1. The following account of the Markovo Republic and the regional peasant movement is based largely on government reports, peasant petitions and reminiscences, contained in Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv goroda Moskvy (TsGIAgM), f. 17, op. 77 and 103; and Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi Revoliutsii SSSR (TsGAOR), f. 36, op. 14, f. 58, op. 9 and f. 63, op. 26; and accounts of the peasant meetings in such newspapers as Russkoe slovo, Pravo and Russkie vedomosti. In addition, two Soviet secondary works provide narrative accounts and reproduce some of the relevant archival documents. Both are entitled Markovskaia respublika: iz istorii krest'ianskogo dvizheniia 1905 goda v moskovskoi gubernii; one written in 1925 by I.N. Pavlov, the son of a participant in the republic, and the other by the historian I.I. Smirnov in 1975. For a recent western account, see Shanin, Teodor, Russia 1905-07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 109–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Edelman, Robert, Proletarian Peasants: The Revolution of 1905 in Russia's Southwest (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987 Google Scholar; Timothy Mixter, “The Hiring Market as Workers' Turf: Migrant Agricultural Laborers and the Mobilization of Collective Action in the Steppe Grainbelt of European Russia, 1853-1913” and Scott Seregny, “Peasants and Politics: Peasant Unions During the 1905 Revolution,” in Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921, eds. Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). For a succinct overview of the variety of rural protest during the revolution, see Perrie, Maureen, “The Russian Peasant Movement of 1905-1907: Its Social Composition and Revolutionary Significance, “ Past and Present 57 (1972): 123–55, esp. 126-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an analysis of regional differences.

3. Shanin, Russia, 1905-07, 79-137, and esp. 169-70; and John Bushnell, “Peasant Economy and Peasant Revolution at the Turn of the Century: Neither Immiseration nor Autonomy,” The Russian Review 47, no. 1 (January 1988): 75-88.

4. Scott Seregny, “Peasants and Politics: Peasant Unions During the 1905 Revolution, “ Peasant Economy, 341.

5. This argument corresponds to the notion of the dual function of the peasant commune found throughout the literature. For example, see Aleksandrov, V. A., Sel'skaia obshchina v Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 313–14 Google Scholar; and Mironov, Boris, “The Russian Peasant Commune After the Reforms of the 1860's Slavic Review 44, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 441–44Google Scholar.

6. For work on dissension and social control, see Jeffrey Burds, “The Social Control of Peasant Labor in Russia: The Response of Village Communities to Labor Migration in the Central Industrial Region, 1861-1905,” in Peasant Economy, 52-100; Christine Worobec, “Victims or Actors? Russian Peasant Women and Patriarchy,” in Peasant Economy, 176-206; idem, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post Emancipation Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 182-84, 213-14; and A.N. Anfimov and P.N. Zyrianov, “Nekotorye cherty evoliutsii russkoi krest'ianskoi obshchiny v poreformennyi period,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1980): 26-41.

7. In making this argument I am echoing and extending the comments of Beji Eklof who notes that “the very notion of a conflict between the peasant commune and modernity, at least in the economic sphere, may be spurious” (“Ways of Seeing: Recent Anglo-American Studies of the Russian Peasant (1861-1914),” Jarhbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 36 [1988]: 63). Eklof is specifically referring to the work of Esther Kingston- Mann on economic innovation within the communal context. See “Peasant Communes and Economic Innovation: A Preliminary Inquiry,” in Peasant Economy, 23-51. I am making a similar point in the political sphere. Just as economic innovation could be accomplished through the communal structures normally associated with hindering progress, the case of Markovo reveals how politicization could involve the utilization of “traditional” institutions in the expansion and radicalization of peasant political perspectives.

8. For overviews of the provincial economy, see V.P. Semenov, ed., Rossiia: Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie nashego otechestva, vol. 1, Moskovskaia promyshlennaia oblast' (St. Petersburg, 1899); Bradley, Joseph, Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 9-10, 12–15 Google Scholar. For a description of the evolution of the Volokolamsk economy, see Ekonomickeskii sbornik po volokolamskomu uezdu (Moscow, 1926), i-xix.

9. For descriptions of migration to Moscow, see Bradley, Muzhik and Muscovite, 26-31, 103-17; and Johnson, Robert, Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979 Google Scholar. On crafts and trade in Volokolamsk, see Moskovskaia zemskaia uprava, Statisticheskoe otdelenie, Moskovskaia gubemiia po mestnomu obsledovaniiu 1898-1900, vol. 2, pt. 2, Zemledel'cheskoe khoziastvo i promysly krest'ianskogo naseleniia (Moscow, 1907), 1-9, 13, 28-33, 103, 417, 549, 582-85; Pallot, Judith and Shaw, Dennis, Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia, 1613-1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 218–40 Google Scholar.

