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Obshchina and Mir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Steven A. Grant
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Extract

The words Obshchina and Mir should be familiar to all students of nineteenth-century Russia. Yet most Russian historians would probably be hard pressed to distinguish properly between the two terms. Current scholarship offers scant help regarding precise definitions and usages of these nouns. Semantic as well as historical questions are raised by their use, and the semantic questions are compounded by the fact that both Russian words are usually translated into English as “commune.” Each of these words does have its own history and a meaning which separates it from its counterpart, however, and this article attempts to eliminate some of the confusion surrounding the use of the two terms.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , December 1976 , pp. 636 - 651
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1976

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References

1. The restriction to nonpeasants will become clear in the following sections. “Russia” throughout this article refers basically to Great Russia.

2. F. P. Filin et al., eds., Slovak sovremennogo russkogo literatitmo go iasyka, s.v. mir. Cf. Lazar, Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 54 and S8S, n. 11Google Scholar); Jerome, Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (New York: Atheneum, 1964, p. 253 Google Scholar; Teodor, Shanin, The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972), pp. 33 and 239Google Scholar; and Zaionchkovskii, Petr; Otmena krepostnogo prava v Rossii, 3rd rev. and enl. ed. (Moscow, 1968), pp. 126 and 129Google Scholar, where mir = sel'skoe obshchestvo = obshchina.

3. Volin, Century, p. 77. Cf. his description of the mir on pp. 78-79. It should be noted here, in connection with the word “tenure” in the text, that Russian has two words similar in meaning to the English concept of ownership. In this article, vladenie will always be translated as “tenure, ” “holding, ” or “possession”; sobstvennost’ will be “property” or “ownership.” Between roughly 1700 and 1861 almost no peasants owned their own land in Great Russia; they held state or landlord (pomeshchik) land.

4. Filin et al., eds., Slovar1, s.v. obshchina.

5. Watters, Francis M., “The Peasant and the Village Commune,” in The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Vucinich, Wayne S. (Stanford, 1968), pp. 134–35 Google Scholar; Male, D. J., Russian Peasant Organisation before Collectivisation (Cambridge, 1971), p. 220.Google Scholar

6. Robinson, Geroid T., Rural Russia Under the Old Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 67–68, 70-71Google Scholar; Sterling, J. E. Wallace, Eudin, Xenia Joukoff, and Fisher, H. H., eds., notes to Features and Figures of the Past, by Gurko, V. I. (Stanford, 1939), p. 595–97.Google Scholar

7. Sergei, Pushkarev, Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, ed. Vernadsky, George and Fisher, Ralph T. Jr., (New Haven, 1970)Google Scholar, s.v. mir and obshchina.

8. Carsten, Goehrke, Die Theorien iiber Entstehung und Entwicklung des “Mir” (Wiesbaden, 1964), p. 1–5.Google Scholar

9. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 16, p. 264, quoted in Dubrovskii, S. M., Stolypinskaia semel'naia reforma (Moscow, 1963), p. 49.Google Scholar

10. Ibid.

11. Marc, Raeff, ed., Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (New York, 1966), p. 228 n.Google Scholar

12. V., Trirogov, Obshchina i podat’ (St. Petersburg, 1882), p. 91 Google Scholar; Vasil'chikov, A. I., Zemlevladcnie i semledelie v Rossii i v drugikh evropeiskikh gosudarstvakh, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), vol. 1, p. xxxvi and vol. 2, p. 122Google Scholar; Sterling, Eudin, and Fisher, eds., Features, pp. 596-97.

