The world of the mir

Steven L Hoch´s "Serfdom and social control in Russia" is a scholarly study of how Russian serfdom looked like in practice. Czarist Russia abolished serfdom in 1861. Until that time, most peasants in Russia lived under slave-like conditions in villages quite literally owed by aristocratic landlords. This book is a case study of one such village, Petrovskoe in the Tambov region.

What makes the Russian situation interesting is that serfdom and aristocratic control co-existed with peasant communes. The commune, known as mir, was (supposedly) very collectivist and egalitarian. Often, the mir has been regarded as a form of "primitive communism" or "socialism". If only the landlords and the czars had been removed, Russian peasant society would have become the basis of a socialist society.

Steven L. Hoch begs to differ. He believes that the mir was part of the oppressive system of serfdom, and that its economic equality was enforced from above. For reasons of efficiency, the landlords wanted the peasant households to be roughly equal in size and work capacity. The serfs were "equal" in the same sense as slaves in the antebellum South were "equal". And even this egalitarianism turns out to be pretty relative on further investigation.

Most peasant households were three-generation households, despotically controlled by the oldest male, known as the patriarch. The patriarchs had certain privileges. They were in effect a kind of foremen or overseers. Often they were exempted from field work around the age of 50. The patriarchs took the best food, slept at the best place in the house and arranged the marriages of their household members. Inevitably, these petty chieftains supported the system and co-operated with the bailiffs representing the landowner.

The mir was controlled by a group of patriarchs known as elders. At least at Petrovskoe, there were never any mass meetings of the entire peasantry. The decisions of the mir were taken by the elders, and they only convened once a year. It's not clear how they were elected, but it seems an elder could be unseated by the landlord (one prince Gagarin). Among the duties of the mir were tax collection, taking care of the needy and decide who would be drafted to the army.

"Taking care of the needy" was also somewhat relative, however. Small households were often poorer than large ones, since they had less members and hence were given less land. Sometimes, the mir at Petrovskoe did indeed help poorer families. The reason? The *landlords* demanded it, since small families were bad for work efficiency. The patriarchs were less keen on helping the poor, however, since some small households had fissioned from the three-generation households controlled by the patriarchs. Some people were ready to risk poverty just to escape the clutches of the patriarchs. In other words, the small households were a threat to patriarchal power! Apart from actually aiding the small households, there was another method open to the elders of the mir: to draft poor peasants into the army as a kind of punishment. In this way, the mir "equalized" its members, while safeguarding patriarchal prerogatives.

Hoch describes the life of the serfs in some detail. Punishments, usually by flogging, were common. So were theft, drunkenness and violence. Sexual immorality was common in some villages. The serfs willingly informed on each other, stole from both the manor and each other, and competed for the best positions. Collective resistance against the bailiffs, landlords and indeed patriarchs was virtually impossible. During the entire 19th century, only one revolt took place at Petrovskoe, against a particularly odious draft. (Being drafted into the army was seen as a death sentence, since Russia waged constant wars during this period. Also, the time of service was 25 years!) Usually, "only" hardened criminals and people deemed to rebellious by the patriarchs were drafted as a relatively safe way of getting rid of them. Naturally, serfs couldn't leave their designated area without special permission. Some tried to escape, but the number who succeeded seems to have been minor. Czarist Russia was a tightly controlled society. On a more humorous note, the mir meticulously kept a record of all its bribes! Thus, modern researchers can see exactly who in Tambov was bribed, why and with how much.

The author says very little about the spiritual lives of the serfs, but it obviously wasn't centred on the Orthodox Church. The local church at Petrovskoe was unkempt, and the peasants didn't give it more money than the required amount. The priests were corrupted (many of the bribes recorded were to priests) and probably unpopular among the landlords and bailiffs as well, since the mir dared to file complaints against some priests with the landlord's office in Moscow. I suspect that so-called "popular superstition" was the common form of religious life at Petrovskoe. Hoch describes the cult of hearth-spirits, who could only be approached by the patriarchs.

To sum up, Hoch's book gives the impression that Herzen and Marx were wrong. The mir wasn't a "socialist" mini-society that could be "liberated". It was part of the oppressive structure itself.

The book also has certain shortcomings. How did the mir emerge in the first place? What happened to it after the abolition of serfdom? This is never touched upon. True, it's outside the scope of a book dealing with a single village in Tambov, but since the author makes general observations about the character of the mir, this should have been mentioned, if only briefly. The author also believes that peasants are "by definition" (?!) exploited all over the world, during all historical periods, that they always compete against each other, and that whatever communal arrangements exist among them are purely pragmatic. This is unconvincing.

Still, "Serfdom and social control in Russia" is an excellent book about the Russian form of the peculiar institution.