The peasants were the main and most numerous estate in Russia. It was on them that the entire economic life of the state rested, since the peasants were not only the guarantor of the country's survival (they supplied it with everything necessary), but were also the main taxable, that is, taxable class. In the farm of the peasant, all duties were clearly distributed. Men were engaged in work in the field, crafts, hunting, fishing. Women ran the household, took care of cattle, gardens, and were engaged in needlework. In the summer, peasant women also helped in the fields. Children were also taught to work from childhood. From about 9 years old, the boy began to be taught to ride a horse, drive cattle into the yard, guard horses at night, and at 13 years old - to harrow the field, plow, take haymaking. Gradually, they were also taught to wield a scythe, an ax, and a plow. By the age of 16, the boy was already becoming an employee. He owned crafts and could weave good bast shoes. A girl from the age of 7 began to do needlework. At 11 she already knew how to spin, at 13 she could embroider, at 14 she could sew shirts, and at 16 she could already weave. Those who did not master the skill at a certain age were ridiculed. Boys who did not know how to weave bast shoes were teased as "bastards", and girls. Those who have not learned to spin are "unspun". Peasants also made all the clothes at home, hence its name - homespun. Sometimes, when the peasant worked, the details of his clothes were drawn into the loom, for example, slippage - machine for twisting ropes. The man was in an uncomfortable position. Hence the saying “get into trouble” - i.e. into an uncomfortable position. Russian shirts were wide and long. Almost to the knees. To make it comfortable to work in a shirt, they cut out under the arms gussets - special replaceable parts that do not interfere with the movements of the hands in the sleeves, collect sweat and can be replaced. On the shoulders, chest and back, shirts were sewn background - lining, which could also be replaced. The main type of outerwear was a caftan made of cloth. They made it on a lining and fastened in front with hooks or copper buttons. In addition to caftans, the peasants wore undershirts, zipuns, and in winter - sheepskin coats to the heels and felted hats.

Peasant women dressed in shirts, sundresses , ponevy - skirts made of cloth, which were tied at the waist. On the head of the girl they wore a bandage in the form of a wide ribbon. Married women kept their hair carefully kichki and kokoshniks : "goof off" meant to disgrace. Threw over the shoulders dushegrey - wide and short sleeveless sweaters, similar to a flared skirt. All clothes of peasant women were decorated with embroidery.

In the peasant house, everything was thought out to the smallest detail. The dwelling of the peasant was adapted to his way of life. It consisted of cold rooms - cages and canopy and warm – huts . The canopy connected a cold cage and a warm hut, a utility yard and a house. In them, the peasants kept their property. And in the warm season they slept. The house always had a basement or underground - a cold room for storing food supplies. The central place in the house was occupied by the stove. Most often, the stove was heated "on black", i.e. there were no ceilings, and the smoke came out through a window under the very roof. Such peasant huts were called chicken . A stove with a chimney and a hut with a ceiling are an attribute of boyars, nobles and wealthy people in general. However, this also had its advantages. In the chicken hut, all the walls were smoked, such walls do not rot longer, the hut could serve for a hundred years, and the stove “ate” much less firewood without a chimney. Everyone loved the stove in the peasant hut: it fed delicious, steamed, incomparable food. The stove warmed the house, old people slept on the stove. But the mistress of the house spent most of her time near the stove. The corner near the mouth of the furnace was called - woman kut - female corner. Here the hostess cooked food, there was a cupboard for storing kitchen utensils - crockery . The other corner, opposite the window and near the door, was for men. There was a shop where the owner worked and sometimes slept. Peasant goods were kept under the bench. Between the oven and the side wall under the ceiling, they laid platy­­ - a place where children slept, dried onions, peas. A special iron ring was inserted into the central beam of the ceiling of the hut, a cradle was attached to it. A peasant woman, sitting at work on a bench, put her foot into the loop of the cradle and rocked it. To avoid a fire, where a torch was burning, a box with earth was always placed on the floor, where sparks flew.

The main corner of the peasant house was the red corner: here hung a special shelf with icons - goddess under it was a dining table. This place of honor in a peasant's hut was always located diagonally from the stove. A person entering the hut would always look into this corner, take off his hat, cross himself and bow to the icons. And then he said hello.

In general, the peasants were deeply religious people, however, like all other classes in the Russian state. The word "peasant" itself is a modification of "Christian". Peasant families paid great attention to church life - prayers: morning, evening, before and after meals, before and after any business. Peasants regularly attended church, especially diligently in winter and autumn, when they were free from household burdens. Fasts were strictly observed in families. They showed special love for icons: they were carefully kept and passed down from generation to generation. The goddess was decorated with embroidered towels - towels . Russian peasants, who sincerely believed in God, could not work badly on the land, which they considered to be God's creation. In the Russian hut, almost everything was done by the hands of the peasants themselves. The furniture was home-made, wooden, of a simple design: a table in the red corner according to the number of eaters, benches nailed to the walls, portable benches, chests in which goods were stored. For this reason, they were often upholstered with iron strips and locked with locks. The more chests there were in the house, the richer the peasant family was considered. The peasant hut was distinguished by cleanliness: cleaning was done carefully and regularly, curtains and towels were changed frequently. Next to the stove in the hut there was always a washstand - an earthenware jug with two spouts: water was poured on one side, and poured out on the other. Dirty water collected in tub - a special wooden bucket. All the dishes in the peasant house were wooden, and only pots and some bowls were earthenware. Clay dishes were covered with simple glaze, wooden ones were decorated with paintings and carvings. Many of the ladles, cups, bowls, and spoons are today in Russian museums.

