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The Litigious Daughter-in-Law: Family Relations in Rural Russia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Beatrice Farnsworth
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Extract

Russian folk wisdom regarded the daughter-in-law, the snokha (a word that also meant sister-in-law), as a source of family friction. Unable to coexist in the cramped quarters of the peasant hut, or izba, where a mother-in-law ruled over the stove and a father-in-law kept watch on the family purse, the daughter-inlaw supposedly made evident her discontent. A host of proverbs and folk sayings attest to the idea of the snokha as troublemaker: the saying that the daughter-in-law “likes the family hands but resents the family pot” summed up this resentment. According to this view, the daughter-in-law took but did not give.

Twentieth-century historians, influenced perhaps by Soviet interpretations as well as by literary impressions, see the peasant daughter-in-law in the prerevolutionary era not as a source of friction but rather as a helpless victim of family hostility: a husband's beatings, a mother-in-law's tyranny, a father-in-law's sexual harassment.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 49 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

1. For proverbs, Zarudnyi, M. I., Zakony i zhizri. Itogi izsledovaniia krest'ianskikh sudov (St. Petersburg, 1874), p. 157 Google Scholar. Efimenko, Aleksandra, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” Delo (1873):65–66.Google Scholar

2. A major contributor to the literary image of peasant women was Nikolai A. Nekrasov. See “Frost, the Nose”, Red in Nekrasov, N. A., Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii v trekh tomakh, ed., Chukovskii, K. I. (3 vols.; Leningrad, 1967), 2:109 Google Scholar. For historians on peasant women, see Engel, Barbara,Mothers and Daughters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 8 Google Scholar; Atkinson, Dorothy et al., Women in Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1977), p. 33 Google Scholar; Anokhina, L. A. and Shmeleva, M. N., Kul'tura i byt kolkhoznikov Kalininskoi Oblasti (Moscow, 1964), p. 174 Google Scholar.

3. Czap, Peter, “The Perennial Multiple Family Household, Mishino, Russia 1782–1858,” Journal of Family History (Spring 1982): 25.Google Scholar

4. For the courts, see Czap, Peter, “Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1861–1912,” Journal of Social History 1 (Winter 1967): 149–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jurisdiction was limited tocases not involving property worth more than 100 rubles, arson, or murder. A township (volost’) was made up of several village communities.

5. Trudy Komissii po preobrazovaniiu volostnykh sudov (7 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1874).

6. Ibid., l:ii.

7. Ibid., 3:57–58, 102; in Iaroslavl’ province.

8. See Shungunskii township in Kostroma in ibid., 3:306–308 and Arapovskii township in Tambov, also in ibid., 1:10.

9. There are a few entries for 1861–1863; see table 1.

10. Trudy Komissii, 2:106.

11. Ibid., 2:206–207.

12. Ibid., 3:179.

13. For this standard of judgment, see Peter Czap, “The Influence of Slavophile Ideology onthe Formation of theVolost Court of 1861 and the Practice of Peasant Self-Justice between 1861 and 1889,” Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1959, pp. 79–82.

14. In Bol'shesel'skii township, Iaroslavl’ province, up to thirty girls attended school and allfour judges were literate with salaries of 40 rubles a year. Trudy Komissii, 3:176. For Vysotskiitownship, see ibid., 2:203. Two of the judges were literate; judges were paid 40 rubles a year.

15. Money and cattle were called nadelok. The money might go to her husband and the cattlemight become part of the general property. Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” p. 93.

16. Trudy Komissii, 2:185, 190 (Moscow); 1:136 (Tambov).

17. Maksim M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (London: D. Nutt,1891), p. 55. Only males were, in fact, consulted. Donald M. Wallace, Russia (1905 ed.; reprint,New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 89.

18. Pakhman, S. V., Obychnoegrazhdanskoepravo v Rossii (2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1877–1879),2:261 Google Scholar; Mukhin, V. F., Obychnyi poriadok nasledovaniia u krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1888), pp. 252–53, 261Google Scholar; Trudy Komissii, 1:15 (Tambov).

19. Trudy Komissii, 3:75, 85 (Iaroslavl’), and 3:388 (Kostroma); Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:270; Czap, “Peasant-Class Courts,” p. 165.

