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COM

“But what exactly is this state of war? Even the weak man knows- or at least thinks- that
he is not far from being as strong as his neighbor. And so he does not abandon all
thought of war. But the stronger man- or at least the man who is a little stronger than the
others- knows, despite it all, that he may be weaker than the other, especially if the other
uses wiles, surprise, or an alliance.”



-Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended

“Standing on the side, four peasants uttered various rumors: that, ‘Everyone of them are
alike with regulations’, then, that ‘We are not free from barshina’, then, that ‘Assigning
of the guard is only to be done once in a year’, and so on.”



-District Police Chief Shushkevich, Podolia Province, 1848

“Well, you discuss, but we know the law.”

-Peasant Clergyman of Dubechno to Imperial Soldiers, 1848

Towards the beginning of the spring agricultural harvest of 1848, peasants in the

village of Krimno began to grumble over the imposition of a new inventory law1 , enacted

the previous year, requiring them to render additional farm labor and sheaves of grain to

their landowner. Like many farmers in surrounding villages, the Krimn peasants believed

the new laws to be an unjustifiable burden, created only for the benefit of wealthy or

noble landowners. They resented the additional day of corvee labor forced upon them,

noting that neighboring peasants who paid landowners with annual rents, instead of labor,

faired much better under the new law. When the Krimn peasants confronted the local

police official, they stated their wish to be moved from barshina, or corvee labor, to

obrok, or fixed term rent. To augment their claim, the peasants presented the example of

nearby villages that paid their landowners with obrok; could they too, pay their

landowner in this fashion? The answer was a resolute no, and the standoff between the

Krimno peasants and local police forces over fulfilling the new inventory quotas lasted

1 The Inventory Law, enacted in 1846, targeted the Western provinces of Podolia, Kiev, and
Volhynia, as well as the Congress Kingdom. At its base, the law sought to assess the land
held in these territories and re-evaluate the tax obligation derived from these estates. The
inventory law also stipulated the number of days peasants were obligated to perform corvee
labor and night guard duty.
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five days. During this confrontation, the spirit of resistance spread to nearby villages of

Dubechno, Liubokhina, and Lyutk, an area that contained over 3,000 peasants. The

situation was volatile, to say the least.

This confrontation between the villagers of Krimno and local imperial authorities

contains no elements of surprise for those who study peasant, or sub-altern, resistance.

Are we shocked to discover that the powerless often found humility when confronted by

the coercive hand of the powerful? For the peasants of Krimno, their refusal to carry out

the new agriculture law ended with birch rod beatings administered by district police

chief, F.E. Meier. The peasants pleaded for forgiveness, yet the threat of their

‘willfullness’ was far from quashed. What is most surprising is that news of the Krimno

incident spread, and other villages adjusted their strategies for resisting the new inventory

laws accordingly. A conduit of information flowed between the villages, blending rumor

and news passed on by the peasantry. This conduit gave the ‘powerless’ peasantry greater

ability to mitigate claims and force used against them by the Russian imperial authorities.

Using reports from district police chiefs and military officers of three provinces that made

up the right-bank Ukrainian lands in Imperial Russia (Kiev, Podolia, and Volhynia), this

study will analyze resistance to the new inventory laws of 1846 with special focus on

peasant use of the information conduit. Focusing on the year 1848, the Spring of

Nations, allows the possibility of detecting subtle influences the revolutionary movement

possessed in the western provinces in regards to their aims in resisting the

implementation of the new inventory law. Peasants shared information of successes and

failures in confrontations with authorities, coordinated plans for collective resistance, and

spread rumors of future edicts all in an attempt to thwart Imperial ambitions.

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Georges Lefebvre’s seminal work The Great Fear of 1789, also depicted peasants

using information conduits to gain knowledge, which in turn shaped their actions and

responses to local events. Initial news of the fear spread along the postal routes, and then

filtered down the chain to towns, and then rural areas. Lack of French language skills

proved not to be an effective deterrent against the spreading of rumor; the majority of

counties through which the Fear spread spoke little or no French.2 Villages sent citizens

towards hubs of information- larger towns, trading markets, etc.- in order to gather the

news and report back. Lefebvre stated that is was through these means the Great Fear

spread around France.3 During this period of crisis, French peasants engaged with their

information conduits, learning not only about local events but also rumors and

speculations traveling across the country.

