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Russian Peasant Volunteers at the Beginning of the Crimean War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David Moon
David Moon*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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Extract

In October 1853 war broke out between Russia and Turkey. The following March Britain and France joined the war on the side of the Turks. In the first seven months of the war, the Russian government announced three regular recruit levies, several appeals for volunteers and the formation of a temporary naval militia. News of these measures filtered down to seignorial peasants (pomeshchich'i krest'iane) through official channels and as rumors that went beyond the contents of the government measures and that contained various distortions, in particular that the government was offering privileges, including freedom from serfdom and the regular recruit obligation, to volunteers. In the spring and early summer of 1854, thousands of seignorial peasants left their villages to volunteer for military service. Many descended on Moscow. Seignorial peasants, however, had to have permission from their owners to volunteer, and the would-be volunteers were returned to their villages. Usually Russian peasants loathed military service in the regular army and did everything in their power to avoid being drafted. Why did so many peasants try to volunteer in the spring and early summer of 1854?

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , Winter 1992 , pp. 691 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1992

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References

A preliminary version of this article was presented to a seminar in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, England, in October 1986. I am grateful to the following people for their comments on this and various subsequent drafts: Maureen Perrie, David Saunders, Daniel Field, Ed Melton, Sheila Fitzpatrick and Martha Newman.

1. John S. Curtiss, Russia's Crimean War (Durham: Duke University Press, 1979), 184, 236.

2. They had been banned from volunteering since 1742. Beliaev, I., Krest'iane na Rusi (Moscow: Tipografiia Obshchestva rasprostraneniia polezykh knig Mokhovaia, 1891), 255–56Google Scholar. On the harshness of military service in prereform Russia and the ways in which peasants tried to avoid being drafted, see Beskrovnyi, L. G., Russkaia armiia i flat v XIX veke: Voenno-ekonomicheskii potentsial Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 74–75 Google Scholar; Bohac, Rodney D., “The Mir and the Military Draft,” Slavic Review 47 (Winter 1988): 652, 653, 656, 657-58, 664–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curtiss, John S., The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825-1855 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 233–54Google Scholar; Keep, John H. L., Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 146–56Google Scholar; Elise Kimerling, “A Social History of the Lower Ranks in the Russian Army, 1796-1855” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia, 1983), 41-46.

3. Some of the documents have been published: S. B. Okun', ed., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1850-1856 gg. Sbornik dokumentov. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'noekonomicheskoi literatury, 1962), 431-52. I consulted other documents in Soviet historical archives: TsGIA, fondy 797 (Kantseliariia ober-prokurora Sinoda); 1281 (Sovet ministra vnutrennikh del); 1284 (Departament obshchikh del Ministerstva vnutrennikh del); 1286 (Departament politsii ispolnitel'noi); TsGAOR, f. 109 (III otdelenie sobstvennoi ego imperatorskogo velichestva kantseliarii).

4. Litvak, B. G., Ocherki istochnikovedeniia massovoi dokumentatsii XIX-nachala XX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 137–41Google Scholar; LeDonne, John P., “Criminal Investigations before the Great Reforms,” Russian History 1 (1974): 101–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Pravitel'stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v. (Moscow: Mysl', 1978), 167-71, 176 Google Scholar; Wallace, Donald MacKenzie, Russia (London: Cassell, 1877; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1970), 327.Google Scholar

5. See, for example Dergachev, A. F., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Penzenskoi gubernii nakanune reformy 1861 goda (Penza: Penzenskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1958), 75–77 Google Scholar; Ignatovich, I. I., “Volneniia pomeshchich'ikh krest'ian ot 1854 po 1863 gg.,” Minuvshie gody (1908) bks. 5-6: 97-98, 117–19Google Scholar; Karmin, M. S., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Riazanskoi gubernii v 50-kh godakh XIX veka (Riazan', 1929), 41–45 Google Scholar; Linkov, la. I., Ocherki istorii krest'ianskogo dvizheniia v Rossii v 1825-1861 gg. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebnopedagogicheskoe izdatel'stvo ministerstva prosveshcheniia RSFSR, 1952), 96–106 Google Scholar; Margulis, V. L., “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Riazanskoi gubernii nakanune reformy 1861 goda,” Uchenye zapiski. Riazanskii pedagogicheskii institut, no. 11 (1953): 132–58Google Scholar; Slezsinskii, A, “Morskoe opolchenie,” Russkaia starina 124 (December 1905): 718–24Google Scholar; Snezhnevskii, V. I., “K istorii pobegov krepostnykh v poslednei chetverti XVIII i v XIX stoletiiakh,” Nizhegorodskii sbornik 10 (1890): 58–59 Google Scholar. For treatment by western historians see Curtiss, Russia's Crimean War, 535-38; Wada, Haruki, “The Inner World of Russian Peasants,” Annals of Institute of Social Sciences (University of Tokyo), no. 2 (1979): 79 Google Scholar. See comments by Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 352-53. The role of the volunteer phenomenon, or of peasant unrest in general, in the causes of the abolition of serfdom are beyond the scope of this article.

6. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, 2nd series (hereafter PSZ 2), 29 (1854), nos. 27916 and 28150.

7. In 1839 the empire had been divided into eastern and western zones for recruiting levies. In peacetime, levies were raised in each zone in alternate years. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 78; N. Varadinov, Istoriia ministerstva vnutrennikh del, 8 pts. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, 1858-1863), pt. 3, bk. 2: 464-65.

8. PSZ 2, 29 (1854), nos. 27889-27890, 28189-28190; 28 (1853), no.27431; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 78; Varadinov, Istoriia, pt.3, bk.4, 63-64. From October 1853 to the end of August 1854, 337, 166 men were drafted into the armed services. By the end of the war, a further 461, 238 had been drafted (Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 78-79). For the eastern levy see Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 77; and Curtiss, Russian Army, 252. The freeing of seignorial peasants is in Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (here after SZ), (St. Petersburg, 1842), vol. 9, Svod zakonov o sostoianiiakh, art. 1090.

9. Varadinov, Istoriia, pt.3, bk.4, 105 and 116; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 80; Alfred J. Rieber, ed., The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857-1864 (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1966), 24.

10. TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.24; Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 446-47. The minister of internal affairs probably did not intend for this to happen. Since 1837 the word vsenarodno rather than vseobshche had been used when legislation was to be read out to the population at large. PSZ 2, 12 (1837), no. 10304, arts. 6, 79, 82, 83; cf. SZ (1832), 1, Osnovnye zakony, arts. 112-16.

11. State peasant obrok was a tax paid to the government for the use of their land allotments (N. M. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest'iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, 2 vols. [Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia Nauk, 1946-1958], 1: 343). For examples of the distribution of the regulations see Kurskskie gubernskie vedomosti (24 April 1854) no. 17, sect. 2 and TsGIA, f.1286, op. 15, 1854, d.1158, 1.46. The appeal to the free classes was published in some provincial gazettes; for example, see Nizhegorodskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 16, sect.2, (21 April 1854).

12. Babkin, V., Narodnoe opolchenie v Otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1962)Google Scholar; PSZ 2, 29 (1854), no.28121; Zhurnal ministerstva vnutrennikh del (hereafter ZhMVD), (St. Petersburg), pt.6, bk.5, (May 1854), sect.4: 1; TsGIA, f.1286, op. 15, 1854, d.1158, 1.26ob; Slezskinskii, “Morskoe opolchenie,” 719. See also, Greenhill, Basil and Gifford, Ann, The British Assault on Finland 1854-1855. A Forgotten Naval War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988 Google Scholar.

13. Sanktpeterburgskie senatskie vedomosti (6 April 1854), supplement, 65; ZhMVD, pt.6, bk.5 (May 1854), sect.4, 3; TsGIA, f.1284, op.241, 1854, d.14, 1.26; Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 437 654 n.441; Slezskinskii, “Morskoe opolchenie,” 720; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.27-27ob., 181 and 197; Penzenskie gubemskie vedomosti (21 April 1854), sect.2; Nizhegorodskie gubemskie vedomosti (5 May 1854), sect.2; Voronezhskie gubemskie vedomosti (8 May 1854), sect.2; ZhMVD, pt.6, bk.5 (May 1854), sect.4, 1-7; TsGIA, f.1284, op.241, 1854, d.14, 11.26-27ob.; f.1281, op.6, 1855, d.29, U.24ob.-25ob.; d.59a, 1.23; Slezskinskii, “Morskoe opolchenie,” 720-24; Ignatovich, “Krest'ianskie volneniia,” 108; Linkov, Ocherki, 97; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.950, 11.Mob., 8-8ob.; d.1158, 11.27, 127-127ob.; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.138, 11.6-8ob.

