Legal identity and the possession of serfs in imperial Russia

Journal of Modern History

Volumn 70, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 561-587

  Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33750228465     PISSN: 00222801     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/235117     Document Type: Article

References (155)

1. This characterization derives from the work of two eminent historians, Marc Raeff and the late P. A. Zaionchkovskii. Among their many relevant works, see Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven, Conn., 1983),
2. and Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia (Boulder, Colo., 1994);
3. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v. (Moscow, 1978).
4. The scholarly literature on official and unofficial justice in the imperial period is enormous and growing, but still fragmentary. On popular uses of laws and courts, see L. V. Danilova, E. I. Indova, and N. V. Gorbushina, eds., Krest'ianskie chelobitnye XVII v. (Moscow, 1994);
5. A. V. Kamkin, "Pravosoznanie gosudarstvennykh krest'ian vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka (Na materialakh Evropeiskogo Severa)," Istoriia SSSR, no. 2 (March-April 1987), pp. 163-73;
6. G. A. Kavtaradze, "Zhaloby krest'ian pervoi poloviny XIX veka kak istochnik dlia izucheniia ikh sotsial'nykh trebovanii," Vestnik Leningradskogo universiteta, no. 20 (1968), pp. 54-61;
7. Isabel de Madariaga, "Catherine II and the Serfs: A Reconsideration of Some Problems," Slavonic and East European Review 52, no. 126 (January 1974): 47-54;
8. Edgar Melton, "Enlightened Seigniorialism and Its Dilemmas in Serf Russia, 1750-1830," Journal of Modern History 62 (December 1990): 675-708;
9. David Moon, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform: Interaction between Peasants and Officialdom, 1825-1855 (London, 1992);
10. E. S. Paina, "Zhaloby pomeshchich'ikh kiest'ian pervoi poloviny XIX v. kak istoricheskii istochnik," Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (November-December 1964), pp. 110-17;
11. M. F. Prokhorov, "O pravosoznanii pomeshchich'ikh krest'ian Rossii v tret'ei chetverti XVIII veka," in Sosloviia i gosudarstvennaia vlast' v Rossii. XV-seredina XIX vv.: Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia - chteniia pamiati akad. L. V. Cherepnina, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1994), 2:31-42;
12. D. I. Raskin, "Ispol'zovanie zakonodatel'nykh aktov v krest'ianskikh chelobitnykh serediny XVIII veka (Materialy k izucheniiu obshchestvennogo soznaniia russkogo krest'ianstva)," Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (July-August 1979), pp. 179-92;
13. L. N. Vdovina, "Krest'ianskoe ponimanie prava na zemliu v pervoi polovine XVIII v. (po materialam chelobitnykh monastyrskikh krest'ian)," in Mentalitet i agrarnoe razvitie Rossii (XIX-XX vv.) (Moscow, 1996), pp. 124-34;
14. Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (Princeton, N.J., 1990), chaps. 5-6,
15. and "The Ideal of Paternalism in the Prereform Army," in Imperial Russia, 1700-1917: State, Society, Opposition: Essays in Honor of Marc Raeff, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn and Marshall Shatz (DeKalb, Ill., 1988), pp. 95-114.
16. On the postemancipation period, see Alexander K. Afanas'ev, "Jurors and Jury Trials in Imperial Russia, 1866-1885," in Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881, ed. Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), pp. 214-30;
17. Jane Burbank, "A Question of Dignity: Peasant Legal Culture in Late Imperial Russia," Continuity and Change 10 (December 1995): 391-404;
18. Peter Czap, Jr., "Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1851-1912," Journal of Social History 1 (1967): 148-78;
19. Cathy Frierson, "'I Must Always Answer to the Law . . .': Rules and Responses in the Reformed Volost' Court," Slavonic and East European Review 75 (April 1997): 308-34,
20. "Crime and Punishment in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Criminality at the End of the Nineteenth Century," Slavic Review 46 (Spring 1987): 55-69,
21. and "Rural Justice in Public Opinion: The Volost' Court Debate, 1861-1912," Slavonic and East European Review 64 (October 1986): 526-45;
22. Stephen P. Frank, "Popular Justice, Community, and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870-1900," reprinted in The World of the Russian Peasant: Post-Emancipation Culture and Society, ed. Ben Eklof and Stephen P. Frank (Boston, 1990), pp. 133-53;
23. Joan Neuberger, "Popular Legal Cultures: The St. Petersburg Mirovoi Sud," in Eklof, Bushnell, and Zakharova, eds., pp. 231-46;
24. Peter H. Solomon, Jr., ed., Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864-1996: Power Culture and the Limits of Legal Order (Armonk, N.Y., 1997);
25. Paul W. Werth, "Baptism, Authority, and the Problem of Zakonnost in Orenburg Diocese: The Induction of over 800 'Pagans' into the Christian Faith," Slavic Review 56, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 456-80;
