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Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period
Peasant Russia is a comprehensive examination of peasant life in central Russia in the decades immediately following serf emancipation. Using interdisciplinary methods of family history, anthropology, ethnography, and women's studies, Christine Worobec explores the world of peasant households and communities, elements of which live on in today's Soviet Union. In full detail she shows how peasant Russia retained its traditional institutions and customary practices in the face of the economic changes associated with industrialization and urbanization. The book draws on previously unexamined judicial, folklore, and household records to assess the durability of the extended Russian peasant family and the customs linking it to the community. The Russian peasants portrayed here actively shaped their society, developing a variety of economic and social strategies to cope with their harsh environment and the demands of the state. Discussing their efforts to safeguard their way of life through courtship and marriage rituals and through such social restrictions as property devolution practices, a misogynist patriarchalism, and severe penalties for deviant behavior, Worobec reveals that peasant traditionalism impeded the impact of modernization and cushioned its effects.
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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October 26, 2019
"Peasant Russia" examines the structure, roles and functioning of families and rural collectives in Russia between the period of emancipation of the serfs (1861) and the Russian Revolution (1917).
The book contents draw on some statistical data and many individual court cases illustrating the need to enforce traditional life, as peasants in rural Central Russian regions edged toward new options opening up with the growth of urban industrialization. I also like that she includes many traditional proverbs and expressions to support her points.
Christine D. Worobec, with obvious Feminist interests, outlines the "patriarchial ordering of family and community relationships" throughout Russian society, from Tsar to Patriarch to individual heads of households. Collective interest and community solidarity enforced behavioral norms and moral code to maintain the status quo ensuring "the subordination of woman to man, child to parent, young to old and weak to strong." Although women were second-class citizens, they were not only the victims of oppression but, very much actor and oppressor as well in their tightly woven universe.
While the first third of the book tends to be dry in a discussion of household size and composition, land allotment systems, and the responsibilities of the bol'shak (administrator and decision-maker for life), and the breakup of large households into more nuclear family units, the rest of the book picks up as it moves on to the more interesting topics of children's roles, courtship, marriage and childbirth.
For example, "the meaning of marriage differed for men and women...where functions were strictly delineated along gender lines. A young man derived his legitimacy as a full-fledged communal member from marriage. 'Without a wife and family a peasant is not a peasant,' reasoned a popular Russian peasant saying." This was because they were not entitled to farmland. A peasant in Tambov province spoke on the disadvantages of bachelorhood: "What kind of life is it [to remain a bachelor]? You forever remain a landless peasant; no one will say a kind word to you; you will have no one to look after you in your old age, and when you die there will be no one to bury you." And, of course, marriage was an even more dramatic event for a young girl.
"Peasants perceived the unmarried not only as an exception to the rule, but as potential idlers and parasites, especially in the predominantly agricultural provinces of central Russia where nonagricultural pursuits were limited. A popular proverb noted, 'A man who is not clever at 20, not married at 30, and not rich at 40, is good for nothing.'" More scorn, however, fell on spinsters ('one-braided one', odnokosaia, a spinster had to wear the single braid of a maiden as opposed to the two worn by married women). Folk sayings cast her among the worst, "There is nothing worse than a priest's dog, a retired soldier, and an old maid" and "an old maid is a family ulcer."
Worobec explores the world of the young bride, the fraught mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship and what happens to both young and old widows and widowers in such a family-oriented society. And what happens if the family patriarch is a drunk and a wife-beater? How did young sons and their wives rebel from communal and familial restraints? The book occasionally points out some differences between Russian and European practices.
By reading this book, I've gained an appreciation of what held Russian communities together through thick and thin and how tightly they policed their own. Understanding this helps explain what happened under Soviet rule and why, even today, Russians exhibit many of these ingrained beliefs and cultural expectations. It's an eye-opener for Americans, even me who spent 23 years in Moscow.
The book contents draw on some statistical data and many individual court cases illustrating the need to enforce traditional life, as peasants in rural Central Russian regions edged toward new options opening up with the growth of urban industrialization. I also like that she includes many traditional proverbs and expressions to support her points.
Christine D. Worobec, with obvious Feminist interests, outlines the "patriarchial ordering of family and community relationships" throughout Russian society, from Tsar to Patriarch to individual heads of households. Collective interest and community solidarity enforced behavioral norms and moral code to maintain the status quo ensuring "the subordination of woman to man, child to parent, young to old and weak to strong." Although women were second-class citizens, they were not only the victims of oppression but, very much actor and oppressor as well in their tightly woven universe.
While the first third of the book tends to be dry in a discussion of household size and composition, land allotment systems, and the responsibilities of the bol'shak (administrator and decision-maker for life), and the breakup of large households into more nuclear family units, the rest of the book picks up as it moves on to the more interesting topics of children's roles, courtship, marriage and childbirth.
For example, "the meaning of marriage differed for men and women...where functions were strictly delineated along gender lines. A young man derived his legitimacy as a full-fledged communal member from marriage. 'Without a wife and family a peasant is not a peasant,' reasoned a popular Russian peasant saying." This was because they were not entitled to farmland. A peasant in Tambov province spoke on the disadvantages of bachelorhood: "What kind of life is it [to remain a bachelor]? You forever remain a landless peasant; no one will say a kind word to you; you will have no one to look after you in your old age, and when you die there will be no one to bury you." And, of course, marriage was an even more dramatic event for a young girl.
"Peasants perceived the unmarried not only as an exception to the rule, but as potential idlers and parasites, especially in the predominantly agricultural provinces of central Russia where nonagricultural pursuits were limited. A popular proverb noted, 'A man who is not clever at 20, not married at 30, and not rich at 40, is good for nothing.'" More scorn, however, fell on spinsters ('one-braided one', odnokosaia, a spinster had to wear the single braid of a maiden as opposed to the two worn by married women). Folk sayings cast her among the worst, "There is nothing worse than a priest's dog, a retired soldier, and an old maid" and "an old maid is a family ulcer."
Worobec explores the world of the young bride, the fraught mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship and what happens to both young and old widows and widowers in such a family-oriented society. And what happens if the family patriarch is a drunk and a wife-beater? How did young sons and their wives rebel from communal and familial restraints? The book occasionally points out some differences between Russian and European practices.
By reading this book, I've gained an appreciation of what held Russian communities together through thick and thin and how tightly they policed their own. Understanding this helps explain what happened under Soviet rule and why, even today, Russians exhibit many of these ingrained beliefs and cultural expectations. It's an eye-opener for Americans, even me who spent 23 years in Moscow.
January 14, 2010
The last couple chapters were especially interesting. I may never tire of gender theory in history even if it's the crazy stuff (which this wasn't, this was very sensible and thoughtful).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews