A Wager on the Peasantry: Anti-Zemstvo Riots, Adult Education and the Russian Village during World War One: Stavropol' Province

Abstract

SEER,Vol. 79,JJo.I, Januagy 200 I A Wager on the Peasantry: Anti-Zemstvo Riots, Adult Education and the Russian Village during World War One: Stavropol' Province SCOTTJ. SEREGNY INJanuary I9I6 a military court in Stavropol' decided the fates of sixty-three peasants from the village of Aleksandriia charged with violent rioting in November 1914. According to the indictment, the accusedhad incited a crowdof two thousandpeasantswhichforcedthe release of fellow-villagersarrestedfor an earlier disorder,set fire to a school, destroyeda trader'shome and store, nearlybeat to death their volost'(township) elder and fought a squadron of police sent to the village, resulting in several fatalities and many injuries.The tribunal sentenced four of the rioters to death and forty-sixreceived terms at hard labour or prison.' The severity of the sentences came as no surprise. Stavropol' Province, a rich grain-producing region which servedas a majorsupplypoint for Russia'sArmy of the Caucasus,had been under martial law since the beginning of the war. The military overlordsof the region, headed by the Tsar'sgreat-uncle GrandDuke Nikolai Nikolaevich, wished to underscorethe point that no disorders Scott J. Seregny is Professor of History at Indiana University, Indianapolis. This article benefited from perceptive comments by Corinne Gaudin, Robert Geraci, Tracy McDonald, Kimitaka Matsuzato, Daniel Orlovsky, Franziska Schedewie, members of the History Research Seminar at Indiana University, Indianapolis and the anonymous referees and editor of the SEER. Generous support from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Office of Faculty Development at Indiana University, Indianapolis, and the Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University, made the research possible. ' Severokavkazskii krai, 6 January I9I6, no. 4, p. 3; 22 January 1914, no. 17, p. 2; 27 January I9I6, no. 2I, p. 3; for a description of the events, see A. M. Anfimov (ed.), Krest'ianskoe dvizheniev Rossii v godypervDimirovoivoiny. ul' 194 g.-fevral 1917 g.. Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow-Leningrad, i965 (hereafter Krestianskoedvizhenie),pp. 131-36, and Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), f. i288, Op. 3, d. 6i ('Doklad Chlena Soveta Ministra Vnutrennykh Del d.s.s. Kharlamova i Upravliaiushchego otdelom zemskogo khoziaistva d.s.s. Bliumenau po komandirovke v dekabre 1914 g. v Stavropol'skuiu guberniiu'), 11.1-4, 29-30. A WAGER ON THE PEASANTRY 9I would be tolerated in the army's rear.2 Moreover, the events in Aleksandriiawere only the most extreme manifestation of a wave of discontent that swept the province in 19I4. Police counted more rural disturbances in Stavropol' that year than in any other part of the Russianempire and the province remainedvery unsettledinto I9 I5.3 The target of peasant protest was the zemstvo,an institution new to Stavropol'Province and intended by its sponsorsto bring the blessings of self-government and civilization in the guise of improved roads, schools and medical services to this backwardfrontier region. When the newly minted zemstvaconvened in late I913 they wasted little time settingup the kindsof programmespioneered by theircolleaguesin the 'old zemstvo'provinces. Despite the fact that peasants controlled the Stavropol' zemstva, much of the local population turned violently against the new institutions. Moreover, anti-Zemstvo protest was often expressed in the idiom of apocalyptic confrontation between the peasant community and outsiders. Rumours conflating the zemstvo and the antichrist seemingly more appropriate to times of mortal threats to peasant culture such as the civil war (i 9I8-2I) and collectivization (1928-32) served to mobilize peasant resistance and subvert the claims of outsiders on the peasant economy and rural autonomy. In addition, Stavropol' peasants utilized 'peasant monarchism' to similar ends. The dramatic events in Stavropol' thus reflect deeper patterns of peasant culture, mobilization and protest, but also the transformative power of the Great War. The episode also reflects on an old and probably unresolvable debate about the viability of imperial Russia and the likelihood of revolution by 1914; specifically the problem of nation-building by transforming peasants into citizens (or, to paraphrase Eugen Weber, 'making peasants into Russians'). While this 2 RGIA, f. 288, Op. 3, d. 22 ('Zametka o prichinakh nedovol'stva Stavropol'skim zemstvom'). This report was made by V. F. Polubinskii, a MVD official on the Mogilev provincial board (prisutstvie) for zemstvo and...