26. Reginald E. Zelnik, Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995).
27. See Moon, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation;
28. M. A. Rakhmatullin, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v velikorusskikh guberniiakh v 1826-1857 gg. (Moscow, 1990);
29. V. A. Fedorov, Soldatskoe dvizhenie v gody dekabristov, 1816-1825 gg. (Moscow, 1963).
30. For theoretical and comparative works that also emphasize social conflict and resistance, see Florencia E. Mallon, "The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History," American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1491-1515;
31. Gyan Pakrash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism," American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1475-90;
32. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Resistance and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, Conn., 1976),
33. and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance (New Haven, Conn., 1985);
34. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, 1993).
35. On the concept of appropriation as an alternative to internalization, see Jeanette A. Lawrence and Jaan Valsiner, "Conceptual Roots of Internalization: From Transmission to Transformation," Human Development 36 (1993): 150-67;
36. Barbara Rogoff, "Children's Guided Participation and Participatory Appropriation in Socioculturel Activity," in Development in Context: Acting and Thinking in Specific Environments, ed. Robert Wozniak and Kurt W. Fischer (Hillsdale, N.J., 1993), pp. 121-53;
37. James V. Wertsch, "Commentary," Human Development 36 (1993): 168-71.1 am grateful to Catherine Raeff for sharing the psychological literature.
38. The codification of Russian serfdom dated from the Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, which eliminated time limits on the return of runaway serfs and established state responsibility for enforcing servile relations.
39. Serfdom should not be confused with Russian slavery, which was abolished by 1725. Throughout this article, all references to legal bondage and servile labor refer to serfdom. There is a need to study other forms of servitude, such as relations of indenture, after the abolition of slavery. On slavery, see Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725 (Chicago, 1982).
40. On the role of indentured servitude in the hiring of substitute recruits, see [Statistik], Naem rekruta v polovine XIX-go stoletiia v Arkhangel'skoi gubernii (Arkhangel'sk, 1912), pp. 4-9.
41. In 1801, Alexander I granted all subjects, except serfs, the right to own uninhabited land. Although serfs always had owned land in the name of their masters, they were not permitted to purchase unsettled property in their own names until 1848. Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1961), pp. 361-62.
42. Peter I (the Great) introduced the capitation beginning in 1718. On the revisions (revizii), see E. V. Anisimov, Podatnaia reforma Petra I: Vvedenie podushnoi podati v Rossii v 1719-1728 (Leningrad, 1982);
43. V. M. Kabuzan, Narodonaselenie Rossii v XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX v. (Po materialam revizii) (Moscow, 1963),
44. and Izmeneniia v razmeshchenii naseleniia Rossii v XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX v. (Po materialam revizii) (Moscow, 1971).
45. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (hereafter PSZ): 1st ser. (I) 1649-1825, 45 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1830);
46. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (2d ser. (II) 1825-81, 55 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1830-84).
47. Here PSZ (I), vol. 8, no. 5633;
48. PSZ (I), vol. 12, nos. 9267, 9332.
49. PSZ (I), vol. 15, nos. 10796, 10855, 11490;
50. PSZ (I), vol. 16, no. 11638;
51. PSZ (II), vol. 3, no. 2378.
52. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), f. 1149 (Departament zakonov Gosudarstvennogo soveta), op. 2, d. 44. For the instructions to the Legislative Commission, see Sbornik Imperatorskogo Rossiiskogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, 148 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1867-1916), vols. 93, 107, 123, 134, 144, 147;
53. François-Xavier Coquin, La Grande Commission Législative, 1767-1768: Les cahiers de doléances urbains (Province de Moscou) (Paris, 1972), pp. 110, 161-63.
