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Did Serf Owners Control Serf Marriage? Orlov Serfs and Their Neighbors, 1773-1861

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

John Bushnell
John Bushnell*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Northwestern University
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Historians of the Russian peasantry hold almost unanimously that serfowners routinely intervened in serf marriage: that they generally forbade serf women to leave the estate through marriage or marry at all without permission, commanded serfs to marry young, made compulsory matches when their serfs failed to marry on schedule, and otherwise prevented serfs from exercising free choice in marriage. Equally common is the assumption that the nobles’ interest in serf marriage was the multiplication of human property and the number of duespaying labor units, i.e., married couples. The one exception is Steven Hoch, who found that on the Gagarin estate of Petrovskoe, Tambov province, managers never intervened, at least in first marriages. They never had to, Hoch argues, because the heads of peasant households shared the owners’ interest in early and universal marriage. That was because estate managers allocated land, the only significant economic resource, to married couples on an egalitarian basis. Even Hoch accepts the standard view that, on other estates where different socioeconomic conditions held, estate authorities did have to intervene to ensure that serfs married early and universally.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , Fall 1993 , pp. 419 - 445
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1993

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References

The research for this article was supported by a grant from IREX. I am grateful to Steven Hoch and Boris Mironov, who read an earlier draft with great care. It is not their fault that I have not taken their advice in every instance.

1. So as not to expand references needlessly, the locus classicus is Semevskii, V. I., Krest'iane v tsarstvovanie Imperatritsy Ekateriny II, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg : M.M. Stasiulevich, 1903), I : 302–25Google Scholar. The most thorough recent statement of this position is V. A., Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina v Rossii (XVIITnachalo XIX v.) (Moscow : Nauka, 1976), 303–9Google Scholar. Two recent American studies echo Semevskii and Aleksandrov : Arcadius, Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout : An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1985), 7, 36–38, 66–67 Google Scholar; Peter, Kolchin, Unfree Labor : American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1987), 73–74, 111 Google Scholar. Among the most thorough studies of peasant families and marriage on serf estates are those by Czap, Peter, especially “The Perennial Multiple Family Household, Mishino, Russia, 1782-1858,” Family History (Spring 1982) : 5–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “A Large Family : The Peasant's Greatest Wealth : Serf Households in Mishino, Russia, 1814-1858, ” in Richard, Wall, ed., Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1983), 104–51Google Scholar; and “Marriage and the Peasant Joint Family in the Era of Serfdom, ” in David, Ransel, ed., The Family in Imperial Russia (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1978), 103–23Google Scholar. Czap does not address the question of manorial interference in serf marriage directly, but seems to take it for granted.

2. Steven Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia : Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov household serfs at Petrovskoe did petition for permission to marry; household serfs were dealt with differently than field serfs (the subject of this study) on most estates. My own more cursory excursion into the Petrovskoe estate papers confirms Hoch's conclusion that there is no direct evidence of intervention in field serf marriage. However, it is interesting that in 1812 and 1813 the estate's monthly population reports show that while a few brides were imported through marriage, no Petrovskoe woman married off the estate; that suggests that there may have been a ban on such marriage (TsGADA, f. 1262 [Gagariny], op. 1, ed. khr. 28, 42). Furthermore, management in 1831 prepared a list of all women on the estate “who have reached their majority and should marry.” Managers had an interest in serf marriage, even if they did not feel compelled to act on it (ibid., ed. khr. 754).

3. E. I., Indova, “Instruktsiia kniazia M.M. Shcherbatova prikazchikam ego iaroslavskikh votchin (1758 g. s dobavleniiami k nei po 1762 g.),” Materialypo istorii sel'skogo khoziaistva i krest'ianstva SSSR 6 (1965) : 460.Google Scholar

4. Semevskii, Krest'iane, I : 314.

5. Petrushevskii, A. F., Generalissimus kniaz’ Suvorov (St. Petersburg : Tip. M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1884), I : 272–73Google Scholar; Aleksandrov, Sel'skaia obshchina, 308.

