The Invention of the Russian Rural Commune: Haxthausen and the Evidence

Author(s): T. K. Dennison and A. W. Carus

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Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 561-582
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 Joural, 46, 3 (2003),pp. 56I-582 ? 2003 CambridgeUniversityPress
TheHistorical
DOI: Io.IoI7/Soo 18246Xo3003145 Printedin the United Kingdom

THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN

RURAL COMMUNE: HAXTHAUSEN AND
THE EVIDENCE
T. K. DENNISON
Downing College,Cambridge

and

A. W. CARUS
University of Chicago

A BSTRACT. In theI840s the GermanRomanticAugustvonHaxthausenoriginatedtheidea, in a book

reportingon his travelsthroughRussia, that collectiveownershipof land and otherassetswas integralto
thetraditionalcultureof theRussianruralcommune.Russianintellectualsacceptedthisideaand madeit the
basisfor political ideals and social theories(evenafterI9I7, as in the case of AleksandrChayanov).7he
I86i EmancipationAct had broughtcollectiveownershipof land into existenceby law, but Haxthausen's
own theory- whichrelatedto raroslavl'provincein thefirst half ofthe nineteenthcentury- has neverbeen
tested.This articledoes that, andfinds that nearlyall parts of Haxthausen'stheory,insofaras theyare
testable,arefalse. This doesnot meanthatHaxthausen'stheorywasfalse everywhere in Russia, butit was
false for theplace he advanced it about, and be
may therefore false elsewhere. No culturalor ownership
pattern of rural society, therefore,should be assumed a priori to hold for the whole of Russia. Only
painstaking,detailedlocal studieswill tell us whichpatternsheld in whichparts of this vast and hetero-
geneouscountry.

The impact of German Romanticism on the formation of the Russian intelli-

gentsia in the early nineteenth century is well known.1 So it is less shocking than it
might seem that this largely urban group, closer to European books than to the
Russian countryside, should have accepted a theory of their own rural society
from a German Romantic, August Freiherr von Haxthausen (1792-I866), who
travelled through Russia in I843-4 at the invitation of Czar Nicholas I, and
published his StudieniiberdieinnerenZustdndeRufilandsin I846.2 Haxthausen's theory

1 See, for instance,I. Berlin, 'A remarkabledecade', in his Russianthinkers(Harmondsworth,1978),

esp. pp. II4-35 ('The birth of the Russian intelligentsia') and pp. I36-49 ('German Romanticism in
Petersburgand Moscow').
2 Haxthausen'scareer has been well documentedby Wolfgang Bobke ('Augustvon Haxthausen:
Eine Studie zur Ideengeschichteder politischen Romantik' (PhD diss., Munich, I954)),and in the
catalogueof an exhibiton his life and worksat the Universityof Miinster,P. HeBelmann,AugustFreiherr

561
562 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

of the commune proved enormously influential in Russian social and political

thought; debate about it did not ebb until after I9I7.3 In the west, Haxthausen's
theory has proven even more durable; it gained a new lease on life with the
western discovery of the works of Aleksandr Chayanov after 1945, and has many
adherents even now. Its influence on Russian and other historians is pervasive.
But is it true? Amazingly, this question is hardly discussed.
One reason for the durability of Haxthausen's theory is the peculiar difficulty
of confronting it with relevant facts. Because a version of it was essentially written
into Russian law in I86i,4 evidence about the nature of the commune from after
that date is not strictly relevant to Haxthausen's own theory. In this article we
attempt, belatedly, to provide a direct empirical scrutiny of Haxthausen's original
theory, i.e. to compare it with independent data from the region and period
(Yaroslavl' province in the first half of the nineteenth century) in which it was first
articulated.

I
A scion of one of the oldest and most established Catholic noble families in the
bishopric of Paderborn in Westphalia, Haxthausen was swept up, as a student, in
the patriotic enthusiasm of the War of Liberation, and in i813 joined the cam-
paign. When Napoleon was defeated in 1815, Haxthausen returned to G6ttingen.
He became known for his eccentric behaviour, particularly his ultra-patriotic
insistence on wearing 'old German dress (altdeutscheTracht)'.5Leading Romantic
writers were among his friends, and he edited a literary magazine with con-
tributions by, among others, Arnim, Brentano, and the Brothers Grimm. He
maintained these contacts after his return (without a degree) to B6kendorf, his
family estate, in i818, and continued to assist the Grimms with their famous
collection of German folk and fairy tales. The many literary visitors to B6kendorf
included Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who wrote the text of 'Deutschland,
Deutschland fiber Alles', and with whom Haxthausen worked on his own col-
lection of north German folk songs.6
Around I820, these folldoristic interests began to extend to historical and social
questions. The task of running the family estate after his return from G6ttingen

vonHaxthausen(1792-i866): SammlervonMdrchen,Sagenund Volksliedern, undRusjilandreisender

Agrarhistoriker
aus Westfalen(Muinster, 1992). A complete English translation of Haxthausen's book was published in
I854-5; a modern abridgement appeared as Studieson the interiorof Russia, edited with an introduction
by S. F. Starr (Chicago, 1972).
3 The best and most complete overview of these debates is C. Goehrke, Die TheorieniiberEntstehung
und Entwicklungdes 'Mir' (Wiesbaden, I964); for their political dimension, see F. Venturi, Roots of
revolution:a historyof thepopulistand socialistmovementsin nineteenth-century
Russia (Chicago, I960).
4 The enshrinement of the rural commune, approximately as described by Haxthausen, in the I86I
Emancipation Act, is discussed in detail by J. von Keussler, Zur Geschichteund Kritik des bauerlichen
Gemeindebesitzes, I (Riga, 1876), esp. pp. 224-62. HeBelmann, Haxthausen,pp. 30-1.
6
Ibid., p. 53.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 563
focused Haxthausen'sattentionparticularlyon the agriculturalfolk traditions.In
1825,he began writingpolitical polemics for the pro-Catholicpress, as well as a
historicalstudy of the 'agrarianconstitution'in Paderborn.7This book proved to
be a turning point in Haxthausen'scareer. Its advocacy of the traditionalcor-
porativeagrarianconstitutionand deprecationof the growinginfluenceof market
relations8greatlyappealedto the conservativeagrarianparty in Prussia,not least
to its effectivehead, the crown prince, the later King FrederickWilliam IV.9 On
FrederickWilliam'sinitiative,Haxthausenwas employedfor the entire decade of
the i83os by the Prussianministryofjustice. His taskwas to researchand report
on the traditionalagrarianconstitutionsof the variousprovincesof the Prussian
monarchy, to preparefor revisionsto the Allgemeines Landrecht
of 1795,which was
perceivedby the agrarianconservatives(and some senior ministers)as insensitive
to local traditionswithin the far-flungprovinces of the post-I8I5 state, whose
territoriesnow extended from Saarbriickento Memel. Haxthausen was also
chargedwith developinglegislativeproposalsto correctthis perceivedimbalance.
FrederickWilliam was enthusiasticabout Haxthausen'sfirst round of studies,
and urged his ministersto pay close attention.10But local officialsreacted with
dismay, especially in the western provinces- where the institutionsimposed by
Napoleon remained in force, and enjoyed the widespreadsupportof a growing
middle class. Haxthausen was roundly criticized for his ignorance of law and
currentjudicial practice, and his legislativeproposalswere rejectedfor their in-
consistency with 'what has always counted as lawful here up to now'.11The
interior minister von Schuckmann was equally unimpressed, and considered
Haxthausen'swork to be largely propaganda,buttressedby little more than an-
ecdotal evidence, for the 'peculiar theories to which the author is beholden'.12
None the less, the crown prince's stubborn support made possible another
round of studies, though the extensive ethnological and historical research at-
tempted in Haxthausen's previous efforts was to be abbreviated in favour of
immediate practicalrecommendations,especially'to obtain as complete a basis
as possible for legislation concerning the division of peasant holdings, peasant
inheritance, and the constitution of the village community'.l3His reports con-
tinued as before, focusing on the form of peasant holdings, stressingthe vestigial
survival,where he encounteredit, of traditional,multi-stranded,and less market-
oriented forms of property-holding.14A number of his studies and legislative
proposals were published. But as his ideas became better known, resistanceto
them increased. His erstwhile supporter Ludwig Freiherr von Vincke, who