Russian peasants were sensitive to someone else's misfortune. Living in a community the world They knew very well what mutual assistance and mutual assistance are. The Russian peasants were merciful: they tried to help the injured, the weak, the poor. It was considered a great sin not to give a loaf of bread and not let a suffering person sleep for the night. Often the world sent to fire stoves, cook food, take care of livestock in families where everyone was sick. If a house burned down in any family, the world helped him cut down trees, take out logs and build a house. To help out, not to leave in trouble - it was in the order of things.

The peasants believed that labor was blessed by God. In everyday life, this was manifested in the wishes of the worker: “God help!”, “God help!”. Peasants greatly appreciated the workers. And, on the contrary, laziness was condemned in the peasant system of values, because work was often the meaning of their whole life. They said about lazy people that they "beat the buckets." At that time, wooden chopping blocks were called buckles, from which spoons and other wooden utensils were made. Preparation of baklush was considered a simple, easy, frivolous matter. That is, laziness in the modern sense as a form of complete idleness could not even be represented at that time. The universal, honed over the centuries, form of life of the peasants, finally formed precisely in this cultural era, became the most stable in Russian culture, survived various periods and finally disappeared (was destroyed) only in the twenties and thirties of the last century.

Medieval Europe was very different from modern civilization: its territory was covered with forests and swamps, and people settled in spaces where they could cut down trees, drain swamps and engage in agriculture. How did peasants live in the Middle Ages, what did they eat and do?

Middle Ages and the era of feudalism

The history of the Middle Ages covers the period from the 5th to the beginning of the 16th century, up to the onset of the Modern Age, and refers mainly to the countries of Western Europe. This period is characterized by specific features of life: the feudal system of relations between landowners and peasants, the existence of seigneurs and vassals, the dominant role of the church in the life of the entire population.

One of the main features of the history of the Middle Ages in Europe is the existence of feudalism, a special socio-economic structure and mode of production.

As a result of internecine wars, crusades and other hostilities, the kings gave their vassals lands, on which they built estates or castles. As a rule, the whole land was given along with the people living on it.

Dependence of peasants on feudal lords

A rich lord received possession of all the lands surrounding the castle, on which villages with peasants were located. Almost everything that peasants did in the Middle Ages was taxed. Poor people, cultivating their land and his, paid the lord not only tribute, but also for the use of various devices for processing crops: furnaces, mills, and a grape crusher. They paid the tax in natural products: grain, honey, wine.

All the peasants were heavily dependent on their feudal lord, in practice they worked for him by slave labor, eating what was left after growing the crop, most of which was given to their master and the church.

Wars periodically took place between the vassals, during which the peasants asked for the protection of their master, for which they were forced to give him their allotment, and in the future became completely dependent on him.

The division of peasants into groups

To understand how the peasants lived in the Middle Ages, you need to understand the relationship between the feudal lord and the poor inhabitants who lived in villages in the territories adjacent to the castle, cultivated land.

The tools of labor of peasants in the Middle Ages in the field were primitive. The poorest harrowed the ground with a log, others with a harrow. Later, scythes and pitchforks made of iron appeared, as well as shovels, axes and rakes. From the 9th century, heavy wheeled plows began to be used in the fields, and a plow was used on light soils. For harvesting, sickles and chains were used for threshing.

All tools of labor in the Middle Ages remained unchanged for many centuries, because the peasants did not have money to purchase new ones, and their feudal lords were not interested in improving working conditions, they were only concerned about getting a big harvest at minimal cost.

The discontent of the peasants

The history of the Middle Ages is notable for the constant confrontation between large landowners, as well as the feudal relationship between rich lords and the impoverished peasantry. This position was formed on the ruins of ancient society, in which slavery existed, which was clearly manifested in the era of the Roman Empire.

The rather difficult conditions of how the peasants lived in the Middle Ages, the deprivation of their land allotments and property, often caused protests, which were expressed in various forms. Some desperate fled from their masters, others staged mass riots. The rebellious peasants were almost always defeated because of disorganization and spontaneity. After such riots, the feudal lords sought to fix the amount of duties in order to stop their endless growth and reduce the discontent of the poor people.

The end of the Middle Ages and the slave life of the peasants

With the growth of the economy and the emergence of production by the end of the Middle Ages, an industrial revolution took place, many villagers began to move to cities. Among the poor population and representatives of other classes, humanistic views began to prevail, which considered personal freedom for each person an important goal.

As the feudal system was abandoned, an era called the New Age came, in which there was no longer any place for outdated relationships between peasants and their lords.

The knights considered the peasants to be second-class people: low, uneducated, rude. But at the same time, peasants played an important role in the life of medieval society. It was believed that the peasants, like heretics and Jews, are descendants of the Old Testament Canaan, who was the son of Ham. Ham, in turn, was one of Noah's sons who mocked his father's Noah when he was drunk. Noah said prophetic words to Canaan: "He will be a servant of servants to his brothers." So the descendants of Canaan became peasants who occupied the lowest position in medieval society.

