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The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 by Terence Emmons; ThePeasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia by Wayne S. VucinichReview by: Richard WortmanJournal of Social History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring, 1969 - Spring, 1970), pp. 295-302Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786599 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861. By TERENCE EMMONS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. xi + 484 pp. $13.50).

The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Edited by WAYNE S. VUCINICH (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968. xx + 315 pp. $8.50).

In his preface Terence Emmons describes The Russian Landed Gentry as "neither an economic history of the emancipation, nor a study of state policy, politics or public opinion. It is, rather, a mixture of all these-with emphasis on the gentry-which, if it had to be labelled, might be called 'a social history of the emancipation"' (p. viii). It may be difficult to categorize works of history, but the author's doubts in this case are clearly unwarranted. In his first chapter Emmons does attempt to depict social characteristics, but this treatment is brief and not closely tied in with the body of his study. For the most part the gentry are visible only when they make appearances on the political stage. The issues that unite them may have economic origins or implications, but the author is concerned almost exclusively with political activity-when the members of the gentry actively confront the Russian state.

Emmons's principal theme is the awakening of the gentry in the emancipation era from their traditional political torpor. In the late 1850s groups among the gentry began to assert pretensions to participate in the important decisions concerning the great reforms. In the face of government resistance the movement spread, involving wider and wider circles of gentry until its demise in the early 1860s. The leading role was played by the gentry of Tver' province to whom Emmons devotes a major part of his study. He traces in detail the rise of liberal sentiment in Tver' and shows the dissemination of the liberal programs worked out in Tver' to disaffected members of the gentry elsewhere in Russia. He persuasively disposes of old social interpretations which attached liberal views rather mechanically to particular regional origins and types of economic interests. He shows the chief distinguishing mark of the leaders of gentry liberalism to be



journal of social history

their intellectual and educational backgrounds. Most of them had been in contact with the ideological ferment taking place in intellectual circles during the previous decades. Men like Unkovskii and Golovachev brought the ideas of the salons and lecture halls of Moscow into the provinces. As an increasing number of nobles felt their interests violated by the terms of the emancipation, they began to take up the formulas propounded by the liberals-the notions of rule of law, limitations on administrative arbitrariness, and publicity of the work of government.

If the liberals phrased and gave content to gentry oppositional sentiment, it was the government, in Emmons's view, that provided the stimulus to opposition by turning a deaf ear to gentry opinion. Unable to countenance participation of outsiders in the formulation of emancipation, the tsar and his advisors refused the gentry a role in the determination of their own fate while soliciting their assistance when necessary. Emmons's account of the formulation of statutes- which is the most complete and up-to-date in English-shows clearly how the bureaucrats jealously clung to power at every stage of the work of reform, while they maintained the fiction that the emancipation was a gift of the nobles to their serfs. As members of the nobility realized that the bureaucracy was not pursuing their best interest, they were driven to abandon their passivity and seek a political role.

After the first effects of the emancipation began to be felt, gentry dissatisfaction grew and gentry political activity became more wide- spread and more ambitious in its goals. Emmons follows in great detail the process of the deepening and extension of political con- sciousness. Gentry assemblies' demands included genuine local self- government, a new court system with personal responsibility of officials before the courts, an end to press censorship. All of these demands aimed at "the elimination of the existing system of arbitrary bureaucratic administration" (p. 354). The more radical proposed to renounce their own class privileges. Many nobles advanced claims to participate in national government and called for some kind of representative system to allow the public to take part in state life. Coinciding with similar statements from radical circles, the gentry addresses of 1861 represent the first concerted campaign for political participation in government in modern Russian history. The government's response-as always in such cases-was chilly. It combined repressive measures with a series of concessions-the judicial and

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zemstvo reforms, the promise of new credit institutions, and some minor modifications in the emancipation arrangements. The patriotic upsurge after the Petersburg fires and the Polish uprising brought new support to the government. By 1863 the movement had lost much of its force and all but disappeared. But it served as an inspira- tion to those committed to liberal ideals later in the century. The author sees in it "the genesis of all subsequent efforts to reform the autocratic regime" (p. ix).

