HOUSEHOLDS

It is generally assumed that the peasant household economy in Russia was entirely dependent on the inputs of family members, as peasants had no access to rural labor markets. On this view, all peasant households in Russia were large, extended, and headed by elder patriarchs.³

Interestingly, none of these assumptions is borne out in the empirical evidence for Voshchazhnikovo. On this estate mean household size—calculated from data in household listings and census-like “soul” revisions—was roughly five, and over half of all households were simple nuclear families. Mean age at first marriage was over 20 (as late as 26 for men), and marriage was not universal: up to 20 percent of women on this estate never married. Many of these headed their own independent households, with the result that between 15 and 25 percent of all serf households were headed not by aged patriarchs but by unmarried women. Households at Voshchazhnikovo, like those in other parts of Europe, also contained live-in servants and labourers. Communal land on this estate did not provide an incentive for large households; no correlation between size of household and size of communal allotment was found. Finally, the evidence indicates that, contrary to the widely held view, many of the demographic patterns observed at Voshchazhnikovo were the direct result of estate policies. For instance, taxes were levied on women who married outsiders, but not on men. As a result, many serf men married outsiders, and large numbers of women remained unmarried. And fines for unauthorized household divisions meant that poorer serfs were forced to continue living with their parents, whereas better off serfs could establish separate households.

COMMUNITIES

Russian communes are assumed to have been more cohesive than communities in other premodern societies, as specifically manifested in the communal ownership of local resources—in particular, land—and the distribution of these resources to member households in accordance with their consumption needs. Resources, in this view, were periodically reallocated in response to changes in household size and needs. This egalitarian distribution of wealth, it is claimed, ensured that all commune members were provided for and could meet their feudal and state obligations. Collectivist forms of resource allocation are supposed to have made it possible for Russian peasants to resist outside market forces more effectively. In addition, communal cohesion is thought to have facilitated the organization of collective action to protect commune members against excessive rent seeking by landlords and state officials.⁴

But in this case, too, we find that the conventional view does not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Communal resolutions, estate reports, and petitions to the landlord indicate that serf society on this estate was highly stratified and marked by significant intracommunal conflict. The commune was not economically self-sufficient; serfs, as we will shortly see, bought and sold land, hired labor, and grew cash crops. Nor were resources distributed equitably. Communally held land on this estate was feudal land, for which serfs were required to pay feudal dues. As a result, it was distributed not to those who needed it, but to those who could afford to pay. These better-off serfs often served as communal officials, and used their position to allocate resources to themselves and members of their social networks. Poor households were not only deprived of land, but often had their requests for monetary assistance rejected. Widows with young children, as well as the elderly and infirm, were repeatedly denied poor relief by the commune. Collective action was rarely mobilized against landlords and other outsiders; instead it was used by powerful members of the commune to coerce the poor and marginalized. Petitions to the landlord—thousands of which have survived—indicate that few serfs trusted the commune in matters of justice. Across an enormous range of issues, from property rights and contract enforcement to taxation or inheritance, Voshchazhnikovo serfs chose to bypass the commune, taking their cases directly to the landlord.

THE SERF ECONOMY

Russian peasants, it is thought, “raised or made most of what they had.”⁵

It is difficult to square this view with the evidence from land transactions contracts, credit agreements, lists of servants and laborers, estate reports, land surveys, guild records, and serf petitions. These sources indicate that land, labor, and credit markets were fairly widespread around Voshchazhnikovo, and that serfs of all social strata participated in them. In addition to communally held land, serfs had private holdings, many of which were located in distant parts of the province, suggesting they were used mainly as a form of investment or enforceable loan collateral. Serfs clearly grasped the concept of property very well; some 30 percent of all petitions to the landlord concerned disputes over property. Roughly half of all Voshchazhnikovo households let their communal land to others or hired laborers to work their allotments so that they could engage full-time in wage work (in trade, service, or rural industry). Serfs lent and borrowed money, setting out the terms of their agreements in formal contracts with explicit references to interest and collateral. There was a Friday market on the estate, where serfs could buy (or sell) grain, meat, oils, wine, salt, and sugar, as well as tobacco, paper, ink, and candles. Serfs also traveled to markets in other parts of central Russia, including Rostov, Moscow, and Nizhnyi Novgorod. Wills and dowries include items such as French headscarves, expensive jewelry, silk stockings, and luxury house wares such as silver tea and coffee pots. Finally, the archival sources indicate that this estate was not unique. Contracts and court records show that Voshchazhnikovo serfs engaged in land, labor, and credit transactions with other Voshchazhnikovo serfs, serfs from other estates, free peasants, merchants, and other landlords, from neighboring districts to places as far away as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Helsinki, and Riga.

INSTITUTIONS

In the conventional account of Russian history, serfdom is usually blamed for Russia's economic underdevelopment.⁷

All the transactions described above were made possible through the quasi-formal legal-administrative framework developed by the Sheremetyev family to oversee their estates (Voshchazhnikovo was only one of many). This framework explicitly set out the rules and regulations of the estate and the consequences of violating them. Juridical procedures were clearly outlined and a system of formal contracts and recordkeeping left no doubt as to the terms agreed to by parties to disputes. Enforcement by the landlord could be counted on. This significantly reduced the risk to serfs of engaging in land, labor, and credit transactions. Property rights were largely upheld, contracts enforced, and serfs were given the right to take disputes directly to the landlord in St. Petersburg if they were not satisfied with the decision of local officials. As a result, many serfs—though not all—became considerably richer. And the landlord gained by levying new taxes on wealth.

Two things, however, prevented “serfdom” from contributing to wealth creation on any larger scale. First, not all landlords ran their estates as the Sheremetyev family did. Most Russian landlords did not have the resources to establish an administrative apparatus like that at Voshchazhnikovo. It is therefore unlikely that serfs on smaller estates enjoyed the benefits of an institutional framework like the one described above. Second, even a legal-administrative framework like the Sheremetyev's was not integrated into any larger body of law, issuing from a central government. Unlike serfs in medieval England who could appeal to the Royal Courts, or serfs in early modern Prussia who could appeal to the Emperor, Russian serfs had essentially no rights before the law. They were the property of their landlords and were thus at their lords' mercy. Moreover, this lack of a larger framework of society-wide institutions meant that serfs were at the mercy of other rent-seeking groups in the society. Although landlords had a certain degree of power, they could not always protect their serfs from other state-backed corporate groups, such as local and provincial officials, merchant guilds, and the church, who were always seeking to exploit serfs' tenuous legal status. The result was, at best, a reasonably well-functioning informal economy, limited to the jurisdiction of a particular lord. To do well in this system, a serf was forced to devote enormous resources to bribing officials, making contacts in important places, and getting around the numerous obstacles arbitrarily placed in his path. Thus even the most entrepreneurial serfs were unlikely to invest over longer time horizons in the sort of large-scale projects that made the agricultural and industrial revolutions possible in early modern England.