At the same time, according to Christian morality, which was dominant in the Middle Ages, peasants are people whose souls will more easily reach the kingdom of God, because the peasants are poor.

Indeed, the poverty of the peasants in the Middle Ages knew no limits. They were constantly starving, dying from numerous diseases during epidemics. They tried to protest against the feudal lords, but the forces of poor peasants and well-armed knights were unequal. Peasants were despised. They were told that they lived on the land of a feudal lord or on land that belonged to a monastery. Consequently, everything that is in their economy also belongs to the feudal lord. The peasant owns only his life.

Peasants often stole crops from their master's fields and set them on fire in order to avenge bribery, hunted in the master's forests without permission, fished in the master's reservoirs, for which they were severely punished.

The peasants had no right to leave their master's lands without permission. Fugitive peasants were caught and severely punished. The peasants were forced to turn to their master if there was a need to resolve any dispute. The master had to judge the peasants fairly.

A Day in the Life of a Peasant (WORK)

In the morning, with the first rays of the sun, the peasant woke up in his small house, which was located in a small village, consisting of 11 yards. A large friendly family of a peasant gathered at a rough table for breakfast: a peasant with his wife, 4 daughters and 6 sons.

After praying, they sat down at the wooden benches. For breakfast there were grains cooked in a pot on the hearth. After a quick lunch, back to work. It is necessary to pay the dues on time and work out the corvée.

Almost all the children of the peasant were already working as adults. Only the youngest son, who was barely 5 years old, could only herd the geese.

It was autumn. The harvest was in full swing. All the household members took the sickles inherited from their grandfather and went to cut the ears.

The whole day the family worked in the fields, taking only one break for lunch.

In the evening, tired, they came home. Grandmother cooked porridge, turnips and a delicious grape drink for dinner. After supper the peasant's wife went to feed the pigs and milk the cow.

Right. In the period of its formation (XI-XV centuries), the dependence of the peasants on the landlords was expressed in the payment of tribute, the performance of work at the request of the landowner, but left enough opportunities for a completely acceptable life and his family. Beginning in the 16th century, the position of the serfs became increasingly difficult.

By the 18th century, they were already little different from slaves. Work for the landowner took six days a week, only at night and on the remaining day he could cultivate his plot of land, which he fed his family with. Therefore, the serfs expected a very meager set of products, there were times of famine.

On major holidays, festivities were organized. This limited the entertainment and recreation of the serfs. The children of peasants, in most cases, could not receive an education, and in the future they were expected by the fate of their parents. Gifted children were taken to study, they later became serfs, became musicians, artists, but the attitude towards serfs was the same, no matter what work they did for the owner. They were obliged to fulfill any requirement of the owner. Their property, and even children, were at the complete disposal of the landowners.

All the freedoms that at first remained with the serfs were lost. Moreover, the initiative to cancel them came from the state. At the end of the 16th century, serfs were deprived of the opportunity to move to, which was provided once a year on St. George's Day. In the 18th century, landowners were allowed to exile peasants to hard labor without trial for misconduct, and a ban was established on filing complaints by peasants against their master.

From that time on, the position of the serfs approached that of the cattle. They were punished for any offense. The landowner could sell, separate from his family, beat, and even kill his serf. In some manor estates, things were going on that are difficult to comprehend by modern man. So, in the estate of Darya Saltykova, the hostess tortured and killed hundreds of serfs in the most sophisticated ways. This was one of the few cases when, under the threat of an uprising, the authorities were forced to bring the landowner to justice. But such show trials did not change the general course of the situation. The life of a serf peasant remained a disenfranchised existence, filled with exhausting labor and constant fear for his life and the life of his family.

The very name "peasant" is closely connected with religion, it comes from "Christian" - a believer. People in the villages have always lived according to special traditions, observing religious and moral norms. Life, features of the everyday way of life were created for hundreds of years and passed on from parents to children.

Instruction

Most of the peasants in Russia lived in semi-dugouts or chopped huts. It was a small room where the whole family was housed, where cattle hid in winter. In total, the house had 2-3 windows, and those were small to keep warm. The main thing in the house was the “corner”, where the iconostasis was located. The goddess could consist of one or more, and there was also a lamp with oil and sacred scriptures with prayers nearby. In the opposite corner was a stove. She was a source of heat and a place where food was prepared. They drowned it in black, all the smoke remained in the room, but it was warm.

It was not customary to divide the house into rooms, all were placed in one room. Often the families were large, with many children sleeping on the floor. Surely in the house there was a large table for the whole family, where all the household members gathered for food.

Peasants spent most of their time at work. In the summer they planted vegetables, fruits, cereals, looked after them, so that a big harvest. They also raised cattle, and almost every family had chickens. In winter, animals were allowed into the house during severe frosts in order to save their lives. In cold weather, men repaired objects