54. Provincial administrative reforms introduced by Catherine II in the 1770s and 1780s brought the protections of organized government - government beyond tax collection and conscription - to large segments of the population, including peasants. At the same time that the Catherinean reforms gave clearer written articulation to the authority of seigniors, they also made legal-administrative institutions more accessible to ordinary people. "Opis' delam arzamasskogo uezdnogo suda," Deistviia Nizhegorodskoi gubernskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii (hereafter DNGUAK), vypusk 5 (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1889), pp. 174-77, 191-93;
55. V.I. Snezhnevskii, "Opis' zhurnalam nizhegorodskogo namestnicheskogo pravleniia (za 1781-1783 gg.)" DNGUAK: Sbornik statei, soobshcheniia, opisei, del i dokumentov, t. 3 (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1898), p. 129,
56. "Opis' delam nizhegorodskogo gorodovogo magistrata, 1780-1798,"DNGUAK, t. 1, vypusk 11 (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1891), pp. 578-79,
57. "Opis' del i dokumentov nizhegorodskogo gorodovogo magistrata za 1787-1861 gg.," DNGUAK: Sbornik statei, soobshcheniia, opisei, del i dokumentov, t. 2, vypusk 15 (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1895), pp. 65-66,
58. and "Opis' delam arzamasskogo uezdnogo suda, 1804-1847," DNGUAK, vypusk 6 (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1889), pp. 260-61;
59. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 20, 1.25-25ob. On the Catherinean reforms, see Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven, Conn., 1990).
60. PSZ (I), vol. 33, no. 26469;
61. Snezhnevskii, "Opis' delam arzamasskogo uezdnogo suda, 1804-1847," pp. 269-70; RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 44, ll.23-23ob., 36ob.-37.
62. Lords still could issue passports to serfs, who then found their own employment. In legal-administrative practice, this prescription meant that arrangements between nobles and non-nobles for the use of serf labor should adhere to the general laws regulating economic activities. The legal formulation makes sense in the context of widespread but unenforceable violations of occupational restrictions based on residence and registered social category. PSZ (I), vol. 38, no. 29416;
63. PSZ (I), vol. 39, nos. 29936, 30040. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 1, dd. 12:44, ll.24-25.
64. One of the women was the mother of an illegitimate son, also covered by the agreement.
65. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 1, d. 12, ll.2-6ob. State peasants were free agriculturalists who paid the capitation and a quitrent directly to the state. In 1857-58, the tenth revision identified 49 percent of male peasants as serfs, 46 percent as state peasants, and 4 percent as appanage peasants belonging to the royal family. There was no empire-wide general census before 1897. Christoph Schmidt, Ständerecht und Standeswechsel in Russland, 1851-1897 (Wiesbaden, 1994), p. 87.
66. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 1, d. 44, ll. 28ob.-29, 43ob.-45ob. Two cases reviewed by the Senate in 1829 and 1830 led to the emancipation of serfs from Moscow and Tula provinces on grounds of possession by merchants. The merchant masters and one noble also were fined. See RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 44, l. 30-30ob.; d. 20, ll. 20ob.-30.
67. Dispossessed serf owners received four hundred rubles fora male soul and two hundred rubles for a female. The sources examined do not document whether the treasury reimbursed nobles in the eighteenth century. Such compensation would be consistent with the granting of quittances to landlords who exiled their serfs to Siberia, a practice that dated from 1760. Madariaga, "Catherine II and the Serfs" (n. 2 above), pp. 38-47.
68. PSZ (II) (n. 8 above), vol. 3, no. 2378;
69. PSZ (II) (vol. 12, no. 10149; RGIA (n. 9 above), f. 1149, op. 2, d. 44, ll. 26ob., 28-28ob., 37ob.-38, 42-42ob.
70. This distinction illustrated the difficulty of delineating administrative from judicial procedures; RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 44, ll. 25-26, 32ob.-44ob.
71. The following discussion of the Koronovskii case is based on ibid., d. 20, ll. 14-17ob.
72. There is no comprehensive description of Russian court structures for the imperial period. Legislative prescriptions, themselves sometimes contradictory, did not necessarily conform to actual practice. Multiple, overlapping, and ambiguously delineated jurisdictions and instances were the norm. See Christoph Schmidt, Sozialkontrolle in Moskau: Justiz, Kriminalität und Leibeigenschaft, 1649-1785 (Stuttgart, 1996);
73. N. N. Efremova, Sudoustroistvo Rossii v XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX vv. (istoriko-pravovoe issledovanie) (Moscow, 1993);
74. John P. LeDonne, Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism, 1762-1796 (Princeton, N.J., 1984), pp. 145-201.
75. On postreform structures, see S. A. Golunskii and D. S. Karev, Istoriia suda i ugolovnogo protsessa: Al'bom nagliadnykh posobii (Moscow, 1938);
76. Jörg Baberowski, Autokratie und Justiz: Zum Verhältnis von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Rückständigkeit im ausgehenden Zarenreich, 1864-1914 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996);
77. N. P. Eroshkin, Istoriia gosudartsvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsonnoi Rossii, 4th ed. (Moscow, 1997).
