The myth of the age-old poverty of Russian peasants exposed

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A century ago, the peasantry constituted the absolute majority of the population of Russia and could rightfully be considered the foundation of the country. The life of peasants in pre-revolutionary Russia has long been the subject of political speculation. Some argue that it was unbearable, the peasants vegetated in poverty and almost died of hunger, were the most disadvantaged in Europe.

Other, no less tendentious authors, on the contrary, paint the life of the pre-revolutionary peasantry almost as a patriarchal paradise. How did the Russian peasants live? Were they really the poorest among the peasantry of other European countries, or is this a lie?

To begin with, the myth of the age-old poverty and backwardness of the Russian people has been happily reproduced and replicated over the centuries by haters of the Russian state of various political convictions. We find different interpretations of this myth in the articles of pre-revolutionary liberals and socialists, in Nazi propaganda, in the writings of Western historians and "Sovietologists", in the conclusions of modern liberals and, finally, in tendentious Ukrainian propaganda campaigns. Of course, all of the listed groups of authors and disseminators of this myth had or have their own, often not overlapping interests. It was important for some to overthrow the monarchy with his help, for others to emphasize the allegedly original “savagery” of the Russian people, while others used it to assert some kind of ideal model for the development of the Russian state. In any case, this myth was often based on all sorts of unverified statements and inferences.

The vast territory and colossal climatic, geographical, economic differences of the Russian regions throughout the entire course of national history determined completely different levels of agricultural development, different material security and everyday comfort of Russian peasants. To begin with, by the way, you need to decide what to understand as a whole by the peasantry - an estate in the pre-revolutionary sense or, from the point of view of a more modern approach, a group of people employed in agriculture - agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, etc. In the latter case, the differences between the peasants of pre-revolutionary Russia are even greater. Pskov and Kuban, Pomorie and Don, Ural and Siberia - Russian peasants lived everywhere, as well as farmers, cattle breeders, hunters and fishermen of other peoples of Russia. And their position was different, including in proportion to the geographical features. In the Pskov region and in the Kuban, agriculture has different opportunities for its development, as in other regions of Russia. This must be understood when considering the life and well-being of the Russian peasantry.

But let us delve deeper into history and begin to examine the life of the Russian peasantry in pre-Petrine Russia. In those distant centuries, peasants everywhere lived joylessly. In the countries of Western Europe, their position was far from being as successful as the "Westernizers" are now trying to present it. Of course, the unconditional progress of a number of European countries in comparison with Russia was the gradual destruction of feudal relations in the countryside, followed by the liberation of the peasantry from feudal duties. In England, Holland, and a number of other European countries, the manufacturing industry developed rapidly, which required more and more new workers. On the other hand, agrarian transformations contributed to the outflow of the population from the villages to the cities. Not because of a good life, English peasants from their native villages rushed in search of food to the cities, where at best they were faced with hard work in factories, and at worst - the position of an unemployed and homeless marginal with all the ensuing consequences, up to the death penalty under the then British laws. With the intensification of the development of overseas territories in the New World, in Africa, Asia, thousands of European peasants rushed there in search of a better life, not fearing possible death during long sea voyages, proximity to dangerous tribes, death from disease in an unusual climate. By no means all of the settlers were born adventurers, just life in Europe was such that it “pushed” those who had no chance at home, across the sea, in search of a better life.

The most difficult was the situation of the peasantry in southern and northern Europe. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, the feudal order remained unshakable, the peasants continued to be exploited and often became victims of the tyranny of the landowners. In Scandinavia, due to climatic conditions, the peasants lived very poorly. Life was no less difficult for the Irish peasants. And what happened in Russia at that time? No one can say better than their contemporaries.

In 1659, 42-year-old Catholic missionary Yuri Krizhanich arrived in Russia. Croatian by birth, he was educated first in Zagreb, then in Austria and Italy, traveled a lot. In the end, Krizhanich came to ecumenical views and asserted the need for a single Christian Church of Catholics and Orthodox. But such views were negatively perceived by the Russian authorities, and in 1661 the arrested Krizhanich was exiled to Tobolsk. There he spent fifteen long years, having written several very interesting works during this time. Krizhanich, who traveled through almost all of Russia at that time, managed to get very closely acquainted with the life of the Russian people - both the nobility and the clergy, and the peasantry. At the same time, it is difficult to accuse Krizhanich, who suffered from the Russian authorities, of pro-Russian tendentiousness - he wrote what he considered necessary to write, and outlined his own vision of life in Russia.

For example, Krizhanich was very indignant at the ostentatious luxury of Russian people who did not belong to the upper classes. He noted that "people of even the lower class lash whole hats and whole fur coats with sables … and what can be more absurd than the fact that even black people and peasants wear shirts embroidered with gold and pearls?..". At the same time, comparing Russia with Europe, Krizhanich indignantly emphasized that there is no such disgrace anywhere in European countries. He attributed this to the high productivity of Russian lands in comparison with Poland, Lithuania and Sweden and, in general, with better living conditions.