6. “Rasporiazheniia grafa Arakcheeva, ” Novgorodskii sbornik 4 (1865) : 275-78.

7. A few of them : Petrovskaia, I. F., “Nakazy votchinnym prikazchikam pervoi chetverti XVIII veka,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 4 (1953) : 234-35, 250–53Google Scholar; M.V. Dovnar-Zapol'skii, “Materialy dlia istorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, ” Universitetskie izvestiia, Kiev, 7 (1904) : 86; 8 (1905) : 98; 11 (1910) : 250Google Scholar; Sbornik starinnykh bumag, khraniashchikhsia v muzee P.I. Shchukina (Moscow, 1901), IX : 6-7; “Instruktsii kniazei Gruzinskikh, ” Deistviia Nizhegorodskoi gubernskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii 10 (1912) : 51; GIM (Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei), Otdel pis'mennykh istochnikov, f. 14 (Golitsiny), op. 1, ed. khr. 2484, 11. 68-68ob., 71ob., 73.

8. Orlov-Davydov, Vladimir, Biograficheskii ocherkgrafa Vladimira Grigor'evicha Orlova (St. Petersburg : Tip. Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, 1878); I : 269-72.Google Scholar

9. On the number of Orlov serfs : Semevskii, Krest'iane, I : 34. The digest of rulings is TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 507 (Reestr prikazov V.G. Orlova i Moskovskoi domovoi kontory po votchinam, 1774-1807).

10. Orlov-Davydov, Biograficheskii ocherk, I : 280-81; TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 510 (Kniga ukazov, 1776), 11. 52ob.-5610.ob.; S.I. Arkhangel'skii, “Simbileiskaia votchina VI. Gr. Orlova (1790-1800 gg.), ” Nizhegorodskii kraevedcheskii sbornik 2 (1929) : 169, 173.

11. For a published copy, see M.V. Dovnar-Zapol'skii, “Materialy dlia istorii votchinnogo upravleniia v Rossii, ” Universitetskie izvestiia 11 (Kiev, 1910) : 253–88Google Scholar. The original of this publication is in the Panin family archive (TsGADA, f. 1384, op. 1, ed. khr. 1484); presumably it arrived with one of Vladimir Orlov's daughters, who married a Panin, and may have been used as a model on Panin estates. For other evidence of the influence of Orlov's Ulozhenie : Orlov-Davydov, , Biograficheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg : Tip. Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, 1878), II : 170 Google Scholar; Semevskii, Krest'iane, I : 243.

12. Instructions to sixteenth-century monastic, metropolitan and patriarchal estates : Akty sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi kontsa XIV-nachala XVI v. (Moscow : Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), II : 437-38; III (Moscow : Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1964), 45, 78; Gorchakov, M. I., O zemel'nykh vladeniiakh Vserossiiskikh mitropolitov, patriarkhov i Sv. Sinoda, 988-1738 gg. (St. Petersburg : Tip. A. Transhelia, 1871), 224–25Google Scholar. Instructions from the Archbishop of Riazan’ and Murom in 1621 : Tikhon, Vozdvizhenskii, Istoricheskoe obozrenie Riazanskoi ierarkhii (Moscow : Tip. S. Selivanovskago, 1820), 76Google Scholar. Instructions issued by the Pokrovskii convent (Suzdal’) in 1633 : GIM, f. 17 (Uvarova), op. 2, ed. khr. 2a, d. 302, no. 1, 11. 1-3. Boyar Morozov's instructions : Zabelin, I. E., “Bol'shoi boiarin v svoem votchinnom khoziaistve (XVII-yi vek),” Vestnik Evropy, no. 1 (1871) : 22–23Google Scholar. Voin Korsakov's instructions : Sbornik starinnykh bumag (Moscow, 1897), III : 153Google Scholar. The Solotchinskii monastery, 1680s-1690s : TsGADA, f. 1202 (Solotchinskii monastyr’), op. 1, ed. khr. 263, 488, 499, 502; Dobroklonskii, A. P., “Solotchinskii monastyr', ego slugi i krest'iane v XVII veke,” Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiishikh, no. 1 (1881) : 72 Google Scholar. Many instructions on marriage are preserved in the papers of Andrei Bezobrazov from the 1670s-1680s : TsGADA, f. 1277 (Bezobrazovy), op. 1, ed. khr. 1, 1. 401-403ob.; ed. khr. 3, 1. 271-271ob.; ed. khr. 4, 1. 317; Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, Otdel rukopisei, f. 29, ed. khr. 135, 11.92-93.