Previous scholarship on Russian peasant resistance has focused on the active

methods employed, such as outright revolt or seizure/destruction of manorial property.

There are numerous examples to draw upon, as these events produced a larger ‘footprint’

in the historical documentation. Passive resistance, by its very nature, is difficult to track

in the same document source base. James Scott called this passive activity ‘everyday

resistance’ stating,

“Where everyday resistance most strikingly departs from

other forms of resistance is in its implicit disavowal of
public and symbolic goals. Where institutionalized politics
is formal, overt, concerned with systemic, de jure change,

2Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the modernization of rural France, 1870-1924.
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press) 68.
3Geogres Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France.
(New York: Schocken Books, 1989) 67-68, 129.
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everyday resistance is informal, often covert, and

concerned largely with immediate, de facto gains.” 4

Scott developed his model of ‘everyday resistance’ based upon actual experience and

field research in the small, Malaysian village of ‘Sedaka’, yet his insights contained

significant implications for the study of Russian peasant resistance. Use of rumor and

gossip particularly interested Scott, as he viewed this behavior as a means by which the

poor of Sedaka engaged in the discourse of power within the village. He notes, “Behind

every piece of gossip that is not merely news is an implicit statement of a rule or norm

that has been broken. It is in fact only the violation of expected behavior that make an

event worth gossiping about”.5 Instead of promoting a discourse that envisioned a radical

change of power relations, as found in revolt movements, gossip allowed the peasant to

use the established norm as a baseline for critique.

Gossip and rumor, frequently used by the Russian peasantry, served as a means of

critiquing the status quo within boundaries tolerated by the Imperial regime. As seen in

the documents below, rumor allowed the peasantry to play for time, and there are several

examples of such tactics yielding favorable results for the supposedly ‘weaker’ party.

More active means of resistance, such as outright revolt or replacement of estate officials,

engendered active repression. Collective responsibility placed upon entire villages

ensured that those who committed riotous acts against the state paid for those acts.

Stephen Hoch, in his study on the village of Petrovskoe in the Tambov province, noted

that communal authorities were forced to pay the costs of a peasant outburst in 1828; the

4James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) 33.
5 Ibid. 282.
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sum included damage of property incurred, quartering and feeding of soldiers sent to put

down the outburst, and the transportation cost associated with exiling the most onerous

peasants to Siberia.6 Active resistance, in general, proved too costly to engage in for most

peasants.

‘Everyday resistance’, on the other hand, allowed for peasants of Russia to

challenge the demands of landowners and the state alike, combating the regime with the

very logic and symbolism used to justify the rule of the powerful. Allan Wildman, in his

study on land charters of the post-emancipation settlement, noted how peasants used

rumors to postpone the signing of new land agreements. As the tsar’s decree on land

agreements contained a stipulation that pre-emancipation labor requirements would be

honored for two additional years after the emancipation of 1861, many peasants

professed the belief that a new decree of the tsar’s true will7 for peasant freedom would

follow the end of this labor extension period. Their refusal to sign the new agreements

and belief in ‘silly rumors’, as noted by the governor of Kharkov in 1861, forced many

landowners, desperate for the quick cash infusion the land settlements provided, to

acquiesce to peasant demands on farm allotments and price of land.8

6Stephen Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986)
7 Authority in the Russian Imperial state came directly from the tsar himself. If peasants
decided that a new law or edict was unfair, they could claim that the local landowners or
nobles were obscuring the true nature of the tsar’s decree. Thus the phrase, “The tsar
wants it, but the boyars resist” is a prime example of how peasants ingeniously turned the
power base of the Russian state on its head. If the tsar possesses all the power, then how
could a landowner exercise a decree that violates (in the peasant mindset) the basic
paternal relationship professed by the absolutist regime?
8 AllanK. Wildman, “The Defining Moment: Land Charters and the Post-Emancipation
Agrarian Settlement in Russia, 1861-1863,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East
European Studies 1205 (1996): 27-28.
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This was not the first time peasants used rumors of the tsar’s ‘true will’ to further

