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The Soldatka: Folklore and Court Record

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Beatrice Farnsworth
Beatrice Farnsworth*
Affiliation:
Wells College
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Extract

The most vulnerable member of the peasant household was reported to be the soldatka, the soldier's wife. The quintessential outsider in a community based on married couples, the soldatka suffered from the general coldness of the village toward single women. Stereotyped as abused, neglected, and without resources, she was seen as a loose woman who drank and the bearer of illegitimate children. We know little about her. Popular imagination has been informed largely by the soldatka's plaintive voice in folk "recruit" laments. Historians have paid scant attention to the marginal members of peasant society. Yet focusing on the weaker persons in the peasant household provides insight into little-known subjects: family antagonisms, interpersonal relationships, and the status of women.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 58 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1990

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References

I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities and to Wells College for research support. I would like to thank Peter Czap, Daniel Field, and Lynne Viola for their useful criticisms and suggestions and Edward Lee for his translations of folk laments. An earlier version of this article was prepared for the Conference on the Peasantry of European Russia, 1800-1917, Boston, 19-22 August 1986.

1. Titov, A. A., Iuridicheskie obychai sela Nikola-Perevoz, Sulostskoi volosti, Rostovskago uezda (Iaroslavl', 1888), 60 Google Scholar.

2. On soldatka drinking, see Zhbankov, D. N., Bab'ia storona (Kostroma, 1891), 70 Google Scholar; on the soldatka and illegitimate children, L. Hoch, Steven, “Serfs in Imperial Russia : Demographic Insights,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 13 (1982) : 222 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kimerling, Elise, “Soldiers’ Children, 1719-1856 : A Study of Social Engineering in Imperial Russia,” in Forschungen zur osteuropdischen Geschichte 30 (1982) : 87–90.Google Scholar

3. For recruit laments, see Sokolov, Y. M., Russian Folklore, trans. Smith, C. R. (New York : Macmillan, 1950, 224–240 Google Scholar; Barsov, E. V., Prichitaniia severnogo kraia, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1882)Google Scholar; Russkieplachi ( “Bolshaia seriia biblioteki poeta “) ed. Vinogradova G. S. (Leningrad, 1937); Azadovskii, M., Lenskie prichitaniia (Chita, 1922)Google Scholar; “Prichitaniia” in Russkoe narodnoepoeticheskoe tvorchestvo, ed. V. P. Adrianova- Paretts, A. M. Astakhova, and I. P. Dmitrakov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956) 2 (book 2) : 152-192; Agreneva-Slavianskaia, O. Kh., Plachi iprichitaniiapo umershim ipo rekrutam (Tver, 1889); 1.1Google Scholar. Ul'ianov, , “Voin i russkaia zhenshchina v obriadovykh prichitaniiakh nashikh severnykh gubernii,” Zhivaia starina, vol. 3-4 (Petrograd, 1914), 233 Google Scholar. An exception to the general lack of attention is the recent work by Aleksandrov, V. A., Sel'skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX-v) (Moscow, 1976), 268–269, 289–299, 311–312Google Scholar.

4. Sokolov, Russian Folklore, 226.

5. Ibid., 213-214.

6. Ibid., 226.

7. Astakhova, A. M., “Improvization in Russian Folklore” in Oinas, Felix J. and Soudakoff, Stephen, eds., The Study of Russian Folklore (The Hague, 1975), 91–112 Google Scholar; and Vinogradova, G. S., ed., Russkie plachi (Prichitaniia) (Moscow, 1937), xix Google Scholar. For biographical information on Fedosova and analysis of her folk laments, see Chistov, K. V., Narodnaia poetessa I. A. Fedosova (Petrozavodsk, 1955)Google Scholar. Also see, Russkoe narodnoe poeticheskoe tvorchestvo, 2 (2) : 152-184. Barsov, Prichitaniia severnogo kraia, 2.

8. For Maksim Gorkii, “Voplenitsa,” Odesskie novosti, 1896, no. 3660 (14 Iiunia), reprinted in Chistov, Narodnaia poetessa, appendix 3 : 350-356; For Lenin on Fedosova, Sokolov, Russian Folklore, 237; on Nekrasov, see Russkoe narodnoe poeticheskoe tvorchestvo, 2 (2) : 158.

9. Samoilova, K. N., Krest'ianka i sovetskaia vlast’ (Moscow, 1921), 6 Google Scholar.

10. Nekrasov, N., “Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?” trans. Soskice, J. M. (New York : AMS, 1917), 250, 256–257 Google Scholar.