The Russian Landed Gentry is a thorough and meticulous history of the complex political currents among the gentry in the emancipation era. The documentation is vast, and Emmons provides the reader with extraordinary new materials and information, much of it from Soviet archives. Indeed to my knowledge no previous historical work of an American scholar on Russia brings to light so much unpublished material. Emmons uses these materials effectively to build his narrative and provides frequent and generous quotes. The appendices contain translations of several of the more important documents- excerpts from the memorandum by Unkovskii and Golovachev to the tsar of December 1857 and gentry addresses to the tsar from 1859-60 and 1861-62.

The narrative account of the spreading of liberal ideas among the gentry is painstakingly minute, so much so that Emmons himself seems overwhelmed by his facts. Synthesis is rarely invoked to avoid monotonous repetition of the same or similar developments in different gentry assemblies. Emmons's approach is to remain the detached observer, setting forth his materials carefully and chrono- logically and intruding his own views as infrequently as possible. Conclusions are subdued and reserved for the end of each section. There is little effort to make the characters vivid or human or to add drama to the narrative. This approach results from Emmons's view of the historical process. His emphasis is on individual events rather than basic and unchanging attitudes. The gentry's relationship to the emancipation, he stresses, "was a dynamic one, that can only be un- derstood historically, that is through study of the ongoing rush of events-in particular the development of relations between the government and the gentry in the preparation of the reform-and not alone by means of static generalizations about certain group or regional interests" (p. 263). By focusing on the "ongoing rush of events" Emmons succeeds in presenting an excellent study of ideological diffusion-one of the best in the historical literature on Russia.

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But by the same token he tends to slight social and economic motiva- tions. Though his account is presented in almost photographic detail, it is given from a perspective that misses or mutes some of the most important features of his subjects.

Thus from Emmons's narrative the conflict between gentry and state seems to have almost exclusively political roots in the individual responses of the autocracy. Yet behind the government's reluctance to involve the gentry lay quite justifiable fears of gentry economic designs. If the peasants' interests were to be safeguarded, it was clear that gentry influence on the reform had to be limited or even ex- cluded. In his discussion of the conflicts in the late 1850s, Emmons focuses on the issue of obligatory redemption of land, on which the liberal gentry's position was more advanced than the government's. But at the same time he slights his treatment of the central questions of the size of land allotments to the peasant and the amount the peasants were expected to pay. The norms for maximum and mini- mum allotments to the peasants established by the Editing Com- missions, most historians agree, were injurious to the peasants' interests. The payments they set were clearly above the market price of the land and would become an unendurable burden for the peasants later in the century. Yet even the liberal gentry at this time was bent on decreasing the size of the allotments and increasing the payments. Alexander Unkovskii, the leading figure among the Tver' liberals, signed the Address of the Five (alluded to only vaguely by the author), the first point of which stated that the Editing Com- mission's rulings on allotments and payments would be ruinous to the gentry. Emmons himself points out that nearly all the deputies at the liberal "first summons" of 1859 hoped to increase the peasants' payments by over one hundred percent. But he does not accord this fact much significance in his discussion of the political conflicts that ensued.

The Address of the Five went on to claim that despite the large allotments, the peasants' condition would deteriorate because, for one reason, peasant government would be crushed by the influence of bureaucrats. This was the typical gentry reasoning of the time: the economic issue was cloaked with political meaning, and with admir- able legerdemain yesterday's landlord and master became today's crusader for the rights of the local population. In many cases gentry liberalism was quite sincere. But it is hardly a wonder that while the gentry were entertaining their own notions of the terms of emancipa-

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tion and while so many of them were shifting their serfs about on the estate to ensure themselves the best land, the government was less than eager to collaborate with them in drafting the reform.

After the first jolt of the emancipation in 1861, the gentry's economic situation became particularly uncertain. Emmons, however, gives only a brief description of the immediate economic impact of the reform and focuses again on the issue of obligatory redemption which was pressed by the liberals. The persistence of obligatory relationships between landlord and peasants undoubtedly was one factor making it difficult for the nobles to adapt to the new circumstances. But many of the grievances stemmed more directly from injured economic interests, and the attacks on the existing administrative system were but one expression of this malaise. Even the question of obligatory redemption had its economic side, since according to the emancipation provisions, the landlord stood to lose one-fifth of his payment if he proceeded without the consent of the peasant. More urgent was the need for credit. The old credit institutions had been abolished at the end of the 1850s and nobles were in need of capital in the new circumstances. This is well expressed in the protocol of the Voronezh gentry (p. 351). The acting Minister of the Interior, Valuev, reported on this in September 1861. His memorandum (Istoricheskii arkhiv, Jan.-Feb. 1861), which is not mentioned in the bibliography, depicts a general and urgent need for credit felt among the gentry to tide themselves over the crisis. The necessity of an improved judicial system arose not only from the liberal program but also from the fear for personal and proprietorial rights that the emancipation threatened and that only a reformed court system could protect. Emmons mentions these demands but only in passing as if they were concomitants of the political struggle, arising from the conflict between liberals and government. He does not treat them as independent factors but subsumes them under the general movement for reform, where it is not clear that they belong.

