A PEASANT FAMILY OF THE OLD TYPE
Ivan Petroff--His Past Life--Co-operative Associations--Constitution of
a Peasant's Household--Predominance of Economic Conceptions over those
of Blood-relationship--Peasant Marriages--Advantages of Living in Large
Families--Its Defects--Family Disruptions and their Consequences.
My illness had at least one good result. It brought me into contact
with the feldsher, and through him, after my recovery, I made the
acquaintance of several peasants living in the village. Of these by far
the most interesting was an old man called Ivan Petroff.
Ivan must have been about sixty years of age, but was still robust and
strong, and had the reputation of being able to mow more hay in a given
time than any other peasant in the village. His head would have made a
line study for a portrait-painter. Like Russian peasants in general,
he wore his hair parted in the middle--a custom which perhaps owes its
origin to the religious pictures. The reverend appearance given to his
face by his long fair beard, slightly tinged with grey, was in part
counteracted by his eyes, which had a strange twinkle in them--whether
of humour or of roguery, it was difficult to say. Under all
circumstances--whether in his light, nondescript summer costume, or in
his warm sheep-skin, or in the long, glossy, dark-blue, double-breasted
coat which he put on occasionally on Sundays and holidays--he always
looked a well-fed, respectable, prosperous member of society; whilst
his imperturbable composure, and the entire absence of obsequiousness or
truculence in his manner, indicated plainly that he possessed no small
amount of calm, deep-rooted self-respect. A stranger, on seeing him,
might readily have leaped to the conclusion that he must be the Village
Elder, but in reality he was a simple member of the Commune, like his
neighbour, poor Zakhar Leshkof, who never let slip an opportunity of
getting drunk, was always in debt, and, on the whole, possessed a more
than dubious reputation.
Ivan had, it is true, been Village Elder some years before. When elected
by the Village Assembly, against his own wishes, he had said quietly,
"Very well, children; I will serve my three years"; and at the end of
that period, when the Assembly wished to re-elect him, he had answered
firmly, "No, children; I have served my term. It is now the turn of some
one who is younger, and has more time. There's Peter Alekseyef, a good
fellow, and an honest; you may choose him." And the Assembly chose the
peasant indicated; for Ivan, though a simple member of the Commune, had
more influence in Communal affairs than any other half-dozen members put
together. No grave matter was decided without his being consulted,
and there was at least one instance on record of the Village Assembly
postponing deliberations for a week because he happened to be absent in
St. Petersburg.
No stranger casually meeting Ivan would ever for a moment have suspected
that that big man, of calm, commanding aspect, had been during a great
part of his life a serf. And yet a serf he had been from his birth till
he was about thirty years of age--not merely a serf of the State, but
the serf of a proprietor who had lived habitually on his property. For
thirty years of his life he had been dependent on the arbitrary will of
a master who had the legal power to flog him as often and as severely
as he considered desirable. In reality he had never been subjected to
corporal punishment, for the proprietor to whom he had belonged had
been, though in some respects severe, a just and intelligent master.
Ivan's bright, sympathetic face had early attracted the master's
attention, and it was decided that he should learn a trade. For this
purpose he was sent to Moscow, and apprenticed there to a carpenter.
After four years of apprenticeship he was able not only to earn his own
bread, but to help the household in the payment of their taxes, and to
pay annually to his master a fixed yearly sum--first ten, then twenty,
then thirty, and ultimately, for some years immediately before the
Emancipation, seventy roubles. In return for this annual sum he was free
to work and wander about as he pleased, and for some years he had made
ample use of his conditional liberty. I never succeeded in extracting
from him a chronological account of his travels, but I could gather
from his occasional remarks that he had wandered over a great part of
European Russia. Evidently he had been in his youth what is colloquially
termed "a roving blade," and had by no means confined himself to the
trade which he had learned during his four years of apprenticeship. Once
he had helped to navigate a raft from Vetluga to Astrakhan, a distance
of about two thousand miles. At another time he had been at Archangel
and Onega, on the shores of the White Sea. St. Petersburg and Moscow
were both well known to him, and he had visited Odessa.