From the experience of discussions about the life of peasants in Tsarist Russia, I know that in order to prove their heavy lot, they often recall, in particular, 12 letters from the village of Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt (Engelhardt A.N. From the village: 12 letters 1872-1887. M., 1999 - on the Internet, see, for example, http://www.mysteriouscountry.ru/wiki/index.php/Eng...letters_from_the_village/Letter_first)
Let's not forget, however, that these are letters from the 1870s and 80s - and the situation of the peasants from the end of the 19th century until 1917 improved rapidly. It should also not be forgotten that A.N. Engelhardt was close to the populists (and, in fact, he was exiled to his village Batishchevo in 1870 in connection with student unrest organized, by the way, by the main demon of the populists - S. Nechaev, the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky in Possessed by Dostoevsky It is clear that Engelhardt, when dwelling on the life of the peasants, wrote primarily about the troubles of the Russian village of those times.
Moreover, from a historical point of view, the works of Russian writers, classics of Russian literature cannot be called reflecting the fullness of the life of the peasants. Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Korolenko - after all, they wrote exactly about what the soul ached about, about the troubles of the people, even if these troubles concerned only the poorest, the most humiliated, the most offended. How many of these poor people were there? 10-15%? Hardly more than 20%. Of course, and this is a lot - and Russia of that time (and still) is grateful to everyone who wrote about it - but if we are engaged in history, then let's study the situation of all sections of the peasantry, and not just the poor.
Returning to the letters of N. Engelhardt, I note that, in my experience of discussions with opponents, they usually quote these letters very selectively. For example, a common quote:
<<В нашей губернии, и в урожайные годы, у редкого крестьянина хватает своего хлеба до нови; почти каждому приходится прикупать хлеб, а кому купить не на что, те посылают детей, стариков, старух в «кусочки» побираться по миру. В нынешнем же году у нас полнейший неурожай на все... Плохо, — так плохо, что хуже быть не может. … Крестьяне далеко до зимнего Николы приели хлеб и начали покупать; первый куль хлеба крестьянину я продал в октябре, а мужик, ведь известно, покупает хлеб только тогда, когда замесили последний пуд домашней муки. В конце декабря ежедневно пар до тридцати проходило побирающихся кусочками: идут и едут, дети, бабы, старики, даже здоровые ребята и молодухи>>.
Heavy picture. But I do not remember that any of the opponents quoted the following paragraph of this letter from Engelhardt:
<<«Побирающийся кусочками» и «нищий» — это два совершенно разных типа просящих милостыню. Нищий — это специалист; просить милостыню — это его ремесло. Нищий, большею частью калека, больной, неспособный к работе человек, немощный старик, дурачок. .... Нищий — божий человек. Нищий по мужикам редко ходит: он трется больше около купцов и господ, ходит по городам, большим селам, ярмаркам. .…
The one who is begging in pieces has a yard, a farm, horses, cows, sheep, his woman has outfits - he just doesn’t have bread at the moment; when next year he has bread, he will not only not go begging, but will serve the pieces himself; . The peasant has a yard, put on three souls, has three horses, two cows, seven sheep, two pigs, chickens, and so on. His wife has a supply of her own canvases in her chest, her daughter-in-law has clothes, she has her own money, his son has a new sheepskin coat. ...>>
Three horses, two cows, seven sheep, two pigs, etc. - yes, this is a “middle peasant” (or even a “fist”) by the standards of the 1930s ... And he begs in pieces because he does not want to sell anything from of his good, and he knows that this year (for his family, or village, or province with a poor harvest) they will help him, and the next, for someone with a poor harvest, he will already help others. This is the principle of peasant mutual assistance common to the Russian countryside. By the way, - in a fundamental scientific study, Doctor of Historical Sciences. MM Gromyko “The World of the Russian Village” (we will talk about this book later) an entire chapter is devoted to peasant mutual assistance.
And, ending this long digression about the book by A.N. Engelhardt, of course, the entire educated society of Russia at that time was grateful to him (and, of course, justly grateful) for these letters (and for his activities in the post-reform Russian village). I also note that these letters of his were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski and Vestnik Evropy of that time - without any censorship clippings.
Well, everything is known in comparison. Can you imagine that some truth seeker or writer published his letters from the countryside in the 1930s in Soviet newspapers and magazines, where he would describe what was happening there? In general, in the days of Stalin, can you imagine? Unless, in a personal letter to Stalin himself, risking his freedom (or even his life), for example, Sholokhov dared to write about it. He would try to post it!
***

THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BOARD OF NICHOLAS II
Let us return to the position of the peasants at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II, at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century.
Further, based on the research materials of the famous émigré historian Sergei Germanovich Pushkarev (1888-1984), I present "Russia in the 19th century (1801 - 1914)". See http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/History/pushk/08.php
By the end of the 19th century, out of 380 million acres of land in the European part of Russia, only 15% belonged to the nobility, and in Siberia and the Far East there were no noble landholdings at all. Moreover, with the predominance of small peasant landownership in Russia, there were much fewer small-scale farms (less than 5 acres per yard) than in other countries - less than a quarter. Thus, in France, farms of less than 5 hectares (this is 4.55 acres) accounted for about 71% of all farms, in Germany - 76%, in Belgium - 90%. - The average size of land ownership of French peasant farms at the end of the 19th century. was 3-4 times less than Russians. The main peasant problem in Russia until about 1907 was technical backwardness, low productivity of the peasant economy, as well as communal land ownership.
Nevertheless, since the second half of the 19th century, the community was not a hindrance for an enterprising peasant. He could both rely on her and reckon with her in some way, but he could also act quite independently. Expressive evidence of the opportunities for entrepreneurial initiative is the huge role of the so-called trading peasants in the country's economy even under serfdom, as well as the emergence of merchants and entrepreneurs from peasants as a mass phenomenon in the second half of the 19th century.
In general, the peasant landed community, with its leveling tendencies and the power of the "peace" over individual members, was extremely "lucky" (in quotation marks) in Russia; it was supported, defended and guarded by everyone - from the Slavophiles and Chernyshevsky to Pobedonostsev and Alexander the Third. Sergei Witte writes about this in his Memoirs:
“The defenders of the community were well-meaning, respectable “junkmen”, admirers of the old forms, because they are old; police shepherds, because they thought it more convenient to deal with herds than with individual units; destroyers who support everything that is easy to shake, and finally the theoreticians who saw in the community the practical application of the last word of economic doctrine - the theory of socialism.
Let me also remind you that hundreds of years before that, peasant communities in Russia were planted from above (by the authorities, for fiscal purposes - tax collection), and were not at all the result of a voluntary association of peasants or the "collectivist nature of the Russian people", as former and current "soil scientists" claim. ' and 'statesmen'. In fact, according to the deepest natural essence, the Russian man was and is a great individualist, as well as a contemplative and inventor. This is both good and bad, but it is true.
Another misfortune at the beginning of the 20th century was that all the "advanced" (precisely in quotation marks) parties (the RSDLP, then the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, and then even the Cadets) offered and promised the peasants to give them the master's land - but if the peasants had a concept about agrarian statistics and would have known that the division of the "master's" lands could increase their land use by only 15-20 percent, they would not, of course, strive for it, but would be engaged in the possible improvement of their own economy and the improvement of the farming system (under the old "three regiments" a third of the land was permanently unused).
The previously mentioned well-known historian S. Pushkarev wrote about this problem in his book "Russia in the 19th century (1801 - 1914)". He wrote further:
<<Но они (крестьяне) возлагали на предстоящую «прирезку» совершенно фантастические надежды, а все «передовые» (в кавычках) политические партии поддерживали эту иллюзию — поддерживали именно потому, что отъем господских земель требовал революции, а кропотливая работа по улучшению урожайности и технической оснащенности (в частности, через развитие на селе кооперации) этого не требовала. Этот прямо обманный, аморальный подход к крестьянскому вопросу составлял суть крестьянской политики всех левых, революционных партий, а затем и кадетов">>.
But the fundamental morality of the country was kept primarily by the peasantry. Along with diligence, honor and dignity were its core. And so, the rust of the crafty and deceitful agitation of the left parties of the then Russia began to corrode this foundation. Of course, here it would be possible to tell in more detail about the fact that by the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II, the triad “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” was not a slogan, but the real core of peasant Russia, but we confine ourselves to what was said above.