13. Hellie, Richard, ed. and trans., The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, I, Text and Translation (Irvine : Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1988), 90.Google Scholar

14. A few examples at random : an immunity charter given to the Tolgskii monastery by the Prince of Iaroslavl', : Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi Imperii arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsieiu Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk (St. Petersburg, 1836), I : 11 Google Scholar; the Beloozero charter of 1488 : Akty sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii, III : 40; an immunity grant to the Trinity-St. Sergius monastery in 1472-1473 : ibid., I : 301-303.

15. Only Andrei Bezobrazov seems to have required that no serf marry off his estate without his permission (see sources in note 12), but there is no record of a case in which he refused to allow a woman to leave. No other sources even hint at a limitation.

16. Eighteenth century uezd notarial records are liberally salted with transactions involving the release of serf women for marriage onto other estates, or even to peasants who were not serfs at all; they are in TsGADA, f. 615. For Rumiantsev's instructions : Dovnar-Zapol'skii, “Materialy, ” 12 (1903) : 7.

17. The earliest such manorial instruction I have found is M.M. Shcherbatov's, issued in 1758. See note 3.

18. And also on the instructions issued by other nobles : one cannot read the nobles’ instructions without noticing provisions that must have been borrowed. However, Orlov adapted whatever rules he may have taken from others to suit his own tastes and estates.

19. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 510 (Kniga ukazov, 1776), 11. 7ob., 107-107ob., 112-112ob., 114-1 Hob.

20. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 510 (Kniga ukazov, 1776), 1. 10.

21. These are the fees recorded in the Rostov uezd notarial records, the krepostnye knigi, for 1771 and 1772; TsGADA, f. 615, op. 1, ed. khr. 9205 and 9207. The administration of the ekonomicheskoe vedomstvo in charge of recently secularized church villages collected 10 or 11 rubles in Rostov uezd in the same years. Krepostnye knigi for other uezdy in the 1760s and 1770s also disclose that most nobles collected a customary rather than a market charge.

22. TsGADA, f. 1454 (Sidorovskoe votchinnoe pravlenie), op. 1, ed. khr. 334 (Donosheniia, 1785), 1. 4; ed. khr. 164 (Prosheniia, 1777), 11. 1, 2, 9, 10, 12-13; ed. khr. 41 (Otpusknaia, 1754); ed. khr. 41 (Otpusknaia, 1760); ed. khr. 58 (Otpusknaia, 1768); ed. khr. 115 (Otpusknaia, 1774). The market price for individual marriageable female serfs in the 1770s is difficult to determine, because most serfs were sold in village lots in a package with land, and because just in that period prices began to rise very rapidly. Nevertheless, the fragmentary evidence on serf sales does point to 15 rubles as a probable market price for single women (Semevskii, Krest'iane, I : 165-75, 598-99).

23. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 1.39ob.

24. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 1. 79ob. Sidorovskoe serfs continued to marry their daughters away from the estate, too, but in 1785 Orlov tightened the rules : in 1773 his brother Ivan had permitted households that brought a woman onto the estate through marriage to marry a woman off the estate without paying the vyvod; Vladimir Orlov now ordered that the vyvod be paid in every case (TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 343 [Ukazy, 1785], 1. 25).

25. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 510 (Kniga ukazov, 1776), 11. 18-20; ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 3 (the Orlov central office repeated instructions that had been issued in 1779).

26. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 1. 80ob.

27. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 1. 60; ed. khr. 662 (Zhurnal, 1807), 11. 77-77ob., 113-113ob., 114ob.-115.

28. TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 145 (Kniga ukazov, 1776-1792), 1. 2ob.; ed. khr. 181 (Ukazy, 1778), 1. 11-1 lob.

29. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 1. 50ob.

30. Ibid., 1. 57.

31. TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 238 (Prosheniia, 1780), 1. 10.

32. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 516 (Kniga prikazov, 1779), 11. 66ob., 95ob.

33. Sidorovskoe : TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 523 (Kniga prikazov, 1792), 11. llob.-I2ob.; ed. khr. 531 (Zhurnal, 1800), 1. 2ob.; ed. khr. 707 (Zhurnal, 1810), 1. 109ob.; ed. khr. 742 (Zhurnal, 1811), 1. 165ob. Tax and census records from Sidorovskoe show that perhaps 20% of the estate's women were Old Believers willing to pay a tax for declaring their faith, and that many of them did not marry, most unusually for Russian peasant women (TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 38 [Kvitantsii, 1735-1772]; ed. khr. 46 [Perepisnaia kniga, 1763-64]; ed. khr. 293 [Perepisnaia kniga, 1782]). Gorodets : TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 1000, 11. 23ob., 24ob.

34. The conflict between sectarian households that resisted giving their women in marriage and other households that sought wives for their men, requires more elaboration that is convenient here. In brief : all peasants, sectarians and Orthodox alike, considered it imperative for men to marry. Sectarian fathers wanted their sons to marry in order to preserve the household but withheld their daughters from marriage for religious reasons. Fathers who withheld daughters threatened the survival of all households in the village.

35. TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 145 (Kniga … ukazov, 1776-1792), 1. 2-2ob.

36. TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 166 (Ukazy, 1777), 11. 26-27ob., 53ob., 55.

37. E.g. on the Golitsyn estate of Konstantinovskoe, Riazan’ uezd : GIM, Otdel pis'mennykh istochnikov, f. 14, op. 1, ed. khr. 240, 11. 20ob.-21, 34-35.

38. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 2763, 1. 29ob. In this manuscript copy of the Instruktsiia, every sentence is a command, and every command is punctuated by an exclamation mark.

39. E.g. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 731 (Delo, 1810), 11. 1-3 (Liubim uezd, Iaroslavl’ province); ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 27ob. (Alisteevo estate, Nizhnii Novgorod province); ed. khr. 936 (1821), 1. 143ob. (Simbilei).

40. Data from Serpukhov uezd is discussed later in the paper. For Riazan’ uezd in the 18th century : John Bushnell, “Peasant Marriage in Riazan Uezd, 1690-1960 : Geography, Demography, Seasonality, ” Midwest Russian History Colloquium, March 1992; for the Petrovskoe estate in Tambov province, Hoch, Serfdom, 75-76.

41. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 2763, 11. 29ob. 30.

42. Arkhangel'skii, “Simbileiskaia votchina, ” 181.

43. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 507, 1. 7.

44. The estates were also of roughly equal size. When Orlov bought Simbilei, it had 1105 male serfs (Arkhangel'skii, “Simbileiskaia votchina, ” 173). I have found no figures on the population of the Gorodets estate in the same period, but in 1828 it held 2, 258 males (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 1002). Size is relevant, because serfs faced very severe problems if all marriages had to be arranged within the borders of a small estate.

45. TsGADA, f. 1384, op. 1, ed. khr. 1484, 11. 17 ob. 19. There are other manuscript copies and a published copy : Dovnar-Zapol'skii “Materialy, ” 11 (1910) : 253-88. There are no variations more significant than scribal errors among any of the copies of the Ulozhenie that I have seen.

46. For example : TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 533 (Zhurnal, 1799), 1. 23; ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 26ob.; ed. khr. 705 (Zhurnal, 1810), 1. 70; ed. khr. 1000 (Zhurnal, 1828), 1. 5ob.; ed. khr. 2830 (Delo, 1813), 1. 1-lob.; f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 1154 (Prosheniia, 1809), 11. 1-2; ed. khr. 1192 (Prosheniia, 1810), 11. 1-2, 4-5, 11-12.

47. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 1002 (1828), 11. 146ob., 147, 152ob., 153.

48. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 1000, 11. 97ob.-98.

49. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 562 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 43ob.

50. Almost certainly 100-150 rubles assignat rather than silver, although the sources are not explicit. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 705, 1. 103ob. (Landekh, 1810, 120 rubles); ed. khr. 562, 1. 50 (Borisoglebsk, 1802, 3 women for a total of 160 rubles); ed. khr. 661, 1. 86 (Borisoglebsk, 1807, 125 rubles); ed. khr. 662, 1. 128 (Porech'e, 1807, 110 rubles for 2 women); ed. khr. 707, 11. 26ob.-27, 58ob. (Borisoglebsk, 1810, 120 rubles; Porech'e, 120 rubles); ed. khr. 742, 11. 6ob., 167 (Borisoglebsk, 1811, 130 rubles; Porech'e, 1811, 50 rubles); ed. khr. 937, 1. 59ob. (Borisoglebsk, 1821, 150 rubles); ed. khr. 1000, 1. 50ob. (Borisoglebsk, 1828, 420 rubles for 2 women). When Orlov in turn bought women to give as brides to his male serfs, he paid on the order of 100 rubles. See below.

51. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 562 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 15ob.; ed. khr. 662 (Zhurnal, 1807), 11. 71, 88. He had done so earlier, too : TsGADA, f. 1454, op. 1, ed. khr. 243 (Ukazy, 1785), 1. 25.

52. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 705 (Zhurnal, 1810), 11. 96ob., 103ob.; ed. khr. 710 (Kniga, 1810), 1. 2ob.

53. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 936 (Obshchii nastol'nyi reestr, 1821), 1. 8ob.

54. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 662 (Zhurnal, 1807), 11. 77-77ob” 113-113ob#x0022#x0020;114ob.-115.

55. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 631 (Zhurnal, 1806-1808), 1. 37ob.

56. Serfs from the small village of Staraia Gat', Orel province, in 1826 asked for the right to give their daughters to outsiders and to marry outsiders themselves, suggesting that they did not have that right. But the manorial records provide no other information on this case, and the peasants may in fact have been asking for an ex change agreement under which they would not have to pay the bride departure fee (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 977 [Raporty, 1825-1826], 11. 40-4lob). In 1825 for unknown reasons Orlov put a stop to off-estate marriage at Porech'e, Rostov uezd, but the ban was soon lifted (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 973 [Kniga, 1825J, 1. 19ob.; ed. khr. 1000, 1. 50ob.). In 1828, Orlov forbade bridal exchange between Gremiachevo and another estate, because the Ulozhenie did not permit such. The exchange agreement negotiated between Sharapovo, Orel province, and an estate owned by A.N. Zinov'ev (Orlov's in-law) in 1777 was still in force in 1802, but exchanges were so infrequent that the Sharapovo bailiff in 1802 had to ask the central office for the terms (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 561 [Zhurnal, 1802], 1. 3).

57. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 742 (Zhurnal, 1811), 11. 12ob.-13, 28-28ob., 31, 81-81ob.

58. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 936 (Obshchii nastol'nyi reestr, 1821), 1. lOob.

59. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 937 (Nastol'nyi reestr, 1821), 11. 29ob.-30, 59ob.

60. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 26ob.; ed. khr. 2830 (Delo, 1813), 11. l-2ob.; ed. khr. 936 (Obshchii nastol'nyi reestr, 1821), 1. 143ob.; ed. khr. 661 (Zhurnal, 1807), 1. 66; ed. khr. 1219 (Predpisaniia, 1845-1850), 1. 152; A.I. Zvezdin, “Kratkii doklad ob osmotre Simbileiskogo votchinnogo arkhiva gr. Orlovykh-Davydovykh, ” Deistviia Nizhegorodskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii, 13, no. 3 (1912) : 30.

61. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 661 (Zhurnal, 1807), 11. 66ob.-67.

62. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 937 (1821), 11. 41ob.-42.

63. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 705 (Zhurnal, 1810), 1. 78.

64. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 2772 (Delo, 1805-1806), 11. 1-11; ed. khr. 632 (Zhurnal, 1806), 1. 25ob.

65. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 731 (Delo, 1810), 11. 1-5 ob.

66. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 742 (Zhurnal, 1811), 1. 191-191ob.; ed. khr. 1000 (Zhurnal, 1828), 11. 97ob.-98.

67. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 11. 6ob.-8, 33ob., 37-37ob., 58ob.

68. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 561 (Zhurnal, 1802), 11. 8ob., 19ob.

69. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 756 (Delo, 1811), 11. 1-2; ed. khr. 533 (Zhurnal, 1799), 1. 61.

70. Steven Hoch has argued convincingly that peasant patriarchs were complicit in the enforcement of manorial discipline (Hoch, Serfdom, passim). The Orlov archive amply supports that argument, although the question can be read the other way : serfowners were complicit in enforcing peasant community discipline.

71. TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 533 (Zhurnal, 1799), 11. 43ob.-44, 61, 89ob.-90; ed. khr. 531 (Zhurnal, 1800), 1. 162-162ob.; ed. khr. 564 (Zhurnal, 1802), 1. 100ob.; ed. khr. 662 (Zhurnal, 1807), 11. 76ob., 86ob.-87; ed. khr. 707 (Zhurnal, 1810), 11. 99, 161; ed. khr. 742 (Zhurnal, 1811), 1. 2ob.; ed. khr. 937 (Zhurnal, 1821), 11. 101ob.-102; ed. khr. 973 (Kniga, 1825), 1. 1.

72. The question then arises : what would serfs have done if they had not been serfs? Probably they would all have managed to marry anyway. That, at least, was the case in some non-serf villages in Riazan’ uezd; John Bushnell, “Peasant Marriage in Riazan Uezd, 1690-1960.” I have found no evidence anywhere that state peasants were less likely to marry than serfs, but the question has not in fact ever been examined. A working hypothesis is that the difficulties that some peasants placed in the way of marriage were both real and ritualized, and that if there had been no external authority to which to appeal, peasants would not have carried resistance as far as they sometimes did. On the Orlov estates, they did not for the most part carry their resistance as far as they might have : when they arrived at the altar, most resisters consented to marriage. I have examined this tendency to carry resistance as far as possible without actually obstructing marriage in : John Bushnell, “The Struggle to Win a Bride : Peasant Marriage in Riazan’ uezd in the 1690s, ” Midwest AAASS Conference, May 1992.

73. Uezd notarial records—the krepostnye knigi in which contracts and property transfers were fixed—provide information on property ownership or jurisdiction. Early in the eighteenth century these had been Dolgorukov villages; in the mid-eighteenth century they were crown peasant villages (TsGADA, f. 615, op. 1, ed. khr. 10197, 10268, 10269).

74. TsGIAM, f. 737 (Serpukhovskoe dukhovnoe pravlenie), op. 1, d. 3684 (Rospisi Serpukhovskogo uezda Khatunskoi desiatiny sela Ivanovskogo tserkvi Rozhdestva Ioanna Predtechi, 1784), 11. 1-18. The non-serf village was so small that comparison between serf and non-serf populations would be meaningless; peasants from both groups are included in the statistics that follow.

75. The priest listed peasants in family groups, but did not specify whether or not a single male was widowed or had never married. It is not always possible to tell whether single males to whom children were not attached had ever been married— wife and children might well have died.

76. As Steven Hoch pointed out to me, the age distribution here is peculiar, as is the proportion of married to unmarried within the 17-23 age group. He concludes that the data are fundamentally flawed. I am less perturbed by the anomalies in this relatively small sample, and am more impressed by the fact that all males over age 23 were married. I reason the same way about the figures for women, in Table 2. Indeed, the age distribution of males and females generally coincides; there really were many more births (or survivors beyond infancy) in some years than in others.

77. I infer the date of conversion to free-farmer status from the parish registers : in 1839 peasants in those villages were entered as serfs of Anna Orlova, in 1842 as free farmers.