7 A. von Haxthausen, Uberdie in denFiirstenthiimem

Paderbornund CorveyundderenConflicte
Agrarverfassung
in dergegenwdrtigen
Zeit (Berlin, I829).
8
He opposes 'certain opinions' that have 'planted themselves firmly and set themselves up as
incontrovertibletruth', especially'the idea - which firstcame to life in England- that agricultureis a
business,a branchof industry,where previouslyit counted as the basis of life itself- as well as the idea
that fields are commoditiesthat can and must be carriedto market' (ibid.,pp. vii-viii).
9 Bobke, 'Haxthausen', pp. 40ff. 10 Ibid., p. 45. n
12 Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., p. 43. 13 Ibid., p. 50. 14 Ibid., p. 53.
564 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

headed the Westphalian provincial government, protested to Berlin in I836 that

Haxthausen should not come back, as this would 'arouse in the public a very
unsavoury sensation'. He also deprecated Haxthausen's work as merely a 'hap-
hazard juxtaposition and one-sided collection of loose notes intended to under-
mine the reputation of the provincial government'.1 Others reacted similarly.
The officials of the district of Miinster, for instance, accused Haxthausen of
complete ignorance of their institutions.16 Likewise the government of the Rhine
province: 'And this Herr von Haxthausen, who as his own writing shows does not
know even the ABC of our history and conditions, presumes to pass expert
judgement upon us! '17The estates of Halberstadt went so far as to petition the
minister of justice in Berlin 'to consign Haxthausen's works to a perfect oblivion'.
The minister, exasperated at Haxthausen's slow pace and his fascination with
antiquarian details, made an attempt to transfer the eccentric baron to another
department, which, however, rejected this idea 'for many and very weighty
reasons'.18 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when Haxthausen's grant
money ran out in 1840, he was unable to renew his appointment. The final break
came in May 1842, when Haxthausen's petition to resume his travels and obtain
a permanent appointment at higher pay was turned down.
We need not take the Prussian bureaucracy and the western provincial officials
at their word to understand why they might have been appalled at Haxthausen's
approach. He was an amateur; if his work fits into a recognizable genre or tra-
dition, it is that of Justus M6ser's local antiquarianism and of the Volkskunde
inspired by Herder and the Romantics. This tradition was not only backward-
looking and conservative, hostile to the French Revolution and Napoleonic
institutions. It also defended and glorified precisely the German tradition of
the corporative and particularist forces within the German states19
Kleinstaaterei,
that constituted the very barriers to centralization the Prussian bureaucracy was
working, at all levels, to overcome. Nor did Haxthausen attempt in the least to
conceal this particularist and anti-centralizing tendency of his research. That he
apparently thought he could get away with it under the very auspices of the
most programmatically and energetically centralizing of the German states only
confirms his reputation for eccentricity.
From a present-day perspective, things look somewhat different. The later
discipline of anthropology grew out of the M6ser-Herder Volkskunde and central

15
Ibid., p. 59.
16 ' [Haxthausen] is quite unacquainted with the requisite knowledge of the constitution and of
conditions at least as far as they concern the district of Minster, and that on the contrary his infor-
mation regarding this area is factually mistaken and his judgements about our procedure are devoid of
expertise or legal knowledge' (qu. by Bobke, 'Haxthausen', pp. 59-60).
17 Ibid., p. 60. 18 Ibid.
19 On these institutional forces, see M. Walker, Germanhometowns: community,estate,and generalestate,
I648-1871 (Ithaca, NY, I97I); S. C. Ogilvie, Statecorporatism the Wiirttemberg
andproto-industry: Black Forest,
i58o-i797 (Cambridge, I997); and especially S. C. Ogilvie, 'The state in Germany: a non-Prussian
view', in J. Brewer and E. Hellmuth, eds., RethinkingLeviathan:the eighteenth-century state in Britain and
Germany (Oxford, I999), pp. I67-202.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 565
European local-history tradition that Haxthausen contributed to.20 He has also
been viewed as an important influence on, or even a founder of, the historical
school of economics later exemplified by Roscher, Sombart, and Weber.21 He
clearly had a vision for a new kind of history. 'On the nature of the communal
constitution, the most important part of all constitutions, almost nothing is to be
learned from books', he said. To provide the basis for such knowledge, 'precise
local investigations' were needed 'that would have to extend like a net over all
the Germanic peoples and lands'.22 His own ambitions to perform this task were
being thwarted, he felt, by the 'philistine' Prussian bureaucracy: 'If it is a matter
of investigating the mummies of Egypt or the inscriptions of Persepolis, then
money flows readily ... But local studies of the communal constitution, that is too
trivial! '23
He was certainly, then, a visionary for a new kind of social history that only
found institutional recognition much later. His own local research, though,
while sometimes finely observed in telling details, was often quite superficial, even
sloppy. He lacked the prolonged exposure to and participant observation within a
single locality that gave Moser's writings such integrity as they possess.24
Haxthausen shares with the Catholic 'political romanticism'25 exemplified by
the Schlegels, Gentz, Girres, Reichensperger, and Adam Muller, an aristocratic
paternalism and an 'organic' theory of society. But for him the organism of
society is local. It is specifically characterized by its corporatecomposition, the
subordination of individual rights and interests not to the Volk,the state, or the
church, but to the local corporation26 - the craft or merchant guild, the estates of
the local statelet (Kleinstaat)or province, the closed village community. These were
not uniform, but had evolved in accordance with their own geographic and social
needs and their particular history; each had its own weights and measures,
legends and traditions, local dialect, and legal customs.27

20
J. H. Zammito,Kant,Herder,andthebirthofanthropology
(Chicago,2002), esp. ch. 8; on the impactof
central European Volkskundeon Malinowski'sthinking,see E. Gellner, 'Two escapes from history or
the Habsburg impact on British thought', in A. Bohnen and A. Musgrave, eds., Wegeder Vernunft:
zum70. Geburtstag
Festschrift vonHansAlbert(Tiibingen, i99i), esp. pp. 234-5.
21 G. von Below, Die deutsche vondenBefreiungskriegen
Geschichtsschreibung biszu unserenTagen(2nd edn,
Munich, 1924), esp. p. I76.
22 Haxthausenin a letterto W. Menzel, quotedby G. von Below, reviewofW.
Sulzbach,DieAnfdnge
dermaterialistischen in Vierteljahrsschrift
Geschichtsauffassung, fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,
io (1912),
pp. 463-5. 23 Ibid., p. 465.
24 Moser's ethnographic and historical writings are discussed, with further references, by
J. B. Knudsen,JustusMiserandtheGerman Enlightenment(Cambridge,1986),ch. 4.
25 The
phrase originateswith Carl Schmitt and his book focusing on Adam Miller, Diepolitische
Romantik(2nd edn, Munich, 1925); for a wider view of the specifically Catholic movement, see
L. BergstraB3er,Derpolitische
Katholizismus(Munich, 192I).
26 On Haxthausen's social and
politicalthought see Bobke, 'Haxthausen', esp. part II, pp. 90o-62;
Haxthausen'sown most directstatementof his ideas is 'Temporissignatura',Janus:Jahrbiicher deutscher
Gesinnung, Bildung,undThat,19-20 (I845),pp. 393-468.
27 Walker, Germanhometowns;
Ogilvie, Statecorporatism;Ogilvie, 'The state in Germany'. On
the intellectual and ideological backgroundto German articulationof this corporatistview before
Romanticism,see A. W. Carus, 'ChristianThomasius,corporatism,and the ethos of the professional
566 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

