Before one can answer how the “peasant” is featured in the Russian imagination, it is important to define what imagination means within the context of this question. The definition of imagination in this sense can be argued to be derived from the memory and interpretations of this social class’s existence. Hence, we will use Maurice Halbach's definition of imagination when we delve into how the “peasant” features in the Russian imagination. For Halbach, the “imagination” is alive in the sense that it is composed of the way history is remembered and contextualized by its events at the time.[1] Hence, the imagination in this sense is very much alive and is constantly changing. Through this lens, the analysis will focus on the way the peasant is remembered attempting to unblur the lines of “real” or “imagined” narratives. Through this lens, the imagination becomes heavily tied to the symbolism of the “peasant” as it reveals to us a context in which culture, politics, and relations the Russian state has to its geographic and diplomatic surroundings. This essay argues that the “peasant” within this explored definition of the “imagination”, hence paints a complicated portrait of how Russia views its trajectory at the time as the role of the “peasant” within Russian society during the late Tsarist period represents within Russia, a struggle between tradition and modernity and by extension, the character of Russia’s national identity. To explore this struggle, the essay will utilize Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina and a variety of secondary sources to analyze this contrast.
To fully understand the context in which the “peasant” is featured in the Russian imagination, one must first be provided some history of the Russian “peasant” class and their relation to the land and the hierarchal structure in which they existed in. Here, Maklakov’s text provides this much-needed context. Russia up until 1861 functioned on a system of serfdom in which the political system was founded based on the Monarch to Landlord to Peasant relationship. Thus, all functions of the state be it taxation, military recruitment, and other bureaucratic functions were performed by the landlords on behalf of the monarch while the serfs acted as the manpower for the state to function.[2] However, when serfdom was abolished in a series of liberal and western-oriented reforms, a new set of problems arose. For one, since the state had to buy the land off the former landlord class, the serfs who had once worked these lands now owned them with the caveat that they had to pay the state for the land. To solve this, the Russian state declared the lands “inalienable”.[3] While this ensured that the land would belong to the peasants without the threat of possible reclamation by another entity as mentioned by Maklakov, it had redefined the peasant as a landowning class, and with it, peasants now became a class that was socially mobile as they were able to make profit off of the land that they communally owned.[4] These created problems as the state started to tax these farmers placing upon them a financial burden. In the more abstract sense, questions of social status started to brew as richer peasants who went to university had started to re-contextualize their status in the tsarist hierarchy and the idea of the “peasant” as a class and where they belonged in a rapidly developing society had started to become unclear causing much discontent among the Russian population.[5] As one can observe, the “peasant” in the Russian imagination had become complicated with these liberal western-oriented reforms as not only was there a financial aspect to their discontent with their role in society, the education that richer peasants were able to afford pushed them into a direction in which they had started to question their role within the state itself.
Here, the novel Anna Karenina sheds further light on this issue. Looking at Part Three, Chapter One of the novel, we can start to see this struggle of what “peasant” life means within the Russian imagination between Konstantin Levin and his half-brother Sergei Koznyshev. Despite their closeness, their values differed greatly. For Levin, the countryside was where “stuff of life”[6] happened and that the very moral fibre of Russian society and where our most raw emotions of “joy suffering and toil” is greatest felt.[7] Meanwhile, for his half-brother Sergei, the countryside, in his view was “a rest from work, and on the other hand a pleasant antidote to dissipation.”[8] Sergei even goes so far as to say that the best thing about the countryside was the fact that “one could and should do nothing there”.[9] In many ways their views on the peasantry could be argued was an interesting extrapolation of the views on the peasantry’s position within the Russian consciousness and their role in the future of Russian society. For someone like Levin he felt that the liberal-mindedness of his brother and his patronizing attitude toward the peasantry served to demonstrate a form of condescension that undercut the cultural, social and political significance of the peasantry. This can be seen when Levin describes Sergei’s attitude towards the peasantry having said that Sergei’s treated them as one of his “good cause”.[10] Meanwhile for Levin the peasant’s problems, plights and role in society was more akin to having a problem of the “immortality of the soul”[11] while his brother attempted to approach the problems of the peasantry in the way one would approach an “ingenious construction of a new machine”.[12] As seen, Tolstoy illustrates the nuance in which liberal reformers and traditionalists viewed the issues of the peasantry. For traditionalists such as Levin, the issues of the peasantry occupy an almost spiritual role within Russian society where the problems of the peasantry were the problems of Russia and in a way, their role holds a spiritual purity within the Russian state. Meanwhile, for the more liberal-minded reformers such as Sergei he approaches it with the same nuance as that of an industrial machine and with the same care as one would approach a “good cause”.[13] That is to say, for Sergei, and by extension in Tolstoy’s mind the liberal reformer was only concerned with improving the lives of the peasantry and their role in society without consideration for the national, cultural and spiritual aspects. For sergei, and by extension the liberal minded reformer, a change in their role was necessary and like all problems, would require constant practical solutions and can be improved upon through legislative means. While for the traditionalists such as Levin, a return to simpler times as a peasant would mean re-connecting with the land and roots of Russia.