78. These and subsequent figures are based on the ages entered in the parish registers. To get the true average age at marriage, they would all need to be raised by one-half year. However, to the extent that peasants identified any particular age as appropriate for marriage, they thought only in terms of integers : a woman was 19, not 19.2 or 19.8. Thus unadjusted figures reflect the peasant sensibility better than adjusted ages.

79. TsGIAM, f. 737, op. 1, ed. khr. 3752. There was also a serf village that had never belonged to the Orlovs, but it was so small and produced so few marriages that its marriage age data are of little use.

80. Here and elsewhere, average distance covers only men who married women from other villages.

81. 81. Some bridal villages are not recorded in the parish registers. 1 located and measured the distance between all villages in this area of Serpukhov uezd with a manuscript map drawn in 1894 (TsGIAM, f. 184 [Moskovskaia gubernskaia zemskaia uprava], op. 13 [Karty, plany, diagrammy, chertezhi, 1866-1917], ed. khr. 349 [Karta Serpukhovskogo uezda]). The map has no scale; I established one with the aid of a 1990 map of Moscow oblast'. Relative distances between inhabited points that appeared on both maps roughly coincided. I also used Spiski rmselennykh mest Rossiiskoi imperii, XXIV, Moskovskaia guberniia. Spisok naselennykh mest po svedeniiam 1859 goda (St. Petersburg : Tsentral'nyi statisticheskii komitet ministerstva vnutrennikh del, 1862), 213-22 to identify a few villages marked but not named on the manuscript map.

82. Catherine II abolished the payment of vyvodnye den'gi (the bride transfer fee) for peasant women subject to state jurisdiction who married onto serf estates in her Manifesto of 17 March 1775 on the occasion of the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War. However, the wording was so confused that officials in some provinces did not understand what she had done. Catherine definitively abolished the payment of vyvodyne den'gi for state (and ekonomicheskie) peasant women in 1782. (Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, XX [St. Petersburg, 1830], 84 [no. 14, 275]; XXI [St. Petersburg, 1830], 709-10 [no. 14, 468]).

83. TsGIAM, f. 737, op. 1, ed. khr. 3752 (Metricheskaia kniga Bogoroditse-Rozhdestvenskoi tserkvi sela Talezha Serpukhovskogo uezda, 1855-1862). In a very few cases, the bride's village was omitted, illegible or could not be located on the available maps. Average distances were calculated from brides’ and grooms’ villages that could be identified and located.

84. Orlov-Davydov was still keeping lists of unmarried but marriageable women as his father-in-law had (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 1, ed. khr. 1704 [Imennoi spisok, 1855]). The Semenovskoe estate (in the 1850s referred to as the Otradinskoe estate) records also show a small but steady traffic in brides across the estate borders (TsGADA, f. 1273, op. 2, ed. khr. 1726 [Statisticheskie tablitsy, 1856-1860]).

85. The fact that state peasant women became serfs upon marriage to serfs may possibly have inhibited such marriages, but the implication of the parish register data is that this effect was weak at best. More free women married serfs than the other wav around. Cost was far more important than legal status.

86. TsGIAM, f. 737, op. 1, ed. khr. 3551 (Metricheskaia kniga dannaia iz Serpukhovskogo Dukhovnogo pravleniia Sepukhovskogo uezda sela Khatuni v Voskresenskuiu tserkov’ prichtu, 1843-1848); ed. khr. 2552 (Metricheskaia kniga dannaia iz Serpukhovskogo Dukhovnogo pravleniia Serpukhovskogo uezda sela Khatuni Voskresenskoi tserkvi, 1848-1855); ed. khr. 3699 (Metricheskaia kniga Predtechenskoi tserkvi sela Ivanovskogo Serpukhovskogo uezda, 1831-1839); ed. khr. 3702 (Metricheskaia kniga ts. Ioanna Predtechi sela Ivanovskogo Serpukhovskogo uezda, 1842-1849).

87. John Bushnell, “Peasant Marriage in Riazan’ Uezd, 1690-1960. ”

88. Hoch, Serfdom and Social Control, 91-132 and passim. My findings support his general conclusions, but not necessarily his argument that the peasant custom of collecting a bride price facilitated marriage.