THE

AWKWARD CLASS

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF
PEASANTRY
IN A DEVELOPING SOCIETY:
RUSSIA 1910-1925

TEODOR SHA NIN

4. . . the class that represents barbarism

within civilization’
KARL MARX

OXFORD
AT TH E C L A R E N D O N PRESS
1 97 2
 Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. /
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOKYO

© OXFORD UNIVER SIT Y PRESS I 9 J 2

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PRINTED IN GREAT B R IT A IN
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 TO

ISAAC D E U T SC H E R

A GENTLE REVOLUTIONARY

AND TO

AN A R G U M E N T L EF T U N F I N I S H E D
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I s h o u l d like to express my thanks to the University of Birmingham for the

two years’ research scholarship which made this study possible. I should also
like to thank the University of Sheffield for a research grant which helped in
the task o f collecting necessary data. Most of all, though, I should like to
thank my friends at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the
University of Birmingham, Bob Davies, Bob Smith, and Geoff Barker, for
without their help, patience, and friendship, this study would never have
taken shape.
 CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES xiii

LIST OF F IG U R E S xvii

R U S S IA N A B B R E V IA T IO N S U SE D xix

IN T R O D U C T IO N I

PART I

R U SSIA A N D ITS PE A SA N T R Y
AT THE T U R N OF THE C E N T U R Y
I. R U SSIA AS A D E V E L O PIN G SOCIETY 9
(a) The Turn of the Century 9
(b) A ‘Developing Society’? 13
(c) The Peasant Sector 19
(<d) Social Dualism and Russian Society 24

2. P E A SA N T H O U SE H O LD A N D PEASANT SOCIETY 28
(a) The Peasant Household 28
(b) The Peasant Commune 32
(c) Peasant Society and Culture 38

P A R T 11

CYCLICAL M OBILITY
3. THE D IF F E R E N T IA T IO N DEBATE 45
(a) The Roots of the Debate 45
0b) Census Evidence 47
(c) The Unfinished Debate 58
id) The Heritage of the Debate: Towards New Answers 61

4. PO L A R IZ A T IO N A N D CYCLICAL M OBILITY 63
(a) The Correlation of Wealth and Size 63
(b) Budget Studies and Polarization 66
(c) Dynamic Studies and the Mobility of Peasant Households 71
(d) The Mobility of Peasant Households and the Mobility of Peasant
Society 76
X CONTENTS
5. ‘SUBSTANTIVE CH A N G E S’ 81
(a) The Levelling Mechanism 81
(b) Partitioning and Newly Created Households 85
(c) Merger and Extinction 88
(d ) Migration 92

6. M U LT ID IR E C T IO N A L A N D CYCLICAL M O BILITY:
TOW ARDS AN E X PLANATO RY MODEL 96
(a) The Residual Component of Peasant Household Mobility 96
(b) Biological Determinism 101
(c) Economic Determinism and Multifactorial Analysis 109
(d) The Peculiarities of a Smallholding Economy 112
(e) The Mobility of Peasant Households: a Multifactorial Model 115

7. M U LT ID IR E C T IO N A L A N D CYCLICAL M O BILITY:
V ALIDITY A N D RELEVANCE 122
(a) Validity: Regional Differences 122
(b) Validity: Historical Trends 126
(c) Validity: Operational Definitions 131
(d) Social Differentiation and the Political Significance of
Multidirectional and Cyclical Mobility 137

P A R T III
THE PR E D O M IN A N T CO NFLICT (1917-1925)
8. THE A G R A R IA N R EVO LUTIO N A N D L EV ELLIN G
AM ONG THE R U SSIA N PE A SA N T R Y 145
(a) In Search of Kulak Counter-Revolution 145
(b) Land Redivision, 1917-1919 147
(c) The Results of the Agrarian Revolution 153
id) Mobility of Peasant Households and the Agrarian Revolution 156
(e) Peasant Solidarity and Agrarian Revolution, 1917-1920 160
9. THE R UR AL SOCIETY IN THE PERIO D OF THE N.E.P.:
POWER, DIVERSITY, A N D CO NFLICT 163
(a) The Local Authority in Rural Russia: the de jure situation 163
(b) The Commune Gathering and the Rural Soviet 166
(c) The Socio-Economic Strata 169
(d) The Traditional Division of Roles by Sex and Age 175
(e) Vertical Segmentation and the Outsiders 177
10. THE R U R A L SOCIETY IN THE PERIO D OF THE N.E.P.:
THE P R E D O M IN A N T CO NFLICT 180
(a) The Rural Salariat (Sluzhashchie) 180
(b) The Party Members (Partiitsy) 185
 CONTENTS xi
(c) The Ex-Servicemen (Armeitsy) 190
(d) The Plenipotentiary Outsiders and the Volost' Power Caucus 192
(e) The Rural Power Structure and the Future Development of the
Countryside 197

A PPE N D IC ES
A. THE P E A SA N T R Y AS A PO LITICAL FACTOR 203
(a) The Peasantry: An Analytical Definition 204
(b) The Peasantry: The Historical Context 207
(c) The Peasantry and Society 211
(1d) The Peasantry in Political Action 214
B. R U S S IA N PE A SA N T LAW A N D THE IN H E R IT A N C E
OF PRO PERTY 219
(a) Peasant Law 219
(b) Family Property 220
(c) Peasant Inheritance and Partitioning, 1883-1905 222
(d) Peasant Law, 1905-1929 224

B IB L IO G R A PH Y 228

G LO SSA R Y 239

IN D E X 245
 LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER I

i. Indicators of Russian Economic Development, 1900-1913 11

chapter 3

1. Peasant Households in European Russia by Size of Average

Land-Allotment, 1905 48
11. Peasant Households in European Russia by Horse-Ownership, 1912 48
in. The Estimated Differentiation of the Russian Peasantry, 1913 52
iv. Peasant Households by Sown Area and Horse-Ownership, 1917 and
1919 53
v. Peasant Households by Sown Area and Horse-Ownership, 1917 and
1920 54
vi. The Differentiation of the Russian Peasantry by Region, 1920 55
vii. Peasant Households in Zones of the R.S.F.S.R. by Sown Area, 1920
and 1922 56
v i i i . Differentiation of Peasant Households in the R.S.F.S.R., 1922-1926 57
ix. Lenin’s Stratification of the Rural Population of European Russia,
1905 59

CHAPTER 4

i. Size of Households by Amount of Land Sown, Kaluga Gub., 1897 64

11. Size of Households and Number of Horses Owned by Amount of
Land Sown (Ts.S.U. Census, 1925) 64
hi. Socio-Economic Differentiation of the Peasantry in Saratov Gub., 1927 65
iv. Household-Size, Property, Income, and Accumulation of Peasant
Households by Land Held in Voronezh Gub., 1887-1896 69
v. Structure of Households, Capital, Income, and Accumulation by
Land Sown per Household, 1922-1923 70
vi. Simplified Hypothetical Dynamic Study of a Community, 1900-1910 72
vii. Peasant Mobility in Vyazma Uezd, Smolensk Gub., 1884-1900 75

chapter 5

I. ‘Substantive Changes’, Epifan' Uezd, 1899-1911 83

II. ‘Substantive Changes’ in Grain-Deficient Zone, 1924-1925 84
xiv LIST OF TABLES
in. Households Involved in ‘Substantive Changes’, Surazh Uezd, Chernigov
Gub., 1882-1911 84
iv. Households Involved in ‘Substantive Changes’, European Russia, 1922
and 1924 85
v. ‘Substantive Changes’ by Number of Male Workers, Epifan' Uezd,
Tula Gub., 1899-1911 86
vi. Households Merging in Epifan' Uezd, Tula Gub., 1899-1911 89
vii . Households Merging in 1920 in Areas Unaffected by Famine, 1920 and
1924 89
viii. ‘Substantive Changes’ in Surazh Uezd, Chernigov Gub., 1882-1911 91
ix. Annual Rates of Natural Increase in Voronezh Gub. by Land Held per
Household 92

chapter 6

1. Peasant Mobility in Surazh Uezd, Chernigov Gub., 1882-1911 98

11. Peasant Mobility in Some Regions of the R.S.F.S.R., 1920-1924 99
hi. Peasant Mobility in Sixteen Guberniyas of European Russia, 1924-1925 100
iv. Development of the Labour Force and Consumption-Needs of a Hypo­
thetical Peasant Family 104
v. Consumer/Worker Ratios by Type of Household and Area Sown,
Starobel'sk Uezd, Kharkov Gub., 1910 105

chapter 7

1. Annual Dynamic Survey of the Year 1924-1925 124

11. ‘Substantive Changes’, Chernigov Gub. 128
hi. ‘Substantive Changes’, Moscow Gub. 128
iv. ‘Substantive Changes’, Tula Gub. 129
v. ‘Substantive Changes’, European Parts of the R.S.F.S.R., 1920-1924 130

chapter 8

I. Indicators of Peasant Economic Activity, R.S.F.S.R., Agricultural

Censuses of 1917, 1920, and 1922 154
II. Peasant Households by Size of Membership, 1917 and 1919 157
h i.Annual Rates of Partitioning of Peasant Households, 1911-1922 158
iv. Rates of Partitioning of Peasant Households by Area Sown, 1917-1920 158

chapter 9

1. The Social Stratification of the Rural Population of the U.S.S.R., 1924-

W 170
The Causes of Rural Poverty, Penza Gub., 1924—1925 172
 LIST OF TABLES xv

CHAPTER 10

i. Salaried Staff employed by the State in Rural Areas of the U.S.S.R., 1926 181
11. Communists in Rural Administration 184
h i. Bolshevik Party Membership by Social Class, 1905, 1917-1924 186
iv. Officials of Soviet Local Authorities by Type, 1924-1926 194
 LIST OF FIGURES
i. Types of Mobility in Peasant Society (Graphs of Socio-Economic
Change) 51
11. Types of Household Mobility 76
Peasant Socio-Economic Mobility: Peasant Society and Peasant
Households 78
iv. Households undergoing ‘Substantive Changes’ by Wealth (Hypothetical 118
Graph)
v. Multidirectional and Cyclical Mobility: The Determinants of Centri­
fugal and Centripetal Mobilityamong PeasantHouseholds 118
vi. The ‘Statistical Optical Illusion’ inGraphic Form 136
 RUSSIAN ABBREVIATIONS USED
des. Desyatina, which was the standard Russian land measure, (i des. =
1-09 hectares = 2-7 acres.)
gub. Guberniya, a province—the main administrative division of the
Russian state in the period discussed.
Komsomol Kommunisticheskii Soyuz Molodezhi: the youth organization of the
Bolshevik party.
N.E.P. Novaya ekonomicheskaya politika; the economic policy introduced
by the Soviet government during the period 1921-8; also the period
of its implementation.
R.S.F.S.R. Rossiiskaya Sovetskaya Federativnaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika:
the Russian republic in the Soviet period.
Rub. RubV—the basic unit of Russian currency.
Ts.S.U. Tsentralnoe statisticheskoe upravlenie: the central statistical board
created by the Soviet government after the revolution.

8214986 B
 INTRODUCTION
T he conception o f the basic dynamics of a peasant society accepted by
Russian policy-makers and, indeed, by the majority of educated Russians at
the beginning o f this century can be outlined in a few sentences. It was
believed that, in the process o f inevitable economic advance, every human
society necessarily headed towards an increasing division of labour,1 the
establishment o f market relations, the accumulation o f capital, and social
diversification. It was also believed that these processes were centred in towns
but inevitably spread into the countryside. Rich peasant farms, which were
larger and better equipped and had a higher capital/worker ratio, found
themselves in an advantageous position as far as the optimal use o f the factors
o f production and their further accumulation were concerned. For precisely
opposite reasons, poor peasant farms were at a disadvantage in any attempt
to improve their economic position. Continuing cumulation o f economic
advantages and disadvantages led to a polarization o f peasant society into
rich farmers, who increasingly acquired the characteristics o f capitalist entre­
preneurs, and poor farmers, who lost their farms and became landless wage-
labourers in the employ o f rich farmers, estate owners, or urban entrepreneurs.
Some o f the typical characteristics o f a traditional peasant family farm could
still be seen in the middle strata of the peasantry, but these would disintegrate
or change in the inevitable process of economic advance. With them would
disappear the survivals of the traditional peasant society. A new social struc­
ture based on capitalist farming would finally come to be established in the
countryside.
This general picture of the dynamics o f a peasant society was firmly
established as a piece o f self-evident knowledge—it had become part o f the
prevailing ideology, not only in the normative but also in the cognitive sense.2
It was, in turn, taken as given and constituted the basic assumption under­
lying the rural policies of all the rulers of the Russian state during the politically
crucial quarter o f a century which followed the 1905-6 revolution.3 The
political perspective was that the peasantry would break down into new rural
1 In the broad sense advanced by Adam Smith in The Wealth o f Nations (1806).
2 Ideological images o f reality may act merely as justifications and canonizations of
political decisions taken but also as ‘lenses . . . through which men see, a medium by which
they interpret and report what they see’ (C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People (1963),
p. 406). For a recent discussion see P. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Construction o f
Reality (1967).
3 The Russian populism expressed in the Social Revolutionary party was ideologically
‘odd man out’ in its acceptance of and reliance on the cohesion o f the peasantry as one
class. The populists were not, however, given the opportunity to carry out any real policy
towards the countryside, and are not, therefore, significant for our discussion.
2 INTRODUCTION
classes typical of capitalist society (i.e. capitalist farmers, wage-workers, etc.)
which would demonstrate increasing self-awareness, cohesion, and tendencies
to political action in support of their own interests. This expected development
was in fact a precondition for the success of the policies pursued by successive
Russian governments.
The major fact o f Russian rural history in the first quarter o f the century
is that the predicted development both of the class structure and o f the politi­
cal response of the peasants did not happen. The richer farmers and the rural
wage-earners (and/or poor peasants) on the whole failed to act as independent
factions. In spite o f the apparent differentiation and of polarization-processes,
the villages o f the Russian peasantry went on showing remarkable political
cohesiveness and unity of action. The results of Stolypin’s attempt to estab­
lish, from 1906 onwards, a stratum of independent, well-to-do, and con­
servative peasant yeomen settled on enclosed farms (khutora) disappeared
practically overnight, without a trace of any rallying to its defence, in 1917-
18.1 In 1918, new rural policies attempting to socialize the countryside by
mobilization of the rural poor for a second revolution against the wealthy
peasants had to be abandoned, and the ‘Committees o f the Poor’ ( Kombedy)
which had been set up, disbanded.1 Similar results occurred with the various
attempts made to organize the rural poor during the period o f the New
Economic Policy (1921-8).1 Efforts to socialize the countryside reached a new
climax in imposed collectivization which, instead o f being the looked-for
socialist revolution of the rural poor (supported by their urban allies) against
their exploiters, turned into ‘a battle . . . more perilous and formidable . . .
than the battle of Stalingrad’2 between the forces of the Soviet state and the
Russian peasantry acting virtually as a united whole.3 This basic discrepancy
between the acknowledged aims and the manifest results o f rural policies
constitutes the crux of the political history of rural Russia during a decisive
period and forms the focal point of this study.
The apparent failure of accepted theories to accord with the crucial evidence
o f Russian rural history can be approached in three ways: (i) by denying
the very existence of a problem; (ii) by claiming that delays intervened in the
processes expected; or (iii) by introducing new factors into the analysis. The
first approach could be made by denying either the very fact of an unexpectedly
high political cohesion of the Russian peasantry4 or denying the existence of
peasant differentiation and polarization during the period. An alternative
form of the first approach could be to dispose of the very premiss o f class
analysis by putting in doubt the correlation between socio-economic position
1 See Chapter 8, section (b).
2 Stalin’s description of collectivization (as reported by Churchill) in F. Maclean, Eastern
Approaches (1951), p. 360.
3 For a discussion of the background see Chapters 9 and 10.
4 This was, in fact, the attitude adopted by many scholars o f the Soviet establishment,
especially after collectivization.
 INTRODUCTION 3
and political attitude and action. But neither the Russian evidence available
nor the indications of comparative studies would seem to make any such
solutions appear reasonable. In the case of the second approach, the initial
theory would be sustained, and the claim would be made that the changes
predicted had not had time to take place fully. Interest and further research
promoted by this attitude would therefore be focused on the factors of social
inertia as the reasons behind the delay in the fulfilment o f the changes pre­
dicted—i.e., on the static factors which reinforce stability. Research on these
lines has, in fact, been done and has produced illuminating results in the form
o f studies o f Russian peasant culture, of the structure of the peasant commune
and so on.1 Finally, the accepted basic model of the dynamics o f peasant
societies can be challenged by re-analysing the nature of the factors accepted
as relevant and their interaction. It will be apparent that this study is based
on the last approach—namely, the admission of major additional factors as
necessary for the understanding o f the problems analysed. Particular attention
is given to the processes reinforcing the stability o f the social system—an aspect
which tends to be overlooked by many of the theories o f social change.
The argument o f the present work is, firstly, that the patterns of socio­
economic mobility2 peculiar to and characteristic of peasant society led to
significant changes in the way actual differentiation and polarization-processes
impinged on the political consciousness and action of the Russian peasantry.
The focus o f investigation o f mobility will here turn from the changes in
peasant society as a whole to the social impact of the mobility of individual
households and their multidirectional and cyclical nature.3 Secondly, it is
argued that analysis of conflict-relations between the social groups in the
Russian countryside points to a crucial division between the members o f
peasant communities and the rural representatives of the town-centred ap­
paratus o f the party and the state, which overshadowed the other divisions
within peasant society. Finally, it shows the relationship between patterns of
socio-economic mobility and the conflict-relations in rural society and indi­
cates the significance of these for explanation o f the basic processes of Russian
rural history with a number of possible inferences relevant to the general
analysis o f peasantry in the contemporary world.
Before turning to the relevance of our analysis it may prove useful to say
what it does not attempt to do. The analysis and concepts introduced are not
intended to provide a master key to the understanding of peasant societies in
general, regardless o f space, time, and political and cultural framework. Yet
it may prove relevant to analysis at some levels of generalization. In the first
1 For example, the contemporary studies by Luzhin and Rezunov and the recent studies
by Taniuchi and Male referred to in Chapters 9 and 10.
2 The term ‘mobility’ is used in the sense of vertical mobility as defined by The Encyclo­
paedia o f the Social Sciences (1st edition), vol. ii, p. 554, but is limited to the socio-economic
dimension only.
3 For a discussion o f the relationships between types of mobility see Chapter 4, section (d).
4 INTRODUCTION
place, it may shed further light on the history of Russia and, in particular,
contribute to clarification o f the course of events in that major period of
Russian rural history which lies between the 1917 revolution and mass
collectivization in 1929. Secondly, it may prove significant for more general
studies o f the peasantry as a social entity and suggest important directions for
future empirical investigations. It seems highly unlikely that the processes
discussed were confined to the Russian peasantry alone. Indeed, recent studies
have indicated possible similar tendencies in Turkey, Iran, China, and Japan.1
Such evidence, if true, would lead to readjustments in our interpretations o f
contemporary peasantries—particularly in so far as the persistence o f tradi­
tional rural social patterns is concerned. It may therefore prove relevant also
to evolving strategies for rural development in contemporary developing
societies. Thirdly, it may contribute to sociological theory at a more general
level. The discussion of ‘non-economic’ determinants o f the economy, the
elaboration of analytical concepts like cyclical mobility or vertical diversity, and
the confrontation of major theories and models o f society with challenging
new evidence, may provide an additional perspective to the general study of
social structures and their dynamics.
The importance o f the study of Russian peasant society is very much
increased by the unusually high quality and the extensive nature o f the data
gathered in rural Russia in the last decades of the nineteenth and first quarter
o f the twentieth centuries—the result of an historically extraordinary en­
counter between a highly sophisticated and deeply committed intelligentsia
and a massive traditional peasantry.1 These studies by Russian rural econo­
mists, sociologists, and ethnographers were, in their day, the leading works
in this field in the world. The studies were followed up and developed on a
national scale up to 1928 by the Central Statistical Board (Ts.S.U.) o f the
Soviet government and by various Soviet planning departments. In fact, the
Russian data collected half a century ago are in many ways superior to those
of recent studies of peasant societies and, indeed, still unique. This is not
to deny that there are enormous difficulties involved in using these Russian
materials today. With primary sources lost, authors dead, and explanations
obscure, some of them are incomprehensible, Russian impatience with detail
plus frequent technical faults in printing and presentation exacerbate the
problem. Last but not least, the steps involved in assembling the Russian
sources after half a century of war, purge, and revolution would, if described,
read like a detective story. Yet the extraordinary quality and range o f the
Russian data on peasant society make its study an illuminating and worth­
while exercise, for all the difficulties involved.
1 See Chapter 6, section (e).
2 In fact many of the research workers of the local authorities (zemstvos) embarked on
their studies as a direct result of being banned, because of revolutionary activities, from
living in big cities and from holding university posts. Others volunteered for this work
out of commitment to the populist or the socialist causes.
 INTRODUCTION 5
The limits o f the period and of the geographical area of this study were
determined, at least in part, by the data available.1 This choice, nevertheless,
does cover a most significant period of Russian rural history (1910-25 and,
in particular, the years 1917-25) and broadly corresponds with that likely to
be chosen on the merits of subject-matter alone. The geographical area con­
centrated on covers the main rural regions o f European Russia, which con­
tained more than three-quarters of all Russian peasants and can be considered
as representative o f the Russian peasantry as a whole. The delimitation of
data in terms o f both time and space has not, however, been approached with
rigidity. Consequently, some data deriving from other periods and regions
have been presented when they seemed to be illuminating. On the other hand,
the generalizations reached should prove to some extent valid for other
periods and areas, and, particularly, for the whole o f the first three decades
o f this century and for all rural Russia, the Ukraine, and Belorussia.
The present study consists of three main parts plus Appendices. Part I
serves to provide the introduction necessary by examining what were the
major problems, strains, and alternatives facing Russia and the position of
the peasantry in Russian society. It then presents the social structure o f the
Russian peasantry, focusing on its specific characteristics. This part may be
omitted if the general background is already known without affecting the
cohesion o f the further argument. Part II attempts a systematic examination
o f socio-economic differentiation and of the mobility of the peasant households.
It concentrates on the phenomena o f multidirectional and cyclical mobility
among peasant households, their causes and their significance for the power
relations and political sociology o f Russian rural society. Part III then analyses
Russian rural society in terms of classical political sociology, i.e. in terms o f
conflict and power relations between the major social groupings of the village.
It does so by examining aspects of the agrarian revolution o f 1917-19, and by
analysing the major groups and group relationships within Soviet rural society
prior to collectivization. The discussion is summed up in Chapters 6-7 and
9-10 concluding Parts II and III respectively. The various parts o f the study
are, to some extent, independent and, at times, touch on issues broader
than the specific topic o f this book. It is hoped, however, that a unity will be
seen to emerge—the basic theme o f sociological investigation o f Russian
agrarian history which may contribute to the more general analysis of the way
a peasant social structure actually operates.
Before the present study could proceed, preparatory work had to be done
in order to fill numerous gaps. Two of these ‘pre-studies’ have been included
as Appendices. Appendix A makes explicit the author’s general framework of
analysis o f peasant social structure and political action. Appendix B provides
an exposition o f the inheritance customs of the Russian peasantry, expand­
ing what is discussed in Chapter 2, and providing additional explanations
1 See Chapter 4, sections (a), (b), and (c).
6 INTRODUCTION
o f the evidence examined in Chapters 5 and 6. The Bibliography lists the
sources used.
The limits to our knowledge of peasant social structure are evident in the
way current concepts are often underdeveloped and ambiguous. On the
whole, the concepts which have been used in this field have been transferred
uncritically from the analysis of a qualitatively different urban capitalist
society and, time and time again, they have acted as blinkers rather than
sources of illumination. The English language (unlike the Russian) adjusted
long ago to an urban setting and a market economy and has therefore often
proved recalcitrant. In an attempt to break free from ‘bewitchment by our
own language* terms have had to be invented, modified, and at times adapted
from the Russian; these may sound unconventional, at least to the English
reader. In so far as additional clarity has been gained by these inelegancies,
such a procedure has seemed justified, for ‘although the invention o f new
language symbols by itself would achieve little, it is certain that, without
it, no headway could be made at all’.1 To try to offset some o f the conse­
quent inconveniences a number o f figures have been introduced, and a short
Glossary o f terms used has been added.
The conclusions reached in this study are necessarily o f a tentative nature.
During research, the need to investigate a number of additional issues became
particularly evident. A study of the dynamics of peasant wealth, including
such elements as enrichment, capital-formation, etc., badly needs to be under­
taken. The external economic relations of the peasantry (as expressed in
taxation, rent, terms of trade, etc.) and the social significance o f these also
need to be studied. The peasant budgets described in Chapter 4 would provide
illuminating basic material for such investigations. Large-scale studies o f the
political activity and consciousness of peasantries are also needed; again,
existing data are a potentially rich source o f information. Most important,
comparative studies of peasant socio-economic mobility on the lines suggested
by the Russian scholars should be urgently taken up in contemporary
‘developing societies’ in which the issues involved are crucial for the realistic
planning of socio-economic change and growth. When these have been done,
the issues raised in the present study will need to be re-examined in a widened
framework of evidence and in the light of the analytical insights o f our
generation.
1 W. Baldamus, ‘Notes on Stratification Theory’, Discussion Papers, University o f Bir­
mingham, Faculty o f Commerce and Social Science (1967), no. 5, p. 23; for discussion see
also pp. 22 and 24.
 PART I

RUSSIA AND ITS PEASANTRY

AT THE TURN OF
THE CENTURY
 1
RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
Ty i ubogaya
Ty i obiVnaya
Ty i moguchaya
Ty i bessil'naya
Matushka Rus'
You are destitute
Yet full o f riches
You are all-powerful
Yet helpless
Mother Russia
N. N E K R A S O V

(a) The Turn o f the Century

O n the eve o f the twentieth century, Russia was in the eyes o f the Western
‘civilized world’ something gigantic, backward, and stagnant. Forsaken some­
where on the fringe o f unending Asian waste, a reminder and successor of
a Mongol Khanate, Russia was not quite Europe and yet Europe it was, a
ballast for and a shadow over the brisk business and rational liberalism o f the
nineteenth-century West. Books and memory carried the impression o f un­
ending muddy roads, poverty-stricken villages, boastful noblemen, power­
ful despots, and o f the locust-like Russian armies which had swarmed into
Europe to strangle the 1848 ‘spring o f the nations’.
The feeling o f enormity was no doubt well founded. By the turn o f the
century, the princedom o f Muscovy had grown into an empire of 26,500,000
square kilometres—more than a hundred times the area of the United
Kingdom, three times that o f the U.S.A., one-sixth o f the world’s land.1 In
1897, the first modern national census showed a total o f 128,000,000 in­
habitants.12 They were divided between nearly two hundred nationalities
(Great Russians being in the majority), belonged to dozens of religious groups,
spoke 146 tongues. Seventeen million (13 per cent) Russians lived in the 865
towns o f the realm.3 The Tsar’s subjects included 2-4 million industrial

1 Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po sel'skomu khozyaistvu Rossii (1914),

P. 2.
2 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ Brokgauz and Efron, (1907), additional vol. iv/D, p. i.
3 Ibid. Also P. Lyashchenko, Istoriya narodnogo khozyaistva SSSR (1952)* vol. ii
p. 118.
10 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
workers, 1-25 million soldiers, 1 million officials, 300,000 convicts, 17,000
students, and more than 100 million peasants.1
The riches of Russia were as impressive as its size.2 Yet, as soon as related
to the size of the population and compared with the performances o f other
European countries, the huge absolute figures reveal poverty and backward­
ness. The income per capita in Russia in 1900 was 3 times lower than that
in Germany, 4*2 times below that in the U.K ., even 1*5 times below that in
the Balkans.3 The production o f iron per worker was half that recorded in
Western Europe and a quarter that of the U.S.A. The second largest railway
network in the world was, at the same time, the smallest in Europe in relation
both to the area and to the population served.4 More than three-quarters of
the population over the age of ten were illiterate in 1897.5
However, if backwardness cannot be denied, Russian society at this time
was far from stagnant. In political life, inaugurating congresses o f revolution­
ary socialists in 1901-2, a disastrous war with Japan in 1904-5, the procla­
mation of a feeble Russian parliament {Duma) in 1905, a revolution in 1905-6
and a subsequent period o f reaction, followed each other in quick succession.
At the same time, a variety of large-scale social processes were at work.
During the period 1900-13, up to 4 million peasants had settled in towns and
an additional 2 \ million had made their way to colonization areas in the
Asiatic parts o f Russia.6 Educational facilities spread and, by 1913, more than
half o f the appropriate age-groups were attending primary schools.7 After
1906, the standard o f living of the industrial workers improved.8 Yet it is the
national figures o f economic growth which most strikes the eye. Between 1900
and the First World War, grain production rose by 27 per cent, while all the
indicators o f industrial production recorded much more rapid growth. The
nominal value o f the capital and the turnover of industrial enterprises during
the same period doubled, as did state expenditure and national income. The
nominal value o f exports also doubled during the same period.9 A simul­
taneous rise in prices was estimated to be 29 per cent (40*9 per cent in the case
1 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', op. cit., add. vol. iv/D, p. 9; also F. Lorimer, The Popula­
tion o f the Soviet Union (1946), p. 25, and A. Butyagin and Yu. Sultanov, Universitetskoe
obrazovanie v SSSR (1957), P- 30 (the figures of students are for 1900).
2 See, for example, Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 414-15, partly reported in Table i -i below.
3 A. Finn-Enotaevskii, Kapitalizm v Rossii (1890-1917 gg.) (1925), vol. i, p. 189.
4 Exception is made in so far as the population of Scandinavia and Montenegro are con­
sidered. Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po sel'skomu khozyaistvu, ed. cit.,
PP. 598- 9 .
5 Entsikopdicheskii slovar\ op. cit., add. vol. iv/D, p. xx.
6 L. Lubny-Gertsykh (ed.), Trudy kolonizatsionnogo nauchno-issledovatel!skogo instituta
(1926), vol. ii, p. 7; N . Turchaninov and A. Domrachev, Itogipereselencheskogo dvizheniya
po 1914 gg. vklyuchitelno (1916), pp. 44-5, 66-8. See also Chapter 5, section (d).
7 N . Timasheff, The Great Retreat (1946), p. 34.
8 M. Gordon, Workers Before and After Lenin (1941), pp. 65-73, also P. Khromov,
Ocherki ekonomiki Rossii perioda monopolisticheskogo kapitalizma (i960), p. 77.
9 For the components see A. Bolshakov and N. Rozhkov, Istoriya khozyaistva Rossii
(1926), vol. iii, pp. 13-15*
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY n
of agricultural produce and 12-5 per cent for manufactured goods),1 while the
population expanded during the period by 21 per cent. The estimated gross
annual growth o f the national income was about 5 per cent—but less than 1*5
per cent in per capita terms and with prices fixed.

T able i -i

Indicators o f Russian Economic Development 1900-1913*

Indicator 1900 1913

(abs.) (% o f 1900)

(A) Population Total (mil.)b 135*4 1643 121

o f which urban (%) 13 17 —
Production
(B) Grain (mil. metric tons)c 58-8 74*5 127
(B) Iron and Steel (mil. metric tons) 2*7 4*o 148
(B) Coal (mil. metric tons) 169 35*9 212
(B) Cotton Consumed by the
Industry (mil. metric tons) 0261 i*5 i 575
(B) Exports Total (mil. roubles) 716 1,520 212
Industrial Enterprises
(B) Capital (mil. roubles) 1,886 3,900 208
(B) Turnover (mil. roubles) 3,503 6,882 195
(C) State Expenditure (mil.
roubles) i,464d 3,094 211
National Income'
(C) Total (mil. roubles) 6,100 11,800 193
(C) per capita (roubles) 63 101 160

Sources (A) V. Den, Kurs ekonomicheskoi geografii (1925), p. 9.

(B) P. Lyashchenko, Istoriya narodnogo khozyaistva SSSR (1952), vol. ii, pp. 414-15*
(C) A. Finn-Enotaevskii, Kapitalizm v Rossii (1890-1917gg.) (1925), vol. i. pp. 179, 185,
189.
Notes
a The rise in prices during the period 1900-13 was estimated to be 29 per cent (Lya­
shchenko, op. cit., pp. 350-1).
b Including Finland and estimated by extrapolation.
c In the case of grain production averages for 1899-1901 and 1911-13 were used rather
than the data for 1900 and 1913 in view o f the distortion which the use o f individual years
could give rise to— particularly the exceptionally favourable conditions giving an un-
typically high harvest in 1913.
d An average o f the figures available on state expenditure in 1899 and 1901.
* Estimated by Prokopovich for 50 guberniyas of European Russia in which two-thirds
of the Russian population lived. Lyashchenko quotes somewhat different figures (op. cit.,
PP- 350- 1).

What conclusions can be drawn from the evidence on economic develop­

ment and social change available for the Russia of that period?
1 Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 350-1.
12 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
First, let us state the obvious: in conformity with its Western image, Russia
at this time was undoubtedly sprawling and poor. However, the Russian
economy, badly underdeveloped as it was by Western European standards,
was showing a reasonably rapid growth in production, income, and trade,
judged by international standards. Indeed, the growth-rate o f gross industrial
output in Russia was high when compared to those of the industrial societies,
though lower than for most of them in per capita terms.1The statistics reflected
a cycle in which an economic boom in the second half o f the nineties was
followed by a recess in the years 1900-7 and a new boom in 1909-13.12
Secondly, there exists broad consensus o f scholarly opinion on the
immediate causes of the post-1893 industrial ‘leap forward’ in Russia. An
economic boom was triggered off in the 1890s by an extensive programme of
state-generated railway construction with consequent large-scale orders for
industrial goods and an improvement in export opportunities.3 By the begin­
ning of the twentieth century, railway construction had slackened, but the
Russian government continued its policies o f direct state investment and
intervention (in 1913,60 per cent of the state budget revenue came from state-
owned enterprises and other state property).4 The state had also introduced
high protective tariffs on manufactured goods to benefit home industries. The
rates o f profit in Russia, which were much higher than those in Western
Europe, and massive government-guaranteed loans to the railways and local
authorities encouraged foreign investment, which brought about 200 million
roubles’ worth of foreign capital into Russia each year.5 Further capital
formation was due to a constant flow of resources from agriculture into the
urban sector through redemption payments, taxes, rents, payments for the
land o f estates sold to the peasantry, and so on. The continuous rise in
world agricultural prices after 1895 ensured a constantly positive balance of
payments.6 After a recession related to a European economic crisis and to the
unsuccessful 1905-6 war, a rapid increase in production occurred in 1909-13,
explicable in terms o f interrelated rises in the agricultural prices and the
production and export of grain which, together with some improvements in
urban living-standards (after the 1905-6 revolution), led to a rapid extension
o f the internal market. The extension of the internal market together with the
rapid increase in state expenditure were said, in their turn, to be major stimuli
to industrial growth and further capital accumulation.7
Thirdly, the economic growth observed displays basic differences in charac­
ter when industry and agriculture are compared. The figures produced by

1 R. W. Goldsmith, ‘Economic Growth of Tsarist Russia 1860-1913’, Economic Develop­

ment and Cultural Change (1961), vol. 9, pp. 474-5. 2 Ibid., pp. 398-401.
3 For discussion see Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 123-7. 4 Ibid., pp. 388-90.
s M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (i960), p. 38; also Khromov, op.
cit., pp. 96, 138, 146-8. Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 385, quotes an average o f 280 million
roubles for 1898-1913, half o f which were loans to the government.
6 Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 416. 7 Ibid., p. 408.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 13

Lyashchenko (and presented in part in Table I •I above) form the basis o f the
majority o f contemporary studies of Russian economic growth. Yet Lya-
shchenko’s key summary table1 fails to reveal the full extent o f the problem of
relations between agriculture and industry. He presented the 46 per cent rise
in grain production 1899-1913 as his only index of agricultural growth, dis­
regarding the fact that the year 1913 was marked by an untypical bumper
harvest, and without relating, in his crucial table, economic growth to the rise
in population. Furthermore, the increase in grain production was due to a
great extent to the ploughing-up of grazing land; this, in fact, led in turn to an
increasing shortage o f fodder. Livestock production, which was estimated by
Goldsmith to account for a quarter of the total production of Russian agri­
culture, actually decreased in per capita terms during the period.2 The over-all
results could not be much influenced by agricultural production other than
that o f grain and livestock which accounted for nine-tenths of the total value
of agricultural production.3 During the years 1900-13, the increase in the
production o f Russian industry was estimated at about 5 per cent per capita
per annum, while the increase in agricultural production was only slightly
ahead o f the rise in population.4 ‘The gap between the development of agri­
culture and o f industry’, mentioned by Lyashchenko, the ‘discrepancy between
the industrial segment o f the economy which was forging ahead and the
relatively stagnant agricultural segment’, pointed out by Gershchenkron,5
was a crucial characteristic o f Russian economic development.
Analysis o f Russian economic history seems highly relevant to the recent
debates on contemporary ‘developing societies’. Social systems and economic
conditions never exactly repeat themselves—but identity is not, o f course,
a condition o f valid comparative analysis. During the period we are talking
about, Russia was a country with an overwhelmingly peasant population, less
than $100 per capita annual income, and a government pursuing industrial­
izing policies in a world increasingly dominated by powerful industrial
societies. Does not all this sound familiar to every student o f the contemporary
world?
(b) A ‘Developing Society'?
In 1946 Timasheff published in London an extensive treatment of Russia
as a developing society.6 In a ‘mental experiment’, to use a Weberian term, he
examined and extrapolated forward the major trends in Russian development
between the 1890s and 1913. He concluded that, ‘if undisturbed’, Russia
would by 1940 have reached levels of industrialization, income, and education
1 Ibid., p. 395. r ,
2 Ibid., pp. 278-9. Khromov has estimated livestock as responsible for only 10 per cent
of the total agricultural production, which seems, however, a gross understatement.
P. Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii (1967), P* 513- Goldsmith, op. cit., p. 451.
3 Ibid., p. 453. 4 Ibid., p. 442.
5 Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 408; C. Black (ed.), The Transformation o f Russian Society
(i960), pp. 50-1. 6 Timasheff, op. cit., p. 386.
i4 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
similar to if not higher than those reached under Soviet rule, a rule which also
‘threw back Russian philosophy and arts at least a century’.1 Far from being
a necessary breakthrough and a removal o f obstacles to development, ‘the
communist revolution has been a dangerous illness, but the Russians possess
enough vital energy to overcome it’.2 Rapid economic growth at the rates
achieved at the turn of the century he assumed to be self-perpetuating into the
future. The 1909-13 economic boom, clearly related to the extension o f the
internal market, has been treated as the turning-point to a ‘take-off’.
The time which has passed has not diminished the appeal of Timasheff’s
way o f thinking for some writers; in fact, a number of recent studies echo his
argument without, however, either referring to him or enriching his analysis.3
Yet the growth-prospects offered by Timasheff do seem surprisingly far-
removed from those o f the so-called ‘developing societies’ in the contemporary
world. During the last decade, both official reports and explanatory theories
concerning the socio-economic development of these societies have grown
increasingly alarming. Myrdal’s notion of the cumulation o f advantages and
disadvantages seems to put it in a nutshell.4 In an unrestricted market economy,
accumulated capital tends to produce further accumulation o f capital;
accumulated ability to produce makes for increases in productivity; the better
the educational facilities, the better the conditions for the growth o f new
educational facilities. And vice versa. Shortage o f capital, low productivity,
limited access to educational facilities, as well as political feebleness, will tend
to cumulate at the underprivileged pole of society, creating unending ‘vicious
circles’. Nor is all this the result o f some objective or natural economic laws;
the tendency towards cumulation rests on the power structure and existing
differences of interest in the world society. The ‘developing societies’ find
themselves in the position of feeble newcomers in a world very much divided
among crafty partners. Their infant industries are strangled as much by the
cheap mass-production of well-established industrial complexes as by the
conscious policies of the big powers. Both the rapid development o f substi­
tutes and monopolistic controls drag down the prices o f the products tradition­
ally exported by the developing societies. The catching-up process becomes
increasingly difficult as time goes by.5 It is the very existence o f the ‘advanced
world’ with its accumulated and accumulating advantages and bullying power
which stands in the way of the ‘developing societies’. A slow process of
economic growth and an increasing lag behind the ‘advanced’ industrial
countries results.
Was the Russian development at the turn of the century different in kind
1 Timasheff, op. cit., pp. 394-5.
N. Timasheff, ‘The Russian Revolution’, The Review o f Politicst 5 (1943), no. 4, p. 440.
3 See for example, V. Treml (ed.), The Development o f the Soviet Economy: Plan and
Performance (1968), and in particular G. Warren Nutter’s contribution (pp. 290-6).
4 G. Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (1957).
5 C. Furtado, Development and Underdevelopment (1967).
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 15
from the contemporary experience o f the ‘developing societies’? How far are
Timasheff’s projections into the future valid and what can we learn from
Russia’s actual economic growth? Does pre-revolutionary Russian develop­
ment offer a key to the most significant o f contemporary problems? The
answers can possibly be found, on the one hand, in the contemporary analysis
undertaken by some o f the development economists (in particular, by Baran,
Furtado, and Frank1) and, on the other hand, in the history o f Russia’s
western neighbour, Germany. The historic performance of the entrepreneurial
middle classes, the early capitalists o f Western Europe, does not seem to be
repeated in other conditions; if ‘undisturbed’, ‘developing societies’ gravitate
towards backwardness and poverty, regularly associated with parasitic elites
and military regimes.2 However, between on the one hand the lucky first-
comers—those nations and societies which benefited from the early develop­
ment o f capitalism and the exploitation of colonies—and, on the other hand,
the colonized peoples, who form the mass o f today’s ‘developing societies’,
a third intermediate group can be distinguished. This third group seems to
consist o f those countries which reached the threshold of industrialization and
capitalism somewhat later than the first-comers, yet did not have their econ­
omies distorted by conquest and colonization. They could benefit from the
industrial experience already gathered, learning from their predecessors’
mistakes and even avoiding some of the limitations imposed by pioneer
development, while as the world market had not yet been fully established,
the intervention o f the more advanced economies could be kept in check. The
U.S.A. would head this list, though it is not wholly typical since placed in
particularly favourable conditions. In fact the spectacular advance o f England
at its peak repeated itself in the U.S.A. at a higher level o f capital accumulation
and technological advancement. It lacked established pre-capitalist social
structures and traditions, had large ‘empty’ territories (i.e. scarcely populated
or populated by peoples who could be exterminated), was far enough away to
eschew Europe’s political tensions, and yet was close enough to benefit from
its market and experience. Such conditions made the U.S.A., as early as the
First World War, into a creditor o f Western Europe, now outstripped.
The other members o f the third group seem to be Germany, Japan, and
Russia, with the latter at the bottom of this list in terms o f achievement and
dynamism.3 In spite o f the differences in conditions and history in these three
countries, all show marked similarities as far as the basic issues and aims
o f government policies are concerned.
Nineteenth-century Germany managed to escape the road o f cumulation
o f disadvantages by virtue of the powerful interventions o f the Bismarckian
1 Ibid.; P. Baran, The Political Economy o f Growth (1957); A. Frank, Capitalism and
Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967).
2 For examples see S. Andreski, Parasitism and Subversion (1966), or R. Dumont, False
Start in Africa (1966).
3 See for comparison Goldsmith, op. cit., pp. 474- 5-
8214936 C
16 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
state which ensured rapid industrialization.1 Such development there neces­
sitated a government powerful and aggressive enough to link radical develop­
ment policies with an at least partial removal of internal social obstacles and
a degree o f control over foreign pressures and the impacts of the world market.
In this period, the Russian government consciously attempted to follow ‘the
German path’. Bunge, Mendeleev, Witte, Stolypin, Kokovtsov—a succes­
sion o f brilliant finance ministers and prime ministers—professed policies of
directed economic development, government intervention, and thorough­
going support of native industrialists.12 The whole of the economy was power­
fully influenced by the Russian State Bank—which ‘differed from European
banks by being financed mainly by government resources’.3 The policy of
increasing the national debt figures as the source o f the ‘financial well-being
at the roots o f the development of industrial capitalism’.4 Government
policies facilitated high profit margins in industry, low wages, and the skim­
ming o f agricultural returns for the sake of urban capital formation.
Russia’s opportunities for rapid economic development were better than
those of today’s' developing societies’ in several ways. Firstly, the rise in world
prices of foodstuffs and, in particular, of grain, Russia’s main export product,
had ensured a constantly positive balance of payments and favoured increases
in agricultural production.4 Secondly, Russia had not just recently emerged
from a colonial past; the powerful and highly centralized Russian state was
able both to mobilize resources and—at least to some extent—to check
foreign political and economic pressures. Two further factors (which seem,
however, less decisive) relate to Russia’s extensive territory: first, the Asiatic
parts o f the country played, at least to a limited extent, the role o f an amalgam
o f British India and the American Wild West, i.e. o f an exploited colony and
o f an ‘open frontier’;5 second, the very size and potential wealth o f Russia
could be considered as an additional preferential factor (one should, though,
recall Indonesia or Brazil of today, which are large and potentially rich yet
actually immensely poor and slow in economic growth).
Yet, the chances o f conditions favourable to the socio-economic develop­
ment of Russia persisting were anything but good. In economic terms, Russian
growth was very much dependent on a positive balance o f payments, while
more than 50 per cent of the value of exports, in 1913, was made up o f food­
stuffs and only 5 per cent of manufactured goods.6 Yet from the early 1920s
the terms o f trade were increasingly unfavourable to primary products and

1 For a discussion see, for example, F. F. Clairmonte, Economic Liberalism and Under­
development (i960), chapter 10.
2 Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 387-93, 408, 414-17. Black, op. cit., pp. 47-61, 211-23.
3 Khromov, Ocherki, pp. 94-5.
4 Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 386-8.
5 In fact Russia has also tried to imitate ‘Western’ economic imperialism in its relations
with its southern and eastern neighbours (Persia, China, etc.). Khromov, Ocherki, pp. 230-1.
6 Bolshakov and Rozhkov, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 13-15.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 17
specifically to foodstuffs.1 The period of war seems to have provided the only
substantial exception and, in our century, as Atallah puts it, ‘except under
specific conditions, the long-term movement of the terms of trade between in­
dustrial and agricultural products will be against agricultural products’.12 This
will also hold good for the more broadly defined primary products/secondary
products division. The basic determinant of Russia’s positive balance of pay­
ments and the ‘booster’ o f the internal market and of production was, there­
fore, on the point o f an extended downward turn.3
At the same time Russian economic development was very much conditioned
by the policy o f encouraging foreign investment and by the increasing foreign
debts o f the government. Indeed, it was said that ‘without the influx of foreign
capital the development o f Russian industry would be impossible’.4 Lya-
shchenko estimated foreign investments during the period 1898-1913 at 4,225
million roubles (of which 2,000 million roubles consisted of state loans).5 By
1914, the total foreign capital invested in Russia was said to be 8,000 million
roubles, which included foreign ownership o f up to two-thirds o f Russian
banking, extensive foreign ownership of mines and other enterprises, large
state and municipal debts, and so on.6 The costs of the war more than doubled
foreign debts.7 In post-First World War conditions, Russia would have had to
face an inevitable crisis o f payments abroad with the necessity of contracting
further loans just to pay off the old ones and foreign dividends. Foreign
investments and exports would probably be increasingly insufficient to meet
the growing obligations and needs of economic development and to secure
self-perpetuating and rapid economic growth.8
Furthermore, the prospects for Russia’s economic development must be
viewed in the broader framework of the interaction between state policies
and the economy. The ability o f the Russian state to outweigh the effects of
cumulated economic backwardness was very much the crux of the matter and
determined future possibilities. Yet the power o f the Tsarist state was clearly
diminishing. From a first-class power in the first half o f the nineteenth century,
Russia had deteriorated, by the turn of the century, into a second-class force

1 M. Atallah, The Long-Term Movement o f the Terms o f Trade between Agricultural and
Industrial Products (1958), pp. 3-4, 7-9, 12-13, 72-9. P. Lamartine Yates, Forty Years o f
Foreign Trade (1959), pp. 38-45, 62-72. 2 Atallah, op. cit., p. 79.
3 For the unfavourable impact o f such change in the terms of trade on the economic
position o f the contemporary ‘developing societies’ see the letter of the leading British
economists in The Times, 29 October 1957, and estimates, ibid., pp. 3-4.
4 Evaluation by the prominent Russian economist Tugan-Baranovskii as quoted by
Gordon, op. cit., p. 353. 5 Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 385.
6 Khromov, Ocherki, pp. 134, 144. Half of the foreign debt is said to consist of the state
loans, 1,200 million roubles of the guaranteed railway loans, 700 million roubles of muni­
cipal debts, and the rest in private investments (ibid., pp. 147-8).
7 Khromov, Ocherki, p. 148; Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 644.
8 For elaboration o f possible negative results o f such economic trends and dependences
see, for example, proceedings o f the Delhi Conference o f the seventy-seven poorer members
o f the U .N . reported in the Observer, 28 January 1968.
18 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
both politically and militarily. Externally, military defeats in the war against
Japan in 1904-5 and against Germany during the First World War both signalled
and contributed to this growing weakness. Internal contradictions and revolu­
tionary pressures operated in a similar way. Far from being ‘undisturbed’
the political, the economic, and every other aspect of life in Russian society
oscillated violently under the impact o f external turbulences and internal
contradictions. The First World War tended to strengthen these processes and
led both to increasing dependence on foreign capital and to increasing politi­
cal and military influence on the part o f the senior members o f the Entente
over Russia. Given a build-up o f post-war crises and an increasingly doubtful
ability on the part o f the Russian government to dominate, control, exploit,
and mobilize resources, predictions by extrapolation o f the trend o f socio­
economic development between 1900 and 1913 seem anything but prudent.
In fact, both unreserved acceptance and total rejection o f Timasheff’s
extrapolation would seem to oversimplify a highly complex situation. The
socio-economic development of Russia in this period was very much a race
against time with the results very much in the balance. The possibilities lay
between rapid industrial development and recovery o f political momentum,
before the growing power of the world’s leading states made this less probable,
and further deterioration. Consequently, the future could be either a German-
style rapid economic advance to join the club of the dominant ‘advanced’
societies, or a cumulative political and economic decline to the status of
‘another China or India’, a society shaken by increasing internal contra­
dictions and, at least temporarily, an easy prey to powerful foreign imperial­
ists.1 Yet the economic gap between Russia and the industrial societies was
increasing. Between 1861 and 1913, the economic growth o f Russia in per
capita terms was somewhat below the average for Europe; about half the
figure for Germany, two-fifths of that for the U.S.A., and one-third o f that
for Japan. The economic position o f Russia by 1913 in comparison with those
countries had actually become more unfavourable than in 1861.12 Even a
revolution could not, ipso facto, force Russia out o f this set o f alternatives
created by the development of the world society.
The race against time imposed by world socio-economic processes made
crucial the potential stumbling-blocks and delaying factors in the process of
catching up with the West. The conservative character o f the Tsarist political
regime and state machinery time and time again was charged with such a
negative influence. Foreign economic domination was probably developing
into another such factor. A major obstacle to rapid socio-economic change
and political reform was, moreover, built into the very fabric o f Russian
society—in the single fact that more than four-fifths o f the population were
peasants.
1 D obb’s comparison between Russia and India may be of interest here (op. cit., p. 11).
2 Goldsmith, op. cit., pp. 442-3, 474-5; also Khromov, Ocherki, p. 398.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 19

(c) The Peasant Sector

In 1861, ‘the right o f bondage over the peasants settled upon landlords’
estates and over domestic serfs was forever abolished’.1 Russia’s ‘private serfs’
were emancipated. They were granted a major part of the land they had
traditionally held, subject to the payment (over several decades) of a large
redemption fee to their masters. By 1867, the emancipation had been extended
on similar lines to the ‘state peasants’ (i.e. those enserfed directly to the state),
who formed a majority in the northern and Asiatic parts of Russia.12 A specifi­
cally peasant social and political structure, with peasant households and
communes as its major units, was now formalized. Out of dozens o f variants,
rooted in the past, a single peasant social estate (soslovie) was moulded,
similarities in circumstances and way of life now being reinforced by specific
peasant legislation, distinct from national law.3
The first modern national census in 1897 showed 84*2 per cent o f the in­
habitants o f the European part of Russia to be peasants by ‘social estate’
(though 6 7 per cent of them resided in towns).4 These figures would have been
larger, had they included some essentially peasant groups which did not
formally count as peasants (Cossacks and some o f the non-Russian farmers).
In the whole Empire, the rural population topped 87 per cent, of which the
share o f non-peasant country-dwellers (i.e. nobility actually living on estates,
teachers, local officials, and so on) was very small.5 On the eve o f the First
World War, the rural population of Russia was still more than 84 per cent of
the total, a proportion which underwent little change until the early 1930s.6
Furthermore, many o f the ‘town-dwellers’ were, in fact, worker-peasants
alternating between village and town life. Up to nine-tenths of Russians
would, therefore, have been of peasant origin or in close contact with the
peasantry; at least four out o f every five lived in villages; three-quarters of
those employed worked in agriculture; 80 per cent o f army recruits were
peasants.7 In purely numerical terms the peasants were Russia.
With emancipation, the nobility was left with a considerable share of
Russia’s most valuable land.8 Yet a dual agricultural system o f big com­
mercially run estates and peasant family farms operating side by side (such as

1 The first article of the Russian General Statute of Emancipation. See G. T. Robinson,
Rural Russia under the Old Regime (1949), PP- 65, 80-9.
2 In the 1858 census 107 million mature males were listed as ‘private serfs’ and 12-8
million as ‘state serfs’ (including direct serfs o f the Imperial family), ibid., p. 63. Gerschen-
kron, however, has estimated the ‘private’ serfs to be 53 per cent of the total in the time of
emancipation; A. Gerschenkron, Continuity in History (1968), pp. 153, 198-206.
3 See Chapter 2 and Appendix A below.
4 Entsiklopedicheskii s l o v a r op. cit., add. vol. iv/D, p. xix.
5 Ibid., p. 1. For a discussion o f the non-peasant rural population see Chapters 2, 9,
and 10. 6 S. Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaya zemel'naya reforma (1963), p. 410.
7 Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1925), p. 105.
8 Even some of the traditionally peasant land (otrezki, etc.), was taken over by nobility
in this process Robinson, op. cit., chapter v.
20 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
exists in some o f the developing societies today) did not result in Russia. The
nobility owned hardly any land in northern and Asian Russia and only a
limited amount in the south east. More important, the Russian nobility failed,
on the whole, to take up the challenge of modern capitalist production. By
1913, about half o f the land belonging to the nobility at the time o f the
emancipation had been sold, mainly to peasants.1 Half the remainder was
rented out, once more to the peasants.12 In 1914-15, only about a tenth of all
the land sown in Russia belonged to the estates, some o f which were still being
run as traditional manors with lands worked by peasant labour (otrabotka),
on the basis of various share-cropping arrangements and as part o f the
essentially peasant economy. The nobility, moreover, owned only 5 per cent
o f the livestock.3 The big landowners participated in the rural economy
through peasant payments of rent, etc., rather than by large-scale production.4
The Stolypin reforms of 1906-10 attempted to create a powerful new
stratum o f wealthy peasants engaged in capitalist farming.5 ‘Private’ peasant
land (i.e., not the commune holdings) was bought to a very large extent by
this group, which also benefited from enclosures and showed, at least in some
areas, higher yields per acre and higher incomes.6 Yet, by 1913, the number
of Russian peasant households which were not only wealthier but had evolved
into agricultural enterprises run on capitalist lines was still very small.7 Russia’s
agriculture operated mainly in the framework of traditional family farms
typical of peasant agriculture, with some islands of modernized estates and
capitalist farms, relatively small yet somewhat more important as producers
for the market.8 The growth of the production for export o f butter in Western
Siberia seems the only case of a regional break-through to a full-scale market
and money economy within the Russian peasant agriculture.9
The poverty o f Russia was very much the poverty o f the Russian peasant.
In 1913 only half o f Russia’s national income was produced by her agriculture,
which engaged more than two-thirds o f the national labour force.10 Low as
the income per capita was in towns, it was still more than double the figure for
the countryside. Exclusion of the estates and of the thin upper crust of peasant
farmers who had done particularly well would, no doubt, reveal even lower
standards of per capita income for the peasant majority o f the Russians.
Furthermore, a three times greater annual variation in yields than that

1 Robinson, op. cit., pp. 131, 262; see also A. Anfimov, Rossiiskaya derevnya v gody
pervoi mirovoi voiny (1962), p. 37; see also Chapter 3, section (b), below.
2 Anfimov, op. cit., p. 44.
3 Ibid., p. 280, also see A. Chelintsev, Russkoe sel'skoe khozyaistvo pered revolyutsiei
(1928), pp. io- i i . 4 Anfimov, op. cit., pp. 152-5.
5 For elaboration of the Stolypin reforms see Chapter 2, section (b); Chapter 3, sections
(a), (b), and (c).
6 See further discussion in Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 8. Also Dubrovskii, op. cit.
7 Ibid., p. 469. Robinson, op. cit., pp. 238-42.
8 Dubrovskii, op. cit., p. 469. Robinson, op. cit., pp. 238-42, 260-1.
9 Yates, op. cit., p. 84. 10 Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe, p. 498. The figures are for 1913.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 21
observed in Germany and the United Kingdom revealed itself in the course of
frequent years o f famine, which were particularly disastrous for smallholders.1
The socio-economic differentiation of the countryside had introduced a
variety o f conditions and incomes among peasant households—a process
which will be discussed below. Even so, the peasantry was more remarkable
for the depth o f its general poverty than for the extent of its differentiation.
‘The basic reason for the lowness of the average standard of life in Tsarist
Russia was the low production of agriculture, which constituted the livelihood
o f four-fifths o f the population’.12 Dobb’s remark stresses one o f the major
determinants o f the poverty of the peasant majority and consequently o f the
people o f Russia. For example, Russia’s yield o f wheat per acre during the
period 1909-12 was less than one-third of that in Britain and less than two-
fifths o f that in Germany.3 Other branches o f agriculture showed similar
weaknesses. Moreover, yields on peasant allotments were even lower than
those reported on ‘privately-owned land’.4 Supplementary incomes from
peasant crafts and trades (promysly) were relatively low and home crafts are
said to have declined under the pressure of cheap industrial goods.5 Low
productivity and income in peasant agriculture led to numerous ‘vicious
circles’ in which poverty bred poverty; low incomes and limited credit blocked
capital formation and serious chances of improvement via rises in produc­
tivity. For example, Russian farmers used, per acre, about five per cent of the
chemical fertilizer used in Germany and one-twelfth of that used in Britain.6
Complex agricultural machinery barely existed. The 1910 census reported a
lack o f basic equipment in 34 per cent of peasant households and a total lack
o f horses in 30 per cent of peasant households.7 ‘In this grain-growing country’,
comments Robinson, ‘the existence of millions of farms without work-animals
is a fact which assaults the imagination with suggestions of every sort of hard­
ship’.8
Contrary to widely held beliefs, the average size o f peasant allotments in
Russia was not much lower than the typical size o f farms in Germany or
France.9 It was rather the ‘prescientific and premechanical level of agriculture’
which led to an ‘acute sense o f population- and land-hunger’.10 ‘Russian
agriculture . . . combined in many parts of the country and in several of its
most important branches, the disadvantages of small-scale operation and
large-scale, and often absentee ownership; and showed at the same time the

1 V. Den, Kurs ekonomicheskoi geografii (1925), p. 193.

2 Dobb, op. cit., p. 39.
3 Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po sel'skomu khozyaistvu, op. cit., pp.
113-14. *• Ibid., pp. 64-81, Bolshakov and Rozhkov, op. cit., pp. 80-3.
5 Robinson, op. cit., pp. 246-50; Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 96-9. See also Budget Studies
referred to in Chapter 3, section (b). 6 Anfimov, op. cit., p. 67.
7 V. Yakovtsevskii, Agrarnye otnosheniya v SSSR v period stroitel'stva sotsializma
(1964), p. 21. 8 Robinson, op. cit., p. 115.
9 M. VolT and G. Mebus, Statisticheskii spravochnik po ekonomicheskoi geografii SSSR
drugikh gosudarstv (1926), pp. 41-4, 51-2. 10 Lorimer, op. cit., pp 14-15*
22 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
low per-acre yield o f newly-settled countries and the low output per man­
hour o f the densely-populated regions of the old world.’1 Rents and prices of
land were soaring. In the conditions of economic development obtaining, the
‘surplus rural population’ of Russia was estimated to be between one-third
and two-fifths o f the total—a true measure o f underemployment, backward­
ness, and hunger.12
The peasant economy of Russia was powerfully influenced not only by
economic disadvantages and their cumulative impact but also by the power
situation o f the peasantry vis-a-vis other social forces, by the political economy
o f Russia expressed in terms of land-tenure, state policy, and the like. During
the years 1861-1906, Russian peasants had paid up to 1,000 million roubles in
redemption fees.3 More than that was almost certainly spent by them on buy­
ing and renting land, whose price had risen tenfold between i860 and 1900
and continued to rise thereafter.4 The terms of urban-rural trade, influenced
by the government policy of high prices on manufactured goods, took from the
Russian peasantry yet another slice of its limited income. The taxes and rents
paid by peasant households were estimated in 1913 to have reached 18 per
cent of total income. This necessitated extensive forced sales of peasant produce
—and these went on in times of undernourishment and even o f famine.5
The peasant was the most downtrodden member of Russian society not
only in terms o f wealth and income. The worse than 70 per cent level o f illiteracy
among Russians in 1897 was very much the illiteracy o f peasants,6 the
operation o f medical services and public health was particularly bad in the
countryside, and so on. At the same time, helplessness in the face of
the lowest ranks o f a corrupt bureaucracy was particularly inevitable for
the peasant. Yet it was mainly peasants in uniform who were called upon to
defend the existing regime from the ‘external and internal foes o f His
Imperial Majesty’.
Turning to the basic economic processes going on in the Russian country­
side at this time, even the patchy evidence and clashing estimates from different
scholars clearly reveal a number o f trends. Firstly, the crop-production of
Russian agriculture was expanding in both physical and value terms.7 The
combined production effect of an increase in sown area and an increase in
yields slightly exceed population growth. Though agricultural production was

1 Goldsmith, op. tit., p. 447; also Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe, p. 516.

2 For evidence see Chapter 4, section (d), below; also Robinson, op. cit., pp. 97-114, 243;
Anfimov, op. cit., pp. 150-1.
3 Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 17. 4 Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe, p. 355.
5 Bolshakov and Rozhkov, op. cit., pp. 74-5.
6 Robinson, op. cit., p. 127. L. Kritsman, P. Popov, and Ya. Yakovlev (eds.), Sel'skoe
khozyaistvo na putyakh vosstanovleniya (1925), pp. 829-38, 845. Timasheff, The Great
Retreat^ p. 35. See also Narodnoe khozyaistvo v tsifrakht op. cit., p. 49.
7 Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po seVskomu khozyaistvut ed. cit., pp. 59,
63. During the period 1901-12, the sown area expanded by 17 per cent. The increase of
livestock was, however, much smaller (ibid., pp. 242-3; Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 278).
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 23

becoming somewhat more diversified, 92*3 per cent of the area sown was
accounted for by grain.1 At the same time livestock increased at a much
smaller rate and actually decreased in per capita terms. In such circumstances
even a modest increase in income per capita could be doubted as far as the
majority o f Russian peasantry are concerned.
Secondly, agricultural exports were increasing considerably, partly on
account o f the production of estates and capitalist farms but probably mainly
as a result o f the traditional Russian policy of ‘we shall undereat but we will
export’—which under the Russian conditions of taxation and grain marketing
meant undereating by peasants and exporting by profiteers.2 In spite of the
expanding external trade money exchange was still fairly limited among the
Russian peasants. In 1913, the trade turnover per capita in Russian towns was
twenty times higher than that in the villages.3
Thirdly, between the emancipation of the peasants and the First World
War, the land held by the peasants was considerably extended. The additional
land was brought into cultivation by ploughing up grasslands, by colonizing
new land, and, even more, by buying and renting land which had belonged
to the nobility. Simultaneously, peasant emigration to the towns, and
colonization in the east o f Russia, was removing from the countryside about
a third o f the natural increase of the peasant population.4 Yet peasant
population growth was outrunning the growth of land in peasant hands: the
average size o f peasant holdings dwindled.5
Fourthly, capital accumulation in agriculture and investment in equipment
and agricultural improvements were limited, and their influence on production
could not have been substantial. The percentage rates of increase in the use of
chemical fertilizers and agricultural machines, and in the spread o f more
sophisticated types o f agricultural techniques, etc., were spectacular, yet the
very low absolute figures revealed the reason for this—barely existent take-off
points.6 At the same time livestock, the traditional form o f accumulation of
peasant wealth, decreased in per capita terms. Capital formation in agriculture
was kept in check by the general poverty o f the peasantry, was diluted by
population growth, and was skimmed off by those at the top o f the power
structure o f Russia. The peasantry carried a heavy burden o f state expenditures
and o f forced capitalist development in the towns, while participating to a
very limited extent in the benefits of the Russian ‘economic miracle’. The
Russian peasantry not only was poor but also constituted the major exploited
1 Ibid., Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po seVskomu khozyaistvu, p. 59.
2 Ibid., pp. 321, 336. Lyashchenko, op. cit., pp. 283-5. The quotation taken from a speech
by a Russian minister of state, Vishnogradskii, in the late nineteenth century (Lyashchenko,
op. cit., p. 282). See also P. Lyashchenko, Russkoe zernovoe khozyaistvo (1927), pp. 274,
291, 320-1.
3 Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe, p. 218.
4 See Chapter 5, section (d), below.
5 Dubrovskii, op. cit., pp. 29-30, 415; Robinson, op. cit., p. 194.
6 See, for example, Anfimov, op. cit., pp. 60-9.
24 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
class which, to a great extent, paid the bill for the spectacular development
o f the urban economy.
Finally, the national processes of economic growth described above resulted
in a variety of changes in which the mass of the peasant households found
themselves involved. A rapid process of socio-economic mobility was
going on; it will be discussed in detail later. There was large-scale migration.1
An increasing penetration of market and money relations into the villages,
a growing national educational system, army service, and village-to-town
migration were producing an increasing urban impact on peasant life. At the
same time, peasant immigrants formed urban enclaves o f worker-peasants
in every city o f Russia; they transferred to the towns both elements
o f peasant social structure (e.g. the artel'—the typical commune-type gang
o f peasant artisans and temporary workers) and peasant poverty (by increas­
ing unemployment and keeping down wages, standards o f housing, and the
level o f literacy).
The national indices of socio-economic growth and the projects o f develop­
ment in Russia have to be set against the fact of an overwhelmingly peasant
population. Even doubling the wages of industrial workers would have
influenced national income and the major pockets o f poverty but little. Even
total literacy in towns could have left three-quarters o f the nation illiterate.
And so on. The impact o f even the most spectacular achievements o f the urban
economy was diluted at times to the extent of one-sixth by rural backwardness.
For example, Goldsmith points to the fact that the 3 5 per cent rate o f per
capita growth of Russian industry was very high by international standards—
yet, in spite of it, Russia fell behind the Western countries simply because
of the high proportion of agriculture in its economy ‘which, in virtually every
other country, grew much less rapidly than the rest o f the economy’.2 On the
eve of the First World War the peasant majority o f the population was grow­
ing into a major bottleneck for Russia’s economic and social development.
Further industrialization in towns called for an expanding internal market,
skilled mobile labour, increasing capital investment and productivity;3 the
Russian peasantry emerged as a braking factor on all o f these. However, the
peasantry was not only the poorest, the most exploited, and the most oppressed
part of the Russian population; it also lived within distinctive structures of
social interaction.