11. On recruitment, see M. Pintner, Walter, “The Burden of Defense in Imperial Russia, 1725-1914,” Russian Review, 43, (July 1985) : 251, 255.Google Scholar

12. The widowed daughter-in-law had to remain for six weeks in her in-laws’ home. Pakhman, S. V., Obychnoe grazhdanskoepravo v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1877-1879), 2 : 185 Google Scholar. Thereafter, she could remarry. Titov, Iuridicheskie obychai sela Nikola-Perevoz, 41. Even in the Crimean War years, 6.4 men were recruited for each 100 male souls. Pintner, “Burden of Defense in Imperial Russia,” 251, 255. In a particular village, however, the number might be substantial. See, for example, the village of Petrovskoe in Tambov province where from 1850 to 1856, 22 serfs were drafted. Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 224. In 1813 in the same village, 47.6 percent of the women ages 15 to 49 had husbands in service. In 1827 the figure had fallen to 21.3 percent. Hoch, Steven, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986), 78 Google Scholar.

13. Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 243-244.

14. On free status for the soldatka, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii 10 (St. Petersburg, 1836), no. 7982; Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, 1857, 9 (St. Petersburg, 1857), 243, no. 1200; Hoch, “Serfs in Imperial Russia,” 222, and Hoch, Steven L. and Augustine, W. R., “The Tax Census and the Decline of the Serf Population in Imperial Russia, 1833-1858,” Slavic Review 38 (September 1979) : 41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the legal status of children, Kimerling, “Soldiers’ Children,” 63, 79, 84, 88. On concealing children, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov, 2 (14 November 1838), 13 : no. 11, 745. On foundling homes and soldatki, Ransel, David L., Mothers of Misery : Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1988), 154–158 Google Scholar.

15. On a wife's legal freedom to follow her husband, Brant, P., “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” Voennyi sbornik 3 (1860) : 357–358 Google Scholar, and Kimerling, “Soldiers’ Children,” 63; Hoch and Augustine, “Tax Census,” 418. See Brant for the living conditions of the minority of recruits whose families lived with them ( “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 366-367, 370).

16. Svod zakonov 9 : 243-244.

17. For soldatka employment, see Curtiss, John, The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825-1855 (Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 1965), 236–237 Google Scholar. For baby peddlers, Ransel, David L., “Abandonment and Fosterage of Unwanted Children : The Women of the Foundling System,” in The Family in Imperial Russia, ed. Ransel, David L. (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1978), 205 Google Scholar. Of 1, 766 prostitutes in Moscow in 1890 over half were from the peasant class; 118 were soldiers’ wives and daughters. Walter Hanchett, “Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century” (Ph.d. diss., University of Chicago, 1964), 43. On soldiers’ wives, see Brant, “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 358-360.

18. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 17.

19. Svod zakonov 9 : 244. Aleksandrov, V. A., Obychnoe pravo krepostnoi derevni Rossii. XVIII nachalo XIX v (Moscow, 1984), 215, 217 Google Scholar.

20. Barsov, Prichitaniia severnogo kraia, 119-120; on begging, see Mironov, Boris, “The Russian Peasant Commune after the Reforms of the 1860s,” Slavic Review 44 (Fall 1985) : 454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Barsov, Prichitaniia severnogo kraia, 104-106.

22. S. I. Arkhangel'skii, “Simbileiskaia votchina Gr. Orlova (1790-1800),” Nizhegorodskii kraevedcheskii sbornik, 182; and see V. A. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 246, 252, and Polnoe sobranie zakonov, 258-260, no. 7982.

23. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 257; Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 155-157; Keep, John L. H., Soldiers of the Tsar : Army and Society in Russia 1462-1874 (New York : Oxford University Press, 1985, 148–152 Google Scholar.

24. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 243. For nineteenth century rulings, see Svod zakonov 4 (book 1, part 1) (1857) no. 100, 102, as quoted in Brant, “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 357-358. Bohac, Rodney, “The Mir and the Military Draft,” Slavic Review 47 (Winter 1988) : 65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reports on the conscripts from the Manuilovskoe estate in Tver province. Hoch observes that most of the recruits in Petrovskoe were married, Serfdom and Social Control, 152.

25. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 243, 246-258. Aleksandrov discusses the principles employed in choosing recruits on different estates, and the draft status of married men.

26. Ibid., 261.

27. Hoch. Serfdom and Social Control, 151, 156, on obligations to support the soldatka.

28. See Nekrasov for the soldatka-batrachka theme in “An Unlucky Year,” chap. 6, “The Peasant Woman,” 251-258 in the poem, “Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?” For commentary on the theme, see Chistov, Narodnoe poetessa, 233-234, and Russkoe narodnoepoeticheskoe tvorchestvo, 176.

