Poor relief in rural Russia: evidence from Yaroslavl Province, 1750-1860

"This paper examines welfare provision in Russian serf society, using archival evidence for the Sheremetyev family’s Voshchazhnikovo estate in Yaroslavl province (central Russia). According to the conventional view, Russian peasant society was marked by a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth, with arable land held communally and distributed among households in accordance with their labour capabilities and consumption needs. In this system, only households that suffered temporary setbacks – such as loss of a draught animal or labourer – are thought to have required assistance, and in these instances, the peasant commune is supposed to have made provision. In the first part of the paper it will be argued that this was not the case – at least not in rural Yaroslavl. First, Russian peasant society was actually highly stratified. Second, feudal dues and taxes were usually attached to communal land – taxes and dues for which peasants were held collectively responsible. As a result, land was allocated only to those who could afford to pay, leaving the poorer members of society without access to communal resources. Finally, petitions for relief indicate that the commune was generally reluctant to provide assistance to the poor; most petitions – even those for temporary relief – were denied. The second part of the paper examines the institutional implications of the absence of a formal poor relief system, in particular the implications for the structure of the rural labour market and for the peasant household economy. It is often assumed, for instance, that large extended-family households were a cultural feature of Slavic society. But in the absence of any institutionalised form of poor relief, it seems likely that Russian peasants were forced to rely more on kin for assistance than were people in early modern England and other parts of northwest Europe. Peasants described as poor in Yaroslavl province often worked for other peasants as servants or labourers (service was a ‘lifetime’ phenomenon in central Russia, rather than a ‘lifecycle’ phenomenon, as in, for instance, England, France or Germany). Finally, it will be suggested that the absence of institutionalised welfare provision might offer at least a partial explanation for the prevalence of a ‘non-European’ household formation system in Russia during this period."