(d) Social Dualism and Russian Society

The Russian peasantry displayed a specific social structure in terms o f class
characteristics, basic units of interaction, social institutions, and typical
1 See Chapter 5, section (d), below.
2 Goldsmith, op. cit., p. 425.
3 For discussion of the limitations imposed by the character o f the available peasant
labour see Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 210-11, and also Appendix B, section (d), below;
Robinson, op. cit., pp. 246-50, 249.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 25
patterns o f consciousness, as described in the following chapters. It represented
a specific ‘way o f living’, a kind o f ‘arrangement of humanity’; in more general
terms, it operated as a ‘permanently ordered social system, perpetuating its
own structure (and those neutralising determining environmental pressures)’.1
The conditions o f poverty and exploitation outlined above interacted with
specific features o f the peasant social structure, each reinforcing and stabilizing
the other.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Hertzen had pointed to the ‘two Russias
which had come into hostile opposition from the beginning o f the eighteenth
century’. He enlarged: ‘on the one hand, there was governmental, imperial,
aristocratic Russia, rich in money, armed not only with bayonets but with all
the bureaucratic and police techniques taken from Germany; on the other
hand, there was the Russia of the dark people, poor, agricultural, communal,
democratic, helpless, taken by surprise, conquered, as it were, without battle’.2
By 1900, ‘upper-level Russia’ was undergoing rapid change, incorporating
new social strata called into being by industrialization and the growth of
capitalism. ‘Lower-level Russia’ was probably never as communal and demo­
cratic as the Russian radicals would have liked to have it. Yet the essential
split between the two Russias was still marked and there to stay for decades
to come.
In the period we are considering, Russia appeared as a dualistic society
with two ‘permanently ordered social systems’ operating side by side. The
differences between the two basic sections of society, the peasant and the non­
peasant, ran much deeper than the differences between social classes operating
within the framework of a shared, single social structure. A large proportion
o f Russian townsmen at this time displayed to a great extent the major social
characteristics o f ‘Western’ capitalist societies while an overwhelming majority
o f Russian villagers lived in a markedly different structure of social organ­
ization o f relatively ‘closed’ and self-perpetuating peasant households and
communes. The bond between the two sectors and types of social structure
was largely limited to a shared national territory and a common system of
power relations.
The term ‘dualism’ here implies neither a total lack o f contact between the
two sectors nor an eternal social division between them. Processes leading to
the disintegration o f this dualism in society were, in fact, already under way.
The development o f a market and money economy played a particularly
important role here. The wage-labour market, military service, and the
educational network advanced the integration of the peasants into the wider
society. But prognoses of the future in the form of analyses o f the processes
1 The quotations come respectively from Fei Hsiu Tung in R. Bendix and S.jLipset, Class,
Status and Power (1953), p. 32; R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (1956)* P- 25; and
Z. Bauman’s discussion o f social systems in Social Science Information, 7 (1966), no. 5,
pp. 69-70.
2 Black, op. cit., p. 590.
26 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY
o f structural change cannot be substitutes for analysis o f actuality. The term
‘dualism’, then, serves here to conceptualize a situation in which two qualita­
tively different types o f social structure relating to two large groups in society
operate side by side, a situation sustained by a low level o f social interaction
along a narrow front between the hard cores o f the groups and by the existing
systems o f domination. The resulting network of domination and exploitation
cannot be overlooked in any realistic analysis, yet its existence does not
preclude the realism and usefulness of the concept of dualism. In such
societies, even those who ‘invade’ the other ‘world’ by the fact o f residence
(worker-peasants in towns, some of the rural intelligentsia, and so on) tend
to develop into closed enclaves rather than to bridge over the societal split.1
Social dualism was not limited to differences in types o f economy. The
cultural patterns of the peasantry and its political consciousness were markedly
different from those prevalent in other sectors of society.2 To turn to political
events, even the 1905-6 revolution should more properly be termed ‘the
1905-6 revolutions’ or even ‘the dual revolution’. It represented, in fact, two
revolts different in form, organization, and timing. The rebellion o f the intelli­
gentsia and the workers was led by national political parties and was aimed
at the Tsarist state. It had already been crushed when the peasants started to
set fire to estates in a big way in a spontaneous agrarian revolt aimed against
the landed nobility and attempting to take over land under the single unifying
cry: ‘The land is God’s.’3 The two revolutions proceeded in parallel, linked in
the main only by the weakness a*d military defeat suffered by Tsarism which
had triggered them off and by tht common gallows and prisons provided for
their militants under Stolypin’s rule.
‘The Great Reform did not effect a revolutionary change in the internal
organisation of the peasantry’, concluded Robinson in his unsurpassed history
of the emancipation of the Russian serfs.4 This power o f the essential features
o f peasant social structure to endure manifested itself time and time again,
defying a variety o f reforms, pieces of legislation, and even revolutions. The
‘October Revolution’ in 1917, followed by the civil war of 1918-21, represented
a major watershed in the life of Russian society. Yet the specific characteristics
of Russian peasant society persisted and, if anything, were magnified by the
disappearance o f the estates and the revitalization of the communes.5 The
basic dualism o f Russian society also endured. The urban economy, dominated
by state industry, faced after the civil war a sea of peasant smallholders. The
political dualism displayed in the 1905-7 revolution repeated itself to a great
extent in the 1917-21 period of revolution and civil war.3 It was followed by
a dualism of power in the countryside, in which the peasant communes and
1 For further discussion see Chapters 9 and 10 below.
2 See Chapter 2, section (c); Chapter 9, section (b), and Chapter 10, sections (c), (d),
and (e), below.
3 Robinson, op. cit., chapters ix, x. 4 ibid, p. 66.
5 See Chapters 8, 9, and 10 below.
 RUSSIA AS A DEVELOPING SOCIETY 27

local officialdom confronted each other, encamped in their different ‘worlds’.1

The interaction between the peasant and urban sectors was, if anything,
reduced by the shrinking of the market and the disappearance of the biggest
farms, which had been more oriented towards a money economy.
A policy o f industrialization in Russia necessitated the simultaneous tackling
o f three basic problems relating to the peasantry. Firstly, an at least partial
dissolution o f the social structure typical of peasant societies and an increased
integration o f the peasants in the life o f the nation had to take place. Such a
development would mean the disintegration o f the essential boundaries o f the
dualistic society, to be replaced by an integrated, national class system.
Secondly, an industrialization policy would necessitate an at least partial
‘skimming’ o f agriculture through the investment of agricultural surpluses for
industrial capital formation. Thirdly, to do this would necessitate political
suppression, control, or, at least, neutralization o f the peasantry in what would
inevitably amount to its deepest crisis.
The essential alternatives for Russian socio-economic development were
therefore to a great extent fixed and can be legitimately formulated in terms
o f the deep social dualism, the place o f the peasantry in the wider society, and
the major processes o f social change in the countryside. All that does not, of
course, mean that there was only one possible path for the industrialization of
Russia; quite the contrary. In a Russian context the mechanisms o f rural
social change were always powerfully influenced by, and were at times synony­
mous with, the government, the state, and, after the revolution, the party. The
actual policies o f Stolypin in 1907-11, Lenin’s N.E.P. (introduced in 1921,
and still being defended by Bukharin in 1929), as well as Stalin’s collectiv­
ization in 1929-33, represented among other things conscious choices of
different roads towards industrialization. Plans and circumstances, voluntar­
ism and determinism, ‘dreams’ and ‘facts’, come together to make a political
reality, each aspect making little sense when considered alone.
One o f the crucial problems o f Russia as a developing society was therefore
its overwhelming peasant majority. The Russian peasantry, which was the
largest, the poorest, and the most exploited part of the Russian population,
constituted a social formation with a remarkable capacity to endure.
1 See Chapters 9 and 10 below.
 2
PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND
PEASANT SOCIETY

The peasantry, the key toward understanding o f China, is a way o f

l i v i n g ... fei h s i u TUNG

(a) The Peasant Household

P e a s a n t households form the nuclei of peasant society. The nature of
peasant households seems to constitute the most significant single character­
istic o f the peasantry as a specific social phenomenon and to give rise to the
generic features displayed by peasantries all over the world.1 A peasant house­
hold is characterized by the nearly total integration o f the peasant family’s life
with its farming enterprise. The family provides the work team for the farm,
while the farm’s activities are geared mainly to production o f the basic con­
sumption needs of the family and the dues enforced by the holders o f political
and economic power.
The Russian peasant household (dvor) at the turn o f the century closely
corresponded to the general type described. ‘The family and the farm appear
as almost synonymous’, testified Mukhin in his compilation on peasant
customs at the end o f the nineteenth century.12 A volume of a Russian encyclo­
pedia published in 1913 described the bulk o f peasant households as ‘con­
sumer-labour enterprises, with the consumer needs of the family as their aim
and the labour force of the family as their means, with no or very little use of
wage labour’.3
A Russian peasant household consisted, in the majority o f cases, o f blood
relatives spanning two or three generations. However, the basic determinant
o f household membership was not a blood-tie but total participation in the
life o f the household or, as the Russian peasants put it, ‘eating from the
common pot’.4 This unity implied living together under the authority of a
patriarchal head, social organization and division of labour on traditional

1 For discussion of the generic features o f the peasantry in different countries and periods
see, for example, R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (1956).
2 V. Mukhin, Obychnyi poryadok nasledovaniya krest'yan (1888), p. 151.
3 Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ Brokgauz and Efron, 2nd edition (1913), vol. xviii,
p. 519.
4 Quoted from A. Chayanov, The Theory o f Peasant Economy (1966), p. 54.
 P E A S A N T H O U S E H O L D A N D P E A S A N T S O C IE T Y 29

family lines, and basic identification of the member with the household.1
Consequently, one who joined the household through marriage or adoption
(primaka, viazen) was considered a member with full rights, while a son of
the family who set up a household on his own was viewed as an outsider.
The peasant household operated as a highly cohesive unit of social organ­
ization, with basic divisions of labour, authority, and prestige on prescribed
family lines. Generally, the head of the household was the father o f the family
or the oldest kin-member. His authority over other members and over house­
hold affairs implied by peasant custom both autocratic rights and extensive
duties o f care and protection. The household was the basic unit of production,
consumption, property holding, socialization, sociability, moral support, and
mutual economic help. Both the social prestige and the self-esteem o f a peasant
were defined by the household he belonged to and his position in it, as were
his loyalties and self-identification.
Women, in spite o f their heavy burden of labour (both housework and
fieldwork),2 and their functional importance in a peasant household, were
considered second-class members of the community, and nearly always placed
under the authority o f a male.3 However, even the equality o f male members,
accepted in principle, should be considered in the framework o f a patriarchal
structure, involving extensive rights o f the head over his household. The strong
cohesion o f the family and the family property meant submission and lack of
any tangible property for junior male members.4
‘The life o f a family is the life o f a farm.’5 A typical peasant farm in Russia
in the period under consideration was a small agricultural enterprise (2-6
desyatinas or approximately 5-15 acres o f sown land),6 based on centuries-old
agricultural techniques and types o f equipment.7 Grain-growing dominated
both peasant field production and diet.8 The Russian peasant economy
1 The word ‘traditional’ is used here in the wide sense adopted by M. Weber, The Theory
o f Social and Economic Organisation (1947), pp. 324-423, as the conceptual opposite of
‘rational-legal’. See also N. Birnbaum, ‘Conflicting interpretation o f the rise of capitalism:
Marx and Weber*, British Journal o f Sociology (1953), PP- 125-41.
2 For example, a study o f a typical peasant timetable in the 1920s has shown that a
peasant woman spent nearly as much time on ‘productive work’ as the male peasant (1,905
versus 1,935 hours per annum) but at the same time spent much more time on housework
(2,229 versus 622), which led to as much as one-third more work, in terms of time spent, by
a woman than by a man. See A. Bolshakov, Sovremennaya derevnya v tsifrakh (1925), p. 100.
3 As expressed in the peasant saying, ‘A crab isn’t a fish and a woman isn’t a person’ (Rak
ne rybay baba ne chelovek). There were, however, some exceptions as far as widows were
concerned. For a discussion see Appendix B, section (c), below.
4 For a discussion of family property see further parts o f this section; also Appendix B,
section (b). 5 N . Makarov, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo i ego interesy (1917), p. 71.
6 The average area o f sown land per household rose moving from the north to the south o f
Russia. The average for the south was more than 6 des. per farm and the production o f grain
for the market was also much more advanced. For further discussion see Chapter 7 below.
7 Mainly variations o f the three-field system o f land use, dependent on a traditional
communal crop rotation and in the majority o f cases on the horse-drawn sokha. See
V. Aleksandrov (ed.), Russkie (1967), pp. 17-99.
8 V. Den, Kurs ekonomicheskoi geografii (1925), pp. 188, 211.
3o PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY
displayed strong tendencies towards autarky characteristic of* pre~industrial
rural societies. The scope o f market relations was limited by largely consump­
tion-determined production objectives, low rates of surplus, limited use o f
money, and a low level of professional specialization among and diversification
o f the rural population.
The household’s production activities primarily consisted o f strenuous
efforts by its members to make ends meet—i.e. to feed the family and to meet
dues and taxes. Serious rural underemployment (both total and seasonal) was
partly tempered by peasants’ supplementary employment in crafts and trades
(promysly); competition with growing urban industry was made possible by
natural exchange and desperately low earnings. ‘When the brief agricultural
season did not yield a living for the peasant family, the work for less than
subsistence through the long winter months was better than to be altogether
idle—and perhaps to be buried in the spring.’1 However, the main occupation
o f Russian peasants consisted of performing a wide variety o f rather non­
specific tasks combined to make up what may be called traditional farming.2
Peasant family life was the main form of occupational training for the younger
generation, while tradition acted as the main occupational guide. The con­
sumption-determined aims, the traditional methods o f production, the use
o f family labour, the low marketability of the product, and the lack o f check­
ing and control in money terms by systematic book-keeping made the peasant
household a production unit very different from a ‘rational’ capitalist enter­
prise. Nature was, in addition, a major determinant o f peasant economic life.
The smallness o f peasant resources magnified its impact. The difference
between a good agricultural year and a very bad one was the difference be­
tween prosperity and famine, if not death. If it was family history which
determined, to a great extent, the development of a farm, it was the modes and
seasons o f traditional farming which prescribed the pattern o f everyday life
of the peasant family. The nature and development o f the family made for
a peculiarly deep-rooted cyclical rhythm o f life on the peasant family farm.
Family property was the major legal reflection o f the character o f the
Russian peasant household. Unlike private property, family property limited
the rights o f the formal owner (khozyain); he acted as the head administrator
o f the property (bol'shak) rather than as a property-owner in the sense current
outside peasant society.3 An extreme expression of this feature was the legal
possibility and actual practice of removing the head o f a household from his
1 G. T. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime (1932), p. 104. The meaning of
‘subsistence’ was, of course, far from absolute and varied between areas, households, and
periods.
2 For example, as late as the census of 1926, 95*3 per cent of the working population of
the Russian countryside named ‘farming’ as their only or main occupation. Statistiche-
skii spravodmik za 1928 g . (1929), p. 44- For an analysis of the peasant’s occupation see
B. Galeski, Chlopi i zawdd rolnika (1963).
3 For example, in the contemporary Russian Civil Code, which was, however, limited
to the non-peasant minority o f population. See Appendix B, section (a).
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 3i
position in some cases o f ‘mismanagement’ or ‘wastefulness’ and appointing
another member o f the household instead. On the other hand, unlike in cases
o f group property, participation in family property did not assume any
definable shares o f the property or the profits except in terms of rights to share
in collective consumption.
The peasant proceeded through certain prescribed stages; childhood, pre­
marital adolescence, marriage, becoming a head o f one’s own household, and,
eventually, retirement and death. Only by becoming a head o f a household
was it possible to rise to the full status of a man within the peasant com­
munity. The only alternative road to self-emancipation for the peasant
involved his leaving the peasant community altogether by emigration.1
Marriage became, in these conditions, ‘an absolute postulate’2—a crucial pre­
condition o f social maturity necessitated by the character o f the farming.3 The
very existence o f a peasant household necessitated the existence of a farm, i.e.
some property expressed in holdings o f land and equipment. The passing of
property from one generation to another was therefore a major issue of every­
day peasant life and peasant customary law.4
Within the framework o f family property, the very notion of inheritance as
developed in non-peasant societies failed by definition to appear. The passing
o f property from generation to generation did not necessarily involve the
death o f a parent and was approached legally as a partitioning o f family
property between its members. Partitioning (or apportionment to set up a
junior male) was, in fact, frequently carried out before the death of the head
o f the household—corresponding closely with the growth of nuclear families5
and their requests for independence. The head o f the household took the
decision (partly established by custom) as to when to partition his farm, when
to make apportionment to a son, and when to retire. Partitioning led, on the
whole, to an equal division o f household property between all its male
members.6 In cases o f the death o f all male members o f the household, the
property was generally taken over by the peasant commune.7
A typical new household would therefore begin as a young couple with a
few young children, on a small farm. The farm would consist of a limited
1 For a discussion see Chapter 5, section (d), below.
2 An expression taken from a classic study o f another peasant society; W. Thomas and
F. Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1958), vol. i, p. 107.
3 This explains the early age o f marriage typical of the Russian peasantry. See I. Pisarev,
Narodonaselenie SSSR (1962), p. 178.
4 For a full discussion of inheritance under Russian peasant customary law see Appendix
B, sections (a), (c), and (d), below.
5 i.e. a family consisting of parents and their children.
6 Russian peasant law made an exception for an individual female’s property, which
could include cutlery, cloth, etc. This ‘female property* was, in fact, the only private property
in the peasant household and could consequently be left by will and/or unequally divided.
For an elaboration see Appendix B, sections (b) and (c), below.
7 In some areas a blood-relation or a woman could inherit household property if no
male members of a household remained alive. See Appendix B, section (c), below.
8214936 D
32 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY
amount o f land, one or two horses, and a little equipment shared out from or
by a ‘maternal’ unit in the process o f partitioning.
The growth o f the family created additional consumption pressures. The
head o f the new household tried to expand his farm and income by buying or
renting additional land and equipment and, at times, employing his family’s
labour in crafts and trades (promysly). The growing-up o f children gave
additional labour to the farm but also created new consumption needs and
problems o f employment. It also posed the problem of providing a dowry for
daughters and equipment for setting up new farms for sons, which required
apportionment. After each such apportionment or sometimes upon a partition­
ing following the death of the head o f the household, the same cycle started
over again on a new small farm managed by a new young couple.
The Russian state’s policy before 1906 supported the stability and cohesion
o f the peasant household by imposing on it collective responsibility for the
payment o f taxes and dues and for the ‘good behaviour’ o f its members, in
addition to its many other functions. The state also legally confirmed the
head o f the household’s wide disciplinary powers over its members.1 Stolypin’s
policy, after 1906, greatly reduced the legal powers of heads o f households over
their members12 while, at the same time, in many cases making heads o f house­
holds into unlimited owners of household property. From the turn o f the
century, moreover, the impact o f the capitalist developments in urban Russia
had been felt increasingly in the countryside. However, a decade o f Stolypin
policy had failed to produce a decisive change in the social character o f the
Russian countryside—at least as far as peasant households went. Capitalist
farms (or even farms well integrated into the market economy) remained, on
the whole, exceptional.3 The revolution and civil war o f 1917-21 swept away
the Stolypin reforms and re-established the essentials o f nineteenth-century
peasant customary law. Yet even the impact of the revolution on the character
o f peasant households was modest.4 The Russian peasant household retained
its basic characteristics during the whole o f the period under review.

(b) The Peasant Commune

Rural communities display a number of manifest similarities all over the
world. A community may be defined as a territorially-based human group
united by ties of social interaction and interdependence, by an integrated

1 Robinson, op. cit., p. 66. Until 1906 the head o f the household could, on the whole,
have a member o f his household arrested, sent back to his village under escort, or flogged,
by simple application to the peasant court.
2 For a further discussion see Appendix B, section (d), below.
3 This broad generalization would not hold true for some regions— in particular for the
less densely populated south and some of the guberniyas o f the north-west, though it did
remain valid for the majority o f the Russian peasant population.
4 For a further discussion see Appendix B, section (d), as well as Chapters 5, 8, and 10
below.
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 33
system o f accepted norms and values, and by the consciousness o f being
distinct from other groups delineated on similar lines.1 High self-sufficiency
should be added as a major characteristic of a traditional peasant community.12
Pitt-Rivers’s description o f a ‘closed community’ as based on habitual per­
sonal contact, wide endogamy, homogeneity o f values, emphasis on strict
conformity, intense group solidarity, marked ideological egalitarianism, etc.,
is a fair generalization o f the cultural traits of peasant communities.3 Com­
munity o f descent and relatively low territorial mobility, primary personal
contact and lack o f anonymity, low division o f labour and simple co-operation
seem to underlie the high cultural cohesion of rural communities. Common
political and economic interests find their expression in at least some rudi­
mentary elements o f local authority, administering common affairs and
representing the community to outside authorities.
Yet actual village life is far from being a rustic haven o f equality, stability,
and brotherly love. Redfield’s classical descriptions o f a conflict-free rural
community o f Tepoztlan4 were disproved by Lewis’s study5 and further de­
mystifications have followed.6 The village community is highly cohesive but,
at the same time, it is diversified into different and conflicting groups and
factions. These diversities and conflicts in no sense express some temporary
social pathology; rather, they play a vital part in village life and are decisive
for understanding its social structure and dynamism.7 Furthermore, the rural
community has to be treated in its historical setting. The relative stability of
the entity does not preclude change and development as the results of both
internal and external forces. The development o f a market society has been,
on the whole, the most crucial determinant o f structural changes in rural
communities.
Rural communities seem to display differences in specific national character­
istics to an extent which far exceeds the differences between peasant house­
holds in different cultures. In fact, the heated argument about the peasant
commune (obshchina or mir) made it into the best-known feature o f the pre­
revolutionary Russian countryside. A typical peasant commune o f the main

1 B. Galeski, Sociologia wsi (1966), p. 86.

2 The word mir used by the Russian peasants to describe the peasant commune or com­
munal assembly means both ‘world’ and ‘peace’ in Russian, and is, in fact, an expression
significant o f the major functions o f the commune. The commune was the peasants*
world.
3 G. Pitt-Rivers, ‘The Closed Community and its Friends’, Kroeber Anthropobgical
Society Papers (1957), no. 16. For a summary o f anthropological research into peasant
communities see C. Geertz, ‘Studies in Peasant Life: Community and Society’, Biennial
Review o f Anthropobgy (1961).
4 R. Redfield, Tepoztlan: A Mexican Village (1946; first published in 1930).
5 O. Lewis, Life in a Mexican Vilbge: Tepoztbn Re-studied (1951).
6 For example G. M. Foster, ‘Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society’, in Human
Organisation, xix (1960-1), no. 4.
7 For a specific discussion o f patterns of differentiation and conflict in Russian peasant
communities see Chapters 9 and 10 below.
34 PE A S A N T H O U S E H O L D A N D PE A S A N T S O C IE T Y
part of Russia was a self-governing territorial community and was the main
legal owner o f land held or used by its households.1
Self-government o f a Russian peasant commune at the beginning o f the
century was embodied in the communal gathering (skhod), which consisted
o f the heads o f households or their representatives. In this way the landless
and non-peasant families of the locality were excluded from representation.2
The wide functions o f the commune made the gathering into a most powerful
body, at least potentially. The actual process o f decision-taking, however,
was far removed from the formally democratic proceedings laid down by law.3
The decisions were typically unanimous, but the actual power lay in the hands
o f several o f the more active and, on the whole, more wealthy, members o f the
community who took the lead.4 The force of general consensus and the tradi­
tional conformity and inertia of the peasant community underlay this process.
The major executive authority in the pre-revolutionary period rested in the
hands o f an ‘elder’ (starosta) who was elected for three years. The gathering
also elected officers to be in charge o f land-use, tax collection, welfare, etc.
Commune offices were, in many cases, a heavy burden to their holders.
They were treated as compulsory, however, and refusal to accept office was
punishable under pre-revolutionary law.5
Both the duty and the right to belong to a commune were restricted, until
1906, to the peasants, thus making it an essential element o f membership of
the peasant social estate (soslovie).6 A commune (and not a geographically
defined settlement) was formally recognized in pre-revolutionary Russia as
the major local administrative unit o f rural Russia. In fact, the legislators
intended that the commune, after emancipation, should consist o f all the
peasants in one village. A commune might, however, also consist o f peasants
who had all belonged to the same master.7 This varied genesis gave rise to a
variety o f possible interrelations between actual villages and communes. Some
settlements found themselves split between different communes, while some
communes consisted of a number o f villages or even of parts o f a number of
villages.8 Most peasant communes in pre-revolutionary Russia seem, however,
to have corresponded to villages or to small settlements within the locality
and to have displayed all the characteristics o f a rural community. The
1 With the exception of the western frontier area the repartitional commune described
was typical of the great majority of Russian peasants. See S. Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaya
zemel'naya reforma (1963), pp. 570-3.
2 T. Tsytovich, Sel'skoe obshchestvo (1911), pp. 48-56.
3 A. Leontev, Krest'yanskoe pravo (1909), p. 84.
4 Stepniak, The Russian Peasantry (1888), p. 36; Tsytovich, op. cit., pp. 48-56.
5 Tsytovich, op. cit., pp. 56-60.
6 For a discussion of social estates see Chapter 1, section (c), above and Chapter 3, section
(a), below. 7 Leontev, op. cit., p. 29.
8 In some cases, a kind o f super-commune evolved with several communes holding some
and in collective possession and dividing it firstly by communes and then by households.
The super-communes seem to have been particularly in evidence in areas o f comparatively
recent colonization, i.e. the south of European Russia and Siberia.
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 35
revolutionary upheaval of 1917-20 and the steep rise in the number of com­
munes during this period1 seem to have increased the degree o f correspon­
dence between actual settlement and peasant commune.12
The Russian peasant commune fulfilled, before the revolution, a remarkably
wide range o f functions; these can be classified into two main categories.
Firstly, the peasant commune acted as the lowest territorial local authority
under the auspices o f the state’s administrative apparatus. Secondly, the
peasant commune acted as a major unit of economic activity, enjoying legal
ownership o f land and also organizing, administering, and/or owning local
undertakings serving production (e.g. mills and stud services).
The peasant commune carried out the functions of a local authority in the
widest sense. The range o f its administrative responsibilities included road
and bridge maintenance, care for the welfare of the aged and handicapped, the
provision o f education facilities, the accommodation of travelling officials,
help in drafting o f recruits, and so on. It had, moreover, some basic police,
jurisdictional, and fiscal functions. Officers o f the commune were held
responsible for the official registration of residents and for law-enforcement;
they had the right to arrest and to impose small fines. The fiscal functions of
the commune stemmed from two major sources. Firstly, emancipation had
left the commune with the collective duty of ensuring the payment of the state’s
taxes and o f redemption fees (krugovaya poruka).3 Even after the general
moratorium o f debts and the legal abolition o f commune collective responsi­
bility for tax in 1906, the commune authorities were still used as a major
institution for ensuring the payment o f state taxes by individuals. Secondly,
the various duties undertaken by the commune required funds and these were
raised by the imposition o f commune dues (mirskie sbory), fixed by the gather­
ing. This money was supplemented by the exaction o f compulsory services
{naturalnye povinnosti)—for example, the duty to provide labour for various
commune needs, the duty to provide horses and sometimes food without
payment, etc.4 Indeed, the apparent injustice whereby all the expenses of the
local administration were consequently shouldered by the peasantry only, and
the necessity for dividing up functions between peasant land communes and
local authorities, were frequently discussed before the revolution.
A number o f communes formed together an administrative parish (volost')—
the highest echelon o f peasant local organization. The pre-revolutionary
volost' was administered by an executive (uprava) which consisted o f the elders
and tax-collectors o f its communes and was headed by a volost' elder (volostnoi

1 For a fuller discussion see Chapter 8 below.

2 For a fuller discussion o f the relations between settlement, commune and local author­
ity see Y. Taniuchi, ‘A Note on the Territorial Relationship between Rural Societies, Settle­
ments and Communes’, Discussion Papers, University o f Birmingham, Faculty o f Social
Science (1966) (Series RC/D). See also Leontev, op. cit., p. 82; Tsytovich, op. cit., p. 30.
3 And the consequent rights o f control over households’ economic activities.
4 Leontev, op. cit., pp. 94-5; Tsytovich, op. cit., p. 17.
36 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY
starshina) assisted by a clerk (pisar').1 A court o f elected peasant magistrates
operated in each volost' with the right to hear, in accordance with local
custom, cases involving a variety of civil and petty criminal offences.12 Both
the volost's and the communes were tightly controlled by the state administra­
tive machinery and in particular by the state officials {zemskii nachal'nik—
conventionally translated as ‘Zemskii chief’)3 specially appointed for this
purpose from the local nobility and having the right to overrule any decision
taken by peasant electees and even to control their election.4
In the economic sphere, the commune was the legal owner o f the main part
o f peasant land. On the whole a peasant household kept on a hereditary basis
only a small plot round the house (usad'ba). Arable land was held by the
household as an allotment (m del) granted by the commune. Another area of
commune land was reserved for collective use (in particular, pasture and
forest). Peasant households were free to buy private land from non-commune
sources. Privately owned land, however, was still found among the great
majority o f Russian peasants, being of only secondary importance to com­
munally owned allotted land.
The communal character of land-ownership found its fullest expression in
the rights of the commune gathering {skhod) over land-redivisions. Even land
which had been held for generations and redeemed by a peasant household
after the emancipation was taken away and re-allocated by commune gather­
ings. A law of 1893 had formalized and legalized the right o f the commune to
redivide land in accordance with egalitarian principles o f its own choice, and
had made the period between full-scale redivisions of land {peredel) to be
twelve years at least.5 The frequency and character o f land-redivision varied,
in fact, a great deal according to local conditions (e.g. the availability o f land,
problems arising out of taxation or the interplay o f power between various
interested groups) and the actual figures have never been fully established.6 It
was estimated that two-thirds to four-fifths o f communes underwent at least
one large-scale redivision of the land between the 1861 emancipation and the
end of the century. Each commune was legally free to establish standards o f
land-redistribution but was bound to relate it to some egalitarian principle—
such as, for example, division by the number of consumers in a household.7
Full-scale redivision o f the land was only an extreme case, however, o f the
egalitarian impact of commune property on land-holding. The communes
engaged in many kinds o f partial redistribution o f communal land—e.g. of

1 Leontev, op. cit., p. 68. * See Appendix A below.

3 Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar', op. cit., vol. xxiii, pp. 326-8. The post-revolutionary
organization of the volost' will be disclosed in Chapter 9. The zemstvo was tightly controlled
by the state bureaucracy. See Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar', op. cit., vol. xviii, pp. 652-79.
4 Robinson, op. cit., p. 119.
5 See O. Khauke, Krest'yanskoe zemel'noe pravo (1914), pp. 83-7.
6 Robinson, op. cit., pp. 121-2.
7 I. Izgoev, Ohshchinnoe pravo (1906), pp. 38-40.
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 37
the holdings o f households which had emigrated or become extinct; some­
times strips o f land o f some of the households were re-allocated by decision
o f the commune gathering (otrezka,, prirezka), etc.
However, the carrying out of rural land-redivision, which caught the
scholar’s eye because o f its lack of accord with the social and economic
structure o f urban society, fell short of expressing all the economic functions
o f the peasant community. The prevailing open-field system, with its formal
three-field cycle o f farming and the division of land into strips, made agri­
cultural co-operation o f all the members of the commune mandatory at the
major stages o f the farming year.1 The commune also took care of local live­
stock, hired the herdsmen, rented additional land and, in some cases, owned
or administered workshops and mills. The administrative and economic
activities o f the peasant commune formed a closely integrated complex and
constituted an all-inclusive social organization.
The 1861 emancipation led to the unification in law of the various types of
peasantry into one all-embracing social estate with the commune as its basic
unit o f organization.2
The stability o f peasant commune organization and its acceptance by the
state was furthered by its manifestly useful functions in relation to both the
peasantry and the state. The communes’ egalitarianism ensured some eco­
nomic stability and the provision of some social services (care for the welfare of
orphans and the aged, etc.). In addition, the commune organization provided
a useful administrative device for policing, tax-collection, and so on. However,
in the 1905-6 revolution, the Russian peasant commune dramatically revealed
its additional latent function as a generator o f egalitarian ideology and as a
school for collective action o f a kind capable o f turning into revolt overnight.
As a result, the following decade witnessed a major effort by the government
to destroy the peasant communes. The Stolypin reforms were designed ‘to
establish for the peasantry a new socio-economic order’,3 to break up the
traditional rural social structure, and to establish efficient capitalist farming
as a base for political conservatism and rapid economic growth. The new
legislation favoured the rich farmers in establishing capitalist farms, and
promoted dissolution o f peasant communes, by facilitating enclosure of com­
munal lands into the private property of the heads of households.4 Successes
1 Since the beginning of the century more sophisticated agriculture increased, i.e. more
complex crop cycles, industrial crops, etc. However, until the end o f the period discussed
the formal three-field system with an obligatory fallow remained prevalent in all the major
regions of Russia. Aleksandrov, op. cit., p. 20. For further discussion see Chayanov, op.
cit., pp. 139-43*
2 This was the result o f establishing the duty and exclusive right of every peasant to be
registered with a peasant commune. See Appendix B, section (a), below.
3 From Stolypin’s speech on 15 March 1910; A. Gerschenkron, Continuity in History
(1968), p. 237.
4 For a fuller discussion o f the Stolypin reforms see Robinson, op. cit., chaps, vi and vii,
and Dubrovskii, op. cit.
38 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY
were reported, yet administrative zeal clearly biased the records.1 Many re-
partitional communes declared dissolved by a law of 191012 apparently failed
even to hear about the new law. Even the official figures show diminishing
returns; after big initial impetus there was a sharp decline in the establishment
o f enclosed types o f farm.3 The numbers of households which chose to leave
communes dropped steadily after 1909 and reached, in the last pre-war year
(1912-13), its lowest figure—about a quarter of the number in 1909* The
majority o f Russian peasant households were still living within the framework
o f the traditional commune when the 1917 revolution came. Peasant com­
munes were revitalized in the revolutionary period and their spontaneous re­
establishment as the most inclusive local organizations o f peasants seems to
prove how deeply the commune was rooted in the social structure and con­
sciousness o f the Russian peasantry. The development o f the communes
during the revolution and the early part of the N.E.P. period will be discussed
in Chapters 8 and 9.

(c) Peasant Society and Culture

Turning from discussion of the peasant household and peasant commune
to that of the peasantry as such, we come to a phenomenon o f a very different
type. The peasant household and peasant commune are definable in terms of
real face-to-face social interaction. On the whole, the peasantry as a social
phenomenon can be defined only in analytical terms.4 As a matter o f fact,
the very segmentation of the peasantry (i.e. the lack o f constant and necessary
social interaction among its basic units) is one o f its essential characteristics.
The pre-revolutionary system of social estates (soslovnaya sistema) in Russia
provided an additional (legal) dimension by which the peasantry could be
defined and selected. The ‘estate’ o f each man was clearly marked in his
identity documents, and defined many of his civil rights and duties. This
proved of secondary significance, however, as the social structure o f the
Russian peasantry changed very little as a result of the collapse o f the legal
system o f social estates in 1917.
‘Peasant society and culture has something generic about it. It is a kind of
arrangement of humanity with some similarities all over the world.’5 This was
Redfield’s summary after a wide comparison of peasantries in different periods

1 The share of commune land turned into the private property o f heads o f households
after 1906 was 14 per cent of the total in 40 gub. of European Russia in 1915, but ranged from
less than 5 per cent in the north and south-east to more than 50 per cent in the Ukraine and
Belorussia. See Dubrovskii, op. cit., pp. 574-6.
2 This law abolished commune land property in all peasant communes which had not
undergone a full-scale land-redistribution since the emancipation. About 2 million house­
holds would have been affected.
3 A. Anfimov, Rossiiskaya derevnya v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1962), p. 71.
4 Or, as R. Redfield has put it, describing the peasantry as a phenomenon: it is ‘a type
without localisation—not a typical anthropological community’. See his Peasant Society
and Culture, p. 25. 5 ibid., p.169.
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 39
and countries. The major dualism conceptualized by social scholars in notions
o f ‘mechanical’ versus ‘organic’ solidarity (Durkheim) community versus
society (Tonnies), brotherhood versus competition (Meine), etc., expresses, in
fact, a basic typological difference between peasant and urban societies.1 The
specific character o f peasant social structure is determined by the peculiarities
o f its basic constituent units: the household and the rural community. The
peasantry can be defined as small producers on land who, with the help of
simple equipment, their own labour, and that of their families, produce
mainly for their own consumption and for meeting obligations to the holders
o f political and economic power, and reach nearly total social self-sufficiency
within the framework o f a village community. A wider definition would have
to include analysis o f specific features: traditional agriculture as the main
occupation, the social characteristics of the family production unit, the impact
o f life in small, relatively stable, and ‘closed’ communities, relative stability of
pre-industrial cultural traits, the underdog political position in society, and
a distinctive typology o f change.12 The peasantry entered the contemporary
world as the major representative of pre-industrial social formations in a world
differently structured and increasingly dominated by urbanites. The spread of
the market and o f money relations, growing specialization in performance of
occupational tasks, the improvement of communications, state-sponsored
education, etc., led, in Europe, to structural changes in the character of
the main rural social units and to their closer integration into national urban-
centred societies. By all these yardsticks, the Russian peasantry remained,
during the period under discussion, at a relatively low level o f advancement.
Specific characteristics o f peasant society can be seen in all the major
spheres o f social interaction. The relatively high self-sufficiency of peasant
households and communities results in a general tendency in peasant societies
towards segmentation into units o f high similarity and low mutual interaction.
In the economic sphere, traditional values, consumption-oriented aims in
production, and the use o f family labour grossly restricted the impact o f the
drive to maximize money profits as the determinant of production. The major
concepts o f classical economics throw relatively little light where traditional
peasant economies are concerned.3 In fact, peasant economic action can at

1 For a discussion of the significance o f this major dualism o f sociological concepts see
P. Sorokin and C. Zimmerman, Principles o f Rural-Urban Sociology (1929), chap. 2. Also
see Appendix A , section (c), below.
2 For an attempt in this direction see Appendix A, sections (a) and (b), below. For further
discussion of the subject see T. Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies (1971), Intro­
duction.
3 For example, the division of peasant incomes into wages, rent, and profit seems to have
little real or analytical value. For a discussion see Chayanov, op. cit. Even Marx remarked
that ‘with parcellated farming and small-scale landed property . . . production to a very
great extent satisfies own needs and is carried out independently o f control by the general
rate o f profit* (Chayanov, op. cit., p. 222). The edition o f Capital published by Kerr seems
to obscure the issue. See K. Marx, Capital (1909), vol. iii, p. 943.
4o PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY
times be better understood in terms o f economic ‘constraints’ rather than in
terms o f a market-oriented tendency towards an economic optimum. Yet all
that did not mean lack of drive for betterment on the peasants’ part. The
‘irrational’ peasant behaviour was logical in a qualitatively different system of
social organization and values. For example, partitioning which could lead
to a decrease in productivity in the newly created households made sense in so
far as higher value was placed on the independence and prestige gained by the
head o f the new household than on economic success and profits. The specific
characteristics o f peasant economy should of course, be seen historically, i.e.
in relation to increasing penetration o f market economy into the rural society.
To take an example from another sphere, peasant political activity was marked
also by specific characteristics such as tendencies towards vertical segmenta­
tion, localization, spontaneity, and so on.1
Peasant communities showed also clearly distinguishable cultural patterns—
both results and determinants o f characteristically peasant peculiarities. These
cultural patterns2 determined a way o f life and coloured the peasants’ basic
attitudes, their perception of the world, their values and the meanings they
attached to social reality.3 Deep traditionalism (i.e. justification o f action in
terms o f the past), conformism (i.e. justification o f action in terms o f the will
o f the community), basic egalitarianism, particularistic and diffuse human
relationships, and on the whole, the setting o f a high value on landholding and
the inviolability o f the patriarchal family have been expressed in peasants’
customs and rules all over the world both as rationalizations and justifications
o f the present and in dreams o f a better future.4
The Russian peasantry showed the basic generic features o f a peasant
culture described in this section. The prevalent system o f values derived from
similar roots and is to be understood in terms o f the characteristics o f basic
units o f peasant social structure and their development as discussed in the
sections (a) and (b) o f this chapter. The so-called ‘non-rationality’ o f peasant
economic action (i.e. its not being geared to the sole aim o f maximizing
money income) was closely related to the character of the peasant household.
The communal cohesion, the powerful conformity and tendency to justify any
action in terms o f the communal will (po vole mira), was reinforced by the
specifically Russian forms of the communes’ organization. The attitude to
land— as serving essentially consumption purposes (kormitel)—meant that it
1 The concept o f vertical segmentation will be elaborated in Chapter 9 below. See also
Appendix A.
2 The term ‘cultural patterns’ is used in the sense defined by C. Wright Mills in Power,
Politics and People (1962), p. 406: ‘the lens of mankind through which men see; the medium
by which they interpret and report what they see*. For a discussion see P. Berger and
T. Luckman, Social Construction o f Reality (1967).
3 See the discussion by H. T. Fei in R. Bendix and S. Lipset, Class, Status and Power
( 1953), P. 32.
4 i.e. both ‘ideology’ and ‘utopia* in the terms o f K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia
( 1949).
 PEASANT HOUSEHOLD AND PEASANT SOCIETY 41

should not be approached as property in the usual sense. The basic attitudes
to justice, as expressed by legal customs and the decisions of peasant courts,
were marked by their subjectivism1 and egalitarianism; they were determined
by overriding concern for the interest o f communal cohesion; the satisfaction
o f the minimum needs of every family and the maintenance of good neighbour­
hood relations were valued more highly than impartiality.2 The image o f the
peasant millennium o f the just society frequently appeared as ‘Vselenskii M ir\
i.e. as a grandiose peasant commune which would include all the people of
Russia, or o f the entire universe. However, the increasing impact of market
relations resulted in growing conflict between traditional society and the new
values and patterns o f social organization of an urban society and its competi­
tive economy.
The studies o f Russian scholars provided for extensive if uneven know­
ledge o f rural Russia, some of which is summarized above. Yet an analysis of
the basic characteristics o f the social structure and dynamics o f the Russian
peasantry in the period under discussion is a very different thing from a
comprehensive collection o f generally accepted ‘facts’. On many o f the major
issues, the most essential evidence was either dubious or simply lacking.
Furthermore, much o f the collection, selection, and interpretation of evidence
was inseparably linked with the major ideological and political issues o f con­
temporary Russia and can be understood only in such a context. The most
important controversy which, for a period o f as long as half a century,
divided Russian scholars and politicians, related to the socio-economic
differentiation o f the Russian peasantry, and its implications for the future of
Russia.
1 Expressed in the tendency o f the peasant court to pass judgement either ‘according to
the man’ (po cheloveku) or ‘according to conscience* (po sovesti), by which the personality
o f those involved and the social implications o f the judgement carried more weight than
objective circumstances or legal precedent. See Mukhin, op. cit., p. 311.
2 Which would account for the typical tendency o f the peasant court ‘to divide the sin by
half’ (delit' grekh popolam)— to resolve by division o f property rather than to pass judge­
ments totally in favour o f one side, ibid., p. 311.
 PART II

CYCLICAL MOBILITY
 3
THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE

One feature of the history o f old Russia was the continual beatings she
suffered for falling behind, for her backwardness. She was beaten by the
Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the
Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry.
She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her— for her backward­
ness; for military backwardness, for cultural backwardness, for political
backwardness, for industrial backwardness, for agricultural backwardness.
She was beaten because to do so was profitable and could be done with
impunity . . .
That is why we must no longer lag behind . . . We are fifty or a hundred
years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in
ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.
j. s t a l i n , Speech t o Managers o f Industry

(a) The Roots o f the Debate

A t the turn o f the century the Weltanschauung of educated Russians was
dominated by a love-hate relationship with the West; adoration, envy, xeno­
phobia, shame, desire to catch up—the feelings found in every ‘developing
society’ today. In some ways these feelings were even more intense for, after
a century in which Europe had been impressed by the strength o f Russian
patriotism, by the force o f Russian arms, by the grandeur of Russian literature,
the great majority o f Russians still remained desperately backward. Worse—
the gap seemed to be widening.
The Russian intelligentsia reacted with a deep emotional and intellectual
commitment to progress, envisaged as a rapid catching-up with, or even out­
stripping of, the West. The forceful chant of Stalin’s speech in 19311 reflected,
a generation later, the strength of this emotional appeal. Intellectually, the
problem consisted o f two interrelated features: firstly, the economic and
cultural stagnation o f the majority o f the people; secondly, the inadequacies
o f the Tsarist state. A passionate search for the mechanism and the historical
agencies o f social change was at the root of the debate on the differentiation
o f Russian peasantry. Hence its values, aims, form, and content.
Both the Neo-Classical and Marxist economists regarded economic growth
as the major determinant o f the modernization required. The accelerating
natural growth o f the population made economic development all the more
urgent. The anxiously studied economic history o f the West pointed to a
1 J. Stalin, Voprosy leninizma (1945), p. 328.
46 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
sequence of stages, and this was readily accepted as a ‘law o f social science’.
Capitalism was viewed as a necessary stage, which would ensure accumulation
o f capital, rationalization of production, and industrialization. This stage had
to be preceded by, and related to, a rise in the social division o f labour, a
development o f market relations, money economy, and wage-work, and a final
disintegration o f the natural economy. For the rural majority o f the Russian
population1 this would mean the dissolution o f the traditional peasantry into
big capitalist producers and landless rural and urban wage-workers. This
picture o f future development was challenged by a group o f rural economists
and statisticians known as the Organization and Production School, or the
Neo-Populists. While accepting the need for modernization and economic
growth, as well as the necessity for the spread o f market relations, the Neo-
Populists stressed the potential stability o f the peasant household. They
envisaged rural economic growth, based on capital-intensive and highly
productive family farms, participating in a large-scale co-operative movement.
Both major views on the future evolution of Russian society were presented
as being historically necessary and, at the same time, as political programmes
directed towards the solution which would be most advantageous to Russian
society.
The underlying value-assumptions closely relate the economic and political
spheres. During the period, Marxist thought swept through the Russian intel­
lectual world, becoming incorporated into the social eidos o f diametrically
opposed political factions. The impact o f Marxist class theory was a result of
its being the only intellectually cohesive causal theory o f political history at
that time. The existing legal system gave additional force to the Marxist case.
Every Russian was bom into an ascribed legal position as a member o f a social
estate (soslovie), e.g. nobleman, peasant, etc.12 The social-estate status o f each
o f the Tsar’s subjects was stated in his passport, defined legal rights and
prescribed obligations, and was closely related to actual social position in
terms o f property, occupation, income, way o f life, and so on. Furthermore,
elected authorities (e.g. the Gosudarstvennaya Duma—the consultative
Russian ‘parliament’, first elected in 1906) consisted o f representatives o f the
various estates or, alternatively, of classes defined by the amount o f property
held.3 Consequently, in Russia at the beginning o f this century, both the
intellectual pillars o f the establishment and the ideologists o f revolution
adopted the conceptual language o f social classes. Social classes were regarded

1 ‘Majority’ is, if anything, too weak a word for a group which still amounted in 1913
to as much as 84 per cent o f the total population. See Chapter 1 above.
2 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ Brokgauz and Efron (isted n ., 1907), vol. xxx, pp. 911—13.
3 Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar', Brokgauz and Efron (2nd edn., 1913), vol. xiv,
pp. 4° 4“ I2‘ Members were elected on the basis o f a discriminatory electoral law. For
example, in the election to the third Duma in 1907 one member was elected for every 230
landowners (mainly noblemen), for every 60,000 peasants, and for every 125,000 workers.
BoYshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (2nd edn.), vol. xii, p. 287.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 47
as social groups with a broad unity of major political and economic interests,
shaped by conflict relations with other classes and expressed in the growth of
specific sub-cultures, self-consciousness, and tendencies to common action.
‘The history o f hitherto existing societies’, moreover, ‘had been the history of
class struggle.’1 The character of Russian society, as well as the mechanism
and agencies of change, were to be defined accordingly and related to assumed
social ends. Stolypin decided ‘to place the wager not on the needy and drunken
but on the sturdy and strong’—on the emerging capitalist farmers— ‘called
upon to play a part in the reconstructing of our Tsardom on strong monarchi­
cal foundations’.2 The Liberals took capitalist development and the rise in
strength o f the urban middle classes for granted as the path o f constitutional
evolution. To the Marxists, the inevitable Western-like rise o f capitalism
would lead, through increasing social polarization, to the once more inevitable
proletarian revolution and a better civilization. To all three schools of thought,
the differentiation o f the peasantry was vital for their most sacred plans. The
process o f differentiation was to produce the class which would be called upon
to dominate and ensure a better future, be it the protective wall of monarchist
farmers, the camp o f middle-class respectability, or the proletarian revo­
lutionary army. On the other hand, the Populist faith in peasant revolution
presupposed the ability o f peasant cohesiveness to withstand capitalist dif­
ferentiation. Consequently, the future of Russia was seen as dominated by the
peasantry—the class representing the majority o f the nation. The features of
Marxism and Populism discussed above formed, together with varying degrees
o f revolutionary voluntarism,3the hard core o f Russian revolutionary ideology.
Far from being limited to purely academic considerations, therefore, the
peasant differentiation debate was reflected in the central questions o f political
evaluation, prediction, and action. The socio-economic differentiation of the
peasantry—i.e. the extent of diversity in wealth o f peasant households and the
consequent stratification by wealth o f the Russian peasant population—was
held to provide the main explanations for peasant political consciousness and
action. Judgements about the extent of the differentiation process were crucial
for the basic political decision-making of both the government and its enemies.

(b) Census Evidence

For an issue o f such significance, the amount of empirical evidence gathered
in pre-revolutionary Russia was very limited indeed. Rural censuses of wealth
were considered the best sources o f straightforward data on existing levels of
socio-economic differentiation, defined simply as the diversity of wealth
1 The first sentence o f the first chapter o f the Communist Manifesto of K. Marx and
F. Engels.
2 Stolypin’s speech in 1907 before the Duma; see A. Bolshakov and N . Rozhkov, Istoriya
khozyaistva Rossii (1926), vol. iii, pp. 26-7.
3 i.e. the belief in the ability of the devoted few to turn the tide o f history by a display of
determination and sacrifice.
8214936 E
48 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
between peasant households. However, between 1897 an^ 1916* no national
censuses o f the rural population were carried out in Russia. Some information
could, though, be derived from two studies on a national scale which took
place during that period—the 1905 study of peasant landholding, and the
1912 military survey of horses.

T able 31
Peasant Households in European Russia by Size o f
Average Land-Allotment, 1905 a

Households
Land-allotment per
household (des.) (000) (%>

Less than 5 2,669 238

5-10 4,940 44*1
More than 10 3,59i 32*1
Total 11,200 Ioo-o

Source. N. Oganovskii and N. Kondratev (eds.), Sel'skoe khozyaistvo v Rossii v X X v.

(1923), PP- 69,71.
N o te.a The figures are based on the data o f the 1905 census o f peasant allotments in 42
out o f the 50 guberrtiyas in European Russia; just which guberniyas these were is not
stated in the source used.

T able 311
Peasant Households in European Russia by
Horse-Ownership, 79/2°

Horses per Households

household
(000) (%)
None (B) 4,172 31*4
i( A ) 4,276 321
2 (A ) 2,95i 22*2
3 (A) 995 7*5
4 and more (A) 893 6*8
Total 13,287 100*0

Sources. (A) Voenno-kon'skaya perepis' 1912 g. (1914), pp. 148-9.

(B) A. Chelintsev, Set'sko-khozyaistvennaya geografiya Rossii (1923), p. 133.
N ote. a The table is based on two sources:
Source (A) only recorded the households owning horses.
Source (B) reported those households which were excluded from the census as horseless.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 49
Their evidence on aspects of peasant wealth did, indeed, provide food for
thought and speculation, but its indicative value in the differentiation debate
was limited. The 1905 study did not take into account either the privately
owned or the rented lands held by the peasantry. In the 1912 survey of horses,
not all peasant-owned horses were considered because of the military purposes
o f the survey. In both cases, additional indicators, necessary for our purposes,
were lacking, and the social significance of the figures presented for the various
areas o f Russia remains far from clear. This partial and accidental evidence
could add little more on the question of the actual differentiation o f wealth in
the Russian countryside o f the period than is to be found in Jasny’s com­
ment that ‘The peasant countryside was indeed characterised not by the riches
o f the relatively few as by the great poverty of the mass.’1
Furthermore, the most significant and controversial issue was not, in fact,
the state o f affairs, but the rate of change; not the actual extent o f socio­
economic differentiation in the Russian peasantry, but the differentiation-
processes going on in peasant society. Yet for any analysis o f socio-economic
mobility (i.e. o f changes occurring in the economic position of peasant house­
holds) the pre-revolutionary Russian national data were of no avail.123Some
illumination could, however, be had from local studies. Since 1864, regional
authorities had come into being, under the name of zemstvos3 whose officers
were elected by the various social estates. The activities o f the zemstvos were
closely controlled by the state bureaucracy yet they increasingly became the
rallying-points o f the liberal-minded gentry and middle classes. An increasing
number o f zemstvos established ‘statistical departments’—actually bodies with
the wider function o f carrying out many-sided social research.4 First-rate
scholars took charge o f a variety o f field studies devoted, in particular, to the
social problems of the peasantry.5 Increasingly sophisticated techniques o f col­
lecting data were tested and adopted.6 Repeated local censuses made it pos­
sible to trace the course of socio-economic mobility and—more specifically
— of differentiation-processes by comparing the states of socio-economic
differentiation at different dates. Such studies led to conceptualization of
a typology o f socio-economic mobility in a peasant society which gained
general acceptance as a way of analysing mobility by using the statistical data

1 N. Jasny, The Socialised Agriculture o f the U.S.S.R. (1949), P- W9-

2 The term ‘mobility’ is used in the sense o f vertical mobility as defined by the Encyclo­
paedia o f the Social Sciences (1st edn.), vol. ii, p. 554, but is limited to the socio-economic
dimension only. For a discussion see Chapter 4, section (d), below.
3 Brokgauz and Efron, Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ vol. xviii, pp. 652-79.
4 The first zemstvos were established in 1865, and as early as 1867 the first socio-statistical
study had been started by the zemstvo o f Kherson gub. The first published study (of Vyatka
gub., published in 1871) was followed by literally hundreds o f such publications. See
E. Volkov, Agrarno-ekonomicheskaya statistika Rossii (1923 (?)), p. 73.
5 The fullest compilation o f these studies was published in Z. M. and N. A. Svavitskii,
Zemskie podvornye perepisi, 1880-1913 gg. (1926).
6 For a further discussion on this see Chapter 4 below.
 50 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
made available by successive censuses. (See for example Tables 3*v, 3*vi,
etc.) Four basic types o f peasant mobility were delineated, expressible on
two major scales o f possible change: (a) that of aggregate shift (podvizhka),
expressing general bettering or worsening of the socio-economic position of
a peasant society as a whole; and (b) that of differentiation-processes, express­
ing changes in the socio-economic differentiation o f the society. The actual
processes could be identified in those terms.
Figure i illustrates this typology. The wealth of peasant households in the
society studied is measured along the horizontal axis, and the number (or
percentage) o f households is measured along the vertical axis. The curve will
consequently show the differentiation of peasant households in the society
being studied. An aggregate shift upwards or downwards will be recorded as
a movement of the curve to the right or to the left—see Graphs (i) and (ii)—
the shape o f the curve remaining the same. Polarization will be shown as a
flattening o f the curve (i.e. an increase in differentiation), as can be seen in
Graph (iii). Levelling will be recorded as a steepening o f the curve— i.e. a
higher concentration of peasant households in the middle range—as in Graph
(iv). In statistical terms, an increase or decrease in the median (M) will measure
aggregate shifts, while the quartile deviation (QD) or standard deviation (SD)
will measure differentiation-processes, increasing with polarization and
decreasing with levelling.
The numerous local censuses carried out by various zemstvos generally
revealed a fair amount o f differentiation of peasant society, and some evidence
o f aggregate shifts downwards and of polarization-processes.1 However, local
censuses which would permit studies of mobility were relatively few and there
was no way to be sure how far the available data were representative of the
Russian peasantry as a whole. Worse, the remarkable work o f the zemstvos
was carried out in only about half the guberniyas o f Russia; it was restricted
to small local samples and the validity and comparability of the data were
seriously limited by the different methods and indicators used in the different
zem stvos2
Pre-revolutionary Russian scholars and politicians did not possess, there­
fore, the essential data with which to verify or disprove their deductions. The
figures given today by Soviet scholars for the extent o f socio-economic
differentiation of the Russian peasantry on the eve o f the First World War
(see Table 3*111) must, therefore, be treated as rather arbitrary estimates.
Not even such crude estimates as these exist for processes of differentiation.
The strains o f the First World War and the wartime imposition o f a state
monopoly o f grain supply soon evoked growing administrative intervention
by the state and a demand for planning, and the need for better knowledge of

See Svavitskii, op. cit., pp. 185-327, and V. Knipovich: K voprosu o differentsiatsii
russkogo krest'yanstva (1912).
2 V. Den, Istochniki vazhneishikh otraslei khozyaistvennoi statistiki SSSR (1929), p. 22.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 51
the countryside made itself felt. In 1916, a national rural census was carried
out for the first time since the end o f the previous century. It was repeated in
19 17 —already in the midst o f revolution.

Figure 1. Types o f Mobility in Peasant Society (Graphs o f

Socio-Economic Change)

(i) Aggregate shift upwards (ii) Aggregate shift downwards

(iii) Polarization (iv) Levelling

Starting position of a ------ Final position of the same

group of households group of households

The Soviet revolution heralded the final establishment of a new nation-wide

machinery for the collection o f rural statistics. One result o f the commitment
o f the Soviet regime to economic planning was the establishment of the
Ts.S.U. ( Tsentraluoe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie), a powerful national statisti­
cal board, to collect the necessary information.1 The analysis of the data
collected during the censuses of 1916 and 1917 and during further censuses in
1919, 1920, and 1926 created, for the first time, a massive and reliable body
o f rural statistical data both on a national and a regional scale.12 Increasing

1 The Ts.S.U. was formally established by the Soviet Government on 25 June 1918.
A department specifically for rural statistics was established in the Ts.S.U. only in 1920
(Volkov, op. cit., pp. 275-6).
2 Den, op. cit., pp. 32-9.
52 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
standardization in methods of collecting and analysing statistical data made
valid comparisons possible. The repeated large-scale censuses for the first time
made it possible to draw reliable conclusions about mobility in a peasant
society.

T able 3*111
The Estimated Differentiation o f the Russian Peasantry, 1913 a

Stratum % o f households

Poor peasants 65
Middle peasants 20
Kulaks^ 15
All strata 100

Source. BoTshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (2nd edn.), vol. xxiii, p. 327.

N otes: a A Soviet demographer has alternatively estimated that the Russian peasantry con­
sisted in 1913 of 14 per cent kulaks, 5 per cent rural proletarians, and 81 per cent peasants
who did not belong to either o f these two strata. (I. Pisarev; Narodonaselenie SSSR
(1962), pp. 66, 71).
b Kulaks were here defined as rich peasant exploiters o f their less wealthy neighbours.

The October 1917 revolution and the civil war which followed led to almost
total state control of the urban economy and to the redistribution o f land in
the countryside. The severe politico-economic crises o f the civil war resulted
in a rapid decline in production, the disintegration o f rural urban market
exchange, and the flight o f townsmen to the countryside. Only the end of
the civil war and the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921 led to
a gradual recovery o f the economy.1
The development of differentiation-processes in peasant society during
revolution and civil war was made apparent in Ts.S.U. studies, comparing
the differentiation o f peasant households in the census o f 1917 with that in
similar samples for 1919 and 1920. Sown area and horses per household were
adopted as the main indicators of peasant wealth.2The data for 1917 and later
years are compared in Tables 3*iv and 3*v.
These figures show a steep rise in number of households and an actual
decline in total land sown and in number o f horses. A powerful aggregate
shift downwards had consequently been taking place accompanied by a
strong levelling process, which seems to have been a manifestation o f agrarian
revolution. Yet, as revealed in Table 3.VI the degree of inequality still
remained high in the newly created Russian Republic (R.S.F.S.R.), and
especially in the agricultural south and in Siberia.
1 For an outline of this see Chapter 8 below.
2 For a discussion of indicators of peasant wealth see Chapter 7, section (c), below.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 53
The introduction o f the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) in 1921 marked the
beginning o f the recovery o f agriculture, though this did coincide with
a serious famine in some o f the important agricultural areas. Both these
phenomena found reflection in the pattern of socio-economic mobility as
presented on p. 56.

T a b l e 3*iv

Peasant Households by Sown Area and Horse-Ownership,

1917 and 1919 a

A. By land sown

No. of households % change in % of households

Land sown per
number of
household ides.)
1917 1919 households 1917 1919

None 49,087 30,415 —3 8 0 11*49 6*56

Less than 2 122,643 198,647 4 62 0 28*70 42*87
2-4 123,590 135,966 +100 28*92 29*34
4-6 62,601 57,301 - 8-5 1465 12*37
6-10 47,678 33,814 —291 i i -i 6 7*30
10-16 1 6 ,4 3 2 6,393 —6 r i 384 1*38
16-25 4,178 756 —81*9 0*98 0*16
More than 25 1,082 98 - 90*9 0*26 0*01
Total 427,291 463,390 + 8*4 100*00 100*00

horses owned

No. of households %change in %of households

No. of horses niimKf»r nf
per household 1919 households 1917
1917 1919
None 122,826 116,138 - 5*7 2875 25*06
1 203,409 278,714 + 37-0 4762 60*15
2 75,072 56,937 -24*1 17-57 12*30
3 16,990 8,356 —50*8 3-98 i*8o
4 5,304 2,224 -58*1 1-24 0*48
5 and over 3,630 958 -72*1 084 0*21
Total 427,291 463,390 -f- 8*4 100*00 100*00

Source. Ekonomicheskoe rassloenie krest'yanstva v J917 i 1919 gg. (1922), Tables on pp. 10-
11, 20-1.
Note. a The tables are based on a study o f the same villages in the two years. The villages
were selected from 25 gubemiyas and were considered to constitute a representative sample
of the peasantry of European Russia. For names of gubemiyas studied see Source, p. 2.
54 th e d iffe r e n tia tio n d e b a te

The figures reveal a slow aggregate upward shift in all the major regions
except those hit by famine, in which a sharp aggregate downward shift,

T a b l e 3*v

Peasant Households by Sown Area and Horse-Ownership,

1917 and 1920 a

A. By land sown

% o f households
Land sown per
household (des.) 1920
1917

None io *6 4*7
Not more than 2 30*4 47*9
2* 1-4*0 30* 1 31*6
4*1-10*0 25-2 15*3
More than 10 0 37 0*5

Total 100*0 100*0

B. By horses owned

% of households
Horses per
household 1917 1920

None 290 27*6

1 49*2 636
2 170 79
3 3'4 0*7
4 or more i -4 0*2
Total 100*0 100*0

Source. A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), p. 82.

Note. a The tables are based on a study of the same villages in the two years. The villages
were selected from 22 guberniyas and were considered to constitute a representative sample
o f the peasantry of European Russia. The source does not specify names o f guberniyas
studied, but the sample seems to correspond closely to the one used in Table 3*iv (in both
cases the study was carried out by Ts.S.U.).

coupled with levelling, took place at the same time. The famine of 1920-2 had
a particularly marked effect in the areas which, as late as 1920, had displayed
a high degree of differentiation; this made the subsequent levelling all the more
spectacular.
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56 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE

T a b l e 3*v i i

Peasant Households in Zones o f the R.S.F.S.R. by Sown

Area, 1920 and 1922 (Jpercentage)a

Households in
Land
sown grain-deficient grain-surplus zone grain-surplus zone
per with no famine hit by famine
zone
household
ides.) 1920 1922 1920 1922 1920 1922

None 7*o 50 2-4 2*4 6*5 4*4

Not more than 2 63 8 62*6 338 33*2 23*4 49*9
2-1-4 24*2 26*6 40*0 36*6 34*5 30*1
4*1-6 40 4*6 17-0 18*3 18*8 9*5
6 1 -1 0 1*0 ri 6*3 8*7 12*5 49
10*1-16 0*0 0*1 0*5 o*8 3*4 ro
More than 16 — — — — 0*9 0*2
Total 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0

Source. Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1924), pp. 321-2.

N ote. a For an outline of these geographical zones see Chapter 7, section (a).

The period 1922-5 was marked by a general recovery o f Russian agriculture.

An aggregate upward shift and a slow process of polarization were now being
registered for the whole Russian countryside.1
In spite o f some problems of comparability with the figures for various
years, the general trends of socio-economic mobility seem, therefore, reason­
ably clear. After the aggregate shift downwards caused by wars, by famine, and
probably also by problems o f readjustment after the revolutionary division
o f the lands of the nobility, an aggregate shift upwards begins, reflecting the
recovery o f agriculture. With regard to the differentiation-processes, levelling
took place during the period 1917-20 and was followed by very slow polar­
ization. The only surprise which might be evoked would be at the relatively
small discrepancy (with the single exception o f the landless stratum) between
the pre-revolutionary pattern of differentiation and that of the years which
1 The means and quartile deviations, in terms o f sown area per household, were as
follows:

Indicator 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926

M 1*75 2 *08 2*47 2*75 2-87

QD 1*27 1*36 1*41 1*53 1-59

Development proved to be much slower in terms of horses per household (even a decline
was noted in one year— 1925) but the direction of development was very much the same as
that recorded in terms of sown area.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 57
followed what had been the stormiest period of Russian rural history plus a
fully fledged agrarian revolution.1 Though lack of fully comparable data does
not permit detailed comparisons to be made, the 1925-6 stratification of the
peasantry would not, after all, seem to have been very different from that in
1917, in spite o f the generally acclaimed immense levelling during the period
o f the agrarian revolution.

T a b l e 3* v i i i

Differentiation o f Peasant Households in the R.S.F.S.R.,

1922-1926 (percentage)a
A. By land sown

Households
Land sown per
household (des.)
1922(A) 1923(A) 1924(B) 1925(C) 1 9 2 6 (0

None 6*7 3*2 4*2 4*7 4 ‘5

Not more than 2 51*3 47*3 40*6 343 32*1
2*1-4 27*3 297 32*7 34*0 34-7
4*1-6 9*2 i i *4 130 156 16*2
6 -I-I0 4*5 64 7*1 8-7 9.3
10*1-16 \ f \ 1*8 2*0 2*4
2*0
More than 16 ) r° ) 0*6 o *7 o*8
Total 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0

B. zstock ownedb

Households
Workstock
per household 1922(A) 1923(A) 1924(D) 1 9 2 5 (0 1926(C)

None 37*1 30*6 310 30*6 30*4

1 50*0 54*6 5 i '4 52-3 50*2
2 9 9 no 12*5 12*4 13 8
3 1*9 2*4 31 2*9 3*5
4 and over II i ‘4 2*0 i*8 2*1
Total 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0 100*0

Sources. (A) A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), p. 84.

(B) Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR za 1923-24 gg. (1925 (?))> P- 756.
(C) Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), pp. 78, 81.
(D) Ibid., p. 81.
N otes. a This table is based on dynamic surveys (carried out annually by Ts.S.U.) o f a
large representative sample o f households o f the R.S.F.S.R. For a discussion o f this type
o f survey see Chapter 4 below.
b ‘Workstock’ refers mainly to horses, but also includes oxen, which were more important
in southern Russia.
1 Compare, for example, Tables 31V and 3*vm.
53 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
(c) The Unfinished Debate
The extent to which differentiation among the peasants was actually present
and had been developing was the main question in a controversy which
divided generations of Russian scholars. The general conceptual, politi­
cal, and emotional background to this debate has already been discussed.
Both the strength of ideological pressures and the data available before the
revolution made for the essentially deductive and speculative character
o f the views upheld and the theories advanced on this particular question.
Conclusions were derived mainly from basic theoretical preconceptions
and from general understandings of the economic development o f Russian
society.
At the turn of the century, Russia underwent rapid urban growth and
industrial development. Capitalism took firm roots in both urban economy and
society.1 The majority of Russian economists consequently assumed rapid
socio-economic polarization in the Russian countryside, especially after the
peasantry had been freed from the egalitarian tutelage o f the commune by
Stolypin’s reforms o f 1906-1 o.2 The spread of a money economy and wage-
work in rural areas was assumed to promote the market (price) mechanism
into the major regulator of the peasant economy and o f peasant social action.
The richer peasant households were regarded, in this conceptual framework,
as capitalist enterprises moved by the urge to maximize profits and accumu­
lating economic advantages.3 The majority of the peasants were viewed as
semi-proletarians in process of rapid proletarianization.4 Both strata were
seen as operating within the social framework o f market economy and grow­
ing capitalist relations; only a minority o f peasant households—the so-called
‘middle peasants’—were seen as still remaining at the earlier historical stage
o f a semi-natural, self-supporting economy (see Table 3*ix below). Only over
prophecies for the distant political future did the Marxists part company
with other supporters of economic determinism. At the same time, there was
a minority of scholars—those close to the Populists—who approached the
peasant economy as a specific, non-capitalist social structure. The peasant
household was viewed by them in the social framework of a semi-natural
economy as situated largely outside the field o f market relations, money
economy, and profit-determined production. Non-economic and especially
biological (family) factors were seen by them as decisive for social change.5
A somewhat curious attempt at integrating these conflicting views was made
at the turn o f the century by Gurevich, a Marxist who saw the ages o f families
as the source o f the major social class-divisions in the Russian peasantry of
1 See Chapter 1, sections (a) and (b), above.
2 The reforms are described in Chapter 2, section (b), and Appendix A, section (c).
3 For example, V. Lenin, ‘Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossi i’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii
(5th edn.), vol. iii.
4 In Lenin’s spectacular description, 4a labourer with an allotment’, ibid., p. 77.
5 For a discussion see Chapter 6, section (b), below.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 59
the day.1 In his view, a minority consisting of old and wealthy peasant house­
holds was confronted, in class conflict, by young and proletarian households,
those of intermediate age ranking between. Other attempts to bridge the concep­
tual gaps between the economic determinists and the Neo-Populists were made
in the writings o f P. Maslov, N. Sukhanov, and some others, but the majority
o f Russian scholars remained firmly polarized between the two major ideologi­
cal camps.12The vastly different estimates of peasant differentiation which were
made were mostly ‘quantitative’ expressions o f major conceptual differences
in the approach to the analysis o f stages in the evolution of market relations.
The extreme divergences in these estimates were made possible by the
deficiencies o f the basic evidence. Lenin estimated the differentiation o f the
Russian peasantry in 1905 to have been as outlined in Table 3.IX.

T able 31X
Lenin's Stratification o f the Rural Population o f European Russia, 1905

Land per
holding (des.) Holdings
Social stratum
Range Average (Min.) (%)

A. Pauperized peasantry* 0-15 TO 10-5 8o-6

B. Middle peasantry 15-20 15*0 i*o 7*7
C. Capitalist farms** 20-500 46-7 i *5 n *5
D. Feudal latifundia 5 00+ 2333*0 003 0*2
All strata 0 -500-h 21*4 13-03 ioo-o

Source. V. Lenin, ‘Agrarnaya programma sotsial-demokratii v pervoi russkoi revolyutsii

1905-1907 godov’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (5th edition), vol. xvi, pp. 202-3.
N otes. a The upper limit o f holding-size for stratum A, described originally as ‘Ruined
feudal peasantry, crushed by exploitation’, was placed much higher than assumed in any
o f the contemporary censuses or field studies. This led to four-fifths o f all peasant house­
holds being treated as poor and a consequent underestimation of ‘middle’ peasants.
b Described originally as ‘peasant bourgeoisie and capitalist landed proprietors’, stratum
C consisted mainly of richer peasants and not o f estates or other non-peasant agricultural
enterprises.

At the opposite extreme, Oganovskii, a decade later, was still to doubt the
very existence o f differentiation among the Russian peasantry, if measured
in per capita terms.3 In his view, the available figures on differences in the

1 I. Gurevich, Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie russkoi derevni (1896).

2 For a fuller treatment see N. Makarov, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo i ego evolyutsiya
(1920), vol. i, chap. 1.
3 See Brokgauz and Efron, Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ vol. xviii, pp. 519-23; and
Chapter 7 below.
6o THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
wealth o f households were being misunderstood: differences in wealth which
were actually differences between, on the one hand, sizes o f households and,
on the other, levels o f prosperity of different communities were being wrongly
interpreted as evidence of intracommunity socio-economic differentiation.1
Elimination o f this statistical ‘trick’ (fokus) could, he believed, make differ­
entiation in per capita terms disappear.2
The rapid rise in the amount, reliability, and acceptability o f data provided
by national censuses after 1916 failed to resolve the basic conceptual contro­
versy o f the earlier differentiation debate. In fact, new questions appeared,
leading to new clashes o f evaluation and interpretation. To be sure, the differ­
ences in the estimates o f the situation had narrowed to some extent, yet the
differentiation debate reached a new peak o f intensity at a conference held by
the Agricultural Academy in 1926.3 The major pre-revolutionary schools of
thought reappeared there to state their cases once again.
To the Neo-Populists, economic polarization had barely existed even in
pre-revolutionary Russia and could not be significant for the period after the
revolution.4 To the major Neo-Classical economists, Kondratev, and Pro­
kopovich, polarization of the peasantry was necessary, progressive, and
evident.5 Indeed, Kondratev challenged the government’s policy o f ‘struggle
against the well-to-do rural stratum, the only group which can create a basis
for market production’ and stated that ‘to favour the rural poor . . . limits our
real help to them’.6 Finally, the Marxist spokesmen o f the new establishment
were caught in the dilemma o f conflicting ideological and political pressures.
Increasing differentiation and a consequent rise in rural exploitation were
accepted as a necessity in a market economy, yet a socialist state could not pos­
sibly favour this. An increase in the size o f an enterprise was ‘the unbreakable
rule’7 o f economic progress and efficiency—but collective farms did not seem
to grow, while the growth of some private farms represented gains for the
class enemy—indeed, their very existence was seen as a potential threat.
The main group of party scholars,8 led by Kritsman, developed research
whose direction was governed by ideological commitment to detect a rising
tide of polarization. The hiring-out of horses and equipment was seen as the
1 See Chapter 3, section (a), and Chapter 7, section (c).
2 Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar', vol. xviii, p. 521.
3 The debates were published in Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), nos. 4-9. The open
exposition of their views by non-Marxist scholars was, no doubt, facilitated by the internal
party struggle against the ‘Left Opposition’.
4 Ibid., no. 4, p. 119, and no. 5, pp. 117-18. See also Chapter 6, section (c), below.
5 S. Prokopovich still exercised from abroad a major influence on Russian economic
thought. His argument against Chayanov was even requoted in Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva,
no. 5, pp. 121-2.
6 Requoted from Trudy pervoi vsesoyuznoikonferentsiiagrarnikov-marksistov (1931), p. 27.
7 V. Milyutin, in Na agrarnom froute (1925), no. 2, p. 7.
8 A. Gaister, M. Kubanin, G. Raevich, G. Gordeev, and others who dominated the
agricultural section of the Communist Academy and its major mouthpiece, Na agrarnom
fronte.
 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE 61
main new form o f rural class-exploitation. It was predicted that socialism in
the countryside would follow a period of increasing polarization and would
come as a result o f state intervention and a rise in urban wages and produc­
tivity, which would rob richer farmers of their wage-labour and make their
influence crumble.1 Few only defended the purity o f the Marxist definition by
which capitalist class-differentiation could be measured only qualitatively,
i.e. in terms o f the predominance of wage-labour12—which would have put
it, in this period, at next to nil.
In a further attempt to come to grips with the issue, a number o f studies
carried out at the end of the 1920s experimented with new methods of analysis
and validation.3 Then came 1929. The crises o f grain-supply, planned in­
dustrialization, and enforced collectivization left no room for the scholarly
arguments o f 1926. Indeed, even knowledge o f the issues became an embarrass­
ment to the collectivizers. A congress o f Marxist specialists in agriculture was
hastily summoned in 1929—not to debate issues, but to condemn enemies.4
This it did. Then the flood of collectivization and the great purge swept away
the differentiation debate and, with it, its main participants.