29. Chistov, Narodnaia poetessa, 239; Nekrasov, “Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?” 254.

30. Barsov, Prkhitaniia severnogo kraia, 158.

31. Ibid., 158-159.

32. Chistov, Narodnaia poetessa, 244.

33. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 290-292. Sometimes a free soldier would have to agree to become a serf again. For question of whether former soldiers could claim a share in family property, see Titov, luridicheskie obychai sela Nikola-Perevoz, 67-68; Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 290-292, and Pokrovskii, P., “Semeinye razdely v Chuklomskom uezde,” Zhivaia starina (1903) 1-2 : 40 Google Scholar. Also see Chubinskii, P. P., “Ocherk narodnykh iuridicheskikh obychaev i poniatii v Malorossii,” Zapiskii imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva po otdeleniiu elnografii, 2 (1896), 692.Google Scholar

34. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 296-297.

35. Barsov, Pritchitaniia severnogo kraia, 143.

36. Nekrasov, “Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?,” 256.

37. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 289-290. On women's appeals to the commune, see Aleksandrov, Obychnoe pravo krepostnoi Derevni Rossii, 206-215. On the commune's assistance to families in time of need, see Mironov, “Russian Peasant Communes after the Reforms of the 1860s,” 458.

38. Kimerling, “Soldiers’ Children,” 88, 89; Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 289-290, 298-299; Polnoe sobranie zakonov, 1 (1830) 12 : no. 8989. According to Aleksandrov, illegitimate sons who grew up dependent on the peasant commune were almost always drafted out of turn (Sel'skaia obshchina, 290).

39. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 289-290. According to estate records, a mir sometimes provided exemptions from certain taxes to soldatki with minor children who farmed in their own households separate from those of their in-laws. The commune would reserve land for them counting on their children's future work (Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 311-313). For benefits from the mir to soldatki, see ibid., 268-269. On soldatka's children and the mir, see ibid., 290, and Aleksandrov, Obychnoe pravo krepostnoi derevni Rossii, 220-221.

40. Svod zakonov 9 : 244. Brant, “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 360.

41. Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 289-299.

42. Polnoe sobranie zakonov 1 (1830) 12 : no. 8989. Also see the case of Aksin'ia Kriukova who in 1803, using the law in her behalf, petitioned the authorities of St. Petersburg province to release her three illegitimate sons from the control of the landlord Egor Famintsyn since she, not the landlord, had brought them up. The senate ruled that they belonged to the military domain not the landlord, although Kriukova had asked that her sons be “free” to choose a station in life. She ultimately won the case. Kimerling, “Soldiers’ Children,” 88-89.

43. The basic means to study the records of the township court is the Trudy Kommissii po preobrazovaniiu volostnykh sudov, the work of a special government commission carried out between 1871 and 1874. In its seven volumes (broken down into provinces, districts, and townships) the investigators reprinted the cases as recorded in the court books. Investigators, unable to examine each of the 11, 786 townships into which European Russia was divided, selected townships that reflected the diversity of geographic, economic, and ethnic factors. The record, however, is incomplete because some townships did not record cases—especially family disputes—that the court resolved amicably. It is impossible therefore to know how many peasants actually appealed to the courts and with what kinds of cases. For full description of the courts, see Czap, Peter, “Peasant-Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1861-1912,” Journal of Social History 1, 2 (Winter, 1967) : 149–179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of customary law as a collective mentalite, see Confino, Michael, “Russian Customary Law and the Study of Peasant Mentalites,” Russian Review 44 (January 1985) : 36–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. The remaining 15 of the 108 cases were brought against the soldatka : 5 of them by family members. I used a total of 108 cases involving soldatki selected from five provinces : two from the central agricultural region (Kiev and Tambov) and three from the central industrial region (Moscow, Iaroslavl', and Kostroma). Within these provinces, I worked with six or seven districts each, guided by the fact that for Kostroma and laroslavl’ only six districts were available. My purpose was to keep the number of districts chosen from each province roughly equal. Districts and townships within districts were chosen randomly except for Kostroma and laroslavl’ where the total number of districts and townships reported in the Trudy were used : Kiev : 7 districts, 26 townships; Tambov : 6 districts, 45 townships; Kostroma : 6 districts, 17 townships (total available); laroslavl', 6 districts, 31 townships (total available); Moscow : 7 districts, 30 townships.

45. Trudy 5, Kiev, 17; 1, Tambov, 400; 2, Moscow, 224, 182, 195.

46. Ibid., 3, laroslavl', 40.

47. Ibid., 4, Poltava, 652 (The law is undated but appears to be from the early 1870s). Also see Trudy 4, Saratov, 565. Pakhman, agreeing that the soldatka could demand that part of the property due her soldier husband, says that it is not clear from whom exactly she demands the property (Pakhman, Obychnoe grazhdanskoe pravo, 2 : 186).