II
By the time he was finally defeated by the Prussian bureaucracy, Haxthausen
already had another iron in the fire. Whether motivated by genuine historical
interest or the opportunity of employment in Russia, he had become interested in
what he regarded as the originally 'Slavic' pattern of settlement throughout much
of modern Germany. The Germanization of these areas during the past millen-
nium had, he thought, obscured but not entirely overlaid its original character,
which, he thought, was to be found intact not in Germany itself but in Slavic
lands of the Balkan peninsula and in Russia. However, many characteristics of the
original 'Slavic' pattern were still to be found in the southern and eastern parts of
Germany, he insisted, and in a few very remote areas, such as the uplands of
Trier, the original pattern had preserved itself almost completely. In these areas,
he thought or had heard, there were still villages 'where the corporation of the
commune even today counts as the sole owner of all property in land'.
To each commune member a share of the communal assets(here called inheritance),his
share of gardens,arablefields, and meadows is allocatedfor a seriesof years, to work and
to use. When that period of years is up, all his sharesrevert home to the commune, and
new sharesare measuredout and allocatedby lot.28
This is the first explicit description by Haxthausen of what is now called the
'repartitional commune'29 and is usually associated with Russia. He admits that
in most of Germany this pattern no longer retains its original character of
communal property and regular redistribution of holdings, but insists that its
spirit is none the less still corporative and communal; it forms
a republicwith a completelydeveloped,self-containedconstitution,of which an absolutely
essentialcomponent is that the individual Genosse30(commune member) clearly does not
own the authenticand true rightof propertyin the field he cultivates,but only a possession
of usufruct kind, within certain limits. Only the corporation, the commune, is the true
owner. The commune members enjoy their shares as in a cooperative.31

classes in the early German Enlightenment' (PhD diss., Cambridge, 1981); on the ideology of Klein-
staaterei,seeJ. von der Zande, Biirgerund Beamter:Johann GeorgSchlosser,r739-I799 (Wiesbaden, I986).
28 A. von Haxthausen, Uberden Ursprungund die Grundlagen der Verfassungin denehemalsslavischenLdndern
Deutschlands(Berlin, I842), p. 25.
29 The idea that the ancient
'village constitution', handed down from the first agricultural in-
habitants of eastern and eastern central Europe, lacked private property (all land and other assets being
held in common for temporary, possibly lifetime use by individual peasants) already appears in his first
book, on Paderborn, that so pleased Frederick William IV (Haxthausen, Agrarverfassung, pp. 95-6).
30 This term, which means roughly 'member of a corporation' has no direct equivalent in English;

in German, by contrast, it has a long and important history in law and political thought, traced by
Otto von Gierke in his monumental Das deutscheGenossenschaftsrecht (4 vols., Berlin, I868-I913); parts of
vol. iv were translated by Sir Ernest Barker as Natural law and the theoy of societ, 15oo to i800 (2 vols.,
East
Cambridge, I934). Some of the connotations of 'Genosse' may be gathered from its use in
Germany before 1989 as the equivalent of 'comrade'.
31 Haxthausen, Uber den Ursprung,p. 24. The basic pattern of settlement, Haxthausen maintained,
was determined once and for all by the first agricultural settlements in an area, by a kind of organic,
institutional 'path dependence'. Subsequent occupiers, even if they expel or liquidate the original
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 567
The project of investigating the intact original of this pattern conveniently be-
came more interesting to Haxthausen as his prospects in Berlin faded, and just at
this time he revealed himself an expert on the Russian rural commune. The
occasion was the Russian imperial edict of 2/I4 April 1842, permitting serfs to
own land in their own name. The bulk of his article describes the rural commune.
Although he does not specifically mention the repartition of land among com-
mune members, many elements of his later view are already present. The com-
mune is responsible for all aspects of its members' lives, he says; it elects its own
communal officers, and its representatives to the lord, who are held responsible
by him not only for obrokpayments but for collection of head tax and many other
aspects of community life; 'such a Russian village commune is a complete and
most usefully organized little republic'.32
Even without the verbal overlap in his descriptions, it is clear that he projected
his idea of the ancient pattern on to the present-day Russian commune. So it is
not surprising that, when he actually went to Russia, he found there just what
rumour or hearsay had informed him still existed in the uplands of Trier - the
original collective ownership of all property, and the regular redistribution of
arable land among community members.
He was invited to Russia by the imperial government to travel through the
country and report on the state of the peasantry.33 He was accompanied
throughout by a government representative - who, unbeknownst to Haxthausen,
was keeping a close eye on him34- and by an interpreter (he himself never
learned Russian). Departing from Berlin in early March 1843, he travelled over-
land via the Baltics to St Petersburg, where he remained until late April. He then
set out for Moscow, where he spent a few days, and in mid-May went on to
Yaroslavl'. There he spent a week, and continued east as far as Veliki Ustyug. He
then headed south on the Volga from Nizhnyi Novgorod through Kazan, Sim-
birsk, Samara, to Saratov, where he arrived at the end ofJune. He then turned
west again, overland, and arrived in Kharkov, via Tambov and Voronezh, in
mid-July. From there he continued to the Crimea, visited a Tatar community,
and embarked on a two-month visit to the Causasus35 that took him as far as
Tbilisi and Yerevan. Back in the Crimea at the end of September, he travelled
through the Ukraine back to Moscow, where he arrived a month later and stayed
until April I844, returning to Germany via St Petersburg.

inhabitants,are unable to undo the originallyestablishedagriculturalinstitutions(Haxthausen,Uber

den Ursprung,pp. IIff, 22f; cf. Haxthausen, Agrarverfassung,
pp. 97ff).
32
A. von Haxthausen, 'Der kaiserlich russische Ukas vom 2.(14.) April I842', Beilagezur Allgemeinen
Zeitung, 133 (I3 May 1842), p. 1058.
33 Recommendations from the Prussian court as well as a
long letter from Haxthausen himself to
the czar no doubt had a role in stimulating this invitation; see V. I. Semevskii, Krest'ianskiivoprosv Rossii
v XVIII i pervoipolovineXIX veka(2 vols., St Petersburg, I888), II, pp. 429-43.
34 Also, certain sources of information Haxthausen asked for were censored or
withheld; ibid.,
PP. 434-5. 35 About which he wrote a separate book, Transkaukasia(Leipzig, i856).
568 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

His entire journey through rural Russia, then, covered over 2,000 miles in
three months (or 4,000 miles in four months, counting the return journey through
the Ukraine); given the primitive roads, he must have spent 90 per cent of his
time in carriages or on boats. When he did stop, it was in cities; he appears to
have spent no more than a few days, in total, on rural estates. He did not know
the language, and he was under government supervision. Only in the winter of
i843-4 did he spend seven months in one place (Moscow), in the company of
Slavophile intellectuals - precisely those who, when his book was published a few
years later, greeted it with enthusiasm.
The first two volumes of the Studieniiberdie innerenZustdnde,das Volkslebenund
insbesondere die lindlichenEinrichtungen
Rujilandswere published in I846, the final
volume in I852. It was published simultaneously in German and French; it was
in these languages that it had its impact in Russia. Haxthausen's theory of
Russian rural society was accepted immediately by Russian intellectuals, across a
wide range of political opinion, from Aksakov to Herzen. Despite the extremely
narrow factual basis and the author's ignorance of their language, Russians across
the spectrum immediately accepted the theory more or less as we summarize it
below. The only controversy was over the originof those rural institutions. The
legal historian Chicherin challenged Haxthausen's account in I856: he disputed
the historical continuity of the repartitional commune, especially its patriarchal
origins, and regarded the commune rather as an artefact of government policies
since Peter the Great. Chicherin also disputed that the idea that communal
property was historically associated with Slavic peoples. He was immediately
attacked in the Slavophile press, not without personal invective, particularly by
the Moscow legal historian Beliayev, who had already, in I85I, published a major
study of the commune based essentially on Haxthausen's theory.36 The positions
staked out by Chicherin and Beliayev in i856 set the framework for an epic
controversy, generating a flood of publications that did not recede until the rev-
olution.37 The Slavophile position, insisting on the ancient historical roots of the
repartitional commune, was endorsed by Alexander Herzen and many other
non-Slavophile radicals, and became the ideological basis for populism, the main
Russian political opposition movement during the second half of the nineteenth
century.38 Indeed, the first excerpts of Haxthausen's book to appear in Russian
were published in 1857 by the leading populist Chernyshevsky.39
Through this entire controversy, despite its enormous political and economic
ramifications, few of the participants questioned Haxthausen's descriptive ac-
count of the Russian commune; only its origins were in dispute.40 By the time it
occurred to anyone to question the reliability of Haxthausen's data,41it was toolate
to confront Haxthausen's theory of the commune with any present reality; the