13. Among the best treatments of the problem of the origins of Russian peasant “communes” are Goehrke, Die Theorien) Michael B. Petrovich, “The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Historiography, ” in The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich, pp. 206-18; Dubrovskii, S. M., “Rossiiskaia obshchina v literature XIX i nachala XX v. (Bibliograficheskii obzor),” in Voprosy istorii sel'skogo khoziaistva, kresfianstva i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii, ed. Ivanov, L. M. et al. (Moscow, 1961), pp. 348–61 Google Scholar; Kizevetter, A. A., “Krest'ianstvo v russkoi nauchnoistoricheskoi literature,” in Kresfianskaia Rossiia, vol. 5-6 (Prague, 1923), p. 23–43.Google Scholar

14. Russkaia pravda po spiskam akademicheskomu, karamsinskomu i troitskomu, ed. B. D. Grekov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934), p. S; Medieval Russian Laws, trans, and annotated by George Vernadsky (New York, 1969), pp. 4-5, 13, 28, n. to art. 13.

15. It is frequently pointed out that the word mir in Russian also means “peace” and “the world.” It is easy to see how the village in which the peasant lived was his whole world. The connection with the meaning “peace” is more nebulous, though etymologicalh/ the root is the same. Perhaps for this reason, in old Russian orthography, mir was spelled with an “H” to mean “peace” but with an “i” to denote both “the world” and the “peasant village community.”

16. The assertion of continuous usage is based on logic. Copies of the Russkaia Pravda from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain the word mir (see note 13 above). Collections of peasant proverbs from the eighteenth century have examples of sayings wherein the word mir means either “world” or, more likely, “peasant community.” Cf. Ippolit Bogdanovich, comp., Russkie poslovitsy (St. Petersburg, 1785), part 1, pp. 15, 25, 33, 35, 36, 51, 72, 73; part 3, pp. 12, 13, 17, 21, 22. Similar collections from the nine-teenth century demonstrate that mir was used to denote the peasant village (see Dal, Vladimir I., Poslovitsy russkogo naroda: Sbornik [Moscow, 1862], pp. 431–33Google Scholar).

17. See notes 21 and 22 below.

18. Cf. S. G. Pushkarev, “Proiskhozhdenie krest'ianskoi pozemel'no-peredel'noi obshchiny v Rossii, ” part 2, Zapiski nauchno-issledovatel'skogo ob “edineniia (Russkii svobodnyi universitet v Prage), vol. 10, no. 77 (Prague, 1941), pp. 197, 199, 224, n. 14.

19. Names possibly used in referring to this special type of tenure (in the adjectival form, modifying vladenie) were obshchestvennoe (cf. note 23 below) or dtuhevoe (see Postnikov, V. E., Iuzhno-russkoe krest'ianskoe khoziaistvo [Moscow, 1891], p. 34 Google Scholar, for a nineteenth-century example of this term's use). The system of redistribution (not tenure) was called simply uravnenie zemli by nonpeasants (see Pushkarev, “Proiskhozhdenie, ” pp. 191, 193, 194, 199).

20. Slovar1 akademii rossiiskoi, po asbuchnomu poriadku raspolozhennyi, s.v., mir.

21. I. A. Krylov, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1969), 2: 92-93, 449 n.; A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiatikh tomakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1949), 6: 190-93. Cf. V. V. Vinogradov et al., eds., Slovar’ iazyka Pushkina (Moscow, 1957), s.v. mir and mirskoi.

22. Pushkarev, “Proiskhozhdenie, ” pp. 186-99. See also V. A. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX v.) (Moscow, 1976).

23. See Chernyshev, I. V., Agrarno-kresfianskaia politika Rossii za 150 let (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 79–80 Google Scholar; Semevskii, V. I., Krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v 18 i pervoi polovine 19 veka, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1888), pp. 29–30, 68-70, 81-88, 107-18, 132-34Google Scholar; V. V[orontsov], ., “Ocherki obshchinnogo zemlevladeniia,” Otechestvennyc zapiski, no. 1 (January 1882), pp. 237–38Google Scholar; Goehrke, Die Theorien, pp. 7-9; Prikazchikova, E. V., Ekonomicheskie vsgliady A. N. Radishcheva, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1949), pp. 85–86 Google Scholar; Boltin, I. N., Primechaniia na istoriiu drevniia i nyneshniia Rossii G. Leklerka, vol. 2 ([St. Petersburg], 1788), pp. 340–43.Google Scholar