(d) The Heritage o f the Debate: Towards New Answers

The abrupt end o f the differentiation debate left unresolved a number of
major problems o f relating the evidence provided by the rural censuses to the
history o f peasant Russia during the crucial period 1917-25. To begin with,
how was it that the impact on differentiation o f a victorious egalitarian
revolution and a further decade o f Soviet rule had been so limited? More
generally, what causal explanation could be given of the differentiation-
processes among Russian peasants? Again—in view of the evident socio­
economic differentiation—why did the Russian peasantry fail to split along
class lines, and so failing, disprove prophecies and frustrate policies time
and time again? Moreover, if this apparent spontaneous political cohesion
was only a matter o f conservative inertia or non-economic determination
o f peasant political action, how could this be reconciled with the violent
peasant upheavals, still fresh in memory, which broke out when land and
property were at stake in 1905-6, 1917, and 1920?
The results o f the work o f the Russian scholars were not, however, limited
to adding to the puzzles already existing and to purely quantitative accu­
mulation o f data (as in the impressive wave of rural censuses since 1916).

1 For example, Puti seVskogo khozyaistva, no. 8, p. 116, or A. Gaister, ibid., p. 128, and
again in Na agrarnom fronte (1927), no. 11-12, p. 11.
2 For example, N . Sukhanov, Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva, no. 6-7, p. 140.
3 For example, the studies by A. Gaister of stratification estimated on the basis of budget
studies, Rassloenie sovetskoi derevnii (1928); or V. Nemchinov’s study o f incomes from
entrepreneurial activity in the Urals region, lzbrannye proizvedeniya (1967), vol. i, pp. 44-120
(first published in 1927).
4 See Trudy pervoi vsesoyuztioi konferentsii agramikov-marksistov.
62 THE DIFFERENTIATION DEBATE
While heated political debates and world-shattering revolutionary events
went on, important conceptual developments were taking place, laying the
foundations for new answers to old and new questions. An increasing number
o f Russian scholars departed both from the essentially deductive and specula­
tive attitude o f the ‘Grand Theories’ and from orthodox empirical or de­
scriptive methods. An attempt was made to approach the issues involved by
reconceptualization at a lower level of abstraction, and to adopt new methods
o f investigation—in a way which would have been classified by today’s
sociologists as the development of ‘theories of middle range’. As a result, new
types o f evidence were amassed. Far from bearing only on the Russian past,
these methods may well prove to be of contemporary value, for the major
issues o f the Russian differentiation-debate arise for the majority o f mankind
in the so-called ‘developing societies’ of today.
The most important of the conceptual and methodological developments
discussed was, no doubt, the focusing of research on the peasant household
as the main unit for statistical study.1 It was this increasing interest in peasant
households which led to new methods o f study, new questions being asked,
and essentially new types of data being sought.
This promising development in methods of research and analysis was
initiated by the statistical departments of some o f the more advanced
zemstvos. The revolution brought with it the appointment o f some o f the best
zemstvo statisticians to senior positions in the Ts.S.U. The research methods
developed in the zemstvos were now transferred into the Ts.S.U. and used on
a national scale. As a result, these Ts.S.U. studies supplemented the census
evidence with an additional body of data of a character and a scale still unique
throughout the world. After a short description of the findings related to
correlations characteristic of the Russia peasantry, of family size and eco­
nomic positions, we shall proceed to examine the two major methodological
novelties developed by zemstvos and subsequently adopted by Ts.S.U.— ‘budget
studies’ and ‘dynamic studies’.
1 It was the 1887 Conference o f Russian Statisticians which declared that the peasant
household (dvor) was the major unit o f peasant society and that consequently future
statistical surveys should be focused on it (see Volkov, op. cit., p. 80). The slowness with
which this new attitude penetrated actual statistical studies is well worth specific investiga­
tion in terms of relations between realities o f peasant life and of the consciousness o f ‘the
educated*.
 4
POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY

From the point of view of the science of statistics, the zemstvo statisticians
achieved far more than the whole Russian statistical establishment. New
paths have been broken through by the work of the zemstvo statisticians
. . . substantially diverging in almost every respect from West European
models. The zemstvo statisticians constructed a tool, unique of its kind,
for studying the life of the peasantry, such as no other country has at its
disposal.
Russian encyclopaedic dictionary on the eve o f the First World War

(a) The Correlation o f Wealth and Size

‘T h a t the poor have more children than the rich is a well established fact’,
hence there is an ‘inverse relationship between family size and socio-economic
status’.1 The Russian peasantry failed to appreciate such fruits of modern
demographic thought. For them, the reverse held true.2
A clear positive correlation between size (i.e. the number of members) of a
peasant household and its wealth (as measured by various indices) was re­
vealed by all the Russian censuses. The average size and wealth of peasant
households varied considerably between different regions. The size was
recorded as decreasing from 6 3 in 1891 to 6 0 in 1917 and to 5 4 in 1922.3
Yet the characteristic correspondence between demographic and economic
diversity in peasant households held true in all regions and in all periods.4
The positive correlation between size and wealth in peasant households
reduced the extent o f socio-economic differentiation, if approached in per
1 The Determinants and Consequences o f Population Trends (1953), U .N. Department o f
Social Affairs, pp. 85-6.
2 As a matter o f fact a positive correlation between wealth and family size has also been
recorded by some recent studies of pre-industrial and ‘developing’ societies. For example,
P. Laslett reports, for sixteenth-century England, that ‘Social rank and economic conse­
quences went with the size of household’, E. Wrigley (ed.). An Introduction to English
Historical Demography (1966), p. 169. D . and J. Crook in Revolution in a Chinese Village:
Ten Mile Inn (1953), p. 6, gave the average size of the family in the village studied as about
8 persons for the rich, 5 for the middle, and 3-4 for poor families, and spoke about
‘biological destruction of the poor’.
3 For 1897, Yu. Larin, Ekonomika dosovetskoi derevni (1926), p. 157. The post-revolu­
tionary figures are for the R.S.F.S.R., see Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii po SSSR
1918-23 gg. (1924), PP- 107 and 146.
4 A discussion of this demographic phenomenon would lie beyond the scope o f our
studies. The main reason seems to have been the lower rates o f mortality (for further dis­
cussion, see Chapter 5), and the higher rates o f adoption (for discussion, see Appendix B,
section (b)) in the wealthier stratum.
8214030 F
64 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
capita terms. However, differentiation did not disappear because o f this and
the bigger and wealthier households showed greater wealth per capita also
(see Tables 4-1, 4*11, and 4-111 below).

T able 4-1
Size o f Households by Amount o f Land Sown
Kaluga Gub., 1897a

_ , * Average land (des.)

Land sown Average &______ _ _
per household members per
<**•> household household capita

None 3-2 0*2 0*1

Less than 3 5*3 4*9 09
3-6 66 9 ’4 i -4
6-9 8-3 142 1*7
9-12 9*8 20*1 20
More than 12 12*0 3II 2*6

Source. B. Knipovich, K voprosu o differentsiatsii russkogo krest'yanstva (1912), p. 66.

Note. a This table is based on a study of 31,147 households (with 211,047 members) under­
taken by the Kaluga zemstvo.

T able 4*11
Size o f Households and Number o f Horses Owned by Amount
o f Land Sown (Ts.S.U. Census, 1925)a

Land sown Members Average land sown (des.) Horses owned

per household per household per household
{des.) per per
household capita

Less than
0*1 30 0*0
0*1-20 4*0 1*2 0*3 o *5
2* 1-4*0 5*4 2*7 0*5 o*8
4* i-6*o 6*6 46 o *7 ro
6 * i-io o 8*o 7*2 o *9 1*2
101-16*0 9*5 12*4 i *3 L5
16*1-25*0 99 18*8 i *9 i*8
More than
25» 9*8 33*3 34 2*5
Total 5-3 3*2 o*6 o*7

Source. A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), pp. 160-5.

Notes. a The census was based on a representative sample o f villages in 16 guberniyas of
European Russia. For the names o f guberniyas included see Source, pp. 139-40. The sample
included 269,317 households.
b The figures for this stratum seem somewhat doubtful in view o f the relatively small
number of households in the sample (101 or 0 03 per cent o f the total).
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 65
An extensive statistical study o f peasant differentiation was published by
Knipovich on the eve o f the First World War.1This compilation o f studies by
zemstvos revealed, with no exceptions, the characteristics described above (see
Table 4-1).
Post-revolutionary studies recorded similar patterns, though the use o f
different categories prevents a quantitative comparison being made between
the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary data. Use of land sown as the
main index o f peasant wealth in post-revolutionary Russia was sometimes
challenged in view o f the egalitarian land-redistribution of 1917-20.12 How­
ever, the basic correlation between size and wealth remained true (at least as
far as all the available data can testify) during the thirty years’ interval be­
tween the surveys recorded in Tables 4-1 and 4-111, whatever index of wealth
was used.

T able 4-111
Socio-Economic Differentiation o f the Peasantry in Saratov Gub.,
1927

Arableland6 (des.) Value of

Members -------------------------- livestock
Stratum*1
per household per per (roubles per
household capita household)

I. Poor 4-8 56 1*2 6 lI

IIa. Lower middle 5*o 65 1*3 I24'3
lib. Middle 6-6 11*9 1-8 342-7
lie. Upper middle 7’4 15-5 21 544*3
III. Petty capitalist 81 180 2*2 937*4

Source. M. Sulkovskii, Klassovye gruppy i proizvodstvennye tipy krest'yanskikh k/iozyaistv

( 1930), pp. 61-3.
Notes. a The definition o f peasant strata was based on an evaluation o f factors of economic
exploitation— wage work, renting o f land and equipment, trading, etc., as suggested by
L. Kritsman, Materialy po istorii agrarnoi revolutsii v Rossii (1928), vol. i. Introduction.
b Land rented by peasant households was also included.

A typical well-to-do household of the Russian peasantry was therefore

characterized by more members and larger numbers of mature male workers,
as well as by area sown and quantities of livestock, equipment, etc., exceeding
the averages in the area. Conversely, a typical poor household was character­
ized by small membership, few (if any) mature male workers, and smaller (if
any) holdings o f land, sown area, livestock, and equipment.3 The impact of
1 B. Knipovich, K voprosu o differentsiatsii russkogo krest'yanstva (1912).
3 For a discussion o f the operational definition o f wealth see Chapter 7. For a discussion
of the 1917-20 land-redivision see Chapter 8.
3 Russian peasant households display a virtually unlimited variability o f forms and
characteristics. However, the studies of Russian statisticians made this generalization
66 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
this diversity was expressed in significant economic trends reflected in the
budget studies o f peasant households.

(b) Budget Studies and Polarization1

Budget studies were defined by their main inaugurator as possibly the
fullest quantitative description of the chosen unit in terms o f economic fac­
tors and their interaction.2 A budget study of a peasant household included
a detailed record o f its membership and o f property held, of annual income and
o f expenditure in both money and natural forms. These studies consisted o f a
systematic input/output analysis (which included labour, production, con­
sumption, sales, tax, accumulation, etc.) o f each peasant farm in a selected
sample and a census o f its major factors o f production, i.e. wealth, workers,
equipment, etc. The data were then related to the socio-economic strata and
the possible correlations traced.
Some rudimentary budget studies of peasant households had been carried
out in Russia as early as the eighteenth century.3 The first studies done in the
form later adopted were those by P. Semenov, published in 1880.4 The studies
made by Shcherbina from 1887 to 1891 marked a new stage, in which statistical
studies o f representative samples o f peasant budgets were attempted.5 After
Shcherbina’s, numerous studies on similar lines were undertaken by different
zemstvos.6
Unlike budget studies of non-peasant families, the property and income
records o f peasant households presented complicated methodological prob­
lems.7 N o market in land existed after 1917. The basic dualities o f money
income versus income in kind and income from farming versus income
possible and valid for a substantial majority o f households. See Z. M. and N . A. Svavitskii,
Zetnskie podvornye perepisi, 1880-1913 gg. (1926), pp. 185-311. For basically similar data
in the period o f the N.E.P. see A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klossy v krest'yanstve, 1926,
pp. 83-91 and 160-5. See also A. Gaister, Rassloenie sovetskoi derevni (1928), pp. 120-31,
as well as the various statistical handbooks published by Ts.S.U.
1 Enrichment and capital formation in peasant households presents a major problem
which could only be clarified within the compass o f a specific study. We shall touch upon
the subject briefly only to the extent necessary for clarification o f our topic.
2 F. Shcherbina, Krest'yanskie byudzhety (1900), p. 71. The author held the post o f head
o f the Statistical Department, Voronezh zemstvo. For a fuller discussion see A. Chayanov
and G. Studenskii, Istoriya byudzhetnykh issledovanii (1922), in particular pp. 8, 37, 60.
3 See Chayanov and Studenskii, op. cit., p. 15.
4 Ibid., p. 17.
5 Budget studies gained a formal and nation-wide recognition at the Conference of
Russian Statisticians in 1894. Ibid., p. 23.
6 For a history o f budget studies see ibid.; see also E. Volkov, Agrarno-ekonomicheskaya
statistika Rossii (1923 (?)), pp. 108-12 and 467-9. For a recent exposition see A. Vainshtein,
Narodnoe bogatstvo i narodnokhozyaistvennoe nakopleniepredrevolyutsionnoi Rossii (i960),
pp. 467-9* Volkov quoted as many as 56 budget studies undertaken before the revolution
(the samples varied from 2 to 772 households). For elaboration of the 10 most important pre­
revolutionary studies see S. Prokopovich, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo (1924), pp. 15-18.
7 For example: How far should communal land allotments be recorded as the property
o f a household? How should the value of self-consumed production be valued? etc.
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 67
from crafts and trades (promysly)1 gave rise to many doubts. Total con­
sideration o f all the items of a full budget proved to be difficult, if not im­
possible.2 The complexity o f the data, the cost o f collecting them, and the
difficulties o f getting co-operation from the peasants grossly limited the
size o f the samples studied and increased the possibilities o f misinterpretation.
The shortcomings o f small samples were balanced, to some extent, by selecting
for intensive study households believed to be typical and representative of
various strata o f peasant society. However, the necessity that the participants
should have some basic intellectual skills (e.g. literacy) made for a frequently
reported upward bias—i.e. higher productivity, income, marketability, etc.,
in the households studied compared with the averages recorded for the same
region, period, and stratum.3
In spite o f these shortcomings, budget studies laid the foundations o f our
specific knowledge o f the actual economic processes taking place in peasant
households. Basic elements in the economy o f peasant households—such as
the accumulation o f capital, the taxation level, the level o f marketability, the
extent o f money transactions, and the impact of various factors of production
on income—were all opened up to empirical investigation. For the Russian peas­
antry as a social group, the studies showed a generally low standard of income
and capital accumulation.4 This was generally explained by low productivity
and the low initial capital in the peasant farm, by the pressure of underemploy­
ment and by the disadvantageous socio-political position of the peasantry in
terms o f taxation, rents, terms of trade, and vast middle-men’s profits.5
When broken down by socio-economic strata, the budget studies, on the
whole, supported the a priori assumption that the effects o f economic ad­
vantages and disadvantages were cumulative, as argued by the majority of
Russian economists. The larger households showed higher capital-per-worker
indices and seemed to benefit, also, from more efficient use of productive
factors as a result o f the larger scale of production. Consequently, this stratum
showed, on the whole, higher incomes per capita and per labourer, a higher
share o f own production sold, and higher rates o f accumulation and invest­
ment.6 Conversely, the smaller and/or poorer households showed the opposite
1 For a fuller definition of crafts and trades see the Glossary, pp. 239-43 below.
2 Some of the items were at times overlooked in the studies, like, for example, manure,
on the whole most valuable in traditional peasant farming. The income from the ‘females’
economy’ (i.e. chickens and garden produce from near the home, run independently by
women) remained on the whole the secret o f the women concerned.
3 For a fuller discussion of the shortcomings o f budget studies see, for example,
Prokopovich, op. cit., pp. 15-28.
4 N. Makarov, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo i ego evolutsiya (1920), vol. i, pp. 70-1, also
Prokopovich, op. cit., p. 167. See also Chapter 1 above.
5 See, for example, A. B. Bolshakov, Sovremennaya derevnya v tsifrakh (1925), pp. 22-3,
or Gaister’s analysis, op. cit., p. 5.
6 The Russian budget studies seem to indicate higher incomes per capita and higher
accumulation in the bigger households, except at the end o f the N.E.P., which was marked
by the heavy taxation of the richer households.
68 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
features. The impact of the shortage o f capital was magnified in the smaller
households by the relatively higher proportion of capital tied up in the essential
basic buildings and livestock.1 The amount o f peasant family labour which
could find employment in the household was lower and, in spite o f the higher
rates o f employment in crafts, the burden o f underemployment was heavier
in the smaller households.12 A statistical analysis o f a wide range o f pre­
revolutionary budget studies undertaken by Prokopovich showed close cor­
relations between the wealth as well as the size o f peasant households and the
performance o f these households in terms o f income, productivity, and ac­
cumulation, expressed in both total and per capita form.3 Shcherbina’s classic
study is outlined in Table 4-iv.
After 1919,4 Ts.S.U. inaugurated systematic annual budget studies of
peasant households. The size o f the samples increased and greater care was
taken to make them representative on a regional and national scale. Income
generally came to be measured by the index of Conventional Net Income
(uslovnyi chistyi dokhod)5 which consisted o f the estimated gross income less
the input which, however, did not include the value o f household family labour,
livestock, and equipment. On the whole, the basic patterns discovered were
similar to those reported before the revolution (see Table 4-v).6
Since 1925, some o f the budget studies showed a decrease or even a partial
disappearance o f correlation between the wealth and size o f the households
and their per capita income and accumulation o f wealth. This resulted from
the very high and inversely correlated income from crafts in the lower strata.
An explanation o f this phenomenon may lie in the peculiarities o f the peasants
picked for the budget study samples, which could account for the greater
number o f successful non-agricultural enterprises. It could also be related to
the exceptionally high proportion of young households in this stratum, which

1 For a discussion see G. Raevich, ‘Ob'em krest'yanskogo khozyaistva i teoriya fak-

torov’, in Na agrarnom fronte (1925), no. 1, p. 12. By A. Chayanov’s estimates, only in
households which had sown at least 2 des. of land did owning a horse become an economic
proposition. In the smaller households, the horse proved an economic liability even though
it was needed for the most basic functions o f the Russian peasant economy, which de­
pended mainly on grain production. A. Chayanov, The Theory o f Peasant Economy (1966),
PP- I53- 9-
2 For example, see Shcherbina, op. cit., p. 190. In a post-revolutionary budget study
made in 1922-3, the analysis of the share of the potentially available family labour actually
employed by the peasant households varied from 36 24 per cent (out of which 4-33 per cent
was on crafts and trades) for the richest stratum— defined by its members having more than
8 des. of land sown per household— to 27*92 per cent (out of which 10 26 per cent was on
crafts and trades) for the poorest households with less than 2 des. o f land sown per house­
hold. Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1924), p. 340.
3 Prokopovich, op. cit., pp. 36, 132-40.
4 Volkov, op. cit., p. 377.
5 This concept was introduced by A. Chelintsev. The C.N.I. was generally expressed in
money terms per household, per labourer, or per capita.
6 For example, the 1924-5 Ts.S.U. budget study Statisticheskii spravochnik 1927 (1927),
pp. 132-5.
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 69

T a b l e 4 * iv

Household-Size, Property, Income, ancl Accumulation o f

Peasant Households by Land Held in Voronezh Gub., 1887-1896a

Size of land Av. no. of Property Annual per capita

holding (des.)b members per per capita
household* (roubles)** Income Accumulation
(roubles)* (roubles)

None 3*47 54'I4 5614 2*35

Up to 5 5*i7 6933 59*53 601
5-15 638 77-18 68* 13 6*55
15-25 8-53 88-43 73*58 9*49
More than 25 12*03 106*59 94-80 18*62
All holdings 6*76 81 *66 73*29 10*08

Source. F. Shcherbina, Krest'yanskie byudzhety (1900), pp. 112, 115, 190, 198-9.
Notes. a The table is based on a study o f peasant budgets carried out by Shcherbina and
his assistants. The main part o f the budgets were taken during the 1893-6 period. The
methodology of this study was generally adopted as a model in later studies carried out in
various zemstvos. The sample covered 230 households.
6 N o information about land sown is available. Voronezh gub. in this period had a
relative abundance of land under extensive cultivation.
c The average number of workers per household was closely correlated with the average
number of members per household (see Source, p. 216).
d Property was defined as buildings, livestock, agricultural and domestic equipment,
furniture, and items o f dress.
e Income in kind was estimated as 54 8 per cent total, ranging from 19*3 per cent for the
landless, to 58-4 per cent for the wealthiest stratum (see Source, p. 216).

could account for considerable push for ‘rapid development’. (For a dis­
cussion on this see Chapters 5 and 6 below.) In fact, the possibility that the
majority o f peasant households would have shown closely similar levels of
income during some periods o f post-revolutionary Russian history cannot be
excluded. Progressive taxation would reinforce such a tendency. In the
conditions o f the increased pressure of anti-kulak measures after 1927, some
studies even reported the lowest (or even negative) accumulation in the biggest
households.1 However, such a situation was exceptional. On the whole, the
post-revolutionary budget-study results, as exemplified in Table 4-v, fol­
lowed the pre-revolutionary correlation patterns, i.e. they showed a clear
tendency towards the cumulation of economic advantages and disadvantages
in peasant households.
In the light o f the evidence of the budget studies, the social mechan­
ism underlying the differentiation-processes among the Russian peasantry
could be, and by numerous scholars was, viewed within the framework of
1 See, for example, M. Sulkovskii, Klassovye gruppyi proizvodstvennye tipy krest'yan-
skikh khozyaistv (1930), pp. 169-70.
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 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 71
textbook economic theory and the doctrines o f economic determinism.1
The differentiation-processes could be explained simply in terms o f the
advantages o f the bigger and wealthier households over the smaller and
poorer ones, resulting in cumulative polarization. After the reversal due to the
extra-economic factor of agrarian revolution in the years 1917-19, the cumu­
lative polarization should once more have resumed its pace, even if tempered
by the generally low level o f capital-accumulation in agriculture and the
egalitarian policies o f the Soviet regime. However, such a simple explanation
is shaken by the results of what were called ‘dynamic studies’ of peasant
households.
(c) Dynamic Studies and the Mobility o f Peasant Households
Statistical data published by the Russian government before the revolution
tended to present the peasantry and the agriculture of the country (or o f any
region) as wholes.2 The introduction o f the use o f categories representing
various socio-economic strata revealed illuminating correlations between the
socio-economic differentiation o f peasant households and some basic aspects
o f peasant life.3 Furthermore, it permitted the identification of socio-economic
mobility within peasant societies by comparing peasant differentiation in
consecutive years.4
However, the recorded changes in the differentiation of peasant society did
not fully express the extent o f the socio-economic mobility of peasant house­
holds; for instance, the economic rise of a thousand households counteracted
by the decline o f another 800 may be recorded merely as a rise o f 200, while,
in fact, 1,800 units have experienced socio-economic mobility. It was the
attempt to reach behind the gross data on peasant societies and/or socio­
economic strata and to analyse the mobility o f individual peasant households
which brought ‘dynamic studies’ into being. This development of statistical
methodology clearly reflected a conceptual change related to the increasing
interest in peasant socio-economic differentiation as well as to increasing
awareness o f the importance of households as the basic units o f peasant
society. Dynamic studies involved tracing the individual histories o f peasant
households and analysing them statistically as mass data. The essential features
o f this method may be illustrated by the hypothetical example given in the
following Table 4*vi.
The basic data analysed by a dynamic study included information about the
socio-economic position of each household at the beginning and at the end of
1 See Chapter 3, section (c), above.
2 For example, the highly instructive Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po
sel'skomu khozyaistvu Rossii, published annually from 1908 to 1917.
3 See, for example, the peasant censuses and budget studies introduced by the zemstvo
statisticians and after 1916 adopted by the government (Tables 4*1,4-11,4-111,41V, 4*v above).
4 See Tables 31V, 3-v, 3-vn, and 3-viii above. As a matter of fact, in many cases, Russian
scholars embarked on the obviously erroneous path o f assuming differentiation-processes
from the existence o f differentiation per se. For a discussion see N. Chernenkov, K kharak-
teristike krest'yanskogo khozyaistva (1905), p. 101.
72 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
the period studied, and some further information about changes which had
taken place in their internal structure during the same period.1The households
were classified by socio-economic stratum at the beginning o f the study. At
the next stage, every stratum was treated as a unit and the socio-economic
position o f each o f its households at the end of the period was recorded in
figures or percentages in the appropriate columns ( A A i . A B l , A C i ; B A i ,
B Bi, B C i ; etc.). The figures in squares A A i, B B i, C Ci (25, 265, and 15)
indicate, therefore, the households which had not changed their socio­
economic position in terms of the strata as defined. The other figures represent
households in various degrees of ascending or descending mobility.

T ABLE 4- vi
Simplified Hypothetical Dynamic Study o f a Community,
1900-1910a

Number o f households

Socio-economic 1910
stratum
Ai Bi Ci
1900 Poor Middle Rich

A. Poor 275 25 75 175

B. Middle 450 120 265 65
C. Rich 125 85 25 15
All strata 850 230 365 255

Note. a Merger, partitioning, extinction, and migration omitted.

Dynamic studies were first introduced by N. Chernenkov. He compared

data on 17,090 peasant households, recorded in a local census o f 1894, with
the information collected about the same households in the national census of
1897.2 This work was followed by a study o f Vyazma uezd in 1884 and 1900,3
and three more dynamic studies on the eve of the First World War.4 In all the
pre-revolutionary studies, the basic data were not collected specially for the
1 This additional information included the disappearance and creation o f new peasant
households through migration, extinction, partitioning, and merger. For a discussion of
this see Chapter 5.
2 Carried out on peasant households o f the uezd of Petrovsk in Saratov gub. and pub­
lished in Chernenkov, op. cit. (first published 1900). All the pre-revolutionary dynamic
studies were carried out by the statistical departments of the various zemstvos.
3 Carried out in Smolensk gub. and published in an article by P. Rumyantsev, ‘K. vop-
rosu ob evolutsii russkogo krest'yanstva’, Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozreniya (1906),
PP. 527- 39.
4 (1) Surazh uezd in Chernigov gub. for the period 1882-1911; see G. Kushchenko,
Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo v Surazhskom uezde (1916). (2) Epifan' uezd in Tula gub. for
the period 1899-1911; see A. Khryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 73
purpose o f the study but were examined ex post facto after being collected
for some other purpose.
From 1920 onwards, the Ts.S.U. introduced annual dynamic censuses
(dynamicheskie perepisi) o f all peasant households as a basis for the systematic
study o f peasant mobility. These censuses were based on large samples and steps
were taken to ensure their representativeness, both nationally and region­
ally.1 The data were no longer approached ex post facto and their collection
was geared to the needs of the dynamic studies. The analysis was very labour­
consuming and the publication of results lagged. Not all the results o f the
post-revolutionary dynamic censuses and studies were ever fully published, but
elements of them can be found in Ts.S.U. journals and handbooks and in the
publications o f some rural statisticians and economists. In 1927, a large-scale
dynamic study for the period 1924-5 was published in the annual Ts.S.U.
handbook.2 This first official publication by the Ts.S.U. of a full-scale dynamic
study o f a representative sample of more than half a million peasant house­
holds in various regions of the U.S.S.R. was followed, six months later, by a
similar publication for 1925-6.3 This, however, was the last one to see the light
o f day.
The evidence gathered by three decades o f dynamic studies of the Russian
peasantry revealed clear, and somewhat surprising, uniformity and continuity
in the patterns o f mobility of peasant households. The basic processes and
interrelations proved qualitatively similar in dynamic studies of samples
reflecting different periods, drawn from different areas, and using different
categories o f peasant wealth.4The following pre-revolutionary study o f Vyazma
uezd presented on p. 75 will serve here as an example of such typical processes
and interrelations. (Three more dynamic studies, including those o f the
Ts.S.U., will be presented at a more advanced stage o f discussion below.)5
An attempt to measure the mobility o f peasant society just by comparing
differentiation in 1884 with that of 1900 (Table 4 * v ii, Part B) would have
indicated that only about 10 per cent o f peasant households had changed
stratum (in terms o f the arbitrary categories of wealth used) between the two
i8 g g - ig i 1 gg. (1916). (3) M oscowgub. for the period 1900-10; P. Vikhlyaev, Vliyania travo-
seyaniya (1915), part 9, reported in Prokopovich, op. cit., p. 159. One more dynamic study
was, in fact, started by S. Blekov in 1901 in the Tavrida gub., but was discontinued and
never published: see Volkov, op. cit., p. 12.
1 The census was based on the total recording of households in clusters (gnezda) selected
as representative of the various guber/iiyas.
2 Statisticheskii spravochnik 1927, pp. 66-73: based on a representative sample of 583,314
peasant households. A more detailed study which covered 17 guberniyas o f the same
dynamic census (265,436 peasant households) was published as an appendix to Khrya-
shcheva, Gruppy i klossy, pp. 142-9. See Table 6*111 below.
3 Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh, 1917-1927 gg. (1928), pp. 124-36. We lack,
however, for the 1925-6 study, additional data published by Khryashcheva for the 1924-5
study (see preceding footnote).
4 For a discussion see Chapter 7, section (c), below.
3 Chapters 6 and 7, and especially Tables 61, 611, and 6111.
74 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
dates. However, during the period 1884-1900, of the original sample o f 13,880
households, 2,039 households (15 per cent) had emigrated, 663 (5 per cent)
had become extinct, and 1,884 (14 per cent) could not be traced> making
altogether 4,586 (33 per cent) households which had disappeared.1 Further­
more, the dynamic study carried out (Table 4*vn, Part A) revealed that, of
the residuum analysed, as many as 45 per cent o f the households had moved
into another category of peasant wealth by the end of the period. To the
households which had changed position, one could legitimately add the total,
or at least the larger part, of the 4,586 households which had disappeared
during the period of the study.2 This would put the proportion o f households
which had undergone socio-economic mobility during the period 1884-1900 at
more than half, and indicates a ratio of more than 5:1 between the total mobi­
lity of peasant households and the mobility recorded for the peasant society
in Table 4*vn, Part B, using identical categories o f wealth.3
The first general conclusion which can be drawn from the dynamic studies,
is, therefore, that the mobility of peasant households is multidirectional in
character—i.e. it consists to a great extent of opposing movements o f indi­
vidual households which cancel themselves out when analysis is confined to
the study o f the mobility of the society as a whole. The net mobility o f a
peasant society can be seen as the tip of an iceberg—the summary results of
socio-economic changes of much greater magnitude.
A further conclusion which can be drawn from the dynamic studies would
have to be the existence of a strong centripetal mobility of peasant households
in relation to the median wealth in the society studied— i.e. the rises o f the
poorer households and the descents of the wealthier ones. Moreover, as the
example in Table 4- vn shows, the higher the relative socio-economic position
o f the peasant household, the greater, on the whole, is the likelihood that it
will begin to deteriorate, and vice versa, the lower its position the better its
chance of showing an improvement.4 Given the existence o f demonstrable
centripetal forces, in a society in which socio-economic stratification does not
disappear, it follows that centrifugal tendencies must be operating to counter­
vail the centripetal forces, a conclusion which finds empirical support in the
results of the ‘budget studies’ discussed above. A complex multidirectional
mobility, involving centripetal and centrifugal tendencies simultaneously
operating among peasant households, is, therefore, at work and underlies the
gross differentiation-process in peasant society. Moreover, anticipating the
1 Rumyantsev, op. cit., pp. 527, 534-6.
2 The relationship between the disappearance o f peasant households and their socio­
economic mobility will be fully discussed in Chapter 5 below.
3 An increase in the number o f arbitrarily chosen strata would lead, o f course, to a
‘statistical* increase in recorded mobility without any real changes in evidence.
4 This pattern is the probable one. It does not exclude the possibility o f some o f the
richer households continuing further enrichment and even taking a structural leap into
commodity-centred or even capitalist farming. For a further discussion o f this see Chapter
6, section (e); also Khryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva, vol. ii, pp. 63-4.
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 75
discussion o f dynamic studies further on, the socio-economic position of
substantial numbers of Russian peasant households in the period studied
fluctuated with a certain specific regularity. A peasant household would,
for a time, rise in socio-economic terms within the peasant community, and
then after reaching some peak undergo a decline. At a later stage the same

T a b l e 4 - vi i

Peasant Mobility in Vyazma Uezd, Smolensk Gub., 1884-1900a

A. The Dynamic Study

Stratum Sown No. of % of 1884 households sowing in 1900 % of

land households households
(des.) 1884* Nil Less 3-9 More Totalling undergoing
than des. than 0 -9 + stratum-
3 des. 9 des. des. change
1884-1900

A Nil 1,329 49*0 263 236 II 100 52-0

B Less
than
3 des. 2,249 107 39-7 48-3 i ’3 100 6o-6
C 3“9
des. 5,238 4-i 196 68*7 7*6 100 31-3
D More
than
9 des. 418 3*2 106 653 20-9 100 79*1
All strata 9,294 44‘5C

B. The Differentiation o f Peasant Households (percentage)

Years Households sowing

Less than 3-9 More than

Nil 3 des. des. 9 des. Totalling

1884 143 24*2 569 4'5 100

1900 95 24-6 592 67 100
Households
changing stratum
1884-1900** ( ~ ) 4‘8 ( + ) o *4 ( + ) 2'3 ( + )2‘2 97

Source. P. Rumyantsev, ‘K voprosu ob evolutsii russkogo krest'yanstva\ Ocherki realists

cheskogo mirovozrcniya (1906), pp. 527, 538.
Notes. a The study is based on the records of those o f the 13,880 households in the 1884
census which still actually existed in 1900. The relationship between household disappear­
ance and mobility will be discussed in Chapter 5 below.
b Only the households still accounted for in 1900.
c Weighted average.
d Percentile points; -f indicates additions to a given stratum, — indicates losses from a
stratum.
76 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
household, having reached its lowest ebb, might again start to move upward
and the whole cycle would recommence. This recurring process we term
cyclical mobility.1
Cyclical mobility represents, therefore, a specific case o f multidirectional
mobility in which a substantial number of units successively participate in
simultaneously operating powerful and opposing trends. Figure n sets out the

Figure n. Types o f Household M obility

(i) C en trif u ga l m o b ility (ii) C en trip e tal m o b ility

(iii) M u lt i - d ire c t io n a l m o b ility (iv) C y c lic a l m o b ility

main patterns into which mobility o f peasant households is analysed in our

study—centrifugal, centripetal, multidirectional, and cyclical—as processes, i.e.
as happening on a time scale. The simultaneous occurrence of opposing trends
shown in sections (i) and (ii) would lead to multidirectional mobility, indicated
in (iii). The process in which peasant households are caught up in turn in
ascending and descending phases (i.e. cyclical mobility) is depicted in section
(iv). The more complex, actual processes can be classified in terms of the
typology presented.

(d) The Mobility o f Peasant Households and the Mobility o f Peasant Society
Before proceeding to analyse the various factors influencing the mobility
of peasant households and to try to draw conclusions in the form o f an

1 Similar processes were observed in other peasant societies— see, for example, M. Yang,
A Chinese Village (1945), p. I32,P. Stirling, Turkish Village (1965), chap. 7, and I. Ajiami,
‘Social Classes, Family Demographic Characteristics and M obility’, in Iranian Villages,
Sociologia Ruralis, ix (1969). See also for centripetal trends M. Nash, ‘Indian Eco­
nomies’, Social Anthropology (1967), pp. 93-101.
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 77
explanatory model, let us recapitulate, in a more formalized and general way,
the essential relationship between the mobility of peasant households and the
mobility of peasant society (see Figure iii ). Such a summing-up, self-evident as
it may seem, may help us to clarify the problems arising from trying to under­
stand differentiation-processes in peasant societies. It will also pinpoint the
issue o f the causes o f mobility among peasant households.
The mobility recorded for a peasant society as a whole is a net balance of
the oscillations o f its component peasant households. The forms of mobility
of peasant households display a practically unlimited heterogeneity and can
be analysed in a variety o f ways, two o f which are presented here as the most
important for our discussion. Those studying regularities in the mobility of
peasant households have tended to stress ascending and descending trends—
i.e. the enrichment and impoverishment of peasant households—those trends
o f which the informed public was most conscious. An analysis in terms of
centrifugal and centripetal movements is more appropriate to a study
o f differentiation-processes. These different analytical approaches do not, o f
course, express a different reality; the extent of the mobility of peasant house­
holds will not change whatever method of analysis is adopted (£ = a + b =
c + d in the following Figure).
Figure in. Peasant Socio-economic Mobility: Peasant
Society and Peasant Households a
A. The M obility o f Peasant Societies and Peasant Households b

Level considered Synchronized movements Unsynchronized movements

Mobility in terms 1 Aggregate 11 Differentiation-

a o f a peasant shifts* processes/
society*
Mobility in terms a. ascending and c. centrifugal and
p o f peasant
households4 b. descending d. centripetal

a Socio-economic mobility is defined in its broadest terms as the change in wealth of

peasant households.
b The quantification of the extent of mobility can be arrived at by measuring its generality,
(i.e. numbers o f houses involved) weighted by ‘intensiveness’ (i.e. extent o f change recorded
for those households); for an explanation of terms and discussion see P. Sorokin, Social
and Cultural M obility, 1959, pp. 136-7.
c For a typology of mobility in peasant societies see Figure 11 above (Figure in. Parts
B and C correspond to the method o f presentation adopted in Figure 11).
d The extent of the mobility o f peasant households will not change, whatever way of
analysing it is adopted. Consequently, the sum total o f ascending and descending movements
must equal the sum total o f centrifugal and centripetal movements (0 = a + b = c + d ).
e It would also include a levelling impact o f differential rates o f emigration and household-
extinction, as will be shown in Chapter 5, section (a), below.
/ For an examination of the factors responsible for the centrifugal and centripetal trends
underlying differentiation-processes see Chapter 6, section (e), below, and in particular.
Figure v on p. 118.
78 P O L A R IZ A T IO N A N D C Y C L IC A L M O B IL IT Y

B. The Nature o f Aggregate Shifts

Art Aggregate Shift Upwards An Aggregate Shift Downwards
t A
+ I

ir

w 60
to
.a
a
a
•3
c s .a
o <o 8
< Q Q
a <3

V Y
The aggregate shift upwards o f the peasant The aggregate shift downwards o f the
society (a l-f) = a —b peasant society (a l—) = b —a
The total number o f peasant households in The total number o f peasant households in
which mobility occurs j8 = a + b which mobility occurs P = a + b
The number o f households affected by The number o f households affected by
mutually cancelling mobility (a + b )—(a —b) mutually cancelling mobility ( a + b ) —(b —a)
= 2b = 2a

C. The Nature o f Differentiation-Processese

Polarization Levelling
“ A
+
1*5

ji

cd cd
60 3 cd
a o. 3
a

U U O U
c *X3 0
V Y
The polarization of a peasant society (a ll-f ) The levelling o f a peasant society ( a l l—) =
= c —d d -c
The total number of peasant households in The total number o f peasant households in
which mobility occurs p — c + d which mobility occurs p = c + d
The number of households affected by The number of households affected by
mutually cancelling mobility ( c + d ) —(c—d) mutually cancelling mobility ( c + d ) —(d—c)
— 2d = 2C
 POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY 79
The general exposition of the interrelationships between mobility o f peasant
society and mobility o f peasant households contained in Figure h i , Part A
is expressed diagrammatically and in a quantifiable form by Parts B and C.
Knowledge o f the ascending and descending mobility of peasant households
enables conclusions to be drawn about the character and size o f the aggregate
shift in a peasant society and about the gross mobility of peasant households.
The knowledge o f centrifugal and centripetal tendencies away from and
towards the median (which can be envisaged as the middle household in terms
o f wealth in the given society) enables us to draw conclusions about the
character and the extent of the differentiation-processes in the peasant society,
as well as about the gross mobility of the peasant households in it.
The analysis in Part C of Figure in enables us therefore to identify the
two basic trends underlying the differentiation-processes in the peasantry.
Differentiation-processes are the resultants of the operation o f two major
tendencies—opposite in direction, different in strength, and generated by
what seem to have been different sets o f factors. Economic theory and the
empirical evidence o f the ‘budget studies’ lead us to accept, at least tenta­
tively, the cumulation o f economic advantages and disadvantages as a major
generator of the centrifugal tendencies in the mobility o f peasant households.1
However, the centripetal tendencies evident in dynamic studies cannot be
explained in these terms. For this very reason, the evidence o f the dynamic
studies did not make sense to many economists, and tended to be dismissed
as doubtful, or, at least, as reflecting only a temporary and abnormal situation.
For example, Kondratev simply declared that the centripetal and cyclical
peculiarities o f peasant mobility reported ‘could not be a usual occurrence’.2
However, the increasing amount and reliability o f data made this ‘criticism
by shoulder-shrugging’ clearly unsatisfactory.
The focus o f the following discussion will turn, therefore, to the causes o f
centripetal mobility and the possible reasons for which peasant households
would move from being under the determining influence o f centrifugal forces
to being under the influence o f centripetal ones and vice versa. Such analysis
must go beyond the boundaries o f Neo-Classical economics and consider
broad issues o f the social structure and dynamics of peasant society.
To begin with, the land-redistribution practised by the Russian peasants
seems to have provided a manifest egalitarian wealth-redivision mechanism.
The extent of land-redistribution by the Russian peasant communes was never
fully recorded and may well have to remain for ever in the realm o f guess­
work.3 The extent and frequency of land-redivision varied between regions and
even between different communes in the same locality.4 N o doubt, in some
1 Only further studies of a peasant economy and, in particular, of the problems of enrich­
ment and capital formation could make it conclusive.
2 Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), no. 5, pp. 131-2.
3 G. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime (1949), PP- 121-2.
4 See Chapter 2, section (b), above and Chapter 8, section (b), below.
8214036 G
8o POLARIZATION AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
cases, land-redivision by communes would have accounted for a considerable
share of the centripetal mobility o f peasant households, or would even have
been the major factor responsible for it. Yet, for several reasons, it fails
to account for a major part of the centripetal (levelling) trend evident from
the dynamic studies.
Firstly, land-redivision by communes would have an egalitarian (centripetal)
effect on holdings o f commune land-allotments, though not, o f course, on
those peasant lands which were held as private property—which were particu­
larly important in the case o f the wealthier households. The influence of land-
redivision on other categories of peasant wealth (ownership o f horses, capital
or equipment) could be only secondary. Yet powerful centripetal mobility was
observable in strata which held extensive private lands and in dynamic studies
stratifying on the basis of all the categories of peasant wealth (horses, capital,
etc.).1
Secondly, although, as has already been stated, the actual extent of land-
redivision by communes is far from clear, if we accept as realistic the legal
provisions about land-redivision (i.e. not to be carried out more frequently
than once every twelve years—this was at the end of the nineteenth century),12
or even allow for a shorter period, then the rates of centripetal mobility found
seem far too high to be accounted for by conceivable processes o f land-
redivision by commune.3
Lastly, and most importantly, large-scale centripetal trends were reported
in Belorussia where land-redivision by commune was practically non-existent.4
Land-redivision by commune could therefore be classified as only one o f
the possible determinants o f peasant households’ centripetal mobility, rooted
in the peculiarities of the social structure of the Russian peasantry. However,
yet another set o f factors affecting the centripetal mobility o f peasant house­
holds and the levelling tendencies in peasant societies can be seen, also arising
out of the peculiarities of the peasant social structure and specifically o f the
internal dynamics o f peasant households. The Russian scholars working on
the dynamic studies identified them under the umbrella term ‘substantive
changes’ (organicheskie izmeneniya).
1 See, for example, Table 6*n below, or Nemchinov’s studies referred to in Chapter 6,
section (c).
2 See Chapter 2, section (b), and Appendix B, sections (a) and (b).
3 See Chapters 6 and 7. 4 See Table 71 below.
 5
‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
In peasant life . . . family and farm appear as almost synonymous.
V. M U K H IN

(a) The Levelling Mechanism

T r a n s m u t a t i o n s of peasant households resulting in their appearance and
disappearance within peasant communities in Russia were given the name
‘substantive changes’ (organicheskie izmeneniya). This term covers the
processes o f the partitioning, merger, extinction, and migration of peasant
households. These processes make apparent the intimacy of the links
connecting the fortunes o f the traditionally structured peasant family
and the peasant farm. Partitioning results in the appearance of new
peasant households. Extinction and merger led to households’ disappearance.
With emigration, a peasant household disappears from one community to
reappear (as immigration) elsewhere. The umbrella term ‘substantive changes’
therefore embraces social processes o f vastly differing kinds but which have
one characteristic in common: their differential impact is reflected in levelling
tendencies in peasant societies.
The social structure o f peasant households and the demographic character­
istics o f the Russian peasantry1were the fundamental causes of the differential
effects which ‘substantive changes’ had on the mobility recorded for the vari­
ous socio-economic strata within peasant communities. Rates o f partitioning
correlated with the size and the wealth o f peasant households. The ‘pulver­
izing’ effect o f partitioning was strongest, therefore, among the wealthier
strata. On the other hand, the disappearance of peasant households through
merger, extinction, and emigration2 correlated inversely with size and wealth.
A considerable number of the poorer households were constantly being
purged from peasant societies. Both partitioning and disappearance, therefore,
generated levelling trends and worked in a direction running counter to eco­
nomic polarization.
In terms o f the socio-economic mobility of peasant households, ‘substantive
changes’ can be subdivided into two categories. On the one hand, partitioning
and merger lead to generally centripetal tendencies (though, in a number of
1 In particular, the positive correlation between the size and wealth o f the peasant house­
hold: see Chapter 4, section (a). For a discussion of social structure see Chapter 2, section (a).
2 Immigration will be discussed below in section (d).
82 SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
individual cases, the opposite would be true—e.g. partitioning of poverty-
stricken households). On the other hand, emigration and extinction express
changes o f a different character for, in their cases, the household and its
members actually disappear from peasant society. However, the differential
character o f this second category of processes (i.e. the inverse correlation of
rates of emigration and extinction with wealth) leads to a real levelling due to

Figure iv. Households undergoing 'Substantive Changes* by Wealth {Hypothetical Graphs)

a ------ partitioned households

b ------ households w hich disappeared
by merger, extinction, and
emigration
A broken line indicates the appearance of
two different types of correlation in different
empirical studies. For an interpretation of this
see Chapters 5 and 6

a change which is only statistically centripetal—what may be called a semi-

centripetal effect—i.e. a levelling tendency within a peasant society due to
a simple decrease in the proportion of the poorest households. In analysing
differentiation-processes, we shall therefore follow the tradition o f Russian
scholars by discussing all these ‘substantive changes’ under a common heading
as a single major factor making for levelling tendencies in peasant societies.
Characteristic correlations o f rates o f the various forms o f ‘substantive
changes’ with wealth were reported in both the pre- and post-revolutionary
dynamic studies; they persisted whatever operational definition o f wealth
was used—with the single exception o f rates o f emigration and merger among
the wealthiest strata in some dynamic studies.1
Tables 5*1 and 5-11 are characteristic examples of these ‘substantive
changes’.
1 For example, see Table 5*1; for a further discussion see sections (c) and (d) below.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 83

T able 5-1
‘Substantive Changes’, Epifan' Uezd, 1899-1911
A. By Arable Land per Household

Sown land Percentage o f households

per household
{des.) Partitioned Liquidated** Merged Em i­ Both No Total
grated partitioned ‘substantive
and merged change*

Nil 4 ’0 3 77 i-4 18-7 0*2 379 100

Less than 3 5 ’9 71 2*2 10 8 07 733 100
3-6 254 i'5 o*8 40 03 679 100
6-9 450 07 0*3 1-7 06 516 100
9-15 560 0-6 0*4 0*9 1*0 41-1 100
M ore than 15 63-1 i-9 i-3 51 1-3 274 100
T otal 22*6 4 2 13 64 o*5 650 100

B. By Horses per Household

N o. o f Percentage o f households

owned Partitioned Liquidated** Merged Emi­ &Both No T otal

per household grated partitioned ‘substantive
and merged change*

N il 90 9*i 2*1 12*7 o*7 664 100

1 234 20 1*0 3-5 o*3 69*8 100
2 37-8 o*8 o*5 1-4 o*5 590 100
3 508 0*6 04 1-4 0-8 46 0 100
4 and more 619 0*7 o*7 33 o*3 331 100
Total 22*6 42 i ‘3 6*4 o*5 65-0 100

Source. A. Khryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam 1899-1911 gg. (1916), vol. ii, p. 38.
N otes, a This term covered both households which became extinct and those which emigrated with no intention
o f returning. O ther pre-revolutionary studies provided specific figures for extinction (see, for example, Table
5 'V in ).
b Included households which left the village to set up their own enclosed farm {khutor).

Comparative studies o f households which had undergone ‘substantive

changes’ tackled this problem in another way presented in the following Tables
5. hi and 5. iv. The households which had been partitioned proved to be above
average in size, membership, number of horses, and wealth, while those which
had become extinct, merged, or emigrated, proved to be below average by all
these measures. The existence of a relationship between the size and wealth
o f peasant households and the incidence of ‘substantive changes’ is therefore
borne out once more.
‘Substantive changes’ were closely related to a number of basic features of
peasant economic life and social structure. What needs to be stressed is the
broad social context in which this process, of which economic determinants
formed but one aspect, took place. For example, the economic deterioration
o f a household was generally closely related to a crisis in its family structure.
84 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES

T able 5-11
‘Substantive Changes' in the Grain-Deficient Zone, 1924-1925?

Sow n lan d P ercen tag e o f hou seh o ld s

p e r h o u seh o ld
(des.) P artitio n ed T em porarily Liquidated?* M erged^ N o s u b s ta n ­ T o ta l
em igrated tive change

N il 02 5 *i 8*5 i *3 849 100

Less th an 2-1 i *5 i '4 i -5 o -7 949 100
2 1 -4 0 3*4 0-4 0-8 o -3 951 100
4 1 -6 0 5*6 02 o -5 o -3 934 100
6 1 -1 0 0 8*7 0*2 o-6 o *3 902 100
1 0 1 -1 6 0 67 — — — 933 100
16-1 o r m o re 200 — — — 800 100
T o ta l 2-5 1-2 1*4 o *5 94.4 100

Source. S ta tistic h e sk ii spravoch n ik S S S R , 1927 , (1927), p. 66.

N o tes. a T h is tab le is based o n a dynam ic survey by T s.S .U . F o r definition o f th e a re a stu d ied
see Source, p . 64.
6 See n o te o. T ab le 51 above.
c A few h o u seh o ld s which b o th p a rtitio n e d a n d m erged d u rin g 1924-5 are c o n sid ered u n d e r
th e h eading ‘m erg ed ’.

T able 5-111
Households involved in ‘Substantive Changes', Surazh Uezd,
Chernigov Gub., 1882-1911

Households In 1882
which between
1882 and 1911: Av. no. of Av. no. o f Av. arable A v.n o. o f Females
members labour land per livestock per
per units'* household per males
household (des.) household6 (%)

Partitioned 7*85 3*98 8*o6 608 86

Emigrated 5-83 2*97 5-28 3 67 106
Disintegrated 4-42 2*33 3*21 2-75 131
Showed no
‘substantive
changes’ 5*90 2-97 5*67 4*34 106

Source. G. Kushchenko, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo v surazhskom uezde (1916), Tables,

pp. 2-3, 8-9.
Notes. a A mature male worker was considered as 1 labour unit; a mature female worker
was considered as o*8 labour units, and so on.
b Livestock per household was counted in hypothetical units in a way closely similar to
counting labour units.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 85

T a b l e 5 - iv

Households involved in ‘Substantive Changes’, European

Russia 1920 and 1924°

H o u seh o ld s Y ears A v .n o . o f Per household P ercentage o f households

w h ic h : m em bers ------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------
p er fam ily L and sow n N o. o f W ith o u t W ith o u t W ith o u t
(<d es .) livestock m atu re m ale livestock ploughing
w o rkers eq u ip m e n t

P artitio n ed in 1920 8-5 6-2 i *7 24 94 146

o f w hich in 1924 46 3-2 o-8 1 1’3 38-5 434
M erged in 1920 4*6 40 ri 263 461 48-1
o f w hich in 1924 5-8 46 11 io -7 350 350
E m ig rated an d 1920 4-3 30 09 246 694 694
liq u id ated
R e tu rn e d 1924 4*3 2-4 07 16-8 72-9 729
Show ing no 1920 5*5 3 '5 ri 13*2 25 '3 3 4 ‘5
su b stan tiv e
chan g es
o f w hich in 1924 5-5 3-6 09 151 310 33*6

Source. A . K h ry ash ch ev a, G ru p p y i k la s s y v k re st'y a /istv e (1926), p. 71.

N o te . a Based o n th e T s.S .U . studies.

Widows, old couples, and men without any family {bobyVs) were frequently
mentioned in descriptions of the poor households with high extinction or
merger rates. Indeed, study of the correlations o f various factors in peasant
economic life with rates o f ‘substantive changes’ led Prokopovich to conclude
that ‘The number o f male workers proves the strongest determinant of the
ability o f peasant households to survive’.1 Households without an adult male
lacked both the male labour crucial to traditional Russian farming and the
central figure o f husband and father of the patriarchal family. On the other
hand, a high number of adult male workers also meant the existence o f a large
number of nuclear families within the household, and this increased the proba­
bility o f partitioning. Stratification by the number of mature male workers
per household proved particularly significant as exemplified in Table 5-v
on the next page.

(b) Partitioning and Newly Created Households

Partitioning involves the creation of new peasant households as a result of
splits in the membership and property of ‘maternal’ units. The process of
partitioning cannot be understood in purely economic terms (even though
progressive rates o f taxation on households might well encourage such a
process). In fact, the majority o f cases of partitioning would never have taken
1 ‘Failure to survive’ was, in fact, used by S. Prokopovich as a synonym for ‘substantive
changes’ (Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo (1924), p. 191).
86 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
place had the maximization o f production or profits been the only motive.
The very expectation of partitioning was dysfunctional for economic growth.1
Splitting scarce resources precludes advantage being taken o f a larger enter­
prise.1 The specific social structure and social dynamics of Russian peasant
society have to be taken into account to understand why, to the angry surprise
o f some economists, by partitioning, peasant households did ‘cross the
boundaries o f economic rationality’.*123 In fact what was in action here was
a somewhat different type of ‘rationality’.4

T able 5*v
‘Substantive Changes' by Number o f Male Workers, Epifari Uezd,
Tula Gub., 1899-1911“

N o. o f Percentage o f households which between 1899 and 1911:

iittuc
workers Partitioned Merged Both Em igrated Liquidated No T otal
per household merged substantive
in 1899 and changes
partitioned

Nil 28 3.9 1-6 13*9 2 78 500 100

1 68 16 0*4 8-6 4*1 786 100
2 32-8 o-6 04 3’4 1-3 615 100
3 568 o-3 o-6 21 0-4 39*8 100
4 and more 726 02 1-2 07 0-6 24*7 100
T otal 22-6 i-3 OS 64 42 65 0 100

Source. A. K hryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam 1899-1911 gg. (1916), vol. ii, p. 41.
N ote, a The strong influence o f the num ber o f male workers per household on the rates o f ‘substantive changes’
was already pointed out in the first dynamic study in 1897. N . C hem enkov, K kharakteristike krest'yanskogo
khozyaistva (1905), p. 35.

Official records o f the reasons for partitioning were vague and analysing
them would not lead us far; family quarrels between couples within the
extended family (in particular, amongst the women) were the major declared
reason for partitioning.5 In general, partitioning seems to have been accepted
by heads o f households as a necessary and natural course o f events. The
pecularities o f peasant social structure—in particular, the establishment of
1 For example, amounts of savings were withheld for long periods from use and invest­
ment ‘in case of partitioning’ and, at times, two weak horses were kept by a household
instead of the economically preferable alternative o f one o f better quality (see N . Rosnitskii,
Litso derevni (1926), p. 11).
2 The relationship between the size o f a farm and its productivity and income has been
discussed in Chapter 4, section (b), above.
3 Na agrarnom fronte (1927), no. 5, p. 14: the reason for increasing rates o f partitioning
was described there as ‘petty-bourgeois fanaticism’.
4 See Chapter 2, section (c), above.
5 See, for example, the study by the Communist Academy reported in M. Kubanin,
Klassovaya sushchnost* protsesa drobleniya krest'yanskikh khozyaistv (1929), pp. 72-5. ‘Ne
uzhilis’— ‘We did not get on well’— was the phrase frequently used when declaring reasons
for partitioning.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 87
one’s own household as a mark of maturity and independence—seem to have
been the main determining factors in the process.1
Social explanations of partitioning advanced in Chapter 2 are consistent
with the close correlation of the partitioning-rate with the average size of
household.12 Consequently, no partitioning whatsoever took place in large
numbers o f peasant households in the lower strata.3 However, the very high
rate o f partitioning observed in the wealthier strata had a considerable effect
on the peasant society as a whole. For example, from the early 1920s onwards,
no less than one-third of all households in the richer stratum underwent
partitioning during each consecutive period of three years (one formal crop-
rotation).4 It would mean also that as many as a quarter of all the households in
peasant communities were involved in partitioning during thepreceding decade.5
Information about newly created households is scarce and scattered. A
number o f studies were carried out by A. Khryashcheva and her assistants
but they were extremely limited in scope.6 The insights gained were summed
up as follows by Khryashcheva: ‘As far as the total number of newly-created
households is concerned we may generally observe, now as well as in the past,
an increase in land sown as well as in the means of production. It seems
that the moment o f partitioning coincides with the moment of greatest strain
in the original household which strives to equip the new ones—i.e. to provide
the necessary horses, equipment, and so on. The original household not only
divides existing equipment but at times buys horses and equipment or gives
money to new households for this purpose.’7 This seems also to be true o f the
immovable part o f wealth (e.g. the house, barns, etc.).
The mobilization of resources and effort called forth in the period of
partitioning could, in the short run, counterbalance the undesirable economic
effects o f pulverization of farms on over-all production. In per capita terms,
this could give a fair margin to the new households created within the richest
stratum. However, the majority of even these households started their exis­
tence as smallholders, much exposed to the harsh vicissitudes and accidents of

1 For an alternative interpretation by Kubanin see Chapter 6, section (c), below.

2 Which was related, in turn, to the number of both mature males and nuclear families
in a peasant household.
3 See Prokopovich, op. cit., p. 167. See also P. Rumyantsev, ‘K voprosu ob evolutsii
russkogo krest'yanstva’, Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozreniya (1906), p. 534.
4 See Tables 611 and 6111 in Chapter 6. In the first case, the households of the richest
stratum were defined as those possessing at least two horses. In the second case they were
defined as those showing at least 8 des. of land.
5 For some estimates of national rates of partitioning over a longer period see Chapter 7.
6 A pre-revolutionary study published as Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam
1899-1911 gg. (1916), vol. ii, as well as the post-revolutionary Ts.S.U. studies. The pre­
revolutionary studies were limited to one uezd, while the post-revolutionary ones dealt with
one year only or else recorded periods which were exceptional because o f war and famine
(1920-3).
7 ‘Rassloenie krest'yanstva v usloviyakh N.E.P.’a', Sotsialisticheskoe khozyaistvo ( i 925)»
no. 5, p. 61.
88 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
peasant life. The high rate of natural growth in the young families tended to
reduce any possible advantages in per capita terms. The socio-economic
advantages o f the wealthier peasant households were cut short by partition­
ing, with a centripetal effect which advanced levelling tendencies in peasant
societies. Simultaneously, the smallest and least able to survive among the
units newly created by partitioning disappeared through merger, extinction,
and emigration.

(c) Merger and Extinction

A considerable number o f peasant households were enmeshed in a process
o f socio-economic deterioration. In many cases, deterioration followed one of
the common disasters o f peasant life: the death o f a worker, fire, even the
death o f a horse, would be enough to destroy the precarious balance of the
small household economy. Slower processes, such as the ageing o f a childless
couple, the deterioration of land, or changes in the terms o f trade brought
similar results. The ensuing crisis could either destroy the household or be
overcome by merger.
The process o f merger amalgamated two or more different households into
one unit o f larger size and with a larger amount o f available labour, land, and
equipment. Marriage or already existing blood ties were usually involved
although some mergers involved no past, present, or future family ties.1 The
majority o f households which merged were forced to do so by economic
inadequacy and/or a breakdown in family structure; this finds expression in
a strong inverse correlation between socio-economic stratum and rate o f
merger. However, there are, under the same heading, a number o f rich house­
holds for which merger with a weaker unit brought some economic ad­
vantages.12 The correlation between wealth and rate o f merger may therefore
become positive for a small group o f the richest households, thus somewhat
limiting the levelling force of merger. The big majority o f mergers, however,
involved poor and small households; for example, the pre-revolutionary study
by Khryashcheva (see Table 5-vi) analysed the peasant households which
merged during the period. These households were categorized according to the
number o f horses owned by each (with a special category o f households recently
returned to their communities, irrespective o f the number o f horses they
possessed). The pattern o f inverse correlation between peasant wealth
(expressed in terms of the number of horses owned) and the incidence of
mergers can be clearly seen. Furthermore, the same study recorded that 33*2
per cent o f the households which merged had no mature male workers-
whatsoever; all o f them merged with households possessing at least one.3

1 Sotsialisticheskoe khozyaistvo (1925), no. 5, p. 61.

2 Especially additional family labour and land in cases where these were relatively short.
3 This additional information was provided in Khryashcheva, ‘Rassloenie krest'yanstva*,
p. 62.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 89

T a b l e 5 - vi

Households Merging in Epifari Uezd, Tula Gub., 1899-1911

Type of Percentage merging with other households

household --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Established Established Established Established Recently
with no with 1 with 2 with more returned
horses horse horses than 2 horses to village*

Established 73*3 3i *7 25*8 92 2-5 4*i

with no
horses
Established 22-5 — 100 3*3 00 92
with 1 horse
only
Recently 4*2 — — i *7 i *7 o-8
returned to
village*
Total 1000 31*7 35*8 142 4*2 141

Source. A. Khryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam 1899-1911 (1916), vol. ii,

p. 80.
Note. a Irrespective of number of horses.

Sparse data collected after the revolution seem to offer some additional
indications o f the causes o f merger.

T able 5 -vii

Households Merging in 1920 in Areas Unaffected by Famine,

1920 and 1924 a

Year Land Land Workstock No. of Land Workstock

sown sown per households sown per
per per household6 (Index) per household6
household capita (No.) capita (Index)
(<des.) (des.) (Index)

1920 i*8 0*42 0*56 100 100 100

1924 3 *i 0*54 0-76 50 120 94

Source. A. Khryashcheva, ‘Usloviya evolutsii krest'yanskogo khozyaistva’, Sotsialisticheskoe

khozyaistvo (1925), no. 5, p. 62.
Notes. a This table is based on a Ts.S.U. study of 75,000 households in 1920, repeated on
the same sample in 1924.
b Mainly horses but at times also oxen.

Clear economic gains were achieved as a result o f merger, and these were
expressed in increases in the sown area per capita—a major index o f peasant
well-being. Economic adjustment and better use of resources lay at the root
90 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
o f the decrease in the number o f horses.1 It seems fair to assume that the
perceived advantages of a more economic organization or expectations of
economic recovery were major reasons underlying the merger o f peasant
households. However, the crucial importance of the family structure o f the
household in an actual merger involves a variety of human factors and calls
for a frame o f reference much wider than the purely economic one. Merger
meant not only unification of resources but also things as personal as common
family life and acceptance of a new patriarchal authority. A solution o f the
crisis o f deterioration by merger might well be blocked, therefore, by personal
and social considerations, or merely by lack o f interested potential partners,
especially when consumption-needs exceeded the possible rise in production.
The final disappearance o f a household through extinction might well then
have followed.
The process o f extinction involved the disappearance o f a peasant house­
hold through the deaths of all its members.12 The household was legally
declared extinct (vymorochnyi), its property taken over by the village com­
mune,3 and the household struck off the rolls. The force o f extinction in pre-
industrial societies has been generally underrated by both laymen and scholars
in our generation. Its role remained well hidden, on the whole, behind the data
on over-all population growth. Yet mortality trends proved strong and erratic,
bringing about the extinction o f numerous households. Some indications of
its magnitude may, perhaps, be gained from the recorded genealogies o f the
nobility. During 900 years, the royal family o f Rurik expanded into 187 family
lineages, o f which 148—i.e. 79 per cent—became extinct. Over approximately
six centuries, 69 per cent of the family lineages o f the Russian descendants of
the Lithuanian prince, Gedymin, became extinct.4 Similar records are lacking
for the peasantry, but extinction would presumably have occurred even more
frequently.
On the present topic, it is the differentiation o f extinction rates which has
had even greater significance. The pre-revolutionary studies reported a re­
markably strong inverse correlation between wealth and rate o f extinction
of the Russian peasant households. For example, in the dynamic survey quoted
in Table 5 •viii, the figures for extinction over a period of 29 years ranged from

1 The tendency of small households to be over-burdened by investment ‘tied up’ in basic

equipment has already been discussed in Chapter 2, section (a).
2 For the diversity of legal proceedings related to the question o f how far a mature woman
could be considered a member for the purposes of inheritance see Appendix B. The death
o f all the mature members with the consequent adoption o f children by other households
could sometimes lead to similar results. Alternatively, a temporary guardian could be
appointed; the households thus remaining a legally distinct entity.
3 In some communes, which did not practise redivision o f land, the possibility o f inheri­
tance by blood relation who was not a member o f the extinct household existed, if no male
member of the household remained alive.
4 Prince P. Dolgorukov in Rodoslovnaya kniga (1857), requoted from V. Chernov,
Rozhdenie novoi Rossii (1934), p. 59.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 9 i
32-5 per cent for the poorest stratum down to 1 7 per cent for the richest. In
the poorest stratum (defined by sown area from 0 to 3 des. per household)
extinction was the most marked of all ‘substantive changes’. Indeed, more
than half o f the poorest households disappeared altogether either by extinction
or by emigration, in the course of the twenty-nine years covered. The higher
rate o f mortality (in particular, infant mortality), and the smaller size of

T able 5 -viii

‘Substantive Changes' in Surazh Uezd, Chernigov Gub.,

1882-1911 {percentage)

Sown land Percentage of households

held per
household Extinguished Emigrated Partitioned N o substantive Total
(des.) change

Less than 3 32-5 194 6*2 419 100

3-6 104 22*2 15-4 52-0 100
7-9 4*2 19*9 26* 1 49-8 100
10-12 3*5 156 35*1 45*8 100
More than 12 1-7 7-1 51*6 33*6 100

Source. G. Kushchenko, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo v surazhskom uezde (1916), p. 8.

households among the lower strata, lay at the root o f the inverse correla­
tion between wealth and extinction. Studies made o f this subject are few,
but a survey by Shcherbina at the turn of the century was widely accepted
as typical for the country in general in the first quarter of the twentieth cen­
tury.1 Birth-rates rose, to a certain extent, with a rise in peasant wealth,
though death-rates showed a much closer inverse correlation. As a result,
rates o f natural increase were closely related to the wealth o f peasant
households. The rates of natural increase in the wealthiest households in
Shcherbina’s study (see Table 5-ix) were nearly twice as high as those in
the poorest ones.
In the post-revolutionary period, the term ‘liquidation of household’
adopted by Ts.S.U. combined both extinction and emigration by persons
declaring a decision not to return. N o exact evaluation of post-revolutionary
extinction-rates is therefore possible. However, extinction seemed to remain
a frequent occurrence in peasant life and a major component o f ‘substantive
changes’.

1 The data were, in fact, republished as typical in a summary o f the big debate on
differentiation (see Chapter 3, section (c)) in Pud sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), no. 5,
pp. 121—2.
92 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES*

T a b l e 5*ix
Annual Rates o f Natural Increase in Voronezh Gub. by
Land Held per Household (per i,ooo)a

Land held Birth-rate Death-rate Natural

per household increase6
(</&?.)

Less than 5 51-8 350 16*8

5-15 538 33*2 20*6
15-25 530 286 24*4
More than 25 558 2 62 29*5

Source. F. Shcherbina, Svodnyi sbornik po 12 uezdam voronezhskoi gub. (1897), pp. 353-5,
392.
Notes. a This study is based on records drawn from 6 uezds, Voronezh Gub.
b A similar pattern was reported by N. Semenov, Statistika po zemel'noi sobstvemiosti
(1880), Appendix; also A. Shingarev, Vymirayushchaya derevnya, 1907.