their goals. Daniel Field, in his study of peasant involvement in rebellion, dissected

peasant claims of naïve monarchism expressed in the following statement: “The tsar

wants it, but the boyars resist.” 9 Field discovered that peasants used this statement as a

means to resist landowner claims for additional labor or rent, especially upon

introduction of new laws or proclamations. Russian authorities feared the dissemination

of false interpretations of new decrees, and took special care in determining who received

notice of impending changes of the law. As most peasants were illiterate, edicts that

altered the fundamental relationship between landowner and peasant were transmitted

orally, with decrees read aloud at markets, fairs, town squares, and, for the rural

population, church services. Poor roads and geographically distant locations often meant

that couriers arrived in provincial areas at differing speeds, meaning that some locales

received the new law before others. 10 This staggered arrival of edicts created a legitimate

perception for the peasant population that some districts were treated differently that

others in the eyes of the law.

A prime example of this lag effect is found within the correspondence between

Nicolas I and Ivan Paskevich, the appointed leader of Russian troops in the western

provinces, dated 10 April 1848. After March 1848, Nicholas I ordered that the new

Inventory laws be abandoned, in light of the unrest then unfolding in the west. Wanting

no disruptions, Nicholas ordered that all force be used to put down revolts in the

9Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1976)
10David Moon, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform
(Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1992) 10-12.
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provinces of Kiev, Podolia, and Volhynia. After Paskevich received the order, he passed

it on in duplicate to the governor of the western provinces, D.G. Bibikov on 19 April

1848. Word of the legal annulment took even longer to reach the rural population, and

the documentation indicated that resistance against the inventory law continued through

August in the province of Podolia. Clearly, the transmission of the new decree took

considerable time to permeate into the western provinces.

Documents from the right-bank Ukrainian territories of Russia, written in 1848,

allow us to view these information conduits in action. Tremendous revolutionary activity

took place in Western Europe, as France, Prussia, and Austria faced crises protesting

against the monarchical system. Tsar Nicholas I, fearful that the European example

would spread to Russia, ordered a mobilization of troops on the western territories, and

issued a decree read in all Russian churches on 26 March 1848 stating that Russia would

resist revolutionary aggression at its borders. Manifestos and pamphlets written by

foreign émigrés in both Polish and Ukrainian, and distributed in the right-bank Ukrainian

territories, urged peasants to resist the tsar’s orders and join with their brothers in

Europe11 . All of these events created shockwaves that flooded through the western

provinces of Russia. Peasants, unsure of the volatile situation, turned to local information

conduits, such as neighboring villages and markets, as well as larger conduits, such as

state announcements and foreign-origin pamphlets, to assess their available options.

Did Russian Imperial peasants in the right-bank Ukrainian provinces engage in

similar behavior during the ‘Spring of Nations’ movement of 1848? The evidence

presented below indicates that peasants used local connections to access the information

11 A.Z.
Baraboi, “Pravoberezhnaya Ukraina v 1848 g.”, Istoricheskie Zapiski 34 (1950)
86-121.
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conduit. The knowledge they gained, either rumor or factual account, allowed them to

challenge the inventory laws implementation within their own villages.

Documents from the Kiev Province

On 20 March (April 1)12 1848, Kiev governor I.I. Funduklei wrote to Nicholas I

about the refusal of several villages 13 in the Kievian uezd (a smaller division of the

province) to carry out the requirements of the new inventory law14 . When the landowner

of these estates arrived in the village of Karashin to punish the instigators of the work

stoppage, he noticed the impertinent tone used by the peasants in their conversation. The

governor, relaying information gathered from those at the scene, noted that a peasant

from Lydmilovka hurled insults at the local steward. In response, the district police chief

with soldiers from the fourth battalion visited each village, leaving only when the

peasants agreed to fulfill the additional day of corvee labor stipulated by the new

inventory law.

The report is not very long, and contains few details; those provided are meant

only to bolster the decision to use force against the resisting peasants. What is most

significant about this incident is that seven villages united to protest the inventory law.