The precise nature of Ivan's occupations during these wanderings I could
not ascertain; for, with all his openness of manner, he was extremely
reticent regarding his commercial affairs. To all my inquiries on this
topic he was wont to reply vaguely, "Lesnoe dyelo"--that is to say,
"Timber business"; and from this I concluded that his chief occupation
had been that of a timber merchant. Indeed, when I knew him, though he
was no longer a regular trader, he was always ready to buy any bit of
forest that could be bought in the vicinity for a reasonable price.
During all this nomadic period of his life Ivan had never entirely
severed his connection with his native village or with agricultural
life. When about the age of twenty he had spent several months at home,
taking part in the field labour, and had married a wife--a strong,
healthy young woman, who had been selected for him by his mother, and
strongly recommended to him on account of her good character and her
physical strength. In the opinion of Ivan's mother, beauty was a kind of
luxury which only nobles and rich merchants could afford, and ordinary
comeliness was a very secondary consideration--so secondary as to be
left almost entirely out of sight. This was likewise the opinion of
Ivan's wife. She had never been comely herself, she used to say, but she
had been a good wife to her husband. He had never complained about her
want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered
good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward,
then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky
nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye
would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she
knew that--reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's
stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time he employed it he
was called an "old scarecrow," or something of the kind.
Perhaps, however, Ivan's jocular remark had more significance in it than
his wife cared to admit, for during the first years of their married
life they had seen very little of each other. A few days after the
marriage, when according to our notions the honeymoon should be at its
height, Ivan had gone to Moscow for several months, leaving his young
bride to the care of his father and mother. The young bride did not
consider this an extraordinary hardship, for many of her companions had
been treated in the same way, and according to public opinion in that
part of the country there was nothing abnormal in the proceeding.
Indeed, it may be said in general that there is very little romance
or sentimentality about Russian peasant marriages. In this as in other
respects the Russian peasantry are, as a class, extremely practical and
matter-of-fact in their conceptions and habits, and are not at all prone
to indulge in sublime, ethereal sentiments of any kind. They have little
or nothing of what may be termed the Hermann and Dorothea element
in their composition, and consequently know very little about those
sentimental, romantic ideas which we habitually associate with the
preliminary steps to matrimony. Even those authors who endeavour to
idealise peasant life have rarely ventured to make their story turn on
a sentimental love affair. Certainly in real life the wife is taken as a
helpmate, or in plain language a worker, rather than as a companion, and
the mother-in-law leaves her very little time to indulge in fruitless
dreaming.
As time wore on, and his father became older and frailer, Ivan's visits
to his native place became longer and more frequent, and when the old
man was at last incapable of work, Ivan settled down permanently and
undertook the direction of the household. In the meantime his
own children had been growing up. When I knew the family it
comprised--besides two daughters who had married early and gone to
live with their parents-in-law--Ivan and his wife, two sons, three
daughters-in-law, and an indefinite and frequently varying number of
grandchildren. The fact that there were three daughters-in-law and only
two sons was the result of the Conscription, which had taken away the
youngest son shortly after his marriage. The two who remained spent only
a small part of the year at home. The one was a carpenter and the
other a bricklayer, and both wandered about the country in search of
employment, as their father had done in his younger days. There was,
however, one difference. The father had always shown a leaning towards
commercial transactions, rather than the simple practice of his
handicraft, and consequently he had usually lived and travelled alone.
The sons, on the contrary, confined themselves to their handicrafts, and
were always during the working season members of an artel.
The artel in its various forms is a curious institution. Those to which
Ivan's sons belonged were simply temporary, itinerant associations of
workmen, who during the summer lived together, fed together, worked
together, and periodically divided amongst themselves the profits. This
is the primitive form of the institution, and is now not very often met
with. Here, as elsewhere, capital has made itself felt, and destroyed
that equality which exists among the members of an artel in the above
sense of the word. Instead of forming themselves into a temporary
association, the workmen now generally make an engagement with a
contractor who has a little capital, and receive from him fixed monthly
wages. The only association which exists in this case is for the
purchase and preparation of provisions, and even these duties are very
often left to the contractor.