36 Goehrke, Theorien,pp. 37f 37 Ibid., p. 45.

38 also I. Berlin, 'Russian populism', in his Russianthinkers,
Venturi, Revolution; pp. 2IO-37.
39 Bobke, 'Haxthausen', p. 237. 40 Goehrke, Theorien, esp. pp. 27-89.
41 E.g. von Keussler,Gemeindebesitz,pp. I75-8I.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 569
I86I Emancipation Act established the commune in law as the effective owner of
all estate land held communally before that date.42 Whether or not Haxthausen's
theory had accurately described Russian rural institutions before I86i, something
closely resembling it was broughtintoexistenceby the Emancipation Act itself. Given
the enormous attention generated by Haxthausen's book in Russia during the
i84os and I85os, his theory may well have had an important role in bringing
about the state of affairs it purported to describe. But this should not be taken, as
it almost invariably has been, to mean that it correctly described the institutions
that existed beforethis happened. This remains an open empirical question. To
address it, let us confront Haxthausen's theory with evidence from a serf estate in
Yaroslavl' province, the very region where he claims to have observed it, and
from the century or so before I86I.

III
What Haxthausen saw in Russia confirmed and added texture to ideas he already
had before his trip. Still, he says, his observations are hard to make explicit. In
western and central Europe, he says in the preface to the Studien,basic concepts of
rural society (like 'Gemeinde' or 'Commune') are broadly similar, and have
meanings in the various western and central European languages, even in the
western Slavic languages, that broadly correspond to each other. These societies
have been in mutual contact for millennia, their institutions have converged, and
their language for describing these institutions is essentially uniform.43 Russia is
quite different, he says; here we have a society whose outside contacts have been
minimal. Certainly its elite has had substantial contact with the west over the
past century, since Peter the Great - but at the cost of contact with, or even
knowledge of, their own rural society.44 So: 'Whoever wants to travel to Russia
and thoroughly investigate conditions there, viewing the life of the people with an
unprejudiced eye, must above all forget everything that he has read about it
abroad. 45

42
Haxthausen himself was involved, through correspondence with highly placed Russian court
insiders, in the deliberations leading up to the post-emancipation settlement; see A. Cohausz, ed.,
August von Haxthausen,Editha von Rahden: Ein Briefwechselim Hintergrundder russischenBauernbefreiung
i86i
(Paderborn, I975), as well as M. Stoyanoff-Odoy, Die GroffJiirstin
HelenevonRuf3landundAugustFreiherrvon
Haxthausen:Zwei konservative Reformerim Zeitalter
derrussischen (Wiesbaden,1991).
Bauernbefreiung
43 Haxthausen, Studien,I,
pp. vI-vIn.
44 A circumstancethat Haxthausenfound
deeply troubling:'By far the greaterpart of the Russian
elite has received a completely west European education. Though one cannot claim that this has
destroyedtheir national consciousness,it is certainlytrue that the love of national customs,the desire
to protect national institutionsand preservethem carefully,carryingthem forwardand regenerating
them, has been greatlyweakened.As men of such educationhave ... the greatestinfluenceon the path
followedby the government,... they have only too often treatednationalcustomsand institutionswith
hostility,or have tried to replace them stealthilywith strange,foreign ones' (ibid., III,p. II9).
45
Ibid., I, p. x.
570 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

Russian customs and institutions are not as radically different as those of

Turkey or Persia, but the presence of certain superficial similarities, e.g. Chris-
tianity, Haxthausen warns, is all the more likely to mislead us into assimilating
Russian institutions to our own.46 And this trap is all the more perilous because
the literate Russian elite has itself fallen into it from the other side, uncritically
assimilating their own institutions to western categories.47
The Latin communitasand the German Gemeinde,he says, mark a uniform legal
category throughout Europe, with only minor regional variations, that is used the
same way across all classes of society. The concept of the Russian commune,
the mir, by contrast, means something quite different in the Russian legal and
bureaucratic language, the language of the educated, 'than in the language of the
people, the life and world view of the people themselves .48 Among the educated,
and in legal documents, it means the same as in the west: 'the complex of people
who happen to be living together at a single place, the district of a city, a market
town, a village'.49But:
The meaning and concept of this word is somethingquite differentin the people's way of
seeing it. Even the literalmeaning of the word mirindicatesthe sacrednessof the concept,
for it means both commune and world;only the Greekword kosmos expressessomethinglike
the concept behind this Russianword.50

And while Haxthausen is unable to recollect a single aphorism or saying in a

Germanic or Romance language 'in which the power, the justice, the sacredness
of the commune is recognized', the Russian language is full of such sayings.51The
concept of the mir,he concludes for this and other reasons, is deeply embedded in
the Russian folk character, of which its agrarian constitution is a direct expression.
Haxthausen acknowledges the difficulties of attempting to express something so
radically incommensurable with western concepts, but (resorting like his modern
colleagues to something like 'thick description') he does give an account of what
lay at the bottom of the Russian concept of the mir, stressing especially three
aspects: (I) its spontaneity, as arising without compulsion (and indeed asserting
itself against contrary compulsion) from the character of the people, and reflecting
an organic development from the origins of agriculture; (2) its patriarchal or
paternal nature, as arising from the concept of family; (3) its emphasis on equality.52
At this level of generality, Haxthausen's theory of the Russian commune is
impossible to test, and indeed he himself stresses this. He emphasizes the holistic
nature of social Verstehen,again in very modern-sounding terms, insisting that the
folk character or character of a people itself cannot be described; we are only able
to describe certain manifestations of it:
is a task of whose true and compre-
The representationof a folk character(Volkscharakter)
hensive solution no one is really capable. Who could bring such an infinite manifold

46 47 Ibid., III, 48
Ibid., IIi, p. ii6. p. I20. Ibid., III, pp. 120-1.
49 Ibid., III, p. 12I. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., III,p. I22.
52
Ibid., III, pp. I22-5.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 57I
together into a uniform picture!- But customs and usages and ways of life can be de-
scribed and represented; and these always emerge from the folk character, and it is
reflectedin them. If one also seizes on a few eloquentlycharacteristicfeaturesof popular
life, then it might well be possibleto sketcha reasonablytrue picture,in broad and general
terms, for the ethnographicdepiction of a folk character.53
In a certain sense, then, Haxthausen's theory claims to be based on holistic insight
into a phenomenon radically incommensurate to western concepts and not
available to empirical scrutiny. None the less, he anticipated that some of his
particular claims might be challenged, and excuses himself in advance for any
possible errors of fact. Enlightened persons of good will, he says, should take the
author's method into account when they scrutinize his results, and 'whether they
agree with him or rectify him, he only wishes that the book may give occasion for
improvements, and stimulate progress.'54
In that spirit, confident that we are among the 'enlightened persons of good
will' the baron had in mind, we proceed, somewhat belatedly, to a very
straightforward 'rectification' that no one in the I84os or I85os thought to
undertake. We identify seven specific claims he makes in his book, all deriving
from his holistic view of the Russian commune, that are sufficiently concrete to be
confronted with relevant, unambiguous, and independent evidence.
For maximal relevance, this evidence should come from the region and period
in which Haxthausen first formulated his theory. Accordingly, we use data from
I750 to I860 for Voshchazhnikovo, a Sheremetyev estate in Yaroslavl' province,
which consisted of thirty villages and was home to some 3,000 serfs, a third of
which lived in the village of Voshchazhnikovo (after which the estate was named).
Of the Sheremetyev estates, Voshchazhnikovo was neither the richest nor the
poorest; it specialized neither in agriculture nor in the manufacture of any
particular product. Like many estates in this region, its serfs fulfilled their
obligations to the landlord in cash or kind (obrok)instead of labour (barshchina).
Voshchazhnikovo was located approximately 30 kilometres north-west of the
city Rostov Veliki and 50 kilometres south-west of the provincial capital Yaroslavl'.
It is in this area that Haxthausen undertook what seems to have been his only
visit to a rural estate, and in connection with which he first describes the repar-
titional commune.55 We use data from census documents, communal meeting
minutes, landlords' instructions, estate correspondence, and serf petitions for the
Voshchazhnikovo estate to test the seven specific claims below.56