10. On the peasant movement in Moscow gubemiia, see P.K. Red'kin, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Moskovskoi gubernii v gody pervoi russkoi revoliutsii,” in Uchenye zapiski moskovskogo gorodskogo pedagogicheskogo instituta imeni B.P. Potemkina, vol. 59, p. 4 (1959): 191-233. For a useful summary on the period between October and December 1905 and a listing of disturbances, see “Khronika krest'ianskogo dvizheniia v tsentral'nykh promyshlennykh guberniiakh (Oktiabr'-dekabr’ 1905 goda),” Istorik marksist 12, no. 52 (1935): 98-118.

11. Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 1: Russia in Dissarray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 112-14; Chermenskii, E. D., Burzhuaziia i tsarizm v pervoi revoliutsii, 2nd ed. (Moscow, Mysl', 1970), 57–61 Google Scholar.

12. Information on and analyses of peasant petitions of 1905 can be found in a wide array of sources. See, for example, O.G. Bukhovets, “K metodike izucheniia 'prigovornogo’ dvizheniia i ego roli v bor'be krest'ianstvo v 1905-1907 godakh (po materialam Samarskoi gubernii,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 3 (1979): 96-112; K.V. Sivkov, “Krest'ianskie prigovory 1905 goda,” Russkaia mysl', vol. 4, sect. 2 (1907), 24-48; Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, 164-66; and Seregny, Scott, Russian Teachers and the Peasant Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 152–54 Google Scholar..

13. On the peasant union, see Kiriukhina, E. I., “Vserossiiskii krest'ianskii soiuz v 1905 g.,” Istoricheskie zapiski 50 (1955): 95–141 Google Scholar, and “Mestnye organizatsii Vserossiiskogo krest'ianskogo soiuza v 1905 godu,” Uchenye zapiski kirovskogo pedagogicheskogo instituta 10 (1956): 83-157. On union activity in Moscow and Volokolamsk specifically, see “Mestnye organizatsii,” 117-18, 136, 139 and 152. For a report on a Volokolamsk peasant union organizational meeting, see Russkoe slovo, no. 309 (23 November 1905).

14. On the formation of the circles, see Smirnov, 12-15 and Pavlov, 11-14.

15. Information on the distribution of newspapers in the villages on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 revolution suggest a peasantry increasingly interested and concerned with national and political issues. On Volokolamsk, see “Gazeta v derevne,” in Statisticheskii ezhegodnik Moskovskoi gubernii za 1905 (1905), 170-78; and Statisticheskii ezhegodnik (1906), 209-19. For similar views, see Brooks, Jeffrey, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature 1861-1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 28–29 Google Scholar; and Olenin, P, “Krest'iane i intelligentsiia,” Russkoe bogatsvo 1 (January 1907): 264–65Google Scholar.

16. Zubrilin, A. A., Sposoby uluchsheniia krest'ianskogo khozaistva v nechernozemnoi polose (Moscow, 1901), 16–20 Google Scholar; and Volokolamskoe uezdnoe zemskoe sobranie, 1904 g., Doklad volokolamskoi uezdnoi upravy po ekonomicheskoi chasti, 4-6. On zemstvo agronomists and initiatives to improve peasant agriculture, see Veselovskii, B. B., Istoriia zemstva za sorok let (St. Petersburg, 1909), II: 130–68Google Scholar.

17. For figures on adoption of foddergrass cultivation, see Doklad volokolamskoi uezdnoi upravy, 6; on adoption of iron plows, see Ekonomicheskoe biuro moskovskago gubernskago zemstva, Istoricheskii ocherk ekonomicheskikh meropriiatii moskovskago gubernskago zemstva (Moscow, 1895), 54.

18. Statisticheskii ezhegodnik (1904), 35-36. The yearbook was compiled by the Moscow zemstvo each year based on surveys of correspondents throughout the province. Correspondents included nobles, zemstvo employees and peasants. By 1905 the percentage of peasant correspondents had increased so that 19 of the 34 correspondents from Volokolamsk were peasants.

19. 27 correspondents listed the introduction of foddergrass as a positive achievement, followed by 23 for the supply of seeds, and 21 for the provision of iron plows. No other activity was mentioned in more than 13 responses (Statisticheskii ezhegodnik [1905], 148). Zubrilin also believed that the success of his initiatives had allowed him to gain the peasants’ trust. See his reminiscences in Zubrilin, A. A., Po rodnoi strane: mysli i vospominaniia (Moscow, 1913), 9–12 Google Scholar.