The concessions of the early 1860s were clearly directed at these general grievances; the liberal demands for participation in government received little satisfaction. The zemstvo reform created institutions limited to economic concerns and gave the local population no control over the local administration. The judicial reform introduced open and independent courts and elective Justices of the Peace, but the chief demand of the liberal gentry-court jurisdiction over administrative abuses-was effectively precluded by the reform's

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"administrative guarantee" provision. The other concessions, concerning credit and modifications in the emancipation, were largely economic in nature. If the gentry were bent predominantly on political gains, it would seem that they were bought off rather cheaply. Yet the overwhelming response of the gentry to both the zemstvo and the judicial reform was favorable, and the political movement sub- sided shortly thereafter. Liberal ideas may not always mask particular selfish ambitions, but by leaving the latter dim in the background, the author avoids the central question of the interaction between political ideals and social interests. In the early 1860s the autocracy succeeded once again in neutralizing gentry political ambitions by answering other more immediate and pressing needs. The Russian nobleman awoke from his political apathy in the emancipation era, but he could not change overnight. He remained largely an economic creature, and it is this side of his personality that is missing from Emmons's otherwise exhaustive and valuable study.

In the collection of essays, The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, the Russian peasant is not the central figure. Most of the authors are interested in some other aspect of Russian life-religion, the army, the proletariat, historiography, literature-and the peasant appears as a secondary and perhaps accidental object of their interest. The discussion as a result follows the diverse interests of the contri- butors with a frail thread of unity being maintained only by the valiant efforts of Vucinich at the beginning and Riasanovsky at the end.

An important problem is the lack of sources that treat peasants and

peasant life directly. Thus Donald Treadgold in "The Peasant and

Religion" devotes most of his attention to the tangential, if interest-

ing subjects of Russian sectarians and schismatics, while the

orthodoxy of the majority of Russian peasants, about which materials are scant, is touched on only fleetingly. John Curtiss's treatment of

peasants and the army is limited by the absence of reports expressing the attitudes of the peasants themselves. The article dwells on the difficult conditions in the army at the turn of the century-the poor rations, the unsanitary food and clothing, and the brutal discipline. Yet one wonders whether the peasants who did not live in enviable conditions in the village reacted as indignantly as did Curtiss's educated observers. Curtiss seeks in the deprivations the soldiers underwent an important cause of the rebelliousness in the ranks of the army in the early twentieth century. But he admits that conditions at that time were probably no worse than before and in the end

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attributes the unrest largely to the influence of revolutionary ideas. Francis Watters's "The Peasant and the Commune" provides a useful summary of the legal and economic features of the commune, emphasizing its role in contributing to peasant poverty. The article, however, tells us little about peasant life in the commune, the way the commune shaped peasant attitudes, or its relationship to the methods and types of peasant agriculture; perhaps these will be covered in the longer work from which this article is drawn.

The peasant figures in Reginald Zelnik's "The Peasant and the Factory" even less than in the other works of the collection. The article, rather, is a valuable and astute study of state policy toward the urban working class from Peter the Great until the late nineteenth century. Zelnik traces the effort to prevent the creation of an urban proletariat separated from the land and shows the effect of this policy in shaping working-class attitudes in the nineteenth century. He explains the peculiar circumstances of the Russian proletariat that would make it a powerful and yet unpredictable social force at the end of nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Two articles are concerned with educated society's response to the peasant. Michael Petrovich contributes a useful sketch on the rising historical interest in the peasantry during the nineteenth century. Donald Fanger sensitively describes and analyzes the treatment of the peasant in the writings of important Russian literary figures from Radishchev to Bunin. He sees the peasant as a myth created by the authors to answer their own needs. The sociological meaning of the discussion, however, is somewhat diminished by Fanger's imposition of the yardstick of literary excellence which immediately excludes all but a few fictional works on the peasantry.

