Russia under the Old regime

141

completed every three years. It was not a very efficient method of utilizing land, if only because it placed a third of the arable permanently out of commission. Already in the eighteenth century agrarian specialists criticized it and much pressure was exerted on the peasant to abandon it. But as Marc Bloch has shown in the instance of France and Michael Gonfino has confirmed in that of Russia, agricultural techniques cannot be isolated from the entire complex of peasant institutions. The muzhik fiercely resisted pressures to abandon the three-field routine and it remained the prevalent pattern of cultivation in Russia well into the twentieth century.1

Observers of the Russian village had often commented on the extreme contrast in the tempo of its life during the summer months and the remainder of the year. The brevity of the growing season in Russia calls for the maximum exertion during a few months which are followed by a long period of inactivity. During the middle of the nineteenth century in the central provinces of Russia 153 days in the year were set aside for holidays; most of them fell between November and February. On the other hand, from approximately April to September there was time for nothing else but work. Historians of the positivist age, who had to find a physical explanation for every cultural or psychic phenomenon, saw in this climatic factor an explanation of the Russian's notorious aversion for sustained, disciplined work:

There is one thing the Great Russian believes in: that one must cherish the clear summer working day, that nature allows him little suitable time for farming, and that the brief Great Russian summer can be shortened further by an unseasonal spell of foul weather. This compels the Great Russian peasant to hustle, to exert himself strenuously, so as to get much done quickly and quit the fields in good time, and then to have nothing to do through the autumn and winter. Thus, the Great Russian has accustomed himself to excessive short bursts of energy; he has learned to work fast, feverishly, and extensively, and to rest during the enforced autumn and winter idleness. No nation in Europe is capable of such intense exertion over short periods of time as the Great Russian; but probably also nowhere in Europe shall we find such a lack of habit for even, moderate, and well distributed, steady work as in this very same Great Russia.2

Spring comes to Russia suddenly. Overnight, the ice breaks on the rivers, and the waters, freed from their confinement, push the floes downstream, crushing everything in their path and spilling over the banks. White wastes turn into green fields. The earth comes to life. This is ottepeV or thaw, a natural phenomenon so striking in its suddenness that it has long served to describe awakenings of spirit, thought or political life. As soon as it has arrived, the peasant faces a period of highly concentrated physical work: before the introduction of machinery, eighteen hours a day were not uncommon. The rapidity with which field work had to be completed made for one of the most onerous features of serfdom. The serf could not schedule the duties he owed his master so as to have time in which undisturbed to carry on his own work. He had to do both concurrently. Landlords sometimes required serfs to attend to domainial land before allowing them to till their own. When this happened, it was not unusual for peasants to have to work round the clock, tilling the landlord's strips daytime and their own at night. Work reached its highest pitch of intensity in August when the spring harvest had to be collected and the winter harvest sown. The agricultural season allowed so little margin for experimentation that one is not surprised at the conservatism of the Russian peasant where any change in working routine was concerned; one false step, a few days lost, and he faced the prospect of hunger the next year.

As soon as the soil, hard as rock in the winter, softened, the peasant household went into the fields to plough and plant the spring crop. In the northern and central regions, the principal spring crop was oats, and the principal winter crop rye, the latter of which went into the making of black bread, the staple of the Russian peasant. In the nineteenth century, the peasant consumed on the average three pounds of bread a day, and at harvest time as much as five pounds. Wheat was less cultivated there, partly because it is more sensitive to the climate, and partly because it requires more attention than rye. To the south and east, rye yielded to oats and wheat, the latter grown mostly for export to western Europe. The potato came late to Russia and did not become an important crop in the nineteenth century, with only 1 \ per cent of the cultivated acreage given to its cultivation (1875). The coincidence of a major cholera epidemic accompanying the introduction of the potato into Russia in the 1830s caused all kinds of taboos to be associated with it. In the garden plots attached to their houses, the peasants grew mainly cabbages and cucumbers which, next to bread, constituted the most important items in their diet. They were usually eaten salted. Vegetables were essential to the peasant diet because the Orthodox church prescribed that on Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as during four major fasts lasting several weeks each, its adherents were to abstain not only from meat but from all foods derived from animals, milk and its byproducts included. The national drink was kvas, a beverage made of fermented bread. Tea became popular only in the nineteenth century. The diet was acrid and monotonous but healthy.

Peasants lived in simple log cabins called izby (singular, izba). They furnished them sparingly with a table and benches and little more. They slept on earthen stoves which occupied as much as a quarter of the izba's space. As a rule, no chimneys were constructed, and the smoke