Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period
by Christine Worobec
Category: History

Peasant Russia is a comprehensive examination of peasant life in central Russia in the decades immediately following serf emancipation. Using interdisciplinary methods of family history, anthropology, ethnography, and women's studies, Christine Worobec explores the world of peasant households and communities, elements of which live on in today's Soviet Union. In full detail she shows how peasant Russia retained its traditional institutions and customary practices in the face of the economic changes associated with industrialization and urbanization. The book draws on previously unexamined judicial, folklore, and household records to assess the durability of the extended Russian peasant family and the customs linking it to the community. The Russian peasants portrayed here actively shaped their society, developing a variety of economic and social strategies to cope with their harsh environment and the demands of the state. Discussing their efforts to safeguard their way of life through courtship and marriage rituals and through such social restrictions as property devolution practices, a misogynist patriarchalism, and severe penalties for deviant behavior, Worobec reveals that peasant traditionalism impeded the impact of modernization and cushioned its effects.