United together, they possessed a much greater chance of securing their demands from

the landowner, which in this case amounted to relief from an additional day of corvee

12Initial dates given for the reports are on the Julian calendar system; by 1848 the
Russian Empire had fallen 12 days behind the calendars of the west. Dates in the
parenthesis indicate the adjusted date.
13These villages were Gavronshchinia, Karashin, Iurova, Krasnoi Slobody, Nalivaikovki,
Liudmilovska, and Kinteevki.
14 A.V.Predtechenskii, ed., Krestianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1826-1849 gg (Moscow:
Society for Economic Literature, 1961), 609-610.
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labor. Days spent working on manorial land meant that peasant land, land that provided

food and taxes for the landowner and state, went unimproved. The addition, or

subtraction, of required labor thus carried significant weight with the peasantry. Also, the

peasants did not use violent force against the landowner or other members of the

bureaucracy. Instead, they probed to see how responsive the landowner would be to

change; when it became clear that the landowner would use force to restore order, the

peasants backed down and agreed to continue their work.

Landowners often hoped for quick resolution of their estate disturbances, yet not

every group of restive peasants submitted as easily as those in Karashin and surrounding

villages. Some conflicts could span over prolonged periods, requiring several visits by

police, landowners, soldiers in an attempt to restore order. Such was the case with the

following event that lasted over four months, from April until July. Once again, the

governor, I.I. Fynduklei, wrote to Nicolas I, on April 6 (April 18) about the refusal of

peasants from the village of Rebedailovka in the Chgirinskii uezd to carry out their

corvee labor 15. When visited by the landowner and district police chief, the villagers of

Rebedailovka gathered to hear the authorities read to them the provisions of the new

inventory laws. Refusing to accept these terms, the villagers responded that they knew of

peasants in “Little Russia” (a common 19th century term for the Ukrainian lands) who

upon accepting the new laws were denied the right of their freedom and remained tied to

the land. When pressed on how the peasants knew this example, a few peasants separated

15 Ibid. 610-611.
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from the group and provided a rude retort to the steward, landowner, and police chief.

They then turned to the crowd and yelled, “Do not listen- everything is a lie”.16

Responding to this turn of insubordination by the peasantry, the police chief,

together with the leader of the nobility, Borozdin, gathered soldiers and once again met

with the villagers. This time, the peasants, numbering around 200, gathered around the

church fence to deal with the authorities. Once again, the police chief read aloud the new

inventory law, only to have the peasants yell that no amount of strength would remove

them from their place and that they were not afraid of police or soldiers. At this point, the

police chief moved forward and arrested fifty peasants, sending five to prison in the town

of Chigirin to receive birch-rod beatings. Three days passed before the soldiers left

Rebedailovka, a move prompted by the acquiescence of the remaining peasants. Yet this

did not end the conflict, as the soldiers returned four months later to restore order on 11

July17. As before, the peasants gathered around the church fence to meet with the police

chief. Suddenly the peasants began to yell and shout, picking up pikes that they had

placed by the fence in preparation. Conflict ensued, with some peasants fleeing to the

forest and others arrested by the soldiers.

`
What is most interesting about the Rebedailovka example is that the peasants not

only used rumors about what would happen if they accepted the new laws, but also

identified with a larger area, in this case Little Russia or the Ukrainian territories. Their

denial of the new laws, by stating that everything the landowner says is a lie, fits in with

the pattern noted by Hoch, Field, Wildman, and others. “The tsar wants it, but the boyars

16 Не слушайте, это всё ложь

17Predtechenskii, 612-613.
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resist” is not exactly what the villagers of Rebedailvoka say, but it is the feeling behind

their actual words. Gathering around the fence of the church is also interesting behavior.

While the figure of a clergyman is not present in the narrative, the use of the church as a

place to gather support and challenge the authorities perhaps indicates the peasant’s

identification with Christian ideals of benevolence and kindness in the face of the new

inventory laws perceived unjust nature. This is not the only time peasants used the

church as both protector and symbolic turn in the discourse over corvee labor.