"POOR", "MIDDLE", "FIST"?
What was the stratification of peasant farms by the beginning of the 20th century? Lenin, in one of his first works "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (1899), based on an analysis of Zemstvo statistics for the European part of Russia (for arable provinces, with a grain bias), gives the following data:
Horseless peasant farms: 27.3%
With 1st horse: 28.6%
With 2 horses: 22.1%
With 3 or more horses: 22%
(V.I. Lenin, PSS, v.3 http://vilenin.eu/t03/a023)
True, Lenin did not include statistics for the wealthy Don region in these data, and made a reservation that dairy farms should take into account not the number of horses, but the number of cows. At the end of the 19th century, the wealthy Baltic and western provinces, as well as the non-poor northern and industrial provinces, and only parts of some central provinces (Ryazan, Oryol, Tula, Nizhny Novgorod). Lenin in his work (in chapter V\"decomposition of the peasantry in the areas of dairy farming"\) gave statistics only on some of these latter, relatively poor provinces. According to him, about 20% of peasant farms in these non-chernozem provinces did not have a single cow on their farm, about 60% of farms had 1-2 cows, and about 20% had 3 or more cows.
In general, on average, according to V. Lenin, there were 6.7 heads of cattle per peasant household in central Russia (in terms of cattle).
Does all this mean that 20-27% of peasant families in the European part of Russia had neither a horse nor a cow? Apparently, this is not the case at all: rather, 20-27% of the farms in the grain counties did not have a horse, but kept cows, and about 20% of farms in the dairy counties did not have cows, but had a horse.
One way or another, but, with appropriate adjustments, it can be assumed that no more (but rather much less) 20% of peasant families could be attributed to the "poor peasants", at least 50% to the "middle peasants", and to wealthy peasants (with 3 or more horses and/or cows) - at least 22%. The concept of "kulak" (and indeed "middle peasant") did not exist in the countryside then; in fact, the peasants themselves simply divided themselves into hard workers and idlers.
However, was the stratification between these groups so great in terms of living standards, food consumption (nutrition)?
Yes, in most poor (horseless) peasant families, someone (the head of the family, or one of the eldest sons) worked as a laborer in wealthy households. But the laborer ate in a prosperous household from the same boiler with members of the "kulak" family, and during the censuses the owner was often recorded as a member of the family (see S. Kara-Murza's article "Lenin's Fruitful Mistakes", http://www.hrono.ru/ statii/2001/lenin_kara.html).
Here is what S. Kara-Murza writes in this article:
<<Ленин придает очень большое значение имущественному расслоению крестьянства как показателю его разделения на пролетариат и буржуазию. Данные, которыми он пользуется (бюджеты дворов по губерниям), большого расслоения не показывают. "Буржуазия" - это крестьяне, которые ведут большое хозяйство и имеют большие дворы (в среднем 16 душ, из них 3,2 работника). Если же разделить имущество на душу, разрыв не так велик - даже в числе лошадей. У однолошадных - 0,2 лошади на члена семьи, у самых богатых - 0,3. В личном потреблении разрыв еще меньше. Посудите сами: у беднейших крестьян (безлошадных) расходы на личное потребление (без пищи) составляли 4,3 рубля в год на душу; у самых богатых (пять лошадей и больше) - 5,2 рубля. Разрыв заметен, но так ли уж он велик? Думаю, данные Ленина занижают разрыв, но будем уж исходить из тех данных, на которых он основывает свой вывод.
Lenin attaches particular importance to nutrition as an indicator of living standards, here "the most striking difference between the budgets of the owner and the worker." Indeed, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat differ as classes not only in relation to property, but also in culture - the way of life. And here the type of food is one of the main features. Was this difference among the peasantry such as to make italicize the words "master" and "worker" - to indicate a class difference? The horseless expenses [for a year] for food are 15 rubles. for a family member, for "five-horse" - 28 rubles.
The gap appears to be large, but further data will explain this gap. Practically all horseless families, according to Lenin, provide an average of 1 farm laborer (either a husband, or a daily wife, or children). A rural resident, even becoming a farm laborer, at that time did not cease to be a full-fledged peasant - and was considered as such both in his family and in the family of the peasant employer.
Farm laborer eats at the owner. According to data for the Oryol province, the cost of food for a laborer costs the owner an average of 40.5 rubles. per year (a detailed diet is given). This money must be added to the budget of a horseless family. If so, then it turns out that the "proletarian" spends 25.4 rubles on food per family member, while the "bourgeois" spends 28 rubles. (per year) It would be necessary to deduct the expenses for the farm laborer from the owner’s budget, if during the census he recorded the farm laborer as a member of his family, then the gap will decrease even more - but we will not do this, there is no exact data. But the main thing, I repeat, is the type of food, not the size of the bowl. Yes, a rich peasant ate more fat than a poor peasant, and in a common bowl on his table there was more meat. But he ate lard, not oysters, drank moonshine, not champagne.
From the data cited by Lenin (if we take not the "yard", but the cost per capita), the stratification of the peasants into classes on this basis is not observed. Yes, and Tolstoy noted: “In the courtyard in which they first showed me bread with quinoa, in the backyards their own threshing machine was threshing on four of its horses ... and the whole family of 12 souls ate bread with quinoa ... "Dear flour, on these will be shot unless you get ready! People eat with quinoa, what kind of gentlemen are we!
Those whom Lenin called "bourgeoisie" (5 horses per yard) were in fact a working peasant family: on average, such a family had 3.2 of its own workers - and 1.2 laborers were hired.>>
The peasants themselves divided themselves into "conscious" - hard-working, non-drinking, active - and loafers ("hooligans").

MASS HUNGER OF 1891-1892
Let us first recall that prior to the 19th century, mass famine in lean years was a common occurrence in all European countries. Back in 1772 in Saxony, 150 thousand people died from a lack of bread. Also in 1817 and 1847. famine raged in many parts of Germany. Mass famine in Europe has become a thing of the past since the middle of the 19th century, with the final abolition of serfdom (in most countries of Central and Western Europe - at the end of the 18th century, in Germany - from the middle of the 19th century), and also thanks to the development of means of communication, which made it possible to quickly ensure the supply of food to lean regions. A global food market has developed. Bread prices no longer depended directly on the harvest in the country: plentiful local harvests almost did not lower them, poor harvests did not increase them. The incomes of the population of Europe increased and the peasants, in the event of a crop failure, were able to purchase the missing food on the market.
In tsarist Russia, the last mass famine was in 1891-1892.
The dry autumn of 1891 delayed sowing in the fields. The winter was snowless and frosty (the temperature in winter reached -31 degrees Celsius), which led to the death of the seeds. Spring turned out to be very windy - the wind carried away the seeds along with the top layer of soil. Summer began early, already in April, and was characterized by long, dry weather. In the Orenburg region, for example, there was no rain for more than 100 days. The forests were struck by drought; cattle began to die. As a result of the drought-induced famine, about half a million people died by the end of 1892, mostly from cholera epidemics caused by the famine.
Russian railways could not cope with the transportation of the required volumes of grain to the affected areas. The main blame was placed by public opinion on the government of Alexander III, which was largely discredited by the famine. It refused to even use the word famine, replacing it with crop failure, and forbade newspapers from writing about it. The government was criticized for only banning grain exports in mid-August, and traders were given a month's notice of the decision, allowing them to export all their grain stocks. Minister of Finance Vyshnegradsky, despite the famine, was against the ban on the export of grain. Public opinion considered him the main culprit of the famine, since it was his policy of raising indirect taxes that forced the peasants to sell their grain. The minister resigned in 1892.
November 17, 1891 the government called on citizens to create voluntary organizations to fight hunger. The heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich, headed the Relief Committee, and the royal family donated a total of 17 million rubles (a huge amount for private donations at that time). Zemstvos received 150 million rubles from the government for the purchase of food.
ESTIMATES OF THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS OF THE MASS HUNGER OF 1891/93
On the Internet, you can find a variety of estimates of the victims of the mass famine of 1891/93 (from 350 thousand up to 2.5 million), but without links to sources. I quote data from well-known sources:
1. In the work of 1923, academician-demographer S.A. Novoselsky (S.A. Novoselsky. The impact of war on the natural movement of the population. Proceedings of the Commission for the Survey of the Sanitary Consequences of War, 1914-1920, M., 1923, p. 117) already Soviet times, when tsarist Russia was certainly not favored, data are given on the victims of the famine of 1892 - 350 thousand people.
2. Statistical data located on the Indiana University website (http://www.iupui.edu/~histwhs/h699....manitChrono.htm) - 500,000 die- (Americans helped the starving in 1891-1892)
3. In the famous book of the American historian Robert Robbins of 1975 (Robbins, R. G. 1975. Famine in Russia. 1891-1892. New York; London: Columbia University Press.) - from 350 thousand to 600-700 thousand.
4. The Dutch historian Ellman Michael, professor of economics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands - in comparison with the famine of 1947, he also cites data based on the work of Novoseltsev - “Excessive mortality in 1892 amounted to about 400 thousand.”
M. Ellman Famine of 1947 in the USSR // Economic history. Review / Ed. L.I. Borodkina. Issue. 10. M., 2005
5. V.V. Kondrashin in the book "The Famine of 1932\33" estimates the victims of the famine of 1891\92 at 400-600 thousand with references to: Anfimov A.M. "The economic situation and the class struggle of the peasants of European Russia. 1891-1904" (1984) and the dissertation "History of the famine of 1891/92 in Russia" (1997).
http://www.otkpblto.ru/index.php?showtopic=12705
So, according to well-known sources, the number of victims of the mass famine of 1891-1893 is estimated at 350-700 thousand people, including those who died from various diseases.