However, it is difficult to reproach Krizhanich for excessive idealization of Russian life, since in general he was rather critical of the Russian and other Slavic peoples and all the time strove to emphasize their differences for the worse from the Europeans. Krizhanich attributed to these differences the extravagance, simplicity, candor of the Slavs in comparison with rationalism and prudence, resourcefulness and intelligence of Europeans. Krizhanich also drew attention to the great propensity of Europeans to industrial activity, which was greatly facilitated by their puritanical rationalism. The Russian, Slavic world and the West in Krizhanich are two completely different civilizational communities. In the twentieth century, the outstanding Russian philosopher and sociologist Alexander Zinoviev spoke about "Westernism" as a special type of society development. Centuries later, he often noticed the same differences between the Western and Russian mentality, which Krizhanich wrote about in his time.

Krizhanich, by the way, was far from the only foreign traveler who described the prosperous and well-fed life of the Russian people in comparison with the inhabitants of other countries. For example, the German Adam Olearius, who visited Russia as the secretary of the embassy of the Schleswig-Holstein duke in 1633-1636, also noted in his travel notes the cheapness of food in Russia. The memories left by Olearius testify to the fairly prosperous life of ordinary Russian peasants, at least judging by the everyday scenes that he witnessed on the way. At the same time, Olearius noted the simplicity and cheapness of the everyday life of the Russian people. Although food is plentiful in Russia, most ordinary people have few household items.

Of course, Peter's reforms and the numerous wars that the Russian Empire waged throughout the 18th century affected the position of the Russian common people. By the end of the 18th century, the ideas of the philosophers of the Enlightenment were already beginning to spread in Russia, which contributed to the formation of a negative attitude towards the existing social and political order among some of the Russian elite. Serfdom becomes the main object of criticism. However, then serfdom was criticized, first of all, for humanistic reasons, not as an outdated form of socio-economic organization, but as inhuman "slavery" of the peasants.

Charles-Gilbert Romme lived in Russia for seven years - from 1779 to 1786, working as a teacher and educator for Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov. In one of his letters, an educated Frenchman, by the way, who then took an active part in the Great French Revolution, wrote to his comrade that in Russia "the peasant is considered a slave, since the master can sell him." But at the same time, Romm noted, the position of the Russian peasants - "slaves" on the whole is better than the position of the French "free" peasants, since in Russia each peasant has more land than he is physically able to cultivate. Therefore, normal hardworking and savvy peasants live in relative prosperity.

The fact that the life of Russian peasants favorably differed from the life of their European "colleagues" was noted by many Western travelers in the 19th century. For example, the English traveler Robert Bremner wrote that in some areas of Scotland, peasants live in such premises that in Russia would be considered unsuitable even for livestock. Another British traveler, John Cochrane, who visited Russia in 1824, also wrote about the poverty of the Irish peasants against the background of the Russian peasantry. It is quite possible to believe their notes, since in most European countries and in the 19th century, the peasant population lived in deep poverty. The mass exodus of the British, and then the representatives of other European peoples to North America, is a typical confirmation of this.

Of course, the life of a Russian peasant was hard, in lean years and hungry, but at that time it did not surprise anyone.

The situation of the peasantry began to deteriorate rapidly in the second half of the 19th century and especially at the beginning of the 20th century, which was associated with the progressive social stratification of the Russian countryside, high birth rates and a shortage of land in Central Russia. In order to improve the situation of the peasants and provide them with land, programs were conceived for the development of vast territories of Siberia and the Far East, where it was planned to resettle a large number of peasants from the provinces of Central Russia (and this program began to be implemented under Peter Stolypin, no matter how they treated him later) …

Those peasants who moved to the cities in search of a better life found themselves in the most difficult situation. Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Maxim Gorky, Alexey Svirsky and many other prominent representatives of Russian literature tell about the bleak life of slum dwellers. The “bottom” of the city was formed as a result of the destruction of the habitual way of life of the peasant community. Although representatives of various estates poured into the marginal strata of the population of Russian cities, they were formed by the peasantry, or rather its poorest part, whose natives at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. en masse moved to cities.

Taking into account the huge number of the peasant population, most of them illiterate and had no work qualifications, low rates for unskilled labor remained in Russia. Life was poor for unskilled workers, while foremen received quite subsistence money. For example, turners, locksmiths, foremen received at the beginning of the twentieth century on average from 50 to 80 rubles per month. For comparison, a kilogram of beef cost 45 kopecks, and a good suit cost 8 rubles. Workers without qualifications and with low qualifications could count on much less money - they received about 15-30 rubles a month, while domestic servants worked for 5-10 rubles a month, although the cooks and nannies "had table" at their place of work and there most often they lived. In the United States and a number of Western European countries, workers received, in a comparative ratio, a lot of money, but they got it just as easily, and the unemployment rate was very high. Let us recall that the intensity of the struggle of workers for their rights in Europe and North America in the late XIX - early XX centuries. was no less than in the Russian Empire.

Life in Russia has never been easy, but it cannot be called any particularly terrifying and poor in comparison with other countries. Moreover, so many trials fell to the share of Russia that not a single European country, not to mention the United States or Canada, has endured. Suffice it to recall that in one twentieth century the country experienced two world wars that claimed millions of lives, a civil war, three revolutions, a war with Japan, large-scale economic transformations (collectivization, industrialization, development of virgin lands). All this could not but be reflected in the level and quality of life of the population, which, nevertheless, increased at a rapid pace in Soviet times.