20. Mukhin, Obychnyi poriadok, pp. 263–64. She could demand in court the right to run herhusband's portion of the land allotment if she paid the taxes; ibid. She could also insist that herfather-in-law not sell his farmstead since it was the future inheritance of her son. Ibid., p. 65;Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoepravo, 2:273; Trudy Komissii, 1:686, 688 (Tambov); 5:78 (Kiev).

21. Trudy Komissii, 2:324, 363, 370 (Moscow); 3:394 (Kostroma); Mukhin, Obychnyi poriadok, p. 266.

22. Trudy Komissii, 2:182 (Moscow).

23. Ibid., 2:195 (Moscow).

24. Ibid., 3:43 (Iaroslavl’).

25. Ibid., 2:212 (Moscow); F. Pokrovskii, “O semeinom polozhenii krest'ianskoi zhenshchiny v Kostromskoi gubernii po dannym volostnogo suda,” Zhivaia starina 3–4 (1896): 464.

26. See V. A. Aleksandrov, “Semeino-imushchestvennye otnosheniia po obychnomu pravu vrusskoi krepostnoi derevne XVIII-nachala XIX veka,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (1979): 48.

27. Opyt istoriko-sotsiologicheskogo izucheniia sela “Moldino” (Moscow, 1968), p. 108 (here after cited as “Moldino “); Anokhina and Shmeleva, Kul'tura i byt kolkhoznikov Kalininskoi Oblasti, p. 173.

28. “Moldino,” p. 109; Anokhina and Shmeleva, Kul'tura i byt kolkhoznikov Kalininskoi Oblasti, p. 174.

29. Mukhin, Obychnyi poriadok, p. 299.

30. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:185; Trudy Komissii, 3:289 (Iaroslavl’); 3:393(Kostroma).

31. Trudy Komissii, 2:170 (Moscow).

32. Ibid., 3:165 (laroslavl’); 5:132 (Kiev); 1:137 (Tambov).

33. “Moldino,” p. 108.

34. A. O. Afinogenova, Zhizri zhenskago naseleniia Riazanskago uezda (St. Petersburg, 1903),p. 76.

35. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:89.

36. Ibid., 2:88; Trudy Komissii, 3:16 (laroslavl’); 5:91 (Kiev); 3:354 (Kostroma); 3:407 (Kostroma).

37. Ibid., 2:569 (Moscow).

38. Ibid., p. 577.

39. For cases in which both parties were flogged for fornication, see Trudy Komissii, 3:377, 379;a woman charged a man with rape; he countered that they had lived together lovingly. The courtsentenced her to socially useful work and him to twenty floggings. Ibid., p. 142 (laroslavl’). A widowwho charged a man with fathering her child was awarded support; ibid., 1:138 (Tambov). See ibid.,3:379 (Kostroma), for a man fined 5 rubles for beating a woman who refused sexual intercourse.For other fornication cases, P. P. Chubinskii, Trudy etnograficheskoi statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v Zapadno-Russkii Kraii (St. Petersburg, 1872), pp. 18–19; 186–88.

40. Tiutriumov, I., “Krest'ianskaia sem'ia,” Russkaia rech (St. Petersburg, 1879), vol. 4,part 1:292 Google Scholar.

41. Trudy Komissii, 3:394 (Kostroma); also ibid., 158 (Iaroslavl’); A. Smirnov, Ocherki semeinykh otnosheniipo obychnomu pravu russkago naroda (Moscow, 1877), pp. 46–47.

42. Leont'ev, A. A., Volostnoisud i iuridicheskie obychai krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1895), p. 15 Google Scholar;see Trudy Komissii, 6:100–101 for three-day jail sentence.

43. Trudy Komissii, 2:208 (Moscow).

44. Atkinson et al., Women in Russia, p. 33; Anokhina and Shmeleva, Kul'tura i byt kolkhoznikov Kalininskoi Oblasti, p. 174; Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 45.

45. Trudy Komissii, 5:3, 33, 141 (Kiev).

46. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:112.

47. Trudy Komissii, 3:144 (Iaroslavl’); for neighbor's report, see ibid., p. 354.

48. Minenko, N. A., Russkaia krest'ianskaia sem'ia v zapadnoi Sibiri (Novosibirsk, 1979),pp. 127–30,135Google Scholar. Also see Kostrov, N. A., luridicheskie obychai krest'ian starozhilov tomskoi gubernii (Tomsk, 1876), pp. 20, 26Google Scholar, for relations between husband and wife.

49. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:112–13; Trudy Komissii, 2:10 (Moscow). Judgerefers to articles 106, 107, vol. 10, chap. 1 in Svod zakonov grazhdanskikh. See Trudy Komissii, 3:20for judges guiding themselves by vol. 10 and by Sel'skii ustav. In the first half of the nineteenthcentury, husbands were forbidden in imperial law to beat their wives. Atkinson et al., Women in Russia, p. 33.•50. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2: 105–06; Trudy Komissii, 6:279–80 (Samara).

51. For punishment of wife-beaters, see Trudy Komissii, 1:32, 39,295, 440, 443 (Tambov); 2:10,66, 72, 100, 108, 140, 239, 274, 275, 360, 418, 425, 545 (Moscow); 3:72, 101, 183, 185, 208, 225,236, 237, 263, 264, 272 (Iaroslavl’); 3:354, 383, 389, 413–15 (Kostroma); 3:444 (Nizhog); 4:109(Kharkov); 4:260 (Poltava); 5:91, 132, 191 (Kiev); N. Astyrev, V volostnykh pisariakh (Moscow,1896), p. 266; Tiutriumov, “Krest'ianskaia sem'ia,” pp. 142–43. In one case, a wife was dealt fifteenblows for deserting her husband, but he received twenty blows for beating her.

52. See table 1; also wife-beating cases recorded in forty-four townships: Moscow, seventeen;Iaroslavl', eight; Kostroma, seven; Tambov (agricultural) three; and see F. Pokrovskii, “O semeinompolozhenii krest'ianskoi zhenshchiny v kostromskoi gubernii po dannym volostnogo suda,” p. 459.

53. In Dymer with its 1,800 souls the elder received 40 rubles a year; the judges were unpaid.By comparison, in Ivanovskii township in Iaroslavl’ with 1,479 souls the elder received 450 rubles ayear; the judges 30 rubles.

54. Trudy Komissii, 5:161 (Kiev). Taganchevskii township had 2,505 souls; the elder received210 rubles a year.

55. Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” p. 57; Kovalevsky, Modem Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 45.

56. For transcripts in which women protest beatings, see Astyrev, V volostnykh pisariakh, pp. 270–71; Trudy Komissii, 1:443 (Tambov).

57. Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” pp. 86, 88–89.

58. Ibid., pp. 86–87.

59. Ibid., pp. 83, 87.

60. Trudy Komissii, 2:168 (Moscow); Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:95–97.

61. Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” p. 89.

62. Ibid.

63. Four husbands also charged debauchery, one disobedience, two theft, one physical abuse,and one demanded (successfully) the wages his wife earned working away from home because hehad to hire her replacement. Trudy Komissii, 3:139 (Iaroslavl’). A judge noted that husbands frequentlycharged wives with insubordination and wives charged ill-treatment, ibid., 2:93 (Moscow).

64. Ibid., 3:378 (Kostroma).

65. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:91.

66. Trudy Komissii, 3:384 (Kostroma).

67. Ibid., 2:555 (Moscow).

68. Ibid., p. 563. See pp. 555, 557, for other such agreements. Also Astyrev, V volostnykh pisariakh, pp. 224–25. Peasants expected wives to pay compensation for the loss of labor their desertion involved. Wallace, Russia, p. 545.

69. Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2:86–87. See Svod zakonov grazhdanskikh, vol. 10, chap. 1, art. 103 for spouses’ obligation to live together.

70. Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” p. 92, claims that township courts treated womenwith more sympathy than civil courts that were obliged to obey written law rigidly.

71. Trudy Komissii, 3:62 (Iaroslavl’).

72. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 43.

73. I am indebted to Neil Weissman of Dickinson College for the contrasting image.

74. [V U. Krupianskaia], The Village ofViriatino, trans. Sula Benet (New York: Anchor, 1970),p. 102; Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoepravo, 2:23–24,161–62,185–86; M. I. Zarudnyi, Zakony i zhizn’ (St. Petersburg, 1874), p. 118; Tiutriumov, “Krest'ianskaia sem'ia,” 4, part 1: 291–93; Mukhin,Obychnyi poriadok, pp. 223–77; Efimenko, “Krest'ianskaia zhenshchina,” pp. 65, 72–73, 86.