Hence, it should come as no surprise that traditionalists in Imperial Russia held a similar view to Tolstoy’s fictional character Levin towards the peasantry in late imperial Russia. According to Barbara Engel, as Russia continued to industrialize and modernize, so did the role of the peasant change within their village. Here, she highlights the concept of the “outmigration peasant” in which a peasant, due to economic circumstances would leave their village to find work in urban centres. [14] As mentioned by Engel, due to their changing circumstances, the outmigration peasants had started to become more commonplace and the number of female outmigration peasants in St. Peterburg had ballooned to 480 per 1000.[15] As seen, this figure was substantial and as a result this meant that there was a clash of cultures between the urban and rural peasantry. Even among the peasantry, there was a noticeable shift in the way they perceived their status within Russian society. For example, as mentioned by Engel, the migratory peasants had started to embrace some aspects of western modernity. For example, the urbanized migratory peasants especially the younger ones had started to embrace western fashions. Here, she notes that migratory peasant men traded their “peasant shirts” for short jackets and migratory peasant women had started to trade their traditional Sarafany for wool blouses and silk dresses. Moreover, the attractiveness of foreign goods seemed to become the norm in villages. Engel notes that it was not uncommon for wives to write asking for their husbands for foreign goods such as tea.[16] However, while the peasants had started to embrace certain Western consumerist mentalities, the country’s views and their embrace for urban modernity had become complex. For example, educated nobles of the Lykoshin Commission, blamed the reforms that allowed the existence of the migratory peasants on the “hooliganism” that was perpetrated by the peasants in the 1905 revolution.[17] Similar sentiments are echoed in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina when Levin argues with Sergei over the education of the peasantry stating that a “peasant who is literate is much worse as a labourer. You can’t get the roads repaired; and as soon as a bridge is put up it is stolen”.[18] Levin goes on further and argues that the emancipation of the serfs and the creation of the zemstvo institutions did not make things better as the “roads are not better” and that the courts system which arbitrated over cases in fact had hurt the peasantry.[19] As seen, for a lot of traditionalist Russian nobility the introduction of Western modernity had corrupted the purity of the idea of the Russian peasant. This can be seen in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina when Levin had earlier in the novel swelled with pride at playing a peasant going as far to describe his hard day’s work of toiling in the fields saying that “Everything was wonderful, everything was rosy.”[20] As seen, for the traditionalist Russian nobles, the peasant’s condition pre- emancipation was pure and noble where hard work was a reward for itself. However, with the introduction of Western institutions and Western consumerist culture through the introduction of the migratory peasant class, it had started to twist these sacrosanct values of what it meant to be a peasant in the Russian imagination.