78. This peasant subsequently was purchased by Collegial Secretary Radkevich.
79. Stupishina, who admitted to perjury, and the local officials who registered illegal documents and generally mishandled the transactions associated with the case (there were no accusations of bribery) also were exempted from punishment, based on the 1826 amnesty. PSZ (II), vol. 3, no. 2378.
80. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 17ob.-24ob.
81. This decision resulted from two lawsuits forwarded by the Simbirsk provincial administration. In both cases, household serfs sought emancipation, claiming that they had been in the possession of non-nobles without written documentation.
82. In 1833, the seventh department heard a case involving peasants from Kursk province, sold by Lieutenant Prince Meshcherskii to Collegial Assessor Bakeev in 1820. Since then, the peasants had been administered by the merchant Fateev, who did not possess a legal proxy. In 1829, Bakeev sold the serfs (the number of persons is not indicated) to Captain Trubetskoi and Titular Councillor Malyshev, the latter also identified as a noble. One widow and her minor daughter remained the property of Bakeev and continued to live with Fateev, who still held no written authorizations. Citing the Koronovskii case as precedent, the Kursk provincial administration ruled, and in 1834 the Senate confirmed, that those peasants currently possessed by nobles would remain serfs. The widow and child living with Fateev would be freed, and in accordance with the law, the merchant would be fined.
83. The provincial procurator disagreed, noting that laws of 1814 and 1818 gave the heirs of personal nobles six months to sell the human property of the deceased.
84. One of the disputed cases was decided by the Kaluga provincial administration and the other by its Tula counterpart. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 24ob.-27.
85. In military service, Peter I's Table of Ranks, consisting of fourteen grades or classes, granted nobility at the lowest commissioned officer rank (rank fourteen). From 1845 only military rank eight conferred noble status. L. F. Shepelev, Otmenennye istoriei - chiny, zvaniia i tituly v Rossiiskoi imperii (Leningrad, 1977), pp. 25-35.
86. The agreement did not require that Pochepin report to Serebriakov.
87. Debt was not necessarily a sign of economic crisis: it could be an effective financial tool, and Serebriakov could have owned other estates. In this instance, however, it appears that the landlord was economically vulnerable. On the beneficial uses of debt in later times (the issue has not been examined for this period), see Seymour Becker, Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 1985).
88. RGIA (n. 9 above), f. 1149, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 27ob.-29ob.
89. In 1831, Ivanov's suit reached the Kaluga civil chamber, which returned the case to the Tula provincial administration for decision.
90. An obvious sign of legal guilt would be the purchase of a serf after he or she initiated a lawsuit. RGIA, f. 1149, op. 2, d. 20.
91. Ibid., d. 90.
92. Ibid., l. 11ob.
93. This exemption was not granted to the masters who appealed decisions emancipating their serfs. PSZ (II) (n. 8 above), vol. 20, no. 19283;
94. PSZ (II) (vol. 22, no. 20825; RGIA, f. 1149, op. 3, d. 125.
95. The sources examined do not indicate the final results of these cases. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv goroda Moskvy (TsGIAgM), f. 16 (Kantseliariia Moskovskogo general-gubernatora), op. 1, dd. 427, 477; op. 13, d. 176.
96. There is no systematic study of judicial cases in which serfs demanded freedom based on mistaken origins, illegal enserfment by noble landlords, or manumission agreements with masters (usually deceased). For examples of relevant lawsuits from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see TsGIAgM, f. 16, op. 1, dd. 427, 477; op. 13, dd. 176, 188, 215, 238, 449, 967, 992. For cases concerning the illegal enserfment of free persons, see Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Structures of Society: Imperial Russia's "People of Various Ranks" (DeKalb, Ill., 1994), pp. 67-70, 78-85,
97. and "Social Misfits: Veterans and Soldiers' Families in Servile Russia," Journal of Military History 59 (April 1995): 215-36, esp. 227-32.
98. The lower ranks of the Russian army came from servile and free social groups liable for the capitation. During the eighteenth century, the term of service was for life, reduced to twenty-five years in 1793 and to twenty in 1834. Children born after a father or husband began active service were legally free, belonged to the military, and in the case of males, were destined for induction in the army.
99. The case originated in the Arzamas district court of Nizhnii Novgorod province. "Opis' del Permskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii vyslannykh iz Senatskogo arkhiva," Trudy Permskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, vypusk 3, otdel 2 (Perm, 1897), pp. 56-57.