Claim I Land repartitions wereundertaken

harmoniouslyby consensus,withoutconflictor
Haxthausen acknowledges the obvious difficulties in the way of an
controversy.
appropriate repartition, given the many variables involved,57 but none the less
maintains that Russian peasants overcame them 'easily', not only because of

53 Ibid., III,pp. I26-7. 54 Ibid., I, p. x. 55 Ibid., I, pp. I03-I4, II9-28.

56 All source materialsare located in the RussianState Archivefor Old Documents
(RGADA),and
the State Archive of Yaroslavl'Province(GAYaO). 57 Haxthausen,Studien,
I, p. I24.
572 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

traditionally trained surveyors, but also because the entire institution arose from
peasant culture and corresponded to their deepest values. He describes the scene
of a repartition in glowing terms: 'At the distribution of the land and the division
by lot the entire community is present, as a rule, women and children included,
but great peace and order prevails. Never is there conflict, indeed the greatest
justice and rightness prevails.'58

This was not, however, the case in Voshchazhnikovo. A large proportion of the
disputes among estate serfs had to do with the allocation of communal lands. In
fact, conflict was such a common feature of the redistribution process that one of
the land surveyors for the estate, in a letter to the Voshchazhnikovo estate ad-
ministration in 1775, suggested that a formal procedure be established for dealing
with such disputes.59 In his report, he notes that five disputes from the 1774 re-
distribution have not yet been resolved and that an upcoming survey of serfs'
additional holdings is sure to result in even more conflict.60
It is not surprising that such disputes arose, since each parcel of land on the
Voshchazhnikovo estate had a feudal obligation attached to it. When allocated a
portion of the communal land, a serf was simultaneously allocated a portion of
the communal tax burden. Serfs were therefore anxious to ensure (a) that they
were not being given too large a share of the feudal tax burden and (b) that the
amount of land they received was commensurate with the feudal dues they were
required to pay. In Voshchazhnikovo, repartition usually involved first dividing
the communal lands among the estate villages and then among individual serf
households within each village. In this way, conflict over communal holdings
could occur among individual serfs, as well as among villages on the estate.
In most repartition disputes, serfs complained that they were being forced to
pay for more land than they had actually received. In 1825, for instance, serfs
from the village of Kulelevo argued that on the basis of a repartition carried out in
i798 they were being forced to pay feudal dues for I05 desiatin(about 283-5 acres)
of communal land when they had only been given access to 94 desiatin(about
253.8 acres).61In their petition to Count Sheremetyev, they demanded that they
be allocated the additional I desiatin(about 29-7 acres) or that their feudal dues be
reduced accordingly.62 Similarly, in I844 the serf Pyotr Shepelyov from the village
Dem'ian complained that he had been paying feudal dues since I842 for land
he had never held.63 He claimed that instead of allocating land to him during the
last repartition, the village officials had arranged to let the land to serfs from a
neighbouring estate for their own profit. Shepelyov thus demanded that he
receive his share of the land or be relieved of his feudal obligations.64

58
Ibid., i, p. 125. 59 RGADA, f. 1287,op. 3, ed.khr.323,11. 8-9.
60 61 Ibid., ed.khr.930, 1. 2.
Ibid., 11.8-9.
62 Ibid., 1. 2. 63 RGADA, f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. i635, 1. 50.
64 Ibid., 11.50.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 573
Disputes could also arisewhen a serf or a villagewas expected to take on more
communal land (and dues) than they felt they could afford.In 1853,for instance,
the village Lykhino petitioned to have 'I9 souls' worth of land'65in their pos-
session reallocated to another village, as they were unable to pay the dues.66
Other disputes on the Voshchazhnikovo estate concerned the quality of land
allotments.In I724,the serfsof Musorovocomplainedto the estateadministration
that their allotmentswere of a poorer quality than those held by serfs in neigh-
bouring villages. In particular,they argued that the land was too far away from
the village for them to be able to cultivateit.67
These examples indicate that, contraryto the Haxthausen view, land repar-
tition on the Voshchazhnikovoestate was a contentiousundertaking,which fre-
quentlyresultedin conflictand controversy.Furthermore,in each of these cases a
petition was made to the landlord's administration,suggestingthat disputes in
Voshchazhnikovo were not overcome 'easily' by serfs themselves, but only
through the interventionof estate authorities.

Claim 2 The commune was a kindof patriarchal extended family, and its constituent
familieswereorganized In
patriarchally.particular,thismeant (a)thattheoldestmalemembers
of thecommunewereresponsible userightsamongmembers,
for allocating and(b)thateveryone
withoutexception
enjoyed equaluse rights.6While Haxthausen rarely acknowledges
even the existence of poverty or stratification(see claim 7 below), we take (b) to
imply that in cases where a household is poor, welfare provision is provided
spontaneouslyby the commune. We also take Haxthausen's persistent claims
about the 'patriarchal' nature of Russian rural society to imply that female-
headed householdswere absent or rare.

The notion of a communitygovernedby its most senior members- the so-called

'white beards'-is not reflected in the evidence for Voshchazhnikovo. The
communal meeting minutes suggest that young or middle-agedmembers of the
society were chosen to serve as communal officersmore often than were senior
members. For instance,in I807, the two estate zemskie(clerks),Vasily Ivanov and
Semyon Arnautov, were 28 and 31 years old respectively.69 In 1821, the vybornyi
(selectman),Vasily Blazhin,was 43; the starosta
(elder),Ivan Filiseyev,was 40; the
(accountsmanager),Ivan Dolodanov, was 30; and the zborsh-
prikhodo-raskhodchik
chiki(taxcollectors),Ivan Kouzov, Matvei Deulin, and Yakov Rubezhev,were 55,
30, and 33 respectively.70 In i850, the vybornyi,Kozma Pavlov, was 33; the starosta,
Ivan Antipin, was 26; the zborshchiki,
Vasily Efremov, Mikhail Shaidakov, and
Ivan Arnautov,were 38, 27, and 26 respectively.71

65
According to referencesin the estate documents, one soul's worth of land was approximately
6 desiatin(about 16-2 acres). 66 RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 2058, 1. I.
67 L. S. Prokof'eva,Krestianskaiaobshchina
v Rossii(Leningrad,1981), pp. 69-70.
68 69 RGADA, f.
Haxthausen,Studien,I, p. i56. 1287,op. 3, ed.khr. 66I, 1. II.
70 71
Ibid., ed.khr. 733, 1. 3. Ibid., ed.khr. I022, 1. 3.
574 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

That communal officials were so young cannot be ascribed to underlying

demographic features of this society. Evidence from nominal lists for the period
I8I6-58 suggests that roughly 15 per cent of the male population in Voshchazh-
nikovo was over 50 years of age.72 In fact, many of the officials mentioned above
came from households which contained other, more senior male members such
as fathers, brothers, or uncles. Thus seniority does not seem to have been a
prerequisite for communal office-holding on this estate.
Regarding Haxthausen's notion of equal use rights, we will see evidence for a
high degree of social stratification on the Voshchazhnikovo estate under Claim 7
below. Beyond that, the commune often had to be forced by the landlord's of-
ficials to provide assistance to the estate poor.73 In I822, for instance, in a letter to
estate administrators, Count Sheremetyev noted that there were serfs on his
estates living in abject poverty, and demanded that such persons be provided with
relief from communal funds 'so that they should no longer be forced to beg from
others'.74

Finally, regarding household headship, at the time of Haxthausen's trip, one

quarter to one half of all households in the village of Voshchazhnikovo were
headed by females (roughly 45 per cent in 1838 and 24 per cent in i850).75 This is
a very high proportion - much higher than is observed on average in western and
central European rural settlements during the same period.76