(d) Migration
Rural migration consists of a variety o f distinct and interconnected processes
o f which the emigration of family units is the most relevant to our issue.
Emigration is defined as spatial mobility, i.e. movement o f residence for a
substantial period taking the emigrants out o f the community to which they
originally belonged.1 Its main relevant categories would be (i) emigration
abroad, (ii) country-to-town migration, and (iii) colonization o f new lands,
mainly over the Urals. Emigration abroad was virtually non-existent for
Russian peasants. Country-to-town migration in Russia accounted for about
300,000 villagers annually before the revolution.12The net result o f colonization
in the Asiatic parts o f Russia (i.e. the emigration less the re-immigration)
amounted to about 2 \ million peasants during the period 1905-17.3 After the
exodus of townsmen in the years 1918-21, the numbers o f villagers settling
in towns during the period o f the N.E.P. was recorded as about 400,000 per
annum,4 while colonization practically stopped. Net rural migration must have

1 This definition is based on The Determinants and Consequences o f Population Trends

095 3 )> P- 98, and seems to be more useful for understanding Russian peasantry than defini­
tions demanding, at least implicitly, a total and irreversible break o f the immigrant with
his original community. (For example, Encyclopedia o f Social Sciences, vol. 5, p. 488, or
P. H. Hansen, The Study o f Population (1955), p. 489.)
2 L. Lubny-Gertsykh (ed.), Trudy kolonizatsionnogo nauchno-issledo vateTskogo instituta
(1926), vol. ii, p. 7.
3 O zemle (1921), pp. 122 and 127; M. V ol'f and G. Mebus, Statisticheskii spravochnik
po ekonomicheskoi geografii SSSR i drugikh gosudarstv (1926), pp. 36-8; N . Turchaninov
and A. Domrachev, Itogi pereselencheskogo dvizheniya za vrem'ya s 1910 po 1914 gg.
vklyuchitelno (1916), pp. 44-5, 66-8.
4 I. Pisarev, Narodonaselenie SSSR (1962), p. 95.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 93
amounted therefore to roughly one-quarter or one-third of the natural growth
o f the total rural population before the revolution and in the early period of
the N .E.P.1
Rural migration in Russia was generated by powerful pressures peculiar
to the peasant community. The most important o f these pressures were land
shortage, underemployment, and the character of peasant farming and social
structure. At the beginning of the century, in conditions o f nearly stagnant
agricultural technology and small capital investment, ‘surplus’ labour and
‘surplus’ population12 were estimated to be one-quarter to two-fifths o f the
total population. (The surplus was said by Vorontsov to be 5 million out of
24 million mature male workers in European Russia in 1897; to amount to
23 million o f ‘labour forces’ of European Russia in the calculations of a Com­
mittee o f Inquiry published in 1903, and 26 million out o f 62 million rural
inhabitants in 35 gub. of European Russia, as estimated by F. Nefedov in
1907.)3 Furthermore, it was rapidly increasing. In spite o f the heavy losses
during the wars between 1914 and 1921 official evaluation of the‘rural labour
surplus’ put it at 38-50 per cent o f the total in 1923 in the four main regions
o f European Russia.4 The huge permanent ‘surplus o f labour’, to which the
seasonal excess characteristic of traditional Russian agriculture should be
added, suggests the degree o f underemployment and poverty, and the strength
o f the resulting migratory pressures.
Furthermore, smallholding farming, with its limited resources, mono­
culture, and primitive equipment, was particularly subject to the influences
both o f general economic fluctuations and of individual accidents. Livestock
was the first element to be affected by any crisis and this limited chances of
recovery. ‘Livestock is expensive; we sold it in the hungry years and there­
fore we have to emigrate’5—this explanation must have held true for many
Russian peasants. For the majority o f peasant households, the frequent
crisis meant immediate restrictions on consumption. When particularly
strong, crises developed rapidly into disasters involving both starvation

1 Our rough estimate is based on a reported annual growth o f the urban population o f
2*7 per cent from 1897 to 1917 and, after the decline during the civil war, o f as much as
5 per cent during the period 1923-6 (Pisarev, op. cit., pp. 94-5). We have taken into account
the net colonization east of the Urals and assumed urban natural growth to be 1-2 per cent
before and 1-5 per cent after the revolution (this is based on figures given by A. N . Tatarchuk,
TsentraVno-chemozemnaya oblast' (1929), p. 10, and F. Lorimer, The Population o f the
Soviet Union (1946), pp. 31-3).
2 ‘Relative shortage o f land’ as used by Kaufman would possibly express this concept
better. For a fuller discussion o f the problems see D . Warriner, Economics o f Peasant Farm­
ing (1964).
3 Lubny-Gertsykh, op. cit., pp. 6-7. The First World War seems to have validated these
somewhat arbitrary estimates. N o significant drop in land sown or production was reported
until 1916 and 1916-17 respectively— in spite o f the large-scale mobilization o f men and
horses carried out in rural areas.
4 Lubny-Gertsykh, op. cit., p. 549.
* L. Mints, Otkhod krest'yanskogo naseleniya na zarabotki v SSSR (1925), P- 13-
94 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’
and the destruction o f the means o f recovery, followed by emigration of the
survivors.1
The peculiarities o f peasant social structure and, in particular, o f the peasant
family, strongly influenced the character o f peasant emigration. A quest for
independence and prestige in the situation o f a typical peasant family led to
emigration o f the young in particular.2 Data are lacking to prove this point
conclusively but impressionistic evidence and comparative considerations
seem to suggest that young peasants were the major group o f migrants. The
magnitude o f the problem is indicated by the size o f the rural population
between the ages o f seventeen and twenty-four; in Russia during the early
period o f the N.E.P. these amounted to about six million.3 On the other hand,
the peasant social structure provided powerful ties which were opposed to and
at times reversed migratory trends. The cultural peculiarities o f the peasants’
values and traditional way o f life joined forces, for its weaker members, with
the advantages o f living in a peasant household and a commune. Egalitarian
inheritance and family property limited migration4 and provided ties which
lasted long after some had left their villages. A survey o f printers in Moscow,
conducted on the eve o f the First World War, showed that 46 per cent o f them
were still engaged in some form o f farm work—generally seasonal work in
their original households.5 This proportion would surely be higher in less
skilled trades and smaller townships.
In the case o f emigration, the impact of factors external to the peasant com­
munity is more manifest than with other ‘substantive changes’. The strength
o f factors external to village life can be seen by the impact o f wage levels,
unemployment, and the availability o f land for colonization on the directions
and rates o f migration from the villages.6 Yet, over most o f the period, the
impact o f internal factors on the emigration o f peasant families seems to have
been decisive. This is reflected in a close inverse correlation between wealth
and rates o f emigration. Here it is the differential rates rather than the total
figures which are significant. Rates o f emigration correlate inversely with the
wealth of peasant households. Basic social and economic indices relating to
migrating households show them as ranking between households which merged
1 For example, the famine o f 1921 led to a decline o f 21 per cent in the rural population
of the areas affected, and a decline o f between 31 and 37 per cent in sown areas in the
following year (V. Den, Kurs ekonomicheskoigeografii (1925), p. 209). Declining population
here includes both deaths by starvation and large-scale emigration.
2 Accompanied partly, no doubt, by dreams of saving enough ultimately to come back
to their own communities as proper heads of households.
3 Estimated on the basis o f data in Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii po SSSR 1918-
1923 gg • (1924), PP- 6-17, 41-2.
4 See Appendix A below and H. Habakkuk in the Journal of Economic History, vol. xv,
no. 1, p. 7.
5 Quoted from G. T. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime (1932),
p. 249.
6 Robinson, op. cit., p. 250; Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii po seVskomu
khozyaistvu Rossii (1914), pp. 500-11; Mints, op. cit., pp. 40-2.
 ‘SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES’ 95
or became extinct and those which did not undergo substantive changes (see
Tables 5-111 and 5-iv).
One possible exception, limited to the richest households, was revealed by
the dynamic studies. In some cases, the correlation between wealth and rates
o f emigration were positive in the richest stratum, in a way similar to that
already described in the discussion of merger. This phenomenon was inter­
preted as country-to-town emigration of capital and entrepreneurs. How­
ever, this correlation did not always appear and seems to have reflected at
times an indiscriminate lumping together of actual rich emigrants with house­
holds which were moving to consolidated farms (khutora) o f their own in
near-by neighbourhoods.1 When apparent, this phenomenon would reinforce
the levelling impact o f ‘substantive changes’.
Data are lacking to permit us to evaluate fully the impact of immigration
on socio-economic mobility. However, what evidence there is, points to marked
similarities between emigrants and immigrants in terms o f the indices of
peasant wealth.2 This would seem to justify, in discussion o f our issue,
standardized treatment of migration as surplus of emigration over immigration
(whether positive or negative).
1 For a discussion see A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), p. 77.
2 For example. Table 5*iv above.
 6
MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY:
TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL

. . . for reality is richer than any dogma.

V. L E N IN

(a) The Residual Component o f Peasant Household M obility

T h e preceding discussion has provided an explanation o f a number o f causes
o f the multidirectional mobility among peasant households which underlies
the differentiation-processes observable in peasant communities and peasant
society.1Centrifugal mobility can be explained by the tendency for cumulation
o f economic advantages and disadvantages to occur among peasant households
(as outlined in Chapter 3, section (b)). Centripetal mobility, which goes on at
the same time, would have its origin in the redivision of the land administered
by the communes and in the different rates o f partitioning and merger evident
in the various economic strata (as explained in Chapter 4, section (d), and
Chapter 5, section (a)). The total differentiation-process in a peasant society
will be the net sum o f the centrifugal and centripetal terms, the latter being
reinforced by the ‘semi-centripetal’ impact o f particularly intensive emigration
and household extinction in the poorest strata (discussed in Chapter 5, section
(a)). This explanation posits furthermore successive participation o f a signifi­
cant number o f peasant households in opposing trends o f mobility, i.e. that
specific type o f multidirectional mobility termed cyclical mobility.2
The above analysis can be presented as an explanatory model o f peasant
socio-economic mobility; in fact, it was put forward in this form by A.
Khryashcheva.3 Such a model certainly accounts for a significant proportion
o f the actual socio-economic mobility. The question arises: is this model
exhaustive o f all the major determinants involved—and, consequently, does
it provide an adequate explanation o f the main part o f socio-economic
mobility processes examined in the Russian dynamic studies?
An answer to this question emerges from the methods o f analysis and
1 For definitions o f the types o f mobility analysed and discussion o f the relationship
between differentation-processes and the mobility o f peasant households see Chapter 4,
sections (a) and (b) (especially Figure u).
2 A discussion and a diagram showing the factors involved and the forms o f peasant
household mobility is given in Chapter 6, section (e) (especially Figure ni).
3 See below. Chapter 6, section (c).
 CYCLICAL MOBILITY: EXPLANATORY MODEL 97
presentation adopted by G. Kushchenko and A. Khryashcheva for dynamic
studies on the eve o f the First World War.1 These studies departed from the
ex post facto analysis, which had limited itself to collecting data on households
still in existence at a study’s closing date; they provided full records of the
changing socio-economic position o f all the peasant households in existence
at the starting date. In subsequent processing, the records o f all households
which had undergone ‘substantive changes’ were set apart, to be presented
under a separate heading; only the residuum—the ‘persistent’ peasant house­
holds which had not undergone ‘substantive changes’ during the period under
study—was presented in dynamic study form. Since 1920 Ts.S.U. adopted
the methods o f analysis and presentation introduced by Khryashcheva and
Kushchenko and used them on large-scale censuses of selected representa­
tive villages. These particular censuses (dinamicheskie perepisi) were taken
annually for the specific purpose o f dynamic studies.2
Kushchenko’s study and two of the largest Ts.S.U. studies, which follow, may
serve as a fair example both o f the results achieved and o f the Khryashcheva-
Kushchenko method. In each stratum, households which had undergone ‘sub­
stantive changes’ are presented under a separate heading. The sum total of the
households in each stratum which had not undergone ‘substantive changes’ is
divided up in accordance with their position at the end-point o f the process. The
two categories o f households (i.e. those which had and had not undergone‘sub­
stantive changes’) together make up the total (100 per cent). Apart from the
clear separating-out o f ‘substantive changes’ and their full incorporation in
the tabulation, the presentation closely resembles that in the dynamic study o f
Vyazma uezd discussed above.3 As has already been stated, all the Russian
dynamic studies displayed essentially the same basic processes and the same
patterns o f correlation, which supports the notion o f the existence o f extensive
and persistent multidirectional mobility.4 The new methods of analysis and
presentation used here permit us, however, to reach an additional conclusion
about the processes involved. Centripetal mobility did not, in fact, disappear
from samples from which the records of all the households undergoing
‘substantive changes’ had been removed. The residuum o f centripetal mobility
cannot be explained merely by land-redivisions being made by peasant com­
munes, since, as well as in Russia, it proved significant in Belorussia where
such land-redivisions were almost unknowns We must conclude, therefore,
that though both ‘substantive changes’ and commune-administered land re-
divisions certainly contributed to the centripetal mobility found among
peasant households, these cannot alone account for all o f it.
1 This history of dynamic studies is discussed in Chapter 4, section (c), above.
2 Khryashcheva was, in fact, appointed to create and to head the Dynamic Studies
Section o f Ts.S.U. and was removed from her position only in 1928.
3 See Table 4 V11.
4 See Chapter 3, sections (c) and (d).
5 See Table 7-1.
 o
•S ' S
_
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 CYCLICAL MOBILITY: EXPLANATORY MODEL ioi

In part, this residual centripetal mobility could be the result o f statistical

bias resulting from the removal from the sample of the data of households
which had undergone ‘substantive changes’. Those cases o f the worsening of
a poor household’s position which lead to its disappearance ultimately find
registration only under the rubric ‘substantive changes’, while cases of poor
households which ascend do not fail to appear in the record. Similarly, the
further ascent o f rich households tends to be tempered by partitioning (which
makes them disappear from the records), while descending movements do get
recorded. It should, moreover, be noted that further ascent on the part of
households in the highest stratum (e.g. those with ‘more than 12 desyatinas o f
sown area’) fails to find any statistical expression whatever. All the same,
quantitative comparisons of households undergoing ‘substantive changes’
and o f the possible results o f their elimination with the extent of the residual
centripetal mobility recorded in the dynamic studies (in particular in the 1924-5
study, which was the largest in scope) make it clear that it is impossible to
explain the phenomenon away as merely the product of statistical bias.1 The
existence o f another real and major component of mobility must therefore be
accepted; it will be referred to as the residual component of peasant house­
holds’ mobility. An explanation o f the causes of the appearance of this residual
component will have to be found and incorporated in any satisfactory general
model o f the mobility o f peasant households.
During the first quarter o f the twentieth century a group of Russian scholars
undertook the ambitious task of explaining both the residual component of
the mobility o f peasant households and the phenomenon of multidirectional
mobility as a whole, within a unified conceptual framework which could be
labelled ‘biological determinism’.

(b) Biological Determinism

In our discussion o f peasant social structure, a basic duality in the character
o f the peasant household was pointed out. The peasant household operates
both as a family unit and as a production unit; it is therefore influenced by
both biological and economic factors. The majority o f Russian students o f the
peasantry can correspondingly be divided into two diametrically opposed
groups—biological and economic determinists. The prevailing mode of
analysis was ‘monistic’; an explanation of peasant social dynamics was sought
by tracing them to a single major determinant, regarded as a prime mover.
Among each o f these groups, declarations are, it is true, to be found to the
effect that their explanatory model is to be considered only as an analytical
‘ideal type’— one designed to clarify the essential processes, whilst capable of
accepting factors and ‘constraints’ deriving from outside the analytical scheme.
1 Thus, for example, in Table 6111, even if we classify as descending all the households in
Strata A and B which merged, which became extinct, or which emigrated, the centripetal
household-mobility will still remain evident.
102 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
Yet, after this point had been made, actual studies tended to pursue the single
chosen factor and to turn, at least de fa cto , into a purely monistic analysis.
Only a few o f the Russian scholars attempted a consistent multifactorial
analysis, in which the various factors and their interaction were analysed
without some rigidly preconceived conception o f their importance and
hierarchical ordering.
The Organization-and-Production School (or Neo-Populists)1 represented
the hard core o f the Russian ‘biological determinists’ in our period. The
‘biological determinists’ seized upon the demographic changes in peasant
families as the basic determinant of the over-all development o f peasant house­
holds. The ‘ideal type’ o f household, within this analytical framework, was
assumed to meet the essential consumption-needs o f its members through its
own family labour, employed on the farm. Consequently the impacts o f the
market and the price-mechanism (via commodities and wage-labour) were
discounted or minimized, and it was held that an altogether different economic
rationality had to be accepted in assessing economic alternatives. The develop­
ment o f the economy o f the peasant household and the economic choices made
were seen as determined by the consumption-needs o f the family and by its
available labour. Given the traditional peasant cultural framework, the
biological cycle o f peasant family life—birth, maturity, marriage, growth of
children, ageing, and death—would lead to regular economic changes, cyclical
in character. In a peasant household, ‘those working mete (sorazmeryayut)
their production to the needs o f the consumers’.2 For example, increases in
the consumption-needs of a household due to the growth o f children result
in additional effort by those working and in the intensity o f their attempts
to acquire, by buying or renting, more land, livestock, and equipment. It was
argued, then, that peasant households’ mobility reflected the biological cycle
o f the growth and decline o f family units.
A full explanation of multidirectional mobility (including the residual
component) was proposed on the eve o f the revolution by Chayanov.3 The
economic development o f the peasant household was, in Chayanov’s view,
determined by (and could be operationally defined by) the changes in the
consumer/worker4 ratio. The consumer/worker ratio in a hypothetical
1 See Chapter 3, sections (a), (b), and (c). Among the most prominent members o f this
group were A. Chayanov, A. Chelintsev, N . Makarov, Zh. Studenskii, and N . Svavitskii,
while N . Oganovskii and A. Peshekhonov held closely similar views.
2 A. Chayanov, Voprosy organizatsii sel'skogo k/iozyaistva (1912), pp. 5-6. This analysis
was, in fact, a further development o f views already advanced by A. Vasil'chakov, Sel'skii
byt i sel'skoe khozyaistvo v Rossii (1881), pp. 37-40, and carried over by the populist tradi­
tion.
3 Chayanov, op. cit., pp. 5-6; also A. Chayanov, Ocherkipo teorii trudovogo khozyaistva
(1913), part ii. These views were upheld by A. Chelintsev in his Opyt izucheniya organizatsii
krest'yanskogo khozyaistva (1919).
4 The word ‘worker* is used here in the sense o f one who works, not necessarily as a
wage-worker (rabotnik and not rabochyi), i.e. including those who work in their own house­
holds, in fact, the most important group here.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 103
family into which a live child was born every three years is described in
Table 6-iv following.
The biological growth o f the young peasant family would thus have caused
a rise in the consumer/worker ratio and in ‘consumption pressure’. This
would lead to an increase in the intensity o f labour (i.e. ‘self-exploitation’
among its working members) and the pulling-in (podtyazhka) of further factors
o f production by renting land, borrowing, or saving). Such processes would
be recorded as a rise in the economic position of the household. At a given
stage, the coming to working age o f additional workers would ease the
consumption pressure (in consumer/worker terms) and lead to a lowering of
the drive for economic expansion. At the same time, such a development
generated partitioning and heralded possible deterioration and the beginning
o f new cycles, with young families setting off to make a start on new small
farms. Moreover, ‘biological’ deterioration of some o f the households (e.g.
the ageing o f a childless couple or the emergence of a consumption pressure
which could not be met because of, say, the death of the main worker) would
lead to their disappearance through extinction, merger, or, in some cases,
emigration.
The biological cycle of peasant family life would explain, therefore, both
the ‘residual component’ of peasant households’ mobility and ‘substantive
changes’. The other known components o f the mobility were explained by
supporters o f this view within the same conceptual framework. Illustration of
‘biological’ motivation for a redivision of land by a commune could be found
easily enough—after all, the land was, on the whole, redivided in accordance
with changes in the numbers o f consumers or workers.1 Furthermore, the very
institutionalization o f redivision o f land by communes was understood in
‘biological’ terms as being a response to the increasing pressure o f natural
growth and rising density of peasant population where land supply was
limited.2 Even the centrifugal mobility and polarizing trends recorded were
viewed by some members of the group in the same way: ‘Where productivity
in agriculture is rising, family developments and biological trends may be
sufficient to explain polarization in agriculture by the mechanism o f the
biological process alone.’3
On a broad plane and in terms of long-range analysis, the supporters o f
‘biological determinism’ adopted what would today be called an ‘equilibrium
model’ o f social dynamics.4 Counteracting forces were assumed to be generated
1 See Chapter 4, section (b).
2 See, for example, A . Kaufman in Russkaya obshchina vprotsese eyo zarozhdeniya i rosta
(1908). The rise in the density o f population was widely accepted at the beginning o f the
century as the major determinant of changes in social structure (e.g. E. Durkheim, in his
The Division o f Labour in Society, saw the development from a society o f ‘mechanical
solidarity’ to one of ‘organic solidarity’ in these terms).
3 N. Makarov in Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), no. 6-7, p. 134.
4 In terms o f the history o f sociological thought, these views were close to nineteenth-
century ‘organicism* and, to today’s ‘functionalism’.
 R tf

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 CYCLICAL MOBILITY: EXPLANATORY MODEL 105
by any movement away from the point o f stability. Such a conception has
implicit in it a tendency to anticipate levelling and a high degree o f stability
in the system. That assumptions of a tendency towards social equilibrium and
levelling in peasant societies were associated with the doctrines o f biological
determinism was made explicit, as early as the beginning o f the century, by
A. Peshekhonov: ‘On the one hand, in every peasant household, there appears
a tendency to balance the production forces and the consumption needs o f its
membership with the size and organization o f the economic enterprise; on the
other hand, all peasant households tend to some mean or average family
size. This is typical o f the pattern o f social relationships known as the
peasantry.’*1
Chayanov’s general theory o f peasant economy and mobility was empirically
validated— or at least illustrated—by intensive budget studies of 101 peasant
households in Starobel'sk uezd published in 1915.

T a b le 6 -v

Consumption and Production by Type o f Household and Area Sown, Starobel'sk

Uezd, Khar'kov Gub., 1910
A. Consumer! Worker Ratio

S tra tu m S ow n a rea % o f young Av. no. o f Av. no. o f Av. no. o f C o n su m er/
p e r h o u se­ fam ilies in m em bers per ‘consum ing ‘w orking w o rker ra tio
h o ld {d es.) stratum ® household u n its’ u n its’

A N il 364 4*73 3-22 2-55 1-29

B Less th a n 3 764 4*35 2-88 218 1-23
C 3 - 7*5 385 6-28 413 2-82 1-46
D 7-6-15 40 9*37 609 4*34 1-41
E M o re th a n 15 0 0 11 *41 7*39 5*25 1-41
A ll stra ta 0 -1 5 + 27-7 7-66 501 3*57 1-40

B. Annual Consumption per Consumer and Production per Worker (value in

roubles)

In d ic a to r H o u seh o ld s w ith consu m er/w o rk er ra tio o f

1-00-1-15 1-16-1-30 1-31-1-45 1-46-1-60 i - 6 ia n d a b o v e

C o n su m p tio n 6730 78-70 87-50 85-20 81-70

p e r co n su m er
P ro d u c tio n 6810 9900 118-30 128-90 156-40
p er w o rk er

S ource. A C h ay an o v , B y u d zh e ty krest'yart sta ro b e l'sk o g o u ezd a (1915), p p . 13, 18, 39.

N o te . a ‘Y o u n g families* w ere defined as those households w hich consisted o f one m arried couple
(n u clear fam ily) w ith no ch ildren o ld er th an seventeen (Source, pp . 4, 6).

1 A . Peshekhonov, ‘Teoriya i praktika krest'yanskogo khozyaistva*, Russkoe bogatstvo

(1902), no. 9, P- 193 -
106 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
The clear inverse correlation between the percentage o f young families in
a stratum and the average sown area1 does seem to point to the biological
cycle o f peasant family life as a major determinant o f economic development.
The varying consumer/worker ratios in different strata can be interpreted
similarly. Part B o f the Table, moreover, indicates a remarkably stable per
capita consumption-level in different types of peasant households, or at least
o f the four wealthier ones, while production per worker strongly correlates
with the consumer/worker ratio. These figures were treated as proof o f the
theory that the consumer/worker ratio determines the degree o f ‘self­
exploitation’ o f family labour as well as households’ pulling-in ( podtyazhka)
o f additional land to guarantee the level o f consumption. This correlation,
if proved to be general, would also go to support the model o f peasant
household-mobility determined by the life-histories o f typical peasant families
outlined in Table 6-iv.
However, Chayanov’s evidence was strongly challenged by scholars op­
posed to his theoretical stand. On the empirical level, this led to statistical
scrutiny o f the correlations between the factors at work in a peasant economy
examined in various studies. Prokopovich based his attack on Chayanov on
a study o f the correlation coefficients between the gross incomes o f peasant
households and various factors o f production to be found in five major pre­
revolutionary budget studies (including Chayanov’s own study o f Starobel'sk
uezd).12 Coefficients o f correlation between gross income and factors like
(i) size o f land-holding, (ii) land used, (iii) land sown, (iv) value o f plant, and
(v) value o f livestock proved to be clearly significant—they varied between
0 50 and 0 93 (land sown scored highest—between 0 7 3 and 0-93). The co­
efficients o f correlation o f gross income with (vi) number o f workers and
(vii) number o f consumers ranged from 0*41 to 0*63 and from 0*40 to 0-64
respectively. The coefficient o f correlation of gross income with (viii) con­
sumer/worker ratios was negligible (between 0 02 and —o* 10) in all five studies.
Prokopovich therefore ended up totally rejecting Chayanov’s view that the
pattern o f a peasant household’s economy was determined by the pressure of
consumption needs.3
Prokopovich’s analysis is liable, however, to a number o f serious objections.
His estimates o f gross income did not include ‘off-farm’ income which could
have been crucial for many households.4 The very concept o f ‘gross income’
might well be misleading as a measure o f the real economic performance of

1 The landless are treated as a qualitatively different group from the various farming
strata.
2 S. Prokopovich, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo (1924), pp. 32-3. These studies were based
on (i) 1907: Vel'sk uezd, Vologda gub.\ (ii) 1910: Kadnikov uezdy Vologda gub. \ (iii) 1909-
12: Novgorod gub.\ (iv) 1910: Tambov gub. \ (v) 1910: Starobel'sk uezd, Khar'kov gub.
3 See ibid., p. 36.
4 See ibid., p. 34. We shall not discuss here the more general methodological issue o f the
use o f correlations as proofs of causality.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 107
peasant households. The use of an index of income per household (and not
per capita) casts further doubts, in view of the correlation o f household size
and wealth which we have seen. Finally, Prokopovich, in his study, eliminated
the effects in terms o f adjustments in holdings of land and equipment made
by peasants (podtyazhka) which, in Chayanov’s view, would necessarily have
correlated with increases in ‘self-exploitation’, given increasing consumption-
pressure in peasant households.1
Another attempt to disprove Chayanov’s views empirically was made by
G. Raevich in a series of articles published in 1925 and 1926.2 Raevich analysed
elements o f a number o f pre-revolutionary budget studies relevant to Chaya­
nov’s theory and pointed out that, firstly, contrary to Chayanov’s beliefs,
large differences are to be found in the consumption-levels of different peasant
strata as recorded in studies o f Volokolamsk and Vologda uezds.3 He proved,
furthermore that, even in Chayanov’s study o f Starobel'sk uezd, large
differences in consumption-levels appear if the households are classified as
‘capitalist’, ‘independent’, and ‘proletarian’, using a dual index o f land sown
and wage-work hired or offered.4 Secondly, he showed that the alleged ten­
dency for total sown area and area o f land rented to be adjusted to family size
was far from clear in the budget studies of Fergana gub. and Tambov gub.5
Thirdly, Raevich pointed out that, in the thorough budget-studies made of
Penza gub., no proof of a correlation between the consumer/worker ratio and
the level o f ‘self-exploitation’ o f peasant labour had been found at all.6 This
criticism o f Raevich’s was far from totally demolishing Chayanov’s theory,
but the doubts he cast were serious—and were never answered by Chayanov
or his friends. As a matter o f fact, during the decade and a half following 1912,
which was marked by intensive debate and new evidence becoming available,
Chayanov’s own views underwent change. He came to stress increasingly, the
importance o f family labour (rather than consumption-needs) as the major
determinant o f peasant economic action and to accept the autonomous
significance o f capital on both the micro- and macro-economic levels in actual
analysis o f the peasant economy.7 However, Chayanov seems to have retained
the essence o f his views about the crucial influence o f ‘biological’ factors on
the Russian peasant economy o f this period and, more important, for us here,
fully restated in his later studies his initial explanation o f peasant socio­
economic mobility.8
The empirical evidence gathered in the pre-revolutionary budget studies
1 For a discussion o f this point see G. Raevich in Na agrarnom fronte (1925), nos. 11-12,
p. 26.
2 Na agrarnom fronte (1925), nos. 11-12; (1926), nos 1 and 3.
3 Ibid. (1926), no. 3, PP- 6-7. 4 Ibid. (1926), no. 3, p. 7.
5 Ibid. (1926), no. 1, pp. 12-14 and 17-19.
6 Ibid. (1925), nos. 11-12, pp. 27-9.
7 A. Chayanov, The Theory o f Peasant Economy (1966) (originally published in German
and then in Russian in the mid 1920s).
8 Ibid., pp. 53- 69.
 108 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
remains far from conclusive as far as validation or invalidation o f Chayanov’s
theory o f mobility is concerned. The majority o f budget studies—as well as
the extensive data collected in the countryside for purposes other than budget
studies (e.g. censuses and dynamic studies)—gathered since 1916 did not offer
adequate information for drawing conclusions about the problem. The few
post-revolutionary budget studies which did attempt to highlight this problem
seemed to support Prokopovich’s and Raevich’s criticisms, in that no con­
sistent relationships were discovered between consumer/worker ratios and
estimated incomes, labour intensities, etc.1 However, these post-revolutionary
studies were few in number and all were carried out by scholars politically
opposed to Chayanov in the in-fighting over the rural policies, which could
have influenced the results. Only further studies and further sophistication o f
methods could establish the validity o f Chayanov’s theory. Yet by the time
o f collectivization, even, no practical statistical method for validation, accept­
able to all the major participants in the debate, had been arrived at.
The ambiguity o f the available empirical evidence is particularly serious in
view o f the seriousness o f the analytical misgivings raised by Chayanov’s
basic conceptual framework. To begin with, ‘biological determinism’ was
severely criticized at the time by many Russian economists, who claimed that
the penetration o f market relations into peasant life which had taken place
made even the use o f the concept o f an ‘ideal type’ of a peasant household,
free from market influences, unrealistic and misleading.12 We may add to this,
methodological doubts (even stronger in our generation) about equilibrium
models3which have proved, on the whole, to be o f doubtful value for analysing
structural change. Equilibrium models seem to have particular drawbacks for
analysing peasant societies developing under the pressure o f alien and town-
centred economic and political influences.4
An important attempt to overcome what seemed to be inherent weaknesses
o f biological determinism for analysing both structural change in a peasant
society and the changing impact on it o f a market economy was made by
N. Makarov, one o f the outstanding members o f the Neo-Populist group.
The analysis developed by him in fact departs from strict biological determin­
ism in the direction o f a broader multifactorial and historical analysis o f
peasant society.5 Makarov saw the history o f peasant societies as a struggle

1 For example, see M. Sulkovskii, Klassovye gruppy iproizvodstvennye tipy krest'yanskikh

khozyaistv (1930), pp. 35, 39, 62, 83.
2 See, for example, S. Prokopovich, op. cit., pp. 193-244, or the dispute in Puti sel'skogo
khozyaistva (1927), nos. 4-9.
3 For a discussion of this point see J. Rex, Key Problems o f Sociological Theory (1961),
chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 5.
4 For a discussion of this see G. Boeke, Economics and Economic Policy o f Dual Societies
as Exemplified by Indonesia (1953), and G. Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped
Regions (1957).
5 Makarov’s studies no doubt had an effect on the developments, discussed above, which
took place in Chayanov’s views in the 1920s.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 109

between biological and economic ‘principles’ (nachala) in which the first is

gradually superseded by the second. In the first volume o f his major work,
Makarov began a study o f a variety of rural communities in Russia, ranging
from nomadic (non-Russian) tribesmen to typical peasant settlements.1 He
attempted, on the basis of these comparative studies, to reach conclusions
about typical stages in the evolution of the social structure o f a peasantry and
to analyse out the determinants of that evolution. His highly illuminating
work remained, however, unfinished; its second volume was never published.
The validity o f ‘biological determinist’ theories and the degree of influence
o f peasant life-cycles on household mobility must remain, for the time being,
unresolved. They can be elucidated only by further studies based on compar­
able data. However, to'turn to our basic concern, even if we accept that
biological life-cycles affected peasant mobility, the scale o f the residual com­
ponent o f household mobility recorded does not seem to be fully explicable
in these terms. For example, in the Ts.S.U. dynamic study o f 1924-5 (Table
6 -hi above) the residual component o f mobility affected 34-3 per cent of
peasant households, which had moved from one arbitrarily-defined socio­
economic stratum to another within a year. Similar rates o f change were
reported for 1925-6.12 The annual change in the consumer/worker ratio (see
Table 6 -iv above) could not possibly account for a movement o f such size.
Neither can some catastrophe or external change be accepted as an explanation
for such a change in this relatively peaceful period of Russian rural history.3
We must therefore conclude that, even were all the theories and models o f the
‘biological determinists’ validated, such an explanation could not be regarded
as adequate for explaining the whole o f the ‘residual component’ o f peasant
households’ mobility—or, at least, of that recorded in the Ts.S.U. dynamic
studies.4

(c) Economic Determinism and Multifactorial Analysis

An important and politically most influential group o f Russian scholars
viewed the mobility o f peasant households in terms o f the determinism of
a market economy.5 A dominant tendency to maximize profits tended, they
believed, to make peasant households act essentially like capitalist enterprises.
Polarization and centrifugal mobility as the result o f the cumulation of

1 N . Makarov, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo i ego evolyutsiya (1920). The author’s theoretical

views are set out in Part 1 of vol. i.
2 See below, Table 71.
3 ‘Peaceful’ in the sense o f a lack o f sharp changes either in state interference or in agri­
cultural yields (see Chapter 7, section (b), below). A drought and a drop in yields reported in
the summer of 1924 in the Volga basin and the south-east could have had some influence in
1924-5 but not in 1925-6.
4 This does not, o f course, exclude the possibility that the factors stressed by ‘biological
determinists’ played a crucial part during the earlier periods of Russian rural history.
5 Especially the orthodox Marxist and Neo-Classical economists. See Introduction and
Chapter 3, sections (a) and (c).
I 10 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
economic advantages (especially the accumulation of capital) and disadvan­
tages were therefore expected and easily enough explained.1 A slow rate of
polarization could be related to the slowness of capital accumulation in Rus­
sian agriculture, resulting from the imposition of taxes and rents and from
unfavourable terms of urban/rural trade. Major non-economic events like the
1917-18 revolution,2the wars between 1914 and 1921, and the famine o f 1920-1
would be the reasons for downward aggregate shifts and some possible
levelling in peasant communities.3 However, the persistent appearance of
centripetal trends in dynamic studies put the explanatory value o f economic
determinism in doubt and generated pressure on its adherents to provide
answers better than expressions of scepticism or sheer annoyance with data
which ‘didn’t fit’.4
In 1927 M. Kubanin offered an ‘orthodox Marxist’ interpretation of
partitioning which, in spite of its limited heuristic value, is well worth review­
ing as an illuminating example of the essentially deductive and monistic
thought typical o f the period.5 In this analysis, the relationship o f the head of
the household to its junior members was regarded as one of capitalist ex­
ploitation, generating class conflict. Partitioning was therefore a split caused
by a class conflict between the head of the household and its exploited
members, mainly over off-farm earnings.6 Consequently, partitioning was
seen as a resultant of the operation o f economic factors and as only
‘secondary in importance’.7 The rapid disappearance o f partitioning based on
equal sharing between the male members o f each household was predicted
as being necessary for capitalist accumulation.
Kubanin’s theory was strongly supported by the Agricultural Section o f
the Communist Academy.8 However, the only empirical proof presented by
Kubanin consisted o f correlations for a few districts between rates o f off-farm
earnings and rates o f partitioning. This was far from satisfactory evidence for
proving a claim which ran counter to a very substantial body o f contrary
evidence about peasants’ family-property relations and to reports on the
subjective attitudes o f heads o f households to partitioning.9 (After all, it
would take some stretching o f concepts to adopt a picture o f capitalist ex­
ploitation which culminates in capitalists dividing their property between the
1 See Chapter 4, sections (b) and (d).
2 See Chapter 8, sections (a), (b), and (c).
3 See Chapter 2, section (b).
4 See, for example, Kondratev’s cryptic dismissals o f cyclical mobility as extraordinary
and temporary, referred to in Chapter (4), section (c).
5 M. Kubanin, Klassovaya sushchnost' protsessa drobleniya krest'yanskikh khozyaistv
(1929), which followed a number o f articles published in Na agrarnom fronte in 1927-8.
6 Kubanin followed, in fact, the tradition established by Gurviche: see Chapter 3, section
(c), above.
7 See the Introduction by L. Kritsman; Kubanin, op. cit., pp. 2-41. See also the speech
o f G. Gordeev, who supported Kubanin’s theory, in Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1926), no. 8.
8 See L. Kritsman’s introduction to Kubanin, op. cit.
9 See Chapter 2, section (a) and Appendix B, sections (a), (b), and (c).
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL ill
proletarians.) Furthermore, Kubanin’s own operationalization seems to have
proved it to be invalid. He—quite reasonably—came to the conclusion that
dominant intra-family exploitation, class conflict, and profit-motivation would
necessarily lead to a decrease in rates of partitioning. Yet, from all the evidence
available, rates of partitioning seem preponderantly to have shown increases
from the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 till the beginning of mass-
collectivization in 1929.1 Finally, Kubanin did not even attempt to explain
the ‘residual component’ of peasant households’ mobility. Nor was such an
attempt made by any others in his ideological camp.
Strict economic determinism failed to produce a coherent theory of peasant
mobility able to explain its multidirectional nature. This may possibly explain
a number o f attempts at multifactorial analysis made by scholars who started
from a basis of economic determinism of some kind (e.g. Marxist or Neo-
Classical economics), but gradually moved away under the pressure of the
evidence from the dynamic studies.2 Of these theories, by far the most interest­
ing was A. Khryashcheva’s analysis.
Khryashcheva advanced an explanatory model of cyclical mobility in terms
of ‘the dual character of the evolution of peasant households: on the one hand,
purely economic processes and, on the other, essentially non-economically
determined “ substantive changes”. These two kinds of evolution were inter­
related and were dependent one upon the other, but they had opposite
characteristics. The results of economic development over many years were
destroyed by partition. Economic deterioration often came to an end with the
liquidation or emigration of a household. At the same time, households
newly created by partition started from scratch and the stimulation of their
growth was through the operation of economic factors.’3 Thus, the cycle
resulted from two simultaneously operating and opposing linear trends
generated by qualitatively different factors. These conflicting trends did not
necessarily balance, thus making differentiation-processes in peasant com­
munities and peasant society possible and, indeed, usual.
As a Marxist, Khryashcheva accepted that the accumulation of capital in
agriculture was self-evidently the decisive factor in development. However,
she claimed that the surplus accumulated in agriculture would be transferred
to the towns by taxes and rents and through migration of capital and people
from village to town, rich peasants becoming urban entrepreneurs (poor
villagers also left to become wage-workers).4 Such developments would
explain both the poverty and the egalitarian tendencies found in rural society.
Khryashcheva’s analysis was, on the whole, solidly supported by empirical
evidence—the results of her own studies in Tula gu b. before the Revolution
1 See Chapter 7, section (b).
2 For example, P. Maslov, L. Litoshenko, and others.
3 A. Khryashcheva, ‘Usloviya evolyutsii krest'yanskogo khozyaistva’, Sotsialisticheskoe
khozyaistvo (1925), no. 5, pp. 60-1.
4 A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), p. 70.
8214936 I
112 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
and those she supervised in Ts.S.U. after it. However, her devotion to the
political aims o f the Soviet government and her desire to get results consistent
with Lenin’s writings limited her analysis and seems to have prevented her
from drawing some o f the obvious conclusions—especially where the politi­
cal sociology o f the peasantry was concerned. Moreover Khryashcheva did
not provide an explanation for the ‘residual component’ o f peasant house­
holds’ mobility, knowledge of whose existence was greatly advanced by
her own statistical studies. The ‘biological’ explanation o f Chayanov and his
friends has remained, therefore, the only consistent explanation available for
the ‘residual component’ to be found emerging from the Russian dynamic
studies. Yet this explanation has not proved satisfactory or has, at least, not
proved fully adequate. Clarification of this issue must precede further dis­
cussion o f the causes of peasant household mobility.

(d) The Peculiarities o f a Smallholding Economy

For a more satisfactory interpretation of the mobility o f peasant households,
it is necessary to return to our analysis o f the basic social structure o f the
peasantry and the peculiarities o f a peasant economy. Up to this point, the
widespread notion o f the peasant household as a highly integrated duality of
family and production-unit has been accepted.1 According to this view, the
peasant household operates as a family and, at the same time, as an enterprise
in conditions o f partial commodity production. We shall now isolate a third
major characteristic o f peasant households which is significant for our analysis.
The peasant household functions as a small production-unit o f extremely
limited resources, greatly subject to the powerful forces o f nature, the market,
and the state.
The natural fluctuations of weather (hot and cold spells, timely or untimely
rains, hail, storm, and so on) make for a more or less random succession of
‘good’ and ‘bad’ agricultural years.2 The impact o f natural factors was
probably reinforced by a relative rigidity in crop-rotation, traditional in
peasant agriculture, and may have been associated with the prevalent plant
and livestock diseases. To give but one example: the national figures for yields
o f rye—the key component of Russian peasant diet— during the three decades
1891-1921 moved between a maximum o f 73 pud perdesyatina in 1916, and 43,
46, and 32 respectively in the famine years 1891, 1907, and 1921.3 Nor were
such changes limited to a few extraordinary years. The record for these three
decades shows five years o f famine, five more as years with annual yields of
less than 50 puds per desyatina; for five years, though, the yield was 65 puds per
1 See Chapter 2, section (a).
2 For studies of this and other issues discussed here see for example A. Chuprov, Vliyanie
urozhaev i khlebnykh tsen na nekotorye storony russkogo narodnogo khozyaistva (1897), as
well as his Krest'yanskii vopros (1909).
3 S. Klepikov, Sel'skoe khozyaistvo Rossii v tsifrakh (1923), Table XII. A pud equals
approx. 16 3 kg.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL H 3

desyatina or more. The yields for localities would no doubt have fluctuated
even more sharply. To the tale of natural fluctuations in yields one can add
the ‘natural disasters’ of flood and fire. The extent and impact o f such disasters,
which a townsman today would tend to treat as extraordinary and rare, can
be gauged by a remark in a 1929 issue of Pravda to the effect that, in the whole
country, there was not a single peasant house which had not been burnt out
at least once.1
The terms o f trade between the rural and urban sectors (reflected in the
relative prices of major agricultural and non-agricultural products on the open
market) strongly influenced peasant households’ economies. Practically every
peasant household was involved in some exchange operations; at the mini­
mum, it had to sell its produce at least to pay taxes and to buy some industrial
goods, including equipment. At the same time, peasant wage-labour came to
the market. In fact, peasant market operations were, of course, much more
complex than this and varied from period to period, decreasing during the
years 1917-19 and increasing afterwards. The extent of the involvement in a
money economy o f peasant households was subject to heated controversy at
the time and has not since become clear. However, the fact of the involvement
o f households in market exchanges cannot be denied. For example, the 1924-5
annual budget studies—based on representative samples drawn from the main
agricultural regions o f (i) the Grain-Deficient Zone, (ii) the Grain-Surplus
Zone, and (iii) the North Caucasus—showed 19, 25, and 26 per cent re­
spectively o f Conventional Net Income spent as cash on purchases on the
general market.12 The market prices significant for a peasant economy fluctu­
ated widely and their determination was, of course, outside the scope o f the
peasant smallholder’s economy. The changes taking place in the relative prices
o f industrial and agricultural products can be seen in their extreme form in
the so-called ‘scissors crisis’, in which the movement of the exchange rate
against agricultural products reached in 1923 a rate of 1:3 (taking the 1913
price levels as 1: i).3
The policy o f the highly centralized Russian and Soviet states strongly influ­
enced Russian agriculture. The economic intervention of the state involved
the imposition o f taxes and the granting o f credits but also went further in the
form o f attempts at securing total control over the market through price
fixing (e.g. under the ‘grain monopoly’ after 1915), at imposing a ban on
the distilling o f home-made vodka (samogon), at confiscating all agricultural
surpluses (under ‘War Communism’, 1918-21), and even at total planning of

1 Pravda, 18 May 1929; quoted after M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power
(1968), p. 28. Every year about 400,000 farmhouses caught fire (ibid., p. 28).
2 Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh 1917-1927 (1928 (?)), pp. 200-1. For
the discussion o f regional division of Russia see Chapter 7.
3 M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (i960), pp. 162-9; also Klepikov,
op. cit., Table XXXI.
114 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
the production o f rural smallholders (in 1920). One can also include the
legislation on land-reform in 1917-19 and the ban and later limitation on land-
renting and the employment o f wage-labour in the years 1917-28.1 The real
ability o f the state to impose its will on the peasant communities varied over
time, but the fact o f its influence on the peasant economy cannot, once again,
be doubted.12
Our specific knowledge o f the impingement o f these factors on the peasant
economy is still extremely thin, and demands further work. However we may
already draw some conclusions about certain o f the general characteristics of
the interaction between the external factors discussed and the economy of
Russian peasant households.
The economy o f Russian peasant households was typified by limited
resources o f labour, land, and equipment and by extremely limited money
savings and access to credit. The impact of the major external forces on the
peasant economy would have varied widely in extent and character by period
and by area. Yet the way these forces acted tended, on the whole, to be
uniform, at least in that: firstly, the impact o f these external forces was over­
whelmingly powerful compared to the resources of the peasant household;
secondly, they appeared to the peasants as almost totally unpredictable and
certainly quite uncontrollable; lastly, they tended, by their very nature, to
fluctuate widely—whether in the form o f sequences o f ‘good’ and ‘bad’ years,
o f fluctuations in prices, or of seemingly arbitrary twists and turns in the state’s
policies and its officials’ applications o f them.
The massive economic vicissitudes of peasant households resulting from
the impact o f these external factors were expressed in two ways: (i) aggregate
shifts, or changes in the prosperity of the peasantry en masse; (ii) changes in
the relative positions of peasant households. The general economic effects of
external factors on peasant society has been discussed above. These aggregate
shifts were, it seems clear, coupled with large fluctuations in the relative socio­
economic positions of peasant households. Each peasant farm was strongly
influenced by individual chance factors in its specific history and present
family structure. The relative position depended on very small economic
differentials; chance could therefore play an exaggerated role. A successful
contract, a hard-working son, a useful merger, or, conversely, the illness or
death o f a working member, a fire, the death of a horse, the obligation to
provide a dowry, or even a family quarrel culminating in partitioning, could
lead to a complete change in the socio-economic position of a household.
Peasants were well aware of the influence o f chance factors on their life. For
example, a local survey reports: ‘The middle peasants say “Today I am a
middle peasant (,serednyak), tomorrow I become a poor peasant (bednyak). If

1 See Chapter 8, sections (a), (b), and (c).

2 For a further discussion o f the impact o f such state controls during the Soviet period
see Part III following.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 115
the horse dies, I’ll have to hire myself out.’” 1 Far from being extraordinary
occurrences, crises and strokes of luck formed an integral part of peasant life.
These unique individual factors and the idiosyncratic impacts on individual
households o f the externally determined general economic trends must,
therefore, have caused marked socio-economic mobility among peasant
households.
If we accept what has been said above, a number of conclusions would seem
to follow. In the conditions of a peasant economy such as we have been discuss­
ing, considerable random oscillation of peasant households is to be expected;
it will take the form of multidirectional mobility—not, however, cyclical
in nature. Quite otherwise than with linear change, a considerable number of
the random oscillations of peasant households will cancel one another out—
that is, as far as the net results, in terms of the mobility of peasant society as
a whole, are concerned. At the same time, otherwise than with the case of
cyclical mobility, no regular sequence o f centrifugal and centripetal move­
ments o f a considerable number of households will occur. This ‘random
oscillation’ o f peasant households, the product of the conditions of a peasant
smallholder economy facing powerful and fluctuating external pressures,
should be accepted as yet another distinct and major type of mobility among
peasant households on a par with that due to the cumulation of economic
advantages and disadvantages, the effects of ‘substantive changes’, land-
redivisions by communes, and the possible consequences of the biological life-
cycle within the peasant family.
This tentative explanation for the ‘residual component’ of peasant house­
holds’ mobility (or for a significant part of it) will have to remain hypothetical
until further empirical studies can validate or invalidate it. The Russian data
available do not seem to make this feasible; a comparative study of the
peasantry in a ‘developing society’ elsewhere in the world would seem to be
the only way to clarify the issue. All we can say is that, at the present stage,
the explanation here advanced for the existence of a residual component in
peasant households’ mobility in terms of random oscillations (probably
linked with the biological life-cycle) seems to be the most plausible proposition.
However we try to interpret this ‘residual component’ in peasant households’
mobility, its existence cannot be ignored in any attempt to construct a general
explanatory model o f the kind o f peasant mobility revealed by the Russian
dynamic studies.

(e) The Mobility o f Peasant Households: a Multifactorial Model

\ . . hunting for the laws of historical development and “progress” has
diverted the attention of the investigators from a study of the phenomena o f
repetitions, fluctuations, oscillations and cycles in social life, phenomena
which attracted a great deal o f attention on the part of social thinkers in the
1 Quoted from L. Kritsman, K lassovoe rassloenie sovetskoi derevni (1926), p. 164.
116 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
past.’1 This statement of Sorokin is certainly true o f the last two centuries.
Social scientists have been particularly interested in structural changes, i.e.
those creating qualitatively new social structures and organizations. Alterna­
tively their work has been focused on linear changes, i.e. those changes which
necessarily result in and are defined by quantitative differences between the
position at the beginning of the process and at the end of it, in which the
extent o f change correlates with its duration. Conceptually, such changes have
the advantage o f indubitable significance; they can be clearly discerned and
they enjoy the intellectual attractiveness (often meretricious) o f promising
prediction—however rough—by simple extrapolation. In processes which
combine linear and non-linear or cyclical changes, attention was generally
given to the linear aspects of them. In our case, the attention of the students
o f socio-economic mobility has been attracted primarily by ‘net’ linear changes
as defined by differences in the distribution o f units at the beginning and at the
end o f the process, for example, polarization.
Yet the social significance o f ‘repetitions, fluctuations, oscillations, and
cycles’ seems beyond doubt, and time and time again has provided exciting
and illuminating insights into social reality. The work o f Eliade on the linear
versus cyclical comprehension o f the time dimension as a major difference
between the archetypes of thought and Weltanschauung of modern and of
‘archaic’ man, can be given here as an example.2 Nor is there a shortage of
highly significant subject-matter because non-linear changes are numerous
and seem to lie at the basis o f some o f the most persistent forms o f struc­
tural stability. For example, cases o f arrested linear and structural change
collected by Wittfogel can surely be interpreted in terms o f the effects o f the
specific characteristics and cyclical changes in peasant communities not less
convincingly than in terms o f those o f hydraulic technology.3 However, the
accepted concepts and self-evident questions, i.e. the crucial ‘paradigms’
(to use Kuhn’s term)4 o f contemporary social sciences, have on the whole
committed the non-structural and non-linear issues to the margins o f inquiry.
The three basic reasons which barred a more realistic comprehension o f
socio-economic mobility of the Russian peasantry were: (i) the structural/
linear paradigm of the contemporary social sciences; (ii) the prevailing
‘monistic’ tendency in modes of explanation; and (iii) the methodological
tendency to limit discussion to peasantry as a whole or to peasant village
communities. The first was touched upon above. In the monistic frame­
work o f analysis the full explanation is achieved by tracing the relation
o f the phenomena to one major factor accepted as the prime mover o f the
society. Monism formed an imported stage and a useful device for the
1 Sorokin, op. cit., p. 32. 2 M. Eliade, T its M y t h o f E te r n a l R e tu r n (1965).
3 K. Wittfogel, O r ie n ta l D e s p o tis m (1957). For a discussion o f the stabilizing effects of
cyclical mobility o f peasant communities see Chapter 7, section (d) below.
4 T. S. Kuhn, T h e S tr u c tu r e o f S c ie n tific R e v o lu tio n (1968), especially p. x and chaps, iii
and v.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 117
conceptual organization of knowledge and is able to provide satisfactory
explanatory models for issues of less complexity. However, it has on the whole
to be replaced by more complex conceptual frameworks in the advanced
analysis o f complicated phenomena. Finally, transference of the focus of
inquiry from peasantry in general to the study of the life and operation of
peasant family farms and the peasant household/peasant society inter­
relationship was no doubt the biggest methodological achievement of Russian
rural studies and presented us with the extensive and unique evidence on
which this study is based.
The suggested solution to our problem attempts to highlight multidirectional
and cyclical processes and their impact on peasant society. It keeps in focus
the dynamics o f single peasant households and its reflection on peasant
society. It comes to accept the fact that the mobility of peasant households
reflects the interaction of qualitatively different and relatively autonomous
major factors, acting simultaneously, each displaying its own momentum. The
process o f mobility consists, therefore, of several component processes, each
with different social characteristics. Only a multifactorial model can accom­
modate the complexities of peasant mobility, particularly in conditions of
growing market relations.1 The loss of the elegance o f the simpler monistic
models is the price to be paid for a closer approximation to reality.
An operational model o f the mobility of peasant households will need
further work to validate its components and to help determine their relative
‘weights’. The effects o f particular factors will have to be analysed within
specific historical and regional frameworks; further empirical and compara­
tive studies are therefore called for. We are, though, already able to present
a prototype model, indicating the basic components of the mobility of
peasant households and their interaction. Such a model o f the effects of the
mobility o f peasant households on differentiation-processes can tentatively
clarify these processes and their causes and give cohesion to our earlier
treatment. Such conceptualization is, in any case, a necessary precondition
for further investigations.
Figure v constitutes the final part of the diagrammatic exposition of
peasant mobility we have attempted. Figure 1 (p. 51 above) expressed the
basic types o f net mobility of communities and/or o f peasant society—i.e.
aggregate shifts and differentiation-processes. Figure 11 (p. 76 above) de­
monstrated the basic types of mobility of peasant households. Figure in
(pp. 77-8) depicted the relationship between the mobility o f peasant societies
and the mobility o f peasant households, expressing the first as the net sum of
the second. Now Figure v is offered to present the main components and to
suggest patterns and causes o f peasant household mobility, underlying the
differentiation-processes found in Russian peasant society.
1 It is their adoption of multifactorial models which seems to us to make the work of
Khryashcheva, Makarov, et al. a mbre fruitful approach to the study o f cyclical mobility.
 118 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
Figure v. Multidirectional and Cyclical M obility: The Determinants o f
Centrifugal and Centripetal M obility among Peasant Households
(A Prototype Model)

a . Types o f Household M obility (following Figure iii)

Cyclical m obility

The figure is a further elaboration o f the typology o f peasant socio-economic mobility

in relation to the differentiation-processes in peasant societies and follows from Figure iii ,
Part C (p. 78). Household wealth is here used mainly in the sense o f means o f production:
land, livestock, and equipment as well as savings and reserves. On the whole, these assets
correlated with available family labour.

b. The Major Trends in Peasant Household M obility

/(c4) Emigration of
\ \ the wealthiest
\ \

(a) Cumulation of |b)land

advantages and redivision by B1 (c4) (e) Random oscillations
disadvantages lonunune i (c3) (irregular mobility)
Emigration
Extinction

// ' //
(c2) Merger \ \
Time

K e y to P a r t B T re n d s o f M o b i l i t y

The ordinary mobility of peasant households.

Household mobility exaggerated, in the dynamic studies
by a statistical bias (see Chapter 6, section (a)).
Mobility evident in only some o f the dynamic studies.
----------------- ‘Semi-centripetal aspects o f mobility’— i.e. the differential
The actual process The levelling disappearance o f the richest and the poorest households,
reflection of leading to a levelling in the peasant community (discussed
the process in Chapter 5, section (a)).
A ▼ The directions of such centrifugal mobility as may lead to
structural change and disappearance o f typical characteristics
o f peasant economy, e.g. the emergence o f enterprises en ­
gaged in capitalist production or, alternatively, the transfor­
mation o f peasants into wage-labourers.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 119
C. The Determinants o f Household Mobility underlying Differentiation-
Processesa
I. C e n tr ifu g a l tr e n d s b II. C e n tr ip e ta l tr e n d s 0
a. Cumulation of economic advantages b. Land-redivision administered by the
and disadvantages. communes.4
c. Substantive changes:
1. Partitioning.
2. Merger.
3. Extinction/
4. Emigration/
d. Biological life cycle (?). d. Biological life cycle (?).
e. Random oscillation (irregular mobility). e. Random oscillation (irregular mobility).

R e fe r e n c e s to th e c o m p o n e n ts (Parts B and C)
a. For a discussion o f this see Chapter 4, sections (b)and (d).
b. For a discussion of this see Chapter2, section (b) and Chapter 4, section (d).
c. For a discussion o f this see Chapter 5. (For the differences between the centripetal trend
o f Ci and C2 and the semi-centripetal effects of C3 and C4 see Chapter 5, section (a).)
d. For a discussion of this see Chapter 6, section (b).
e. For a discussion of this see Chapter 6, section (c).

a The Figure aims only to show the m a in te n d e n c ie s o f the determinants and does not
exclude differing results in the cases o f individual peasant households (e.g. the partitioning
o f an impoverished household).
b Centrifugal mobility may lead, in some cases, to structural changes (e.g. final prole-
tarization or alternatively the development o f a peasant household into a commodity-
producing enterprise typical of a market economy) with subsequent disappearance o f mobility
typical o f peasant societies.
c A centripetal statistical bias will result from the form of presentation usually adopted in
the dynamic studies (discussed in Chapter 6, section (a)).
4 Land-redivision administered by communes did not occur in some areas— in particular,
in Belorussia and the north-west.
* For a discussion of the specific ‘semi-centripetal* characteristics o f the process o f ex­
tinction and emigration o f peasant households see Chapter 5, section (a).

For the benefit o f the reader the basic patterns of mobility of peasant house­
holds described in Figure 11 are repeated in essence in Figure v, Part A. The
causality o f these patterns is analysed in Figure v, Parts B and C.
Figure v, Part B looks at the specific influence o f each o f the analytically
delineated major types o f factor involved in the mobility found among peasant
households, and relates the predominant direction of mobility to the socio­
economic strata affected. The character of each of the major components of
the mobility o f peasant households (and the elements o f the proposed model)
has been already discussed at some length and will not be repeated here. The
arrows indicate the most probable directions of each type of socio-economic
movement o f peasant households and the semi-centripetal levelling effect of
differential emigration and extinction on the peasant society. In peasant com­
munities and peasant society the tendency towards the cumulation of econo­
mic advantages and disadvantages (a) leads to a polarizing tendency which is
at least partly counteracted by commune-administrated land-redivision (b).
120 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
Differential ‘substantive changes’ (c)—the existence of a correlation between
the rates o f ‘substantive changes’ and the wealth o f peasant households— has,
on the whole, an additional levelling effect on peasant society, through both
centripetal trends o f partitioning and merger (ci and C2) and the ‘semi-
centripetal effect’ o f disproportionately high disappearance o f poor households
as the result o f extinction and emigration (c3 and C4). A particularly intensive
emigration o f the richest could, at times, have a similar effect. The powerful re­
sidual centripetal mobility in the dynamic studies which cannot be ascribed to
factors (b) and (c) indicates the existence of additional components o f mobility.
These are explained here in terms of random oscillation (e) and the possible
influence o f the biological cycle (d). The centripetal tendency would have been
somewhat magnified in the dynamic studies as the result o f a statistical bias,
created mainly by the elimination of ‘substantive changes’ from the records;
this has been pointed out by the use o f a double arrow. The operation o f such
u set o f simultaneously acting factors in a peasant community would neces­
sarily lead to and account for the powerful multidirectional mobility of
peasant households revealed in the dynamic studies. It will also, in all prob­
ability, generate strong cyclical forces—tendencies for peasant households
to be caught up successively in ascending and descending phases o f socio­
economic movement.
The differentiation-processes in a peasant society are the net sum o f centri­
fugal and centripetal trends of peasant households’ mobility. Figure v. Part
C sums up the five major components o f the multidirectional mobility of
peasant households and relates them to the centripetal and centrifugal
tendencies discussed. Projection of the resulting processes in time explains the
multidirectional and cyclical mobility described in the preceding diagram—
Figure v. Part A.
The figure presented helps to clarify yet another point: the cyclical mobility
displayed by many households does not presuppose the operation o f any
mystic equilibrium mechanism or necessary averaging o f the prosperity of
peasant households over time. Indeed acceptance o f the relative autonomy
o f the factors involved leaves open (and subject to further investigation) the
possibility that a number of peasant households will ascend or descend rapidly,
to establish a new type of market-oriented enterprise or, alternatively, to
turn into wage-worker units (marked by A ▼). Such developments, if wide
enough spread, could, at some stage, bring about the disintegration o f the
specifically peasant social structure, with the consequent disappearance of
the types o f mobility which are characteristic o f peasant society.1
1 The actual attempt by some Russian scholars during the period o f N.E.P. empirically
to trace such a development did not, on the whole succeed— possibly because o f the gener­
ally low level of capital accumulation obtaining. The only success in this direction was the
discovery of a low partitioning-rate among wealthy households o f an entrepreneurial nature
in a small sample of 571 households in the Urals: see Khryashcheva, op. cit., pp. 99-105,
and V. Nemchinov, Izbranrtye proizvedeniya (1967), vol. i, pp. 46-62.
 TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL 121
The analysis o f peasant mobility calls for investigation beyond and above
the stage reached in the Russian dynamic studies. The major components of
peasant households’ mobility need to be isolated, subjected to further investi­
gation and related to specific areas and periods.
Some reasonably secure quantitative conclusions can no doubt be drawn
at this stage. For example, the fact that multidirectional mobility greatly
exceeded net mobility in terms o f peasant communities (by about five times in
the studies presented above). However, the most significant conclusion to be
drawn from the Russian dynamic studies is the establishment of the very
fact that massive multidirectional and, in all probability, cyclical types of
household mobility were taking place among the Russian peasantry at this
time; this must be accepted, whatever interpretation is adopted.
The value of identifying the various types of mobility and of interpreting
them in the way done here is to be judged by the validity and usefulness of the
concepts proposed for analysing the basic problems of Russian rural history
and peasant social structure. The chapter which follows will examine, firstly,
the validity o f this model, which has been constructed on the basis of data
drawn mainly from the central regions o f Russia, for different areas of the
country; secondly, changes in the forms of the socio-economic mobility of
Russian peasant households over time; and, thirdly, the limitations of the
operational definitions used. To conclude, we shall consider the significance
for the political sociology of Russian peasant society of the facts we have
culled and o f the interpretations we have advanced.
 7
MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY:
VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE

(a) Validity: Regional Differences

T h e considerable social and economic differences between the various regions
o f rural Russia were the consequences of vastly different geographical situ­
ations and o f diverse histories. The average amount of land per household
varied widely from area to area. For example, the 1905 census o f land holdings
recorded that an average size of an allotment of land per peasant household
varied from about 6 des. in the overpopulated Black Earth Region to 22 des.
in Samara gub.1 The area sown, as recorded in 1920, varied from 8 2 des.
per household in the German area o f Volgaside to less than 0 7 des. in the
Arkhangel gub., while the average for the U.S.S.R. was 3 2 des.2 Large-scale
variability was recorded in regional and local averages o f income, yield,
livestock-holding, equipment, available pasture, proportion o f peasant labour
devoted to crafts and trades, and so on. The extent o f socio-economic differ­
entiation among peasant households also differed from region to region.3
Even the physical layout o f village lands varied in ways which were significant
in relation to economic development.4
European Russia can be divided, running from north to south, into three
major geographical zones: (i) the Podzol Zone, with poor soil, cold climate,
scarce arable land per peasant, and a relatively highly developed level o f rural
crafts and trades and of urban wage-labour by peasants (promysly) ; (ii) the
so-called ‘Agricultural Centre’, with good black soil, comparatively mild
climate, very high density o f rural population and limited opportunities for
earning locally supplementary income; (iii) the south-east with good, abundant
1 N. Oganovskii and N. Kondratev, S e l's k o e k h o z y a is tv o v R o s s ii v X X v. (1923),
PP. 69, 73*
2 S b o r n ik s ta tis tic h e s k ik h s v e d e n ii p o S S S R y 1 9 1 8 - 2 3 g g . (1924), pp. 107-13.
3 For examples of the differentiation o f peasant households in the U.S.S.R. by area
sown in different regions see Chapter 3, Table 3*vn. For further examples see M. Vol'f
and M. Mebus, S ta tis tic h e s k ii s b o r n ik p o e k o n o m ic h e s k o i g e o g r a fii (1926), Tables 50-1. The
meanings of the operational definitions of wealth varied for different regions: for example,
A. Khryashcheva, G r u p p y i k la s s y v k r e s t'y a n s tv e (1924), p. 83, defined a typical middle
peasant household as sowing 6-10 d e s . in the south-east but only 2-4 d e s . in the north­
west.
4 The distance between the peasant’s house and his land increased as one moved from
north to south. The number o f strips per holding increased from south to north. (See
O z e m le (1921), pp. 51-6.)
 C Y C L IC A L M O B IL IT Y : V A L ID IT Y A N D RELEVANCE 123
land, a dangerously unstable climate, relatively low density of population, and
a high grain-marketing rate. Significantly for the major problems of the early
Soviet period, the first area was generally referred to as a grain-deficient zone
(called by Russians potrebiteVskaya polosa—‘the (net) consuming belt’), while
the second sometimes together with the third was referred to as a grain-surplus
zone (proizvodyashchaya polosa— the (net) producing belt’). There were also
close similarities between European Russia’s zone (i) and Belorussia, zone
(ii) and the so-called forest steppe part o f the Ukraine, and zone (iii) and the
steppe part of the Ukraine. On historical grounds, it is possible to distinguish,
furthermore, the north-west, influenced by Polish and German culture and
by long-standing ties of trade with Europe, the north (to which Siberia may be
added), lacking a tradition of landlordism and of serfdom in the usual sense,
and, finally, areas o f Cossack settlement. Using these criteria, we obtain a very
simplified regionalization of rural Russia, relevant to our purposes for both
the pre- and immediate post-revolutionary periods.1
Pre-revolutionary studies did not permit valid regional comparisons of the
major trends o f peasant mobility to be made because different operational
definitions, methods of sampling, and so on, were used. The post-revolutionary
Ts.S.U. studies in many cases lacked regional breakdowns. Furthermore, the
differential impact o f extraordinary and momentous events like the civil war
and the famine made the validity of comparisons of various regions doubtful.
However, in the dynamic study of 1924-5, these basic obstacles to regional
comparisons do seem, for the first time, to have been overcome. This study
was carried out by Ts.S.U. on large, representative samples and the statistical
methods employed were uniform. The year was quite ordinary in climate,
prices, farming practice, and in the state’s policy. Of the seven regions covered
by the study,12 four are presented in Table 7-1. Regions A and B belonged to
the grain-deficient (northern) zone. Belorussia (B), however, was characterized
by smaller opportunities for supplementary local employment in crafts and
trades,3 and the absence o f the custom of redivision of land by communes.
Regions C and D shared conditions of comparatively better land and warmer
climate; the North Caucasus (D),however, was characterized by lower density
o f rural population and higher grain surpluses.

1 For a fuller discussion o f the regional divisions o f rural Russia see, for example, A. Che-
lintsev, R u s s k o e s e l's k o e k h o z y a is tv o p e r e d r e v o ly u ts ie i (1928). For the post-revolutionary
period see, for example, S. Klepikov, S e l's k o e k h o z y a is tv o R o s s ii v ts ifr a k h (1923).
2 Other samples (presented in S ta tis tic h e s k ii s p r a v o c h n ik 9 2 7 g . (1927). PP- 70-3) include
figures for Siberia and the Ukraine, while Khryashcheva, op. cit., pp. 146-9, gives figures
for the region of Volga in R.S.F.S.R.
3 For example, S h o r n ik s ta tis tic h e s k ik h s v e d e n ii p o S S S R (1924). PP- IQ8 and i n
showed that the percentage o f peasant households involved in crafts and trades ( p r o m y s ly )
has been:
1917 1922

Belorussia (4 8 ^b.) iy i 8*8

Moscow Industrial Region (8 gub.) 40*0 224
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126 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
The general rates o f ‘substantive changes’ decreased from the south to the
north, the North Caucasus heading the list and Belorussia at the bottom.
Rates o f partitioning and of the disappearance o f peasant households showed
similar tendencies. The stratification o f ‘substantive changes’ showed similar
patterns in all four regions. Rates o f partitioning correlated positively with the
wealth o f households, while emigration showed an inverse correlation. Finally,
with few exceptions, the rates o f household ‘liquidation’ and merging cor­
related inversely with wealth for the great majority o f peasant households; the
correlation became positive for a small top stratum, however.
The dynamic studies showed, after the elimination o f substantive changes,
a substantial residuum o f centripetal mobility in all four regions. Once more,
the agricultural south seems to have had higher rates o f such mobility, with
the North Caucasus heading the list, but Belorussia had overtaken the grain-
deficient zone o f the R.S.F.S.R.
The comparison o f widely different regions in the 1924-5 dynamic study is
striking more for the similarities revealed than for the diversities—which
could be expected. Data from three other regions (Siberia, the Ukraine, and
the Volga area) reinforce the impression. What has been said about multi­
directional and cyclical mobility based mainly on national data has thus also
turned out to be valid for the regions. There are no reasons to believe that the
basic features emerging from the study for the year 1924-5 were peculiar to
this year alone.1 We may therefore assume that the basic features o f a typical
multidirectional and cyclical mobility (discussed in Chapter 6) held through­
out the various regions o f Russia. The processes were quantitatively more
marked in the south, which was characterized by better agricultural conditions
and less involvement o f peasant labour in crafts and trades.

(b) Validity: Historical Trends

The evidence for basic similarities in the character o f mobility reported by
different dynamic studies also supports the notion o f the universality o f the
phenomenon o f multidirectional mobility in time. Whatever the sample or
the period studied, all the dynamic studies carried out between 1897 and l 92&
without exception recorded manifest multidirectional mobility. Evidence
which would have enabled the major trends and changes in the rates o f
mobility o f peasant households to be traced in quantitative terms is, however,
extremely limited.
The only existing records of such trends before the first ‘dynamic study’ took
place (1897) seem to be statements in a few incidental government reports on
the numbers o f households partitioned. For example, the average annual
number o f households partitioned in forty-three gub. o f European Russia

1 The only additional dynamic study on a comparable regional basis (published by

Ts.S.U. for the year 1925-6) showed patterns closely similar to this one. See Itogi desyati-
letiya sovetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh (1928 (?)), pp. 124-35.
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 127
during the period 1861-82 was reported to be 116,229, while the analogous
figure for the period 1874-82 was 140,355. Partitioning was reported to
be increasing despite the law o f 1886 which had attempted to limit it.1
By comparing rates of ‘substantive changes’ in all the pre-revolutionary
dynamic studies during the period 1886-1911, Prokopovich came to the
conclusion that ‘as time passes by, the number of households which partition,
emigrate, or dissolve rises while the number of households which develop nor­
mally decreases’.12 But it was only in the post-revolutionary period that annual
collections o f the necessary data, based on representative and comparable
• samples and specifying various regions of Russia, were initiated.3 Following
these, Bol'shakov attempted to estimate changes in annual rates of parti­
tioning in a way which would bridge the gaps between the pre-revolutionary
1911-14 data, those for the 1914-20 period of war and revolution, and the
post-revolutionary findings of Ts.S.U. He came to the conclusion that there
had been a sharp decrease in partitioning during the years 1914-17, followed
by a sharp rise after 1917. Rates o f partitioning evident in 1920-3 were said
to be higher than those in 1911-14 but lower than those in 1917-204. As far
as the 1914-17 period is concerned, Bol'shakov’s estimate finds support in
Khryashcheva’s study of Tula gub.5 Furthermore, if we stick to hard figures
only, the regional records of ‘substantive changes’ collected by Ts.S.U. may
shed some light on the fundamental trends in the rates o f ‘substantive changes’
and, in particular, permit some comparison between the pre-revolutionary and
post-revolutionary periods. In the following Tables 7-11 to 7*iv the rates of
‘substantive changes’ recorded by the last three pre-revolutionary dynamic
studies (carried out in 1910-11) are compared with results of the dynamic
studies o f the same guberniyas since 1922.
Each o f these comparisons must be no doubt treated with due caution in
view o f the difference in the areas represented by the samples. A guberniya
included a number o f uezds, which makes the difference between samples
particularly apparent. Consistent similarity in the character of change in all
three cases, however, makes a number of conclusions possible. The revolution
heralded a rise in the over-all rate of ‘substantive changes’ to a level much
higher than before. During the years 1922-6 (in the N.E.P. period), the rates
o f ‘substantive changes’ slowly decreased with a single exception of Tula in

1 O. Khauke, Krest'yanskoe zemel'noe pravo (1914), p. 222.

2 S. Prokopovich, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo( 1924), p. 162. ‘Normal’ development stands
here for ‘not undergoing “substantive change” ’—ironical testimony to the author’s biases.
3 For the data see Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1924), pp. 302-5, and
Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g, (1927), pp. 64-5.
4 A. Bol'shakov, Sovremennaya derevnya v tsifrakh { 1925), p. 32. For the figures advanced
by Bol'shakov and a discussion o f them see Table 8-in and the following section. Kon-
dratev estimated that the rates of partitioning had doubled between pre- and post­
revolutionary periods (see Puti sel'skogo khozyaistvo (1927), no. 5, p. 36).
5 A. Khryashcheva, ‘Krest'yanstvo v voine i revolyutsii’, Vestnik statistiki (1920), nos.
9-12. For discussion see Chapter 8.
8214036 K
128 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
1924-5. Rates o f partitioning closely followed the general pattern for ‘sub­
stantive changes’ as a whole, but rates o f disappearance proved more erratic—
probably as a result o f the particularly strong influence on rural migration o f
factors external to peasant communities.1 The Ts.S.U. practice o f combining
the data on both emigration and extinction under the common heading o f
‘liquidation’ makes it impossible to fully elucidate the rates o f change o f the
components.
It is not possible to use even the crude methods used in Tables 7-11 to 7 -iv
for a s im ila r tentative examination o f changes in the total mobility o f peasant

T able 7-11
‘Substantive Changes’, Chernigov Gub. {percentage)

Study Area Period Households

carried
out by Partitioned Disappeared Total

Chernigov Surazh The 29 years from 26*3 27-0 53*3

zemstvo uezd 1882 to 1911
(A) Average
per annum o-8 o-8 1*6
Ts.S.U. (B) Chernigov 1922-3 3*4 3*5 6*9
gub. 1923-4 2-5 2*5 50
1924-5 2*1 25 4*6

Sources. (A) G. Kushchenko, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo v surazhskom uezde (1916), p. 7.

