Title: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engelgardt's Letters from the country, 1872- 1887 /
Authors: Ėngelʹgardt, A. N. 1832-1893.; Frierson, Cathy A.
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Peasants Russia History; Peasants Russia Social conditions.; Agriculture Economic aspects Russia.; Russia Social conditions
Abstract: From the rye field and threshing barn to the gentry manor and village court, A.N. Engelgardt's Letters painted a lively, entertaining, and insightful portrait of Imperial Russia's rural countryside. Now translated into English for the first time, judiciously abridged, and fully annotated for the modern reader, Engelgardt's account stands revealed both as a major primary source on nineteenth-century Russian and as an ever-more-timely analysis of a peasant culture in the wake of reform. A distinguished chemist at the St. Petersburg Agricultural Institute, Engelgardt was an eloquent spokesman on behalf of Russia's peasant majority. Accused of conspiratorial activities by the Tsarist government, he was exiled in 1871 to his modest estate in impoverished Smolensk province, where, under police surveillance, he wrote his Letters for publication in St. Petersburg. With scientific precision, Engelgardt produced a comprehensive eyewitness account of the peasant's daily affairs and environment, with detailed descriptions of land reform, reflections on the role of peasant women and the effects of emancipation, discussions of local agriculture and the economy, and vivid accounts of peasant attitudes about everything from the Russo-Turkish War to infant death. With an extensive introduction and copious notes, this translation is ideal for students of Russian history and peasant studies.
Contents: Daily life with the peasants on my estate -- Village property and charity : crusts of bread -- My natural healer : the "old woman" -- Village justice -- The peasant's poverty and dependence on local gentry landowners -- The peasant thief Kostik and the Volost court -- The question of public health in the countryside -- The rural clergy -- My trip to the Zemstvo elections -- Work done "out of respect" -- Trespassing and the peasant's sense of private property -- Peasant fatalism and attitudes toward agricultural innovation -- The substinence nature of Russian agriculture -- "Rogues exist to teach fools to be on guard" -- Honesty and industry of the Russian peasant -- Individualism in peasant farming -- A visit to the local agricultural exhibition -- Old Lyska -- The role of peasant women in the rural economy -- Peasant individualism in labor -- Peasants as skilled laborers -- Intelligence of the Russian peasant -- Rural responses to the Russo-Turkish war -- The diggers' artel as a model of collective labor -- Extended peasant households, collective labor, and prosperity -- Individualism of the peasant woman -- The futility of legislation for the village -- The peasant economy in post-emancipation Russia -- New district officials -- Persecution of local Jews -- Bureaucratic measures to prevent plague -- My descent into alcoholism -- The economics of seasonal labor for the peasant -- Prospering peasants in the "happy little corner" -- The peasant exploiter : the Kulak -- Peasant's rumors about the land -- Peasant land purchases and local farming -- The promise of phosphorite fertilizer for Russian agriculture.