The famine of 1891/92 was the last massive famine in tsarist Russia. Of course, there were droughts and lean (starvation) years after 1891, but in the future, the rapid development of railways and the development of agriculture allowed the government to quickly transfer grain reserves from prosperous regions to areas of drought and crop failure. The next mass famine was already in the Soviet of Deputies ("Sovdepiya" - Lenin's expression), in the early 1920s, then in the early 1930s and then in 1947, and each time the number of victims many (many times!) Exceeded the number of victims the last mass famine in tsarist Russia ...

FALSE MYTHS ABOUT THE MASS HUNGER OF 1901, 1911 AND OTHER YEARS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.
Often on the Internet you can find statements like:
<<В двадцатом же веке особенно выделялись массовым голодом 1901, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1911 и 1913 годы, когда от голода и сопутствующих голоду болезней погибли миллионы жителей. По данным доклада царю за 1892 год: “Только от недорода потери составили до двух миллионов православных душ”. По данным доклада за 1901 год: “В зиму 1900-1901 гг. голодало 42 миллиона человек, умерло же их них 2 миллиона 813 тыс. православных душ. Из доклада уже Столыпина в 1911 году: "Голодало 32 миллиона, потери 1 млн. 613 тыс. человек">>.
Quoting from the forum
http://www.otkpblto.ru/index.php?showtopic=12705 :
<<Но вот ссылок на источники в подобных публикациях нет. Откуда вообще взялись такие цифры, и откуда вообще взялись эти "всеподданейшие доклады", тем более, с такой точной статистикой(до тысячи жертв)? ... 2 милллиона 813 тысяч, 1 млн. 613 тысяч? Ни слова о таких количественных потерях нет ни в одной монографии, которую на эту тему мне пришлось в годы обучения на истфаке читать. В тоже время отечественная блогосфера буквально пестрит этой статистикой. … Я решил своими силами попытаться верифицировать эти данные.
A more thorough search found the original source - a certain I. Kozlenko, Kirov, the newspaper "BOLSHEVISTSKAYA Pravda" http://marxdisk.narod.ru/blagos.htm)
Neither there nor there did the authors bother to provide any references to studies or archives. Of course, journalism, and from quite biased sites. But the problem is that this data is operated on in all seriousness by a lot of people>>.
I also tried many times to find the sources of these "data" about the millions of victims of the mass famines of 1901, 1911 - and in the end, through search engines, I also came to the same source - this very article by a certain I. Kozlenko (Kirov) " Blessed Russia”? (truth of figures and slander of fictions) (From the newspaper "Bolshevistskaya Pravda"): http://marxdisk.narod.ru/blagos.htm
Thus, all these figures from the "most sublime reports" are taken from one odious source - from this article by a certain Kozlenko, from Bolshevik falsehood ...
Also false are the myths that the tsarist government at the beginning of the 20th century (and until 1917) exported grain even in lean years from lean provinces. In fact, the export of grain in lean years was limited, and in 1906 a special law was adopted obliging free distribution of flour in lean provinces, at the rate of 1 pood (16.4 kg) per adult and half a pood per child per month - moreover, if this norm cannot be fulfilled by the forces of the province, the export of grain is completely stopped. As a result, grain exporters, interested in stable trade relations with their foreign partners, were now the first to come to the aid of the peasants of the provinces affected by crop failure. [History of Russia, XX century, 1894-1939 \ ed. A.B. Zubkova, M., ed. Astrel-AST, 2010 (p. 223)]
***

