Over the roughly four generations covered in this text, Russian society changed enormously. In 1861 most Russians (and non-Russians within the empire) could not read, lived on the countryside, followed patterns of everyday life that would not have differed greatly from those of a century earlier, and identified themselves mainly by religion, social class (soslovie), and local village. Relations between the sexes also followed traditional patterns, with one Russian proverb even declaring that “A chicken is not a bird and a woman is not a human being.” Civil society was relatively weak, restrained by a suspicious and paternalist state. By 1945 much of this had changed: women held important posts in the Communist Party and worked as doctors and other professionals, many (though still not most) Soviet citizens lived in cities, illiteracy had nearly been abolished, and identity was increasingly based on professional training and the nation - as Russians or even as Soviet citizens. Everyday life depended less on natural rhythms (sunrise and sunset, seasons, and the like) than on schedules, clocks, and machines. While economically the USSR lagged behind western countries, by 1945 Soviet citizens - in particular those living in towns - were unquestionably modern citizens of an industrialized society.
Tsarist society was a paternalistic, hierarchical society. At the apex of society, as at the top of the government, stood the figure of the stern but paternal tsar, placed there by God. The paternal nature of the tsar is reflected in a common Russian phrase, tsar’-batiushka, or roughly “tsar-papa.” Since the tsar held his position from God, a challenge to him amounted to a rejection of God s wisdom and power. Obviously by this period not all Russians held such views, but this traditional view had not vanished, in particular on the countryside. Just as the tsar’s lofty position over Russian society was justified by divine order, so too was the existing social hierarchy legitimate. This hierarchy was reflected, indeed codified, in the soslovie system.
Soslovie may be compared to legal estates in western and central Europe (traditionally: Church, Nobility, Bourgeoisie, and sometimes Peasantry). The categories did not entirely overlap, however, nor did they always have the same significance. To generalize and simplify somewhat, the main sosloviia (pl. of soslovie) were nobleman, churchman, townsman, peasant. As Gregory Freeze has pointed out, the word soslovie was rarely used before the nineteenth century, and until the 1870s the main social distinction in Russian society remained the divide between those subject to the poll tax (peasants and some townspeople) and those who were not.1 Still, soslovie and its categories remained an important marker and indication of individual rights. As in most hierarchical societies, in the Russian Empire one’s personal rights, taxes, and access to education were determined in large part by social standing. Thus up until 1861 peasants paid poll tax, were subject to corporal punishment, and were drafted into the army while nobles were not. The “great divide” in Russian society was thus between nobles and peasants - the middling groups, which made up a relatively small percentage of the total population, were vastly less important for Russian rulers. The term raznochinets (pl. raznochintsy), “people of various ranks,” came to be used to describe individuals who did not easily fit into the soslovie system, uneasily occupying the social space between peasant and noble. Recent research has shown that this common understanding of the term was not always quite accurate, but it is clear that the term raznochinets was used rather imprecisely to refer to people who did not quite “fit” in the established categories.2 In any case the figure of the raznochinets who uneasily occupied the social “middle” is one indication of the weak development of the professions, merchants, and selfmade-men in Russian society. In other words even after 1861 Russians tended to identify more with the category of their birth than with their education and occupation.
The Great Reforms intended to transform Russia into a modern state and, as one part of this modernization, aimed to make Russian society less rigid. To be sure, already in the early eighteenth century Peter the Great had attempted to make Russian society more open to talent through the Table of Ranks, which granted noble status to those reaching a certain rank in the military or civilian hierarchy. On the whole, however, social mobility was the exception rather than the rule in Russian society. The Great Reforms sought to encourage social mobility (as well as physical mobility) by limiting legal restrictions on the “lower orders.” Thus, as we have seen, both peasants and noblemen participated in the zemstva, military service was expected from all, regardless of social standing, and the discriminatory poll tax was abolished.
Nonetheless, many vestiges of the soslovie system remained long after the Great Reforms and even to 1917. In part this was due to the government s uneasiness with a truly modern and mobile populace. On one level, this reflected a fear of social disorder, but it also concerned the practical issue of filling bureaucratic and military posts with qualified candidates. Even in 1914 few university graduates
- or even secondary school students - came from a peasant background. The government also had to deal with existing realities, even when they clashed with principles of the Great Reforms. For example, even after the legal reform there existed a parallel legal system for the peasantry, the so-called volost’ courts. The reason was simple: peasants could rarely afford a lawyer and preferred to have their cases on the local level settled quickly, cheaply, and with a minimum of legalese. If a peasant remained dissatisfied with the volost’ court’s decision, he or she could appeal the case to the regular courts.3 Strictly speaking the existence of volost’ courts violated the principle of a unified justice system, but for practical reasons this parallel court system was retained to the end of the tsarist regime.4
After the Great Reforms social identity continued to be largely based on soslovie categories. English-speaking readers of Crime and Punishment are sometimes puzzled by mentions of Raskolnikov’s former student status. A modern reader would probably stress “former” mentally and think that Raskolnikov had likely flunked out of university (“student” in Russian only refers to those studying at institutions of higher learning). But Raskolnikov’s contemporaries (the novel was first published in 1866, in the midst of the Great Reforms) would have noted instead that at one time Raskolnikov had studied at a university level; that is, he must be from the middle or upper class. Similarly visiting cards often mentioned not only the bearer’s name, but “nobleman” or “merchant of the second guild” (a quite wealthy man) or simply a profession such as physician, lawyer, or professor. Among civil servants, one’s rank (from the extremely distinguished first rank
- never used in the late nineteenth century - to the lowly rank 14, “Collegiate Registrar,” a very modest clerk) determined respect and even the form of address used. Similarly a member of the privileged classes would use the informal “you” (ty, like du in German or tu in Spanish) with a peasant or house watchman, but the latter would be expected to respond with the respectful vy.