(B) Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), 64-5.

T able 7-111
4Substantive Changes', Moscow Gub. (percentage)

Study Area Period Households

carried
out by Partitioned Disappeared Total

Moscow 3 uezds of The 11 years from 181 in 292

zemstvo (A) Moscow gub. 1899 to 1910
Average per annum i *5 ro 2-5
Ts.S.U. (B) Moscow gub. 1922-3 28 2*8 56
1923-4 29 2*5 5*4
1924-5 29 2*0 4*9

Sources. (A) P. Vikhlaev, Vliyanie travoseyaniya (1915), part 9, quoted by S. Prokopovich,

Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo (1924), pp. 64-5.
(B) Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), pp. 64-5.
1 For a discussion o f this see Chapter 5, section (d).
 V A L ID IT Y A N D RELEVANCE 129
T a b le 7*iv

‘Substantive Changes', Tula Gub. (percentage)

Study Area Period Households

carried
out by Partitioned Merged Emigrated Total
and
extinct
Tula Epifan' uezd The 12 years from 2 2 6 i-8 106 35*0
Zemstvo (A) 1899 to 1911
Average per annum i-8 Oi 09 2-8
Ts.S.U. (B) Tula gub. 1922-3 3*3 ro 28 7-1
1923-4 2-4 o-8 i *7 49
1924-5 2*6 o-6 3*5 6-7

Sources. (A) A. Khryashcheva, Krest'vanskie khozyaistvapo perepisyam 1899-1911 g g .(1916)

vol. ii, p. 31.
(B) Staristicheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), pp. 64-5.

households during the period. Differences in the operational definitions and

in the samples used would make any quantitative comparisons useless. An
impressionistic study of the existing data does, however, seem to reveal a
general tendency towards a rise in the rates of change in all the components of
multidirectional mobility when the pre- and post-revolutionary periods are
compared.
The processes of peasant mobility discussed above must be seen in their
historical context. Multidirectional and specifically cyclical mobility influenced
the rural history o f Russia. On the other hand, the processes of mobility were,
in turn, affected by great historical events which lie outside the scope of this
explanatory model o f peasant mobility—war and agrarian revolution. There
were two major breaks in continuity in the life of the Russian peasants in the
period: the first was in the years 1914-20, with wars and revolution, and the
second was in 1921-2 with famine. The impact of the revolution and the civil
war will be discussed at length in the following chapter. The famine led to the
destruction—and a consequent shortage—of the basic means of production,
in particular, livestock. In terms of ‘substantive changes’, it led to a sharp
increase in emigration and extinction o f households and to a drop in rates of
partitioning which could be interpreted in terms o f the economic crises in­
volved, exacerbated by the inflexible manpower supply and limited equipment,
savings, and credit characteristic of peasant households (see Table 7*v).
Extinction and emigration, which occurred on a large scale, were, no doubt,
differential in their operation—i.e. much higher among the poorest house­
holds. This must have led to both levelling and aggregate shift downwards in
peasant society and would be the main long-term result o f the famine as far as
peasant mobility is concerned.
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 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 131

More detailed studies of the modern agrarian history of Russia are clearly
necessary. However, to recapitulate, the evidence available over time and
space points to the validity of the concept used and the universality o f the
processes discussed. Moreover, some additional, though tentative, quantitative
conclusions can be added: firstly, for both pre-revolutionary and post-
revolutionary periods (though not for the gap between those two periods),
Khryashcheva’s statement may be accepted :‘the rate o f “substantive changes”
in different regions and periods varies, but the difference is so small that it
indicates a similarity—i.e. a rate of change fairly typical for all the different
areas, with variability mainly due to lengths of the period of observation.’1
This evaluation can, in fact, be extended to cover all the components of
peasant households’ mobility.
Secondly, the assumption of general similarities does not exclude—indeed
it assumes—specific differences in the rates of mobility in different areas and
at different periods. These variations may be classified into three major types:
(a) relatively stable differences between rates of mobility in different regions—
in particular, lower rates of mobility further north; (b) long-term trends of
which the increase in the rate of ‘substantive changes’ claimed by Prokopo­
vich for the period 1897-1911 remains the main example; (c) major breaks in
continuity brought about by the crises of famine, war, and revolution. The
period o f war and revolution seems to have had a particularly large and lasting
effect in the form o f a large-scale increase in the rates o f multidirectional
mobility in all its forms.
Thirdly, with no exceptions, multidirectional mobility involved substantial
parts o f the peasant community. The strength of the mobility of peasant
households appears particularly great when compared with the differentiation-
processes in the same samples and when analysed in terms of similar
operational definitions. The typical relationship between parts A and B of
Tables 6 •1-6 •in in Chapter 6 (both in general and specifically for each stratum)
recurred in all the studies of different areas and periods known to us.

(c) Validity: Operational Definitions

The extensive statistical data collected for dynamic studies raise the problem
o f the validity o f the operational definitions used for statistical groupings and
analysis. The problem arises of whether or not the operational definitions dis­
torted the truth to such an extent as to render invalid the conclusions reached.
This major issue found expression in a controversy over operational
definitions o f peasant stratification and wealth which raged during the N.E.P.
period and related to the policy-struggles in the Party.2The political importance
1 A. Khryashcheva, ‘Usloviya evolyutsii krest'yanskogo khozyaistva’, Sotsialisticheskoe
khozyaistvo (1925), no. 5, p. 56.
2 The discussion dates, in fact, from much earlier. As early as 1900, a congress o f Russian
statisticians had spent much of its time discussing various indices o f peasant wealth: see
E. Volkov, Agrarno-ekonomicheskaya statistika Rossii (1923), pp. 83-5.
132 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
o f such matters as defining the ‘Kulak’ as well as fixing taxes meant that
published indices o f peasant wealth tended to swing wildly as day-to-day
political considerations intervened.1 Yet, underlying the arbitrary, and at
times demagogic, assertions there was a major issue o f the methodology of
sociological analysis. Operational definition o f social classes together with the
making o f analytically valid socio-economic differentiations constitutes one of
the most complicated problems o f the contemporary social sciences. It may
be even more complicated where peasantry is concerned.
The hard core o f the methodological controversy among Russian scholars
during the period o f the N.E.P. was the hunt for a ‘correct’ operational
definition o f rural stratification. The analytical preference for a ‘qualitative
and sociological’ division as against a ‘quantitative and economic’ one2 was
generally accepted by all students of differentiation; but such a qualitative
operational definition was never clearly made.3 The presupposition o f the
polarization o f the peasantry into capitalist entrepreneurs and proletarians
made the presence or absence o f wage-labour an ideal indicator o f differ­
entiation in Marxist terms. However, the relatively small amount o f wage-
labour reported among the Russian peasantry (and its further decline during
the revolution) made this an inadequate index for scholars who presupposed
considerable differentiation among the peasantry and who were searching for
signs o f its increase. The majority of Marxists tended to rely on the indices of
wealth used by their ideological foes. In these terms, peasant households were
ranked by their holdings, using a scale relating to some major index o f peasant
wealth (land held, land sown, horses owned, estimated capital, manpower,
etc.) and then arbitrarily divided by points along the scale into ‘strata’.
However, far from solving the methodological problems, quantitative
stratification by indices of wealth created new difficulties. Major methodo­
logical controversies arose from the fact that the selection o f the criteria
defining the strata was necessarily arbitrary. These controversies closely paral­
leled the ideological and political battles o f the N.E.P. differentiation debate.
In Ts.S.U. Khryashcheva declared land sown per household to be the best
index o f peasant wealth, in view of the decrease in the relative importance of
crafts and trades in the Russian peasant economy and the tendency for a grain
monoculture. Moreover, land sown (and livestock held) was relatively easily
recorded—a factor o f major importance in the mass surveys initiated by
Ts.S.U. The stratification by land sown was bitterly denounced by Kritsman
and his lieutenants in the agrarian section of the Communist Academy. They
claimed that this index was suitable only for the pre-capitalist period and that
1 For a discussion o f this see M. Lewin, ‘Who was the Soviet Kulak?’, Soviet Studies,
xviii (1966), no. 2, pp. 189-212.
2 i.e. class distinction in the Marxian/Weberian sense, as opposed to stratification on a
scale o f an arbitrary chosen index o f wealth (e.g. income, land sown, etc.). For a discussion
o f terms used see N . Makarov, Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), no. 4, p. 107.
3 See, for example, the debate in Puti sel'skogo khozyaistva (1927), nos. 4-9.
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 133
it helped to conceal real differentiation-processes because of the levelling of
land-holdings which had taken place during the revolutionary period. Strati­
fication o f peasant households by capital and income was proposed as an
alternative1 and put into operation in a Ts.S.U. handbook and in a study by
Gaister, both published in 1928.12 This method revealed some new methodo­
logical weaknesses, however. The amount of land held was not taken into
account, since it was not considered part of capital—a limitation which
made estimates o f actual production factors in terms of ‘capital’ doubtful.
Moreover, any estimates o f capital and income for peasant households in
a type of economy producing a great part of its own needs were extremely
dubious. In fact, the advantages of using indices o f wealth and income
in money terms were quite offset by the difficulties of correctly estimating
them.
In the later stages of the N.E.P. period a number of attempts were made to
find a compromise by using complex operational definitions of peasant strata
reflecting various elements in the peasant economy. For example, in 1927, the
kulak households were officially defined as those which possessed an estimated
capital o f 1,600 roubles and employed at least 50 days of wage-labour annually
or those which possessed capital of at least 800 roubles and employed wage-
labour for at least 100 days.3 All such complex indices suffered from arbitrari­
ness in the choice o f components and their weightings. The sudden return,
just before collectivization, to indices based solely on wage-labour (every
household employing 50 days of wage-labour or more per annum was de­
clared kulak) raises even stronger misgivings.4 In fact, both simple and com­
plex indices used to determine the wealth o f a household had shortcomings
on methodological and pragmatic grounds. Furthermore, whenever two in­
dices were used, some peasant households found themselves ‘in-between’—
in a wealthier stratum using one index than using another.5 Reality was
more complex than any of the methodologies proposed and no theoretical
concepts or operational definitions fitted empirically selected groups with
precision.
The difficulties in establishing meaningful operational definitions of socio­
economic strata did not mean that the attempts were valueless. But the

1 See, for example, L. Kritsman (ed.), Materialy po istorii agrarnoi revolyutsii v Rossii
(1928), vol. i. Introduction.
2 Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1928 g. (1929), and A. Gaister, Rassloenie sovet-
skoi derevni (1928).
3 N. Jasny, The Socialised Agriculture o f the U.S.S.R. ( 1949), P- 162. For examples of a
number of simple and complex indices proposed and used see Kritsman, op. cit., tables.
4 Gaister, op. cit., pp. 105-6. Fifty days of wage-labour could be easily accounted for by
the temporary illness of a farmer, the drafting of a son, or the need for a couple o f dozen
pickers for a day or two days in the peak season. It could stand, moreover, in as little as
a 1:10 proportion to the family labour used.
5 See, for example, B. Knipovich, K voprosu o differentsiatsii russkogo krest'yanstva
(1912), p. 10; also Gaister, op. cit., pp. 108-9, xxxi-
134 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
solution could not lie in some brilliant discovery o f the ‘correct’ and final index
o f wealth but rather in the clarification o f the uses and the limitations o f those
already in existence.
There were, indeed, drawbacks to the usefulness of land sown or horses per
household as the main index o f socio-economic stratification as used by
Ts.S.U., but the possible distortions related mainly to two opposed groups—
the richest and the poorest, who departed most from the pattern o f earnings
usual for the great majority o f Russian peasants. The numbers o f these were
always relatively small and even smaller in the N.E.P. period. Moreover,
objections raised to operational definitions o f peasant stratification by land
sown and/or horses owned per household could be met on two additional
grounds.
Firstly, close correlations were regularly reported between the relative
socio-economic positions o f peasant households defined in terms o f all the
major indices o f peasant well-being: land sown, livestock held, capital, in­
come, household size, percentage o f mature males, and so on.1 In fact, even
Gaister’s major attack on Khryashcheva was supported by tables which
registered the strength of the correlation between strata as defined by capital
per household and strata as defined by land held or horses owned.12 In these
conditions, conclusions based on different indices of peasant wealth would,
broadly speaking, correspond at least as far as the large majority o f peasant
households was concerned.3
Secondly, turning from statics to dynamics, consistent use o f any o f the
indices o f peasant wealth would correctly reflect major trends in mobility,
assuming that no deliberate selection o f misleading samples had taken place
and that their randomness had been safeguarded. A change in the indices
used would lead to quantitative changes, but the direction and character of
trends would remain the same.4
The results and conclusions would, therefore, be basically similar, whatever
index o f peasant wealth was used. With none o f the major single indices

1 Examples may be found in every statistical study o f the Russian countryside: for
example, A. Khryashcheva, Krest'yanskie khozyaistva po perepisyam 1899-1911 gg. (1916).
The study of correlations between income and various factors o f production based on
five major budget studies gave strong support to this view. See Prokopovich, op. cit.,
pp. 32-3.
2 Gaister, op. cit., pp. 120-40. Gaister acted as the main spokesman for the agrarian
section o f the Communist Academy, which claimed that the methods introduced by
Khryashcheva underestimated the amount o f differentiation among the Russian peasantry.
3 The validity of the analysis could, moreover, be increased by the simultaneous use o f
more than one major index o f wealth, e.g. both land sown and horses per household. See
the operational definitions used by Ts.S.U., as recorded in Chapter 3, Tables 31V and 3*v
above.
4 A recent work on methodology in fact advanced an even more extreme proposition—
that, in so far as the sample is not purposefully biased, even samples selected not in a repre­
sentative way would prove sufficient to validate or invalidate hypotheses: see H. Zetterberg,
On Theory and Verification in Sociology (1965), pp. 129-30.
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 135
postulated as being o f ultimate validity, each could validly be used (and, if
possible, be checked on by employing others), differences between theoretical
concepts and empirical evidence needing, however, to be kept constantly in
mind.
Three further distortions resulting from the operational definitions used
by Russian rural statisticians in presenting data should be pointed out as being
relevant here. Firstly, the formally three-field system o f agriculture prevalent
in large parts o f rural Russia at this period necessarily resulted in fluctuations
in the land sown per household recorded in different years.1It could be claimed
that it was this which determined the residual component of mobility in
dynamic studies based on stratification by land sown. In reply, it should be
pointed out that the land of a peasant household was usually split into
numerous strips situated in different parts of the commune’s land, and that
this limited the impact of three-field rotation on the proportion of its land
sown each year by a household. (The land of the commune sown each year
was probably roughly similar.) Moreover, the persistence and universal
appearance o f residual centripetal mobility in dynamic studies where strati­
fication by horses per household—or income from entrepreneurial activities
per household—were used,2 means that the possibility of such a phenomenon’s
being due only to the agricultural techniques of a formally three-field system
can be discounted.
Secondly, a general decrease in size of peasant families, correlating with a
proportional decrease in the stock of basic means of production per household
(land, horses, and equipment held), might, it was argued, mistakenly be
recorded as an aggregate downward shift for the peasant community. No
doubt such developments did take place on a national scale during the period.
However, the relatively slow nature o f decreases in size of peasant households3
would not be sufficient to make necessary recasting the whole o f the discussion
o f mobility.
Thirdly, a major distortion of differentiation, observable in samples drawn
from diverse areas, was pointed out by N. Chernenkov and dubbed ‘The
statistical optical illusion’ by N. Oganovskii.4 By combining several com­
munities o f differing wealth as one report-unit when presenting the data, an
image o f a highly polarized society results. For example, in the situation
represented by Figure vi,the samples from both the villages A and B show low
1 In the usual crop cycle of this type, in each of the strips a winter crop would be followed
by a spring crop and after that the land would be fallow for one year.
2 See the study by V. Nemchinov, Izbrannye proizvedeniya (1967), vol. i, pp. 44-62. See
also Table 611 above.
3 The average membership of peasant households in Russia decreased between 1897 and
1917 from 6*3 to 6 0 (Yu. Larin, Ekonomika dosovetskoi derevni (1926), p. 197). For the
Soviet period see Table 8*i. For discussion of the decrease in size and wealth o f peasant
households during the 1917 period see Chapter 8.
4 See Brokgauz and Efron (eds.), Novyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (2nd edn.) (19 13)
vol. xviii, p. 522.
136 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY

socio-economic differentiation. Yet in so far as the average wealth o f house­

holds in the two villages is widely different, a study o f differentiation in a district
consisting o f those villages would indicate a polarized peasant society. In
graphic form, the degree of socio-economic differentiation will be represented
by the steepness o f the curves A and B (note the high concentration o f house­
holds in the middle range representing a low degree o f differentiation). The
flattening o f the curve seen when the samples are combined will be interpreted
as a more polarized society.

Figure vi. The ‘Statistical Optical Illusion in graphic form

Wealth

------ Hypothetical curve of differentiation w ithin a

district consisting of villages A and B
Hypothetical curves of differentiation
w ithin villages A and B

Rural Russia showed wide diversity in average indices o f peasant wealth in

different localities. Consequently, national and regional figures tended to over­
estimate differentiation by reflecting both ‘genuine’ differentiation between
social strata and differentiation between localities. The bias conveyed by
the ‘statistical optical illusion’ will not have affected our analysis, however,
since variations in differentiation between villages or areas have no signifi­
cant influence on studies o f mobility; in these, the history o f each peasant
household is individually traced, and stress is laid on change rather than on
situation. In fact, the ‘statistical optical illusion’ and multidirectional mobility
both contributed to the manifest gap between rural socio-economic differen­
tiation as reflected in the national figures o f the policy-makers, and differentia­
tion as perceived by the peasantry in real life.
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 137

(d) Social Differentiation and the Political Significance o f Multidirectional and

Cyclical Mobility
The major aspects of peasant social structure and dynamics which we have
discussed above and, in particular, the phenomena of multidirectional and
cyclical mobility, are highly significant for a clarification and interpretation
o f some major strands in Russian rural history. Basic problems of Russian
economic history such as the accumulation of wealth, capital-formation in
agriculture, and key migratory processes appear in a new light when related to
these specific characteristics o f peasant social structure.
In considering the political significance of the features of peasant mobility
we have discussed, attention must be focused on explaining the discrepancy
between the ‘view from the top’—the Russian ruling elite’s prevailing under­
standing o f the political sociology of the Russian peasantry—and the actual
facts, as revealed eventually by Russian history. Here we come to a major
effect o f ideology, considered neither as normative definition of aims and
commitments, nor as conscious manipulation of ideas and of men, but in
terms o f its cognitive consequences—i.e. genuine misinterpretations of actual
processes by political elites basing their understanding on evidence selected
in the light o f a prevailing mode of explanation.1 In the case we are consider­
ing, Soviet policy-makers in the period 1917-25 (and, indeed, afterwards)
viewed the socio-economic stratification recorded in rural censuses as a suf­
ficient proof o f class differentiation and conflict in the Russian countryside;
it was taken for granted and acted upon. Yet the failures o f this policy seem
to disprove the assumptions on which it was based. There was systematic
underestimation o f the cohesiveness o f peasant communities; this led to a
constant discrepancy between the aims of the policy-makers and the results
achieved by the measures they undertook. ‘It has been assumed that the kulaks
would prove a small and isolated minority, hated by the mass of peasants who
would come out on the side of the government. . . . Many of the peasants—
perhaps most—far from rallying to the government’s side, supported the
resistance o f the kulaks and the savage reprisals meted out to the kulaks fell
in a lesser degree on them.’2 In fact, this evaluation o f the collectivization
period has much wider applicability; one could mention the kombedy o f 1918,
the ‘regulation o f agriculture’ and the peasant revolt o f 1920, the rural cam­
paigns o f the Communist Party during the N.E.P. period, and so on.3 Time
and time again, in monotonous sequence, a mistaken evaluation was followed
1 In the sense of a ‘cultural apparatus’, defined as ‘the lens . . . through which men see;
the medium by which they interpret and report what they see’ by C. Wright Mills (Power,
Politics and People (1963), p. 406). The issue o f false cognition by a ruling elite in the light
o f its ‘own’ ideology seems a necessary addition to the concepts o f Marxist ‘false conscious­
ness’ and Gramsci’s ‘hegemony’. See G. Williams, ‘The Concept of “Egemonia” in the
thought o f Antonio Gramsci’, Journal o f the History o f Ideas (i960), no. 4.
2 E. H. Carr, ‘The Russian Revolution and the Peasant’, Proceedings o f the British
Academy (1963), vol. xlix, pp. 90-1.
3 These are discussed below (Chapters 8, 9, and 10).
138 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
by a wrong prognosis, leading to a failure o f the measures applied. The
attempts made to solve the ensuing crises were once again made in the light
o f interpretations derived from the same ideological and political pre­
conceptions. New crises followed.
The rural history o f Soviet Russia could be regarded, therefore, as an
invalidation o f a major Marxian tradition (followed in essence by M. Weber),
that o f a political sociology based on conflict models, with classes defined in
terms o f economic interest, operating as the major units o f political action.1
However, this would not, in our opinion, be a correct conclusion: it is the
oversimplifications and vulgarizations o f this mode o f thought which have
been invalidated. An examination o f the role o f socio-economic mobility in
the shaping o f class consciousness constitutes a necessary supplement to
systems o f political sociology based on conflict models.
As early as the beginning o f this century, some qualifications concerning
the validity o f the class analysis o f society had been accepted by scholars of
different schools o f thought. The problem was that of the conditions neces­
sary for socio-economic differentiation to generate crystallization o f socio­
political classes displaying social cohesion, common consciousness, and a
tendency towards political organization and action in defence o f their interests
(i.e., in Marx’s own language, the development of a ‘class in itself’ into a ‘class
for itself5).2
In Russia, Chernenkov (the inaugurator o f ‘dynamic studies’ and, in his
political views, close to the Populists) challenged at the beginning o f the
century what he described as the prevailing tendency o f the Russian Marxist
writers to identify every rural idiosyncrasy with a division into social classes.3
He made excerpts from Lenin’s major study o f agriculture and quoted
approvingly a number o f the conditions Lenin saw as necessary for socio­
economic differentiations and polarization among peasants to develop into
a division into classes.4 A relative stability of the membership o f the wealthiest
and poorest strata was accepted as one such essential condition. If so, multi­
directional and cyclical mobility at a high rate would self-evidently limit the
political impact o f actual socio-economic differentiation. A generation later,
Prokopovich (a Neo-Classical economist and once a Menshevik minister)
again stressed, in a major work, the importance of the relative stability of the
membership o f socio-economic strata for a division of peasantry into classes
to take place.5 Nor was relating class-crystallization to patterns o f mobility a
1 Classes defined, in Marxist thought, in terms of the ownership o f means o f production
while, in Weber’s writings, defined by a common position in market relations.
2 K. Marx, The Poverty o f Philosophy (1946), p. 135. For a fuller discussion see S.
Ossowski, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (1963), pp. 70-88.
3 N . Chernenkov, K kharakteristike krest'yanskog okhozyaistva (1905), pp. 120, 123-
4. V. Lenin, 'Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii’, Sobranie sochinenii (5th edn.), vol. iii,
pp. 1-609.
4 N. Chernenkov, op. cit., pp. 124-6.
5 S. Prokopovich, Krest'yanskoe khozyaistvo (1924), pp. 173-5.
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 139
strange fancy o f the students o f Russian rural society in this period. In 1906,
Sombart pointed to high vertical mobility as the major determinant of low
degree o f ‘class consciousness’ and of limited political ‘class antagonisms’,
especially in the United States.1 Schumpeter’s preoccupation with the inter­
class mobility, as well as with the mobility of his functionally and historically
defined social classes, seems to arise from closely similar concerns.2
Contemporary sociological studies of mobility have, in fact, almost
exclusively related to industrial societies and considered a multiplicity of
indices o f group-membership, on the whole operationally defined by oc­
cupation.3 The reasons for using occupational indices have been essentially
pragmatic— ‘a simple necessity, the fact that no other clue is available’.4 These
studies have included ‘only a limited slice of the phenomena commonly
regarded as social mobility by other social scientists’.5 Nearly all recent
studies have, in fact, been limited to the rather crude indices o f inter-
generational mobility—comparing father’s and son’s occupations in terms of
manual versus non-manual and rural versus urban, etc. However, as far as
conclusions about the impact o f mobility on political consciousness are
concerned, contemporary students have, on the whole, confirmed the views
expressed at the beginning o f the century. ‘When opportunities for individual
mobility are insufficient, men often resort to collective action as a means of
obtaining rewards they seek, thus generating class struggle’—and, o f course,
vice versa—high mobility weakens such tendencies.6 The absoluteness of such
statements has at times been qualified by pointing to the differences in effect
o f mobility operating in different cultural frameworks, to the importance of
the ‘social expectation’ o f mobility, and to the fact that some types of ‘non-
institutionalized’ mobility may lead to increases in social conflict and tension.7
The influence o f mobility on political consciousness was therefore widely
acknowledged and documented by sociological analysis in our century. We
may assume with a fair degree of certainty necessary political consequences of
multidirectional and—even more so—o f the cyclical pattern o f mobility in
1 W. Sombert, ‘Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?* quoted
after Transactions o f the Third World Congress o f Sociology (1956), pp. 137-43*
2 J. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (1951) (first published in 1927 and based
on lectures delivered during the period 1910-16).
3 For a review of such studies see S. Lipset and R. Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial
Society (1966); R. Merritt and S. Rokkan (eds.), Comparing Nations (1966); N. Smelser and
S. Lipset (eds.). Social Structure and Mobility in Economic Development (1966).
4 G. Carlsson, Social Mobility and Class Structure (1958), P* 167. See also G. Cole, Studies
in Class Structure (1964), pp. 4-6, and a critique by S. M. Miller in Transactions o f the Third
World Congress o f Sociology, pp. 145-50.
5 Merritt and Rokkan, op. cit., p. 217.
6 G. Lenski, Power and Privilege (1966), p. 417. See also T. Marshall, Citizenship and
Social Class (1950), p. 91. Lipset and Bendix, op. cit., pp. 3-4, 70, 76; Smelser and Lipset,
op. cit., p. 377.
7 Lipset and Bendix, op. cit., pp. 260-7. Also Smelser and Lipset, op. cit., p. 371. llie
issue has been discussed at some length already by P. Sorokin, Social Mobility (1927)*
chap. xxi.
140 MULTIDIRECTIONAL AND CYCLICAL MOBILITY
our case. If, indeed, ‘each class resembles a hotel or an omnibus, always full,
but always o f different people’,1 the rate o f turnover will be particularly
relevant to the tendency o f a socio-economic stratum to develop from a ‘class
in itself’ to a ‘class for itself’, from a socio-economic category into a politically
self-conscious conflict-group.
The analysis o f the social structure and mobility presented above seems to
suggest an ideologically determined error at the heart o f Soviet agrarian
policy in its first decade and to clarify some o f the interpretations o f Russian
rural history still current. In considering it, two major additional factors have
to be taken account of, together with the patterns o f socio-economic mobility
on which attention was focused. These are the specifically peasant cultural
patterns and the conflict-relations prevalent in the countryside.
The full impact o f socio-economic differentiation on the political conscious­
ness o f the Russian peasantry and the possible division o f the peasantry into
conflicting classes can be understood only in relation t o : (i) the specific peasant
culture discussed in Part I o f this study; (ii) the patterns o f socio-economic
mobility discussed in Part II; and (iii) the extent to which conflict relations
develop along the lines o f the socio-economic differentiation o f the peasant
society about which more will be said in Part III. Furthermore, the cultural
setting o f mobility—i.e. the extent o f its acceptance and institutionalization
as part o f the peasant social consensus—will be important for the political
results it has. When all this has been taken into consideration, versions o f the
political sociology o f the Russian peasantry based on an essentially static and
narrowly economic interpretation o f the determinant o f political conscious­
ness need to be modified in four main ways.
Firstly, the economic, social, and cultural characteristics o f a traditional
peasantry grossly reinforced the internal cohesiveness o f peasant com­
munities. The typical characteristics o f peasant communities displayed by
Russian peasants during the whole period (though admittedly to varying
degrees)—powerful bonds o f common experience, simple co-operation
and self-imposed conformity—found expression in a communal solidarity
which engendered loyalties o f remarkable force.
Secondly, the available records o f censuses on the whole exaggerate the
extent o f actual socio-economic differentiation and related processes in
Russian peasant communities. This exaggeration resulted from the correlation
which exists between the size o f peasant households and their wealth (this was
not generally taken into acount) and from the ‘statistical optical illusion’
which reflected differentiations as between peasant communities rather than
households.2 Furthermore, the results o f differentiation-processes were very
different from those to be expected from simple extrapolation o f economically
conceived polarizing tendencies. These tendencies proved to be subject to
substantial constraints and could be sometimes cancelled out or even reversed
1 Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 165. 2 See above, Chapter 7, section (c).
 VALIDITY AND RELEVANCE 141
by strong opposing tendencies originating in other factors contained within
the phenomenon o f multidirectional mobility.
Thirdly, the multidirectional and, to a greater extent, the cyclical patterns
o f mobility at work checked the crystallization of peasant socio-economic
strata into classes and made possible the relatively high political cohesiveness
which peasant communities in fact showed. Lack of stability in the member­
ship o f socio-economic strata of the peasantry and high rates of mobility,
enabling the poorer and the richer actually to change places, must have their
impact on the perception of the world by peasants. This tendency was greatly
reinforced by the relative qualitative homogeneity of peasant households
reflected in the fact that the socio-economic differentiation evident within
Russian peasant communities seldom begot classical class conflict such as
struggle between employers and employees (or between actors in a market
situation o f inherent and permanent conflict of interests).
Finally, the peasant community and its immediate neighbourhood provided
the peasants with their most meaningful framework of political consciousness
and political involvement. In the conditions then obtaining, the most signifi­
cant conflicts in peasant society seem to have been those of a peasant com­
munity as such against forces external to it, rather than amongst the various
socio-economic strata within a community. Conflicts with the nobility, with
the towns, and with the state (over rents, prices, taxes, conscription, and law)
acted as powerful external pressures evoking peasant solidarity. The frequency
o f natural catastrophes served to provide the additional bond of awareness of
a common fate. These external pressures and conflicts tended to limit and to
overshadow the tensions created by socio-economic polarization within
peasant communities. In the struggle with an omnipotent nature and powerful
outsiders, a successful farmer, head of a big and relatively wealthy household
(raised, in many cases, within living memory) may have been envied, but still
tended to be seen as a natural leader rather than a ‘class enemy’. Powerful
unifying factors at work in a peasant community impinged forcibly on
peasant political consciousness and affected peasant political stances. No
propaganda effort could, in the long run, make the peasants accept a towns­
man’s picture o f class relations and class warfare which contradicted their
everyday experience. For they knew better.
 PART III

THE PREDOMINANT
CONFLICT
(1917-1925)
 8
THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND
LEVELLING AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY

E k h , t y d a y u b lo c h k o
D a ts v e ta y a s n o g o
B e i s le v a b e lo g o
D a sp ra va k ra sn o g o

Oh you little apple

Oh so bright
Bash the ‘Whites’ from the left
And the ‘Reds’ from the right
Peasant folksong (c h a s tu s h k a ) in the time of the revolution

(a) In Search o f Kulak Counter-Revolution

T he major problems of Russian rural history during the post-revolutionary
decade are, on the one hand, those of the character and significance of the
agrarian revolution, and, on the other hand, those of the power structure and
of diversification and conflict in the Russian countryside of the time. Among
the former, the so-called 'second revolution’ stands out as particularly signi­
ficant for the interpretation of the socio-political structure of Russian peasant
communities. The conflict relations set in motion in that period determined
to a great extent the political sociology of rural Russia in the period to come.
As presented by Soviet historians and widely accepted by scholars abroad,
the history of the Russian agrarian revolution is said to consist of two major
stages. At the first stage (1917-18), the property of non-peasant landowners
was taken over and divided up by the peasants. At the second stage (late 1918
onwards) the land o f the rich kulaks was taken by the village poor in an
egalitarian second revolution.1 This depiction was, no doubt, closely related
to the conceptual framework of Marxist class theory already expressed in
Lenin’s early writings.2 In this view, an essentially anti-feudal revolution had
1 See B o l's h a y a s o v e ts k a y a e n ts ik lo p e d iy a (2nd edn.), vol. i, p. 314. For the view of a
contemporary see, for example, L. Kritsman, K la s s o v o e ra s s lo e n ie v s o v e ts k o i d e r e v n e
(1926), p. 14. The notion of two revolutions was general in the 1920s. After 1929, the col­
lectivization and ‘liquidation of the kulaks as a class' were declared ‘the second revolution’
and crodited to Stalin. Russian scholars have therefore been using the term ‘two stages of
development of the agrarian revolution’ since then.
2 V. Lenin, ‘Dve taktiki sotsial-demokratii v pervoi russkoi revolyutsii’, P o ln o e s o b r a n ie
s o c h in e n ii (5th edn.), vol. xi.
146 AG RARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING

swept away the remainders of feudalism in 1917-18. Peasant class unity in

the face o f common enemies had disappeared, however, as soon as this task
had been accomplished. ‘The kulaks had to enter a battle with the proletarian
dictatorship.’1 In the countryside, the capitalists and the rich now faced the
proletarians and the poor in a new class battle in which, with the help o f the
urban proletariat, the kulaks were defeated. In an attempt finally to fit this
agrarian upheaval into Marxism o f the Stalin variety, Lutskii even went so
far as to excommunicate the very notion o f peasant agrarian revolution as
bourgeois revisionism.2 The peasantry had to have achieved its aims under
the leadership o f the urban proletariat; the land had been given by the Soviet
state and not taken by spontaneous peasant action. The Soviet scholars of
the twenties never doubted the decisive character of local peasant action. Yet
the theory o f two stages had by then already become firmly established. It
was supported by the records o f the major policy-decisions of the government
and by case studies showing egalitarian redivision o f the land (and sometimes
o f equipment) in various communities. The main proof offered, however,
was the extensive statistical evidence o f powerful levelling among peasant
households.
Let us follow this line o f argument and relate it to the orthodox Marx­
ist views on peasant differentiation. The kulaks were said to have consti­
tuted as much as 15 per cent of the peasant households of Russia on the eve
o f the revolution.3 According to a more recent study, the ‘peasant bour­
geoisie’ o f the Ukraine was said to have included 12*2 per cent o f the house­
holds, rising to as much as 22 per cent o f households and 30 per cent o f the
population in the Steppe part o f the Ukraine.4 The Russian peasant population
would therefore have included more than 20 per cent o f members o f kulak
households,5 amounting to about 20 million ‘souls’ organized in the best-
managed households in the Russian countryside.6 Furthermore, this peasant
stratum was marked by a higher-than-average percentage o f mature male
workers, o f whom a considerable proportion were ex-servicemen recently
back from the war—and, in many cases, armed. With their relatives and
friends the kulaks would have represented a formidable force in the Russian
countryside. Yet as much as 50,000,000 hectares (46,000,000 des.) o f land are
1 V. Aver'ev, K o m i t e t y b e d n o ty (1933), p. 3. My italics.
2 E. Lutskii, ‘Peredel zemli vesnoi 1918 g.’, in J z v e s tiy a A N S S S R (Seriya istorii i
filozofii), vol. iv (1949), no. 3. In this, as in many other subjects, Soviet social scientists are
still prisoners of the concepts o f the 1930s and 1940s. See, for example, G. Sharapov,
R a z r e s h e n ie a g ra r n o g o v o p r o s a v R o s s ii p o s le p o b e d y o k t y a b r 's k o i r e v o ly u ts ii (1961), p. 43.
3 See Table 3 m.
4 M. Rubach, O c h e r k i p o is to r ii r e v o ly u ts io n n o g o p r e o b r a z o v a n iy a a g r a r n y k h o tn o s h e n ii
na U k r a in e (1956), pp. 20-3.
5 In view of the larger size o f the wealthier households, see the discussion in Chapter 4,
section (a).
6 We do not, in fact, have hard figures even for the size o f the rural population in 1917.
A census taken in only 36 g u b . o f European Russia showed 71,200,000 ‘souls’. See S t a t i s t s
c h e s k ii s b o r n ik z a 1 9 1 3 - 1 7 g g . (1921), pp. 208-9.
 AMONG THE R USSIAN PEASANTRY 147

said to have been expropriated from this group by the second revolution.1 Of
12.455.000 des. of land held by the ‘peasant bourgeoisie’ in the Ukraine,
7.087.000 des. is said to have been taken away.2 One would have expected a
tremendous civil war, an inter-peasant Armageddon, a clash in comparison
with which even the collectivization o f 1929-32 would pale.
Soviet scholars have been well aware of the necessary conceptual results
of their stand. Widespread kulak rebellion against the proletarian dictatorship
and against the ‘second revolution’ was claimed time and time again, but solid
evidence is lacking. The intensive search for proofs produced many stories of
clashes, mainly over grain requisitioning. No doubt cases of peasant rioting
were numerous in the Russian countryside of that time,3 but there is practi­
cally no record o f uprisings of wealthy peasants against land-redivision. For
example, the large-scale study of the Committees of the Poor (Kombedy)4 by
Aver'ev alleged kulak rebellions at the end of 1918, but adduced only one
example—an uprising in Sosnovka uezd, Tambov gub.,5 which was described,
however, on the very next page of his book, as a general peasant revolt against
extensive taxation and poor supplies. When more carefully examined, the
so-called kulak rebellions seem nearly always to have been general peasant
uprisings, in which no class distinction can be traced.6 In fact, the countryside
in the period o f this supposed ‘second revolution’ (1918-19) proves to have
been relatively peaceful when compared with 1906, 1917, or 1920. Moreover,
in the major peasant rebellions of 1919-21 (those of Makhno and Antonov,
those in West Siberia and the Far East and Turkestan, that of the ‘Green Army
o f the Black Sea Area’, and so on), which were against both the ‘Whites’ and
the ‘Reds’, all strata of the peasantry seem to have risen by localities with
remarkable unity and with no trace of internal class division. Such unity
would seem startling had a major internal class struggle and inter-class
expropriations taken place just a year earlier.
We are, therefore, left with a major problem. What was it that made the
powerful kulaks, the ‘sturdy and strong’7 of the Russian countryside, accept
meekly what would have amounted to robbery in their eyes? Alternatively,
what is wrong with the ‘two stages’ theory of the agrarian revolution in Russia?

(b) Land Redivision, 1917-1919

The Russian revolution raises issues of enormous complexity. We shall
focus our attention on one of them—the redistribution of land. In no period
1 B o l's h a y a s o v e ts k a y a e n ts ik lo p e d iy a , vol. i, p. 314.
2 Rubach, op. cit., pp. 20 and 30.
3 For example, 108 peasant uprisings were reported during the period between July and
November 1918 (Sharapov, op. cit., p. 165).
4 For further discussion see Chapter 8, section (b), below. 5 Aver'ev, op. cit., p. 44.
6 See, for example, Aver'ev, op. cit., Introduction, and the book by V. Gerasimyuk,
N a c h a lo s o ts ia lis tic h e s k o i r e v o ly u ts ii v d e r e v n e , 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 g g . (1958), pp. 85, 88, 109-10;
also Sharapov, op. cit., pp. 165-6.
7 From Stolypin’s speech to the D u m a in 1907. See above, Chapter 3, section (a).
148 AG RARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING

were the discrepancies between plans and achievements, political decisions

and their execution, as enormous as in the time of the revolution. It is not
enough, therefore, merely to establish what was the substance o f national
legislation; it is necessary to go on to examine its local implementation and
analyse the results achieved. Firstly, however, let us look at the legislation.
The legal history o f agrarian revolution began with the Decree on Land,
published on the night of the October Revolution—26 October 1917 (O.S.).1
The Decree proclaimed the nationalization of land and made into law a com­
pilation o f 242 peasant instructions to persons elected (nakcizy).2 The basic
Law on the Socialization of Land of 19 February 19183 marked the completion
o f the legislation inaugurated by the Decree on Land. Non-peasant farmland
property had been practically abolished and all the land was nationalized.
Principles o f egalitarian division o f farming-land in accordance with the size
o f the membership o f the household had been adopted and all transactions
in land, renting, and wage-work forbidden.4 Executive power and the right
to interpret the reform were placed in the hands o f the local Peasant Soviets.
The impact o f Marxist ideology was felt in the provision made (Section 11)
for turning the best-run of the agricultural estates into state farms and in a
declaration of the preferability of collective agriculture.
The growing split between the Bolsheviks and their only political allies,
the Left S.R. Party and the start o f civil war marked a new stage in Soviet
agricultural legislation. On 11 June 1918, a Decree on the Organization of
Committees o f the Rural Poor (Kombedy) was passed5 and by October their
number had reached 70,ooo.6 These new bodies were established to deal with
the acute shortage o f grain created by the breakdown o f both market and state
supply mechanisms.7 Surplus grain was to be expropriated from the hands of
the rural rich and divided between the rural poor and the urban proletariat.
However, the pressing need to ensure the food supply by no means exhausted
the real aims o f the newly established Committees o f Poor. As early as Feb­
ruary 1918, Lenin had predicted ‘that the working peasantry will declare un­
sparing war on its kulak oppressors and help us in our struggle for a better
future for the people and for socialism’.8 On 20 May the Soviet ‘president’
Sverdlov called the V.Ts.I.K. (Soviet Russia’s ‘Parliament’) ‘to approach in the
1 D e k r e t y s o v e ts k o i v la s ti (1957), vol. i, pp. 7-20.
2 A. Bol'shakov and N. Rozhkov, I s to r iy a k h o z y a is tv a R o s s ii (1926), vol. iii, p. 171. The
compilation was prepared under the strong influence o f the S.R. Party and was first pub­
lished in I z v e s tiy a V s e r o s s iis k o g o S o v e ta K r e s t'y a n s k ik h D e p u ta to v , 19 August 1917, no. 88.
3 O z e m le (1921), pp. 22-3.
4 Some exceptions were allowed; for example, land could be rented for not more than
two years in the case of its holder’s illness. * See Aver'ev, op. cit., pp. 53-4.
6 V. Yakovtsevskii, A g r a r n y e o tn o s h e n iy a v S S S R v p e r i o d s t r o ite l's tv a s o ts ia liz m a
(1964), p. 71.
7 The Decree establishing K o m b e d y closely followed the Decree o f 9 May ‘to confer on
the People’s Commissariat o f Supply Extraordinary Powers for the Struggle with the
Rural Bourgeoisie which Conceals Grain Stocks and Speculates in them’; E. H. Carr, A
H is to r y o f th e R u s sia n R e v o lu tio n (1952), vol. ii, p. $1. 8 Ibid., p. 50.
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 149
most serious fashion the problem of social differentiation in the villages, of the
creation of two hostile forces in the villages’ and ‘to kindle the blaze of the same
civil war which recently took place in the cities’.1
Non-peasant land having already been taken over, the threshold of the
socialist revolution in the countryside seemed to have been reached. By May
1918, a decision to initiate the inevitable second revolution was taken by the
Bolsheviks.12 In fact, the Committees of the Poor were expected to lead this
‘socialist revolution in the countryside’.3 It was no doubt this task which made
Lenin declare that ‘The organization of the rural poor is the most important
problem o f our internal development and even the most important problem
o f our revolution.’4 To him, this was the step by which ‘we passed the bound­
ary which separates the bourgeois from the socialist revolution’.5 A spirit
almost o f religious uplift ruled at the regional congresses of the Kombedy6—
yet, on 2 December 1918, the Committees of the Poor were dissolved, with
the dubious explanation that their tasks had been fulfilled. In terms of the
grandiose aims set, this dissolution amounted, in fact, to no less than a ‘timely
recognition o f failure—a retreat from an untenable position’.7 The Kombedy
had failed to develop into the revolutionary vanguard of the poor peasantry.
Yet the idea o f solving the problems of the village along orthodox Bolshevik
lines, by the establishment of an ‘agricultural industry’, still kept a hold. On
14 February 1919 the ‘Regulations on Socialist Land Measures’ declared an
agriculture based on peasant family-farms to be ‘transitional and obsolescent*8
and called for the development of state and collective farms. From the middle
o f 1918 until the end of 1920 the development of agriculture was officially con­
sidered inseparably connected with the ‘statization’ (ogosudarstvlenie) and
collectivization o f agriculture.9 In December 1920 the Eighth Congress of
Soviets declared ‘maintaining farms of proper size and quality to be the duty
o f the population’ while Narkomzem (the People’s Commissariat of Agri­
culture) tried to plan and administer agriculture.101New devices to ensure
peasant co-operation such as forming ‘sowing committees’ were tried.11 It was

1 Gerasimyuk, op. cit., pp. 69-70.

2 See O tc h e t N a r k o m z e m a I X V s e ro s siis k o m u S 'e z d u S o v e to v (1922), p. 7.
3 Ibid., p. 10.
4 From Lenin’s speech to the representatives o f K o m b e d y in Moscow g u b ., ibid., p. 46.
5 Carr, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 55-
6 See, for example, the report S 'e z d k o m b e d o v s o y u z a k o m m u n s e v e r n o i o b la s ti (1918).
7 Carr, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 159.
8 P e r e k h o d y a s h c h ie i o tz h iv a y u s h c h ie . See O z e m le , p. 30.
9 O tc h e t N a r k o m z e m a , p. 7.
10 See I. Teodorovich, O g o s u d a r s tv e n n o m r e g u lir o v a n iik r e s t'y a n s k o g o k h o z y a is tv a (1920).
11 Ibid.; also N. Osinskii, G o s u d a r stv e iu io e r e g u lir o v a n ie k r e s t'y a n s k o g o k h o z y a is tv a (1920).
Simultaneously, in this case, tough talk still persisted and the decisions of Party Conferences
on the activities in the countryside are full of expressions like the peasant’s ‘duty to work
at the place directed’, ‘labour desertion’, etc., with an amusing tendency to transfer urban in­
dustrial terms to a milieu which rendered them meaningless. See V s e r o s s iis k o e so v e sh c h a n ie
p o r o b o te v d e r e v n e (1920).
150 AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING

the failure o f these measures as well as the disappearance o f hope that the
state farms ‘would in a short time become meat and grain factories’1 which
led to the final change of policy expressed in the introduction o f the N.E.P.
and in the Land Code of 1922.2
How far did all that legislation passed by national bodies influence actual
happenings in the Russian countryside? Agricultural revolt had preceded the
Decree on Land. In the autumn o f 1917, peasant revolution had spread like
wildfire. The causal roots o f the rebellion seem to be indicated by the close
correlation to be found between the extent o f local ‘surplus agrarian popula­
tion’ (or, more exactly, relative land shortage) and the spread o f rebellion.3
Its organization was remarkable. Village assemblies decided how to divide
the non-peasant property in each locality. Then action was taken, all house­
holds being compelled to participate in order to ensure success—and equal
responsibility in the event of possible subsequent reprisals.4 These features
displayed in the rebellion of 1917 dominated developments in 1918. The weak­
ness o f the central town-based authorities in the villages left the real power in
the hands o f local organizations. The new government legislated but the local
bodies had the final say.5
A study carried out by Narkomzem showed what were the local by-laws
and instructions relating to agriculture in force in the Russia o f 1918.6 N on­
peasant farmland had been taken over and divided between peasant house­
holds, but the legal provisions for the establishment o f state farms on the
exemplary estates had remained on the whole disregarded. Generally, this
land-redistribution had been declared ‘temporary’, ‘until the final implemen­
tation o f the Basic Law’. Practice had varied greatly over methods o f dividing
up land between peasants. In some areas, all the land (including peasant
allotments o f communal land) had been pooled and then equally divided in
accordance with the number o f consumers per household—in the language
o f Russian peasant millenarianism, a ‘black redistribution’ (chernyi peredel).
In other areas, peasant holdings had remained untouched and only non­
peasant land had been divided up, special attention being given to landless
families. As an intermediate measure, the ‘cutting off o f strips’ (prirezka,
otrezka) had been applied; in these cases, ‘surplus land’ had been transferred
from the richest to the poorest, the intermediate strata not participating in
the reform. Peasants’ privately owned land had sometimes been expropriated
in the same way as non-peasant land, but in other cases such land had been
1 O tc h e t N a r k o m z e m a , pp. 7, 34-55.
2 See Appendix B, section (d). 5 See the map in O z e m le , p. 20.
4 V. Milyutin, A g r a r n a y a r e v o ly u ts iy a (1928), vol. ii. s ibid., p. 179.
6 The study, edited by P. Pershin, covered 33 g u b . o f the R.S.F.S.R. and analysed the
decisions of the g u b e r n iy a and of about one-third o f the u e z d authorities: R a s p r e d e le n ie
z e m li v 1 9 1 8 g . (1919)- The conclusions o f this study, recapitulated in the following para­
graph, find full support in recent publications by Yakovtsevskii (op. cit., pp. 68, 72) and
Sharapov (op. cit., pp. 136-7). See also Z e m li o s o b y k h s u b 'e k to v v la d e n iy a p r i o tc h u z h d e n ii
( 1919).
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 151

treated in the same way as allotments of commune land and, possibly, left
in the possession o f its owners. The study made clear that ‘black redistribu­
tion’ had been exceptional and had generally been carried out on local initia­
tive and against the will of the higher authorities. ‘Cutting off strips’ with
consequent or allocation o f land to the poor, was found to have been the
most common type of land-redistribution. Many instances in which the
richest peasant households had benefited, and sometimes benefited most,
from this land-redistribution, were reported in some later studies. The
land-redistribution involved only fields; peasant house-plots remained, on the
whole, untouched.1
The most remarkable change which seems to have occurred was a change
in the role of the peasant communes. In the words of contemporaries, ‘The
land commune, coming alive with quite exceptional force, was undoubtedly
the basic ideological kernel of the social mechanism which in fact carried out
the agrarian revolution within the peasantry itself.’2 This revival of the peasant
commune was related to two major developments. In the first place, the old
custom o f land-redistribution by communes developed into the main mech­
anism by which the land-redistribution of the revolution was carried out.
Consequently, the communes, the volost', and even the uezd (district) author­
ities tended to clash in attempting to secure the maximum amount of land for
‘their’ peasants and, in the process, consolidated their identities. Claims to land
based on the property rights of serf-owners in the nineteenth century (‘ours
was the lord— ours is the land’) seemed to prove time and time again stronger
than requests for equality between districts, voiced by the central authorities.3
Secondly, a new situation had emerged in central Russia concerning
peasants with enclosed types of farms (uchastkovye form y khozyaistva) who
had mostly left peasant communes after 1906 as a result of the Stolypin re­
forms.4 In the new conditions, with power shifting to the hands of peasant
communities, tension between the members of communes and the ‘splitters’
exploded in the form of a general tendency to force the enclosed types o f
farms back into the communes.5 Newcomers who had settled on enclosed
farms were usually forced out of the region.6 This action could not be
1 See, for example, G. Gordeev, S e l's k o e k h o z y a is tv o v v o in e i r e v o ly u ts ii (1925), p. 107;
see also Rubach, op. cit., p. 234. Some cases o f levelling house-plots were reported by
V. Keller and I. Romanenko, P e r v y e ito g i a g r a r n o i r e fo r m y (1922), p. 105.
2 Keller and Romanenko, op. cit., p. 21.
3 Milyutin, op. cit., p. 230.
4 See G. T. Robinson, R u r a l R u s s ia u n d e r th e O l d R e g im e (1949), chaps, xi, xii.
5 Milyutin, op. cit., pp. 177 and 223-4; S. Dubrovskii, K r e s t'y a n s tv o v 1 9 1 7 g . (1927),
pp. 69 and 70. In some cases the owners o f enclosed farms rejoined communes by their own
free will, believing that they would gain more this way from the redistribution of non-peasant
lands. See L. Kritsman, K la s s o v o e ra s s lo e n ie v s o v e ts k o i d e r e v n e (1926), p. 9.
6 The tension between the members o f traditional peasant communes and the owners
of independent farms engaged in enclosures o f various kinds is by no means specific to
Russia. See, for example, M. Bloch and G. Lefebvre in Charles K. Warner (ed.). A g r a ria n
C o n d itio n s in M o d e r n E u r o p e a n H is to r y (1966), pp. 79-98.
152 AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING

explained purely as a poor-versus-rich engagement. In fact, many o f the owners

o f enclosed farms did not turn out to be any wealthier than their commune-
member neighbours; in 20 out o f 47 guberniyas examined, the average land-
holding o f an enclosed farm was reported to be even below the commune
average in the same area.2 Yet the reports refer constantly both to the total
abolition o f enclosed farms and to the hate-filled approach o f the majority
o f peasants to them.2 From 1916 to 1922, the percentage of enclosed farms
(ikhutor) in Samara gub. decreased from 19 to 01 per cent and, in Saratov
gub., from 16 4 to 0 0 per cent.3 P. Pershin, however, pointed out that
there were different attitudes to different types o f enclosed farming and in
the various regions.4
If the farms with enclosed land held in strips (otrub) were generally elimin­
ated all over Russia, attitudes to the fully enclosed farms {khutor) ranged
from violently negative (in the south and the Agricultural Centre) to ambigu­
ously positive (in parts of the north and north-west). Pershin explained
this by the technical advantages o f the enclosed farms as far as farming in
these areas was concerned and by the lesser degree of socio-economic differ­
entiation expressed in these districts by the creation o f enclosed farms.5
The activities o f the Kombedy at the end of 1918 do not seem to have had
any long-lasting effects on the division of land. It was division by the com­
munes if any which in 1918 acted as the major machinery o f revolutionary
land-redistribution. Furthermore, the redivision o f land seems to have
exercised a strong influence on the development o f livestock-ownership.
By the beginning o f 1919, non-peasant land had in general been redistributed
and the rate o f redivision by commune rapidly fell off.6 A growing desire
on the part o f the peasant for some security in the possession o f newly
acquired land came to be felt in a growing interest in the formalization
o f land-holdings {zemleustroistvo)—and even in a new wave of creation of
enclosed farms in the north-west.7 The agrarian revolution was practically
over.8
1 O z e m le , p. 15. Land-area could be misleading, if used as the only criterion o f wealth.
However, doubts about the economic preferability o f owning an enclosed farm to house­
holding in a commune in terms of the prosperity each could offer were also voiced in the
authoritative study o f the pre-revolutionary period: see Robinson, op. cit., pp. 237-8.
2 One typical decision by an uezd authority instructed all the peasants who had previously
left the commune ‘to join the commune on the usual terms in order to unite the peasantry
and to prevent the beginning o f bloodshed’. See O z e m le , p. 69.
3 V. Danilov, ‘Zemel'nye otnosheniya v sovetskoi dokolkhoznoi derevne’, I s to r iy a S S S R
(1958), no. 3, p. 100.
4 P. Pershin, U c h a s tk o v o e z e m le p o V z o v a n ie v R o s s ii (1922), pp. 39-43.
5 The strong belief of Pershin in the preferability o f enclosed farms for the development
of Russian agriculture could make for some bias in his estimates.
6 Milyutin, op. cit., p. 212. Keller and Romanenko, op. cit., pp. 99-104.
7 O z e m le , pp. 17-71; Pershin, op. cit., pp. 35-44.
8 A tendency to redivide land annually was still rife in some communities, as testified to
by stern prohibitions by the government in 1919 and, even more, in 1920. See Sharapov,
op. cit., pp. 144, 145.
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 153

(c) The Results o f the Agrarian Revolution

What were the actual results of the agrarian revolution in terms of socio­
economic mobility? The main change had taken the form of a major land-
redistribution which had transferred an additional 150 million des. of land
into peasant hands.1This endlessly repeated figure needs serious modifications.
Only about one-third of this land previously belonged to the landed nobility;
it consisted to a great extent of arable land.2 The rest was mainly land owned
in the past by the state and the Tsar’s family, and consisted in large measure
o f non-arable land, mainly forest. The exact amount of arable land acquired
by the Russian peasantry as a result of the revolution is not clear. In 1921,
Narkomzem reported from 33 guberniyas of European Russia, 86 per cent of
non-peasant land property as taken over by the peasants, thus bringing the
the arable land held by peasant households in those areas to 97 per cent of the
total.3 But already in 1916, as much as 89 per cent o f the sown land in Russia
had been recorded as sown by peasant households (the peasantry had also
owned up to 95 per cent of the total livestock).4 A great part of the redistri­
buted non-peasant land seems to have consisted, therefore, of land actually
rented in the past by peasants (mainly by the wealthier households or partner­
ships) and added after 1917-18 to the communes’ pools.5
In spite o f the expropriation o f non-peasant lands, the studies o f 1917-20
record, in fact, an aggregate shift downwards in terms both of land sown and
o f horses per household, as demonstrated in Table 8*i on the next page. The
aggregate shift was partly the result of the sharp increase in the numbers of
peasant households during the period, coupled with the decrease in both
average membership and size of land held. However, land sown and horses
per capita decreased also. The recorded aggregate shift downwards expressed,
therefore, an actual economic deterioration in the position of the Russian
peasantry as a group, a result of war and revolution. A sharp decrease in the
number o f households engaged in crafts and trades also took place.
However, the impact of the agrarian revolution can be fully revealed only
by studying the actual mobility of peasant households in terms of land
held. Estimates varied. The evidence is thin. The report of Narkomzem
already quoted refers to an addition of about one-quarter to three-quarters
o f a desyatina per capita .6 This estimate seems to be rather on the large
1 B o l's h a y a s o v e ts k a y a e n ts ik lo p e d iy a (2nd ed.), p. 341. The peasantry also benefited from
the abolition o f debts and from freedom’from rent to non-peasant owners. For estimates see
Gerasimyuk, op. cit., p. 4. The financial benefits were, however, at times offset by rises in
taxation, inflation, etc.
2 Robinson, op. cit., p. 270.
3 O tc h e t N a r k o m z e m a , p. 5. The g u b e r n iy a s recorded were those, mainly in the central
part o f European Russia, less disturbed by the civil war.
4 A. Chelintsev, R u s s k o e s e l's k o e k h o z y a is tv o p e r e d r e v o ly u ts ie i (1928), pp. 10-11. The
World War led to an increase in the tendency o f the Russian nobility to rent out land rather
than to produce on it.
5 Teodorovich, op. cit., p. 6. 6 O tc h e t N a r k o m z e m a , p. 6.
154 AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING
side. A map presented by Knipovich1 makes it clear that only in Saratov gub.
and Petrograd gub. was the addition larger than half a desyatina per capita.
Furthermore, about half o f all the guberniyas showed an increase o f less
than a quarter o f a desyatina per capita. Teodorovich’s estimate o f addi­
tional land ranging between 0 09 des. (0 24 acre) and 0 33 des. (0 9 acre) per
capita seems closer to the truth, therefore.2 There were even reports of
local additions o f as little as four sazhen’s (0 005 acre) per capita in some o f
the villages. It is not surprising that feelings o f disappointment and unfulfilled
hopes were reported from peasant communities in studies o f attitudes to the
agrarian reform.3

T able 8 1
Indicators o f Peasant Economic Activity, R.S.F.S.R., Agricultural Censuses
o f 1917, 1920, and 1922

Indicator Unit 1917 1920 1922

Av. area sown per household d es. 4*3 3-2 2'2

Av. no. horses per household horses 1*4 i-i o-8
Households with no land sown % o f total 15*9 81 6-7
Households with no horses % o f total 27*0 27-1 37*5
Households engaging in crafts
and trades0 % o f total 23-5 I4 ‘7 11*9
Av. no. members per household persons 61 5-6 5-4
Av. area sown p e r c a p ita des. 0-7 o-6 0-4
Av. no. horses p e r c a p ita horses 0-228 0-196 0-148

Source. S b o r n ik s ta tis tic h e s k ik h s v e d e n ii p o S S S R , 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 2 2 g g . (1924), p. 107.

Note. a i.e. p r o m y s ly , which included off-farm incomes.

Changes in the socio-economic differentiation o f Russian peasantry in the

period 1917-20 according to the most reliable contemporary records are
shown in Tables 31V and y v of Chapter 3 (pp. 53 and 54 above). The data on
stratification by sown area show considerable levelling—exceeding, in fact,
the simultaneous aggregate shift downwards. The numbers o f households
rapidly increased, while the percentage o f the landless dropped by more than
half. A considerable decrease appeared in the number o f larger holdings; its
extent correlating with the holding’s size. The smallest holdings o f less than
two des. o f sown area rose in 1920 to nearly half the total. The differentiation-
processes measured in terms of horses per household showed similar trends.
Apparently the large-scale levelling brought about by the revolution was not
restricted to land alone.

1 O z e m le , p. 31. 2 Teodorovich, op. cit., p. 6.

3 Keller and Romanenko, op. cit., pp. 86-94; Pershin, op. cit., p. 44.
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 155

A major change occurred in the position of the landless1 yet it is necessary

to keep in mind the extraordinary character of this group in the Russian
village during this period. Various representatives of the non-farming popu­
lation-artisans, shopkeepers, some of the retired, teachers, even the clergy—
were recorded as landless in many cases. The food crisis and the collapse of
the money economy and of the wage system gave these people a serious reason
to claim some land; the egalitarian spirit prevailing and the power of the rural
communities validated their claims. To many holders of newly created small­
holdings, the land acquired was but a temporary expedient to hold on to until
better times arrived. Many of them no doubt did not even farm; they had
claimed land in order to rent it out to provide supplementary income. (This
procedure was made illegal during 1917-21 and therefore escaped official
estimation.) This situation would partly explain why the percentage o f the
horseless far exceeded the percentage of the landless throughout the whole
period, military requisitions and the small size of landholdings adding to the
problem.2
An aggregate shift downwards in prosperity was strongly felt in all the
other strata o f the peasant population. Both absolute and relative increases
in numbers were evident in the stratum of the poorest smallholders which
accommodated both upward-moving formerly landless peasants and the
downward-moving farming peasants. This stratum seemed also swollen
by considerable numbers of immigrants. The shift downwards was particu­
larly evident in the richest stratum, a fact which seems to support the claim
that a ‘second revolution’ took place. The decrease in the area sown by the
rich peasants would be partly due to the redistribution o f land formerly rented
from the nobility rather than o f land held by them as allotments or owned out­
right. Transference o f these lands to the commune pool would have been
disadvantageous to those richer households which had rented most in the
pre-revolutionary period. However, the meaning attached to this particular
change by all those involved would be far from class expropriation of the
rich kulaks.
The extent o f mobility reflecting change in the amount of land actually
owned or held as an allotment by the richest households is once again doubt­
ful. An estimate made in 1923 claimed that the main change had been the
expropriation, in the period 1917-20, of about half of the land held by
enclosed farms as well as o f four-fifths of private land bought by the peasants
before the revolution.3 This estimate seems greatly exaggerated, however.
The figures tended partly to record major changes in the place of holding
1 Yakovtsevskii, for example, has estimated the number of landless peasants who ac­
quired land in the process of revolution at about 3,000,000 (op. cit., p. 73).
2 The Russian grain agriculture made horses necessary. However, to keep a horse was
not an economically reasonable proposition for households o f less than 2 des. See Chapter
4, section (b).
3 Y. Blyakher in Statisticheskii vestnik (1923), nos. 1-4, p. 151.
156 AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING

(sdvigi)— in many cases without change in size.1 As indicated, some reports

even claim that the rich householders were major beneficiaries o f the 1918
redistribution o f non-peasant land12 (it could be true, in spite o f reports of
levelling, if partitioning o f wealthy households followed increases in land-
holdings).
Substantial correctives seem necessary, therefore, when approaching the
figures ‘pure and simple’ o f socio-economic mobility at the time o f the re­
volution. Yet a real core of powerful levelling processes remains beyond
doubt whatever the operational criteria used. The large-scale decrease in
the numbers o f the landless and the disappearance o f the majority o f rich
households has been treated as the main proof o f the theory o f a ‘second
revolution’. However, if developments in this period are followed closely, one
surprising point emerges. The second revolution in Russia is said to have been
accomplished by the beginning of 1919, yet the process o f levelling does not
seem to have disappeared or even to have diminished considerably until at least
1920.3 Unless some inertia in revolutionary land- and livestock-redistribution
is assumed (and there seems little reason for such an assumption), an addi­
tional explanation for the considerable levelling processes o f 1919-20 is
needed. At the same time the dynamic studies have taught us not to be
satisfied with descriptions o f major processes in peasant society seen as
a whole, but to try and explore the actual dynamics o f the households
concerned.

(d) Mobility o f Peasant Households and the Agrarian Revolution

The basic data necessary for dynamic studies o f the period o f war and
agrarian revolution are lacking. Hardly surprisingly during the decade 1910-
20, few records o f individual histories o f peasant households were collected,
a handicap which cannot now be put right.
The only relevant data for the period of the 1914-17 war were once more
provided by the indefatigable Khryashcheva. She compared substantive
changes recorded between 1899 and 1911 and between 1912 and 1917 in Tula
gub. Her figures show for the second period a sharp drop in rates o f partition­
ing with simultaneous increase in rates of liquidation of households—clearly
an indication o f the results of war.4 The data for the revolutionary period
are also limited and any conclusions are, to that extent, speculative. For
example, hard figures are available for Belorussia, and show an average
annual rate o f partition and emigration more than double the annual rate

1 Keller and Romanenko, op. cit., p. 10.

2 Aver'ev, op. cit., p. 3. A lso see p. 151, footnote 1.
3 The process o f agrarian reform was belated in parts of the Ukraine and in Belorussia
(Yakovtsevskii, op. cit., p. 74), which formed, however, only about 5 per cent o f the Ts.S.U.
samples for 1917, 1919, and 1920 discussed above.
4 A. Khryashcheva, ‘Krest'yanstvo v voine i revolyutsii’, Vestnik statistiki (1920), nos.
9-12, pp. 13-20.
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 157

recorded by the dynamic study of Belorussia in 1924-5,1 i.e. a sharp in­

crease in the substantive changes’ during the period 1917—20. But even more
than such scarce evidence, the general insight gained from the pre- and post-
revolutionary dynamic studies seems suggestive enough to necessitate some
reconsideration o f the records of mobility of the Russian peasant society
which do exist for 1917-20 (e.g. Tables 31V and 3*v on pp. 53 and 54.)
Both theoretical considerations and the little evidence we possess lead to
the assumption that an extraordinary rise in rates of household partitioning
took place during the years 1917-21. Firstly, the return of ex-servicemen and
deserters—mature, aggressive, marriageable, and keen to claim their rights—
created considerable new pressures for apportioning, especially after the
years o f war, during which a decline in rates of partitioning may safely be
assumed.12 Secondly, partitioning, especially for married sons, would have
been a reasonable way for bigger households to face the real or assumed
dangers o f requisition, progressive taxation, and expropriation. An assumed
right to acquire free timber made partitioning easier technically and economi­
cally since it permitted the building of new peasant houses. A decrease in
patriarchal authority and a relative rise in the standing in the peasant com­
munity both o f the young and of the women in these revolutionary years also
tended towards increased partitioning.3 This increase found expression in a
decrease in the average size o f a peasant household; its impact was especially
strong on the bigger households.

T a b l e 8* i i
Peasant Households by Size o f Membership, i g i j and i g i g a

N o. o f members N o. o f households % of households

per household
Absolute change % change
1917 1919 1917-19 1917 1919 1917-19

1 12,567 12,889 + 322 2*9 28 + 26

2-3 64,657 82,838 +18,175 151 17*9 + 28-1
4-6 174,913 203,504 +28,591 40-9 43*9 + 163
7-10 142,723 140,814 - 1,909 30*4 30*4 - i -3
More than 10 32,431 23,351 —9,080 7*6 5*0 —28*0
All households 427,291 463,390 +36,099 100 100 ■+•8*4

Source. E k o n o m ic h e s k o e ra s s lo e n ie k r e s t'y a n s tv a v 1 9 1 7 i 1 9 1 9 g g . (1922), Tables, pp. 8,18.

Note. a Based on a representative sample of villages in 25 g u b e r n iy a s of European Russia.

1 M. Kubanin, K la s s o v a y a su s h c h n o s t' p r o ts e s a d r o b le n iy a k r e s t'y a n s k ik h k h o z y a is tv

(1929), p. 44.
2 For a discussion see A. Peshekhonov, ‘Dinamika krest'yanstva Za vremya revolyutsii’,
Z a p is k i in s titu ta iz u c h e n iy a R o s s ii , vol. ii (1925), p. 15.
3 Both the ex-servicemen and women exercised strong pressure for partitioning. For
further discussion of this see Chapters 9 and 10.
158 AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING
In view o f what has been said above, Bol'shakov’s estimate in Table 8111 of
the rates o f partitioning seems fairly reasonable. A sharp decrease in parti­
tioning during the years 1914-17 was caused by war conditions and the
mobilization o f the younger age groups. Partitioning must have reached its
peak during the 1917-20 period o f the revolution. After 1920, figures were
provided by annual Ts.S.U. dynamic censuses. The drop from 1920 to 1922
reflected an aggregate downward shift due to war, crisis, and famine as well
as the possible slackening after the particularly vigorous wave in 1917-20.

T able 8111
Annual Rales o f Partitioning o f Peasant Households, 1911-1922

% o f households
Period partitioned per annum

1911-14 i -7
1914-17 03
1917-20 3‘3
1920-22 2*3

Source. A. Bol'shakov, S o v r e m e n n a y a d e r e v n y a v ts if r a k h (1925), p. 32.

The steep rise in the general rate o f partitioning during the revolution must
have been particularly evident in the richer strata. National figures are lacking,
but partial records published for three guberniyas o f European Russia fully
support this conclusion.

Table 8-iv

Rates o f Partitioning o f Peasant Households by Area Sown, 1917-1920

(percentage)

Sown area per household Tambov Smolensk Vladimir

in 1917 id e s .) gub. gub. gub.

Less than 1 2*2 i-8 r8

2-4 7-1 100 7 *i
6-8 17-7 23*4 14*8
10-16 3 3 .3
37*7 246
More than 22 610 600 43*o

Source. A. Khryashcheva, ‘Rassloenie krest'yanstva v usloviyakh nepa’, in S o ts ia lis ti-

c h e s k o e k h o z y a is tv o ,
no. ii (1924), p. 57.