24. Neither of these men attached any great significance or advantages to “communal” (their term was obshchestvennoe, not obshchinnoe) tenure. See Pestel, P. I., Russkaia Pravda. Nakaz Vremennomu Verkhovnomu Pravleniiu (St. Petersburg, 1906), pp. 82–86, 203-4Google Scholar; Semevskii, V. I., Politicheskie i obshchestvennye idei dekabristov (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp. 611–12, 624-29Google Scholar. In contrast, another Decembrist, M. A. Fonvizin, insisted on retention of communal landholding in his plans for Russian agriculture (see Semevskii, Krest'ianskii vopros, vol. 1, pp. 363-69).

25. Sreznevskii, I. I., Materialy dlia slovaria drevne-russkogo iazyka po pis'mennym pamiatnikam, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1902 Google Scholar; photographic reproduction: Graz, Austria, 1955), s.v. obshchina; G. E. Kochin, comp., Materialy dlia terminologichcskogo slovaria drevnei Rossii, ed. B. D. Grekov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937), s.v. ob'china, opchina; Diuvernua, A. L., Materialy dlia slovaria drevne-russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1894)Google Scholar, s.v. obshchina.

26. Kochin, Materialy.

27. Slovar’ akademii rossiiskoi, s.v. obshchina.

28. Ibid. At about this time, Pushkin used the plural of the word in the sense of “commoners”; the British House of Commons was called palata obshchin in the nineteenth century.

29. la. Saburov, “Poezdka v Saratov, Astrakhan i na Kavkaz, ” Moskovskii nabliudatel', book 2 (May 1835), pp. 201-2.

30. Khomiakov, A. S., “O starom i novom,” Sochineniia, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1900), pp. 13–14, 17, 28-29.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., pp. 25-26.

32. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii I. V. Kireevskogo v dvukh tomakh, ed. M. O. Gershenzon (Moscow, 1911), 1: 115 (hereafter cited as Kireevskii, Polnoe sobranie).

33. Special credit for this “discovery” has been given to Kireevskii by Peter Christoff ﹛An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism: A Study in Ideas, vol. 1: A. S. Xomjakov [The Hague, 1961], pp. 206-7; vol. 2: /. V. Kireevskij [The Hague, 1972], pp. 82 and 202) and by Gleason, Abbott ﹛European and Muscovite: Ivan Kireevsky and the Origins of Slavophilism [Cambridge, Mass., 1972], p. 165)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Khomiakov, “O starom, ” pp. 13, 23-25, 28-29.

35. Ibid., p. 29.

36. Kireevskii, Polnoe sobranie, p. 115.

37. A measure of imprecision seems unavoidable in any use of the word obshchina. Here the term can be understood as both the (krest'ianskaia) posemel'naia obshchina (perhaps the most common name used in technical literature) and the sel'skaia obshchina. It would be fruitless, if not impossible, to attempt to define differences in meaning between these two terms as used in the last century. For a useful discussion of obshchina and mir terminology, see Goehrke, Die Theorien, pp. 1-5.

38 See, for example, Khomiakov, "O sel'skikh usloviiakh" and "Eshche o sel'skikh usloviiakh, " Sochineniia, vol. 3, pp. 63-85.

39 Sobranie sochinenii K. D. Kavelina, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 1900), pp. 2S0 n., 253 n., 317 (hereafter cited as Kavelin, Sobranie sochinenii).

40. See, for example, Iurii Samarin, “O pozemel'nom obshchinnom vladenii, ” Sochineniia lu. F. Samarina, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1885); the article originally appeared in Sel'skoe blagoustroistvo in 1858. But perhaps the best observations on the subject came from a foreigner, the German Baron Haxthausen, who “discovered” the Russian repartitional mir for Europeans. See his Studien übcr die inneren Zustände, das Volkslebcn, and insbesonders die landlichen Einrichtungen Russlands, vols. 1 and 2 (Hanover, 1847), vol. 3 (Berlin, 1852).