14. On brokers, mediators or “hinge-people,” see Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 43–44 Google Scholar; Wolf, Eric, Peasants (Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 65–66 Google Scholar; M. Rakhmatullin, A, “Krepostnoe krest'ianstvo Rossii i dvizhenie Dekabristov,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1977): 128–29.Google Scholar

15. Linkov, Ocherki, 93-96.

16. On the origins in Tambov province of the volunteers, see Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 433; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.146-147. For the origins in Riazan’ province see Karmin, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 42; and Margulis, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie,” 133-34. The original confessions are in Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 437. The “decree” was, in fact, the order of 18 March on volunteers from the general population (TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.29-29ob., 181). The subsequent statements are in TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.136ob. The investigation is in TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.29-29ob.; f.797, 1854, op.24, II otd., I st., d.238, 1.9; Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 441. See also TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.181 181ob., 196-196ob.; f.797, 1854, op.24, II otd., I st., d.238, 1.13-13ob.; Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 655 n.451. Lower-ranking clergymen would have had access to the official publications that contained the texts of the measures and most were sufficiently literate to read if not fully understand them. See Gregory Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform and Counter-Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 32, 155-60.

17. This case can be followed in Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 447; Linkov, Ocherki, 101; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.2-3, 45-47, 109ob., 133-134ob., 159, 196ob.; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.137, 1.93-93ob. Announcing legislation without permission, “wilfully” interpreting legislation and spreading rumors were illegal. SZ 1 (1832), Osnovnye zakony, art.65, 14; Ustav o preduprezhdenii i presechenii prestuplenii, arts. 117-22.

18. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 447; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.109-109ob., 141-142, 159, 196ob.; f.797, 1854, op.24, II otd., I st, d.238, 11.13-14; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.137, 1.93-93ob.

19. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 431, 442, 447; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.137, 1.22-22ob.; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.60-60ob.

20. TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.73ob.; Karmin, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 44; Margulis, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie,” 154.

21. Karmin, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 42; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.12-12ob., 14-14ob. and 141; Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 447.

22. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 442, 445, 433, 447, 439-40, 442-43; Karmin, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 43; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.73; Margulis, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie,” 143-45.

23. See S. B. Okun’ and E. S. Paina, “Ukaz ot 5 aprelia 1797 goda i ego evoliutsiia” in Issledovaniia po otechestvennomu istochnikovedeniiu (Leningrad: Nauka, 1964), 283-99. On the flour rations see TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.161ob.-162.

24. Steven L. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 18-19.

25. Curtiss, Russian Army, 246; Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, “The Lower Ranks in the Peacetime Regimental Economy of the Russian Army, 1796-1855,” Slavonic and East European Review 64 (January 1986): 43. The governor of Tambov ordered an investigation into the peasants’ allegations (TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.161ob.-162) but I was not able to find the results of the investigation in the central archives.

26. Following further trouble on this estate, the Senate ordered that it be taken into trusteeship. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 452, 656 n.458 and 712; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.130-132; Margulis, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie,” 158.

27. TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.929, 11.3-4ob. Gorbachev may not have lied in the first instance; he may have been forced to withdraw his statement by the Tavkilovs or under pressure from the investigating authorities.

28. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 443.

29. Ibid., 449.

30. Ibid., 449-50.

31. Ibid., 443, 449-51; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.137, 11.56-57ob., 79, 84-84ob., 86-89; TsGIA, op.15, 1854, d.l 158, 11.80-83ob. There were also cases of peasants attempting to volunteer in Nizhnii Novgorod, Penza and Voronezh provinces (Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 441, 434; Dergachev, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 75-77; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.l 158, 11.74-76, 91-92, 94-97, 106-108, 137-140, 168, 171-171ob., 219-227). The volunteers from Nizhnii Novgorod province and others in Riazan’ and Vladimir provinces were artisans and peasant workers at several privately owned (possessional) foundries and, as such, are beyond the scope of this article. See also A. M. Pankratova, ed., Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v XIX veke (2nd ed., Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'noekonomicheskoi literatury, 1955), 1 (pt.2): 422-32.

32. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 432, 434-37, 448, 451, 431-34, 436-38, 441-45, 447-52, 656 n.455; TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.102, 72ob., 134ob.-135, 196; A. P. Povalishin, Riazanskie pomeshchiki i ikh krespostnye (Riazan': Izdatel'stvo Riazanskoi arkhivnoi kommissii, 1903), 52, 299; TsGAOR, f.109, 4 eksp., 1854, d.137, 11.22-23ob.