It seems safe to assume, for the period o f 1917-20, something like a 50 per
cent rate o f partitioning among peasant households in the richest strata of
the Russian peasantry. To this should be added the levelling impact o f the
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 159
general aggregate shift downwards.1 In the conditions of land shortage and
aggregate downward shift, a marked process of partitioning among the rich­
est necessarily found reflection in the form of considerable levelling among
peasant households.
Even partial and indirect data on household disappearance is lacking for
this period. Given civil war and hardship, the rate of extinction must neces­
sarily have risen. On the other hand, we may assume a decrease in emigration
o f peasant families, with some certainty; conditions were deteriorating in the
towns, resettlement o f peasants in the east had lapsed, and new rights to land-
allotment on the spot had been proclaimed by the revolution. The migratory
cycle, in fact, led to unusual results. Large-scale rural re-immigration out­
stepped emigration during the years 1918-20. On the whole, the immigrants
seemed to join the poorer strata of peasant households and this would partly
account for the numerical rise of the latter.2The impact of immigration on rural
socio-economic mobility would therefore be differential. By swelling the ranks
o f the lower strata, the immigrants seem to have cancelled out the generally
noted levelling effect o f the high extinction rates among the poorest households.3
During the period 1917-20 ‘substantive changes’ seem, therefore, to have
undergone a basic transformation. A sharp increase in partitioning and, in
particular, partitioning o f the biggest households, took place. Simultaneously,
the ‘purge’ o f poorer households was partly arrested and possibly even reversed
by a change in the direction o f rural migration. A trend towards both an
aggregate shift downwards and levelling would follow.
Data for estimating the residual component of peasant households’mobility
from 1917 to 1920 are lacking. However, the intensification of external pres­
sures and an inevitable decrease in stability during the civil war must have led
to an increase in mobility via the operation of chance factors o f all kinds.
The agrarian revolution was mainly carried out through the channel of
commune land-redistributions. In the years 1917-20, some peasant com­
munes carried out as many as four land-redivisions.4 Fully egalitarian land-
redistribution, however, was limited to a minority of peasant communities
and o f households. Nor did commune-operated redistribution become uni­
versal even in 1918.5 Commune redistributions reached their peak in 1918
and then quickly subsided.
To recapitulate, the agrarian revolution, taking the form of requisitioning
o f the non-peasant land and its commune-based redistribution, had a power­
ful levelling effect in 1918. Its impact would have been particularly strong on
the position o f the poor and the landless—the major beneficiaries of the
expropriation o f non-peasant land. However, the sharp drop in the commune
1 See Chapter 3, section (b).
2 See Chapter 5, section (d).
3 For rough estimates o f ‘substantive changes’ during the World War, 1914-17, [see
Khryashcheva, op. cit., pp. 14-20.
4 Keller and Romanenko, op. cit., p. 100. 5 Ibid., pp. 23-6.
8214036 M
i6o AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND LEVELLING
land-redistribution after 1918 did not bring levelling trends to an abrupt end.
A levelling effect o f the centripetal mobility unrelated to agrarian reform1 on
land-redistribution became evident during the aggregate shift downwards of
the years 1919-20. Furthermore, though the expropriation during the revolu­
tion o f horses and equipment seems to have had a limited effect on peasant
economy, the process o f differentiation in terms o f horses and equipment per
household closely followed the levelling observed in terms o f land sown per
household.2 Extensive centripetal mobility of the ‘usual’ kind must have been
operating as a major trend alongside the revolutionary distribution o f prop­
erty in the Russian village and was especially important as far as the richer
strata were concerned. Moreover, the traditional form in which revolutionary
redistribution o f land took place gave a very specific flavour to the political
character o f the Russian agrarian revolution.
In quantitative terms, the centripetal and levelling effect o f multidirectional
and cyclical mobility during any consecutive five years o f the twenties was
comparable in strength to such mobility during the agrarian revolution o f
1917-18. This is not to say that the impact o f agrarian revolution was non­
existent or insignificant. It is to say that multidirectional and cyclical mobility,
determined by the peculiarities of the Russian peasant social structure, were
extremely strong and cannot be disregarded in any analysis. It is to suggest,
furthermore, that, though the landless and the poorest strata were strongly
influenced by division o f non-peasant lands, the levelling effect recorded
both among the bulk o f the middle peasants and the richer strata derived
mainly from the aggregate downward shift, from differential rates o f ‘substan­
tive changes’, and from powerful random oscillation o f peasant households.

(e) Peasant Solidarity and Agrarian Revolution, 1917-1920

The image o f a two-stage revolution in the Russian countryside during the
period 1917-19 was derived to a considerable extent from a wishful theory
supported by conceptually deficient data. The errors underlying the concepts
and policies so derived were varied. Firstly, the size o f the ‘rural bourgeoisie’
was exaggerated by a failure to take into account both the size o f the mem­
bership and the numbers involved in thes trongly centripetal dynamics of
wealthier peasant households. Secondly, multidirectional and cyclical mobility
were disregarded as major factors (operating simultaneously with agrarian
revolution) in the considerable levelling o f the years 1917-20. Thirdly, the
empirically observed tendency towards levelling, at times o f an aggregate
downward shift,3 was disregarded in so far as the general economic crisis of
1 See Chapter 6, section (e), above.
2 Ekonomicheskoe rassloenie krest'yanstva v 1917 i 1919 gg.y pp. 19, 20. At the same time
the requisitioning o f horses by the military and the gradual wearing-out o f the more sophis­
ticated (and irreplaceable) equipment had a particularly strong impact on the wealthier
strata.
3 See the discussion o f Figure I, p. 51 above.
 AMONG THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 161
1917-21 was concerned. Finally, the meaning attached by the peasantry to
the expropriation o f non-peasant land, to the breaking-up of enclosed farms,
and to the widespread levelling of the revolutionary period was not one of
inter-peasant ‘class warfare’ in the terms of the urban world. These socio­
economic changes actually took place within the framework of the traditional
peasant social structure and made for its reinforcement. By the end of the
period o f war and revolution, both the Committees o f the Poor and the
grandiose projects for state food factories had disappeared from the Rus­
sian countryside. So had the majority of the enclosed farms. What remained,
with little or no change, were the traditional peasant households and com­
munes, the typical patterns of peasant differentiation, and the peculiarities
o f dynamics which expressed themselves in continuing multidirectional and
cyclical mobility.
Kulak anti-peasant counter-revolution failed to materialize in 1918-19
mainly because an anti-kulak peasant revolution had failed to take place. On
the whole, poor peasants do not seem to have ‘expropriated’ the land and
property of the rich members of their communes. The destruction of the
enclosed types o f farms should be treated as a different phenomenon, as
expression o f the conservative (reactionary—one may say) strength of tradi­
tional commune ties, rather than of class warfare in the sense applicable to
an urban, market-centred society.1 The revitalization of the communes, the
levelling within the framework of the institutionalized traditional channels
for mobility among peasant households, the re-absorption o f the enclosed
farms into the communes, and the increase in the external pressures from the
state would result in increased social and political cohesion within the peasant
communities.2 This solidarity underlay both the tremendous spread of peasant
revolts in 1920 and their disappearance, all at the same time, in 1921.3 It was
to be reflected, moreover, in the remarkable unity which the peasantry was to
show in its spontaneous attitudes and action in times to come and which
reached a new climax in the period of collectivization.4
1 The owners o f enclosed farms were not identical with members o f the wealthiest stratum
(see Chapter 8, section (b), above).
2 To those who aimed at a proletarian socialist revolution this development could only
mean one thing: ‘Lenin’s agrarian revolution has created a new and powerful layer o f
popular enemies o f socialism in the countryside, enemies whose resistance will be much
more dangerous and stubborn than that of the noble large land-owners’— R. Luxemburg,
The Russian Revolution (1961), p. 48.
3 ‘The peasant risings which formerly, before 1921, were, so to speak, a feature o f the
general Russian picture, have almost completely disappeared. . . . This has been achieved
in the course o f a single year.’ Lenin in his speech to the Fourth Congress o f the Third
International in 1922; see Carr, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 295.
4 For a discussion see in particular the following Chapter 9, section (b), and Chapter 10,
section (e).
 9
THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF
THE N.E.P.: POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT

The question is: Who shall prevail?

( Vopros stoit: kto kogo?)
V. L E N I N

(a) The Local Authority in Rural Russia: The De Jure Situation

T he essence o f political sociology lies in analysing social reality in terms o f the
prevailing power and conflict relations between the major groups in society.
Rural communities all over the world are known for their relative cohesiveness.1
But even so, the simple image of an egalitarian and fully cohesive rural com­
munity, controlled by a self-sustaining social equilibrium, must be left to the
‘ideal type’ o f the sociologists. In reality, rural communities display complex
(if frequently elusive) patterns of diversity, power relationships, and conflicts.
Tracing the lines o f authority and both the actual and potential boundaries
o f diversity and conflict is essential for understanding peasant communities,
their structure, variant forms o f development, and actual dynamics. The
power relationships in the Russian countryside during the N.E.P. (1921-28)
and the major divisions o f rural society constitute a major factor essential for
an understanding o f the period; their examination may in fact cast some light
on other periods and other peasant societies. Furthermore, the patterns of
socio-economic mobility discussed in Part II necessitate in fact a reconsidera­
tion o f the conflict relations in rural society.
The Soviet revolution established a new formal structure o f authority in the
Russian countryside. In the past a legal distinction had existed between on
one hand the local authorities o f the commune and the volost', both elected
by peasants under strong state supervision,2 and on the other hand the
institutions o f the centralized hierarchy o f state appointees at the higher levels
(the uezd and guberniya). This distinction was abolished. A unified system of
‘democratic centralism* was established; its officers were to be elected by the
whole o f the working population o f each corresponding area.
1 The Russian peasant commune (obshchina, mir) exhibited some additional unifying
factors peculiar to Russia. The specific character of the Russian peasant commune should
not, however, be overestimated. The features o f peasant communities show similarities
over a wide range o f pre-capitalist societies.
2 See Chapter 2, section (b).
 PERIOD OF THE N.E.P.: POWER, DIVERSITY, CONFLICT 163
A Rural Soviet1 was to be the working population’s democratic representa­
tion within the bounds of its territory and, at the same time, was to form the
lowest link of the Soviet state machinery. Consequently, it was to be respon­
sible both to its electors and to the higher authority. The Rural Soviet was
elected annually by the whole adult working population o f its area, generally
about half a dozen settlements in close proximity. The kulaks (rich peasant
exploiters), tradesmen, priests, ex-policemen of the Tsarist regime, and some
others were deprived of the right to vote (they were known as lishentsy). A
Congress o f representatives of the Soviets in each volost' acted as the volost's
local legislature. Congresses of Soviets in each uezd, guberniya, and in the
R.S.F.S.R. as a whole operated on similar lines.12 In the periods between
Congresses, both the legislative and executive functions were entrusted to
Executive Committees which were elected by the annual Congresses of Soviets
to form permanent bodies for each volost', uezd, and guberniya. In the Rural
Soviet, the Chairman acted as chief executive officer. The unification of legis­
lative and executive functions was regarded as a manifest advantage of Soviet
democracy over Western parliamentarianism.3 Only at the national level were
legislative and executive functions legally exercised by different bodies: the
All-Russia Congress o f Soviets and the All-Russia Executive Committee
(V.Ts.I.K.; after 1924 Ts.I.K.) legislated, while the Council of Peoples’ Com­
missars (Sovnarkom) headed the state administration.4
The Rural Soviet was intended to have full authority over a variety of
functions fulfilled in the past by the peasant commune. Legal responsibility
for local affairs—administration, the provision of basic services, the collection
o f taxes, and care for the welfare of the local population—was now to be
within the competence of the Soviet. At the same time, affairs relating to the
collective holding of land were to be in the hands of a ‘land commune’ (zemel'~
naya obshchina).5 The authority of the ‘land commune’ was to be embodied
in the ‘land gathering’ (zemel'nyi skhod) and was to include all members of
households united by community of land-holding. The landless inhabitants
o f the countryside were therefore excluded from the ‘land gathering’, while
members o f households deprived of Soviet electoral rights (lishentsy) were
included. The functions assigned to the ‘land commune’ were, however,

1 The term ‘Rural Soviet’ has been used for the Russian expression sel'sovet. The term
‘Village Soviet’ is sometimes used, but it seems misleading, for a sel'sovet might cover a
rural area with a number of settlements having anything from 300 to ‘over 10,000’ in­
habitants; see E. H. Carr, A History o f the Russian Revolution (1950), vol. i, p. 126.
2 Carr, op. cit., vol. i, p. 126; also vol. vi, p. 322. The first Soviet Constitution o f 1918
provided for a 5 to 1 ratio in terms of representatives per unit of population, in favour o
City Soviets as against Rural Soviets, thus scaling down the possible impact o f the peasant
majority. However, this was o f no internal significance for the rural and volost' organizations
themselves.
3 This feature was derived, in fact, from the Paris Commune; see ibid., vol. i, pp. 144-5.
4 For a full treatment, ibid., vol. vi, chaps. 20, 21, and 22.
5 See the Land Code o f 1922, Zemel'nyi kodeks RSFSR (1924)-
164 RURAL SOCIETY IN PERIOD OF N.E.P.
narrowly restricted to the problems of land-redistribution. The volost' Execu­
tive Committees (V.I.K.) were to guide and control the activities o f ‘land
communes’ on their territories. In addition, a ‘rural gathering’ (sel'skii skhod)
was to be established in parallel with the ‘land gathering’.1 The ‘rural gather­
ing’ would consist o f all the inhabitants with Soviet electoral rights within the
area o f a Rural Soviet. The ‘rural gathering’ was to exercise a democratic,
grass-roots control over those whom it elected to the Rural Soviet.
This was the structure o f local authorities which the new regime legislated
for the Russian countryside during the revolution and the subsequent process
o f establishment. However, to turn once more from laws and intentions to
reality, what were the actual relations o f power and authority in the Russian
village? What were the major diversities and group conflicts in the contem­
porary Russian countryside? Finally, what were to be the implications o f the
power-structure, diversity o f interests, and conflict-relations for the next stage
o f the rural history o f Russia?

(b) The Commune Gathering and the Rural Soviet

During the pre-revolutionary decades, it had become increasingly fashion­
able in Russia to discuss the dying-away o f the peasant commune (obshchina,
mir). The views expressed varied, corresponding to the more general under­
lying attitudes. The truth o f the matter was that the peasant commune showed
signs both o f weakening and o f revitalization—the latter especially marked
in times o f crisis. The frequency o f land-redistribution seems to have been
decreasing and a trend for peasants to leave the commune was growing,
especially in north-western and south-eastern Russia.12 At the same time,
however, Russian peasant colonists recreated fully fledged communes of
the traditional type in Turkestan, Siberia,3 and even as far away as
Latin America.4 They also tended to reproduce the same basic structures
o f commune-type relationships in gangs o f peasant labourers and artisans
(iarteli) formed both inside and outside their native villages.
The period o f the revolution saw a general revival of the peasant commune
and its gathering, which emerged as the most general form o f social organiza­
tion among Russians. The social machinery o f the peasant commune played
a major role in the take-over and redivision o f non-peasant land. In the period

1 The decision to set up both rural and land gatherings was taken by a considerable
number o f regional authorities, proclaimed as necessary by a conference on the work of
Soviets held in 1925, and finally legislated on a national scale at the beginning o f 1927. See
M. Rezunov, Sel'skie sovety i zemel'nye obshchestva (1928), p. 23.
2 P. Pershin, Zemel'noe ustroistvo dorevolyutsionnoi derevni (1928), pp. 77-147, 207-81,
329-438. This spontaneous process had, o f course, been greatly accelerated by the Stolypin
reforms (see Chapter 2).
3 Novyi entsiklopedicheski slovar', Brokgauz and Efron (2nd ed n .), vol. xviii, p. 489.
4 See, for example, a report on the Russian colony in Lower California established in
1905: N. L. Whetton, Rural Mexico (1948), p. 164.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 165
of the N.E.P. more than 20,000,00c1 peasant households were organized in
300,000-400,000 peasant communes all over rural Russia.12 In many cases,
a commune corresponded to a settlement but, in a considerable number of
cases, a commune spread over several settlements—though, alternatively,
settlements with more than one commune were also reported.3 Some of these
communes (in particular in the west) were not repartitional, i.e. they did
not engage in periodical blanket distribution of fields between member-
households though otherwise displaying all the typical characteristics o f a
peasant commune. Some ‘super-communes’ were also reported. These ‘super-
communes’ united several peasant communes through common property in
meadows, forests, etc., and were headed by meetings of representatives of the
commune gatherings involved.4
As we have seen, Soviet law provided for two types of democratic assembly
to include most o f the adult inhabitants of a rural area; on the one hand, the
‘rural gathering’ and, on the other hand, the ‘land gathering’. This intention
o f the legislators never came to fruition, however. ‘The facts of life were
stronger than these principles of our law— Until now, in the decisive majority
o f the villages o f the R.S.F.S.R. the rural and the land gatherings are not dis­
tinct and peasants who have lost their political rights actually participate in
the meetings’, sums up a major study in this period.5 Furthermore this report
stated that ‘The gathering consists o f the heads of households which are mem­
bers o f the land commune. . . . Other members of peasant households are
present only accidentally.’6 The study described what amounted, in fact, to
the well-known features of the traditional peasant commune and its gathering,
with not much evidence of impact of a decade of Soviet rule and legislation.
The traditional peasant commune was possibly even strengthened by a de­
crease in the importance o f extra-commune land holders and by some weak­
ening o f external controls.
A peasant household had to recognize at least two types o f local authority
in the village, therefore; the formally established rural Soviet and the com­
mune gathering with its somewhat dubious legal standing.7 However, a
number o f large-scale studies of the Russian countryside made during the

1 Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1928 g. (1929), p. 82.

2 The number of peasant communes in Russia was reported to have increased steadily
from about 110,000 in 46 guberniyas of European Russia at the end o f the nineteenth century
to about 400,000, as reported by the Commissariat o f the Interior (N.K.V.D.) in 1928.
Y. Taniuchi, ‘A Note on the Territorial Relations between Rural Societies, Settlements and
Communes’, Discussion Papers, University o f Birmingham, Centre for Russian and East
European Studies (1966), Series RC/D N o. 3, pp. 8,13. The increase in the numbers o f the
communes after the revolution seemed to make them correspond more closely to settlements.
J Ibid., pp. 12-15. 4 Ibid., PP-
5 Rezunov, op. cit., pp. 23-4.
6 Ibid., p. 24; see also Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 308.
7 Other local centres o f power, in particular the Bolshevik Party and the volost' Executive
Committee will be discussed in Chapter 10.
166 RURAL SOCIETY IN PERIOD OF N.E.P.
N .E .P.,1 together with the recent analyses o f Y. Taniuchi and D. Male,2 make
clear the actual distribution o f authority. As far as real authority was con­
cerned, ‘the commune gathering made itself felt as the real master (khozyain)
o f the village and its economic life. The Rural Soviet was elbowed aside
and made to ask for final authorization o f all its decisions by the commune
gathering.’3
The actual supremacy of commune gatherings over Rural Soviets was
ensured by their control of resources and by their relative independence of
external controls. To begin with, the gathering did hold formal authority over
the land—the peasants’ main ‘means o f production’ as well as source o f in­
come and prestige. In spite o f the decrease in the number o f general land-
redistributions (after the upsurge o f 1918)4 land reallocation still took place
and continued to be controlled by the communal gathering.5
The power o f a communal gathering derived also from its ability to fix and
collect self-imposed taxes (samooblozhenie) for the needs o f the commune—a
manifestly illegal procedure.6 With the extremely limited budget allocated by
the state for local affairs, ‘self-taxation’ became the main source o f expendi­
ture for local rural services. This ‘self-taxation’ lacked state control and, in
many cases, was even kept from the knowledge o f the Soviet authorities.7 The
state’s principles o f progressive scaling were not observed and the poorer
households paid a considerable part o f this tax.8 Nor was this ‘self-taxation’
voluntary. The commune gatherings proved powerful enough to dictate and
extract taxes; its authority was recognized by the peasants.9 Furthermore,
‘the Rural Soviet lost the income even from those public enterprises which
were only vaguely related to the land commune (smithies, granaries, etc.)
since they were taken over by it. This process was greatly facilitated by the
traditional belief in the gathering as owner o f all the villages’ communal
property.’10
Even as late as 1927, after several attempts had been made to increase the
budget o f the Rural Soviets, their expenditures were still only 16 per cent of
1 D. Rozit, Proverka raboty nizovogo apparata v derevne (1926); A. Luzhin and M.
Rezunov, Nizovoi sovetskii apparat (1929); M. Rezunov, op. cit.
2 Y. Taniuchi, The Village Gathering in Russia in the M id- 1920s (1968), and D . Male,
T h e Village Community in the U.S.S.R., 1925-1930’, Soviet Studies, vol. xiv (1963).
3 Luzhin, op. cit., p. 144. 4 See Chapter 8, sections (c) and (d).
5 The meadows were redistributed annually, the land o f households which had become
extinct or had emigrated was reallocated, and so on.
6 The right to impose voluntary self-taxation had been given to Rural Soviets in 1924.
Even then, the right of the commune to decide on self-taxation seems to have remained
unrecognized by state legislation. See Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 462.
7 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, pp. 62-3.
8 Luzhin, op. cit., p. 21; Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, pp. 61-2.
9 Taniuchi, The Village Gatheringy p. 63. In fact the Rural Soviets participated, in many
cases, in both the imposition and the spending o f self-imposed tax agreed upon by commune
gatherings. See the discussion below. See also Vestnik finansov (1927), no. 4, pp. 60-1.
10 Rezunov, op. cit., p. 10. The income also included rent for some o f the commune land
and obligatory unpaid work: for the commune by its members {otrabotka)\ ibid., p. 14.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 167
the recorded (and no doubt underestimated) budgets of the peasant com­
munes.1 A large majority of Rural Soviets did not even have an independent
budget.2 In these conditions, the gatherings tended to extend their activities,
taking over full responsibility for local welfare and administration. The
expense-sheets o f peasant communes show spending on such diverse matters
as land-adjustment measures (zemleustroistvo), forestry, buying high-grade
livestock, running the local school, fire brigade, medical services, post office,
covering the administrative expenses of the Rural Soviet, salaries of militia­
men, and even ‘a payment to the citizen priest for a prayer because of lack of
rain’.3
In fact, the authority of commune gatherings extended far beyond the
boundaries o f control over land-allocation and self-taxation. For example, the
power o f custom and of moral compulsion in the peasant community proved
strong enough to take over jurisdictional functions by imposing and collecting
(quite illegally) fines for minor offences.4 The gathering even played an
important part in the collection of state taxes,5 thus reintroducing, de facto,
some elements o f the old commune collective responsibility for tax-collection
(krugovaya poruka) which had legally been abolished as long before this as
1906.
The gathering met frequently to discuss village affairs.6 Clear-cut, system­
atically collected data is lacking, but a wide range of partial reports enables
a comprehensive picture o f a typical meeting to be built up.7 Suspicious ap­
prehension o f any proposed changes, endless debates and personal quarrels,
incompetent chairmanship and difficulty in reaching any decision constituted
the prevailing atmosphere. Lack of clarity in the proceedings and inconclu­
siveness in the debates often created situations in which the gathering was
ruling by local inertia.8 Absence or silence on the part of the poor peasants
were generally reported, while the richer were much more talkative and
influential.9 Decisions were, on the whole, taken by acclamation and formu­
lated by a small group, consisting o f the well-to-do peasants and the more
aggressive members of the community (krikuny). The Soviet officials and the
members o f the Bolshevik Party were scarcely seen at commune gatherings
and their appearance was generally associated with appeals for funds or
1 The figures were 16,000,000 roubles and up to about 100,000,000 roubles. Rezunov,
op. cit., p. 12.
2 Ibid., p. 9.
3 Ibid., pp. 15-16 and 52; see also Luzhin, op. cit., pp. 27-8.
4 Rezunov, op. cit., p. 31.
5 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, p. 38.
6 From one to thirteen meetings o f village gatherings a month are reported during this
period from various communes. The number of meetings of the gatherings far exceeded those
o f the Rural Soviet. Rezunov, op. cit., pp. 33, 39; Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, pp. 48-9.
7 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, pp. 48- 57- Luzhin, op. cit., pp. 144-5. Rezunov, op.
cit., p. 6; Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 354. N. Rosnitskii, Lit so derevni (1926), pp. 33-8.
8 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, p. 39; also Rezunov, op. cit., pp. 33, 38, 41-6.
* Luzhin, op. cit., pp. 144-5; Rezunov, op. cit., p.38; Rosnitskii, op. cit., p. 35.
168 RURAL SOCIETY IN PERIOD OF N.E.P.
materials or labour for help in current campaigns.1 The frequently voiced
urban complaints that the commune gathering ‘had fallen into the orbit not
o f the Soviets but o f our enemy the kulak’2 amounted to a statement o f the
fact that the gathering had retained its autonomy and continued to be ruled
by the local peasant elite, a situation resting upon the acceptance o f traditional
consensus by the large majority of the Russian peasants.
In these circumstances, the powers accorded by the legislators to the Rural
Soviet remained on the whole illusory. The Rural Soviet had neither the
authority nor the resources to control or even to compete with the commune
gatherings on its territory. The chairman and chief executive o f a Rural Soviet
was at the same time a paid official o f the next higher authority.3 The tight
control exercised by the higher authorities deprived the Rural Soviet and its
chairman o f nearly all autonomy and ability to manoeuvre. The Rural Soviet
was on the whole denied even the right to have its own budget and every
necessary small expenditure had either to be vetted and recorded by the volost'
administration or, alternatively, begged from the commune gathering.4 In
many villages, the Rural Soviet did not even meet, abdicating its rights to
its chairman and/or to the commune gathering.5 Small wonder that, in these
conditions, ‘the gathering manifested itself as the main authority o f the village,
while the Rural Soviet was recognized as just an administrative secondary
appendage to the volost', active mainly as the state tax collector’.6
The remarkable power exercised by the commune gathering over peasant
households and their members was far from being a simple extension or dele­
gation o f state political power. Many o f the gathering’s decisions were quite
clearly illegal in terms o f state law, but this did not make them any less binding
on the peasant. Neither were such decisions arbitrary or unduly coercive in
peasant eyes. The power to impose the commune’s decisions was rooted in
traditions o f long standing, in the homogeneity o f the peasantry as far as aims,
values, images, way o f life, and social organization were concerned, in the
strength o f conformity and social control in a small closely knit community.
The word mir (which meant both ‘world’ and ‘peace’) was indeed a significant
expression o f the commune’s major function. To a remarkable degree, the
commune was the peasants’ world and kept their peace.7
Yet at the same time this world was far from being free o f diversity, strain,
and conflict, in many cases implicit. Three types o f potential conflict-relationship
stood out as the most important for rural society: (a) those arising from socio-
1 Rezunov, op. cit., p. 40. 2 Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 354.
3 More about this is to be found in Chapter 9, section (a).
4 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, pp. 35-7. Some improvement in the financial position
of the Rural Soviet seemed to appear by the end o f the N.E.P.
s Rozit, op. cit., p. 15. e Luzhin, op. cit., p. 144.
7 A contemporary study referred to the customary structure o f the peasant commune as
‘the unwritten constitution* o f the Russian countryside. L. Kritsman, P. Popov, and Ya.
Yakovlev, Sel'skoe khozyaistvo na putyakh vosstanovleniya (1925), p. 822. The power o f the
commune gathering was, in fact, said to have been growing. See Rezunov, op. cit., p. 8.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 169
economic differentiation; (b) the traditional division of roles by sex and age;
and (c) ‘vertical’ segmentation into ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. These will be
discussed further. The discussion will attempt to throw light on two major
questions. First, in so far as analysis of the dominant conflict-situations is,
in our view, bound to underlie any interpretation of developments, what was
the structure o f conflict relations in the Russian countryside at the time?
Second, in so far as the argument that commune gatherings exercised suprem­
acy over Rural Soviets is correct, how did the policy of the Soviet Government
get to be implemented at all in the countryside?

(c) The Socio-Economic Strata

The major conceptual subdivisions most generally accepted as aptest for
the analysis o f the stratification of modern society are rooted in or closely
related to the socio-economic sphere. The social classes o f Marx and Weber
explicitly relate to men’s economic position. In our times, both the Neo-
Marxist and Neo-Weberian concepts o f classes1 and their ‘ideological’
counterpart, the prestige classes o f American functionalist sociology,12 acquire
their illuminating power from the close interrelationship of the economic
sphere and its cultural, political, and ideological expressions in social life.
The discussion o f socio-economic mobility in Part II has pointed to the
severe limitations on any simple application o f models derived from urban
society to the analysis o f peasant social structure and dynamics. Both the
character and the strength o f multidirectional and cyclical mobility accounted
for the peculiarities to be found in the impact of socio-economic diversity
on ‘class crystallization’ in the Russian countryside.3 Furthermore, para-
economic factors greatly contributed to cohesion in the peasant community
and imposed limits on the effects of socio-economic diversification.4Finally, the
unlimited variety o f peasant households made for a large amount of over­
lapping between any empirically defined strata—i.e. some peasant households
would appear rich using one indicator and middle or poor using others.5
However, making these reservations is not to deny out o f hand any impact
o f socio-economic divisions on the social and political life of the Russian
peasantry. After all, manifest differences between the better-off and the poorer
households could be found in every Russian village. We shall therefore again
consider the possible effects of this diversity in wealth, this time using the
terms adopted by the Soviet government to delineate the major classes and
strata of the countryside. We shall examine this time their composition in an

1 For example, S. Ossowski, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (1963); J. Rex,
K ey Problems o f Sociological Theory (1961); R. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in
Industrial Society (1959).
2 For example, the six ‘classes’ in the classical studies o f ‘Yankee City’ by W. Lloyd
Warner and P. S. Lunt, The Status System o f a Modern Community (1942).
3 See Chapter 7, section (d).
4 Ibid.; also Chapter 4, sections (b) and (c). 5 See Chapter 7, section (c).
I70 R U R A L S O C IE T Y IN P E R IO D O F N .E .P .

attempt to assess their probable socio-political effectiveness and capacity for

autonomous action.
A special government committee defined the strata to be found in the rural
population o f Russia and their sizes in 1924-5 as shown in Table 91.

T able 9 1

The Social Stratification o f the Rural Population o f the U.S.S.R., 1924-1925“

Gainfully employed Total population

Strata persons (thousands)^ (thousands)

Rural proletarians* 2,184 4,025

Farmers (khozyaeva) 20,209 107,919
o f whom: poor farmers 5,803 25,245
middle farmers 13,678 77,870
entrepreneurs^ 728 4,804
Total 22,393 111,944*

Source. Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1928 g. (1929), p. 42.

Notes. a Based on the report o f a special committee set up by the Soviet government in
1925 to study social differentiation.
b Samodeyatel'nye, defined as persons with an independent source o f livelihood, including
the unemployed and pensioners, but exluding members o f peasant households (other than
heads o f households) assisting on farms. See Source, p. 940.
c This figure included both labourers and salaried employees (see Chapter 10, section (a)).
d Entrepreneurs were defined in terms o f capital owned or wage-labour employed.
See Source, p. 940.
9 The total population o f the U.S.S.R., according to the same report, amounted to
141.347.000.

The social analysis underlying the policy o f the Soviet Government was
based on the assumption o f a necessary evolution o f the rural proletariat
(or, alternatively, o f the rural poor) into a ‘class for itse lf—a socialist
driving force against the rich peasants. The number o f wage-workers in the
rural areas was, therefore, anxiously studied.
The number o f rural wage-workers in Russia/U.S.S.R. (i.e. those to whom
wage-work was the main source o f livelihood) was recorded as 1,616,000 in
1917; their number had fallen to less than 1,000,000 in 1920 but had subse­
quently increased to about 2,000,000 by 1926.1 O f rural wage-workers in
1926, nearly 25 per cent were as a matter of fact said to work on state farms
and 35 per cent as shepherds—mainly for the peasant communes. About
1.000. 000 rural wage-workers would therefore have been employed by
U.S.S.R. peasant households by 1926; this would account for about 2 per
1 For the results o f the agricultural census o f 1917 see M2 agrarnom froute (1925), nos.
7-8, pp. 72-3, for those o f the agricultural census o f 1920, see ibid., p. 72; for 1926 figures,
see Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR 1927 g. (1927), pp. 307-8. The same sources are used
hereafter if not otherwise stated.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 171
cent o f the total labour force in the countryside. Furthermore, about one-
third o f the rural wage-workers consisted of temporarily engaged youngsters
below the age of seventeen.1The percentage of peasant households employing
permanent wage-labour was recorded as 3 3 per cent in 1917, 1 per cent (its
lowest) in 1920,2 and 17 per cent in 1924.3 This would have risen later, but a
majority o f the employing households were probably those short of manpower
in the poorer and middle strata rather than bigger or richer households.4
The discrepant figures given by different sources make any estimate o f Rus­
sian rural wage-work, and in particular seasonal ones, somewhat dubious.
However, not much doubt remains that the numerical strength of the rural
proletariat was extremely low. So was capitalist exploitation, as defined in
classical Marxist terms.
The image o f a barely existent rural counterpart to the revolutionary urban
proletariat was quite unacceptable to the Bolsheviks. It could be avoided
however, were a wider concept of the ‘poor peasant’ (bednyak) employed. Any
operational definition o f the rural poor had necessarily to be arbitrary, but
substantial numbers of Russian peasant households would be included what­
ever the precise definition used. The rural proletarians could then be seen and
treated as a more advanced section o f the rural poor. What was the character
o f the poorest strata of the Russian peasantry and how far could they be
treated as semi-proletarians in the process of class crystallization?
The study carried out by the Bolshevik Party organization in Penza gub.
during 1924 and 1925 is a unique source of data for the character of the rural
poor and on the causes of rural pauperization. The large sample and the
‘average’ character o f this guberniya (in relation to other regions of European
Russia) point to the general validity of the study.5 The survey presented in
Table 9-11 attempted to clarify, on the basis of the views expressed both by
the peasants and by an independent investigation, the question of the causes
o f poverty for peasant households described as poor.6
Shortage o f physically and mentally fit family manpower and, in particular,
o f mature and able-bodied males, had led to economic deterioration in up to
half of the poor households.7 N o doubt the same reason at least partly ex­
plained the limited ability of this group to exercise political influence in the
1 Na agrarnom fronte (1925), nos. 1-2, pp. 4-8 and nos. 7-8, pp. 65, 77.
2 Ts.S.U. estimate (see ibid., no. 4, p. 71).
3 A. Khryashcheva, Gruppy i klassy v krest'yanstve (1926), p. 54.
4 Statisticheskii spravochnik 1927, pp. 86-9. For regional division see Itogi desyatiletiya
sovetskoi vlasti (1928), p. 162.
s In the sense of lacking exceptional characteristics and displaying indices of agricultural
production and rural social organization which closely followed those average for peasant
households of European Russia.
6 From 25-9 to 43*4 per cent o f Russian peasant households were defined as poor in the
districts under investigation. Rosnitskii, op. cit., pp. 22, 26.
7 For a classical study which demonstrated the high percentages of physically and
mentally handicapped, aged, lonely (,bobyli), widows, etc., within the poor strata, see
F. Shcherbina, Svodnyi sbornik po 12 uezdam voronezhskoi gub. (1897), p. 356.
172 RURAL SOCIETY IN PERIOD OF N.E.P.
community. The second major sub-group consisted o f households moving
downwards as a result o f partition or o f chance factors within the general frame­
work o f multidirectional and cyclical mobility. Only a small part o f the poor
stratum consisted o f households with fit adult male workers and still remain­
ing over a long period at the bottom o f peasant society. Despite the widespread
poverty in the Russian countryside, the chance o f a hard core o f poor peasants
showing lasting cohesion and ability for political action emerging was very
limited, therefore, because o f the group’s social composition. The key im­
pressions conveyed by this survey are corroborated by less systematic in­
formation from other sources, as well as suggested by the continued failure
o f party and governmental attempts to organize the rural poor.1

T able 9*11
The Causes o f Rural Poverty, Penza Gub., 1924-1923°

Percentage o f all
Causes^ the rural poor*

(a) Shortage o f family labour** 14-38

(Z>) Long illness or invalidism approx. 10
(c) Military service o f the main
worker approx. 10
(d) Natural disaster* approx. 20
(e) Partitioning 10-26
( / ) N ot being fit people for
farming^ 5-8
(g) Being layabouts^ approx. 5
(h) Being poor over generations
for unknown reasons** 6-12
All 100

Source, N. Rosnitskii, Litso derevni (1926), pp. 27-8.

Notes. a Based on the results o f a study o f 32,730 peasant households in 28 volost's, carried
out by activists o f the Bolshevik Party.
b The causes of poverty were determined by both a study o f village public opinion and
independent investigations carried out by the interviewers.
c As reported by interviewers in different volost's.
d This group included widows, elderly couples, etc. In many cases the shortage o f labour
resulted from partitioning (Source, p. 27).
e Famine, fire, death o f an animal, etc., were quoted as examples.
f Neudachnikh-literally people with persistent bad luck, failures. The members o f this
group were in fact defined as being badly adjusted to farming or not knowing how to run
their farms (Source, p. 27).
g Lodyri— derogatory term descriptive o f a personality-trait. The peasants identified such
a man as one who ‘spends his summer-time sleeping in a cool place, wastes time drifting
around his neighbours gossiping, sleeps a lot and, having money, spends it on fish in the
local shop; likes to eat well* (ibid., p. 27).
h Potomstvennye bednyaki.

1 L. Kritsman et al.y op. cit., p. 318; see also Luzhin, op. cit., pp. 83-6.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 173

The word kulak (‘fist’ in Russian) was used to imply a mixture of social
definition, political evaluation, and plain abuse, if not slander. Commonly
the term was used in Soviet Russia in several different ways: either synonym­
ously with: ‘member of the rural bourgeoisie’ exploiting fellow members
o f the peasant community, or for the head of a rich household, or also as a
description o f a political enemy of the Soviet regime,1 or even as a description
o f a mean personality. Estimates of the number of kulaks varied accordingly.
The Ts.S.U. studies in 1925 estimated kulak households as about 3 per cent
o f the total, with little change during the years o f N.E.P. However, at the same
time, the number o f villagers deprived of voting rights (lishentsy)—nominally
including all the kulaks as well as some other groups (ex-policemen, etc.)—
was reported to amount to only about 1 per cent of the adult rural population
in 1925.12 Kulaks, defined as those deriving substantial income from employing
wage-workers or engaging in usury or trade (a definition said to be widely
accepted by the peasants and used in the majority of contemporary local
studies—except those carried out by Ts.S.U.) would therefore have amounted
to even less than the 3 per cent estimated by Ts.S.U.3 The extremely small
numbers o f kulaks traced in villages led some Soviet scholars to unite this
stratum conceptually with the wider group of well-to-do (zazhitochnye). True
enough, the well-to-do and the majority of so-called kulaks did constitute
qualitatively indistinguishable strata; both showed higher incomes and
productivity.4 However, it is rather the smallness o f the differences between
their average per capita incomes and the incomes o f their less-successful
neighbours which is striking to us today in the studies of peasant budgets.
Moreover, the wealthier households were distinguished by being bigger and
more intensive in terms o f capital per unit o f land and per worker, by higher
productivity and income per capita in money terms, rather than by being
based on capitalist farming and the exploitation of wage-workers.5 The
wealthier households were particularly important in marketing and formed the
backbone o f the majority o f peasant co-operatives; they included a major part
o f the more competent and articulate farmers and potential political leaders.6

1 A special term, ‘kulaks’ stooges’ (podkulachniki), was invented for those political
opponents who could not by any stretch o f the imagination be regarded as members o f
the rural bourgeoisie.
2 For 1925 see Perevybory v sovety RSFSR v 1925)26 g. (1926), p. 6; the figure for 1924
was i*3 per cent (ibid., p. 6).
3 For example, Rosnitskii, op. cit., pp. 16-22; or I. Voronov, Gruppovoi sostav
voronezhskoi gub. 1925. 4 See Chapter 3, section (b).
5 See Chapter 4, section (b). Further investigation o f this matter is no doubt called for. As
already mentioned (Chapter 3, section (c)), Kritsman and his followers claimed that it was
the renting of equipment and horses which developed into a new and major channel of
capitalist exploitation in rural Russia. The volume o f income derived in this way was never
clearly established and the significance of the phenomenon in peasant communities remains
ambiguous.
6 See, for example, A. Bol'shakov, Derevnya, 1917-1927 gg. (1927), chapter on Co­
operation. See also Rosnitskii, op. cit., Chapter 4.
174 RURAL SOCIETY IN PERIOD OF N.E.P.
Hubbard summarized as follows: ‘The Kulak was a Kulak because he
was more intelligent and enterprising. . . . N o doubt he generally made a
good bargain for himself but there was always a great deal o f mutual assis­
tance and give and take among all classes in the village community.’1Even the
spokesmen o f the Soviet establishment were bound to declare that the mem­
bers o f ‘the well-to-do stratum—i.e. the capitalists or those developing into
capitalists in the villages—are (together with the producers’ co-operatives)
the standard-bearers of agricultural progress. They use to a greater extent
advanced techniques, agricultural co-operation, school education, etc. This
stratum tends to become influential in the Rural Soviet as well as other local
authorities and its members to appear as representatives o f the peasantry
as a whole.’12
It was fully accepted by both scholars and politicians at the time that the
middle peasants formed a large majority of Russian peasant households.
Delineation o f this stratum was generally in negative terms:3 households
which neither hired nor provided wage-labour, which neither hired for use
nor rented out land, equipment, horses, etc. Defined in positive terms, this
would comprise small producers who, with the help of their families and
simple equipment, produced just enough to meet the basic consumption-needs
o f their families and the obligations imposed on them from outside. The
middle peasant was declared by official Soviet spokesmen ‘the major figure
o f the Soviet countryside’.4 N o doubt this declaration was true. However,
the fact o f the matter was that, in these terms, the middle peasants had always
(at least until 1930) constituted a decisive majority o f the Russian peasantry.
The Soviet Revolution o f 1917-18 had only exaggerated middle-peasant
dominance in the Russian countryside.
This description o f the composition of the main socio-economic strata goes,
therefore, to reinforce the conclusions drawn in Part II o f this study.5 The
social character o f the poorest stratum made its unification into a self-
conscious class and independent political action by it highly improbable.
The absence o f a division in community into qualitatively different and
conflicting groups o f employees and employers blunted potential class con­
flicts. The middle peasant formed an overwhelming majority o f the rural
population. Well-to-do peasant households tended to include the ablest

1 L. Hubbard, The Economics o f Soviet Agriculture (1939), p. 22.

2 L. Kritsman, Klassovoe rassloenie v sovetskoi derevne (1926), p. 165. In 1928, Kalinin
had explained the political influence o f the kulaks by the fact that they ‘fulfilled certain
positive functions in the peasant economy’— M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power
(1968), p. 206.
3 L. Kritsman et al. (eds.), M aterialy po istorii agrarnoi revolyutsii v Rossii (1928), vol. i.
Introduction. Kritsman estimated such peasant households— ‘definable only in negative
terms’— as amounting to two-thirds to three-quarters o f the total.
4 The rural households which ranked as neither capitalist nor proletarian were estimated
as more than nine-tenths o f the total number. See, for example, Table 91 above.
5 i.e. those of Chapter 7, section (d).
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 175
farmers and the potential leaders. In this framework, a relatively cohesive
rural community led by the well-to-do seems the most plausible probability.
Such studies as exist tend to support this view.1 If, however, our conclusions
about the limited nature of the conflict between socio-economic strata in the
countryside are accepted, further issues arise. Firstly, what other conflict-
relations were operative in the countryside and to what extent did they
determine social interaction in rural communities? Secondly, what, if any,
were the rural centres of power other than the peasant commune, its gathering,
and its leaders?

(d) The Traditional Division o f Roles by Sex and Age

Family farms form the basic units of peasant society. The major traditional
divisions o f labour, power and prestige, duties and rights, have been defined
in family terms. The social roles and the authority of each person were
ascribed, on the whole, by sex, age, and position in the family. Vast patriar­
chal authority was in the hands of the head of the household. Children were
under the absolute authority of their seniors. For two categories of members
o f the traditional family structure, their contribution to the household
stood in no proportion to their actual influence, authority, and prestige:
these were the women and junior male members. Their social placing was
loaded with inherent conflicts. These conflicts were generally subdued by
the strength of the traditional social structure, by family loyalties, and
by pressure from conservative public opinion of the village community.
However, the war and the revolution dealt a heavy blow to these formerly
self-evident and deeply rooted traditional ties.
A peasant woman shouldered a heavy burden of labour and responsibility,
caring for the plot around the house (usad'ba), the garden and domestic
animals, helping in the fields, preparing food, bearing and raising children.
Yet her social position remained low. Authority over and representation of
the household was given to the man, at least as far as general peasant custom
was concerned. A wife, especially a widow, could acquire wider rights than
an unmarried daughter, and outstanding personal qualities could bring to a
woman remarkable influence in village affairs.12 Yet such was an exception
to the general rule.3
The First World War led to a major change in the position of the peasant
woman. During the war, the women became a substantial majority of the

1 See, for example, Rozit, op. cit., p. 8; see also the evidence quoted in the discussion of
the commune gathering in section (b), above, especially pp. 166-9.
2 See Chapter 2, section (b), and Appendix B.
3 On the other hand, women had, o f course, their influence by influencing men through
both personal pressures and the formulation of village public opinion. There seem also to
have been regional differences: women’s position seems to have been notably higher in the
far north of Russia.
8214930 N
176 RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
labour force in the Russian countryside.1 With many men away for years,
the commune’s affairs were increasingly influenced by women. Heavy war
casualties meant that large numbers of widows (many of them with young
children in their care) had to take charge of households and they could no
longer be treated on the same footing as dependent women under male
tutelage. Later on, Soviet law established legal equality for women: the right
to participate in communal gatherings, to share family property, etc. With
the end of the civil war, the position of women never quite returned to the
pre-war situation. In some cases, the appearance and pressure o f women at
commune gatherings influenced decisions. In other cases, Bolshevik Party
rural activists failed to influence the men but succeeded in organizing the
women, appealing to their underprivileged position.2 This emancipation also
found its expression in a reported wave of partitioning initiated by women,
in many cases as part of divorce settlements.3 Yet, in the big majority of
villages, men, reinforced by tradition, seem successfully to have withstood
female emancipation. On the whole, men remained the heads of peasant
households. Women were stopped by public scorn or by sheer force from
attending commune gatherings.4 Heavy pressure from the Soviet government
raised the proportion of female members of Rural Soviets from 1 per cent
in 1922 to about 10 per cent in 1925, but the more real positions of authority—
chairmanship o f Soviets and officership in the commune—remained in the
hands o f men.5
On the whole, this position of subordination held true, too, for the junior
male members of peasant households.6 Conflict of power and will between
generations and its accompanying frustrations found a partial outlet in violent
family clashes and intra-family crime as w'ell as in the cock-like showing-off
o f young peasants, w?hen away from family and village control (in the army,
in town, and so on). Both the weakening of the patriarchal family and Soviet
legislation strengthened the hand of juniors in conflicts with heads of house­
holds and with the older generation as a whole. Furthermore, war and military
service added to the prestige and the real pow'er of young men in the peasant
communities. Greater adaptability to new ideas made the younger members
o f the community the channels by which urban culture and political influence
came to the village and made them potential challengers of village tradition.
However, both emigration and partition provided major safety-valves for
these pressures. The selective emigration of the ablest (to go into education,
1 Female rural labour during the world war has been estimated as 71-9 per cent o f the
total. A. Anfimov, Rossiiskiya derevnya v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1962), p. 192.
2 See Rozit, op. cit., p. 77.
3 M. Kubanin, Klassovaya sushchnost' protsesa drobleniya krest'yanskikh khozyaistv
(1929), PP- 7 i - 5.
4 Rosnitskii, op. cit., p. 112.
5 Perevybory v sovety RSFSR v 1925/26 g. (1926), pp. 16, 20.
6 At the beginning of the century, Gurvich had even put forward a theory of rural class
warfare between generations; see Chapter 3 above.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, AND CONFLICT 177

administration, etc.) deprived the rural youth of its potential leaders. Other
rebels could be ‘married off’ and apportioned land. As new heads of house­
holds, they were then brought under the heavy pressure of additional respon­
sibilities and they lost, on the whole, what could be treated as ‘fantasies of
youth’.
The traditional peasant social structure and social mobility provided both
powerful levers of social control and major safety-valves against possible
rebellion. Generally the female and/or junior members of peasant society
were successfully checked and controlled in spite of their inherent conflict-
ridden position and potential strength.1 Only when allied with additional
powerful factors could this diversity assume major importance.

(e) Vertical Segmentation and the Outsiders

A number of the most penetrating scholars have stressed a peculiar charac­
teristic of the inner diversity of peasant society. Marx’s striking ‘sack of
potatoes’,2 Durkheim’s ‘segments’ in a society of ‘mechanical solidarity’,3 the
‘vertical integration’ of contemporary scholars,4 have dealt with the same
phenomenon of what may be termed the vertical segmentation of the peasant
community.
Vertical segmentation may be used as a concept to define social groupings,
usually local, which cut across the major socio-economic stratification of
modern society, indicating division into qualitatively similar, highly self-
sufficient, hierarchical segments with relatively little interaction between
them.s (Close cross-segment interaction of units becomes necessary only in the
conditions of complex co-operation, specialization, and division of labour
characteristic of modern industrial societies.) Such segments are internally
united by ties of tradition, common experience, face-to-face relations and
neighbourhood; they provide mutual help as well as being focuses for intense
loyalty and solidarity among their members. In many cases, the cohesion of
such groups is reinforced by a specific subculture. Strongly stressed unity
against real or imaginary enemies makes for the marked defensive charac­
teristics of such groups, which consequently tend to act as political pressure
groups in defence of their members. The segments show hierarchical struc­
tures of authority centred round a patriarchal leader or a traditional oligarchic
leadership. No concept could be strictly equivalent to an empirical entity, but
a concept of vertical segmentation is illuminating when attempting an analysis
1 For example, the results of elections can show to what a remarkable degree the young
were kept out of any position of responsibility. P e r e v y b o r y v s o v e ty R S F S R v 1 9 2 5 (2 6 g .
(1926), p. 23.
2 K. Marx, ‘The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’, S e le c te d W o r k s (1951), vol. i, p. 303.
3 E. Durkheim, T h e D iv is io n o f L a b o u r in S o c ie ty (1949).
4 For example, H. Alavi, ‘Peasantry and Revolution’, in T he S o c ia lis t R e g is te r (1965).
Also O. Lewis, V illa g e L if e in N o r th e r n In d ia (1958).
5 Vertical integration is here opposed to horizontal integration—i.e. integration of units
typified by a similar socio-economic position.
178 RURAL SOCIETY IN T H E PERIOD OF N.E.P.

o f the major units o f peasant societies: a peasant household, an extended

family, a lineage, or a clan, an informal group of neighbours, a commune, a
village, or even a bigger unit can be analysed in these terms. Village political
factions show similar tendencies.1
The notion o f vertical segmentation focuses attention on the different
segments—the units described above— and on their significance in determin­
ing human action. It is this which is highlighted here rather than social co­
hesion and diversity depending on economic position and interest in terms of
relations o f production and market economy.2 Such a frame o f analysis
puts the division and conflict between the insiders (members o f the social
organization constituting ‘a segment’) and outsiders in the centre o f attention.
The Russian villages o f the early N.E.P. showed a distinct pattern o f vertical
diversity and segmentation. A household, an informal group o f friends,
neighbours, a commune, and, at times, even a volost' could validly be ana­
lysed this way. If attention is focused on the commune, as the peasants’
most meaningful framework of political consciousness, the internal cohesion
o f its members was matched by the strain o f their external relations with a
variety o f outsiders. The rural outsiders to a Russian peasant commune could
by classified by a threefold typology: neighbours, strangers, and pleni­
potentiaries. (i) Neighbour outsiders may be defined as members o f other
peasant communes, essentially similar and sharing territorial boundaries
which made both contact and conflict over land-holding unavoidable in the
conditions o f traditional farming, (ii) Stranger outsiders would be those who
brought into the countryside social and cultural components alien to the
peasant commune, disturbing to the basic consensus and violating the homo­
geneity o f units, (iii) Plenipotentiary outsiders would be agents o f external
centres o f power acting as their rural transmission-belts.
The revolution resulted in significant changes in the make-up o f what were
the rural outsiders to the peasant commune. The Russian landed nobility was
eliminated completely at a single blow in 1917-18. The agrarian revolution
led to the destruction o f the majority o f enclosed farms; those remaining
were an insignificant factor except in the west and north-west o f Russia.3
The reunification o f peasants in the communes and the increase in homo­
geneity o f peasant households did not preclude neighbour outsiders' conflicts
within the peasantry. Rural Russia witnessed unending hostility, quarrels,
1 ‘The pattern of political behaviour of the peasantry is based on factions which are
vertically integrated segments of the rural society dominated by landlords and rich peasants
at the top and with the poor peasants and landless labourers who are economically de­
pendent on them, at the bottom.’ Alavi, op. cit., p. 273.
2 The analysis of vertical segmentation does not exclude—indeed it presumes—conflicts
of economic interest between and inside different segments; it calls into question, however,
pure economic determinism.
3 For a discussion see Chapter 8 . For a comparison of the enclosed farms within Russian
villages during the period 1913-24 see M. Vol'f and G. Mebus, Statisticheskii spravochnik
(1926), p. 556.
 POWER, DIVERSITY, A N D CONFLICT 179

and blood-feuds between communes over land, meadows, forests, or just over
past grievances whose actual content had long been forgotten.1 Homogeneity
did not equal unity and segmentation (and consequent socio-political
weakness) o f the peasants on a national scale found ample expression in
relations with neighbouring villages within the Russian peasantry in the
post-revolutionary period. However, it was interaction with qualitatively
different groups and social structures which proved crucial for the Russian
peasant communities.
1 See, for example, the reports of clashes between communes in V. Kellar and I. Roma­
nenko, Pervye itogi agrarnoi reformy (1922), and a description of post-revolutionary societies
by V. Tan-Bogobaz (ed.), Revolyutsiya v derevne (1925)—in particular vol. ii. pp. 55* 102.
 10
THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF THE
N.E.P.: THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT

(a) The Rural Salariat (Sluzhashchie)

A m o n g the rural outsiders to the peasant commune, three groups stand out
as particularly important: the salariat (.sluzhashchie), the members o f the
Bolshevik Party (partiitsy), and the ex-servicemen (armeitsy). Their very exis­
tence was based on their relationship, present or past, to the three national
bureaucratic organizations which had succeeded, to varying degrees, in
penetrating the Russian countryside: the state administration, the Bolshevik
Party, and the army. These three groups showed a considerable amount of
overlapping membership and the hard core o f people who were members of
more than one o f them formed a significant link between them. Various
degrees o f social and/or cultural dissimilarity distinguished these outsiders
from the majority o f members o f peasant communes.
An increasing division and specialization o f labour have marked the develop­
ment o f a market economy and industrialization in all parts o f the world.
In the countryside, an increased number o f tasks get taken over by non-
farming specialists while the job o f a farmer becomes a more narrow and
specialized one. In these terms, i.e. division and specialization o f labour, the
inhabitants of the Russian countryside have been remarkably underdeveloped.
According to the 1926 census, those declaring farming to be their sole or main
occupation still made up as much as 96 per cent of all the labour force1 and
95 per cent o f all families in the rural population.2 The services and products
made necessary by occupational specialization were, on the whole, provided
either by townsmen or by traditional peasant crafts or trades {promysly)
undertaken on a part-time secondary basis.3
In these conditions salaried employment in a variety o f public bodies
1 Statisticheskii spravochrtik SSSR za 1928 g. (1929), p. 44.
2 F. Lorimer, The Population o f the Soviet Union (1946), p. 74. Non-peasants in peasant
communities were estimated as 2 4 per cent of the rural population at the beginning of the
century: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar\ Brokgauz and Efron, vol. xxix, pp. 382-3.
3 Members of the gainfully employed rural population reporting farming as their main
occupation plus some trades as an addition accounted for 37 per cent of the total in 1926—
Lorimer, op. cit., p. 74. Budget studies show that the income from crafts and trades formed
a relatively small part of total income for the majority of these peasant households. See,
for example, Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1924), p. 343, also Statisticheskii
spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), p. 135.
 THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.: THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 181
constituted the most significant occupational diversification in Russian rural
communities.1 The make-up o f salaried state employment in the rural areas
o f the U.S.S.R. is shown in Table i o *i .

T able i o -i

Salaried Staff (Sluzhashchic) employed by the State in

Rural Areas o f the U.S.S.R., 1926a

Employment sector Salaried staff

employed
Education 301,827
Medical services 91,148
Agricultural services & 97,471
Local administration* 71,053
Judiciary 13,928
Protection of public security and order** 31,989
Postal services* 24,340
Trade organizations^ 15,589
Others 16,109
Total 664,454

Source. Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), pp. 282-3.

Notes. a i.e. non-manual employees, office-workers; based on the Ts.S.U. preliminary
figures for August 1926. The figures for the R.S.F.S.R. amounted to about two-thirds of
the total.
b The majority of those under this heading were forest guards and foresters. The re­
mainder included veterinary surgeons, agronomists, land-surveyors, etc.
c This figure does not include employees of Rural Soviets.
d i.e. Soviet police force.
* Includes telephone service.
■f The small numbers recorded under this heading seems to suggest that the personnel of
co-operative trade organizations were not included.

Two amendments to the Table should be made for our purposes. Firstly,
Rural Soviets employed on the average two full-time officials each2 (generally
a chairman and secretary).3 This would add about 100,000 persons to the
figures for rural civil servants. Secondly, persons working in the rural co­
operative trade system and living in the village have not been included
1 A case can be made for the inclusion under the same rubric of agricultural wage­
workers. In view, however, of the character of this group, it has been treated in Chapter 9,
section (c), as a specific socio-economic stratum of the peasantry. In terms of numbers
rural craftsmen outnumbered the salariat, but most of them were basically peasants utilizing
a secondary skill (see above).
2 L. Kritsman, P. Popov, and Ya. Yakovlev (eds.), SeVskoe khozyaistvo na putyakh
vostanovleniya (1925), p. 810.
3 See Y. Taniuchi, ‘A Note on the Territorial relationship between Rural Societies, Settle­
ments and Communes’, Discussion Papers, University o f Birmingham, Centre for Russian and
East European Studies (1966), Series RC/D, no. 3, p. 13.
i «2 THE R U R A L SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD O F N.E.P.

because their numbers cannot be ascertained. The salariat in the rural areas
o f the U.S.S.R. in the mid 1920s would appear to have amounted, all told,
to not much more than 1 per cent of the rural labour force.1The percentage of
families involved would be higher, probably about 2 per cent o f the rural
families. Similar proportions would seem to have held good for the Russian
Republic (the R.S.F.S.R.), which accounted for two-thirds o f the total rural
population o f the U.S.S.R.
The occupational groups presented in the above table may be roughly
grouped into a few major categories. The so-called rural intelligentsia (i.e.
the teachers, medical staff, veterinary surgeons, land surveyors, etc.) made up
more than half o f all salaried employees (two-thirds o f those listed in Table
10 -i).2 The executives of local authorities accounted for somewhat less than a
third, including the officials of the volost' and village authorities, the police, and
part o f the judiciary (in Table 10 -I the share of local administrators drops to
about 16 per cent). The remaining salaried employees represent a rather mixed
bag o f ‘others’ o f which trade and forestry employees (mainly forest guards)
and postmen account for the greater part.3
The rural intelligentsia, therefore, constituted the largest single category of
rural employees, yet their number in the countryside was still extremely small.4
Furthermore, the cultural and social distance separating them from the
peasantry was so great that, in spite of numerous attempts ‘to go to the people’,
no close relationship ever developed. Social contact and cultural interaction
are more difficult to quantify or study and, once more, systematic and reliable
mass evidence on the matter is lacking. Yet some evidence is provided by
memoirs and literature and may be turned to, faute de mieux.s The rural
intelligentsia lived in an ‘island’ o f its own creation in the midst o f the peasant
population. They remained socially and culturally detached: they spoke their
own dialect,6 lived their own social and cultural life, kept to their own kind,
and crowded into the few bigger and less agricultural villages (especially
1 About 800,000 out of a working population of some 70 million in the U.S.S.R. living
in rural areas, Statisticlieskii spravochnik SSSR za 1928 g. (1929), p. 44.
2 We use this expression in the sense accepted in Russian society to identify as a social
group persons exhibiting a variety of characteristics, some of which will be discussed later.
Possibly the best single characteristic usable for delineating this group in the conditions we
have outlined would be an occupation whose performance necessitates more than primary
education and the subsequent pursuit of formal occupational training.
3 A number of those listed in the table as ‘others’ would, no doubt, have qualified either
as members of the rural intelligentsia or as rural administrators.
4 Less than half a million in the rural population of 120 million of the U.S.S.R. at that
time (Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1927 g. (1927), p. 1). Alternatively, about 70 (of
whom 40 were teachers) in an average district (volost') with a population of about 17,000
and containing about 60 settlements (see below).
5 For example, A. Oknanskii, Dva godasredi krest'yan (1924), and M. Gorkii, O russkom
krest'yanstve (1922).
6 The differences between the Russian literary language used by the intelligentsia and the
language of the semi-literate masses were great. See, for example, the writings of Artem,
who tried to put to literary use the language of soldiers and peasants.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 183
villages which were centres of volost's) in which ‘there was somebody to talk
to’. They, on the whole, also remained distinct from the local administrators
and party members.1This isolation greatly restricted, in practice, the potential
cultural and political influence of the rural intelligentsia on the surrounding
population.2
The biggest single group of salaried employees and the most promising
channel for the spread of non-traditional culture was that of the teachers.
However, their impact was considerably weakened by the opposing and
contradictory pressures o f the state administration and the village communes,
both claiming rights as employers. Economic hardship and the dependence
o f the majority o f teachers on the communal gathering (to which they did not
belong) for the provision of the resources necessary for teaching and even at
times o f their own salaries made their position if anything more precarious
than that o f other members of the rural intelligentsia.3
Those o f the employees of the local rural administration accounted for in
Table 101 consisted mainly of the staffs of Volost' Executive Committees
(V.I.K.). In 1925, an average volost' in the R.S.F.S.R. had roughly 17,000
inhabitants and a territory of about 4,000 square kilometres.4 An average
volost' consisted o f about sixty settlements and was subdivided into about
ten Rural Soviet areas:5 the actual figures varied considerably from place to
place, however.
A V.I.K. was legally supposed to consist of three members and two candidate
members. However, the actual figures show an average of seven members per
V.I.K. rising to as many as thirteen or even more in some of the guberniyas in
1925. On average, three members of the V.I.K. were on its payroll as full-time
employees,6 plus an additional staff of some six to eight executives and clerks.7
These V.I.K. officials, supported by the most rudimentary means of com­
munication, were responsible for the various aspects o f volost' welfare, col­
lecting taxes, controlling the Rural Soviets and land communes, carrying out
1 The number of ‘members of the intelligentsia* elected in the U.S.S.R. in 1924-5 to
serve on the volost' Executive Committee (V.I.K.) was 596—i.e. about o*i percent of the
whole rural intelligentsia or 4 per cent of the total number of members of V.I.K. See
D. Rozit, Proverka raboty nizovogo apparata v derevne (1926), pp. 88-9. Kritsman,
op. cit., p. 811, also pp. 847-8.
2 In this sense, the rural intelligentsia proved to have the least overlap of membership
with other groups of outsiders and may be treated as a nearly pure case of outsider strangers.
3 See Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 829, 847-8; also Y. Taniuchi, The Village Gathering in Russia
in the Mid-1920s (1968), p. 7. The average size of a volost' increased as a result of the ad­
ministrative policy of the Soviet government: the average volost' consisted of 12,000
inhabitants in 1924 (Kritsman, op. cit., p. 793).
4 Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh, pp. 1, 11.
5 Taniuchi, ‘A note on the territorial relationship’ loc. cit.y p. 13.
6 A. Luzhin and M. Rezunov, Nizovoi sovetskii apparat (1929), p. 168.
7 Eight randomly picked guberniyas in 1924-5 showed 5,626 paid staff for 327 V.I.K.s, i.e.
an average of eleven members of staff per V.I.K. See Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 810, 812. This
study estimated the average number of staff-members per V.I.K. in the R.S.F.S.R. as
‘about 10’.
184 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
numerous governmental orders and instructions, and answering a stream of
questions coming both from the higher authorities and from the peasant
population.1
The militia, tax collectors, and part o f the judiciary acted under the V.I.K.’s
authority and were counted as belonging to the same category as its im­
mediate employees. The rural executives to a considerable extent overlapped
with the party members and the ex-servicemen o f the Red Army: the pro­
portion o f party members on the staffs o f local authorities was reported, for
example, as shown in Table i o - i i . See also Table i o *i v below.

T a b l e i o -ii

Communists in Rural Administration (percentage)

Category of official 1923 1924

Members of volost' Executive

Committee (V.I.K.) 47 56
Volost' tax collectors* 31 47
Judges 64 74
Public prosecutors 42 43

Source. A. Bol'shakov, Sovremennaya derevnya v tsifrakh (1925), p. 103.

Notes. a The source does not define the area to which these figures relate; it was probably
the U.S.S.R. as a whole.
b Finagenty.

The chairman o f a Rural Soviet acted as the major intermediary between

the V.I.K. authorities and the local peasantry. Legally, the chairman was
only the executive officer o f a democratically elected Rural Soviet. However,
a study o f Rural Soviets made in the mid 1920s reported that ‘generally no
kind o f collective work exists. The chairman and secretary work in the Soviet
collecting taxes and carrying out the orders o f the V.I.K. Actual peasant
problems or needs are dealt with by the commune gathering, independently of
the Rural Soviet.’2
The position o f chairman o f a Rural Soviet, was, in fact, both ambivalent
and extremely precarious. On the one hand, he was, together with the secretary,
a low-grade employee of the V.I.K. and held responsible for executing the
V.I.K .’s orders. On the other hand, he lived in a village with its forceful con­
formity and unlimited sanctions ranging from simple gossip to arson and
murder o f the uncooperative. Nor had the chairman much power o f initiative
1 For the genesis of the V.I.K. see V. Grishaev, StroiteVstvo sovetov v derevne v pervyi
god sotsialisticheskoi revolyutsii (1967).
2 Luzhin, op. cit., p. 61. N. Rosnitskii, Litso derevni (1926), p. 30, reports that the Rural
Soviet consists, in fact, of a chairman and a secretary only, of whom the second is at times
‘considered more important*.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 185
o f his own. As already pointed out, the Rural Soviet did not normally even
possess its own budget; it was totally dependent for its expenses on the V.I.K.
and on the local communes.1 The area of a Rural Soviet generally included
several settlements—a fact which made the possibility of personal control and
the exercise o f influence by the chairman even more remote. The chairman
had repeatedly to fall back on the commune gatherings even for the collection
o f state taxes—his major duty to the Soviet government.2
The members o f the Rural Soviet reacted to their frustrating intermediary
position by recourse to the old peasant weapons of inaction and absenteeism.3
The chairmen themselves could not use quite these tactics, however; the end­
less stream o f orders, demands, and requests from the higher authorities had
somehow to be met. Some chairmen tried zealously to implement the orders
o f the higher authorities against the open opposition and silent sabotage of
the villagers. This attitude necessarily led to the use of repressive measures.
The large majority o f chairmen seem to have chosen an easier path, however.4
‘In 1925, an almost total swallowing-up of the Rural Soviets by the commune
gatherings was to be observed.’5

(b) The Party Members (Partiitsy)

Lenin’s Bolshevik Party introduced into Russian political life a new factor
o f remarkable force. By the centralized strength o f their organization, the
zeal and discipline o f their activists, and by their ability to mobilize masses of
people for militant action, the Bolsheviks proved superior to any other
organization in Russia. It may well be true that, in the changing odds of the
civil war, it was the Bolshevik Party’s superior organization which tipped the
balance. Yet the power and efficiency o f the Bolshevik Party in the town and
the army emphasized even more its remarkable weakness in the countryside.
Orthodox Marxist predictions of the future and their proletarian self-image
made the Bolsheviks focus their activities on towns. In the pre-revolutionary
period, the Bolsheviks were basically an urban party o f intellectuals and
workers.
Members o f peasant origin accounted only for 4 7 per cent in 1905 and
7-8 per cent in 1917. In 1916, the number of rural branches of the Bolshevik
Party all over Russia had amounted to four.6
The Soviet revolution and the civil war brought into the party a wave of
peasant soldiers, raising the percentage of members o f peasant origin to a
1 See, for example, M. Rezunov, Sel'skie sovety i zemel'nye obshchestva (1928), p. 10.
2 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, p. 47.
3 Luzhin, op. cit., p. 63.
4 The ancient trick of Russian peasants—electing a dim elder to represent the village and

take on himself the punishment meted out by the rulers—was, no doubt, frequently used.
5 Rezunov, op. cit., p. 49.
6 G. Sharapov, Razreshenie agrarnogo voprosa v Rossiiposlepobedy oktyabr' skoirevolyutsii
1961), p. 114. The author also states that the total number of peasants who had joined the
Bolshevik Party before the revolution was 494; 4,122 joined in 1917 and 14,792 in 1918.
186 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE. PERIOD OF N.E.P.
peak o f 28 2 per cent in 1921. However, this development did not solve the
problem o f the paucity o f party members and party organizations in the
villages. This was particularly difficult to overcome in a situation where
activists were lacking, resources were scarce, and party members were
frequently called up. The new problem o f mastering state power, of win­
ning a civil war, and o f coping with the decentralizing tendencies o f localities
made the Bolshevik leadership urge the spread o f party organization into the
peasant countryside. Bolshevik Party branches were to act as rallying points
for Soviet loyalists, and as watch-dogs o f the local administrative machinery.

T able i o - i ii

Bolshevik Party Membership by Social Class, 1905, 1917-1924

Social class (percentage)®

Members
Year (thousands) Peasants Workers Others Total
1905 (A) 8-4 4*7 61-7 33-6 100
1917 (A) 23-6 7’6 6o *2 32-2 100
1918 (A) 115-0 14*5 56-9 286 100
1919 (A) 251-5 21*8 47-8 30*4 100
1920 (A) 431-4 251 43-8 31*1 100
1921(A) 585-0 28*2 410 30-8 100
1922(A) 514-8 26-7 444 28*9 100
1923 (B) 485-6 25*7 44*9 294 100
1924 (B) 699-7 24-6* 45’7 297 100

Sources. (A) Vserossiiskaya perepis' chlenov R K P 1920 g. (1923), p. 37, Table 33.
(B) A. Bol'shakov, Sovremennaya derevnya v tsifrakh (1925), p. 100.
Notes. a Probably ‘by social origin’ defined in terms of parent’s occupation and not of the
actual occupation of the member.
b Figures published in 1931 gave as much as 28*8 per cent of members of peasant origin
for 1924 which, however, was said to have declined steadily and reached 25*9 per cent in
1926 (E. H. Carr, A History o f the Russian Revolution (1959), vol. vi, p. 180). Another source
shows members and candidates of the Bolshevik Party of peasant origin as 18-4 per cent
(only 13*5 per cent i f ‘candidates’ are excluded) of the total in January 1927 (Itogi desyatil-
etiya sovetskoi vlasti (1928), p. 20).

