Late imperial Russia and its gendered order in the countryside

Abstract

This chapter examines the gendered contours of Russian peasant society in the critical period between the 1861 emancipation and the implementation of the Stolypin land reforms from late 1906 until 1916, which attempted unsuccessfully to introduce capitalist elements and notions of individual male property ownership in the countryside. In this era, Russian peasant society replicated the structure of the hierarchical patriarchal state. Although peasant women generally conformed to a subordinate position within the male-dominated hierarchy, they occasionally enhanced their status as female heads of households and daughters-in-law, blunted the worst aspects of their lives by demanding separation from abusive husbands, and protested government reforms, which in their implementation often deprived them of property benefits that customary laws had bestowed upon them. After 1861, peasant women’s positions largely improved within the framework of a modernizing state that allowed for greater freedom of movement, a rising standard of living, higher literacy rates, and some legal recourse for abused peasant women. The challenges the agrarian reforms posed to women were nipped in the bud by peasant strategies of subterfuge and the unprecedented demands of World War I. The story of Russian peasant women’s improvements reveals how women were able to carve out spaces for themselves within their patriarchal society, chip away at their victimization, and establish some independence and a sense of self-worth.