In some of the larger towns there are artels of a much more complex
kind--permanent associations, possessing a large capital, and
pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members. Of
these, by far the most celebrated is that of the Bank Porters. These men
have unlimited opportunities of stealing, and are often entrusted with
the guarding or transporting of enormous sums; but the banker has no
cause for anxiety, because he knows that if any defalcations occur
they will be made good to him by the artel. Such accidents very rarely
happen, and the fact is by no means so extraordinary as many people
suppose. The artel, being responsible for the individuals of which it
is composed, is very careful in admitting new members, and a man when
admitted is closely watched, not only by the regularly constituted
office-bearers, but also by all his fellow-members who have an
opportunity of observing him. If he begins to spend money too freely or
to neglect his duties, though his employer may know nothing of the
fact, suspicions are at once aroused among his fellow-members, and an
investigation ensues--ending in summary expulsion if the suspicions
prove to have been well founded. Mutual responsibility, in short,
creates a very effective system of mutual supervision.
Of Ivan's sons, the one who was a carpenter visited his family only
occasionally, and at irregular intervals; the bricklayer, on the
contrary, as building is impossible in Russia during the cold weather,
spent the greater part of the winter at home. Both of them paid a large
part of their earnings into the family treasury, over which their father
exercised uncontrolled authority. If he wished to make any considerable
outlay, he consulted his sons on the subject; but as he was a prudent,
intelligent man, and enjoyed the respect and confidence of the family,
he never met with any strong opposition. All the field work was
performed by him with the assistance of his daughters-in-law; only at
harvest time he hired one or two labourers to help him.
Ivan's household was a good specimen of the Russian peasant family
of the old type. Previous to the Emancipation in 1861 there were
many households of this kind, containing the representatives of
three generations. All the members, young and old, lived together in
patriarchal fashion under the direction and authority of the Head of the
House, called usually the Khozain--that is to say, the Administrator;
or, in some districts, the Bolshak, which means literally "the Big
One." Generally speaking, this important position was occupied by the
grandfather, or, if he was dead, by the eldest brother, but the rule
was not very strictly observed. If, for instance, the grandfather became
infirm, or if the eldest brother was incapacitated by disorderly
habits or other cause, the place of authority was taken by some other
member--it might be by a woman--who was a good manager, and possessed
the greatest moral influence.
The relations between the Head of the Household and the other members
depended on custom and personal character, and they consequently varied
greatly in different families. If the Big One was an intelligent man,
of decided, energetic character, like my friend Ivan, there was probably
perfect discipline in the household, except perhaps in the matter of
female tongues, which do not readily submit to the authority even
of their owners; but very often it happened that the Big One was not
thoroughly well fitted for his post, and in that case endless quarrels
and bickerings inevitably took place. Those quarrels were generally
caused and fomented by the female members of the family--a fact which
will not seem strange if we try to realise how difficult it must be
for several sisters-in-law to live together, with their children and a
mother-in-law, within the narrow limits of a peasant's household. The
complaints of the young bride, who finds that her mother-in-law puts all
the hard work on her shoulders, form a favourite motive in the popular
poetry.
The house, with its appurtenances, the cattle, the agricultural
implements, the grain and other products, the money gained from the
sale of these products--in a word, the house and nearly everything it
contained--were the joint property of the family. Hence nothing was
bought or sold by any member--not even by the Big One himself, unless he
possessed an unusual amount of authority--without the express or tacit
consent of the other grown-up males, and all the money that was earned
was put into the common purse. When one of the sons left home to work
elsewhere, he was expected to bring or send home all his earnings,
except what he required for food, lodgings, and other necessary
expenses; and if he understood the word "necessary" in too lax a sense,
he had to listen to very plain-spoken reproaches when he returned.
During his absence, which might last for a whole year or several years,
his wife and children remained in the house as before, and the money
which he earned could be devoted to the payment of the family taxes.