33. Babkin, Narodnoe opolchenie, 132-205; Beskrovnyi, L. G., ed., Narodnoe opolchenie v Otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, 1962), 104–10Google Scholar; Dement'ev, E. I., “Russkaia derevnia posle otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g.,” htoricheskie zapiski 116 (1988): 303–4.Google Scholar

34. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia, 77; Predtechenskii, A. V., ed., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1826-1849 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1961), 559 Google Scholar. For discussions of “just price” and “reciprocity and the balance of exchange” see Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 163–65, 167-76.Google Scholar

35. Chistov, K. V., Russkie narodnye sotsial'no-utopicheskie legendy XVII-XIX w. (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), 31 Google Scholar; Felitsyna, V. P. and Prokhorov, Iu. E., Russkie poslovitsy, pogovorki i krylatye vyrazheniia (Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 1979), 75.Google Scholar

36. See, for example, Beskrovnyi, Narodnoe opolchenie, 38.

37. Okun', Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie, 447.

38. Exodus 11 and 12. There were large numbers oimolokane (sectarians) in Tambov province. They had considerable knowledge of the scriptures (Wallace, Russia, 296, 298; V. I. Semevskii, Krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v XVIII i pervoi polovine XIX veka, 2 vols. [St. Petersburg: Tipografiia obshchestvennaia pol'za, 1888], 2: 602).

39. This paragraph is based on ideas from Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), esp. 33, 36, 38; G. A. Kavtaradze, “Krest'ianskii ‘mir’ i tsarskaia vlast’ v soznanii pomeshchich'ikh krest'ian” (dissertation, Leningrad, 1972), 67-75; Anand A. Yang, “A Conversation of Rumors: The Language of Popular Mentalites in Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial India, “Journal of Social History 20 (Spring 1987): 485-505.

40. ZhMVD, pt.6, bk.5 (May 1854), sect.4: 1-7.

41. TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 1.161-161ob.

42. See Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976).

43. Gromyko, M. M., “Kul'tura russkogo krest'ianstva XVIII-XIX vekov kak predmet istoricheskogo issledovaniia,” Istoriia SSSR 3 (1987): 49 Google Scholar; Melton, Edgar, “Proto-Industrialization, Serf Agriculture and Agrarian Social Structure: Two Estates in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” Past and Present 115 (May 1987): 85, n.87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Soviet historians have argued, not entirely convincingly, that patriotic feeling was high during the Napoleonic wars and the Balkan crisis and Russo-Turkish war of 1875-1878; see Babkin, Narodnoe opolchenie; Buganov, A. V., “Otnoshenie krest'ianstva k Russko-Turetskoi voine 1877-1878 godov,” Istoriia SSSR 5 (1987): 182–89Google Scholar. In fact, in 1812 at least, peasants’ loyalties seem to have been local rather than national. See Kavtaradze, “Krest'ianskii ‘mir, '” 136-39. Buganov also emphasized the role of religious feeling in 1875-1878. See also Brooks, Jeffrey, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 214–45Google Scholar. The rumors regarding Britain and France are discussed in Shapiro, A, “Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v gody Krymskoi voiny,” Bor'ba klassov 10 (1936): 78 Google Scholar. There had been similar rumors about Napoleon in 1812. See Kavtaradze, “Krest'ianskii ‘mir, '” 115-18. Memories of these rumors may have been rekindled by the fact that Napoleon's nephew, Louis Napoleon, was the French ruler during the Crimean War. For peasants’ continued attempts to avoid the draft, see Bohac, “The Mir and the Military Draft,” 664-65. The officials’ reports are in TsGIA, f.1286, op.15, 1854, d.1158, 11.82ob., 95ob.

44. For rare examples before 1854, see S. M. Seredonin, Istoricheskii obzor deiatel'nosti Komiteta ministrov, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1902), 1: 326; Beliaev, Krest'iane na Rust, 255-56.

45. Bohac, “The Mir and the Military Draft,” 666.

46. If any seignorial peasants succeeded in this, it would not have been recorded by the authorities. In the 1830s seignorial peasants migrated to the Caucasus with false papers describing them as state peasants. This enabled them to take advantage of the special terms for migrants from the state peasantry. See Predtechenskii, ed., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1826-1849 gg., 225; TsGIA, f.1405, op.53, d.3180, 11.8ob.-9.