Claim 3 All estatepropertieswere dividedamong(or open to commonuse by) the estate

serfs, not ony communalland, but also meadows,fisheries,andforests. 'The principle',
Haxthausen writes, 'is that the entire population of a village community is
regarded as a unit, to which belongs the whole area of arable fields, of meadows,
grazing areas, forests, streams, dikes, etc.' As to which of these were partitioned
and which open to common use: 'Forests and meadows, hunting and fishing
rights remain undivided, and everyone participates equally in the right of their
use. But arable fields and meadows are actually partitioned equally among all
male inhabitants according to their value.'77

Access to fisheries, mills, and the market square in Voshchazhnikovo was gener-
ally not divided equally among member households. Nor was it open to common
use. Instead, the estate administration, together with the commune, auctioned off

72 Calculated from revizskieskazkifor Voshchazhnikovo, RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 2553 (I834)
and I941 (i850), and in GAYaO, f. ioo, op. 8, d. 647 (i8i6) and d. 2656 (1858), as well as podvornyeopisi
in RGADA, f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43.
73 RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 848,11. 2-4. 74 Ibid., 1. 2.
75 This phenomenon has been noted in the literature and ascribed to male outmigration in the
region. However, the Voshchazhnikovo data are especially interesting in that they are derived from
dejure sources (soul revisions and household listings) which, in effect, control for migration.
76 See S. Ogilvie andJ. Edwards, 'Women and the "second serfdom": evidence from early modern
Bohemia', Journal ofEconomicHistory, 60 (2000), pp. 961-94, esp. Table i.
77 Haxthausen, Studien, I, p. I24.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 575
control over these rights of access or usage to the highest bidder for a fixed period.
In I816, for instance, a two-year lease on the market square was granted to the
serf Andrian Dolodanov for 287 roubles per year.78 In 1817, the serf Il'ia Mos-
tovshchik bid 70 roubles per year for a four-year lease on the estate fisheries.79
The serfs who purchased the rights to these spaces could then use them as they
wished; they could sell rights of access to fellow villagers (e.g. for stalls in the
market square) or retain them for themselves.
The estate administration also permitted serfs from outside Voshchazhnikovo
to make bids for the rights to estate commons. Landlords' instructions from 1796
specifically state that rights to mills and fisheries should be annually auctioned off
to 'either outsiders or estate serfs .80 In fact, bids from outsiders were sometimes
successful; e.g. in 1847 the rights to two of the estate mills were owned by the 'free
peasant' Ivan Selunyev.81
Pastures and forests were handled somewhat differently. Access to pasture land
was monitored very closely by the estate administration, as were all agricultural
matters. It was not up to the commune alone to decide how rights to these
resources should be distributed. The same was true of forest land, access to which
was supervised by the landlord's officials. Despite the fact that much of the land
around Voshchazhnikovo was forest, there was no official 'communal woodland'
on the estate. The forest was the property of the landlord and he alone decided
how it was to be rationed.82 Evidence suggests that a certain amount of
the landlord's forest was made accessible to estate serfs, in accordance with the
amount of communal land in their possession (or, in other words, in accordance
with the amount paid in feudal dues).83Wood could be cut for domestic use only;
the sale of timber was strictly forbidden. Fines were levied by the estate man-
agement for the unauthorized cutting and usage of wood.84

Claim 4 Communalofficeswereacceptedas an honour,spontaneously and voluntarily.In

Haxthausen's own mind, this was an obvious extension of Claim 2; under the
auspices of traditional, patriarchal authority, obedience and co-operation were
unquestioning.85 To be a commune elder (starosta)was a great honour, which
could no more be avoided or delegated than the familial status of father; 'the
free commune elects its eldest (starosta)and obeys him unconditionally; he is not a
delegate or a representative for them but a father, with full paternal authority'.86

Contrary to this view, the evidence for Voshchazhnikovo suggests that serfs did
everything they could to avoid holding communal offices. The estate archive is
full of petitions from serfs explaining why they could not possibly be expected to

78 79 Ibid., 1. 3.
RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 864,1. 2.
80 Ibid., ed.khr. 81
555, 1. 24. Ibid., ed.khr. I782, 1. 2.
82 This is in contrast to communal arable which was designated by the landlord, but distributed
among serfs at the discretion of the commune.
83 f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. 555,1. 24. 84
RGADA, Ibid., 1. 24.
85 Haxthausen, 86
Studien, I, pp. I04 and I2I. Ibid., II, p. I50.
576 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

serve as commune elder, tax collector, or bookkeeper, etc. Some, like Yakov
Rubezhev, argued that they could not afford to take so much time away from
theirlivelihoods(officerswere usuallyexpectedto serveone-yearterms).87Others,
like Matvei Deulin, argued that it was necessaryfor them to spend most of the
year workingoutsidethe estate, makingit impossiblefor them to performofficial
duties.88Stillothers,likeVasily Uliankov,insistedthat poor health renderedthem
incapableof carryingout the tasksassignedto them.89
In practice it was remarkablyeasy for an officer-electin Voshchazhnikovoto
avoid communal service.All he needed to do was hire another estate serf to do
the job in his place. In most of the petitions concerning communal offices, serfs
explained their reasons for not accepting the job and then noted that they had
hired another to take it up for them.9?This was usually enough to satisfy the
commune and the estate administration,who were mostlyconcernedwith getting
the positionsfilled as quicklyas possible.
This reluctanceto accept communalappointmentssuggeststhat many serfson
this estate were unwillingto give their effortsto the commune. At the very least,
it indicates that communal offices were associated with a high degree of un-
pleasantness,which serfswere willingto go to greatlengths(andexpense)to avoid.
Claim 5 Peasantslivedfromtheircommunal if it existedat all,
lands;privateproperty,
was at besta marginal phenomenon.'As no commune member has any enclosed
and separateprivate land, he also cannot leave any to anyone. But his sons, as
new-born family members, have a family right, by virtue of birth itself, to the
entiretyand its use rights.'91

Very few householdson the Voshchazhnikovoestate lived from their communal

lands. In fact, householdinventoriesindicate that very few lived from agriculture
alone, and those who did were among the poorer members of the society.92
Agriculturewas not very profitablein this part of Russia; the growingseasonwas
shorter and the quality of the soil poorer than in the Black Earth region to the
south. Most serfs made their living from non-agriculturalactivities (including
rural industryand crafts, trade, transport,and domestic service).None the less
Count Sheremetyev insisted that each serf household take on and cultivate a
portion of the communal holdings. These communal lands were considered a
burden by many households;roughlyone thirdlet their allotmentsto other serfs
or hired labourersto cultivatethem.93
Voshchazhnikovo serfs did hold land privately, though, and in substantial
quantities. According to an estate report from I858, serfs held 9,I76 desiatin(about
24,775acres)in communallands, while 'lands purchasedby the serfsthemselves'
totalled 5,646 desiatin(about I5,244 acres).94Private ownership was not merely a

87
RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 733, 1. I2.
89
Ibid., ed.khr. I745, 1. 4.
91 Haxthausen, Studien,I, p. I56.
93 RGADA, f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43.
88 Ibid., 1. 13.
90 Ibid., ed.khr. 733, 1745.
92 RGADA, f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43.
94 RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 2320, 1. IO.
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 577
phenomenon of the mid-nineteenthcentury;referencesto privateholdingsoccur
much earlier. For instance, a set of contractsfrom I759 details sales of land to
Voshchazhnikovo serfs.95And landlords' instructionsfor 1796 refer to 'those
lands purchased by the serfs themselves, and in their possession, for which no
payments are made into my treasury'.96Nor could private property be called
a 'marginal' phenomenon. Land transactionscontractsfor this period suggesta
lively marketin real estate as do credit agreements,where privateland was often
offeredas loan collateral.97Finally,frequentreferencesto privateholdingsappear
in serf wills and inventories.
But was privateproperty'marginal' in the sense that most of it was held by a
wealthy minority? On the Voshchazhnikovo estate, it was not only the rich
'capitalist' serfs- the kulaki-who purchasedprivateholdings.Landownerswere
a diverse group, with many themselves working as servants in Moscow or St
Petersburg.For instance, the serf Grigory Kovin, who purchased 900 roubles'
worth of land in 1832, worked as a live-in servant. Egor Dolodanov, who had
several private holdings, was engaged in trade in St Petersburg.And sisters
Natal'ia and Anna Zhukova,who made a living workingfor others on the estate,
held land worth 6,000 roublesin a neighbouringdistrict.98

Claim 6 Theonlywayto wealthin thecommune was byhavinga largefamily.Families

wereinvariabylargeandextended, andsonsmarried as soonas theypossiblycould.'A nu-
merous family is nowhere a greater blessing than among Russian peasants',
Haxthausen claims, and says that it was in the father'sinterestto ensure that his
sons marriedas soon as possible: 'For it is the Russian custom that as long as the
father, as head of family, is alive, the marriedsons do not form separatefamilies,
or separatehouseholds. So every marriageis to the greatestprofit of the head of
the family,as he therebyacquiresa new share of land.'99The assumptionhere is,
of course, that all land is communal, and is allocatedper marriedmale, so there
would be an incentive to maximize the number of marriedmales in the family.

