The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930

The World the Peasants Made

David Moon

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317895183
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: World History

This impressive work, set to become the standard history on the subject, offers a definitive survey of peasant society in Russia, from the consolidation of serfdom and tsarist autocracy in the 17th century through to the destruction of the peasant's traditional world under Stalin. Over three-quarters of Russian society were peasants in these years, and David Moon explores all aspects of their life xxx; including the rural economy, peasant households, village communities xxx; and their political role, including protest against the landowning elites. In the process he presents a fresh perspective on the history of Russia itself. A big book in every way xxx; and compellingly readable.

CHAPTER 1

Population

Peasants made up the vast majority of the population of Russia throughout the period covered by this book. The numbers of Russian peasants, moreover, grew considerably between the early seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter starts by examining the peasant population of the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the different ways peasants have been defined and the composition of the peasantry. The chapter goes on to consider the reasons for the massive increase in the Russian peasant population over the preceding three centuries. Like most pre-industrial populations, Russian peasants lived in an uncertain world of high and unpredictable mortality. The lives of the very young and old were particularly precarious. The Russian peasantry also had very high birth rates, which in the medium and long terms more than compensated for the high death rates. The growth in the numbers of peasants, especially in relation to the amounts of land available for cultivation, were important factors affecting many aspects of the Russian peasantry’s ways of life.

THE PEASANT POPULATION OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN 1897

On 28 January 1897 the first, and only, general census of the population of the Russian Empire was held. In rural areas, enumerators visited every household in each village in the districts assigned to them. Most were clergymen, teachers, estate stewards and clerks. Only a few were peasants. The majority of enumerators had received secondary education, and some had been to university. When they crossed the thresholds of the peasants’ houses, however, the enumerators entered a different world. Sometimes they had to wait while the peasants drove the chickens and other domestic animals out. Other peasants were less scrupulous, and invited them to join the livestock that were sharing their homes for the winter. Once inside, many experienced great discomfort from either the unbearable cold or the intense heat and sometimes blinding smoke from the peasants’ stoves. An enumerator in Tver’ province reported that he had to write on benches, or ‘on rocking and cluttered tables, kneeling down, in an atmosphere at times simply … stupefying with stench …‘.¹

The census form asked various questions about each member of the household, including name, ‘social estate’ (soslovie), primary and secondary occupations, native language, place of birth, registration (pripiska) and residence, age, sex, marital status, relationship to the head of household, religion, education and literacy. The census was conducted in accordance with contemporary international statistical practices. Although the data it produced have come in for some criticism, there is no doubt that, in the words of a recent authority, it is a ‘unique source on the peasantry of Russia’. The 1897 census provides a ‘snapshot’ of the Russian peasantry at the end of the main period covered by this book.²

Defining and counting peasants

The 1897 census counted 96.9 million peasants in the Russian Empire as a whole, out of a total population of 125.6 million, a proportion of 77.1 per cent. While these figures are useful yardsticks, they pose three problems. First, the precise number of peasants depends on how they are defined. Second, these 96.9 million included peasants from many ethnic groups in addition to the Russian peasants who are the main subjects of this book. Finally, in order to make meaningful comparisons with the peasant population in the centuries before 1897, we need figures based on similar definitions, and have to take account of Russian territorial expansion.

The compilers of the 1897 census used the term ‘peasant’ to describe members of a legally defined, hereditary and subordinate social estate of rural inhabitants. The population of the Russian Empire was divided into a hierarchy of social estates, the origins of which predate the seventeenth century. At the top of the hierarchy were the privileged social estates of the nobility, clergy and (after 1775) the merchantry. Collectively, they made up under 2.5 per cent of the population in 1897. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the enormous peasantry (krest’yanstvo) and smaller townspeople (meshchanstvo), who together comprised almost 88 per cent of the total population of the empire at the end of the nineteenth century. Until the 1870s and 80s these two subordinate social estates had alone born the brunt of the twin burdens imposed on the mass of the population by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century: annual levies of recruits into the lower ranks of the Russian army from 1705, and the poll tax, which was collected for the first time in 1724. Moreover, for around two and a half centuries prior to 1861, nobles effectively owned very roughly half the peasantry as serfs. Before 1762–64, the Russian Orthodox Church had also enjoyed this privilege. The distinct and inferior legal status of the peasant estate survived the reforms that began in the 1860s. Serfdom was abolished in 1861, men of all social estates were made liable to conscription in 1874, and the poll tax was phased out after 1883. Nevertheless, the peasant estate continued to have its own, separate systems of local administration and justice, its members were still liable to corporal punishment, and still provided most of the recruits for the army and a large part of tax revenues. Peasants were grossly under-represented, moreover, on the elected local councils (zemstva) set up after 1864, and in the four State Dumas elected at national level between 1905 and 1917.³