A department for rural work (Otdel raboty v derevne) o f the central com­
mittee was created early in 1919 to organize and co-ordinate the attempt to
penetrate the peasant villages. However, during 1919, the department only
managed to enlist 55 party organizers in all, who were sent to 35 guberniyas
with a combined population of not less than 50 million peasants.1 Small
wonder that, at the end o f a year, the report o f the department concluded: ‘as
may be deduced from our data, party work in the villages does not exist’
(raboty v derevne net).1
1 Otchet otdela raboty v derevne TsKRKP (1920), p. 5.
 THE PR E D O M IN A N T CONFLICT , i87

Party branches classified as rural did, however, exist and were, in fact,
increasing. These organizations consisted of the party members living outside
towns, and were estimated in 1920 to total 4,238 branches with 23,000
members in 22 guberniyas of European Russia, populated by 32 million
peasants.1 By 1924, half of the total of 26,000 party branches in R.S.F.S.R.
were classified as rural. The rural branches included, however, only 22 per
cent o f the total membership, i.e. about 100,000 full party members, and
50,000 candidate members.2 The 1922 census of party members reported the
Bolsheviks as constituting 1-3 per cent of the urban population, but only 013
per cent of the rural population.3 At the end of 1924, the percentage of Bolshe­
viks in the adult rural population in the main 15 guberniyas of European
Russia still only ranged between o-io per cent and 0 26 per cent.4
The membership of the rural branches of the Bolshevik Party consisted
mainly o f salaried executives. Those farmers by occupation (ot sokhi) (repre­
senting more than 80 per cent of the total population of Russia, and about
95 per cent o f the rural population) remained an insignificant part of party
membership. In 1927, after the biggest recruitment drive in the villages which
had lasted for three years (the so-called ‘face to the countryside’ campaign),
party members actually engaged in farming were less than 7 per cent of the
national membership.5 Furthermore, members o f peasant origin (in particular,
those actually farming) headed the lists o f those expelled in the party purges
(chistki).6 The number of villages per single rural party branch in the main 15
guberniyas o f European Russia ranged from 9 to 123.7 Furthermore, three-
fifths o f these branches existed in villages which were administrative centres
o f volost's leaving nearly all the others without any party organizations at all.
Indeed, ‘in relation to the huge mass of 100 million Russian peasants, they
made a small handful, dispersed over the vast territory of U.S.S.R.’.8
A typical rural party branch would be set in the centre of a volost', and
consist o f twelve to fifteen members, at least ten of whom would hold admin­
istrative posts—e.g. the chairman and some members o f the V.I.K., the judge,
the head o f the militia, the heads o f the local departments o f education and
propaganda, tax inspectors, and so on. Of this group, not less than one-third
1 Ibid., p. 8. The estimated size of the peasant population in the guberniyas referred to
is based on Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii po SSSR , 1918-23 gg. (1924)* P- 8.
2 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 169.
3 ‘In this way, the kinship of the town with the proletarian revolution proved ten times
stronger than the kinship of the village’ (D. Rozit, op. cit., p. 9).
4 Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 770-2.
s E. Statten, Sostav VKP (b) (1927), PP- 19-20. In 1925 the figure was 8 per cent. See
E. H. Carr, A History o f the Russian Revolution (1959), vol. vi, p. 181.
6 Of those expelled and resigning from the Bolshevik Party in 1924, half were peasants
by origin, of whom four-fifths belonged to rural party branches (M. Khataevich, ‘Partiya
v derevne’, Na agrarnom froute (1925)* no. 2, p. 112.
7 Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 770-2. In 1925, the average figures for Russia were reported as
twenty-five or thirty villages per party branch (see Carr, op. cit., p. 311).
8 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 770.
188 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
would be newcomers with no roots in the locality, sent in to carry out various
administrative duties.1 Only two to four o f the members o f such a typical
branch would be engaged, to any extent, in farming. Members of the party
engaged in farming as their only source o f income were estimated in 1924 at
‘less than 15 per cent’12 o f the actual membership o f rural party branches.3
The position could, if anything, be worse. In the only available monograph
o f a volost' the author (a party member o f peasant origin) describes the volost'
party branch as consisting, in 1923, o f four members.4 (There were eighteen
members in 1918.) The four members were: the chairman and the treasurer
o f the V.I.K., the judge, and the local head o f the militia, o f whom only one
was a ‘proper peasant’ (korennoi krest'yanin).
The second and smaller category o f rural branches would contain those
situated outside volost' centres. On the whole, such branches are said to
consist o f five or six members filling various full- and part-time offices who
would be drawn from three or four villages.5 They tended to keep contact with
the volost' centre rather than with fellow-members in neighbouring locali­
ties; this tended to make the very existence o f the branch illusory.6 Non-
administrative political contact with the peasant population barely existed.
The peasant image o f the rural party organization was best expressed by
the answer repeatedly given by peasants to an investigation, carried out in
1924-5, as to why they did not join the Bolshevik Party. They answered: ‘How
could the Party find so many posts (dolzhnostei) for us?’7 On examination, the
Schweikian wit o f this remark turns out to reflect a realistic appraisal o f the
state o f affairs.
N ot surprisingly, the internal life o f the rural branches did not have much
in common with peasant everyday life and problems. Actual farming was on
the whole not even discussed. Instead, the subjects o f discussion reported
include anniversaries o f revolutionary events, collections for M.O.P.R.
(International Red Aid—the organization for helping revolutionaries in prison
abroad), and even lectures on sexual ethics.8 Meetings were dominated by
reports on the oscillations o f state policy and the administrative problems of
carrying them out. The vague boundary between the areas o f competence of
the organizations o f the Soviet authorities and Party led many party branches
to take over the administrative duties o f the local authorities. On the other

1 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 773.

2 Ibid. ‘Joining the apparatus’ was a factor steadily diminishing this group, turning
peasant party members into office-workers (Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 181).
3 A constant effort was made by the national leadership to strengthen rural party organi­
zations by transferring urban party members to the countryside. At least one-third of those
transferred failed to adjust and returned almost immediately to town. The others joined
local administration, thus increasing its non-peasant character. See Khataevich, op. cit.,
pp. no-11. L. Kaganovich, Uluchshenie raboty sovetov vderevne (1924), p. 26; see also Carr,
op. cit., vol. vi, p. 342. 4 A. Bol'shakov, Derevnya 1917-1927gg. (1927), p. 123.
5 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 773. 6 i b i dp p. 772-3.
7 Rosnitskii, op. cit., p. 79. 8 Ibid., pp. 79-83; also Rozit, op. cit., pp. 64-5.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 189
hand, some branches practically disappeared, their members meeting only at
sessions o f the local V.I.K.1
In fact, the numerical insignificance does not fully reflect the real weakness
o f the Bolshevik Party in peasant communities. Once more, peasant answers
to questions about the activities and duties of local party branches showed
a fair awareness o f reality. ‘They just collect taxes and order people around’
was the answer given in the early 1920s to Yakovlev, the future People’s
Commissar o f Agriculture. Nor was the party leadership unaware either of
the quantitative or o f the qualitative weaknesses of Bolshevik political work
in the countryside. For example, the 1924-5 inspection carried out by the
Bolshevik Party in Penza guberniya (quoted above) reported that only six out
o f the forty-seven rural branches studied (including both Party and Young
Communist League—Komsomol—branches) gave evidence of reasonably
satisfactory work.123 Yakovlev, in his study, complains bitterly that ‘There are
no party branches in the villages—there are only supplementary Soviet
organizations. There is no branch o f the Party which exercises working-class
influence on the peasantry. There is only an office carrying out the orders of
the authorities and tax collection.’4 This seems to hold on the whole for the
entire period.
Inspection reports and studies of rural party organizations in the 1920s
unanimously complained about the weakness of rural party branches and
their lack o f involvement in the life o f peasant communities. Some of the rural
branches managed better than others, but the majority tended to become
closed and stagnant bodies.5 In any study of the repeated attempts of the Bol­
shevik Party to extend its membership and to establish a rural hinterland of
non-party allies, two groups deserve special attention. These are Komsomol
members and Red Army ex-servicemen.
The Komsomol evolved from various revolutionary youth groups as the
militant organization o f young loyalists to the Soviet regime.6 In conditions
o f civil war, its tasks included policing areas, collecting taxes, suppressing anti-
Soviet uprisings, administering the call-up, and so on. The numbers of its
members in the countryside shot up from barely 2,000 in 1918 to 10,000 in
1919 and 100,000 in 1920.7 The end of civil war and the purge brought a
decrease in the numbers o f rural Komsomol members (80,000 in 1922);
numbers then increased to 147,000, organized in 14,000 rural branches, in 1924.
As a result o f a big recruitment campaign in 1925, the rural Komsomol was

1 Ibid., p. 75. The author speaks of the ‘invisible party branch’ (yacheika-nevidimka).
2 Ya. Yakovlev, Derevnya kak ona est' (1923), p. 74.
3 Rosnitskii, op. cit., p. 73.
4 Yakovlev, op. cit., p. 84.
5 See the reports in Rozit, op. cit., pp. 64-7.
6 Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 784-5; Carr, op. cit., vol. vii, p. 89.
7 Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 785-6. The figures are doubtful, but seem to express correctly
the main trend.
T90 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE. P E R IO D OF N.E.P.

reported to have increased to 522,000 members, organized in 26,130 branches.1

Allowing for all possible doubts about the exact extent o f growth in 1925, the
Komsomol was clearly doing much better amongst the young in the villages12
than the Party was among their elders. Furthermore, a great majority of
Komsomol members were farmers by occupation, well rooted in peasant
communities.3
The social characteristics of the members of the Komsomol explains why,
in many cases, its branches were reported to exercise stronger influence in
some rural areas than did Party branches.4 A major part o f the political
achievements o f the Komsomol seem to have resulted from its successful
canalizing o f the latent conflict between the generations in a peasant com­
munity, the tension between junior members o f peasant households and their
heads.5 Furthermore, the relative success in the villages o f the Komsomol was
partly due to its general educational and sociability value and to the more
relaxed discipline in it than in the Party, once peace had returned. However,
these points o f socio-political strength also contained seeds o f weakness. All
Komsomol activities tended to be marked by waves o f rapid expansion and
equally swift decline.6 Weaker discipline made the definition o f membership
rather vague. Komsomol members grew older and set up their own house­
holds.7 Some o f the most active members left the villages to study; a few joined
the Party and the local administration. The huge membership o f the K om so­
mol (accompanied by a very big turnover) did not find a reflection in conse­
quent increases in rural party membership. Nor could the majority o f lapsing
Komsomol members have joined the ranks o f groups o f party sympathizers
which, on the whole, failed to materialize.8 It may fairly be concluded that the
majority o f Komsomol members married, settled down, and sank without
trace into the peasant mass.

(c) The Ex-Servicemen (Armeitsy)

More than 15 million men served in the Russian army during the First
World War (1914-17), the large majority o f whom were peasants.9 Rapid

1 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 786. Some other sources claim somewhat higher figures: see
Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 99.
2 There seem to have been about 20 million peasants of Komsomol age in the R.S.F.S.R.
in the mid 1920s.
3 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 787; Rozit, op. cit., pp. 81-3. 4 Rozit, op. cit., p. 83.
5 The tension between generations reappeared also in a struggle for control between
Komsomol and party branches, reported from a number of localities. It is possibly this
which is reflected in the remarkably low representation of Komsomol members among
executive officers, chairman of Rural Soviets, etc. See Table io-iv; see also Taniuchi, The
Village Gathering, p. 77.
6 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 785; Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, pp. 91, 106.
7 One has to keep in mind the early age of marriage amongst the Russian peasantry. See
I. Pisarev, Narodonaselenie SSSR (1962), p. 178. For a discussion of this see Chapter 3,
section (a), above. 8 Rozit, op. cit., pp. 66-7; Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p, 314.
9 Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v tsifrakh, pp. 108-9.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 191
‘self-demobilization’ (mass desertions) followed but, at the height of the civil
war, the Red Army consisted once again of 5^ million men, while not less than
2 million Russian subjects served in the various White armies.1 The total
numbers in the Red Army decreased rapidly at the end of the civil war; in
1921— 1£ million, in 1922—560,00c.1 During the mid 1920s, about 1,200,000
young men each year reached call-up age; about 800,000 were found fit for
service, and about 260,000 (i.e. only about one-fifth of the total age-group)
were actually drafted.2 About 70 per cent of those called up were classified as
being o f peasant origin.3
The army provided Russian peasants with a social schooling of extra­
ordinary importance. The traditional one-village outlook broke down under
the pressures o f a new style of living. These young peasants learned about
formal organization, large-scale and complex forms of co-operation, and new
skills—ranging from simple literacy to the handling of complicated machinery
and weapons. New life-experiences and contacts with new people considerably
broadened the outlook of young peasants and made them aware of the nation,
its problems, and the powers o f modern administration. The hierarchical army
structure provided the framework for a training in leadership based on achieve­
ment rather than ascription.
In the Red Army, the young peasants were introduced to a new political
atmosphere and to a coherent political ideology. Half of the army commanders
were reported as belonging to Bolshevik organizations in 1926 (46 per cent to
the Party and 4 per cent to the Komsomol).4 The proportion among privates
and non-commissioned officers was 19 per cent (5 per cent Party, 14 per cent
Komsomol). The Red Army made a systematic effort to educate and politically
indoctrinate its servicemen. Political education and the maintenance of morale
was the task o f political commissars specially attached to every unit. This new
politicized environment, the example and influence o f commanders, and
systematic political indoctrination made a deep impression. The draft brought
4,700 members o f the Bolshevik Party and about 20,000 members of the
Komsomol into the army in 1924. Yet the closely similar group of those dis­
charged from the service in 1926 included as many as 19,400 members of the
Bolshevik Party, and 50,000 members of the Komsomol.5 N o doubt various
degrees of cultural and ideological influence would also have been felt far
beyond those peasant soldiers who actually joined Bolshevik organizations.
With the end o f civil war, wartime soldiers gradually adjusted to the every­
day life o f the peasant communes, and disappeared as a special social entity.
1 G . G o rd e e v , SeVskoe khozyaistvo v voine i revolyutsii (1925), P- H 5 *
2 B. Tal', Istoriya krasnoi armii (1929), p. 190.
3 S t a tis tic h e s k ii sp r a v o c h n ik S S S R z a 1 9 2 7 8 . (1927), p. 45 - Twenty-nine per cent of the
commanders and 78 per cent of the privates and non-commissioned officers in the Red
Army were reported to be of peasant origin in 1926 (ibid., p. 45).
4 Ibid.: see also Carr, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 415.
5 Tal', op. cit., pp. 190-1: this would seem to amount to one-third of those drafted
annually during the mid 1920s.
8214936 O
192 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
Yet, with peace, the impact o f ex-servicemen on village life was far from
coming to an end. Some of the peasant soldiers—perhaps those influenced
most by the new experience—remained in the army or settled in the towns.
Others returned to the village after a couple o f years. Closely bound to the
peasant communities through their households, these ex-servicemen brought
with them the new skills, contacts, and views they had acquired; they acted
as a powerful channel for outside cultural influences to make their way into
the peasant communities.
Many returning ex-servicemen brought with them a desire for change,
rebellious views about the nature of social relationships, and new attitudes to
the Soviet regime.1 The freshly discharged ex-servicemen seemed to challenge
the traditional peasant establishment, time and time again, by setting up new
organizations (of the Bolshevik Party, the Komsomol, co-operatives, etc.).
They budded off and organized new villages (vyselki)— a peculiar kind of
rebellion by the younger generation against the heavy pressures o f village
tradition and their elders.2 Eventually the commune establishment usually
succeeded in bringing them under control.3 The ex-servicemen married,
created new households, and integrated into the peasant commune, gradually
losing the ‘outsider’ qualities they had acquired in the past. A significant group
o f returning ex-servicemen joined the rural administration and party organ­
izations, however, and never became fully reintegrated into peasant society.
For example, in 1925-6, 54 per cent o f all the chairmen o f Rural Soviets and
70 per cent o f the chairmen o f V.I.K.s4 were Red Army ex-servicemen;
as many as 92 per cent of the chairmen o f V.I.K.s were ex-servicemen in
Stalingrad guberniya.5

(d) The Plenipotentiary Outsiders and the Volost' Power Caucus

Examination o f those in the villages who were ‘outsiders’ as far as the
peasant commune was concerned reveals a complexity o f groups and inter­
relations. One classification could be attempted by arranging these groups in
order o f their relative dissimilarity to or separateness from the majority of
peasants. Such a scale would range from, at the bottom end, those peasants
who were well integrated into the community but displayed some cultural
characteristics brought from outside (e.g. re-immigrants from towns and ex-
servicemen) to, at the top, some o f the state-employed professionals set down
in an alien countryside and having barely any contact with peasants at all.
Another classification could rank groups o f outsiders according to their type
o f dissimilarity from the peasantry: the scale would range between two con­
ceptual ideal types—stranger outsiders and plenipotentiary outsiders (the
1 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, p. 29.
2 M. Dobb, Russian Economic Development since the Revolution (1928), p. 359.
3 Taniuchi, The Village Gathering, p. 29; Rosnitskii, op. cit., p. 148.
4 Perevybory v sovety RSFSR v 1925-26 g, (1926), p. 35.
s TaT, op. cit., p. 190.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 193
rural intelligentsia and the local administrators respectively, say). However,
the major issue in the countryside was the problem of authority and power.
Identification o f the centres and of the structure of power-relationships
provides yet another highly relevant classification of rural groups.1 Further­
more, this issue is related to the question o f the execution o f Soviet state
policy in a situation in which there actually obtained a supremacy o f com­
munes over Rural Soviets. Analysis of the power structure may also clarify
what were the dominant conflict-relationships in the countryside and what
their impact was on the various possible future lines of social development.
A major centre of local power in the Soviet countryside of the 1920s was
what might be called the ‘volost' caucus’. It drew its strength from representing
and reflecting the two major national bureaucratic organizations; the state
and the Bolshevik Party. Its hard core consisted of two substantially over­
lapping groups—the heads of the major branches of volost' administration
(V.I.K., militia, judiciary) and the members of the party branch in the village
which was the volost' centre. This hard core was surrounded by a small circle
o f close associates; the other members of the party in the volost', Komsomol
activists, and party sympathizers among the higher grade officials. The rank
and file o f the Komsomol, the majority of the chairmen of Rural Soviets,
some ex-servicemen o f the Red Army, and a few party sympathizers formed
its periphery. Table 10-iv indicates the overlapping of various groups in the
rural administration and their concentration in the volost' leadership.
With Congresses o f Soviets meeting rarely, the Executive Committees
became the agencies o f Soviet power. The V.I.K.s developed into major
centres o f the Soviet administration o f the peasant countryside. The member­
ship o f a V.I.K. overlapped with that o f the local party branch and o f the
other agencies located in the volost' centre. Somewhere in this complex—at a
meeting o f the V.I.K., at a meeting o f the party branch, or just at an informal
gathering—decisions on local administrative affairs got negotiated among the
members o f this small, closely knit group of activists. The decisions were then
fed into the administrative channels available.
The volost' leadership had great power over the inhabitants of its volost'.
The authority o f the volost' leadership was wide and ill-defined—and therefore
arbitrary—including, for example, the power to arrest suspects and ‘enemies’
practically at will. However, wide powers in relation to the peasants did not
mean autonomy for the volost' leaders in relation to the higher authorities.
Their position was seen as mainly executive, and its maintenance was con­
ditional on their success in executing the orders of the higher ranks. It was
a highly centralized organization, to which party members belonged, which
used its right to assign them to work in a particular field, to a specific respon­
sible post and place of residence; the Party presupposed absolute discipline
1 For its genesis during the revolution see V. Grishaev, Stroitel'stvo sovetov v derevne v
pervyi god sotsialisticheskoi revolyutsii (1967)* PP- I0> 12, 26, 60.
194 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
in carrying out orders from above. In actual fact, the V.I.K.s consisted of
appointees o f the guberniya and uezd leaderships. Success and advancement
for members o f the 4volost' caucus’ was measured in terms o f competent
execution o f commands from above (chiefly relating to the collection o f taxes,
the smooth procurement of grain for the towns, the carrying out o f the
numerous campaigns, and ensuring the absence o f major disturbances in the
area). A study o f local government (nizovoi apparat) carried out in 1925 by the
People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (N.K .R.K .I.)
reported: ‘V.I.K.s have proved good executors o f tax-collection work for the
higher authorities, but independent work done by V.I.K.s in serving the basic
needs o f the village is negligible.’1 This seems equally applicable to all the
rural organizations o f the plenipotentiary outsiders.

T a b l e i o -i v

Officials o f Soviet Local Authorities by Type, 1924-1926 (percentage)

Bolsheviks Red Army

ex-service O f peasant
Posts Year Total Party Komsomol men origin

Chairmen of
Volost' Executive
Committees (A) 1925-6 86-0 85*2 o-8 707 48-3
Members of
Volost' Executive
Committees (B)a 1924 614 700
(A) 1 9 2 5 -6 50-5 467 3*8 67*3
Chairmen of
Rural Soviets (A) 1925-6 18*o 14-3 3-7 53*i 953
(C) 1925 5*9 36 2-3 937

Sources. (A) Perevybory v sovety RSFSR v 19251

26 g. (1926), pp. 25, 33-7.
(B) L. Kritsman, P. Popov, and Ya. Yakovlev (eds.), Sel'skoe khozyaistvo na putyakh
vostanovleniya (1925), pp. 811-19.
(C) A. Luzhin and M. Rezunov, Nizovoi sovetskii apparat (1929), pp. 93, 97.
Note. a The figures are drawn from all of the U.S.S.R. and not only the R.S.F.S.R,

The discrepancy between the aims and requests o f higher authority and the
resources o f the volost' leadership was stupendous. The Soviet local executive
lived under perpetual pressure from an everlasting string o f orders, requests,
instructions, and threats coming from the various branches o f the state and
party machinery. He was kept in an atmosphere o f perpetual involvement in
several simultaneously running campaigns, generally without the allocation
o f any additional resources.2 The Weberian model o f ideal-type bureaucracy
1 Luzhin, op. cit., p. 148. The ‘sections* o f the V.I.K.S intended to deal with the various
aspects o f local welfare simply did not work (ibid., p. 216).
2 Frequent complaints were voiced about the staff o f V.I.K.s being overworked. For
example, see ibid., p. 168.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 195
acting in an apolitical, rational, and objective manner would, no doubt, have
seemed ridiculous to this group. Not objectivity, but zealous devotion was
required by the higher authorities; personal failure had the smell of treason
and counter-revolution. Silent peasant defiance of orders added to the general
atmosphere reminiscent of a harassed besieged garrison.
An additional element of tension was that this heavily overworked group
was extremely badly paid. Salaries varied in different areas and periods but
in 1924, members o f V.I.K.s received an average monthly salary of less than
20 roubles; it amounted to as little as 12 roubles in many cases. Chairmen
o f Rural Soviets were reported as receiving less than 10 roubles a month.1
The average salary o f an urban state employee during the same period was
36 roubles per month whilst for those in Moscow the sum was 42 roubles
per month.12
The discrepancy between aims and resources, between personal power and
limited income, between the authority granted and the insecurity felt in
the position led to two opposite reactions. On the one hand, recourse to harsh
administrative methods, arrests,3 and beatings of the peasants by particularly
zealous devotees o f the Party were widely reported.4 This reflected the diffi­
culties experienced in trying to carry out the orders of the higher authorities,
the common lack o f administrative experience, and the tension generated by
the feeling that peasant households ‘had it too good’. On the other hand,
cynicism and corruption spread; this is evidenced by the frequently reported
embezzlement o f public funds,5 bribes, and cases of gross drunkenness
indulged in company with the richer peasants.6
The heavy external pressures, the similarity of problems, and a way of life
far removed from the great majority of the rural population all tended to
produce small and exclusive groups o f ‘outsiders’, sharing a particular sub­
culture, in the volost' centres. Their members lived in their own world of
problems, images, values, friendships, and sociability which centred around
the V.I.K. and the local party branch, and was vastly remote from the world
o f the surrounding peasant communes. Many of the plenipotentiary outsiders

1 Kritsman, op. cit., p. 812. 2 Narodnoe khozyaistvo v tsifrakh, p. 492.

3 For example, during 1922 (the first year of the N.E.P.), according to the records of the
People’s Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin), the peasants in S m o le n sk ^ . lost 2,007,000
days as defendants in court or in gaol, not counting the time spent in court as witnesses. The
court proceedings and arrests were mainly due to tax offences and were the equivalent o f
1,672,000 work days— or 299 work days per 1,000 puds (1 pud = 16 kilogrammes) o f grain
collected. (A. Vainshtein, Oblozheniya i platezhi krest'yanstva v dovoennoe i revolyutsionnoe
vremya (1924), p. 162).
4 Rozit, op. cit., pp. 55-7.
s For example,! ibid., pp.| 68-9; Kritsman, op. cit., pp. 777, 812; Rosnitskii, op. cit.,
pp. 83-4.
6 Drunkenness, in particular from samogon— the illegal home-brewed vodka o f the
Russian peasants— became a major problem in the Russian countryside. The axiii-samogon
policy o f the Soviet state and the Bolshevik Party was another lost battle. ‘Samogon is drunk
by virtually everybody’ reports Rosnitskii (op. cit., p. 120).
196 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
were, in fact, newcomers to the volost' centre; they had no local contacts what­
soever, except those with the local executive group which they had been sent
to join.1 Similarity in educational background2 added to the group’s cohesion.
The eagerly read publications o f the central party press helped to maintain the
political unity and the feeling o f belonging to a big and powerful force. Unity
o f basic aims and shared conflicts made for basic group solidarity; this did not
exclude, o f course, personal clashes over power and influence. Small closed
communities o f outsiders, both plenipotentiary and stranger, had come to be
built up in the peasant countryside o f Russia.
This was the social situation in which the peasants’ image o f the party
members as those who ‘collect taxes and order people around’3 came close to
the party members’ self-image; as reflected in a proposition, voiced in some
rural party branches, to pay party salaries to all party members, because ‘there
are only about half a million of us, and it’s we, after all, who hammer the taxes
out o f them’ (ved' nalogi my vykolachivaem).4
In these conditions, communication between the local administration and
the peasant population became a major problem. The Soviet authorities were
caught in a major dilemma. On the one hand, both the implementation of
short-term policy and the attainment o f the long-term aim o f socialism could
be effected only through close contact with the peasantry. On the other hand,
close contact with the peasantry could (and at times did) develop into cor­
ruption—i.e. the development of personal loyalties taking precedence over
loyalties to the state and the Bolshevik Party. This dilemma was clearly felt
in the party slogans o f the N.E.P. period, which called for a closing o f the
ranks between party members and peasants (smychka) but, at the same time,
heavily castigated what was seen as effectively absorption into the peasantry
(vrastanie). However, in these conditions, they were unavoidably linked. It
seems that the main socio-political boundary ran through the group of chair­
men o f the Rural Soviets. Above this line, the Soviet electees overlapped
with the party members and Soviet white-collar workers, and constituted the
small local elite,5 traditionally referred to by the peasantry as ‘the authorities’
(vlasti, nachal'stvo)— or simply as ‘them’. A peasant who happened to join
the ‘caucus’ was rapidly faced with an unavoidable conflict o f loyalties.
In these circumstances, the periphery o f the volost' power caucus was of
particular importance, both as the main non-administrative bridge to the
peasant population and as the potential ally in the villages. Yet the polarizing
o f loyalties between the members o f the volost' caucus and the peasant
commune made the position of the bridging groups both unstable and pre-
1 See Luzhin, op. cit., pp. 168-71; Kritsman, op. cit., p. 773.
2 Generally primary education, Red Army service, some party experience, and a fairly
limited administrative know-how.
3 Yakovlev, op. cit., p. 74. 4 R OZit, op. cit., p. ?0.

5 See Table i o -i v . More than half o f the members o f the V.I.K.s (including the chairmen)
consisted o f party members and Red Army ex-servicemen.
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 197
carious. The chairmen of Rural Soviets, as we have seen, were a good example
o f this. Both the members of the Komsomol and the Red Army ex-servicemen
constituted a group of potential party sympathizers but, under the pressure
o f this deep political and cultural polarization of rural society, they tended
either to join the administration or to dissolve into the peasant mass. The
members o f the Komsomol were prevented, what is more, by the older
generation, from making any real impression on the Volost' Executive.1 Party
reports o f this period complain endlessly about the lack of non-party peasant
sympathizers in rural areas, ready to shoulder the burden of political work.2
The Bolshevik Party did not fare much better with the rural intelligentsia,
which remained isolated.3
The power structure o f Russian rural society, was, therefore, characterized
by a profound dualism. Real power was held, on the one hand, by the peasant
commune gatherings and, on the other hand, by the plenipotentiaries o f the
state administration, embodied in the V.I.Ks and the party branches; the
Rural Soviets played a mainly subsidiary role. The members of the volost'
power caucus operated not as ‘power-brokers’, to use J. Steward’s and E.
W olf’s term (i.e. a buffer group typical of many rural societies, mediating
between the state power and the peasants, having resources of its own and a
reasonable field o f manoeuvre4), but was totally dependent on the national
leadership. Polarization was in fact reinforced by the weakness and lack of
stability o f what buffer groups there were5 and by the cultural diversity of the
members o f the major groups. The image of a dual society resembling the one
depicted by Boeke as typical of rural areas in the contemporary ‘developing
societies’6 was further complicated in our case, however. The essential dualism
o f the power structure was associated with an essentially threefold division in
the cultural sphere: the Russian rural intelligentsia constituted a third closed
group—that o f ‘stranger outsiders’, who lived alongside the peasant com­
munes and the other distinct group o f ‘plenipotentiary outsiders’. Moreover,
once again the overlap between the three groups was very limited and the
groups which could possibly bridge the gulf were notably weak.

(e) The Rural Power Structure and the Future Development o f the Countryside
During the period discussed, the great majority of Russians lived within the
social framework o f peasant society. The revolution and civil war had dis­
located the main pre-revolutionary classes and social groups of Russia—with
1 See Table io -iv. 2 Rozit, op. cit., pp. 66-7-
3 See Chapter 10, section (a), above.
4 See, for example, Fei Hsiu-Tung, ‘Peasantry and Gentry’, American Journal o f Sociology
(1946), and E. R. Wolf, ‘Aspects o f Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico’,
American Anthropologist (1956), no. 6, pp. 1075-6.
5 See, for example, the discussion of the position of the chairmen o f a Rural Soviet in
Chapter 10, section (a), above.
6 J. Boeke, Economics and Economic Policy o f Dual Societies, as Exemplified by Indonesia
( 1953).
198 THE RURAL SOCIETY IN THE PERIOD OF N.E.P.
the sole exception o f the peasants. At the same time, it gave rise to a new
power elite embodied in the urban-centred Bolshevik Party and the machinery
o f the Soviet state. During the N.E.P. period these two profoundly different
forces faced each other nationally in an uneasy truce.
On the local level, the revolution led to considerable changes in the patch-
work o f the socio-political groups in the Russian countryside. Some o f these
groups had disappeared completely (e.g. the landed nobility), the importance
o f others had increased (e.g. the ex-servicemen and the women), and significant
new groups had come into being (e.g. the Party members). The source-group
and the personality-type o f those recruited to man the local administration
had also changed, reflecting the needs and views o f a new and radical national
leadership. At the same time the socio-economic differentiation o f the
peasantry diminished, mobility went up, enclosed farms disappeared, and
the engagement in crafts and trades lessened, increasing the homogeneity of
the peasant communes and limiting chances o f a ‘Western’ path o f moderniza­
tion by the growth o f the market economy. These changes made the politi­
cal divisions o f the Russian rural society all the more significant for future
developments.
The political dynamics o f Russian rural society in this period were related
to a variety o f conflict relations at work, one o f which seems clearly to have
overshadowed the others and to have become predominant in the political
life o f the countryside. This conflict-relationship developed between peasant
communes and the plenipotentiary outsiders, reflecting on the local level the
relationship between the peasantry and the Soviet state.
The position and actions o f the plenipotentiaries were to a decisive extent
determined by the national organizations and leadership. The implementation
o f state rural policies was strongly influenced by the depth o f the gulf existing
between the members o f the peasant communes and the plenipotentiaries in
the Russian countryside. The possibility o f the latter’s influencing the Russian
peasant communities by political mobilization o f various groups o f the
peasantry was limited to an extreme; various exercises in pressure and coercion
were the main, if not the only, contact and in these the power o f the state
found its match in the silent stubbornness of the peasant communities.
On the other hand the political stand and the social impact o f the peasant
communes was a result of the peculiarities of the peasant social structure.
Defensive conservatism faced state pressures. The vertical segmentation
embodied both the strengths and the weaknesses o f the peasant groups: the
intense solidarity o f each village meant disunity between the villages; the
division into cohesive households and communes gave rise to the socio­
political weakness shown by the peasantry as a whole. Without outside
organizers, peasant action and pressure remained, as a rule, localized; the
peasants lacked national organization, symbols, and leaders and stood little
chance in an open clash with the bureaucratic organization which the state
 THE PREDOMINANT CONFLICT 199
and the ruling party constituted. Yet the ability of the state machine to break
peasant resistance by a full display of force did not mean that it had the ability
to shape the future in accordance with its untrammelled will. The choices open
were determined by the existing social structure, by the resources available,
and by the apprehension of reality by the major political ‘actors’.
During the N.E.P. period, the tremendous passive power of the Russian
peasant communities proved incapable of generating a political alternative
and uniting for political action. The Soviet state machinery and the Bolshevik
Party did have the power, but lacked a perception of the real social processes
going on in the Russian countryside. Worse still, the remoteness of the local
representatives of the Bolshevik Party and the state from the peasantry
blocked the very channels by which an adjustment of concepts and policies
to reality could have taken place. With the political leadership committed to
a misleading conception of rural society, with its local representatives out of
touch with the peasantry in nearly all contexts other than coercive admin­
istrative force, with the power of the communes decisive in local affairs, yet
unable to dictate national policy and bound to be defeated in a full-scale
confrontation with a modern state, the stage was set already in the mid 1920s
for the drama o f collectivization.
APPENDICES
 APPENDIX A
THE PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR1

P e a s a n t s are the majority of mankind. For all but comparatively few countries,
‘the people’ (as opposed to ‘the nation’) still denotes ‘the peasants’; the specific
‘national culture’ closely corresponds to peasant culture; ‘the army’ means young
peasants in uniform, armed and officered by men different from themselves. And
yet one has to be reminded of this.
‘It is a commonplace to say that agrarian history, as such, is neglected—the fact
is too obvious to be denied’ :2 this holds true for many branches of social science
as far as the countryside is concerned. The dozen years which have elapsed since
this passage was written have not much improved the situation, apart from several
notable exceptions in the fields of anthropology and history in the last few years.
Indeed, in the growing flood of social science publications, the few existing rural
studies have almost been submerged.3 But reality seems to confute this solipsism
of the ‘civilized’ mind. Day by day, the peasants make the economists sigh, the
politicians sweat, and the strategists swear, defeating their plans and prophecies
all over the world—Moscow and Washington, Peking and Delhi, Cuba and Algeria,
the Congo and Vietnam.
Even more striking than the neglect of its study are the emotional undertones and
diversities of opinion which shroud this subject. Mitrany’s 400 pages4 bring together
but a fraction of the views expressed. Writers, scientists, and politicians have all
contributed to the discussion, in which the image of the peasant has swung from
that of an angelic rustic humanist to a greedy, pig-headed brute. For example, in
Russia, in one and the same period, the peasantry was held to be ‘the real autocrat
of Russia’5 and ‘non-existent, historically speaking’.6 This kind of verbal contest
did not make reality much clearer. The peasantry went its own way, quite oblivious
of being an intellectual nuisance.
The emotional tension underpinning ambiguous contempt or utopian praise, the
replacement of definition by allegory, as well as acute shortcomings in the conceptual
grasp of the peasantry, are only too strongly felt in the Western intellectual tradition.
The neglect of the subject is but a symptom of this. It calls for a serious study, in
the field of the sociology of knowledge, of the eidos of intellectual image-makers
when dealing with the ‘class that represents the barbarism within civilisation’.7 The
treatment of peasant action as an ‘undecipherable hieroglyphic to the understanding
of the civilised’7seemed to be determined by a conglomeration of factors, of which
1 First published in The Sociological Review, vol. xiv (1966), no. 1.
2 F. Dovring, Land and Labour in Europe, 1goo-1950 (1956)* P- 5-
3 The discussion was brought up to date inT. Shanin (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies
(1971). Also T. Shanin, ‘Peasantry, a Delineation of Concept and a Field of Study’,
European Journal o f Sociology (1971).
4 D . Mitrany, M arx against the Peasant (1951), dealing with Marxist as well as Populist
ideologies.
5 V. Chernov, as quoted by J. Maynard, The Russian Peasant (1967), p. 97.
6 G. Plekhanov on the Russian peasantry.
7 K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works (1950), vol. i, p. 159-
204 APPENDIX A
one stands out as crucial. The peasantry does not fit well into any of our general
concepts of contemporary society. This ‘maddening* peasant quality seems to lie
at the roots of the problems of research in this field.
In this paper we shall start by an attempt to define the differentia specifica of the
peasantry—the uniqueness by which the peasantry may be defined and selected.
This analytical definition1 will then be used as a reference-point in the historical
context. From here we shall proceed to the problem of the peasantry as a part of
society, and then to the patterns of political action of this entity. In dealing with
this subject, other approaches are feasible—and, indeed, needed. The translation
of rich, complex reality into a verbal form of fewer dimensions makes many ap­
proaches possible and valid, subject to recognition of the limitations involved.

(a) The Peasantry: an Analytical Definition

‘Peasant society and culture has something generic about it. It is a kind of arrange­
ment of humanity with some similarities all over the world.’12 In this way, Redfield
summarizes a wide comparison made of peasants in different periods and countries.
The peasantry appears to be a ‘type without localisation—not a typical anthropo­
logist’s community’.3
The peasantry consists of small agricultural producers who, with the help of
simple equipment and the labour of their families, produce mainly for their own
consumption and for the fulfilment of obligations to the holders of political and
economic power. Such a definition implies a specific relation to land, the peasant
family farm, and the peasant village community as the basic units of social inter­
action, a specific occupational structure and particular influences of past history
and specific patterns of development. Such characteristics lead furthermore to some
peculiarities of the position in society and of the typical political action.
(i) The relationship to land and the specific character of agricultural production
lies at the root of some of the specific features of the peasant economy.
The produce from the farm meets the basic consumption-needs of the peasant
family and gives the peasant relative independence from other producers and from
the market. This makes for relative stability in peasant households which, in crises,
are able to maintain their existence by increasing their efforts, lowering their own
consumption, and partially withdrawing from any market relations they may have.
The mainly agricultural nature of production puts limits on the density and
concentration of population and determines patterns of social intercourse, notably
the characteristic annual and other cycles of peasant labour and household life.
Nature introduces an element of chance-factors beyond human control—with
which all the peasant community is faced.
The holding of land, by being ‘a necessary and generally sufficient condition to
enter the occupation’,4 acts (along with some other factors) as an entrance ticket into
the peasantry. Moreover, position in the hierarchy of peasant subgroups is, to a
large extent, defined by the amount of land held.5
1 This definition would appear as a general type based on comparison o f concepts evolved
in studies by a number o f scholars, but the limited number o f societies utilized for compari­
son makes for a certain tentativeness in the character o f this generalization.
2 R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (1956), p. 25. 3 Ibid., p. 23.
4 B. Galeski, Chlopi i zawdd rolnika (1963), p. 48.
5 ‘A rise within the professional group o f farmers is traditionally achieved by enlargement
o f the land-holding, by a rise from the position o f owner o f a small farm to the position o f
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 205
We shall define property in land as a socially accepted exclusive right to hold and
utilize the land concerned, a right which is separate from rights acquired by the
investment of labour and capital. This right finds expression in the holder’s ability
to transfer it, at least temporarily. Property in land, in a wide sense, may have the
form of, on the one hand, the peasant family holding, defined by custom, and on
the other hand, of politically formalized legal ownership. In peasant households*
land appears as the object of traditionally defined and stable holdings and does not
necessarily constitute the object of legal ownership. In actual fact, the legal owner­
ship of peasant land, as seen by a townsman, may lie with the peasant himself, the
commune, the landlord, or the state; the land being correspondingly a private plot*
commune property, or a customary leaseholding. ‘Landlords are not needed to
establish the fact of a peasantry.*1 Their appropriation of part of the peasants’ pro­
duce, and even their political and administrative domination, has generally failed to
break the basic features of the peasant/land relationship.
(ii) The fa m ily fa rm is the basic unit of a peasant ownership, production, con­
sumption, and social life. The individual, the family, and the farm appear as an
indivisible whole. ‘The identification or interest of family and farm-holding seems
to be a typical characteristic of the traditional peasant family.’2 The farm takes the
dual form of a production-consumption unit. The balance of consumption-needs,
available family labour, and the farm’s potential strongly influence a peasant’s
activities. The profit and accumulation motives rarely appear in their pure and simple
form, which makes the neat conceptual models of maximization of income, normal
in a market economy, of most doubtful applicability to a peasant economy.3 The
new, rapidly developing, patterns of industrializing society are to be ‘found outside
agriculture, which still remains the domain of the family-based model’.4
Peasant property is, at least de fa c to , family property. The head of the family
appears as ‘the manager rather than proprietor of family land’,5 and his function
‘has rather the character of management of common family property’.6 These two
descriptions, given by different scholars about the peasantries of two different
countries, show striking similarities. Whatever the imposed national legal structure,
peasants seem to act within this social frame of reference.
The family’s social structure determines the division of labour, the locus of status,
and social prestige. Moreover, ‘the family is the production-team of the farm and
position in the family determines duties on the farm, functions and rights attached.
The rhythm of the farm defines the rhythm of family life.*2
The prestige and position of an individual in peasant society is basically deter­
mined by two ascribed factors, as is his own evaluation and image of himself. These
factors are, firstly, the status of the family he belongs to and, secondly, his position
within his family. His position within the family depends primarily on his progres­
sion through certain basic ascribed positions—i.e. childhood, partial maturity
an owner of a bigger one, and the description ‘good farmer’ is generally attached in the
view of the village to all owners of the biggest farms without exception and is not linked
to the real professional skill or effectiveness of their work.’ Ibid., p. 47.
1 Redfield, op. cit., p. 28.
2 Galeski, op. cit., p. 140.
3 Proof of this statement cannot be summarized; the reader is referred to the studies by
Znaniecki, Galeski, or Chayanov and his group.
4 Galeski, op. cit., p. 57.
5 W. I. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant (1958), p. 92*
6 B. Mukhin, Obychnyi poryadok nasledovaniya u krest'yan( 1888), p. 62.
206 APPENDIX A
before marriage, the period after marriage but before full independence, indepen­
dence (which may be gained either by leaving the family farm and establishing his
own, or by becoming head of the family farm on his parents’ death or retirement),
and, finally, the period of retirement.1 Family labour is an essential requirement for
conducting a farm adequately. Therefore marriage is ‘an absolute postulate’.2 Family
interest directs the choice—and an unmarried man (even a farm-owner) ‘arouses
unfavourable astonishment’ and ‘does not count’,2 since he cannot fully conform
to the norms of the way of life of his fellow villagers.
The main defining feature of family membership lies in full participation in the
life of the farm unit, the hard core of which consists of a married couple or poly­
gamous group and their offspring. The family to the Russian peasant at the begin­
ning of the twentieth century was generally ‘the people who eat from the same pot’
and, to the French peasant of the same period, ‘the people who are locked behind
the same lock’.3 Family solidarity provides the basic framework for mutual aid, con­
trol, and socialization. The individualistic element of personal feelings is markedly
subordinated to the formalized restraints of accepted family role-behaviour. Form­
ing the basic nucleus of peasant society, the life of a family farm determines the
pattern of peasants’ everyday actions, interrelationships, and values. Together with
the mainly natural economy, it makes for the segmentation of peasant society into
small units with a remarkable degree of self-sufficiency and ability to withstand
economic crises and market pressures.
(iii) The fundamental importance of occupation in defining men’s social position,
role, and personality is well known, if little studied. Galeski, however, in his book,
which we have already quoted from, concerns himself with this problem both
analytically and empirically.4 The ambiguity residing in the definition of the trade of
farmer seems to stem from its unique character. Apart from its family base, its
necessary connection with landholding, and its relatively high degree of independence
of the market, its uniqueness lies in its consisting of a peculiarly wide set of inter­
related functions carried out at a rather unspecialized level. Although many of the
jobs done by the peasant are also done by other occupational groups, the specificity
of the peasant’s work lies in their unique combination. This leads to the many
special features characterizing everyday peasant life, as well as its power of resistance
to industrialization. Growing specialization in the countryside leads to the develop­
ment of a rural non-farming population. Simultaneously, the farming function is
progressively narrowed and professionalized as peripheral jobs and jobs requir­
ing high specialist skills are unloaded onto specialists. The farm begins to develop
into an enterprise. The peasant becomes a farmer. However, the tasks which cannot
easily be broken down into a few repetitive actions andmechanized (for example, live­
stock management) still remain largely his special province.
These features of farming determine the form of the process of socialization and
occupational training of the young as one which gives rise to relationships which are
highly diffused, personal, informal, and lying mainly within the framework of the
family.
(iv) The village structure, to a much greater extent than that of the family farm,
1 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., p. 93. For a very similar analysis see A. Vasil'chakov,
Zemledel'e i zemlevladenie (1876), vol. ii, p. 21.
2 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., p. 107.
3 A. Chayanov, Organizatsiya krest'yanskogo khozyaistva (1925), p. 21.
4 Galeski, op. cit., chap. 2.
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 207
presents us with features unique to a specific country and period.1In the setting of
the village community or peasant commune, the peasant reaches a level of nearly
total social self-sufficiency. The appropriation and division of land, marriage, social
and religious needs are generally taken care of at the village level. A common inter­
est in communal rights as well as in providing for productive activity requiring the par­
ticipation of more than one family generates simple co-operation, generally coupled
with some type of grass-roots democracy. The characteristics of the peasant village—its
members being born into a single community, undergoing similar life-experiences
and necessarily involved in close, personal interaction with a consequent absence
of anonymity—make for the highly traditional and conformist culture peculiar to a
rural community. All this makes the word mir (meaning ‘the world’ or ‘peace’), used
by the Russian peasants to refer to their village commune, a significant description
of its function. The village is the peasant’s world. A society of small producers
consists of innumerable village segments generally dominated and exploited by
alien, political hierarchies.
(v) The peasantry is a pre-industrial social entity which carries over into contem­
porary society specific elements of a different, older, social structure, economy, and
culture. This point will be elaborated in the following section but, at this stage, it
should be stressed that we are referring not only to the ‘relics of the way of produc­
tion which already belongs to the past’,12 not only to delayed development, but also
to specific features of development.
A major part of the existing definitions of the peasantry have been taken into
account above. One definition, not so far considered, stands apart from the others—
that formulated by A. L. Kroeber and adopted by R. Redfield—which approaches
the peasantry as ‘a part society, with part culture’.3 In accordance with the adopted
line of reasoning it will be taken into account in section (c) below on the interrelation­
ships of the peasantry with society as a whole.4
No concept of a social stratum can be made exactly to coincide with any empiri­
cally defined group. Yet the importance and validity of attempting a conceptual
definition of the peasantry for research seems to us beyond question.5

(b) The Peasantry: The Historical Context

The peasantry manifests itself not only as a distinctive social group, but as a
general pattern of social life which delimits a stage in the development of human
society. ‘The peasantry . . . is a way of living’, says Fei6 in his classical description of
Chinese society. This general pattern of social life makes its appearance as a sector
1 For a relevant tabulation see S. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems o f Empires (1963),
pp. 34-5, and the supplementary tables.
2 Marx and Engels, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 303.
3 A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology (1923), P- 284; R. Redfield, The Primitive World and its
Transformation (1953).
4 This article was originally written before the publication of E. Wolf, Peasants (i960),
which came to stress the ‘underdog’ position of the peasant as the major component of
peasantry’s definition. Our attitude is made clear in section (c) below and in Shanin, op. cit.
3 For an attempt to develop further the definition of peasantry and in particular to discuss
the relationship between the suggested general type and marginal groups see Shanin, op. cit.
6 See R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset (eds.), Class, Status and Power 0 9 5 3 ), P- 32: ‘The peas­
antry, the key toward understanding o f China, is a way of living, a complex of formal
organisation, individual behaviour and social attitudes, closely knit together for the
purpose o f husbanding land with simple tools and human labour.’
8214036 P
208 APPENDIX A
in earlier tribal (mainly nomadic) society, becomes decisive and typifies a histori­
cally distinct period (that of a society of small producers), and then gradually sinks
to being a sector within industrial society. The appearance of the small-producer
pattern of life is marked by that major change which has been referred to as the
‘agricultural revolution’.1The coming of this stage of development created the basis
for stable settlement, land-division, and the revolutionary rise in productivity which
brought with it the possibility of a comparatively stable surplus. Production came
to be determined, to an increasing extent, by labour utilized.2
Property-relations and nuclear units of social interaction may be treated as the
major indicators of development of economic and social life, to be used to delineate
the society of small producers. The concept of property-relations barely exists in
tribal-nomadic society.3They appear, in the wide sense discussed above, in a small-
producer society, and become fully legally formalized in a capitalist, industrial
society. The kinship group is the basis of social relationships in tribal-nomadic soci­
ety, and remains so in the more narrowly defined familialism of a small-producer
society. The individual in his own right ‘doesn’t count’: he is but a part of the
family as a whole. The town- and market-centred industrializing society, how­
ever, breaks down this system of relationships. The individual becomes the basic
nuclear unit of society, free to interact with any others in the huge new complex of
social hierarchies and structures. The prevalence of family property may well, there­
fore, serve to identify societies of small producers and the historical periods charac­
terized by their predominance.
Furthermore, a society of small producers shows a distinctive cultural pattern,4
features of which persist at least partly among the peasantry of industrializing
societies.5 The basically social rather than economic way of reasoning, the lack of
calculation (i.e. of seeking to maximize income in money terms) were widely docu­
mented already by Thomas and Znaniecki and stressed by every keen student of
peasant life.6 A great deal has been said about the ‘irrational’ behaviour of peasants
as far as land,7 loans,8 prices,9 and income10 are concerned. Peasant th in k ing often
seems to the outsider to be capricious and subjective,11 containing large elements of
what may be called pre-Socratic thought, in which two contradictory opinions may
be held simultaneously. What sometimes remains overlooked is the fact that the
‘stupidity’ exposed by peasants is not necessarily evidence of an absence of thought,
but rather of a frame of reference and patterns of thought peculiar to the group, and
actually serving their needs well.12
1 See V. Gordon Childe, Social Evolution (1951).
2 For discussion see E. Mandel, M arxist Economic Theory (1968), chaps. 1-3.
3 Except for that o f tribal hunting territories, defended from strangers.
4 A cultural pattern being seen for this purpose, as ‘the lens o f mankind through which
men see; the medium by which they interpret and report what they see’ (C. Wright Mills,
Power, Politics and People (1963), p. 406).
5 For a discussion o f this see Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture, chaps. 2 and 3.
6 Even Marx referred to rural societies in which the operation o f ‘law o f value’ never
emerged and to which, therefore, the ‘general economic laws o f society1 did not apply:
K. Marx and F. Engels, Sochineniya (2nd Russian edn.), vol. xxv, part ii, pp. 184-7.
7 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., p. 173.
8 Ibid., p. 161. 9 ibid., p. 169. 10 Ibid., p. 166.
11 See, for example, Mukhin (op. cit., p. 311), who states that the peasants’ court or meeting
tends to decide about property disagreements ‘according to men*— i.e. according to the
personalities o f the people involved rather than general principles or formal precedents.
12 See, for example, the Polish sociologists’ studies o f the prestige determinants o f peasant
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 209
This point is borne out increasingly in recent studies. R. E. F. Smith has pointed
out the cyclical—rather than linear—concept of time held by Russian peasants,
which is clearly linked to their productive life.1 Pitt-Rivers notes the main features
of a closed community to be habitual personal contact, widespread endogamy,
homogeneity of values, emphasis on strict conformity, intense group solidarity, and
marked egalitarianism;2 this may serve as a generalization of the results of much
recent anthropological research into specific peasant cultures. The clash of this
particular culture and its gradual giving way to the new, foreign, Weltanschauung of
the industrializing ‘civilized’ world is an important part of modern social history.
The small producers’ society falls historically in the intermediate period be­
tween tribal-nomadic and industrializing societies. The word ‘intermediate’ is
often used interchangeably with ‘transitional’, ‘unstable’, and even ‘not important to
look at’. However, the small-producer pattern of society proved as lasting as and
no less stable than most other historical types of social structure; society based on
a biological, cyclical, non-structural dynamism, with the family farm as its nuclear
unit, has demonstrated exceptional stability all over the world. Indeed, one does not
need Wittfogel’s hydraulic Eastern Despotism to explain the striking examples of
arrested structural change collected in his book.3 For the ‘stagnant societies* con­
sidered by Wittfogel, the basic social nuclei of family subsistence farm and peasant
village community and their cyclical stability seem to constitute much more of a
common element than do their ‘hydraulic’ features. Furthermore, it is the surplus-
appropriating highly centralized state which bears there the potentialities for struc­
tural change, by the introduction of powerful external pressures into this world of
natural economy and cyclical stability.
The peasant backbone in the small producers’ society dissolves under the influence
of the rise of a market and town-centred money economy and consequent indus­
trialization. An analysis of the appearance and development of an economic surplus
and of capital formation is needed to understand this process.4 The development of
agriculture provided a basis for industrialization but the farms themselves remained,
to a great extent, apart from the new social framework which emerged.5
The producing and trading town introduces social patterns alien to the old world
of small producers. In it, impersonal, warfare-like, profit-centred market relations
underlie human relations. A man, freed from the bonds and the protection of his
family, here becomes an individual participant in a mass society, structured by huge
bureaucratic hierarchies. Accumulation of anonymous capital determines economic
growth. The pursuit of profit, efficiency, and achievement provide the core of the
social value system.
economic action or Chayanov’s demonstrations of the ‘economically irrational’ renting of
land when the cost of letting is higher than the additional income gained, and yet which is
a sensible thing in conditions of an otherwise unemployable labour surplus.
1 R. E. F. Smith, ‘A Model of Production and Consumption on the Russian Farm’,
Discussion Papers, University o f Birmingham, Centre fo r Russian and East European Studies
(1964), Series RC/D, no. 1, p. 11.
2 See J. Pitt-Rivers, ‘The Closed Community and its Friends’, Kroeber Anthropological
Society Papers, no. 16 (1957). For a summary of anthropological research into peasant
communities see Biennial Review o f Anthropology, 1961, 1963* and 1965.
3 K. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (1963).
4 Mandel, op. cit., also P. Sweezy (ed.), The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: a
Symposium { 1963). . , J . . TTO *
3 Mandel, op. cit. According to Mandel’s evidence, even in the present day m the U.S.A.
there are 1,250,000 small farms exhibiting the features of a mainly natural economy.
210 APPENDIX A
By its advantages of capital concentration, population growth, high productivity,
widespread education, and political weight, the urban society rapidly overtakes the
rural and becomes the main determinant of social and economic change. The
peasants’ small-producer world becomes a mere segment of a world very differ­
ently structured. Moreover, whilst still preserving elements of uniqueness, the
countryside develops a special relationship with the town—one which becomes
increasingly decisive for its own development. The town’s lead is felt through the
increasing influence of market relations, the draining-off of surplus labour and
capital, the professionalization of agriculture, the spread of mass products and mass
culture, and by anomie and ‘social disorganization’.1
The view that the development of the peasant sector of a town-centred society is
simply a lagging one, not different in kind, has proved wrong but persistent. In fact,
three parallel patterns of spontaneous development for the countryside can clearly be
distinguished, to which a fourth interventionist form should be added.
(i) Competition from large-scale , capital-intensive , mechanized agriculture gradu­
ally destroys the small farms. Concentration of land-ownership is followed by
concentration of production. Agriculture, fully taken over by industrial methods of
production, becomes ‘merely a branch of industry’.12 The development is apparent
in the large farms of the United States, north Italy, and central France, as well as
in some of the Soviet ‘sovkhozy\ Yet the special features in the techniques of farming
occupation create obstacles to breaking them down into simple, repetitive actions—
i.e. to its full automation. This, together with the resilience of the family-farm unit
and the fact that synthetic foods still remain relatively unimportant, has prevented
‘food factories’ becoming the main form of food-production.
(ii) A town-centred society makes for the development of the peasants into a
professional stratum o f farmers. The poorer villagers are increasingly sucked in from
the countryside by the expanding urban areas. The same happens to peasant entre­
preneurs—and to part of the economic surplus in agriculture. At the same time the
middle peasants, relying on the advantages o f the family production-unit and an
increasing co-operative movement, fight successfully for a place in market society.
These unique features of the development of the farmer stratum were pointed out
as early as Marx3 and seen as the only way for the peasantry to be able to develop
by O. Bauer and others.4 The latest studies of Polish and German sociologists
have shown, furthermore, the growth of a new stratum of worker-peasants, who
supplement their agricultural, mainly subsistence, production by hiring out their
labour.
This pattern-transformation of the peasantry into a cohesive, increasingly narrow,
and professionalized occupation-group of farmers can be clearly seen in most parts
of north-western Europe. Although becoming ever more tied to industrial society,
farming still retains some of its peculiar elements. The socialist states which permit

1 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., p. 1122.

2 V. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (5th edn.), vol. iii, p. 58.
3 The moral of this story, which may also be deduced from other observations in agri­
culture, is that the capitalist system works against a rational agriculture, or that a rational
agriculture is irreconcilable with the capitalist system—even though technical improve­
ments in agriculture are promoted by capitalism. But under this system, agriculture needs
either the hands of the self-employed small farmer, or the control of associated producers.’
Marx and Engels, Sochineniyat vol. xxv, Part i, p. 135.
4 O. Bauer, Bor'ba za zemlyu (1926), p. 203.
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 211
the activity of small producers in the countryside and provide them with necessary
aid, though curbing capitalist development (Russia in the N.E.P. period, contem­
porary Poland and Yugoslavia), bring this pattern to its clearest expression.
(iii) The third pattern of development appears mainly in the so-called under­
developed societies and is characterized by cumulative pauperization of the
peasantry.1 A population explosion, developing market relations, and industrial
competition with traditional peasant handicrafts break up the cyclical equilibrium of
society. A relatively slow industrialization is neither able to drain the countryside
of its excess labour nor to provide sufficient capital accumulation. The potential
surplus is swept away by growing consumption needs. In the small-producer
world, this is not expressed by increasing unemployment, but by ‘hidden’ under­
employment, ‘agrarian over-population’, falling per capita income, and increasing
misery.12
(iv) As distinct from these three spontaneous trends of development, the increas­
ing strength of the modem state and the wish of the revolutionary Elites to tackle the
problem of development within the framework of socialist, collectivistic thinking
makes for the appearance of state-organized collectivization of agriculture. This
pattern is qualitatively different from the spontaneous trends by being a conscious
plan put into operation by a political hierarchy. Long-period evaluation of its
success, in any of the different forms it has taken, would seem premature. How­
ever, in the Soviet Union, where the earliest attempts were made, the capacity of
the elements of specifically peasant life, especially the peasant family plot, to
defeat town-designed plans, was demonstrated to quite a remarkable extent.3

(c) The Peasantry and Society

The difficulties involved in obtaining an over-all conceptual grasp of the nature
of a peasantry have been clearly felt in debates about the place of the peasantry in
society. Even people starting from similar theoretical assumptions have reached
opposite conclusions. Among the Russian Marxists peasantry was ‘a class’ to
Stalin,4 a ‘p etit bourgeois mass’ to Kritsman,5 and ‘not a class but a notion’ to
Plekhanov.
This has been partly due to differences in definition. For example, Ossowski has
distinguished at least three different ways in which the concept of social class was
used by Marx;6 many more conceptual subdivisions of society have been used by
other writers. The different definitions have, in fact, reflected different analytical
aims and different concepts of society.

1 See G. Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (i 957)» chaps. 2, 3,

and 10. \ o
2 See, for example, Pourquoi les travailleurs abandonnent la terre (1900), pp. 130, 144,
which reports, on India, that during the years 1941-51 the natural growth of the
labour-force in the countryside was absorbed as follows: into agriculture, 7°'3 per cent,
into services, 28*3 per cent; into industry, 1*4 per cent.
During the years 1931-51, the share of workers engaged in agriculture rose from 71 to
74 per cent of the working population; in 1952. 74 per cent of peasant families held less
than two hectares of land and one-third was reported as landless. .
3 For discussion see T. Shanin, ‘Cooperation and Collectivisation, m P. Worsley, Two
Blades o f Grass (1971). 4 J- Stalin, Problems o f Leninism (1945). P- 5io.
5 See the Introduction to A. Gaister, Rassloenie sovetskoi derevni (1928), p. xiu.
$ See S. Ossowski, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (1963).
212 APPENDIX A
The main European sociological tradition1 of conceptual subdivision of modern
society stems from Marxist class analysis. Social class is here approached as a unity
of interest, expressed in group subcultures, group consciousness, and group action,
shaped in turn by the conflict-relationships with other classes. Society is structured
by class domination and the working out of the dialectics of interclass conflict and
unity.
If w'e take the criteria for defining class as being relationships to the means of
production,2 or loci of power,3 or capacity to organize production,4 the peasantry
in an industrializing society will fall either into a huge amorphous group of ‘the
ruled’, or into an even more amorphous group of ‘middle classes’. The peasantry, as
a qualitatively distinct entity, disappears. This led the majority of Marxist social
scientists to approach the peasantry as a fading remnant of pre-capitalist society—as
‘non-existent, historically speaking'. Yet, when a major part of the population
remains outside the concept of society as a w hole, the definition in use does seem to
be sadly inadequate, even if the consolation of a glimpse into the future is offered in
exchange. Unfulfilled predictions would seem to be the inevitable result of working
to such a model.
Max Weber’s modification of the Marxist concept of class puts market relation­
ships at the heart of the definition with the issue of class domination retreating into
the background. ‘Class situation is, in this sense, ultimately market situation.’5 ‘Class
situations are further differentiated, on the one hand, according to the kind of
property that is usable for returns, and, on the other hand, according to the kind of
services which can be offered in the market.’6 For Weber, therefore, ‘owners of ware­
houses’ and ‘owners of shares’, for example, constitute social classes, as much as do
industrial workers and peasants. The shortcomings of an unlimited analytical
division of society into small subgroups when approaching social reality had been
pointed out already by Marx in his unfinished manuscript on social class.7
In history, the peasantry many times has acted politically as a class-like social
entity. Moreover, the peasantry in industrial societies has shown an ability for co­
hesive political action—and not only when facing traditional landowners in belated
battles of a pre-capitalist type; their common interests have driven peasants into
political conflicts also with large capitalist landowners, with various groups of
townsmen, and with the modern state.
The polarization of the countryside in an industrializing society—into capitalist
owners and a rural proletariat (as predicted by Marxists)—was checked by the
draining off of capital and labour into the towns, as well as by the specific features
of a peasant family farm economy. The widely accepted picture of the countryside
as being rapidly sundered by an inevitable economic polarization proved over­
simplified. Economic counter-trends seem to have acted in the opposite direction
and greatly influenced the final result. Furthermore, the significance of specific culture,
1 We shall not touch upon the hierarchical status groups, concentrated upon in the
American studies of social stratification, as they are irrelevant to the present work.
2 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, vol. i, p. 33, and V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (5th
edn.), vol. xxxix, p. 15.
3 S ee R . D a h r e n d o r f , Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1959).
4 See works by Bogdanov, Makhaiski, etc—and back to St. Simon.
5 G. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber (1967), p. 182. See also J. Rex,
Key Problems o f Sociological Theory (1961).
6 Bendix and Lipset, op. cit., p. 64.
7 See K. Marx, Capital (1909), pp. 1031-2.
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 213
consciousness, and the meaning attached’1 to the class position proved important.
All this made peasant cohesiveness as a potential basis for political class formation
much stronger than the predictions of the Russian Marxists or of the American
strategists would have led us to believe.
On the other hand, inescapable fragmentation of a peasantry into small local
segments and the diversity and vagueness of their political aims considerably under­
mine their potential political impact. Hence, how far a peasantry may be regarded
as a class is not a clear-cut problem, but should be seen rather, as a question of
degree and historical period. If we posit an imaginary scale or continuum, we could
say that the peasantry would appear as a social entity of comparatively low ‘class­
ness’, which rises in crisis situations.
But the peasantry’s specific features as a socio-political group are not just to be
seen as merely quantitative. Marx’s classical description of the duality in the social
character of the peasantry (on the one hand, it is a class; on the other, it is not)
leaves the riddle unsolved. In so far as the peasantry is not a class, what is it—
granting its qualitative existence?
A class position is basically a social interrelationship—a conflict-interrelationship
with other classes and groups. Outside these interrelations a class ceases to exist.
Yet ‘because the farmer’s produce is essential and, at the lowest level, sufficient for
human existence, the labour of the farmer is necessary for the existence of society;
but the existence of society as a whole is not to the same extent necessary for the
existence of the farmer’.3 Peasants prove this by withdrawing from the market in
crisis situations and, indeed, sometimes consciously use this ability as a means of
exercising political pressure.
The main duality in the peasants’ position in society consists in their being, on
the one hand, a social class (one of low ‘classness’ and on the whole dominated by
other classes) and, on the other, ‘a different world’—a highly self-sufficient ‘society
in itself, bearing the elements of a separate, distinctive, and closed pattern of social
relations. The peasantry is the social phenomenon in which the Marxist approach
to class analysis meets the main conceptual dichotomies of non-Marxist sociological
thinking; Maine’s brotherhood versus economic competition; de Coulangue’s
familistic versus individualistic; Tonnies’s Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft or
Durkheim’s mechanic (segmentary) versus organic societies.4 This unique duality
(‘class’ and ‘society’) leads to conceptual difficulties, yet may well serve as a quali­
tative definition of the peasantry—especially when differentiating this entity from
wider, more amorphous groupings such as ‘middle classes’, ‘exploited masses’, or
‘remnants of feudalism’.
As has already been mentioned, A. L. Kroeber advanced a definition of peasants
as those who ‘constituting part societies with part cultures, definitely rural, yet live
in a relation to a market town . . . [those who] lack the isolation, political autonomy
and self-sufficiency of a tribal population, yet their local units maintain much of
1 See Rex, op. cit., p. 138.
2 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, vol. i, p. 303* ‘In so far as millions of families live
under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and
their culture from those of other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter,
they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small­
holding peasants, and the identity of their interest begets no community, no national bond
and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class.’
3 Galeski, op. cit., p. 49.
4 See R. Redfield, The Little Community ( 1955), PP- 139- 43 -
214 APPENDIX A
their old identity, integration and attachment to the soil’.1 Redfield elaborates
Kroeber’s point and concludes ‘there is no peasantry before the first city’.2
The anthropological approach, under which the extent of cultural self-sufficiency
is used as an index o f social development, is no doubt valid. Moreover, research
centring round the problem of development from tribal to small-producer society
will, necessarily, stress different factors to research centring round the problem of
development from small producer to industrial society. However, Redfield’s defini­
tion of the peasantry seems to be too narrow and his definition of tribal society too
wide. Groups of settlers in many parts of the world, cut off from towns, far from
noblemen, and out of reach of the state and its tax-collectors, can hardly ipso facto
be labelled tribal. These groups share the main features of a peasantry. They seem
to demonstrate peasantry’s self-sufficiency, its ability to exist out of the thrall of
noblemen and town. It was the socio-political significance of these features which
gave rise to the characteristic structure of power-relations found in pre-capitalist
society—it was this very self-sufficiency which made political control a necessity
for the rulers.

