Russia under the Old regime

CHAPTER 6

The reason for beginning a survey of the social classes in old regime Russia with the peasantry does not call for elaborate explanation. As late as 1928, four-fifths of the country's population consisted of people, who although not necessarily engaged in farming, were officially classified as peasants. Even today, when the census shows the majority of Russia's inhabitants to be urban, the country retains unmistakable traces of its peasant past: a consequence of the fact that most of the inhabitants of Soviet cities are one-time peasants or their immediate descendants. As will be shown later, throughout its history the urban population of Russia has preserved strong links with the countryside and carried with it rural habits into the city. The Revolution revealed how tenuous the urbanization of the country had been. Almost immediately after its outbreak, the urban population began to flee to the countryside; between 1917 and 1920, Moscow lost one half of its population and Petrograd two-thirds. Paradoxically, although it had been carried out in the name of urban civilization and against the 'idiocy of rural life', the 1917 Revolution actually increased the influence of the village on Russian life. After the old, westernized elite had been overthrown and dispersed, the ruling class which had replaced it consisted largely of peasants in their various guises: farmers, shopkeepers and industrial workers. Lacking a genuine bourgeoisie to emulate, this new elite instinctively modelled itself on the village strong man, the kulak. To this day it has not been able to shake off its rural past. In the middle of the sixteenth century, when they were being fixed to the soil, the peasants began to abandon the slash-burn method of cultivation in favour of the three-field system (trekhpoVe). Under this farming pattern the arable was divided into three parts, one of which was sown in the spring with summer crops, another in August with winter crops, and the last left fallow. The following year, the field which had been under winter crops was sown with spring crops, the fallow with winter crops, and the spring-crop field was set aside for fallow. The cycle was