48. Trudy 3, Iaroslavl', 93 and 43; 5, Kiev, 227.

49. See ibid., 2, Moscow, 226, 308, 345-346; 1, Tambov, 381, 400, 406, 408-409.

50. Ibid., 3, Kostroma, 302; 1, Tambov, 337.

51. Ibid., 1, Tambov, 198.

52. On the rule not always being observed, see A. M. Anfimov and P. N. Zyrianov, “Elements of the Evolution of the Russian Peasant Commune in the Post Reform Period (1861 -1914)” [Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1980)], translated in Soviet Studies in History 21 (Winter 1982-1983) : 850.

53. Trudy 1, Tambov, 324, 360.

54. See, for example, F. Pokrovskii, “Semeinye razdely v Chuklomskom uezde,” Zhivaia starina (1903), 1-2 : 40.

55. Trudy 1, Tambov (1871), 355.

56. See Rodney Bohac, “Peasant Inheritance Strategies in Russia,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (Summer 1985) : 27, for this practice.

57. See Pintner, “Burden of Defense in-Imperial Russia,” 251, for the view that chances of maintaining contact with home were negligible. See Curtiss, Russian Army under Nicholas I, 237, and Brant, “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 377, for examples of correspondence between husband and wife. Literate scribes may have been used.

58. Trudy 1, Tambov, 394-395, 407, 409.

59. Brant describes the soldatka's family status as resembling that of a hired worker ( “Zhenatye nizhnie chiny,” 35).

60. Trudy 3, Iaroslavl', 202.

61. Pokrovskii, F., “O semeinom polozhenii krest'ianskoi zhenshchiny v Kostromskoi gubernii po dannym volostnogo suda,” Zhivaia Starina (St. Petersburg, 1896) 3-4 : 470 Google Scholar.

62. Trudy 2, Moscow, 168, 509.

63. See ibid., 2, Moscow, 151, 192. For cases in which a soldatka won her case, see ibid., 172, 201, 243, 252, 343, 347, 320, 518. For a case in which the soldatka herself was selling kvitantsii shares, see Trudy 2, Moscow, 418. For a discussion of the operation of the rekrutskaia kvitantsiia, see Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 247, 261, 265-274, 292, and Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 149.

64. Confino, “Russian Customary Law,” 38.

65. For court orders not always being carried out, see the case of Anna in Tenishev, V. V., Pravosudie v russkom krest'ianskom bytu (Briansk, 1907), 41–43 Google Scholar. Chubinskii notes slowness in fulfilling court sentences as a deficiency of the system but contends that this was not a fault of the court since the court could not control the fulfillment of its decisions. Chubinskii, P. P., Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai (St. Petersburg, 1872) 6 : ix Google Scholar.

66. Pintner, “Burden of Defense in Imperial Russia,” 255. On the Manuilovskoi estate, nine villages owned by the Gagarin family, between 1820 and 1855, 60.5 percent of new conscripts were married. Over half of these married men had small children (Bohac, “The Household, the Mir and the Military Draft,” 2). On delayed marriage see Zhbankov, D. N., “Vliianie otkhozhikh zarabotkov na dvizhenie naseleniia,” Vrach, no. 23 (1895) : 640.Google Scholar

67. Titov, luridicheskie obychai sela Nikola-Perevoz, 48.

68. See table 2 in Farnsworth, Beatrice, “The Litigious Daughter-in-Law : Family Relations in Rural Russia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Slavic Review 45 (Spring 1986) : 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. The number of soldatki cannot be precisely determined. Hoch and Augustine, “Tax Census,” 414-415, estimate that in 1858, 433, 750 soldiers and sailors were former serfs; some recruits would have died leaving widowed soldatki. Based on Bohac's findings that 60 percent of the Manuilovskoe recruits were married, we can arrive at a tentative estimate. In 1856, 389, 350 kantonisty (sons of soldiers born after recruitment) were counted. This figure offers a rough gauge of the numbers of soldatki : some women would have no sons, some more than one, other sons would be concealed and, thus, not counted. In 1856 the numbers of soldatki would probably have been higher than it was in the 1870s because of increased recruitment during the Crimean War.

70. Aleksandrov, Obychnoe pravo krepostnoi derevni Rossii, 229.

71. V. F. Mukhin, Obychnyi poriadok nasl'dovaniia u krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1888), 299.

72. For generational conflict, see Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 131-132; for in-law conflict, see Farnsworth, , “Litigious Daughter-in-law,” 49-64; and Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (New York : Pantheon, 1985, 84–85 Google Scholar.

73. For a typical view, see 1.1. Ansheles, , Brak, sem'ia i razvod (Moscow, 1925), 16 Google Scholar.

74. On the courts’ deficiencies, see Frierson, Cathy, “Rural Justice in Public Opinion : The Volost’ Court Debate, 1861-1912,” Slavonic and East European Review, no. 4 (1986) : 526–545.Google Scholar

75. Chubinskii, Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii, vii.