Proximity to the Hapsburg border meant that news from the revolutionary front

during 1848, particularly the regarding the developments in Hungary, arrived much

sooner in the western provinces. Volhynia and Podolia, provinces that formed the

western border against the Hapsburg lands and the Congress Kingdom, were of special

concern to the tsar. Their location made them especially receptive to incoming news and

rumor. Imperial troops, under Nicolas’s orders, began mustering in this area in

preparation for a potential invasion of the Austrian Empire in the event that monarchical

power fell. Yet one could just as easily say that these troops also performed the role of

suppressor, sent to quickly quash any potential peasant revolt. As a result, peasant unrest

could ill afford to become escalated and many peasants used ‘everyday resistance’ to test

the resolve of landowners in this time of uncertainty.

Documents from the Volhynia Province

In the province of Volhynia, peasants used methods of resistance discussed

earlier; use of examples, collective protest, and rumor. Despite their attempts to avoid

more active means, the peasants still received corporal punishment for their passive

measures. On March 6 (March 18) peasants of Krimn, located in the Vladimir uezd,
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approached the local landowner and asked why they could not be switched from corvee

labor to rent18 . As noted in the introduction, these peasants brought in the example of

nearby peasants, who were treasury, or state, peasants that paid their landowner, the state,

in obrok (rent). The Krimn landowner denied them their request, yet the peasants

persisted, refusing still to carry out the labor requirement and demanding to be put on

obrok. Upping the ante, Krimn peasants revealed that they along with other villages,

Dubechna, Lyuboxinii, and Lyutka had taken oaths not to carry out the new labor

requirement under the inventory law. Further unruly behavior by the crowd resulted in

the arrest of two peasants. Meier concludes that he will visit Krimn personally to settle

the matter; with 3,000 peasants in the surrounding area and villages taking oaths of

resistance, the police chief knew that he was in a very delicate position.

On the 8th of March (March 20), Meier assembled his officers and some retired

soldiers to meet with the peasants of Krimn. Upon his arrival, Meier summoned the local

elites and clergymen to discuss the peasant demands. Meier made it clear that the switch

to rent could not be accomplished, reminding those listening that they were the

representatives of the community and will thus be first to be punished for their

disobedience. The threat is followed by a demand for a confession of guilt and absolute

obedience. Hearing these terms, the peasant crowd became agitated and rowdy. Meier,

sensing that he is losing control of the crowd, ordered some peasants to be whipped

which incites panic among the crowd who then quickly flee. After two hours, the

peasants returned, asking for forgiveness. They even revealed that the instigators of their

resistance left Krimn for the village of Dubechna.

18 Ibid. 602-603.
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Wasting no time, Meier departed Krimn and arrived in Dubechna on the 9th of

March (March 21). He arranged a meeting for the following day, noting that several

peasants from neighboring villages appeared for this meeting 19. When gathered, the

peasants totaled around 500 people. A terse argument ensued between Meier and the

peasant crowd, who demanded that they be moved from corvee labor to rent, with the

police chief eventually ordering those gathered to disperse. In response, the peasants

stood firm in their resistance, stating that if they hold out other villages will join their

cause. They decided to remain united while Meier remained in Dubechna, adding that

the local women will bring them food when they grow hungry.

Meier responded to this tactic with the usual police response; he dispursed his

agents to filter out and discover who among the peasantry was a likely instigator of this

resistance. During the search, several retired soldiers bumped into the local clergyman,

found exiting from the village tavern. The accosted clergyman asked the soldiers how

many of their number arrived in Dubechna. Receiving the reply that the number of

soldiers before him was the number that arrived, the clergyman added the following

thinly-veiled threat; the peasants of Dubechna, unlike their neighbors in Krimn,

possessed crudely fashioned pikes sharpened for the anticipated conflict with the

authorities. This exchange resulted in an increasingly heated argument between the

clergyman and the soldiers. When reminded by the soldiers of the consequences for

those who refuse to accept the law, the clergyman retorted, “And are you literate?” 20. The

soldiers answered no. Then, according to the report, the clergyman revealed a book

19 Those mentioned are Pokiti, Glukh, Shekli, and Liutki.

20 А ты грамоте знаешь?
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supposedly hidden in his clothing, pointed to the soldiers, and declared, “Well, you

discuss (the law), but we know the law.” 21 Hearing that a clergyman openly disputed the

law, Meier ordered his arrest. The crowd refused to give him up, acknowledging that the

police chief wanted the clergyman because he supported the peasants’ cause. Despite

vigorous resistance by the crowd, the offending clergyman, arrested, was ultimately sent

to jail. Here the document trail ends.