One key sociological change between peasant emancipation (1861) and the revolution (1917) was the development of the Russian industrial working class. There had, of course, been industrial workers in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, but their numbers were very small. Only with industrial “take off” - around the last decade of the century - did the industrial working class really grow in Russia. Compared with western Europe, the development of the Russian working class was more rapid, more concentrated, and more directly connected with the peasantry. Russian factories tended to be large and located in a few industrialized regions, in particular around St Petersburg, Moscow, the textile-dominated “Central Industrial Region,” and in Russian Poland (Warsaw and L6d:Z in particular). Factories were often very large: the Putilov works in St Petersburg employed tens of thousands (30,000 workers as early as 1870). The fact that large factories were concentrated in a few key regions meant that organizing labor or spreading socialist ideas was that much easier: it is far simpler to spread leaflets among 500 workers in a single factory than at 10 separate factories with 50 workers apiece.
The development of “class consciousness” among workers was not always high. Marxist commentators often blamed this on the close connections between the industrial worker and his peasant background. After all, even in 1917 few industrial workers were without direct connections (parents, siblings) in the village. On the one hand this afforded Russian workers a measure of social security: in an industrial downturn, they could usually return to their village until more work was available. On the other hand, it has been argued, the fact that the workers were so close to the village may have mitigated their demands for higher wages and better treatment. But one can equally argue that the “amphibious” nature of the Russian industrial working class and peasantry may have contributed to the spread of radical ideas in the village.5
The continued influence of peasant norms and values among urban workers did not prevent the development of a conscious industrial working-class identity. Coming from the village to work in St Petersburg as a young man, Semyon Kanatchikov recalled that he quickly adopted the mannerisms, speech, and clothing of a skilled worker. Workers often laid special importance on their outward appearance, not wanting to stick out as a “hick” among more sophisticated city dwellers. Despite long working hours, many workers also sought to gain or improve their knowledge of the world. An illiterate peasant would not be unusual or particularly shameful, but an uneducated worker was both easier to cheat and open to mockery from his fellows. By the eve of the revolution, a distinct workers’ culture and identity had developed in Russia’s industrial cities.6
Among the most conscious workers were skilled workers in metal-working industries and printers. In part their self-definition as workers and urban people was based on the specific needs of their jobs, which required a considerable amount of training and made them difficult to replace.7 And, it must be noted, nearly all of these skilled workers were men: women rarely worked in printing plants or machine building plants; female workers predominated in less skilled and more poorly paid textile plants.® No unions were permitted in the Russian Empire before 1905 and strikes were also illegal. But workers began to organize in practical ways, such as collecting sums among themselves to insure any members against injuries on the job. Such collections were illegal but generally went unnoticed by the authorities. It was out of such groups that strike committees developed, in particular in the Moscow printers’ strike of 1903. The strikers’ demands reflected various “sore spots” of labor-management relations: low pay, unpleasant and dangerous working conditions, but also the lack of respect paid by foremen and bosses to workers. A typical demand was that management use “polite address” (in particular, the polite vy rather than the informal ty) in addressing workers. Strikes played a major role in forcing government concessions during the revolution of 1905; Russia was swept with another major strike wave in 1912-14, sparked by the Lena Goldfields strike. On the eve of World War I, Russian workers were flexing their muscles. Although industrial workers made up only a small percentage of the total population, they were increasingly organized, willing to take on management or even the government, and located in crucial cities like St Petersburg and Moscow.9
Imperial Russia was a rural and peasant country. Even in 1913 only 18 percent of the population of Russia lived in cities, in the 1860s that percentage probably reached barely 10 percent.1 0 The overwhelming majority of nonurban dwellers were peasants. For all the huge advances in industrialization in the 1930s and 1940s, even in 1950 only 39 percent of Soviet citizens were urban dwellers. At the same time the actual lives of those living in villages changed enormously, though not always for the better. Mechanization of the countryside (the use of tractors, harvesters, etc.) and the consumption by rural people of industrial goods (tools, manufactured clothing, books) rose significantly, but in 1945, as in 1861, the Russians who worked the soil remained among the poorest Soviet citizens who did not even have the right to leave their farm - now a collective farm (kolkhoz) - at will.
The transformation of serfs into prosperous farmers was one of the central objectives of the Great Reforms. For most peasants, however, not much changed after 1861. True, they were no longer subject to the whim of the landlord. But on the other hand peasants could not freely leave the countryside for the city - that required permission from the peasant commune (mir). The continuing existence of the peasant commune provided a safety net for peasants but also stymied individual initiative. The commune - not individual peasants - was the legal owner of all land gained from the landlord after emancipation, the land was worked in common, and power resided firmly in the hands of adult male heads of households. Since the land was held in common, it was practically impossible for an individual peasant to try new crops or agricultural methods. Furthermore, peasants who did manage to purchase land on their own (outside the commune)
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