It is ironic that Haxthausenshould have made this observationwhile travellingin

Yaroslavl'province, where households are thought to have been smaller,on av-
erage, than in other parts of Russia.100This is consistentwith findingsfor Vosh-
chazhnikovo,where mean household size in the nineteenth century fluctuated
between 4-8 and 5.3.101These figures are not substantiallydifferentto those for

95 Ibid., ed.khr. 229. 96 Ibid., ed.khr. 555, 1. 2I.

97 Ibid., ed.khr. 1108, 1155, I523.
98 This informationwas obtained by linking purchase contracts (RGADA, f. 1287,op. 3, ed.khr.
1108, II55) with household listings (RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43).
99 Haxthausen, Studien,I, p. I28.
100V. A. Aleksandrov,'Typology of the Russianpeasantfamilyin the feudalperiod', SovietStudies
in
History(Fall i982), pp. 26-62; M. Mitterauerand A. Kagan, 'Russian and central European family
structures:a comparativeview', JournalofFamilyHistory,7 (1982),pp. 103-31.
101Calculatedfrom data in soul revisionsand podvornyeopisifor Voshchazhnikovo(see n. 72).
578 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

rural Westphalia in the nineteenth century.102Furthermore, not all households on

the estate were multiple-family ones, in which married sons lived at home with
their parents. At the time of Haxthausen's trip, fewer than one third of the
households in Voshchazhnikovo were of this sort (22 per cent in I838 and 30 per
cent in I850).103Finally, if we take the assertion that 'sons married as soon as they
possibly could' to mean that they married extraordinarily early, again the data do
not support the claim. Evidence for Voshchazhnikovo suggests that age at first
marriage for males rose during the nineteenth century from a low of 22-1 in i816
to a high of 26-4 in i858.104
There is a more fundamental problem, though, with this claim. Haxthausen's
notion that 'a large family is the peasant's greatest wealth' is based on the
assumption that the repartitional commune was the main mechanism for the dis-
tribution of wealth in Russian peasant societies. The commune is supposed to
have redistributed land periodically to its members in response to demographic
change. When a household took on new members, it received a larger share of the
land; when it lost members, land was taken away. It was in a household's interest,
therefore, to increase its number of members in order to obtain a greater share of
the communal assets.
But this view assumes the absence of institutions such as land and credit mar-
kets, which enable households to bypass the community and pursue their own
individual wealth-maximization strategies. In Yaroslavl' province, land and credit
markets were widespread and Voshchazhnikovo serfs were active participants
in them. These institutions provided serfs with a certain degree of independence
in their investment decisions; they were not forced to rely on communal assets
as their only source of wealth. The Haxthausen view also underestimates the
extent to which wealth could be acquired through non-agricultural activities.
According to household inventories and tax assessment listings, the richest serfs
on the Voshchazhnikovo estate were not those with the most arable land, but
those who engaged in trade or rural industry.105Because agriculture in this region
was not very profitable, an increase in one's share of the communal arable did not
necessarily imply greater wealth.
It seems more likely that, on the Voshchazhnikovo estate, wealthier peasants
were not well off because they had more communal land, but had more
communal land because they were wealthy and could afford to pay more in
feudal dues; it was a form of progressive taxation.106 Since all communal lands
came with feudal obligations, they were apparently distributed in accordance
with member households' ability to pay the fees rather than with household size.
An I858 listing of communal allotments by household appears to support this

102J. Schlumbohm, Lebensldufe,Familien, Hofe: Die Bauern und Heuerleutedes Osnabriickischen

Kirchspiels
Belmnin protoindustrieller
Zeit i65o-I86o
(Gottingen, I994), pp. 201-2.
103 Calculated from data in RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43 and 1941.
104 mean at calculatedfrom household registersand soul revisions
Singulate age marriagefigures
for Voshchazhnikovo (see n. 72). 105 RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43, 1283.
106 Haxthausenhimself
Interestingly, explicitlymentions an instanceof this (Studien,
I, pp. 19-20).
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 579
view. The data show no correlation between size of household and size of
communal holding, and a strongpositive correlationbetween wealth and size of
holding.107

Claim 7 Thedegree ofsocialandwealthstratification

waslow.Inparticular,
therewasno
accumulation
intergenerational of wealth
orimpoverishment.'No one can become poor; a
man may personallywaste everything,and it is no harm to his children. They
keep or obtain their share in the commune none the less, for they derive their
right not from him, but demand it as their own right by virtue of their birth as
commune members(Genossen). So they do not inherithis poverty. 108We take this
to mean that, at a minimum, the variance of the wealth distributionwas lower
than what one might find in Germany or France.

As in Claim 6, this view assumesthat accessto communalland was the only form
of wealth availableto peasants.But on the Voshchazhnikovoestate, as mentioned
earlier,communalland was notthe only source of wealth. Serfsinvestedin private
landholdings,which they were free to bequeathto their heirs.'09These landswere
free of feudal obligations and, in contrast to communal land, could not be re-
allocated to another household. Serfs also invested in their houses and the
buildings around them (such as barns and bathhouses).Houses came in many
differentvarietiesin Voshchazhnikovo:there were large, two-storeystone houses
with tiled roofsvalued at severalhundredroubles(a few at over a thousand),110as
well as small, wooden houses with thatched roofs worth only 20 or 30 roubles."'
Houses and other buildings were considered the private property of serfs and,
unlike communal land, they could be bought, sold, used as loan collateral,and
bequeathedto heirs.And serfswho engaged in tradeor craftscould investin their
businesses,which they could also pass on to the next generation.
This wide range of investment opportunitiesmade it possible for families to
accumulateand transferwealth acrossgenerations;consequently,serf society on
this estate was highly stratified. The Sheremetyev family, well aware of this
stratification,formalized it early on for the purposes of imposing a progressive

107The data in the 1858 report pertain only to households'garden plots. However, garden
plots
were communallyheld lands and, like other communal lands, were periodicallyredistributedamong
member households.The 1858reportshows grossinequalitiesin plot sizes, with some measuringover
3,000 sq. sazhenwhile others measured only 40 sq. sazhen.There does not appear to have been any
correlationbetween size of plot and size of household (calculatedcorrelationcoefficientswere stat-
isticallyinsignificant).Several householdswith fewer than five members held plots of over I,ooo sq.
sazhen,while otherswith over ten membersheld under 200 sq. sazhen.(A sazhenis unit of length roughly
equal to 2-1 metres.) House value was used as a proxy for wealth and the calculated correlation
coefficientwas significantat the -oI level. 108 Haxthausen, Studien,I,p. I29.
109References to the inheritance of private holdings can be found in various contracts, e.g.
RGADA, f. 1287,op. 3, ed.khr.977, II08, and 1523.
110Contrary to Haxthausen's claim (Studien,I, p. I33) that
peasants' houses cost them next to
nothing because they had unlimitedfree wood from supposedlycommunalforests.
111Informationon houses is in RGADA, f. I287, op. 3, ed.khr. II43. Informationon house values
can be found in f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 2320, U. i6-65.
580 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARUS

taxation system. Landlords' instructions for I8oo set out the following par-
ameters: 'those serfs who have over one thousand to several thousand roubles in
property and other capital should be considered of the first rank ... in the second
rank should be those who have five hundred to one thousand roubles in property
and capital ... in the third rank count those who have less than five hundred
roubles'.112 In reality, the disparities were even greater than suggested by these
taxation guidelines. There were serfs on the estate who claimed as much as io,ooo
or 20,000 thousand roubles in capital, while others, like widows and spinsters
without family, had little or no capital and lived on less than 50 roubles per
year.113
We conclude, then, that on the Voshchazhnikovo estate in the century before
emancipation- an average serf estate in the area, and during the period, of
Haxthausen's first 'discovery' of the repartitional commune- the account he
gives is not just misleading in details, but entirely false. Communal land was not
the basis of a self-sufficient household economy, its repartition was far from har-
monious, and the larger shares allocated to richer peasants seem to have been a
form of progressive taxation. There was no correlation between family size and
size of communal holding. There was no communal property in anything but
land. The commune was not 'patriarchal' either in the sense that its eldest
members ran it, nor in the sense that an unusually high proportion of households
was headed by men. Communal offices were shirked or avoided; those elected
often hired others to serve in their place. Poverty was far from impossible, and in
some cases extreme, though welfare provision was resisted by the commune and
had to be enforced by the landlord. Private property in land and dwellings was
widespread. Far from avoiding market transactions, serfs were active participants
in land, labour, and credit markets. Equality was neither aimed at nor achieved;
social stratification was at least as pronounced as in pre-industrial or early in-
dustrial western and central Europe, and was reinforced trans-generationally
through inheritance. Apart from the institution of serfdom itself, then, the society
and economy of Voshchazhnikovo were not so different from what Haxthausen
and
might have encountered in Westphalia or many other parts of Germany
France.

IV
The number of Russian villages or serf estates that have been studied in a way
that would enable us to test the above seven claims is still, unfortunately, very
small.ll4 Most studies of the Russian commune are cross-sectional; they focus on

112 113 Ibid., ed.khr. I39I, 1. 2.

RGADA, f. 1287, op. 3, ed.khr. 555, 1. 49.
114 Some havebeen undertaken:R. Bohac, 'Family,property,and socioeconomicmobility:Russian
peasantson Manuilovskoeestate, I8IO-I861'(PhD diss.,Universityof Illinois,Urbana, 1982);P. Czap,
'"A large family, the peasant'sgreatestwealth": serf householdsin Mishino, Russia, I814-I858', in
R. Wall,J. Robin, and P. Laslett, eds., Familyformsin historicEurope(Cambridge,1983),pp. 105-51;
S. L. Hoch, Serfdomand social controlin Russia: Petrovskoe,a villagein Tambov(Chicago, 1986); K. Gestwa,
 THE INVENTION OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE 58I
a particulartype of document (suchas communal resolutionsor landlordinstruc-
tions)across a broad range of heterogeneousruralsocieties.ll5While such studies
can provide useful backgroundinformation, they cannot tell us how the insti-
tutions they study actuallyworked in a particularlocality. To test specificclaims
of the kind Haxthausenassociateswith his largertheory of Russian ruralsociety,
it is essentialto study how institutionsworked in an overalllocal context.
This is true also of more specific claims arising from AleksandrChayanov's
reformulation of the populist and social-revolutionarytheory of the peasant
obshchina (whichin turn derivedfrom Haxthausen'stheory of the mir)in the early
twentiethcentury.11Chayanovbased his theory on cross-sectionaldata as well,117
without detailed knowledge of how local institutionsworked in any particular
village or community.None the less it is entirelypossible(thoughhere, too, there
are no local community studies to bear this out) that Chayanov'stheory comes
much closer to describing the post-I86I Russian commune accurately than
Haxthausen'soriginaltheory came to describingthe pre-I86iRussian commune.
Given the nature of the community we describe in section III above, it seems
entirely reasonable to question the assumption of an unbroken continuity
between the pre- and post-emancipationruralcommune.
The pre-emancipationcommunitywe looked at is in many ways very familiar;
it closely resembleswhat we would expect to find in other parts of pre-industrial
and early industrialEurope. Rural Voshchazhnikovowas not an autarkicsociety
of multiple-family households, in which access to resources was provided
according to members' needs. It was integratedinto its national economy (even
the world economy)throughmigrantlabour,local fairs,and marketswhere many
consumer goods were available, as well as many commercial and cross-invest-
ment ties. It was characterizedby a variety of household arrangements,a high
degree of social and economic stratification,extensive marketsin land, labour,
and credit in which peasantsfrom differentsocial strataparticipated,and a great
deal of internal conflict.ll8Not so long ago, an imagined past of harmony, ex-
tended families,and unquestionedauthoritywas often projectedon to other parts
of pre-industrialEurope, but this picture has been largely discredited,for most

in RufJland:
Protoindustrialisierung Wirtschaft,
HerrschaftundKulturin IvanovoundPavlovo,1741-1932 (Gottin-
gen, 2000). Though these studiesofferpath-breakinginsightsinto the nature of Russian ruralsociety,
the documents availableon the estates they study mostly have little direct bearing on Haxthausen's
specificclaims as formulatedabove.
115 As in V. A. Aleksandrov,Sel'skaia obshchina
v Rossii(XVII-nachaloXIX v.) (Moscow, I976).
116 On the
continuitybetween earlierpopulistviews of the ruralcommune and social-revolutionary
ideas about rural society, see E. Kingston-Mann, Leninand theproblemof Marxistpeasantrevolution
(Oxford, I983).
117 A. V.
Chayanov, Krest'ianskoe khoziaistvo:
izbrannye trudy(repr. Moscow, 1989), and Ocherki po
ekonomike trydogosel'skogokhoziaistva
(Moscow, I924); in English see D. Thorner, B. Kerblay, and
R. E. F. Smith, eds., A. V. Chayanovonthetheoyofpeasanteconomy (Madison,WI, 1986).
118For greaterdetailon many of these aspects,see T. K. Dennison, 'The
pre-emancipationpeasant
community in central Russia: Voshchazhnikovo 1750-i860' (PhD diss., Cambridge, forthcoming,
2003).
582 T.K. DENNISON AND A. W. CARTTS

parts of western Europe at least, by precisely the kinds of detailed local studies
Haxthausen himself advocated and encouraged.119 Only for Russia has the tra-
ditional picture retained some credibility. But this, we suggest, is mainly because
so little is known about it; in the absence of detailed community studies, tra-
ditional views have a tendency to survive unchecked, especially where they rep-
resent quasi-utopian wish-fulfilments for social ideologies, as Haxthausen's own
theory in some respects clearly did. Whatever may have been the case in a much
earlier period,120 or in the post-emancipation period studied by Chayanov, it
seems clear that Haxthausen's picture of the commune in his own time is at least
partly the product of a Romantic yearning for a society in harmony with itself,
and with landlords in paternal and unchallenged control.
But we cannot say on the basis of a single locality that the entire picture is false,
either; we are entitled only to say that this is an open question. Though Hax-
thausen was willing to see Germany as a patchwork of different kinds of agrarian
settlement patterns, his view of Russia - immeasurably larger in size and popu-
lation, and much more heterogeneous in ethnic composition - was of a single,
uniform pattern. It seems reasonable to doubt this. As to the question what to put
in place of this picture, we can only repeat of Russia what Haxthausen said of
Germany:
to arriveat definitehistoricalresultsand conclusions,one would above all have to attend
closely to investigationsof the ruralconstitution,going into the minutestdetails ... It is to
be hoped that these studies will eventually extend a geographicalnet over all parts of
Germany.At the moment they are too isolatedfor their exploitationto provide a sufficient
basis for combinationsand comparisonsin the large.121

119 An overview of such studies is given e.g. by P. Laslett, 'The European family and early
industrialization', inJ. Baechler et al., eds., Europeand the rise of capitalism(Oxford, 1988), pp. 234-42.
120
Though Haxthausen's view that the Russian commune represents an institutional survival from
a remote past also does not hold up, as has been repeatedly been shown: Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia
obshchina;Goehrke Theorien;S. G. Pushkarev, Krest'ianskaiapozemelno-peredelnaia obshchinav Rossii (repr.
Newtonville, MA, I976). 121 Haxthausen, Uberden Ursprung,pp. 7-9.