Clues exist in this report as to the use by peasants of the information conduit

around their local area. The use of oaths between several villages indicate that the

peasant population not only communicated with each other, but also planned the

collective resistance against the demands of the inventory laws. Coercive force defused

the first situation in the village of Krimn, yet by the very next day the villagers of

Dubechna knew of their compatriot’s capitulation. The word obviously spread, as the

meeting between Meier and the peasants of Dubechna attracted a crowd from several

other neighboring villages. Clearly, many peasants held a stake in the confrontation over

the inventory laws. The reference to the number of sharpened pikes made by the

clergyman may only have been a boastful bluff, yet even the hint of escalating intent

signaled the dedication of the peasants for the cause.

What is most interesting about this scene is the use of literary knowledge as a

justification for interpretation of the law. When the clergyman asks about the literacy of

the soldiers, he does so to show the hypocrisy of those who expound the law yet cannot

read it. Behind this statement one can read the often-reoccurring belief that local

landowners and noblemen obscure the tsar’s true will by falsely interpreting his decrees.

21 То-то, толкуешь, а мы закон знаем.

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This noted clergyman might have possessed very basic literacy skills, yet this was often

enough for peasants to claim that their interpretation of the law was the correct one. 22

The text does not reveal if the book produced by the clergyman was of a secular or

religious nature. While we cannot be sure, we can reasonably assume that the book was a

religious tome. Invoking the true meaning of the law while brandishing the possessed

book symbolically linked the professions of religious law with the impositions of civil

law. This link allowed the peasants to logically assert that the inventory law infringed

upon the paternal obligations implied with religious justification of secular rule.

Gregory Freeze noted that priests and clergymen did not often preach on the

subject of serfdom as an institution.23 When and if they did, the sermons took on a tone

of benevolent service. Phrases like “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” were used to

stress the duty and obligation of the peasant to the landowner or state, yet in conjunction

with this servile obligation was the role of the landowner or state to act as a benevolent

father, treating each of their peasants with kindness and charity. Peasants believed that

the additional day of labor stipulated by the inventory law to be onerous, and in

contradiction with the care ethic found in Christianity and professed by the divine tsar.

Podolia, located on the border of the Russian territory, contained some of the most

coordinated passive resistance found in this study. Rumors easily flowed from one

22The works of Stephen Hoch, David Moon, Allan Wildman, and Daniel Field covers
this phenomenon. In particular, Moon and Field demonstrate in their works that peasants
not only used literate peasants as ‘information brokers’ but also as trusted interpreters of
the law. Imperial authorities knew of this potential ‘interpretation abuse’, and tightly
controlled dissemination of various decrees. As evidenced in several of the documents
analyzed here, police officials and landowners often read laws many times to peasants, in
order that they receive the ‘correct’ interpretation.
23Gregory Freeze, “The Orthodox Church and Serfdom in Prereform Russia,” Slavic
Review 48:3 (1989) 361-387.
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village to another, as the close proximity to the Hapsburg border promoted ‘cross-

contamination’ of European revolutionary ideals. In these documents we find the most

articulated case of peasant involvement in the information conduit as they attempted to

resist the new inventory law. Forty-four incidents in the year 1848 are attributed to

Podolia, which placed only second to Voronezh province with forty-seven. A.Z. Baraboi

noted in his study of the right-bank Ukrainian territories that eight uezds in the province

of Podolia were flooded with rumors about the true meaning of both the inventory laws

and the revolutions in the west24. In the two incidents examined below, peasant’s use of

rumor played a prominent role in their attempts to avoid fulfilling the new inventory

laws.