100. Their children would belong to the military. PSZ (I), vol. 33, no. 26376;
101. PSZ (II), vol. 12, no. 10727.
102. The measurable extent of illegal enserfment has not been established.
103. Nikitina also requested emancipation for the families of her children. TsGIAgM, f. 16, op. 13, d. 188.
104. The initial decisions of the Orel district court and provincial civil chamber were dated 1838 and 1840, respectively. In 1840, Nikitina began to appeal the rulings of the Orel authorities.
105. The local archival record does not indicate the final outcome.
106. Despite illiteracy, Nikitina's petitions contained numerous references to relevant legislation. It seems likely that she obtained assistance from persons with specialized knowledge. On this possibility, see William E. Pomeranz, "Justice from the Underground: The History of the Underground Advokatura," Russian Review 52 (July 1993): 321-40.
107. TsGIAgM, f. 16, op. 13, d. 238.
108. Elise Kimerling [Wirtschafter], "Soldiers' Children, 1719-1856: A Study of Social Engineering in Imperial Russia," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 30 (1982): 61-136, esp. 70-79.
109. During the Crimean War, the legal age limit reached thirty-seven. Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (n. 2 above), pp. 15-16.
110. 1 have not traced the final outcome of this case.
111. TsGIAgM, f. 16, op. 13, d. 449.
112. Both requests were denied.
113. The final resolution of this case is not indicated. Two similar suits from 1845 also required intervention from above - in the first case, from the minister of internal affairs, and in the second, from the Moscow military governor-general. TsGIAgM, f. 16, op. 13, dd. 967, 992. See also V. N. Trapeznikov, "O liudiakh, iskavshikh vol'nosti iz vladeniia gospod svoikh," Trudy Permskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii, vypusk 4 (Perm, 1901), pp. 142-52, esp. 146-47.
114. Richard G. Robbins has found that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, popular expectations of personalized intervention forced provincial governors to spend up to five hours a day receiving petitioners, who might also appear at any hour of the night. Richard G. Robbins, Jr., The Tsar's Viceroys: Russian Provincial Governors in the Last Years of the Empire (Ithaca, N. Y., 1987), pp. 12-64, 81-127, 146-79, 198-99, 243-45.
115. Comprehensive data are lacking, but incomplete reports from Saratov province indicate that between 1800 and 1840, serfs brought thirty-one suits on grounds of registration to persons lacking rights of ownership. Of these, only one failed, and about 120 persons were liberated. In suits against nobles, Saratov serfs prevailed in twenty-six of thirty-nine suits, and about ninety persons were liberated. See Steven L. Hoch and Wilson R. Augustine, "The Tax Censuses and the Decline of the Serf Population in Imperial Russia," Slavic Review 38 (September 1979): 403-25, esp. 419.
116. This characterization applies equally to the right of prereform soldiers to complain against officers. Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, pp. 120-23.
117. Trapeznikov, pp. 151-52.
118. Not all landlords were rich and powerful. At the time of the tenth revision (1857-58), 44 percent of serf owners possessed properties with fewer than 21 male souls, the 22 percent of noble landowners who possessed estates of more than 100 souls owned 81 percent of the serfs, and the 1 percent of landowners with over 1, 000 souls owned 29 percent of the serfs. About three-fourths of serf owners possessed fewer than 100 souls and together owned less than 20 percent of the serfs. Terence Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (London, 1968), pp. 3-14;
119. Daniel Field, The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), p. 131.
120. Trapeznikov, pp. 149-50.
121. Ibid., pp. 143-44.
122. Ibid., pp. 144-45.
123. The final outcome of this case is not described; however, it is clear from later rulings that time limits remained legitimate grounds for rejecting emancipation suits. Ibid., pp. 144-45.
124. In 1838, 140 estates were under trusteeship due to the mistreatment of serfs; by 1858, this number had increased to 193 estates containing 28,508 peasants. Between 1834 and 1845, 630 of 2,838 seigniors tried for mistreating peasants were convicted. Those nobles who were not convicted still received reprimands. Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 142-48;
125. Madariaga, Catherine the Great (n. 10 above), pp. 27-30;
126. Boris N. Mironov, "Local Government in Russia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Provincial Government and Estate Self-Government," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 42 (1994): 161-201, esp. 193-94; Prokhorov (n. 2 above), pp. 31-42; Rakhmatullin (n. 3 above), pp. 179-86.
