The political and economic attitudes of Russian peasants had been formed in the first five hundred years of the current millennium, when no government inhibited their movement across the Eurasian plain and land was available in unlimited quantities. The collective memory of this era lay at the root of the peasantry’s primitive anarchism. It also determined the practices of inheritance followed by Russian peasants into modern times. It has been observed that in regions of the world where land is in short supply, landowners, both nobles and peasants, are likely to practice primogeniture, under which the bulk of the property is left to the eldest son. Where it is available in abundance, the tendency is to adopt “partible” inheritance, dividing the land and other belongings equally among the male heirs.* Even after agricultural land had become scarce, Russians continued to adhere to the old practices. Until 1917–18, when inheritance was outlawed, Russian landlords and peasants divided their properties in equal shares among male descendants. So entrenched was the custom that the monarchy’s attempts, launched under Peter I, to have the upper class keep its estates intact by bequeathing them to a single heir proved unenforceable.
The muzhik held most of his land as a communal allotment (nadel) to which he held no title: when the household died out or moved away, it reverted to the commune. But any land held by the peasant in private property outside the commune, as well as all his movable wealth (money, implements, livestock, seed grain, etc.), customary law allowed his heirs to distribute among themselves.
The practice of partible inheritance had profound effects on Russian rural conditions and, indeed, on many other seemingly unrelated aspects of Russian life. For as has been pointed out, the
transmission mortis causa [by reason of death] is not only the means by which the reproduction of the social system is carried out … it is also the way in which interpersonal relationships are structured.4
After the passing of its head, the household’s belongings were divided, whereupon the household dissolved and the brothers parted to set up households of their own. As a result, the dvor did not outlast the life span of its head, which made this basic institution of the Russian countryside exceedingly transient. In every generation—that is, three or four times a century—households throughout Russia broke apart and subdivided, much as do amoebas or other rudimentary biological organisms. Russian rural life perpetuated itself by a ceaseless process of fission, which inhibited the development of higher, more complex forms of social and economic organization. One dvor begat other dvory, which, in turn, multiplied in the same manner, like producing like and nothing new and different being given an opportunity to emerge.
The consequences of this custom become apparent when examined in the light of societies where the peasantry practiced indivisibility of property. Primogeniture makes possible a high degree of rural stability and gives the state a firm base of support in rural institutions. A Japanese sociologist thus compares the situation in Chinese and Indian villages, where primogeniture was unknown, with that in his own country, where it was prevalent:
Because the principle of primogeniture succession held in Japan, the ruling stratum of a village tended to be comparatively stable over the generations. This stability was lacking in China and India.… The Chinese rule of equal sharing [of inheritance] prevents the maintenance of family status, and the status changes from generation to generation. As a result, the village power center shifts, the leaders’ authority wanes, and no village-wide domination or status-subordination develops.… In Japan, lineally determined familism permeates the entire village structure; the main, or parent, house can easily perpetuate itself through the family inheritance system, and thereby acquire traditional authority. The family, clan, and village function together and promote unity. Thus, in Japanese rural society, the main-branch family, parent-child, or master-servant relationship influences to some degree all aspects of village social life.5
The observations here made about China apply to Russia: in both cases rural institutions were underdeveloped and ephemeral.
Several features of the peasant dvor call for emphasis. The household allowed no room for individuality: it was a collective which submerged the individual in the group. Second, given that the will of the bol’shak was absolute and his orders binding, life in the dvor accustomed the peasant to authoritarian government and the absence of norms (laws) to regulate personal relations. Third, the household made no allowance for private property: all belongings were held in common. Male members acquired outright ownership of the household’s movable property only at its dissolution, at which time it once again turned into the collective property of the new household. Finally, there was no continuity between households, and consequently neither pride in ancestry nor family status in the village, such as characterized Western European and Japanese rural societies. In sum, the Great Russian peasant, living in his natural environment, had no opportunity to acquire a sense of individual identity, respect for law and property, or social status in the village—qualities indispensable for the evolution of more advanced forms of political and economic organization. Enlightened Russian statesmen became painfully aware of this reality in the early years of the twentieth century and tried to do something to integrate the peasant into society at large, but it was late.
Russian peasants lived in villages, called derevni, after derevo, meaning wood, of which they were constructed. Large villages were known as sela. Individual farmsteads (khutora) located on their land were practically unknown in central Russia: they existed mainly in the western and southern provinces of the Empire which had been under Polish rule until the eighteenth century. The number of households per village varied greatly from region to region, depending on natural conditions, of which the availability of water was the most important. In the north, where water was abundant, the villages tended to be small; they increased in size as one proceeded southward. In the central industrial regions of European Russia villages averaged 34.8 households, and in the central black-earth region, 103.5.6 Whereas in the case of individual households size meant prosperity, in the case of villages the opposite held true: smaller villages were likely to be better off. The explanation lies in the practice of strip farming. For reasons which will be spelled out below, Russian communes divided the land into narrow strips, scattered at varying distances from the village. In a large village, peasants had to waste a great deal of time moving with their equipment from strip to strip, often many kilometers apart, which presented special difficulties at harvest time. When villages grew too large to cultivate the land efficiently, the inhabitants either “hived off” to form new ones or else abandoned agriculture and turned to industrial occupations.
16. Village assembly.
At the turn of the century, central Russia consisted of tens of thousands of such villages, usually five to ten kilometers apart.
Compared with rural settlements in other parts of the world, the Russian village was loosely structured and fluid, with few institutions to provide continuity. It was the household rather than the village that served as the building block of Russian rural society. The principal village official, the starosta, was chosen, often against his will, at the insistence of the bureaucracy, which wanted a village representative with whom to deal. Since he could be removed by the same bureaucrats, he represented not so much the population as the government.7