Nonetheless, this view wasn’t just held by the Russian nobility. For one, peasants who were not part of this migratory class had similar fears. As illustrated by Engel, these peasants feared that the “out-migrants may lose their values of sobriety, modesty, submission to authority and willingness to work hard”.[21] This is further illustrated in Geldern’s text where they demonstrate how popular culture in Russia at the time reflected this sentiment. In this, Geldern uses the example of the popular story of Vasiutka who dissatisfied with his life in the countryside moves to the city for work. While he becomes more economically successful, he is still unable to escape his station as a peasant and when he falls in love with a city girl, she does not reciprocate and instead falls for a “vapid clerk”. The story ends with Vasiutka committing suicide.[22] As seen, within the popular Russian imagination, Vasiutka embodies the “peasant” values of hard work and how any attempt for him to fit into the Mold of an urban citizen caused so much grief that he ultimately committed suicide. At the heart of this tale, one can see that the driving conflict of this plot is the incompatibility of cultures. For Vasiutka, the values he was raised on as a peasant could not compete with the Western consumerist mentalities of Russia’s urban citizens, and hence, this struggle with identity became so intense that death was the only way out for him.
While previous explorations of interpretations of the “peasant” in the Russian imagination in this essay tended to show how the peasant life was idealized, there is also a more complicated picture to be painted. Here, we can use Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii’s memoir as a source. In the chapter aptly titled “The bitterness of serfdom realized”, this chapter provides a stark contrast to previous interpretations of peasant life that many authors such as Tolstoy has idealized in his writings. Here, Purlevskii’s memoir serves as a reminder of the relationship between the landlord and the peasant class. In this, Purlesvskii illustrates to his reader how when the peasants had appealed to their landlord against the harsh treatment by their manager, instead of attempting to reconcile both parties, the landlord instructed the manager to “teach all the complainers the domestic way”.[23] As seen, while nobles and writers in popular literature write about “the peasant” during this time with much nostalgia for a more simple time, Purlevskii’s memoir portrays a much more gritty picture in which the nobles did not respect the peasantry in the same way they were often idealized in popular culture. Instead, Purlevskii’s memoir is rather, a repudiation of the idealized relationship between the Russian peasant and its landlord and in its own way, demonstrates the tense relationship between the peasant and state. This can be seen when Purlevskii points to the assassination of a Russian prince in which he interprets as “God’s Judgment on the prince for the torturing of his peasants.”[24] This ultimately does raise an interesting question for traditionalists who argue that the peasant class is the ideal lifestyle and that their status in society should be held sacrosanct. This is because, one could argue that if peasants themselves were praising revolutionary action and redefining their relationship within the context of the Russian state, that meant that fundamentally the traditionalist source of Russian national identity being rooted in the monarch, landlord and sef identity was being flipped on its head.
Another source of interest is Illya Repin’s paintings. In Badcock’s essay she argues that Repin’s paintings provide a very interesting insight into the anxieties and complexities of the “Russian peasant”. Here she analyses the portrait “Muzhichok iz robkikh (‘The Cautious One’ or ‘The Shy Peasant’ or ‘The Timid Peasant’)” and argues that its depiction of the peasant as “shabbily dressed” and with “unkempt hair” represents a pertinent question of national identity.[25] While Repin never provided an explicitly positive or negative interpretation of this painting of the Russian peasant, many discussions were put forth on this matter. As Badcock succinctly puts it with regards to the portrait, if the Russian peasant is the foundation of Russian society as a solider, farmer and idealized citizen, what does his appearance of poverty suggest about the peasant with regards to the Russian empire?[26] Perhaps, one interpretation of this portrait of the peasant could be argued as a representation of the “Russian soul”. In this case, the Russian soul would be rooted in the Slavophile’s idea of the Russian national identity where the peasant’s life is most pure and as a result, is in diametric opposition to the landed gentry’s westernization which would have been viewed as a betrayal of Russian values.[27] In a sense, the portrait of the peasant in the aforementioned interpretation of the Russian soul as being a sign of resilience despite the liberal reforms of the late imperial tsarist regimes. Meanwhile, the peasant as portrayed with its “unkempt hair” and “shabby dress”[28] could indicate to a progressive reformer that the reason he is portrayed in such a way is that the Russian peasant is a victim of the Russian state’s constant struggle between modernization and tradition.