20. For examples of peasant responses, see Statisticheskii ezhegodnik (1904), 37-38, 40-41 and 44. My argument resembles other assessments of peasant relations with outsiders and outside institutions in that, rather than assuming either complete rejection or acceptance, it recognizes that peasants were capable of choosing to interact when it was deemed beneficial, thus doing so on their own terms. Ben Eklof, for example, argues that peasants pushed for education but also imposed limits on the schooling to avoid a “broader socialization” (“Ways of Seeing: Recent Anglo-American Studies of the Russian Peasant [1861-1914],” 73). Eklof develops this argument in his Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 263-82, and in “Face to the Village: The Russian Teacher and the Peasant Community, 1880-1914,” in The Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, ed. Roger Bartlett (London: MacMillan Press, 1990). For an earlier and more positive assessment of the relations between teachers and peasants, see Eklof, “The Village and the Outsider: The Rural Teacher in Russia, 1864-1914,” Slavic and European Education Review 1 (1979): 1-19. Stephen Frank has a similar view of peasants’ reluctant and utilitarian connections to state authority. See Stephen Frank, “Popular Justice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870-1900,” The Russian Review 46, no. 3 (July 1987): 244. While I agree with both Frank and Eklof on the issue of selective contact, based on my study of Markovo, I would argue that the relations were potentially more positive and influential on both sides than posited by Frank or Eklof. For an analysis of teachers and peasants during 1905 closer to my own assessment of Zubrilin's role, see Seregny, Russian Teachers; and “Politics and the Rural Intelligentsia in Russia: A Biographical Sketch of Stepan Anikin, 1869-1919,” Russian History 7 (1980): 169-200.

21. A.A. Zubrilin, “Iz nedavniago proshlago (Agronomiia v Russkoi derevne), “ Russkiia vedomosti, no. 92 (6 April 1906).

22. For information on Zubrilin's agitation in the region, see TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 77, d. 1892, 11. 109-110, 120-121, 165; op. 103, d. 269, 1. 159; TsGAOR, f. 36, op. 14, d. 97, 1. 1; f. 63, op. 26, d. 97, 11. 1-21. On the Markovo peasants’ invitation, see Zubrilin's own account published as part of the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Republic, Krasnyi Pakhar': Izdanie volokolamskogo ukoma, 83, 139 (23 November 1925); Pavlov, 14-15; and Smirnov, 23. Seregny discusses similar recruitment of teachers by peasants “as decoders and interpreters,” in Russian Teachers, 211.

23. Smirnov estimated that almost 1000 attended, but most other estimates are in the 100-300 range. In addition to Zubrilin, speeches were given by union organizers, local peasants and workers. See Smirnov, 23-26; Pavlov, 14-15; TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 77, d. 1892, 11. 109-11; Russkiia vedomosti, no. 289 (3 November 1905).

24. Prigovor sel'skogo skhoda krest'ian s. Markova Moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1905).

25. On Bushnell's argument, see above.

26. Prigovor sel'skogo skhoda.

27. On the November Congress, see Kiriukhina, “Vserossiiskii krest'ianskii soiuz, “ 115-17. For the protocols, see Materialy k krest'ianskomu voprosu. Otchet o zasedaniiakh delegatskoga s“ezda Vserossiiskogo krest'ianskogo soiuza 6-10 noiabria 1905 g. (Rostov on the Don, 1905).

28. Versions of the prigovor were reprinted in Russkoe slovo, no. 291 (5 November 1905) and Russkiia vedomosti, no. 289 (3 November 1905). On the publication of the prigovor as a brochure, see memos to the governor of Moscow, TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 103, d. 269, 11. 83-84.

29. TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 77, d. 1892, 1. 132; Russkiia vedomosti, no. 317 (1 December 1905); Pavlov, 20; Smirnov, 39-40.

30. The strikes are discussed in some detail by both Pavlov and Smirnov. While the Markovo peasants are not referred to specifically in the police and government reports I found in the archives, the strikes and seizure of timber aimed at the two major local landlords, Meshcherskii and Shakhovskii, are mentioned repeatedly by the land captain Miller and the local police. Pavlov, 20-21; Smirnov, 32-34, 40; TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 77, d. 1892, 11. 55, 62, 65, 112. Smirnov notes that Prince Meshcherskii asked for troops to quell the strikes and seizure of timber, but the authorities refrained because, in the words of the district police chief, “Troops would only inflame the peasants” (Smirnov, 34). For descriptions of Ivan Ryzhov's role as a “Peasant Union agitator” and his attempt to spread strikes in neighboring districts, see the resolutions of the Volokolamsk land captains in May 1906 calling for Ryzhov's replacement (TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 1. 39) and-the July report sentencing Ryzhov to 5 years in exile (TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 11. 1-2).