Documents from Podolia Province

Peasants often used crafty tactics to shirk labor obligations they believed to be

unfair. One report, from the Podolia province, highlights exactly the sort of stratagems

employed that so frustrated the typical landowner. On 28 February (March 12) the leader

of the nobility, V.K. Shidlovskii wrote to D.G. Bibikov (mentioned above) listing the

abuses peasants of Kustovts committed. 25 Cholovskii, the landowner, told Shidlovskii

that the Kustovts peasants used sham interpretations of the new inventory law in order to

avoid or perform very little work. Some outright refused to work, while others simply

worked poorly. Those peasants that showed up for work arrived late, or began to wander

away shortly after beginning their task. For the assignment of the night guard, an

obligation many peasants grumbled about, the village of Kustovts sent its young children

24 Baraboi, 103.
25 Predtechenskii, 613-614.
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to perform the task. These measures, according to Shidlovskii, contributed to the

absolute ruin of the estate. However, at the end of the report, Shidlovskii asked if he

could alleviate the situation by allowing peasants without livestock to serve only two

days a week in corvee labor. The answer to his query was not provided.

Not only did peasants use work slowdowns and stoppages to their greatest effect,

their every choice brought the landowner to greater despair. The harvest needed to be

completed, and unless the landowner repealed the additional labor the new inventory law

required the peasants would continue to dither in the fields. Tactics used to avoid the

additional labor was not limited to the method of work, as the peasants of Kustovts also

used an ingenious method of counting themselves for the purpose of distributing work

assignments. The inventory law updated work quotas assigned to each village based

upon the number or husband-wife work teams or tiaglo. Instead of counting each tiaglo

as one unit, the peasants counted each tiaglo as one-half of a full unit, reducing the

amount of work demanded by an equal proportion. While we do not know if Shidlovskii

received permission for his change of the law, his willingness to compromise even a little

was a significant victory for the peasants. The report does not state where the peasants

heard their ‘sham interpretations’ of the inventory law, and it is possible they conjured up

the excuses themselves. More than likely, the peasants of Kustovts learned of the

inventory laws and the myriad interpretations through their contact with other individuals

or groups. If we are to fully understand and map out the information conduits used by the

Peasantry, we must not only take into account the wealth of knowledge uncovered by

studies of folk culture, but also scrutinize the sources for clues as to the means by which

peasants acquired news and rumor.

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Previous documents failed to acknowledge where the peasants gathered to plan

out their acts of collective protest, yet such places must have existed as the coordination

of a number of villages required understanding and comprehension of desired goals.

Previous peasant scholars have shown that peasants interacted the most in areas where

their economic interest meet; the best example being the market. In this last set of

reports, a conflict between the police chief I.I. Levitskii and, initially, the peasants of

Tribusovka, detail peasant usage of the market as a hub in the information conduit shared

between the local communities.26 The conflict began when the peasants of Tribusovka

refused to fulfill the quotas demanded by the inventory law. The report, sent to Bibikov

on March 24th (April 3) begins with Levitskii stating that peasants accosted and disrupted

the work of the assessor, Lazar Vakar. Most likely, Vakar was attempting to assess the

amount of land worked by the peasants of various landowners in order to assign the

proper amount of taxes. Peasants recognized this agent of the inventory laws and sought

to keep him from his work. When confronted about this incident, and the refusal to fulfill

the quota by the landowner, the villagers of Tribusovka responded that they did not

understand the new laws. After being pushed on this issue, the peasants then stated that

they would not accept any new law without the signature of the uezd leader of the

nobility.

On April 6th (April 18), Levitskii visited Tribusovka himself. Seeking a meeting

with the villagers, Levitskii waited for a few hours before the six representatives arrived.

When questioned by Levitskii as to the reason for their resistance, the six peasants state

that they were not able to agree to the new quotas but anticipated in the month of May to

26 Predtechenskii, 614-619.
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receive another decree from the government about the inventory laws. They refused to

divulge where they learned this information, and continued to protest the imposition of

additional labor. Upon receiving this report, Bibikov sent back to Levitskii that he was

endowed with the authority to use all necessary force in order to make the peasants

understand their obligations.

One month later, on May 5th (May 17), the new police chief, I. Shushkevich,

reported of his progress on quashing the inventory resistance in Tribusovka and, now,

Grushka. His questioning of the peasants revealed only one new detail; that the various

rumors they heard about the new decree on the inventory law came from their visits to the

market. There, the peasants engaged in trade and gossiped about various issues.