In conclusion, when asked to define the peasant and their place within the Russian imagination, it becomes extremely difficult to give a singular and conclusive answer. The Russian peasant stands unique in the sense that it represents within the period of late imperial Russia, an uncertainty of national character. For traditionalists, the Russian Peasant represents a bulwark against the Western reformers. For peasants, one of the ways they could envision themselves within the Russian imagination could represent a conflict of identity as epitomized through the struggles of the migratory peasant and their struggle between sticking to their lands and traditions or fully integrating into urban society. Meanwhile, some peasants such as Purlevskii depict the peasantry not as a class in which traditionalists hold sacrosanct in Russian society, but rather as a revolutionary class being oppressed by the landed gentry and monarchy. In a way, one could argue that the Russian peasant holds no cocrete meaning within the Russian imagination. Rather, the Russian peasant within the Russian imagination due to the nature of Russia’s history, acts as the Rorschach test in which different interest groups view how Russia should modernize or reform. Hence, the peasant within the Russian imagination, instead acts as a symbol of late Imperial Russia’s struggle between tradition and modernity.
[1] Patrick Hutton, ‘Recent Scholarship on Memory and History’, The History Teacher, 33 (2000), 537.
[2] V. Maklakov, ‘The Agrarian Problem in Russia before the Revolution’. The Russian Review, 9 (1950), 3
[3] Maklakov, ‘Agrarian Problem’, 4
[4] Maklakov, ‘Agrarian Problem’, 4
[5] Maklakov, ‘Agrarian Problem’, 6
[6] Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy ‘Anna Karenina’ (Russia, 1878; acc. Proquest Ebook Central), 241.
[7] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,241
[8] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,241
[9] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,241
[10] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,243
[11] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,243
[12] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,243
[13] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,243
[14] Barbara Alpern Engel ‘Russian Peasant Views of City Life, 1861-1914’, Slavic Review, 52 (1993) 446
[15] Engel, ‘Russian Peasant Views’, 446
[16] Engel, ‘Russian Peasant Views’, 449
[17] Engel, ‘Russian Peasant Views’, 449
[18] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,249
[19] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,249-250
[20] Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,161
[21] Engel, ‘Russian Peasant Views’, 450
[22] James von Geldern, ‘Life In-Between: Migration and Popular Culture in Late Imperial Russia’, The Russian Review, 55 (1996), 373.
[23] Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii A life under Russian serfdom: the memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii (St. Peterburg, 1868; acc. Fulcrum ALCS Humanities Ebook), 99.
[24] Purlevskii Life Russian Serfdom,101
[25] Sarah Badcock, ‘The Cautious One: Identity and Belonging in Late Imperial Russia (1877), in Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, Joan Neuberger (eds.), Picturing Russian Empire (Oxford,2023), 1
[26] Badcock, ‘Cautious One’,8.
[27] Robert C Williams ‘The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and Non-European Nationalism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1975), 584.
[28] Badcock, ‘Cautious One’,1.
References
Badcock, Sarah, ‘The Cautious One: Identity and Belonging in Late Imperial Russia (1877)’, in Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, Joan Neuberger (eds.), Picturing Russian Empire (Oxford,2023), 1,8
Engel, Alpern., ‘Russian Peasant Views of City Life, 1861-1914’, Slavic Review, 52 (1993) 446,449, 450
Geldern, Von James., ‘Life In-Between: Migration and Popular Culture in Late Imperial Russia’, The Russian Review, 55 (1996), 373.
Maklakov, V., ‘The Agrarian Problem in Russia before the Revolution’, The Russian Review, 9 (1950), 3,4,6
Tolstoy, Lev. Anna Karenina (Russia, 1878; acc. Proquest Ebook Central)
Hutton, Patrick., ‘Recent Scholarship on Memory and History’, The History Teacher, 33 (2000), 537
Purlevskii, Savva Dmitrievich. A life under Russian serfdom: The memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii (St. Peterburg, 1868; acc. Fulcrum ALCS Humanities Ebook)
Robert C Williams., ‘The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and Non-European Nationalism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1975), 584.