Two of the eight articles deal directly with the peasant. Terence Emmons's excellent "The Peasant and the Emancipation" describes the response of the peasantry to the terms of the statutes. Emmons traces the peasants' shifting attitudes toward authority during this critical period and analyzes the role of the tsar myth in maintaining stability among the peasants at a time of great disappointment for them. This is the single discussion of peasant social attitudes in the volume and provides some of the most revealing insights. Mary Matossian's "The Peasant Way of Life" attempts the ambitious task of depicting village life in nineteenth-century Russia. It presents a large selection of ethnographic data touching on such varied aspects of peasant life as family relations, living arrangements, child-rearing

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journal of social history journal of social history

practices, symbols, and celebrations. The author also describes the course of life in a fictional peasant family-the Ivanovs-in a town north of Moscow. The presentation is clear and succinct and brings together for the first time many unusual and interesting materials on everyday peasant life not easily accessible elsewhere. But the approach is so predominantly descriptive that it is difficult to understand relationships among the diverse sides of peasant life. The author states at the beginning that her approach is neither "realistic"- emphasizing brutality and violence-nor idealized-describing things not really present in peasant life. But by concentrating on the externals of peasant life she inevitably stresses the picturesque, and in the absence of an analytical framework the overwhelming impression is of an idyll. Miss Matossian's lengthy and enthusiastic descriptions of feasts and celebrations are absorbing, but the peasant table, from her accounts, seems oddly abundant and indeed, almost irresistibly enticing. And what is one to say of a description of Russian peasant life and celebration where the word vodka is not so much as mentioned and where Ivan and Andrei Ivanov go to the saloon only " to hear the latest news ?" Despite the careful attention to detail, the romanticizing by one of another culture and another era is unmis- takable. The image of the peasant that emerges is even more idealized than that of the populist writers who somehow were able to catch the boredom, frustrations, and acrid odors of peasant life along with its richness and color.

RICHARD WORTMAN

University of Chicago

Population and Society in Norway: 1735-1865. By MICHAEL DRAKE.

Cambridge Studies in Economic History (Cambridge, 1969. $11.50).

This book is a notable contribution to the current spurt of publica- tions about population history and illustrates very well many of the reasons why historical demography has attracted attention recently. These may be summarized as follows: First, if the demographic characteristics of a population can be measured, they are worth close study both because they provide a measuring rod which is sensitive to economic and social change and because they are themselves in- fluential upon the course of change. Second, microlevel studies of

practices, symbols, and celebrations. The author also describes the course of life in a fictional peasant family-the Ivanovs-in a town north of Moscow. The presentation is clear and succinct and brings together for the first time many unusual and interesting materials on everyday peasant life not easily accessible elsewhere. But the approach is so predominantly descriptive that it is difficult to understand relationships among the diverse sides of peasant life. The author states at the beginning that her approach is neither "realistic"- emphasizing brutality and violence-nor idealized-describing things not really present in peasant life. But by concentrating on the externals of peasant life she inevitably stresses the picturesque, and in the absence of an analytical framework the overwhelming impression is of an idyll. Miss Matossian's lengthy and enthusiastic descriptions of feasts and celebrations are absorbing, but the peasant table, from her accounts, seems oddly abundant and indeed, almost irresistibly enticing. And what is one to say of a description of Russian peasant life and celebration where the word vodka is not so much as mentioned and where Ivan and Andrei Ivanov go to the saloon only " to hear the latest news ?" Despite the careful attention to detail, the romanticizing by one of another culture and another era is unmis- takable. The image of the peasant that emerges is even more idealized than that of the populist writers who somehow were able to catch the boredom, frustrations, and acrid odors of peasant life along with its richness and color.

RICHARD WORTMAN

University of Chicago

Population and Society in Norway: 1735-1865. By MICHAEL DRAKE.

Cambridge Studies in Economic History (Cambridge, 1969. $11.50).

This book is a notable contribution to the current spurt of publica- tions about population history and illustrates very well many of the reasons why historical demography has attracted attention recently. These may be summarized as follows: First, if the demographic characteristics of a population can be measured, they are worth close study both because they provide a measuring rod which is sensitive to economic and social change and because they are themselves in- fluential upon the course of change. Second, microlevel studies of

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