41. Some of the best secondary works on this subject include N. V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952); Christoff, Xomjakov; Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), and his “Herzen and the Peasant Commune, ” in Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, ed. Ernest J. Simmons (Cambridge, Mass., 1955). See also my “The Peasant Commune in Russian Thought 1861- 1905” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1973).

42. Cf. Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii, 2nd collection, no. 4677, art. 310; ibid., no. 11189, passim (hereafter cited as P.S.Z.). Also see ibid., UkazateV alfavitnyi (vol. 42, part 2), s.v. mir i mirskie skhody. and mir terminology, see Goehrke, Die Theorien, pp. 1-5.

38. See, for example, Khomiakov, “O sel'skikh usloviiakh” and “Eshche o sel'skikh usloviiakh, ” Sochineniia, vol. 3, pp. 63-85.

43. Ibid., no. 36657, art. 40. V. I. Orlov's celebrated 1879 definition or breakdown of obshchiny into simple (prostye), divisional (rasdel'nye), and compound (sostavnye) was basically only a restatement of this paragraph. See his Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii po moskovskoi gubernii, vol. 4, part 1: Formy kresfianskogo semlevladeniia v tnoskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1879), p. 6.

44. P.S.Z., no. 36657, arts. 51 and 54; ibid., no. 36662, art. 113 and n.

45. Dal, V. I., Tolkovyi slovar” zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka (Moscow, 1865)Google Scholar, s.v. mir and obshchaf, obshchit1.

46. Trudy vol'nogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva, vol. 4, part 4 (November 1865), pp. 345-46.

47. Watters, “The Peasant, ” p. 135. This terminology seems unduly influenced by sociological theories of Durkheim or Tönnies.

48. References for this and the following statements: Pobedonostsev, K. P., Kurs grashdanskogo prava, 2nd rev. ed., vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1873), p. 465 Google Scholar; Pakhman, S. V., Obychnoe grashdanskoe pravo v Rossii, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1877), pp. 12–15Google Scholar; Kavelin, , “Obshchinnoe vladenie,” Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1898), pp. 228–30 Google Scholar.

49. Kavelin, “Obshchinnoe vladenie, ” p. 229.

50. Pestrzhetskii, D. I., Sbornik postanovlenii, otnosiashchikhsia k grazhdanskomu pravu lits sel'skogo sostoianiia (St. Petersburg, 1898), pp. 186, 189-92Google Scholar; Goremykin, I. L., comp., Svod uzakonenii i rasporiashenii pravitel'stva ob ustroistve sel'skogo sostoianiia i uchreshdenii po kresfianskim delam, vol. 1, part 1 (St. Petersburg, 1903), p. 494.Google Scholar

51. See, for example, Kavelin, “Obshchinnoe vladenie, ” pp. 247-51.

52. Pobedonostsev, Kurs, vol. 1, p. 470; E. I. Iakushkin, Obychnoe pravo: Materialy dlia bibliografii obychnogo prava, vol. 1 (Yaroslavl, 1875), p. xviii.

53. Kavelin, “Obshchinnoe vladenie, ” pp. 239-40; Pobedonostsev, Kurs, vol. 1, p. 471; Pakhman, Obychnoe pravo, vol. 1, pp. 18-19.

54. The best collection of such descriptions remains the anthology compiled jointly by the Free Economic and Geographical Societies: Barykov, F. L., Polovtsov, A. V., and Sokolovskii, P. A., eds., Sbornik materialov dlia isucheniia sel'skoi posemel'noi obshchiny, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1880)Google Scholar (no more volumes were published). There is an excellent bibliography of writings on the obshchina up to 1880 in this book. For further listings, see the four volumes published by Iakushkin under the title Obychnoe pravo: Materialy dlia bibliografii obychnogo pravo.