The peasant household of the old type is thus a primitive labour
association, of which the members have all things in common, and it is
not a little remarkable that the peasant conceives it as such rather
than as a family. This is shown by the customary terminology, for
the Head of the Household is not called by any word corresponding
to Paterfamilias, but is termed, as I have said, Khozain, or
Administrator--a word that is applied equally to a farmer, a shopkeeper
or the head of an industrial undertaking, and does not at all convey
the idea of blood-relationship. It is likewise shown by what takes
place when a household is broken up. On such occasions the degree of
blood-relationship is not taken into consideration in the distribution
of the property. All the adult male members share equally. Illegitimate
and adopted sons, if they have contributed their share of labour,
have the same rights as the sons born in lawful wedlock. The married
daughter, on the contrary--being regarded as belonging to her husband's
family--and the son who has previously separated himself from the
household, are excluded from the succession. Strictly speaking, the
succession or inheritance is confined to the wearing apparel and any
little personal effects of a deceased member. The house and all that it
contains belong to the little household community; and, consequently,
when it is broken up, by the death of the Khozain or other cause, the
members do not inherit, but merely appropriate individually what
they had hitherto possessed collectively. Thus there is properly no
inheritance or succession, but simply liquidation and distribution of
the property among the members. The written law of inheritance founded
on the conception of personal property, is quite unknown to the
peasantry, and quite inapplicable to their mode of life. In this way a
large and most important section of the Code remains a dead letter for
about four-fifths of the population.
This predominance of practical economic considerations is exemplified
also by the way in which marriages are arranged in these large families.
In the primitive system of agriculture usually practised in Russia, the
natural labour-unit--if I may use such a term--comprises a man, a
woman, and a horse. As soon, therefore, as a boy becomes an able-bodied
labourer he ought to be provided with the two accessories necessary
for the completion of the labour-unit. To procure a horse, either by
purchase or by rearing a foal, is the duty of the Head of the House;
to procure a wife for the youth is the duty of "the female Big One"
(Bolshukha). And the chief consideration in determining the choice is
in both cases the same. Prudent domestic administrators are not to
be tempted by showy horses or beautiful brides; what they seek is not
beauty, but physical strength and capacity for work. When the youth
reaches the age of eighteen he is informed that he ought to marry at
once, and as soon as he gives his consent negotiations are opened with
the parents of some eligible young person. In the larger villages the
negotiations are sometimes facilitated by certain old women called
svakhi, who occupy themselves specially with this kind of mediation; but
very often the affair is arranged directly by, or through the agency of,
some common friend of the two houses.
Care must of course be taken that there is no legal obstacle, and
these obstacles are not always easily avoided in a small village, the
inhabitants of which have been long in the habit of intermarrying.
According to Russian ecclesiastical law, not only is marriage between
first-cousins illegal, but affinity is considered as equivalent to
consanguinity--that is to say a mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are
regarded as a mother and a sister--and even the fictitious relationship
created by standing together at the baptismal font as godfather and
godmother is legally recognised, and may constitute a bar to matrimony.
If all the preliminary negotiations are successful, the marriage takes
place, and the bridegroom brings his bride home to the house of which
he is a member. She brings nothing with her as a dowry except her
trousseau, but she brings a pair of good strong arms, and thereby
enriches her adopted family. Of course it happens occasionally--for
human nature is everywhere essentially the same--that a young peasant
falls in love with one of his former playmates, and brings his little
romance to a happy conclusion at the altar; but such cases are very
rare, and as a rule it may be said that the marriages of the Russian
peasantry are arranged under the influence of economic rather than
sentimental considerations.
The custom of living in large families has many economic advantages. We
all know the edifying fable of the dying man who showed to his sons by
means of a piece of wicker-work the advantages of living together and
assisting each other. In ordinary times the necessary expenses of a
large household of ten members are considerably less than the combined
expenses of two households comprising five members each, and when a
"black day" comes a large family can bear temporary adversity much
more successfully than a small one. These are principles of world-wide
application, but in the life of the Russian peasantry they have a
peculiar force. Each adult peasant possesses, as I shall hereafter
explain, a share of the Communal land, but this share is not sufficient
to occupy all his time and working power. One married pair can easily
cultivate two shares--at least in all provinces where the peasant
allotments are not very large. Now, if a family is composed of two
married couples, one of the men can go elsewhere and earn money, whilst
the other, with his wife and sister-in-law, can cultivate the two
combined shares of land. If, on the contrary a family consists merely
of one pair with their children, the man must either remain at home--in
which case he may have difficulty in finding work for the whole of his
time--or he must leave home, and entrust the cultivation of his share
of the land to his wife, whose time must be in great part devoted to
domestic affairs.