To compare the mass famine of 1891/93 and the famines in the USSR, I will give documented data here:
--- Mass famine of 1921-1922 (devastation after the Civil War) - the traditional estimate is from 4 to 5 million dead. Starving, according to modern estimates, at least 26.5 million people. Similar figures (27-28 million people) were given in a report at the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets by M.I. Kalinin.
--- Holodomor in 1933-1933. The general estimates of the number of victims of the famine of 1932-1933, made by various authors, differ significantly, although the estimate of 2-4 million prevails: Lorimer, 1946 - 4.8 million, B. Urlanis, 1974 - 2.7 million, S. Wheatcroft, 1981, - 3-4 million, B. Anderson and B. Silver, 1985, - 2-3 million, S. Maksudov, 2007, - 2-2.5 million, V. Tsaplin, 1989, - 3.8 million, E. Andreev et al., 1993, - 7.3 million, N. Ivnitsky, 1995, - 5 million, State Duma of the Russian Federation, 2008, - 7 million (Statement of the State Duma of the Russian Federation "In memory of the victims of hunger 30s on the territory of the USSR")
--- Famine in 1946-1947- According to M. Ellman, everything from the famine in 1946-47. in the USSR, from 1 to 1.5 million people died. Some researchers consider these figures to be too high. Especially high was infant mortality, at the beginning of 1947 amounting to 20% of the total number of deaths. In a number of regions of Ukraine and the Chernozem region, cases of cannibalism were noted.
An acute shortage of food, however, which did not lead to mass starvation, existed in the USSR until the end of the 1940s.

The conclusion is that the most terrible famine in tsarist Russia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, being, of course, a monstrous tragedy, in terms of the number of human victims was still many times (!) Lower than any of the three famines of the Soviet period.
These facts, of course, do not justify the mistakes of the tsarist government in the massive famine of 1891/92, but nevertheless, when comparing the scale and consequences of the famine years, one should also take into account the breakthrough in science and medicine that occurred in the world from 1892-1893. to 1931/32
And if the famine of 1921-1922 and 1946-1947. can be explained by the terrible devastation after the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars, respectively, without even analyzing the “political” factors, then such exorbitant death rates in 1932-1933. to explain from the standpoint of “and we got this as a legacy from the damned backward tsarist Russia, people there died by the millions every year” or “we have such a climate in Russia, and famine is characteristic of it” does not work. The fact remains that tsarist Russia is already in the end of the 19th century did not know such huge human losses from crop failures, which the people in the USSR got in the early 1920s, 1930s and 1946\47 (http://www.otkpblto.ru/index.php?showtopic=12705 )

TSAR GOVERNMENT AND PEASANTS: BENEFITS, BENEFITS, PEASANT BANK
Let's go back to the end of the 19th century. Already at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II, the government more than once provided the peasants with various benefits (in 1894, 1896, 1899), which consisted in the full or partial forgiveness of arrears in government payments. Further, I again cite data from S. Pushkarev's book "History of Russia in the 19th century":
In 1895, a new charter for the Peasants' Bank was issued, allowing the bank to acquire land in its own name (to be sold to peasants in the future); in 1898 the annual growth was reduced to 4%. — After the reform of 1895, the activities of the Bank began to expand rapidly. In total, from the time the Bank was opened in 1882 to January 1, 1907 (even before Stolypin's reforms), more than 15% of the owner's (master's) land passed into peasant hands, through the Bank, in the amount of up to 675 million rubles, of which the loan was issued 516 mil. rubles
Since 1893, when the active construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began, the government began to patronize the resettlement, trying, first of all, to populate the area adjacent to the railway. In 1896, a special "resettlement department" was established as part of the Ministry of the Interior. In 1896, 1899 and 1904, rules were issued on benefits and allowances for settlers; they were supposed to issue a loan in the amount of 30-50 rubles for travel expenses, and 100-150 rubles for the economic arrangement and seeding of fields.
During the decade from 1893 to 1903, the government allocated up to 30 million rubles for the resettlement business. rub. and by the end of the century, this matter unfolded quite widely (although the full development of the resettlement movement dates back to the Stolypin era). From 1885 to 1895 the total number of settlers beyond the Urals was 162,000; for the 5th anniversary from 1896 to 1900 - 932 thousand. A significant part of the settlers, attracted by rumors about the land riches of Siberia, hurried to move there "by gravity", without asking for permission from the government and "passing certificates". The reverse movement of settlers ranged from 10 to 25%. More prudent peasants first sent “walkers” to Siberia for reconnaissance, and only then, upon their return, liquidated their business in their homeland and moved on a long journey - “towards the sun” ...
The government was also aware of the need to organize small credit in the countryside and tried to promote the creation of this organization. In 1895, the "Regulations on Small Credit Institutions" was published.
***
Developed in Russia at the end of the XIX century and cooperation. The emergence of the first cooperative organizations in Russia dates back to the 60s of the 19th century, that is, to the same time when they began to spread in the advanced countries of Europe. Moreover, Russia was even ahead of many of them in this respect. Zemstvos, seeing the undoubted usefulness of cooperative associations for peasants, became the initiators of their creation. In addition, they allocated considerable funds to support cooperatives. However, cooperatives gained real strength and spread in Russia under Stolypin, when the peasants themselves realized its advantages. We'll talk more about this later.
***

At the beginning of the article - a color photograph by S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky (early 20th century)

As well as old photo postcards: http://aquilaaquilonis.livejournal.com/219882.html