peter Jr. “‘A Large Family: The Peasant’s Greatest Wealth’: Serf Households in Mishino, Russia, 1814-1858. In Family Forms in Historic Europe, edited by Richard Wall, 105-152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
——. “Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1861-1912.” Journal of Social History, 1 (1967): 149-79.
Dennison, T. K. “Did Serfdom Matter? Russian Rural Society, 1750-1860.” Historical Research 79, no. 203 (2006): 74-89.
—— and A.W Carus. “The Invention of the Russian Rural Commune: Haxthausen and the Evidence.” The Historical Journal 46, no. 3 (2003): 561-582.
—— and Sheilagh Ogilvie. “Serfdom and Social Capital in Bohemia and Russia.” Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2007):513-544.
——. “Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia: Voshchazhnikovo, 1816- 1858” Continuity and Change 18, no. 3 (2003): 395-429.
——. The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Eklof, Ben. Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
240
Epp, George K. The Educational Policies of Catherine II: The Era of Enlightenment in Russia. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984.
Evtuhov, Catherine. Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod. Pittsburgh: University of Pitsburgh Press, 2011.
Fedorov, V.A. Pomeshchichi’i krest’iane tsentral’no-promyshlennogo raiona Rossii kontsa XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX v. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1974.
——. “Voznikovenie torgovogo ogorodnichestva v rostovskom uezde Iaroslavskoi gubernii: konets XVIII-pervaia polovina XIX veka,” Vestnik moskovskogo universiteta 6 (1962): 49-68.
Fedosiuk, Iurii. Chto neponiatno u klassikov, ili Entsiklopediia russkogo byta XIX veka. Moscow: Flinta, Nauka, 2001.
Field, Daniel. “Stratification in the Russian Peasant Commune: A Statistical Enquiry.” In Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, edited Roger P. Bartlett, 143-164. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
——. Rebels in the Name of the Tsar. Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1976.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Frank, Stephen P. Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1999.
Franklin, Simon. “Printing and Social Control in Russia 1: Passports” Russian History 37, no. 3 (2010): 208-237.
Freeze, Gregory L. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Frierson, Cathy A. “Razdel: The Peasant Family Divided.” The Russian Review 46, no. 1 (1987): 35-51.
——. “Crime and Punishment in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Criminality at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” Slavic Review, 46 (1987): 55-69.
Gerth, Nathan. “A Model Town: Tver’, the Classical Imperial Order, and the Rise of Civic Society in the Russian Provinces, 1763-1861.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2014.
241 Gorbatov, Inna. Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and Grimm. Bethesda: Academic Press, LLC, 2006.
Gorskaia, N.A. Krest’ianstvo v periody rannego i razvitogo feodalizma. Moscow: Nauka, 1990.
——. Russkaia feodal’naia derevnia v istoriografii XX veka. Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli: 2006.
Hajnal, John. “Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System.” Population and Development Review 8, no. 3 (1982): 449-494.
Hamburg, G.M. Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500- 1801. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Hardiman, David. Peasant Resistance in India, 1858-1914. Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Haxthausen, Baron August von. Studies on the Interior of Russia, edited by Fredrick Starr. Translated by E.L.M. Schmidt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
Hellie, Richard. Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Hivon, Myriam. “Local Resistance to Privatization in Rural Russia.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 2 (1995): 13-22.
Hoch, Steven L. “Serfs in Imperial Russia: Demographic Insights,” in Essays in Russian Social and Economic History, 84-109. Boston: American Studies Press, 2015.
——. “The Serf Economy and the Social Order in Russia.” In Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, edited by M.L. Bush, 311-322. London and New York: Longman, 1996.
——.. Serfdom and Social Control: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Ignatovich, I.I. Pomeshchich’i krest’iane nakanune osvobozhdeniia. Leningrad: Mysl’, 1925.
Indova, E.I. Krepostnoe khoziasistvo v nachale XIX veke: po materialam votchinnogo arkhiva Vorontsovykh. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1955.
242 Kaiser, Daniel H. “Church Control over Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Russia.” Russian Review 65, no. 4 (2006): 567-585.
Kashin, V.N. Krepostnye krest’iane-zemlevladel’tsy. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1935.
Keep, John L.H. Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
Kingston-Mann, Ester. In Search of the True West: Culture, Economics, and Problems of Russian Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
——. “Peasant Communes and Economic Innovation: A Preliminary Inquiry.” In Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921, edited by Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter, 23-51. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987.
Kolle, Herdis. Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Family Development in a Proto-Industrial Community. Bergen: University of Bergen, 2006.
Leckey, Colum, Patrons of Enlightenment: The Free Economic Society in Eighteenth- Century Russia. Newark: University of Delaware Press; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefied Publishing Group, 2011.
Lenin, V.I. The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In Lenin: Collected Works, 4th ed., vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964.
Leonard, Carol S. “Landlords and the Mir: Transaction Costs and Economic Development in Pre-Emancipation Russia (Iaroslav Guberniia).” In Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, ed. Roger P. Bartlett, 121-142. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
——. “Rational Resistance to Land Privatization: The Response of Rural Producers to Agrarian Reforms in Pre- and Post-Soviet Russia.” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 41, no. 8 (2000): 605-620.