127. Punishable abuses against subordinates included cruel treatment; excessive drill; failure to provide subsistence, salaries, and supplies; economic corruption; and the unlawful exploitation of soldiers' labor. On these points, see E. V. Anisimov and A. B. Kamenskii, eds., Rossiia v XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX veka: Istoriia, istorik, dokument: Eksperimental'noe uchebnoe posobie dlia starshikh klassov (Moscow, 1994), pp. 223-25;
128. Trapeznikov, Rossiia v XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX veka: Istoriia, istorik, dokument: Eksperimental'noe uchebnoe posobie dlia starshikh klassov (pp. 142-43;
129. Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (n. 2 above), pp. 96-148.
130. To date, no historian has systematically collected the relevant data. An 1851 reclassification of workers attached to privately owned mines in Perm province suggests the possible dimensions of illegal serfdom: 53,900 males registered as serfs in the eighth revision became state peasants. In the period 1835-58, provincial-level (guberniia) courts heard 20,000 and the Senate 15,153 cases concerning unlawful enserfment and illegal bondage. These figures do not include cases heard by district courts but not forwarded to the higher instance provincial chambers. More important, they do not encompass cases reviewed by provincial administrations (gubernskie pravleniia), which until 1845 decided lawsuits brought by serfs on grounds of possession by non-nobles. For the above figures, see Hoch and Augustine (n. 54 above), pp. 411, 419.
131. Paraphrasing Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel de Certeau distinguishes "the society that is thought" from "the society that is lived." Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York, 1988), p. 28.
132. On this theme, see Wirtschafter, Structures of Society (n. 38 above).
133. For parallels in the Soviet period, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia," Journal of Modern History 65 (December 1993): 745-70.
134. Unknown numbers of serfs also escaped servitude through flight. N. V. Kozlova, Pobegi krest'ian v Rossii v pervoi treti XVIII veka (iz istorii sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi zhizni strany) (Moscow, 1983);
135. Moon, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation (n. 2 above);
136. Schmidt, Sozialkontrolle in Moskau (n. 20 above), pp. 267-91;
137. Wirtschafter, Structures of Society, pp. 82-85.
138. The Orthodox religion played a similar role that current scholarship has not fully explored. For potential models, see Gail Lenhoff, The Martyred Princes Boris and Gleb: A Socio-Cultural Study of the Cult and the Texts (Columbus, Ohio, 1989);
139. and Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven, Conn., 1961).
140. On the lack of constituted bodies, see Raeff, Well-Ordered Police State (n. 1 above).
141. On serfdom, see V. A. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX v.) (Moscow, 1976);
142. e siècles (Paris and La Haye, 1969),
143. e siècle (Paris, 1963);
144. Steven L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (Chicago, 1986),
145. and "The Serf Economy and the Social Order in Russia," in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, ed. M. L. Bush (New York, 1996), pp. 311-22;
146. Edgar Melton, "Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture, and Agrarian Social Structure: Two Estates in Nineteenth-Century Russia," Past and Present, no. 115 (May 1987), pp. 69-106,
147. "Household Economies and Communal Conflicts on a Russian Serf Estate, 1800-1817," Journal of Social History 26 (1993): 559-85,
148. and "Enlightened Seigniorialism" (n. 2 above);
149. David Moon, "Reassessing Russian Serfdom," European History Quarterly 26 (1996): 483-526;
150. Ia. E. Vodarskii, Promyshlennye seleniia tsentral'noi Rossii v period genezisa i razvitiia kapitalizma (Moscow, 1972).
151. Mikhail M. Safonov, "Imperatorskaia vlast', gosudarstvennyi apparat i dvorianstvo v kontse XVIII v.," Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 34 (January-June 1993): 149-58;
152. Raeff, Well-Ordered Police State; Melton, "Enlightened Seigniorialism."
153. In an analysis of the actual terms of emancipation, Steven Hoch argues that "fiscal constraints dictated by the collapse of state credit institutions" explain the decision to impose redemption on former serfs. While Hoch is not concerned with political culture or functioning administration, his discussion of the 1859 banking crisis highlights the role of technical institutional issues in emancipation and the great reforms more generally. Steven L. Hoch, "The Banking Crisis, Peasant Reform, and Economic Development in Russia, 1857-1861 "American Historical Review 96 (June 1991): 795-820, esp. 795-97.
154. On the role of an enlightened bureaucracy in the emancipation and other great reforms, see W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia's Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861 (DeKalb, Ill., 1982),
155. and The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 1990).