In the time of serfage the proprietors clearly perceived these and
similar advantages, and compelled their serfs to live together in large
families. No family could be broken up without the proprietor's consent,
and this consent was not easily obtained unless the family had assumed
quite abnormal proportions and was permanently disturbed by domestic
dissension. In the matrimonial affairs of the serfs, too, the majority
of the proprietors systematically exercised a certain supervision,
not necessarily from any paltry meddling spirit, but because their own
material interests were thereby affected. A proprietor would not,
for instance, allow the daughter of one of his serfs to marry a serf
belonging to another proprietor--because he would thereby lose a female
labourer--unless some compensation were offered. The compensation might
be a sum of money, or the affair might be arranged on the principle of
reciprocity by the master of the bridegroom allowing one of his female
serfs to marry a serf belonging to the master of the bride.
However advantageous the custom of living in large families may appear
when regarded from the economic point of view, it has very serious
defects, both theoretical and practical.
That families connected by the ties of blood-relationship and marriage
can easily live together in harmony is one of those social axioms which
are accepted universally and believed by nobody. We all know by our own
experience, or by that of others, that the friendly relations of two
such families are greatly endangered by proximity of habitation. To
live in the same street is not advisable; to occupy adjoining houses is
positively dangerous; and to live under the same roof is certainly fatal
to prolonged amity. There may be the very best intentions on both sides,
and the arrangement may be inaugurated by the most gushing expressions
of undying affection and by the discovery of innumerable secret
affinities, but neither affinities, affection, nor good intentions can
withstand the constant friction and occasional jerks which inevitably
ensue.
Now the reader must endeavour to realise that Russian peasants, even
when clad in sheep-skins, are human beings like ourselves. Though they
are often represented as abstract entities--as figures in a table
of statistics or dots on a diagram--they have in reality "organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions." If not exactly "fed with the
same food," they are at least "hurt with the same weapons, subject to
the same diseases, healed by the same means," and liable to be irritated
by the same annoyances as we are. And those of them who live in large
families are subjected to a kind of probation that most of us have never
dreamed of. The families comprising a large household not only live
together, but have nearly all things in common. Each member works, not
for himself, but for the household, and all that he earns is expected to
go into the family treasury. The arrangement almost inevitably leads to
one of two results--either there are continual dissensions, or order is
preserved by a powerful domestic tyranny.
It is quite natural, therefore, that when the authority of the landed
proprietors was abolished in 1861, the large peasant families almost all
crumbled to pieces. The arbitrary rule of the Khozain was based on, and
maintained by, the arbitrary rule of the proprietor, and both naturally
fell together. Households like that of our friend Ivan were preserved
only in exceptional cases, where the Head of the House happened to
possess an unusual amount of moral influence over the other members.
This change has unquestionably had a prejudicial influence on the
material welfare of the peasantry, but it must have added considerably
to their domestic comfort, and may perhaps produce good moral results.
For the present, however, the evil consequences are by far the most
prominent. Every married peasant strives to have a house of his own,
and many of them, in order to defray the necessary expenses, have been
obliged to contract debts. This is a very serious matter. Even if the
peasants could obtain money at five or six per cent., the position of
the debtors would be bad enough, but it is in reality much worse, for
the village usurers consider twenty or twenty-five per cent. a by no
means exorbitant rate of interest. A laudable attempt has been made
to remedy this state of things by village banks, but these have proved
successful only in certain exceptional localities. As a rule the peasant
who contracts debts has a hard struggle to pay the interest in ordinary
times, and when some misfortune overtakes him--when, for instance, the
harvest is bad or his horse is stolen--he probably falls hopelessly into
pecuniary embarrassments. I have seen peasants not specially addicted
to drunkenness or other ruinous habits sink to a helpless state of
insolvency. Fortunately for such insolvent debtors, they are treated by
the law with extreme leniency. Their house, their share of the common
land, their agricultural implements, their horse--in a word, all that
is necessary for their subsistence, is exempt from sequestration. The
Commune, however, may bring strong pressure to bear on those who do
not pay their taxes. When I lived among the peasantry in the seventies,
corporal punishment inflicted by order of the Commune was among the
means usually employed; and though the custom was recently prohibited
by an Imperial decree of Nicholas II, I am not at all sure that it has
entirely disappeared.