——. Agrarian Reform in Russia: The Road from Serfdom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Lindio-McGovern, Ligaya. Filipino Peasant Women: Exploitation and Resistance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
243 Madariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Mamonova, Natalia. “Naïve Monarchism and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Russia.” Rural Sociology 81, no. 3 (2016): 316-342.
Manchester, Laurie. Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008.
Martin, Alexander M. Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762- 1855. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Melton, Edgar. “Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia, 1750- 1830.” The Journal of Modern History, 62, no. 4 (1990): 675-708.
——. “Household Economies and Communal Conflicts on a Russian Serf Estate, 1800- 1817.” Journal of Social History 26, no. 3 (1993): 559-585.
——. “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure: Two Estates in Nineteenth-Century Russia.” Past & Present, no. 115 (1987): 69-106.
——. “The Magnate and Her Trading Peasants in Serf Russia: Countess Lieven and the Baki Estate, 1800-1820.” Jahrbücher für Geshchichte Osteuropas 47, no. 1 (1999): 40-55.
Milov, L.V. “On the So-Called Agrarian Towns of Eighteenth-Century Russia.” Soviet Studies in History 21, no. 1 (1982): 10-31.
Mironov, Boris. A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917 v. 1, edited by Ben Eklof. Westview Press, 2000.
——. “Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia, 1703-1913.” The Russian Review 69, (2010): 47-72.
—— and Carol S. Leonard. “In Search of Hidden Information: Some Issues in the Socio- Economic History of Russia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Social Science History 9, no. 4 (1985): 339-359.
Mitterauer, Michael and Alexander Kagan. “Russian and Central European Family Structures: A Comparative View.” Journal of Family History 7, no.1 (1982): 103- 131.
Moon, David. “Peasant Migration, the Abolition of Serfdom, and the Internal Passport System in the Russian Empire, c. 1800-1914.” In Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives, edited by David Eltis, 324-357. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
244 ——. The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
——. The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made. London and New York: Longman, 1999.
Morrison, Daniel. “Trading Peasants” and Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Central Industrial Region. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1987.
Owen, Thomas C. “A Standard Ruble of Account for Russian Business History, 1769- 1914: A Note.” The Journal of Economic History 49, no.3 (1989): 699-706; Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 304-305.
Pallares, Amalia. From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: the Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Pickering Antonova, Katherine. An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Pipes, Richard. Property and Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Prokof’eva, L.S. Krest’ianskaia obshchina v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII- pervoi polovine XIX v.: na materialakh votchin Sheremetevykh. Leningrad: Nauka, 1981.
Pushkarev, S.G. Krest’ianskaia pozemel’no-peredel’naia obshchina v Rossii. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1976.
Raeff, Marc. “The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach.” The American Historical Review 80, no. 5 (1975): 1221-1243.
——. Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966
Randolph, John. The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
Ransel, David L. A Russian Merchant’s Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on his Diary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Roosevelt, Priscilla. “Russian Estate Architecture and Noble Identity.” In Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present, edited by James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland, 66-79. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Rubinshtein, N.A. Sel’skoe khoziaistvo Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII v. Moscow: Gospolitzdat, 1957. 245 Rudolph, Richard. “Agricultural Structure and Proto-Industrialization in Russia: Economic Development with Unfree Labor.” The Journal of Economic History, 45, no. 1 (1985): 47-69.
Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga. Edited by Roger Bartlett and Janet Hartley. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, v. 5 supplement. Edited by N.P. Chylkov. Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2001.
Saltykov-Shchedrin, M.E. The History of a Town, trans. Susan Brownsberger. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982.
Saltykov, Mikhail Evgrafovich. The Golovlyov Family. Translated by Natalie Duddington. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
——. The Moral Economy of the Peasant Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.
——. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
Semevskii, V.I. Krest’iane v tsarstvovanie imp. Ekateriny II. St Petersburg, Tip. M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1881-1901.
Shvidkovsky, Dmitry. “Catherine the Great’s Field of Dreams: Architecture and Landscape in the Russian Enlightenment.” In Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present. Edited by James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland, 51-65. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Smith, Alison. “Authority in a Serf Village: Peasants, Managers, and the Role of Writing in Early Nineteenth Century Russia.” Journal of Social History 43, no. 1 (2009): 157-173.
Smith, R.E.F. The Enserfment of the Russian Peasantry. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Stern, Steve J. Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World: 18th to 20th Centuries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture. New York: New Press, 1993.
——. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century.” Past & Present, no. 50 (1971): 76-136. 246 Tilly, Charles. “Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe.” In The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Toumanoff, Peter. “The Development of the Peasant Commune in Russia.” The Journal of Economic History 41, no. 1 (1981): 179-184.
Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Vries, Jan de. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Wegren, Stephen K. “Rural Adaptation in Russia: Who Responds and How Do We Measure It?” Journal of Agrarian Change 4, no. 4 (2004): 553-578.
Wirtschafter, Elise K. Social Identity in Imperial Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997.
——. From Serf to Russian Soldier. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Worobec, Christine. Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Wortman, Richard S. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II. Princeton and Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2006.
——. The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.
247