12 - The Peasantry

Summary

Peasant farming and material culture

One way to focus sharply on this topic is to compare the situation of the Russian peasant with that of the American farmer. The American farmer was a completely free man who lived in his own house with his family on an isolated farmstead/homestead that belonged to him. The stove in his log cabin vented outside through a chimney and he owned everything in his cabin. Because land was free, he could farm as much land as his physical capacity permitted. His land was comparatively rich and harvests were relatively abundant. He was able to accumulate and store wealth in many forms: grain, cattle, material possessions and cash. Typically he had no landlord and was solely responsible for his own taxes. In contrast, by the end of this period the Russian peasant was for most practical purposes enserfed (see Chapters 16 and 23) and he lived in a village and farmed land that was not his own. Although he may have believed that the land was his, in fact the state believed that the land belonged to it and could be confiscated for a monastery, other Church institution or a private landholder/owner who was in full-time state military or civil service employ. His hut was roughly the same size as the American’s log cabin, and it was built in roughly the same way: notched logs stacked on top of one another and chinked with moss and/or clay. The Russian peasant’s land, although abundant, was of poor quality and the crop yields were extraordinarily low. As will be described further below, the interior of the Russian peasant’s hut was considerably different from that of his American counterpart. Russian livestock, work implements, and crops were significantly different from the American.