The definition of peasants used in the 1897 census was peculiar to Russian law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anthropologists and some historians have defined peasants differently. Not all specialists agree, but many of their definitions share several features. Peasants are politically and socially dominated and economically exploited by elite members of the larger societies of which they are a part, for example by nobles, churches and rulers. Peasants live in rural areas and support themselves chiefly, but not exclusively, by subsistence agriculture. They have access to plots of land, which they farm with their own manual labour, draught animals and fairly simple equipment. Production for the market and use of hired labourers are of secondary importance. The basic units of peasant life are households, which are grouped into village communities. Specialists have also identified peasant cultures, which are predominantly oral, in contrast to the largely literate cultures of elites.

Specialists have disagreed whether definitions of peasants should include people on the margins of peasant society. Most agree that hunters and gatherers, whose ways of life predate the invention of agriculture, and nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists, who move around with herds of livestock in search of pasture, are different from peasants. Specialists have debated whether to include the following marginal groups: small-scale commercial farmers who put the largest part of their produce on the market and/or rely on hired labour; agricultural labourers who do not cultivate a plot of land for themselves; and rural artisans, traders, carters, foresters and people engaged mainly in fishing who earn the largest part of their livelihood outside settled agriculture. Even if we exclude all these marginal people, there is still great diversity between peasant societies in different regions and countries, and inside peasantries, between villages and households within villages. Another problem is posed by changes over time, in particular those associated with ‘modernisation’, such as improvements in transport, the expansion of markets, industrialisation, urbanisation, the growth of literacy and formal schooling, and changes in people’s senses of identity, both as individuals and as members of larger, national communities. Nevertheless, many specialists have agreed that it is possible to define distinct groups of people as peasants.⁴

The definition of peasants in Russian law coincided with specialists’ definitions on only two points: exploitation by elites and residence in rural areas. Membership of the legally defined peasant estate in Russia was determined mainly by heredity rather than way of life. People whose lives changed radically did not always transfer to other social estates. The number of members of the peasant estate in 1897 whose ways of life differed from specialists’ definitions of peasants can be estimated from the census data. Since specialists’ definitions are of necessity blurred at the edges, any estimates can be regarded only as guides. The peasant estate in 1897 included 6.5 million people who had left their home villages for towns and cities, many of whom had given up agriculture as their main occupation; 1 million men who were serving in the armed forces;⁵ and around 100,000 people who had received secondary or higher education and been socialised into the elite culture. Thus, around 7.5 million members of the peasant estate in 1897 fell outside the peasantry as defined by specialists.

On the other hand, some members of other social estates supported themselves largely by farming and differed little from their peasant neighbours. The most numerous were around half of the townspeople, many non-Slav subjects of the empire who were classified as ‘aliens’ (inorodtsy) and, by the late nineteenth century, large numbers of cossacks. In total they came to around 13 million people. If the non-peasants (according to speciahsts’ definitions) who were members of the peasant estate are excluded, and peasants (also according to specialists’ definitions) who were members of other social estates are included, the peasant population of the Russian Empire in 1897 can be estimated at 102.5 million, or 81.5 per cent of the total population.⁶

A third way to estimate the peasant population of the Russian Empire from the 1897 census is to ignore the figures on social estates altogether, and to rely instead on the data on occupations. ‘Arable farming (zemledelie) in general’ was by far the largest occupational category in the census data. Over 87 million people in 16.7 million households, almost 70 per cent of the population, were engaged in ‘arable farming in general’ as their primary occupation or were the dependants of people who were. These figures included around 2 million hired agricultural labourers, but excluded about 600,000 people, including dependants, whose main occupations were more specialised forms of crop cultivation that must have been market orientated, for example market gardening and growing flax and hemp. In addition, over 4.5 million people, including family members, were engaged primarily in ‘animal husbandry’ (zhivotnovodstvo). The majority, around 3.6 million, were not peasants, however, but nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists. Most nomads lived in central Asia, nearly 3 million being Turkic-speaking Kazakhs, and smaller numbers lived in Siberia. Excluding nomads, there were approximately 900,000 people engaged in settled animal husbandry. The combined total of people and their dependants who gave agriculture (‘arable farming in genera...