31. Smirnov, 41-42.

32. See Smirnov, 24; and Timofeev's own account of the assembly, in Krasnyi pakhar', no. 83 (139) (22 November 1925).

33. Smirnov, 32-33.

34. The circular pattern of migration can be démonstrated statistically from census materials. See Johnson, Peasant and Proletarian, 29-31, 42-50; Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii 1897 g., vol. 24, table 1, 4-5 and table 3A, 10-11; Perepis’ Moskvy, 1902, vol. I, pt. 1, table 1, 1-4. For accounts of the conflicts between migrants and peasants in the village on one hand, and peasants and workers in the city on the other, see the memoirs of two Volokolamsk natives, Semenov, S. T., Dvadtsat' piat’ let v derevne (Petrograd: Zhizn’ i znanie, 1915), 12–13 Google Scholar; and Kanatchikov, Semen, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov, trans, and ed. Zelnik, Reginald (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 21–22 Google Scholar.

35. Pavlov, 41.

36. Ibid., 41-42.

37. Ibid., 44. The quotation is from Nikolaev's recollection of the republic included in Pavlov, 43-49. The availability of revolutionary materials and the use of the communal offices to facilitate their distribution in Markovo and the surrounding villages is confirmed in the report on Ryzhov summarizing his activities and his sentencing (TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 11. 1-2).

38. On Zubrilin's arrest, see TsGAOR, f. 63, op. 26, d. 97, 11. 1-21. On the arrest of others from the Third Element, see TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 77, d. 1892, 11. 184-92.

39. Zubrilin's importance and the extent of the local peasants’ concern for him were illustrated when, upon his arrest, Markovo peasants issued a resolution in protest and collected 500 rubles to be used for his defense and possible fines; see reports in Russkii golos, no. 61 (4 March 1906) and Pravo, no. 10 (12 March 1906): 964. For protest from another sphere, see the extensive article in praise of Zubrilin and in condemnation of his arrest by the economist Chuprov, A. I., “Gorkiia mysli (po povodu aresta A.A. Zubrilina),” Russkiia vedomosti, no. 52 (23 February 1906 Google Scholar).

40. For general accounts of the Duma elections, see Emmons, Terrence, The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 241–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ascher, Abraham, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 2, Authority Restored (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 50–54 Google Scholar. On peasant voting for Duma and petitioning of local representatives in Volokolamsk, see reports in Russkoe slovo, no. 70 (13 March 1906); and no. 149 (9 June 1906).

41. TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 1. 20. This stance was consistent with arguments made at earlier assemblies in Markovo, which noted the inequities of the current representation on the zemstvo board. See the report in Novosti dnia, no. 8042 (4 November 1905). Similar meetings electing peasant representatives were held throughout Volokolamsk. For an account of one held in Bukhalovsk volost', see Russkoe Slovo, no. 149 (9 June 1906).

42. TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 1. 20. Volokolamsk was composed of eleven volosti, for Markovo, the smallest district, to have two peasant representatives, clearly implied peasant control of the board.

43. In April the government issued new regulations regarding punishment for participating in agricultural strikes. In the summer Stolypin distributed a circular calling for continued vigilance against strikes “which quickly assumed a social character and cannot be tolerated.” See Ascher, Authority Restored, 124.

44. TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 1. 39.

45. Memo reproduced in Pavlov, 30.

46. Ibid., 30-31; Smirnov, 54.

47. Memos to volost’ scribe and board reproduced in Pavlov, 31-32.

48. TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121, 1. 23. For copies of all the petitions, see ibid., 11. 22-34.

49. TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 103, d. 275, 11. 2, 7.

50. As quoted in Pavlov, 33. On the governor's inspection tour, see also Smirnov, 58-59; TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 103, d. 275, 1. 6; TsGAOR, f. 58, op. 9, d. 121; Russkiia vedomosti, no. 177 (12 July 1906), and Russkoe slovo, no. 177 (12 July 1906).

51. Smirnov, 59; Pavlov, 33; TsGIAgM, f. 17, op. 103, d. 275, 11. 24, 34-36.