(d) The Peasantry in Political Action

The political impact of the peasantry has been generally marked by its basic
socio-political weaknesses. The vertical segmentation of peasants into local com­
munities, class, and groups and the differentiation of interest within these communi­
ties themselves have made for difficulties in crystallizing nation-wide aims and
symbols and developing national leadership and organization which, in turn, has
made for what we have called low ‘classness’. Technological backwardness, especially
in the fields of communications and of weaponry and tactical expertise, has brought
to naught many attempts at political action. Yet the peasantry does have its socio­
political points of strength—being the main food producer, being dispersed in rural
areas, and being numerically preponderant. Its monopoly of food production has
often proved of crucial importance in times of crises. The vastnesses of the country­
side can become a stronghold. Numerical strength can tip the balance.
Yet in the long run it is the basic weaknesses of the peasantry which have tended
to stand out. The peasantry have proved no match for smaller, closely knit, better-
organized, and technically superior groups, and has, time and time again, been
‘double-crossed’ or suppressed politically and by force of arms. However, granting
all this, the peasantry cannot be ignored as politically impotent and its actions dis­
missed, therefore, as without significance. For it is not only victors and rulers who
determine political reality.
The spread of industrialization and mass culture gives the peasantry new possi­
bilities of communication and cultural and political cohesion. Yet, at the same time,
it lowers the importance of the countryside in the national production, curbs its
‘food monopoly’ by developing international trade, stimulates village-level polariza­
tion, and improves the government forces’ relative advantage in terms of mobility*
weaponry, and repressive power. Once again, the course of historical development
seems to weaken peasants’ political influence.
However, the peasants’ chances of influencing the political sphere increase sharply
in times of national crisis. When non-peasant social forces clash, when rulers are
divided or foreign powers attack, the peasantry’s attitude and action may well prove
1 Rroeber, op. cit., p. 284.
2 R. Redfield, The Primitive World and its Transformation, p. 31.
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 215
decisive. Whether this potential is realized is mainly dependent upon the peasants’
ability to act in unison, with or without formal organization. This, in turn, is
dependent upon the cohesion of the peasantry, its economic, social, and cultural
homogeneity as well as interaction, and on the reflection of these in the ideological
sphere.
A comparison of the peasantry’s political and armed action in pre-industrial
society with that in contemporary society has still to be made. In a modem society
the patterns of peasant political action and influence are determined by its character
as a social entity. We may discern three main types of it:
(i) Independent class action , as described by Marxist class theory. In this pattern
of action, a social class crystallizes in the course of conflict, creates its own nation­
wide organization, works out its ideology, aims, and symbols, and produces leaders
from within. This form of political action seems to be fairly typical of the main
social classes. However, for the peasantry, this pattern of political action seems the
least frequent. The ‘green’ movements in Eastern Europe, the peasant unions in
Russia in 1905 and China in 1926, the Zapata movement in Mexico, and their
counterparts in the rest of the world need to be studied comparatively to under­
stand the mechanics of this pattern of peasant action.1
(ii) Guided political action , in which the social group concerned is organized by an
external uniting power elite. This pattern of action may become especially important
as far as the peasantry is concerned. The conservative cyclical stability of both the
farm and the village and the political implications of this can generally be overcome
only by a severe crisis, accompanied by the existence of some exogenous organizing
factor of sweeping political and emotional power. This external organizer of the
peasantry may be found in millennial movements, secret societies, the Russian Cos­
sacks, French Bonapartism, or Mao’s people’s army; it provides the peasantry with
the missing factor of unity on a wide scale. The common element found in all these
very different movements is the existence of a closely knit group of activists, having
its own impetus, specific organizational structure, aims, and leadership—a group
for which the peasantry is an object of leadership or manipulation. The peasantry,
in this case, may be ‘used’ (i.e. deliberately tricked into some action alien to its own
interests) or ‘led to achieve its own aims’; yet, the very definition of ‘aims’ is in the
hands of qualitatively distinct leaders. The peasants’ interests and attitudes are only
one of the factors to be taken into account by them. As Marx said, referring to the
French peasantry in the mid nineteenth century: ‘they are . . . incapable of enforcing
their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a
convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their
representative must at the same time appear as their master . . . ’12 The only thing to
be objected to in this statement is the absoluteness of its terms, which has been
refuted by later events.
The low ‘classness’ of the peasantry makes the study of peasant movements
especially illuminating for the sociological analysis of the external elites which lead
them. The peasantry’s weak influence on such leaders seems to make the 61ite group’s
dynamics appear in a ‘purer’ form. Moreover, it leads us to look into the problem
of class-like groups (e.g. of social groups such as Russian soldiers in 1917-18) which

1 See, for example, on the influence of the stratification of the peasantry on political
action, H. Alavi, ‘Peasantry and Revolution’, The Socialist Register (1965).
2 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, vol. i, p. 303-
216 APPENDIX A
are acting temporarily as class entities though not bearing all the features of a class
and their place in political processes.
(iii) Fully spontaneous, amorphous political action . This pattern seems to be highly
typical of peasants’ impact on politics, and may take one of two forms:
(a) Local riots which ‘suddenly’ appear as short outbursts o f accumulated frus­
tration and rebellious feeling. Generally easily repressed by the central authorities,
these riots may act as a check on central policy and stimulate change. When related
to crisis in other areas and spheres, they may develop into nation-wide movements
capable of determining major political development.
(b) Peasant passivity. The conceptual grasp o f passivity as a factor of the dynamics
poses some complex questions. Yet the spontaneous restriction of production by
the Russian peasantry in 1920 proved strong enough to frustrate the will of a govern­
ment victorious in a war against powerful enemies. Enormous numbers of govern­
ment decrees and orders have, all over the world, been voided of effect by the
peasantry’s spontaneous, stubborn, and silent non-fulfilment. The influence of
conservative peasant ‘apathy’ has also many times proved decisive for the victory
of ‘the establishment’ over revolutionaries. That passive resistance is actually a
specifically peasant contribution to politics with a long history, merely elabor­
ated and sophisticated by Tolstoy and Gandhi, has been already suggested by
R. E. F. Smith. The existence of a relationship between the basic features of peasant
society and passive forms of resistance seems evident.
In the study o f the political life of societies, especially those which include
numerous peasants, armed action has a place of special importance. Clausewitz’s
remark that ‘war is an extension of politics by other means’ holds true not only for
the relations between states. This leads us to the need specially to consider the
army and guerrilla warfare as frameworks of peasant political action.
The modern conscript army is one of the few nation-wide organizations in which
the peasantry actively participates. The segmentation of the peasantry is thereby
broken. The cultural intercourse involved, even if there is no indoctrination, teaches
the peasant-soldier to think in national and not just village-limited terms. He is
taught organization, complex co-operative action, co-ordination, modem tech­
niques, and military skills. The army provides him with a hierarchical institution
through which he may rise as a leader and be trained for this position. Even where
other national bodies have organizations represented in the rural level, it is generally
the army which has provided the peasant with the framework for the most active
participation.
This increase in the peasant’s ability to act politically is, while he is in the army,
on the whole successfully curbed by rigid discipline and by control exercised by non­
peasant officers. Yet, in a time of crisis, this repression may disappear and the
attitudes, action, or refusal to act of a peasant army may become decisive. Moreover,
the experience gained in army service acts as an important influence later in the
villages. The ex-serviceman, because of his new experiences, tends to become a
leader and a channel through which outside influences reach other villagers. In
attempting to organize politically, peasants frequently refer back to their army ex­
perience. The Russian Tamanskaya armiya and ‘Green Army of the Black Sea’, the
F.L.N., the Chinese ‘People’s Militia’, the Zapata and Villa armies in Mexico,
served not only as the military organizations but also as the main political organiza­
tions—a kind o f party in arms.1
1 One such force is described by Marx in the Communist Manifesto when speaking of the
 PEASANTRY AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 217
The army, as this kind of organization, may bear the marks of both the first and
second patterns of political action we have described—i.e. the peasantry as ‘a class
for itself’ and as a ‘guided’ socio-political entity.
During the last decade, guerrilla warfare , by its success, moved into the centre of
public attention. American strategists approach guerrilla warfare as a specific
military technique to be taught by smart sergeants along with saluting and target
practice. Their failures in both guerrilla and anti-guerrilla warfare in Vietnam is the
best comment on this approach.
Guerrilla warfare is the most suitable form for the expression of armed peasant
action. The record of it seems to be as old as the peasantry itself. Innumerable rebels
brigands, and outlaws appear in the myth, in the folk-memory of every people as well
as in its real history. The ability of the amorphous guerrilla ‘army’ to dissolve itself
in times of need into the sympathetic peasant mass and vanish into the expanses of
the countryside, its ability to utilize various degrees of peasant militancy and
friendly passivity, its ability to survive without outside supplies, and the adequacy
for this type of warfare of primitive weapons may make guerrillas unbeatable by
modern military methods.
Yet the essentially peasant character of guerilla warfare provides not only its
strength but also its weaknesses: segmentation, lack of crystallized ideology and
aims, lack of stable membership. These essential weaknesses may be overcome by
the injection of a hard core of professional rebels, making the revolt into guided
political action. The professional rebels’ nation-wide ideological and organizational
cohesion, their ability and zeal, and their ability to work out a long-term strategy
may enable them to unite the peasantry, sometimes transforming its revolt into a
successful revolution. Yet the main key to the understanding of guerrilla warfare
has to be sought not in the marvels of the rebels’ organization, but in their relation­
ship with the peasantry; not only in the military techniques of the few, but in the
sociology of the mass.1
There are subjective determ inants o f m ilitary action—generally labelled ‘m orale'
whose resistance to quantification does not negate their importance in the shaping of
reality. Peasant revolts all over the world display common cultural features which
in all their complexity, seem to have been better caught in the synthetic expressions
of the arts than dissected by the analytical tools of the social sciences. The leader-
hero, the legends which surround him, his personal charisma—these to a large
extent take the place of ideology and organization as unifying factors. The pictur­
esque image of the young peasant rebel challenges the mundane nature of everyday
peasant life. The childish display of exhibitionism, described by Znaniecki as typical
of the peasant’s attempts to establish his own personality when breaking out of
rigid family ties,2 explains much of the spirit of peasant fighters. All these features
influence the general character of peasant units as a fighting force, together with the
specific values and self-images of the leading Elites.
The main stream of contemporary sociology has bypassed the traditional peas­
antry. Rural sociology has been localized in and financed by rich industrial societies
early stage of bourgeois class organization as ‘an armed and self-governing association in
the mediaeval commune’. Marx and Engels, Selected Works, vol. i, p. 34.
1 Inroads into research on this subject have been made by E. Hobsbawn in Primitive
Rebels (1959), and ‘Vietnam and the Dynamics of Guerilla Warfare’, in New Left Review
(1965), no. 33. See also Monthly Review , vol. xvii (1965) on guerrilla activities in Latin
America. 2 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., p. 103.
218 APPENDIX A
and has consequently been centred upon the problem of how to promote members
of farming minorities into fully productive and prosperous members of ‘civilized
society’. Few sociologists have so far elevated the peasantry from the footnote to
the page. Yet, were historical and social significance the criteria for the choice of
objects of study, we should be almost overwhelmed by the flood of publications
on the peasantry. Innumerable problems of our world’s political and economic
development lead us back to the subject of the peasantry, to the understanding and
misunderstanding of it by policy-makers. To take but one example, the history of the
Soviet Union has time and time again (in 1918, 1920, 1927-9, etc., up to the 1960s)
largely been shaped by unexpected responses to the ruling party’s policies, based on
such evaluation and prediction. Countless other examples could be cited from
Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc.
Only a cross-disciplinary combination of both conceptual and factual studies may
overcome the shortcomings in our knowledge of the peasantry, in spite of the
methodological difficulties involved. Limping along main roads achieves more than
strolling along side roads.
 APPENDIX B
RUSSIAN PEASANT LAW AND THE INHERITANCE OF PROPERTY

(a) Peasant Law

Socially determined patterns of behaviour are formalized and codified in law.
Yet law may prove a very far from adequate reflection of actual social behaviour.
Wide areas of social behaviour escape legal formalization, being defined by custom,
which acts as an unwritten supplement to written law. Furthermore, custom and
actual social behaviour may be poles apart from the law, opposing and defying it.
To many peasant societies, the law tends to appear as something imposed by
external powers, defined by the needs, interests, cognitions, and values of alien
social groups. On the other hand, the peasantry lives within an elaborate structure
of custom, which expresses its own specific conditions and understandings. In view
of this contradiction, the outcome of any attempt to deduce peasant social behaviour
from the imposed law—or, indeed, from usually rather ill-defined local custom—
must be extremely dubious.
However, Russia of 1861-1906 was a unique case. The law on the emancipation
of the serfs in 1861 elevated peasant custom to the level of specific peasant law.
The problem of peasant/non-peasant social differences was solved by their recog­
nition and formalization by the state. For the peasant communities, custom and
civil law became one.
By the statute of 19 February 1861, the peasantry was singled out as an estate
with a particular form of communal organization, subject to specific legislation
administered by local courts of peasant magistrates. The peasant courts had to judge
‘in accordance with custom’, which was ‘recognized as the source of law’.1 Such
a court’s jurisdiction included the civil cases and minor criminal offences of the
peasant population within a volost' (a district including a number of peasant com­
munes).2 Membership of the peasant estate was defined by the formal registration
( pripiska ) of a family on the rolls of a peasant commune.3 In addition, marginal
groups of non-serf peasants («odnodvortsy , etc.) were included and, after 1887, were
finally absorbed into the peasant estate.4 As a result, about nine-tenths of the popula­
tion of Russia were excluded from the jurisdiction of the national civil law and
placed under customary peasant law (Obychnoe pravo ), as applied and understood
by the peasant magistrates in each locality. The Russian High Court of Appeal
assumed over-all supervision of the application of customary law by the peasant
courts.
1 B. Mukhin, Obychnyiporyadok nasledovaniya u krest'yan (1888), p. 5; also A. Leont'ev,
Krest'yanskoe pravo (1909), p. 10.
2 Candidates for the magistrate’s position were elected by the peasants in each volost'
and finally appointed by the state administration (in the person of the zemskii nachalnik—
an officer selected from the local nobility). Election was for three years. SecNovyientsiklo-
pedicheskii slovar' (2nd edn.), Brokhauz and Efron, vol. ii, pp. 476-81.
3 This registration had been obligatory on peasant serfs since the time of Peter the Great:
see Leont'ev, op. cit., p. 31. The estate also included a high proportion of Russian artisans
and workers. 4 Ibid., pp. 36-41-
220 APPENDIX B
The elevation of peasant custom into law helped to clarify the social structure of
the Russian peasantry. It led to an intensive study of peasant custom which resulted
in a unique collection of peasant legal customs, defined, clarified, and analysed by
specialists.1 The collection and codification o f the, in fact, highly diverse peasant
customs of the country by urban legal specialists was necessarily a selective process,
and, no doubt, sometimes succumbed to the dangers of mistaken interpretation and
ideological bias. However, when the rich data and sophisticated argument produced
by committed populists such as Efimenko or Leont'ev are put together with the
materials of ‘legalistically-minded’ authors opposed to them, such as Pakhman,
Mukhin, and Khaukc, the resultant seems to provide a pretty comprehensive and
reliable picture. The studies of peasant legal custom revealed, on the whole, a
remarkable amount of homogeneity; this was particularly striking in view of the
wide diversity of local conditions. This homogeneity contrasted strikingly with the
marked difference between this customary law and the legislation obligatory on
non-peasant society.2

(b) Family Property 3

All students of peasant custom and law seem to agree that ‘the main peculiarity
in the field is common ownership by the peasant family. This peculiarity extends
throughout the peasant population in all areas of Russia.’4 ‘The property of the
farm belongs to all the family’:5 this statement was described as ‘the basic dogma of
the peasantry’6 which had ‘deep roots in peasant consciousness’.7 This principle
applied both to commune land-allotments and to the peasant-enclosed types of
farms (uchastkovoe khozyaistvo ).
Family property and family land-holding are the most important reflections of
that fusion of family and farm to form the household which was characteristic of
the peasantry. The consensus about this customary practice apparent all over Russia
was duly recognized by the state legislators. The statute of 1861, when dealing with
the allocation of land to the freed serfs, pointed out that ‘the subject of the right to
land and demesne is not the peasant head of household (domokhozyain) himself,
but all the family, all the household (dvor)\* This principle was confirmed in 1888
and once more in 1904 by the Highest Court o f Appeal, which ruled that the allotted
lands ‘are regarded as the property not of the person legally registered as the pro­
prietor, but of all the members of the family, the head of the household being only
the household representative’.9
1 For the history of peasant-law studies see, for instance, O. Khauke, Krest*yanskoe
zemelnoe pravo (1914), p. 205.
2 Facets of this legal dualism have been traced historically by some scholars to the
differences between the Russian legal tradition and Western legal influences. For an elabora­
tion of this view see A. Efimenko, ‘Odna iz nashikh narodnykh osobennostei’, Nedelya
(15 April 1876), p. 120.
3 We shall define peasant property in the widest sense as socially accepted rights to hold
and use land, livestock, buildings, equipment, and farm productions. These rights find
expression in the further right to transfer or exchange them, at least temporarily. Peasant
property could be therefore divided into, on the one hand, the customarily defined holding
and, on the other hand, formalized legal ownership. 4 Leont'ev, op. cit., p. 330.
5 Khauke, op. cit., p. 187. * Mukhin, op. cit., p. 50.
7 Ibid., p. 54. 8 Khauke, op. cit., p. 189.
9 Decision of the State Council of 4 January 1884, confirmed by a Senate decision of
3 March 1904 (case of Kikot): see M. Kubanin, ‘Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskaya sushchnost'
drobleniya krest'yanskikh khozyaistv’, Na agrarnom fronte (1928), no. 1, p. 7.
RUSSIAN PEASANT LAW AND INHERITANCE OF PROPERTY 221
This ruling gave legal confirmation to another aspect of peasant custom. The head
of the household was generally the father of the family—nuclear or extended—but
the head could be the eldest kin or any other member. The rights of the head of the
household were those of an administrator of common property rather than those
o f a legal owner having unlimited freedom to use and dispose of the property.1 This
was most clearly expressed in the legal possibility of removing the head of the house­
hold from his position in the case of mismanagement or misbehaviour.2 However,
the fact of family property did not mean democratic management or equality of
rights among the family members. The head was free to administer his household,
to represent it at commune meetings, and to carry out business deals in accordance
with his personal judgement. All these rights could be legally challenged, however,
if used ‘to the detriment of the household’.3
The principle of family property was closely related to and strengthened by the
institution of collective responsibility for the settlement of duties, taxes, and debts.4
The Stolypin reform, 1906-10, put an end to the collective responsibility of peasant
communes for the payment of taxes, but the collective responsibility of members of
peasant households survived both the Stolypin reforms and the 1917 revolutions.
The Russian peasantry presented a variety of family patterns. These included
nuclear families, extended families (of three or more generations), and complex
families which united people of different blood relationships or of no blood relation­
ship at all.s Formal membership of a family household was conferred by birth or
adoption. These had to be confirmed, however, by full participation in the life of
the household as the basic unit of social interaction: labour, consumption, property-
sharing, prestige, and so on.6 The principle of ‘actual participation’ as the main
definition of a mature member of a household became clear in the light of the legal
treatment o f ‘outsiders’. An adoptee (primaka , vlazen') accepted into a family
through having married one of its members or by agreement, after a period of
participation in the household’s work and activities,7 counted as a full member. At
the same time, a son apportioned from his parents’ household would generally be
considered to have no property rights whatsoever.8
The rights of a family member ‘consist of participation in the use of family
property’.9 Unlike private property, family property limits the rights of the ‘head’
or ‘owner’ (khozyain ). Unlike collective ownership, the rights of each member did
not consist of a share, but of participation in the group-ownership of the whole
property. A member of the household has no rights to the profits apart from collec­
tive consumption. In decision-making, a member was not on equal footing with the
head who, within the limits imposed by custom, ruled his household.10
1 Mukhin, op. cit., pp. 62-3.
2 Khauke, op. cit., pp. 201-2.
3 Ibid., pp. 195-6. 4 Ibid., pp. 193-5.
5 See Mukhin, op. cit., pp. 30-1.
6 A sharp debate took place in Russia between those who supported the ‘labour prin­
ciple’, such as Efimenko and Leont'ev, and their critics, such as Pakhman and Mukhin. The
first group, closely linked with the Populists, claimed that labour input was the only custom­
arily acceptable basis for family membership and inheritance. Their opponents, though
acknowledging the necessary character of labour participation, stressed the importance of
blood ties, rejecting the image of the family household as merely that of a small co-operative.
7 Generally legalized by formal registration (pripiska).
8 Mukhin, op. cit., p. 29. A peasant who migrated to a town enjoyed full rights if he
contributed to the household by sending money.
9 Khauke, op. cit., p. 196. 10 Ibid., pp. 208-9.
222 APPENDIX B
(c) Peasant Inheritance 1 and Partitioning , 1863-1905
The aspects of peasant law most significant for a discussion of socio-economic
mobility are those dealing with the inheritance o f property. The specific inheritance
laws based on the customs of the Russian peasantry came to full flower during the
period 1861-1906. During the following period, 1906-21, two major attempts were
made to alter peasant property laws.12 Subsequently, this was followed by a major
turning back of legislation to the peasants’ customary rules of the earlier period.
Discussion will have to start, therefore, as early as the emancipation.
Inheritance and partitioning customs derived from the structure o f family
property relations and from the fact that land, minimal agricultural equipment, and
a family were necessary requisites for the setting-up of a new peasant household.
Mukhin’s summary of peasant inheritance customs pointed to three main elements
common throughout Russia, including both the areas where the repartitional com­
mune predominated and the areas in which villages consisted of enclosed peasant
farms.3
(i) Inheritance, as defined in the Civil Code,4 was unknown in peasant customary
law (Obychnoe pravo ), which knew only the partitioning of family property among
newly emerging households. In the framework of peasant customary law, the rights
of descendants were not those of inheritance in the sense of the Civil Code, but those
of membership of the family household unit. For these rights to become operative,
it was not necessary to predicate the death of a property-owner.5
(ii) Different principles applied to the peasant inheritance by males and by
females. Peasant law did not consider women, strictly speaking, members of a
household, ‘because they cannot perpetuate a family’.6 Therefore a woman did not
hold property-rights over the household if male members of the family lived. On
the other hand, some items of domestic use (especially utensils and clothing) and
women’s dowries were, on the whole, considered peculiarly female private property
and passed from mother to daughter. Exceptions to the exclusion of females from
sharing in household property were rare and mainly related to widows. The attitude
to widows varied from region to region. It ranged from the full right to be head of
a household and to inherit all the property in some areas to no property rights what­
soever in others. The existence or otherwise of minor children had a major bearing
on women’s rights to property, especially in cases of widowhood.7
(iii) Common membership of the family household unit was the basis for parti­
tioning; blood ties were only as supplementary reasons in cases where no male
member of the household survived.

1 We here use the word ‘inheritance’ in its widest sense—i.e. the passing on of property
from generation to generation—and not only in the legal sense adopted by civil law of both
the Roman and the British varieties and related necessarily to death of the owner.
2 In 1906-14 and 1918-21. 3 Mukhin, op. cit., p. 109.
4 SeeSvod zakonov reprinted in V. Gsovski, Sov/e/ Civil (1949), vol. i,p. 621.
5 Ibid., p. 99; also Khauke, op. cit., p. 209.
6 Mukhin, op. cit., p. 90. A peasant proverb seems to express this attitude: ‘By keeping
my parents I pay my debts, by helping my sons I give a loan, by giving to my daughter I
chuck away (za okno brosayu).’ (Mukhin, op. cit., pp. 122-3.)
7 Ibid., pp. 243-4. The view that Russian peasant women enjoyed full equality of property-
rights expressed by Stepnyak in The Russian Peasantry (1888), p. 130, and requoted by M.
Hindus in The Russian Peasant and the Revolution (1920), was based on a misinterpretation,
as is clearly demonstrated in Mukhin’s authoritative exposition of all the sources from which
Stepnyak drew his conclusions.
 RUSSIAN PEASANT LAW AND INHERITANCE OF PROPERTY 223
The customarily accepted property-rights of male members of the family, in cases
of partitioning, were characterized by a high degree of equality. The rights of an
adopted member were equal to those of descendants,1 as also were the rights of
minor males.12 A member who had benefited from apportionment relinquished his
rights to take part in any further sharing of the original household property.3 In
partitioning, or in the case of apportionment to a member, the division of the
property was left to the discretion of the head of the family, on the understanding
that all members (but only members) got their share.4 If challenged before a peasant
court or carried out on its order, sharing would tend to be fairly equal, though
influenced, to some extent, by judgements on the personal qualities of the members
—their industriousness, sobriety, and so on.5 Generally, awareness of public opinion
and the attitudes of the peasant magistrates would determine the decision of the
head of the household and tend to make division fairly egalitarian.6 The household
property was generally divided into fairly equal shares among all male members with
some additional portion for the member who accepted responsibility for the aged
and the females.7 Among the great majority of Russian peasantry inheritance by
a non-member of the household was practically unknown. Inheritance by will did
not exist as far as land and agricultural equipment were concerned and, in other
cases, was extremely limited and open to challenge as unjust before the peasant
courts. In cases where the members of a household did not want to part after the
death of the head, one of them (generally the eldest son) became, by common con­
sent, the new head.
The partitioning of a peasant household was legally defined as ‘the division of
members and property into new peasant households’.8 Inheritance as a result of
the death of an ‘owning’ head of household was, therefore, treated as a special case
of partitioning. Where no male members of a household remained, the household
was declared escheated ( vymorochnyi). In a repartitional commune, the farm then
became the disposable property of the commune. In villages consisting of enclosed
farms the custom about escheated households varied, sometimes allowing for in­
heritance by blood relations and, at other times, taking the same form as in the
repartitional communes.9
The Russian government repeatedly attempted to limit the partitioning of house­
holds to cases where it was ‘economically justifiable’. However, they failed either to
convince or to force the Russian peasantry to act in an ‘economically rational’ way,
alien to peasant values and the social structure. This legislation only succeeded in
increasing the number of illegal yet customarily accepted partitions.10
Generally, partitions were carried out either at the wish of the head of the house­
hold or immediately following his death. Both courses of events were accepted as
natural. The main reasons put forward for partitioning were the desires of members
1 Mukhin, op. cit., p. 20. 2 Ibid., pp. 15, 60. 3 Ibid., p. 79.
4 Ibid., pp. 66-7; Khauke, op. cit., p. 203.
5 Mukhin, op. cit., p. 59; Khauke, op. cit., p. 187.
6 The actual procedure of partitioning seems to have varied a great deal. For carrying out
partitioning in cases of disagreement, a peasant could resort to different agencies, e.g. the
peasant court, the peasant assembly, older or respected members of the community, etc.;
see Khauke, op. cit., p. 223.
7 Mukhin, op. cit., pp. 120-31, 155. An unmarried woman might sometimes present an
ill-defined claim for a dowry and clothes; in a few localities, she might even inherit land.
8 Khauke, op. cit., p. 219. 9 Ibid., p. 196.
10 Khauke, op. cit., pp. 202, 222; also Mukhin, op. cit., p. 155.
8214086 Q
224 APPENDIX B
for independence, and increased family tension. In cases where the head of the
household was unwilling to effect a partition, he might well be forced into it. The
law of 1886 allowed for partitioning by decision of the commune gathering ( skhod)
against the wish of the head of household in cases o f prodigality or immoral behav­
iour; in practice, these justificatory circumstances were considerably widened to
include cases of family quarrels, disregard of other members* rights, and the like.1
Studies of peasant customs revealed wide diversity according to locality, a fact
which gave rise to considerable argument amongst scholars. Yet there was no
disagreement on the fact that, ‘granting diversity in detail, the basic principles of
partitioning have shown surprising uniformity*.2

(d) Peasant Law, 1906-1929

After 1906 peasant law departed to an increasing degree from its customary roots
but custom still acted as an underlying influence, in many cases determining the way
the law was applied. Moreover, the legislators left untouched wide areas of peasant
social relations in which custom remained the only guide.
The Stolypin reform aimed at creating a stratum of well-to-do capitalist farmers
as a new national basis for economic growth and political conservatism. To achieve
this aim, the obstacle constituted by the egalitarian repartitional commune had to
be overcome. Family property and equal partition would have to give way to private
property and to inheritance by entail, an important factor making for capitalist
accumulation.
The Decree of 5 October 1906 freed the family from the obligation to obtain legal
sanction from the commune gathering for partitioning.3 The abolition of collective
responsibility for duties and taxes (krugovaya poruka) destroyed the formal basis
for interference by the commune in the management o f household property and its
right to remove a head of household if necessary.4 The abolition, too, of the obliga­
tion on a member who wished to leave a household to get permission from its head
weakened non-economic family ties.5 In this way, preparatory steps towards a new
property relationship were being taken.
The Law of 14 June 1910 legally abolished family property of the enclosed types
of farms making them, at one stroke, the private property of the head of the house­
hold, or into collective property in households which did not consist of blood
relatives.6 The land of communes remained for the time being beyond the jurisdic­
tion of this law, on the clear understanding that this exception would disappear with
the gradual destruction of the repartitional commune. The legal basis for customary
partitioning disappeared with the disappearance o f family property. It was partly
replaced by the laws on inheritance, as prescribed in the Civil Code, which embodied
legal concepts quite incompatible with those of peasant customary law.7 Conse­
quently, in 1912 cases of inheritance concerning enclosed types of farms were trans­
ferred to the jurisdiction o f the civil (i.e. non-peasant) courts.8
In 1914 Russia approached the next stage in the legal revolution initiated by
Stolypin’s bold decision ‘to lay the wager on the sturdy and strong and not on the
drunken and weak’.9 By a project introduced in the Duma in 1914, every farm which
1 Khauke, op. cit., p. 223. 2 Ibid., pp. 203-4.
3 Leont'ev, op. cit., p. 350; Khauke, op. cit., p. 228. 4 Khauke, op. cit., p. 202.
5 Ibid., p. 196. 6 jbid., p. 202.
7 Ibid., p. 218. s q zem ie (1921), p. 176.
9 A. Bol'shakov, Istoriya khozyaistva Rossii (1926), vol. iii, p. 21.
RUSSIAN PEASANT LAW AND INHERITANCE OF PROPERTY 225
(a) had left a commune since 1906, or (<b) was smaller than a minimum defined by
law, or (c) was put on the special register by its owner, was declared by law to be
non-partitionable. In this case, on the death of the owner, all the land as well as the
agricultural equipment and house was to be inherited by one man.1 Contemporary
economists estimated that by this law the main inheritor would receive at least two-
thirds of the household’s capital.12 The remainder of the capital had to be repaid by
the new owner to the other members of the household within four years, for which
purpose a special insurance scheme was planned. The world war prevented this
proposal from becoming law.
What were the actual results of this new legislation in the comparatively short
period, 1906-17? All the evidence seems to point in the same direction: the lack of
co-operation by the peasantry, the difficulties of legally elaborating the new laws and
clarifying the existing laws, to which the crisis of the world war was added, barely
aliowedxthis legal revolution to do more than just touch the surface of the real life
of the peasantry.
In spite of having lost (since 1906) the legal right to control households and to
decide on partitioning, the commune assembly and peasant courts continued to
exercise authority and their decisions were respected.3 The law of 1910 was not really
put into operation, ‘being alien to the natural feelings of justice of every peasant’.4
‘God is high, and Moscow far away’, runs a Russian proverb. The life of peasant
households went on in the old way, according to deep-rooted peasant custom.
The agrarian revolution of 1917-19 made a clean sweep of the Stolypin reforms,
yet its impact on the peasant household was mild. The failure of the Stolypin
reform to change the real structure of the peasant household in any significant way
may account for the slightness of the change effected by agrarian revolution on it.
The ‘Decree on Land’ of 26 October 1917 legally endorsed the abolition of the
Stolypin reform, nationalizing all land, ordering its egalitarian division amongst
‘land-workers’, and forbidding the hiring of labour and the letting of land.5 A law
of 27 April 1918 abolished every kind of inheritance all over Russia but on 21 May
1919 this law was declared not applicable to peasant households,6 and in 1922 it was
finally repealed.7 After experiments in the socialization of the countryside and the
development of a non-market economy during the civil war, a new legal agrarian
structure emerged in the N.E.P. period. It was finally established in the ‘Land Code
of the R.S.F.S.R.’8 and put into effect on 30 October 1922.
In all but a few instances, the Land Code—and other legislation passed after the
beginning of the N.E.P. period—legalized once more the basic principles of peasant
customary law as it had existed during the period 1861-1905. The peasants were
placed under specific civil legislation, applicable only to them. The family nature of
household property was reaffirmed (paragraph 67) and full labour-participation
declared necessary for full rights to household membership. The household was
defined as a family labour-unit (paragraph 65) and the adoptee granted full rights
(paragraph 66). The head of the family was declared merely the representative of
the household and could be replaced if the members of the household petitioned

1 Kubanin, op. cit., Part III, Na agrcrnom fronte (1928), no. 11, p. 11.
2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 Khauke, op. cit., pp. 201-2.
4 Kubanin, op. cit., Part III, Na agrarnom fronte (1928), no. II, p. 15.
5 Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti (1957), vol. i, pp. 17-20. ‘Land-workers’ amounted in fact 10
the members of peasant households. 6 Gsovski, op. cit., vol. i, p. 624.
7 ibid., p . 618. 8 Zemel'nyi kodeks RSFSR (1924)-
226 APPENDIX B
for it (paragraphs 68, 69). The legal possibility of renting land and hiring labour was
now reinstated (paragraphs 29, 39), but this was tempered by time-limits and the
requirement that an employer should work alongside his employees. Inheritance by
will or receipt o f household property by gift was forbidden, as was the buying or
selling o f land (paragraph 27). Partitioning, defined as the creation of new house­
holds, had to be carried out on the basis of equal rights for all members of the house­
hold (this was limited, however, by the degree o f labour-participation o f the adult
members—paragraphs 67, 74). Farms declared extinct became the property of the
village commune (paragraphs 18, 20).
In 1921 peasant property affairs were placed under the Land Departments of
local Soviets, and ‘taken out of the jurisdiction of the General Court’.1 By 1922, the
peasantry had been put under the civil jurisdiction of the Land Commissions here
acting specifically as courts, with the Chief Land Commission of the Peoples’ Com­
missar (Minister) of Agriculture acting as the highest court of appeal.12 This was
reaffirmed in paragraph 80 of the Land Code.
In two respects the Land Code differed significantly from peasant customary law.
Firstly, women became equal members of the household, with all rights, including
equal shares on partitioning (paragraph 67). Secondly, much wider equality among
members of the household was asserted. This was expressed, for example, in the
provision that all adult members of the household (and not only its head) should be
members of the commune gathering (paragraph 75).
The only element of Stolypin-type legislation found in the 1922 Code was a legal
provision to limit partitioning by allowing the Peoples’ Commissar of Agriculture
to declare a minimum size of land-plot, into smaller units than which partitioning
would be forbidden (paragraph 88).3 However, this piece of legislation never, in
fact, became operative.
‘We have overcome the written law of the Imperial regime comparatively easily,
yet the old law is quite persistent in the form o f customary law. It is still dominant
among the peasants, though it is losing its power.’4 This evaluation by a prominent
spokesman of the People’s Commissariat of Justice, was if anything, over-optimistic.
The Code of 1922 proved this by being itself little more than a codification of
nineteenth-century peasant legal custom. Only in the field of female equality could
some substantial legal changes be discerned.
During the period 1906-28 legislative attempts of elites at extreme ends of the
political spectrum had failed to reshape basic peasant customs and social behaviour
regarding property. Persistent peasant passivity proved too much for even the most
vigorous legislators and administrators. Peasant inheritance and property customs
emerged from the storms o f revolution and counter-revolution almost untouched.5
1 By a Decree of the V.Ts.I.K. of 10 March 1921: see O zemle , p. 153.
2 See the Circular of 6 July 1922, issued by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture,
O zemle , p. 153.
3 Kubanin, op. cit., Part III, Na agrarnom fronte (1928), no. 11, p. 15.
4 Gsovski, op. cit., vol. i, p. 660.
5 One is struck by the extent to which this still holds true even after collectivization. A
Soviet court still must begin civil proceedings in the countryside by establishing if the prop­
erty is peasant property ‘because this is decisive in defining rights of members of a household
(family) and the type of law relevant in cases of partition’ (see B. Liskovetz, Razdely i vydely
v kolkhoznom dvore (1963), p. 5). Only cases of inheritance in extinct households came under
the ordinary property law. Otherwise the Land Code of 1922 seemed still to be in operation
as late as the 1960s (ibid., p. 9). All this, of course, excluded the property of the state and
of the kolkhoz.
R U SSIA N PEASANT LAW AND INHERITANCE OF PROPERTY 227
The spread of egalitarian inheritance has proved to be closely correlated with
specific features in rural social development all over Europe.1 The areas where
egalitarian inheritance (as opposed to inheritance by will or entail) prevailed were
typified by a rapid rise in the number and a decrease in the size of farms, by higher
rates of natural growth, by lower rates of accumulation of capital, by lagging in the
development of a money economy, and so on. Furthermore, egalitarian inheritance
seems to have limited rural emigration, to have increased agrarian overpopulation
and to have handicapped the integration of the countryside into the capitalist
industrializing society. All this was true also of rural Russia. However, the impact of
egalitarian inheritance in the Russian countryside can be fully perceived only when
it is related to a breakdown by family size, wealth, and social mobility of the various
peasant strata.
1 See H. J. Habakkuk, ‘Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth Century
Europe’, Journal of Economic History, vol. xv (1955), no. 1.
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 GLOSSARY
Aggregate shift (podvizhka). General bettering or worsening of the socio-economic
position of peasantry (a peasant local community or peasant society) as a whole
(See Chapter 3, section (b); Chapter 4, section (d).)
Apportionment (vydel). Creation of a new peasant household by the budding-off
from a family of a young couple to form a new nuclear family with its own
farm.
Budget studies of peasant households. Systematic study of the economic performance
of individual peasant households in terms of input/output analysis and the
statistical analysis of data so collected. (See Chapter 4, section (b).)
Committee o f Poor Peasants (Kombed). An organization of the rural poor created
by the Soviet government at the beginning of 1918 and dissolved at the end of the
same year. (See Chapter 8, section (b).)
Commune, peasant (1obshchina, mir). A territorially based Russian peasant com­
munity, governed by a commune gathering (q.v.), in charge of a variety of tasks:
local services, welfare, fiscal duties, etc. The majority of communes (with the
exception of the western parts of European Russia) were repartitional, i.e. were
the formal owners of peasant land and practised periodical redivisions of land (q.v.)
between their constituent households (q.v.). (See Chapter 2, section (b); Chapter 9,
section (b).)
Commune gathering (skhod). The assembly of heads of peasant households which
embodies the authority of the peasant commune. (See Chapter 2, section (b);
Chapter 9, section (b).)
Conventional net income (uslovnyi chistyi dokhod). The gross income of a peasant
household—i.e. income in both kind and money—less all inputs but family
labour. (See Chapter 4, section (b).)
Crafts and trades (jpromysly). Gainful employment (often seasonal) of Russian
peasants not consisting of farming on own farm. (See Chapter 2, section (a).)
Sub-categories: (i) Non-farming activities on the farm (domestic industry);
(ii) Off-farm wage-work in agriculture; (iii) Off-farm non-agricultural wage-work
(C. and t. = (i)+(ii)+(iii)).
Cumulation of economic advantages and disadvantages. The tendency for rich house­
holds to develop further economically because of the advantage they can take of
accumulated capital, etc., and for poor households to decline economically from
inability to take such advantages; a process tending towards polarization (q.v.).
(See Chapter 4, section (b).)
D esyatina (abbr. des.). The former standard Russian land area measure (1 des. =
1-09 ha. = 2*7 acres).
D ifferentiation, socio-economic. The diversity in wealth of peasant households. (See
Chapter 3, sections (b) and (c).)
8214036 R
240 GLOSSARY
Differentiation processes. Changes in the socio-economic differentiation (q.v.) of
a peasant community or peasant society. (See Chapter 3, sections (b) and (d).)
Sub-categories: (i) polarization (q.v.); (ii) levelling (q.v.) (D.p. = (i)+(ii)).
Dynamic study. A type of research analysing socio-economic mobility by tracing
the histories of individual peasant households and analysing statistically data so
collected. (See Chapter 4, section (c).)
Emigration. A form of spatial mobility, in which members leave a community and
move elsewhere either permanently or for a prolonged period. In the above
study, mainly emigration of peasant families leading to the disappearance of a
peasant household from its original community. (See Chapter 5, sections (a) and (d).)
Enclosed farm (khutor). A peasant household (q.v.) not belonging (in some cases
only partly belonging) to a repartitional commune (q.v.) and with consolidated
land outside the village, on which its house is placed. (See Chapter 2, section (b);
Chapter 8, sections (b), (c), and (d).)
Enclosed types o f farms (uchastkovye formy khozyaistva). Peasant households (q.v.)
whose land does not belong (in some cases only partly belongs) to a repartitional
commune (q.v.).
Sub-categories: (i) enclosed farms (khutor) (q.v.); (ii) farms with enclosed fields
(otrub) (q.v.) (E.t. of f. = (i)+(ii)).
Extinction. The disappearance of peasant household through the death of its mem­
bers. (See Chapter 5, section (c).)
Farm with enclosed fields (otrub). A peasant household (q.v.) not belonging (in
some cases only partly belonging) to a repartitional commune (q.v.) but living
in a village and with land held in the form of strips scattered among other peasant
strip-holdings. (See Chapter 2, section (b); Chapter 8, sections (b), (c), and (d).)
Guberniya (abbr. gub.). Province: the former main administrative division of Russia,
composed of a number of uezds (q.v.).
Household, peasant (dvor). The basic social and economic unit of peasant society
consisting of a family (defined in terms typical of the Russian peasantry) and its
farm. (See Chapter 2, section (a); Appendix B.)
Immigration. Return of members (in this study, mainly families) to a commune after
a prolonged period of absence. (See Chapter 5, sections (a) and (d).)
Komsomol (abbr.). Communist League of Youth; for persons ged from afourteen to
twenty-six. (See Chapter 8, section (b).)
Kulak (Russ: ‘fist’). A rich peasant exploiting his peasant neighbours; in the Soviet
period identified with the enemies of the Soviet regime within the peasantry. (See
Chapter 9, section (c).)
Levelling. The process of decrease in the diversity of peasant households in terms
of wealth, leading to a concentration of households round the mean wealth of
a peasant community or peasant society. (See Chapter 3, section (b).)
Liquidation of peasant households. A term used by Ts.S.U. (q.v.) for the households
disappearing from dynamic study (q.v.) samples, including those extinct and those
allegedly not intending to return on departure. (See Chapter 5, section (c).)
Sub-categories: (i) extinction (q.v.); (ii) (permanent) emigration (q.v.) (L. of
p.h. = (i)-h(ii)).
 GLOSSARY 241
Merger. The amalgamation of different households into one unit. (See Chapter 5
section (c).)
Migration. Spatial mobility involving a change of place of residence either per­
manently or for a prolonged period. (See Chapter 5, sections (a) and (d).)
Sub-categories: (i) emigration (q.v.); (ii) immigration (q.v.) (M = (i)+(ii)).
Mobility (socio-economic, vertical). Changes in the wealth of the households in a
peasant community or peasant society. (See Chapter 4, section (d); on the opera­
tional definitions see Chapter 7, section (c).)
Sub-categories: (i) M. of peasant households (q.v.); (ii) M. in terms of a
peasant community or peasant society (q.v.). (The categories reflect analytical
aspects relevant to the study, and cannot be added together to give the total M.)
Mobility, ascending. Increases in the wealth of peasant households. (See Chapter 4,
section (d).)
Mobility, biological cycle of. A possible component of socio-economic mobility due
to a peasant household’s passing through various phases in family life-history.
(See Chapter 6, section (b).)
Mobility, centrifugal Changes in the wealth of peasant households tending away
from the mean; further impoverishment of poorer families and/or further enrich­
ment of richer families. (See Chapter 6, section (e).)
Mobility, centripetal. Changes in the wealth of peasant households tending towards
the mean; relative impoverishment of richer families and/or relative enrichment
of poorer families. (See Chapter 6, section (e).)
Mobility, cyclical. Socio-economic mobility in which a substantial number of house­
holds participate successively in powerful and opposing trends of enrichment and
impoverishment, both continuously in operation within a peasant society. A specific
type of multidirectional mobility (q.v.). (See Chapter 4, section (c); Chapter 6,
section (e).)
Mobility, descending. Decreases in the wealth of peasant households. (See Chapter
4, section (d).)
Mobility (socio-economic) in terms of a peasant community or society. Changes in
the wealth or differentiation (q.v.) (socio-economic) of a peasant community or
society, resulting from changes in wealth of its constituent households. (See
Chapter 4, section (d).)
Sub-categories: (i) Aggregate shifts (q.v.); (ii) differentiation processes (q.v.).
(The categories reflect analytical aspects relevant to the study, and cannot be
added together to give the total M. of a peasant community or society.) See also
Mobility of peasant households.
Mobility, multidirectional. Simultaneous and opposing trends in the socio-economic
mobility of peasant households which at least partly cancel one another out when
analysis is confined to a peasant society. (See Chapter 4, section (c); Chapter 6
section (e).) Cyclical mobility (q.v.) is a type of a multidirectional M. but not the
sole form of it (e.g. another type would be random oscillation (q.v.)).
Mobility (socio-economic) of peasant households. Changes in the wealth of peasant
households. (See Chapter 4, section (d); Chapter 6 , section (e).)
Sub-categories: (i) ascending M. (q.v.); (ii) descending M. (q.v.); (iii)centrifugal
M. (q.v.); (iv) centripetal M. (q.v.); (v) multidirectional M. (q.v.); (vi) cyclical
242 GLOSSARY
M. (q.v.) (M. of p.h. = (i)-h(ii)=(iii)+(iv) = (v). Also see M. o f peasant house­
holds, factors of; M . in terms of peasant community or society.
Mobility o f peasant households, factors o f Components of the explanatory model of
households* mobility advanced in this work. (See Chapter 6, section (e).)
Sub-categories: (i) cumulation of economic advantages and disadvantages (q.v.);
(ii) redivision of land by communes (q.v.); (iii) substantive changes (q.v.); (iv) the
biological cycle of M. (q.v.); (v) random oscillation (q.v.) (M. of p.h., f. of = (i)-f-
(ii) +(iii)+(iv)+(v)).
Mobility, residual component o f That part of the mobility of peasant households
revealed by dynamic studies (q.v.) after the households which had undergone
substantive changes (q.v.) had been statistically eliminated from the sample.
(See Chapter 6, section a.)
Narkomzem (Russ. abbr. for People's Commissariat for Agriculture). The Soviet
ministry of agriculture 1917-43.
N.E.P. (abbr. for Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika). The new economic policy of
the Soviet government after the civil war, based on a mixed economy; also the
period it was in force (1921-28).
Outsiders to a peasant community. Rural inhabitants interacting with a peasant
community without belonging to it. (See Chapter 9, section (e).)
Sub-categories: (i) neighbour outsiders (q.v.); (ii) stranger outsiders (q.v.);
(iii) plenipotentiary outsiders (q.v.).
Outsiders, neighbour. Peasants, not members of a given community, holding land
bordering on the community’s. (See Chapter 9, section (e).)
Outsiders, plenipotentiary. Non-members of a peasant community working in the
countryside as representatives of external centres of power influencing the com­
munity. (See Chapter 8, section (e).)
Outsiders, stranger. Non-members of a peasant community culturally dissimilar to
the peasants, bringing into the countryside forms of social and cultural compe­
tence alien to the peasant community. (See Chapter 9, section (e).)
Partitioning (razdel). The creation of two or more peasant households as a result
of a split in the membership and property of an original household; when the
process is limited to the budding-off of a young nuclear family, it is generally termed
apportionment (q.v.). (See Chapter 5, section (b); Appendix B, section (b).)
Polarization. The process of increase in the diversity of peasant households in terms
of wealth leading to concentration of households at the poles of wealth and
poverty of a peasant community or peasant society. (See Chapter 3, section b.)
Random oscillations. A form of multidirectional mobility (q.v.), generated by the
idiosyncratic impact of general economic trends and ‘chance’ factors on individual
peasant households. (See Chapter 6, section (c).)
Redivision o f land by communes (peredel). Redivision of commune (q.v.) land in
accordance with broadly egalitarian principles, e.g. the number of consumers or
of mature male workers per household. (See Chapter 2, section (b).)
R.S.F.S.R. (abbr. for Rossiiskaya Sovetskaya Federativnaya Sotsialisticheskaya
Respublika). The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic; until 1923 in
 GLOSSARY 243
alliance with other Soviet Republics, since 1923 a constituent republic of the then
created U.S.S.R.
Rural Soviet (Sel'skii sovet, abbr. Sel'sovet). The lowest-ranking local authority in
the Soviet countryside covering area an usually including several settlements, with
a population of from 300 to over 10,000 inhabitants. (See Chapter 9, section (a).)
Semi-centripetal effect. Levelling (q.v.) in a peasant community or peasant society
as a result of differential emigration or extinction (e.g. higher rates of disappear­
ance in the poorer strata) without actual centripetal mobility (q.v.) of peasant
households taking place. (See Chapter 5, section (a).)
Statistical optical illusion. An exaggeration of the extent of differentiation within
a peasant community, resulting from use of a statistical technique which grouped
the households of several communities together. (See Chapter 7, section (c).)
‘Substantive changes' (organicheskie izmeneniya). Transmutations of peasant house­
holds resulting in the appearance or disappearance of households within the
peasant community.
Sub-categories: (i) partitioning; (ii) merger; (iii) extinction; (iv) migration.
(See Chapter 5, section (a).) (S.c. = (i)+ (ii)H-(iii)+ (iv).)
Ts.S.U. (abbr. for Tsentral'noye Statisticheskoe Upravlenie). The Central Statistic
Board; a data-collecting and publishing agency created after the revolution as a
department of the Soviet government. (See Chapter 3, section (b).)
Uezd. A district; the former territorial-administrative units of which a guberniya
(q.v.) was composed.
Vertical segmentation. A form of social grouping cutting across the major socio­
economic strata to reveal another division of society—into qualitatively similar,
highly self-sufficient, hierarchical, territorially based segments. (See Chapter 9,
section (e).)
V.I.K. (abbr. for Volostnoi IspolniteVnyi Komitet). The standing committee of the
volost' Congress of Soviets; the volost' local authority in the early Soviet period.
(See Chapter 9, sections (a) and (b).)
Volost'. The former administrative territorial units in rural Russia of which an uezd
(q.v.) was composed (in pre-revolutionary Russia, also a territorial unit of the
specifically peasant self-government); it embraced a number of peasant com­
munes (q.v.) and after the revolution Rural Soviets (q.v.). (See Chapter 2, section
(b); Chapter 9, sections (a) and (b).)
Zemstvo. A pre-revolutionary Russian rural local council at guberniya (q.v.) or uezd
(q.v.) level, composed of representatives elected by the social estates, and usually
controlled by the gentry. (See Chapter 2, sections (b) and (d).)
 INDEX
Adopted members of family, rights of, 223 Blood-feuds, 179
Age and sex, traditional division of roles by, Bol'shakov, on partitioning, 127
175-7 Bolshevik Party, 185
Agrarian revolution, 26, 57, 225 branches, functions, 186
and levelling, 145-61 department for rural work, object of,
and mobility of peasant households, 186
156-60 ex-servicemen in, 189
and peasant solidarity, 160-1 farmers in, 187-8
and war, 129 meetings, subjects discussed, 188
economic deterioration in peasantry membership, 185-90; by social class, 186;
after, 153 peasants’ image of, 196
land redistribution after, statistics, 153-4 organization in Penza, 171
legal history of, 148 peasant attitudes to, 189
results of, 153-6 peasant soldiers in, 185
stages, 145 power of, 185
Agricultural equipment, lack of, 21 rural branches and membership, 185,
Agricultural exports, 23 187; inspection-reports, 189
Agricultural improvements and investment, Bolsheviks and Left S.R. Party, split in, 148
23 Bondage, abolition of, 19
Agricultural industry, establishment of, 149 Budget studies, analysis of, 67
Agricultural prices, rise in, 12 and polarization, 66-71
Agricultural production, 16 post-revolutionary, 69, 108
diversification, 23 pre-revolutionary, 106
Agricultural revolution, 208 1887-96, 69
Agricultural system, peasant, 19 1922-3, 69
Agriculture and economy, effects of weather 1924-5, 113
on, 112
and industry, relations between, 13 Capital, accumulation, 15, 209, 211; and
capital accumulation in, 111 industrial growth, 12
economic control, 113 shortage of, effects, 68
industrialization of, 210 Capitalism, 46
legislation on, 149 at turn of century, 58
low production of, in Tsarist Russia, 21 Marxists’ attitudes to, 47
Marxist specialists in, 1929 congress, 61 Capitalist society, 2
polarization in, 103 Capitalists, 174
recovery of, 1922-5, 56; and socio­ Caucus, volost', power, 193, 196; members,
economic mobility, 53 success and advancement, 194
state-organized collectivization of, 211 Censuses, 97
three-field system, and wealth index, 135 analysis of data, 51
Allotments, average size, 21 evidence of socio-economic differentia­
All-Russia Congress of Soviets, 163 tion, 47
All-Russia Executive Committee, 163 first modern national, statistics, 9
Army, peasantry in, 185, 216 local, 49, 50
national, after 1916, 60
Backwardness in Russia, 45 national rural, 1916 and 1917, 5i
Balance of payments, 16 of land holdings, 1905, 122
Banking, foreign ownership, 17 Chayanov, A., general theory of peasant eco­
Biological deterioration of households, 103 nomy and mobility, 105; Prokopovich
Biological determinism, 101-9 attack on, 106; Raevich attack on, 107
criticism of, 108 multidirectional mobility, 102
246 INDEX
Chernenkov, N., introduction of dynamic Council of Peoples’ Commissars, 163
studies, 72 Countryside, socio-economic differentiation
on social class, 138 of, 21
Civil Code, 222, 224 Courts, peasant, 219
Civil war, 26, 52, 129 Crafts, peasant, income from, 21
Class analysis of society, validity of, 138 Crises, development of, 93
Class conflict within peasant household, Cultural patterns of peasant communities,
no 40
Class, definition, 212 Culture and peasant society, 38-41
Class division, rural, 169-75 Customary peasant law, 219
Class struggle and mobility, 139
Class theory, Marxist, 46, 145 Decree on Land, 148, 225
Collectivization, 2 Democratic centralism, establishment of,
Colonists, re-creation of communes, 164 162
Colonization, 92 Developing societies, 14
Committees of the Poor, 2, 147, 148, 149 Differentiation, and levelling, of peasantry,
Commune assembly and peasant courts, 50-2, 54, 56; by region, 55; Marxist
authority, 225 views on, 146
Commune dues, 35 socio-economic, intracommunity, 60; of
Commune gatherings, absorption of Rural peasantry in Saratov, 65
Soviets, 185 Differentiation debate, 45-62
and Rural Soviet, 164-9 Differentiation-processes, 77
procedures, 167 during revolution and civil war, 52
supremacy over Rural Soviets, 166 nature of, 79
Commune offices, compulsory, 34 Disappearance, rates of, 128
Communes, 32-8 Disasters, natural, 113
change in role, 151 Division of labour, 1, 180
expenditure, 167 Drunkenness, 195
formation of administrative parish, 35 Dualism, 25-6, 197
freedom from obligation to, 224 Dynamic censuses, Ts.S.U., 1920, 73
functions, 35, 37 Dynamic studies, and mobility of peasant
government efforts to destroy, 37 households, 71-6
land-redistribution by, 78, 151 introduction of, 72
land-redivision by, 103, 135, 159; legal of a community, 72
provisions, 80 of Vyazma and Smolensk, 75
membership, 34
officers’ responsibilities, 35 Economic boom in 1890s, 12
peasant households organized in, 165 Economic deterioration, i n , 153
recognition of, 34 Economic determinism and multifactorial
self-government of, 34 analysis, 109-12
self-imposed taxes, 166 Economic development, 16
social machinery of, 164 1900-13, indicators of, 11
state control of, 36 of peasant household, A. Chayanov, 102
structure and organization, 3, 165 Economic growth at turn of century, 10, 18
ultimate, 41 Economic position of household, rise in
Communist Party during N.E.P., rural factors affecting, 103
campaigns, 137 Economy and agriculture, effects of weather
Communists in local rural administration, on, 112
184 peasant, 39, 107, 114, 204, 209
Conflict situations, 168, 178 Educational facilities at turn of century,
Consumer/worker ratio, annual change in, 10
109 Egalitarian inheritance, spread of, 227
hypothetical family, 102 Emancipation, of serfs, law of, 219
in different strata, 106 of women, 176
Consumption pressure, 103 self, of peasant, 31
Conventional Net Income, definition of, 68 Emigration, and extinction of poor peasants,
Co-operative, 173, 174 129
 INDEX
247
and merger, 82
and re-immigration, 159 Horses, 1912 military survey of, 48
definition, 92 Household. See Peasant household
Employment, salaried, in rural areas, 181-2
Equilibrium models, 108 Ideology and misinterpretations, 137
European Russia, geographical zones, 122-6 Illiteracy, 10, 22, 24
Executive Committees, 193 Income, annual, per capita, at turn of
Exports, agricultural, 23 century, 10, 13
in 1913, 16 Conventional Net, definition of, 68
Ex-servicemen, 180, 190-2 types of, 66
in Bolshevik Party, 189 Indexes of socio-economic differentiation
in peasant stratum, 146 132-4
in V.I.K.s, 192 Industrial development at turn of centurv
role in village life, 192 58
Industrial growth and capital accumulation,
Family, adopted members, rights of, 223 12
father of, authority of, 29 Industrialization in Germany, 15
peasant, social structure of, 175, 206 Industrialization policy in dualistic society
peasant, stages of, 31 27
Family household, farm, 28-32, 205 Industry and agriculture, relations between,
formal membership of, 221 13
Family labour, 106, 107 Inheritance, egalitarian, spread of, 227
Family member, rights of, 221 in peasant society, 31
Family patterns, variety of, 221 of property and peasant law, 219-27
Family property, 220-1 peasant, and partitioning, 222-4
framework of, 31 Intelligentsia, rural, social and cultural life
in peasant household, 30 of, 182
partitioning of, 31 Iron production, 10
Family size, and socio-economic status, 63
and wealth, correlation of, 63-6 Khryashcheva, A., analysis of cyclical
Famine 21, 22 mobility of peasant families, 111
and socio-economic mobility, 53 dynamic studies of peasant households,
economic effects, 110 97
social effects, 129 on peasant socio-economic mobility, 96
Farmers, in Bolshevik Party, 187-8 study of partitioning, 127
professional stratum of, 210 Kombedy, 147, 148
Farms, enclosed, 2, 151-2; abolition of, failure of, 149
224; destruction of, 178 Komsomol, members in Bolshevik Party,
family, 205 189
non-partitionable, 224 organization and membership, 189
peasant, typical, 29 social characteristics of members, 190
Father of family, authority of, 29 Kondratev, N., 60
Fire, 113 Kritsman, L., 60
Flood, 113 concept of peasantry, 211
Foreign debts after First World War, 17 discussion of wealth index, 132
Foreign investment at turn of century, 17 Kubanin, M., interpretation of partitioning,
no
Geographical area under survey, 5 Kulak, 132, 173-4
Germany, industrialization in, 15 counter-revolution, 145-7, 161
Grain, 113, 123, 148 defeat of, 146
Green Army, 147 households, definition, 133
Guerrilla warfare, 217 percentage of, 146
Gurvich, 58 rebellion against proletarian dictator­
ship, 147
High Court of Appeal, Russian, 219 reprisals, 137
Historical trends, mobility, 126-31 use of term, 173
Horse ownership, 48 wealth of, 173
248 INDEX
Kushchenko, G., dynamic studies of peasant Livestock, decrease in, 23
households, 97 production, 13
Livestock-ownership, development of, 152
Local authority, in village, 165
Labour, division of, 180 officials, 194, 195
family, 106, 107 and peasant population, communication
intensity of, 103 between, 196
specialization, 180 rural, 162-4
surplus of, 93 communists in, 184
Labour force and consumption-needs of structure, 163
peasant family, 104 Lutskii on agrarian revolution, 146
Land, arable, acquisition by peasantry, 153
Decree on, 148, 225
demand for, by non-farming population, Magistrates, peasant, functions, 36
155 Makarov, N., analysis of structural change
holding of, 204 in peasant society, 108
Law on Socialization of, 148 Males, able-bodied, lack of, in poor house­
nationalization of, 148, 225 holds, 171
non-peasant, expropriation of, 159 in peasant households, 85
ownership of, 205; communal character Market economy, growth of, 198
of, 36 Marriage, importance of, 206
privately owned, 36 Marx, K„ class analysis, 138, 212
property in, 205 Marxist specialists in agriculture, 1929
Land Code of 1922, 150, 225-6 congress, 61
Land Commissions, 226 Marxist views on peasant differentiation,
Land commune, authority, 163 59-61, 146
functions assigned to, 163 Men, young, prestige and power, 176
Land Departments of local Soviets, 226 responsibilities, 177
Land-division, 208 Mergers, economic gains, 89
Land gathering, 163, 165 of peasant households, 88-92
Land Measures, Socialist, Regulations on, personal and social considerations, 90
149 Middle peasants, 58, 114, 174
Land-redistribution, 65, 150, 151 Migration, 92-5
after agrarian revolution, statistics, 153-4 large-scale, effects of, 24
benefits to rich householders, 156 rural, pressures, 93
black, 150, 151 Mobility, and social structure, analysis of,
by communes, 78, 151 140
Land-redivision, 36, 147-52 basic types, 50, 117
by communes, 103, 135, 159; legal provi­ biological determinism, 101-9
sions, 80 centrifugal, 76, 96
in Belorussia, 97 centripetal, 74, 76, 78, 101, 120
Land-reform, legislation, 114 cyclical, 63-80, 96-141
Landholding, peasant, study of, 48 dynamic study 1924-5, 123-6
Law, of emancipation of serfs, 219 in sixteen guberniyas of European
of partitioning, 127 Russia, 100
on Socialization of Land, 148 in some regions of R.S.F.S.R., 99
peasant, 19, 219; and inheritance of in Surazh uezd, 98
property, 219-27 influence on political consciousness, 139
Leadership, volost', 193 multidirectional, 74, 76, 96-141; social
Lenin, 59 differentiation and political signifi­
introduction of N.E.P., 27 cance, 137-41
on kulaks, 148 peasant households, 26-32, 76-80; ana­
on Marxist class theory, 145 lysis of, 77; and agrarian revolution,
organization of rural poor, 149 156-60; and dynamic studies, 71-6;
Levelling, 50-1, 81-5, 156 determinants, 119; major trends, 118;
and agrarian revolution, 145-61 residual component, 115; towards
Liquidation of household, 91 multifactorial model, 115-21
 INDEX 249
peasant society, 76-80; measurement of, initiated by women, 176
73 Kubanin interpretation of, no
regional comparison, 123 law of 1886, 127
social, in 1900, 10 of family property, 31
socio-economic, 3, 49, 53, 78 or rich households, 101
sociological studies of, contemporary, rates of, 128
139 rise during revolution, 158
Money economy of peasant households, Peasant(s), attitudes to Bolshevik Party,
113 189
Monism, 115 definition of, 213
Muscovy, princedom of, at turn of century, emigration to towns, 23
area, 9 image of, 203
image of party members, 196
National income, 20 middle, 58, 114, 174
Nationalization of land, 148, 225 poor, 1, 114, 171-2; emigration and
National Growth Rate, peasant, 91 extinction, 129
Neo-Populists, aims of, 46 prestige and position of, in society, 205
members, 102 proletarianization, 58
New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), 2, 27, 52, resettlement of, 159
53 rich. See Kulak
Communist Party during, rural cam­ state, emancipation of, 19
paigns, 137 support of kulaks, 137
migration during, 92 Peasant agricultural system, 19
operational definitions of peasant strati­ Peasant apathy, 216
fication and wealth, 131 Peasant bourgeoisie in Ukraine, land held
passive power of peasant communities, by, 147
199 Peasant communities, characteristics of, 32-
rural society, 162-79, 180-99 8, 140
Nobility, elimination of, 178 cultural patterns of, 40
lineages and extinction, 90 passive power during N.E.P., 199
sale of land, 20 underestimation of cohesiveness of, 137
Non-farming population, demand for land, see also Communes
155 Peasant co-operatives, 173
Peasant economy, 39, 107, 114, 204, 209
Occupational indexes, 139 Peasant estate, membership of, 219
Occupations, rural salaried, 182 Peasant household: and peasant society,
of peasant, 206 28-41, 117
October Revolution, 25, 52, 110 authority in, 29
Operational definitions, validity, 131-6 biological deterioration, 103
Organization and Production School, 46, by size of membership, 157
102 by sown area and horse-ownership, 53, 54
Outsiders, neighbour, definition, 178 characteristics, 28
plenipotentiary, and volost' power caucus, differentiation, 75; in R.S.F.S.R., 57
192-7; definition, 178 disappearance of, 81
rural, changes in make-up, 178 diversity of wealth between, 47
stranger, 197; definition, 178 economic determinants, 83
economy of, 102, 114
Parliament, consultative, 46 employing wage-labour, statistics, 171
Partitioning, 81 extinction, process of, 90
1861-82, 126-7 growth of, 32
1911-22, annual rates, 158 heads of, legal powers over members, 32;
1917-21, factors, affecting, 157 rights of, 221
and newly created households, 85-8 ideal type, 102
and peasant inheritance 1863-1905, 222-4 in European Russia, by horse-ownership,
definition, 223 48; by size of average land-allotment,
effect of 1914-17 war, 156 48
from early 1920s, 87 in zones of R.S.F.S.R. by sown area, 56
250 INDEX
Peasant household (cont.): independent class action, 215
independent, establishment of, 87 polarization of, 60, 132
kulak, definition, 133 political involvement of, 141
liquidation of, 91 political sociology of, 140
males in, 85 relationship to land, 204
membership, 28 social structure of, 24
merger and extinction, 88-92 stratification, 57
mobility, 76-80; analysis of, 77; and Peoples’ Commissar of Agriculture, 226
dynamic studies, 71-6; residual com­ Peoples’ Commissars, Councils of, 163
ponent of, 96-101 Plekhanov, G., concept of peasantry, 211
money economy of, 113 Podzol Zone, 122
newly created, and partitioning, 85-8 Polarization, and budget studies, 66-71
pattern of life, 30 and cyclical mobility, 63-80
poor, lack of able-bodied males in, 171 in agriculture, 103
random oscillation of, 115 of peasantry, 60, 132
size, and number of horses owned, 64; by Polarization-processes, 50
amount of land sown, 64 Political action, peasantry in, 214-18
socio-economic deterioration of, 88 Political consciousness, influence of mobil­
statistical study, 62 ity on, 139
stratification by capital and income, 133 Political divisions of rural society, 198
structure of, 175 Political factor, peasantry as, 203-18
typical poor, 65 Political involvement of peasantry, 141
typical well-to-do, 65 Political significance and social differentia­
wealth of, differences in, 59 tion of multidirectional and cyclical
wealthy, growth rates, Shcherbina’s mobility, 137-41
study, 91 Political sociology of Russian peasantry,
see also Family 140
Peasant land, private, 20 Poor, Committees of, 2, 147, 148, 149
Peasant law, 19, 219 Poor peasants, 1, 114, 171-2
and inheritance of property, 219-27 Population, rural, on eve of First World
Peasant passivity, 216 War, 19
Peasant population and local administra­ Poverty, in 1913, 20
tion, communication between, 196 in Tsarist Russia, 21
Peasant revolutions, 147, 150, 217 Power-brokers, 197
Peasant sector, 19-24 Power caucus, 196
Peasant social estate, 19 and plenipotentiary outsiders, 192-7
Peasant society, basic dynamics of, 1 Power structure, and its influence on future
polarization of, 1 developments, 197-9
Peasant Soviets, 148 of rural society, 197
Peasant stratification and wealth, opera­ Price fixing, 113
tional definitions during N.E.P., 131 Prices, ‘scissors crisis’, 113
Peasant wealth, indexes of, 132 Prokopovich, S., 60
Peasantry: attack on Chayanov’s theory of peasant
and society, 211-14 economy and mobility, 106
as political factor, 203-18 budget studies, 68
as pre-industrial social entity, 207 on partitioning, 127
cumulative pauperization of, 211 on social class, 138
definition of, 39, 204-7 studies of peasant households, 106
differentiation of. See Differentiation Proletarian dictatorship, kulak rebellion
duality in social character of, 213 against, 147
external conflicts, 141 Proletarianization of peasants, 58
external organization of, 215 Proletarians, 146
guerrilla warfare, 217 Property, family, 220-1
guided political action, 215 in land, 205
historical context, 207-11 inheritance of, and peasant law, 219-27
in army, 216 women’s rights to, 222
in political action, 214-18 Property-relations, 208
 INDEX 251
Prosperity, downwards shift in, 155 powers of, 168
role of chairman, 184
Raevich, G., attack on Chayanov’s theory, women members of, 176
107 Rural stratification, operational definition,
Railway network, 10, 12 132
Red Army, 147 Rural wage-workers, statistics, 170
enrolment statistics, 191 Russia, as developing society, 9-27
ex-servicemen, 189 European, geographical zones, 122-6
peasants in, training, 191 territorial extent, 16
political, atmosphere, 191 Tsarist, 17, 21
Redemption fees, 22, 35 basic dualism in, 25
Regional authorities after 1864, 49 Russian Republic. See R.S.F.S.R.
Regional differences, validity, 122-6
Regulations on Socialist Land Measures, Salariat, rural 180-5
149 Salaried employment in rural areas, 181-2
Rents and taxes, 22 Schumpeter, J., 139
Revolutionary ideology, 47 Segmentation, vertical, 177-9
Revolutions, agrarian. See Agrarian revo­ Self-exploitation of family labour, 106
lution and wars, 129 Semenov, P., budget studies, 66
changes in socio-political groups after, Serfs, emancipation of, law of, 219
198 private, emancipation of, 19
1905-6, 26 Sex and age, traditional division of roles
October, 26, 52; economic effects, n o by, 175-7
peasant, 147, 150, 217 Share-cropping, 20
rise in partitioning during, 158 Shcherbina, F., budget studies, 66, 68
second, 145, 147, 149, 156 study of growth rates of wealthy house­
two-stage, 1917-19, wishful theory, 160 holds, 91
Riots, local, 216 Sluzhashchie, 180-5
R.S.F.S.R., creation of, 52 Smallholding economy, peculiarities of,
European parts, substantive changes, 112-15
1920-4, 130 Social classes, 46
Land Code of, 225-6 analysis of, 212
mobility in 1920-4, 99 see also Class
Rural areas, salaried employment in, 181-2 Social differentiation and political signifi­
Rural communities, patterns of, 162 cance of multidirectional and cyclical
structural changes, 33 mobility, 137-41
Rural gathering, 164, 165 Social diversification, 1
Rural groups, power-relationships, 193 Social dualism, 24-7
Rural history of Soviet Russia, 138 Social dynamics, equilibrium model, 103
Rural intelligentsia, social and cultural life, Social estate, peasants, by, 19
182 pre-revolutionary system of, 38
Rural population, of European Russia, status, 46
1905, stratification of, 59 Social structure, and mobility, analysis of,
on eve of First World War, 19 140
Rural salariat, 180-5 of peasantry, 24, 161
Rural society, during N.E.P., 162-99 Socialist Land Measures, Regulations 149
political divisions of, 198 Socialization of Land, Law on, 148
power-structure, 197 Society, and peasantry, 211-14
Rural Soviet, and commune gathering, class analysis of, validity of, 138
164-9, 185 peasant, and peasant household, 28-41,
area of, 185 117; differentiation-processes in, 120;
authority of, 163 mobility of, 76-80; structural change,
budgets, 166 analysis, 108; vertical segmentation
dependence of V.I.K., 185 and outsiders, 177-9
election of, 163 prestige and position of peasant in, 205
formal definition, 163 rural, during N.E.P., 162-99; political
officials employed by, 181 divisions of, 198; power-structure, 197
25 : INDEX
town-centred, development of peasant Ts.S.U., annual budget studies, 68
sector, 210 dynamic censuses, 73
Socio-economic changes within peasant dynamic studies, 109; of peasant house­
social structure, 161 holds, 97; of peasant mobility, 123-6
Socio-economic deterioration of peasant establishment of, 51
households, 88 research and analysis methods, 62
Socio-economic differentiation, intracom­ study of substantive changes, 127
munity, 6o
of countryside, 21 Ukraine, peasant bourgeoisie in, land held
of peasantry, 65, 154 by, 147
Socio-economic mobility, 3, 24, 49, 53, 78 zones of, 123
Socio-economic status and family size, 63 Underemployment, 68
Socio-economic strata, 169-75 Urban economy, 24
Sociological studies of mobility, contem­ Urban growth at turn of century, 58
porary, 139
Socio-political groups, changes after revo­
lution, 198 V.I.K.s, 183
Soldiers, mass desertions, 191 administration of peasant countryside,
peasant, in Bolshevik Party, 185 193
Sombart, W., 139 authority of, 184
Soviets, Congresses of, 163 ex-servicemen in, 192
Land Departments of, 226 members, salaries, 195
Spatial mobility, 92 Rural Soviet dependence on, 185
Stalin, J., concept of peasantry, 211 Village Soviet, use of term, 163
speech on backwardness, 45 Village social structure, 192, 207
State ownership, 12 Volost' , 35, 161, 163
State peasants, emancipation of, 19 Volost' areas and inhabitants, 183
Statistical optical illusion, 135 Volost' caucus, 193
Stolypin, P., 2 members, success and advancement, 194
policy on heads of households, 32 VolosV Executive Committees, 183
reforms, 20, 58, 221, 224, 225 Volost' leadership, 193
Stratification of peasant households by Voting rights, villagers deprived of, 173
capital and income, 133
Substantive changes, 81-95 Wage-labour, households employing, statis­
categories, 81 tics, 171
European parts of R.S.F.S.R., 1920-4, Wage-workers, rural, statistics, 170
130 War, and agrarian revolution, 129
rates of, 127 economic effects 1914-21, n o
term and processes, 81 First World, effect on partitioning and
Ts.S.U. study of, 127 liquidation, 156; effect on peasant
Sverdlov, social differentiation in villages, women, 175
149 ‘War Communism’, 1918-21, 113
Wealth, and family size, correlation of, 63-6
Tariffs, 12 and number of horses owned, 88
Tax-collection, 167, 184, 194 and rate of extinction, inverse correla­
Taxes, 85 tion, 90
and rents, 22 differentiation of, 49
payment of, 221 diversity between peasant households, 47
self-imposed, by communes, 166 indexes of, 132; validity of, 133
Teachers, economic hardship, 183 of households, differences in, 59
Town-centred society, development of pea­ strata among peasants, 173
sant sector, 210 Weather, effect on economy, 112
Trade terms between rural and urban Weber, M., on social class, 212
sectors, 113 Wheat yield, low, 21
Tsarist Russia, 17, 21 White Armies, 147, 191
Tsentralnoe Statisticheskoe* Upravlenie. See Women, emancipation of, 176
Ts.S.U. equality, 226
 INDEX 253
First World War effect on, 175 Yakovlev, Ya, 189
legal equality for, 176 Young Communist League, 189
members of Rural Soviets, 176
partitioning initiated by, 176 Zemstvos, activities, 49, 50
rights to property, 222 Zones, geographical, 122-6
role in household, 29, 175 grain-deficient, 123
status in household, 29 grain-surplus, 123