Allthough the report does not state the means, Shushkevich managed to pacify the

villagers of Tribusovka, yet the damage their rumors created had already spread to nearby

villages. In Grushka, when confronted by the police chief, the peasants called upon their

single literary citizen to read the law to them, so that they might better understand its

meaning. Of course, the peasants continued to draw their own interpretations of this

reading, and soon they made claims stating that everything was the police chiefs fault and

that a new decree would soon emerge. Like other peasants before, the villagers of

Grushka believed that if they accepted the new laws they would forfeit any possibility of

freedom from future decrees. To make matters worse for the chief, the peasants of

Grushka spread their rumors to the villages of Bolgana and Balgan. Both of these

villages told the police chief that they heard of the impending new decree at the market,

and this rumor formed the backbone of their justification for resistance.
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Trade at the marketplace served not only an economic, but informative function.

For communities that were largely illiterate, word of mouth communication spread along

the information conduit served as their only means of learning and processing events that

happened on a micro and macro scale. When revolutionary activity began to foment in

the West, Nicholas I ordered the borders sealed and that all future visas be approved

through the capital, yet the rights of merchants to come and go remained untouched. For

the peasants of Podolia, as well as the other western provinces, the gossip acquired at the

marketplace allowed peasants to hear of successes and failures of other communities in

their struggle against the inventory law.

Yet markets were not the only means by which a peasant tapped into the

information conduit of their locale. We know through Russian folksongs that brides often

traveled away from their home village when they married, as they lamented the fact

weepingly in their traditional bridal songs. In a similar vein, matchmakers, whose job it

was to facilitate a smooth union of marriage, also possessed detailed knowledge of who

lived in various, local villages. Their constant shuffling around to set up prospective

brides and grooms depended to a large extent on the matchmakers reputation for good

work. In the field of folk medicine, a well known znaharka, or healer, might receive

patients from up to thirty miles away for treatment. If the healer felt the patients problem

demanded a different, or more specialized treatment, they were not afraid to refer the

peasant to another healer in the area. In order to fully re-create the information conduits

used by the peasantry of the western provinces, one would need to look at not only police

and administrative records, but also birth, death, marriage, conscription, and emigration

records in order to grasp the full potential of information available to the typical peasant.
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While lacking a more complete picture, we are able to gain valuable insight into

peasant techniques of passive resistance by analyzing their response to demands from

authority. Allan Wildman called the negotiations over post-emancipation land charters

‘the defining moment’. Peasants engaged their landowners and pressed them to accept

favorable terms, using a variety of tactics to prolong the actual charter process. The same

behavior is seen in the documents discussed above, as peasants in the western provinces

attempted to forestall the implementation of the new inventory laws. While there are no

definite examples of peasants securing victory for their claims, the sheer amount of time

it took to resolve these conflicts could be seen in the sprawling documentation spanning

over a period of several weeks or months. This meant that not only were the new work

obligations not carried out, but also that the landowner, whose livelihood largely

depended upon the labor produced by the peasantry, potentially could suffer detrimental

financial loss. The arrival of Imperial troops, whose presence helped stimulate proper

behavior, meant that peasants could ill afford to engage in revolt; the costs, in terms of

repayment of damages and lost work, proved too high for peasants to pursue active

resistance. However, peasants adjusted their tactics accordingly, using more passive

means of rumor mongering and collective protest, to achieve their aims.

Previous research focused on these end result actions; the revolt, the protest, the

petition, etc… Yet all of these events are the result of planning between community elders

and neighboring villages. When peasants gathered at the market to engage in trade, they

also traded news and gossip. Here, one could not only discover what conflicts peasants

were currently engaged in, but also the level of success they achieved. While traditional

interpretations of Russian village culture highlighted their inclusive nature, this research
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demonstrates that peasants not only knew of other communities, but also used examples

of those communities to demonstrate the potential unfair treatment the new inventory

laws would impose. The best example of the information conduit working is seen in the

collective protests organized between several villages in a local area. The ability to

organize and carry out this protest required links between the various villages; these

links, while not identified in the documents, most certainly emerged from familial and

community ties. Regardless, the conduit formed between local communities, included

with the conduits used by the Imperial government27, allowed the peasants to engage and

shape the discourse of power between the state and its citizens.

27 Decrees, pamphlets, newspapers, etc…