The Russian Peasantry and the Elections to the Fourth State Duma

EUGENE D. VINOGRADOFF

The subject of this article is the voting behavior of the agricultural peasantry of European Russia and Siberia during the elections to the Fourth State Duma in 1912.¹ Its objective is to examine the political mentality of the peasantry—their political conceptions and capacity for unity and discipline, as well as their positions on specific issues and their attitudes toward various groups of peasants and non-peasants.

An examination of the political mentality of the peasantry in 1912 tests the two major historiographical schemata that have developed on the basis of research about peasant politics. According to the first schema, socioeconomic differentiation was dividing the peasantry during the early twentieth century into two mutually antagonistic classes, a peasant “bourgeoisie” and a peasant “semiproletariat.” The development of these classes was being accelerated by the Stolypin land reform program, and these two new classes were engaging in an increasingly serious intrapeasantry class struggle, while the older struggle between the peasantry as a whole and the gentry was continuing.

According to the second major historiographical schema, on the other hand, intrapeasantry strife was minimal. Socioeconomic differentiation, although significant, was accompanied by no significant political consequences. Instead of revealing increasing divisions, the peasantry was continuing to display great political cohesion because the landed gentry, its ancient opponent, continued to be predominant in the coutryside.²

The test of these historiographical analyses on the basis of the 1912 election is facilitated by the fact that a proponent of the first schema has already studied these elections. In the only previous examination of peasant voting patterns in 1912, the Soviet historian E. D. Chermen-skii concluded that they provided evidence of a sharp class conflict between the wealthy and the poorer peasants. “Almost half of the peasant [Duma] deputies [who won election in 1912] were rich kulaks,” Chermenskii wrote. They owed their election to the fact that “the government to a significant extent succeeded in falsifying the elections in the peasants’ curia. At least half of the peasant deputies did not reflect the genuine interests of the peasant masses,” whom Chermenskii identified as the emerging peasant “semiproletariat.”³

The evidence to be reviewed in the present article contradicts Cher-menskii’s conclusions, and it also contradicts the conclusions one would expect to draw on the basis of the second historiographical schema. It indicates that class divisions among the peasantry were politically significant in a few regions, as Chermenskii argued, but insignificant in the great majority of regions, as the second historiographical schema would suggest. In other words, there were two fundamentally different sets of political attitudes and conceptions among the peasants in 1912, and the line of demarcation between them was one of region rather than one of class.

In the Baltic littoral, Kovno province, and, to a lesser extent, Siberia, peasants manifested one set of political attitudes and conceptions. They expressed interest in a wide variety of political, economic, and cultural issues—in civil liberties and in the autonomy of local governments; in the land question, rural wage rates, and agricultural development; in education and, where peasants were non-Russian and non-Orthodox, in national cultural and religious autonomy. In addition, as Chermenskii maintained, the peasants of these regions took different positions on these issues, which corresponded to differences in their socioeconomic positions. Finally, these peasants shared the attitudes and conceptions of some groups of non-peasants, and they affiliated with political parties and otherwise joined together to defend their political attitudes and conceptions. Because the socioeconomic status of these peasants was correlated with the positions they took, their political mentality will here be called a “class” political mentality.

In all the other regions of the empire, the peasants manifested a different set of attitudes and conceptions. They expressed interest in only one issue, the land question, and they took a single radical position on that question despite great differences in their socioeconomic positions. Moreover, although they held a common position on this one issue, these peasants proved to be incapable of united or even disciplined action. Indeed, instead of affiliating with political parties or otherwise uniting with one another, they affiliated with individual gentry or official patrons, their principal antagonists on the land question. Because the political attitudes and conceptions of these peasants were correlated only with their membership in the legal peasant estate (krest’ianskoe soslovie) and not with differences in their socioeconomic positions, their political mentality will here be called an “estate” political mentality.

In summary, then, the evidence poses problems for both of the arguments that were outlined above. Neither of them is valid for the peasantry of the empire as a whole, and neither of them provides an explanation for the inability of peasants who shared a common position on the land question to act with unity and discipline.

The bulk of this article will be devoted to presenting the evidence of the regional variations in the political mentality of the peasants. Its major historiographical objective is to demonstrate that the existing schemata are inadequate; it is not to prove a new schema. Nevertheless, since the evidence calls for a closer examination of regional variations in social and economic conditions that might have shaped the political mentality of the peasants, the article will conclude with such an examination, revealing that regional variations in the peasants’ political mentality roughly coincided with regional variations in the peasants’ agrarian system. This suggests that possible relationships between political mentality and agrarian system are worthy of further study.

The elections to the Fourth State Duma were governed by the electoral law of June 3, 1907, which divided the empire’s population into several electoral curiae, defined on the basis both of legal and of socioeconomic status. During the elections each of these curiae elected electors (vyborshchiki) from among its own ranks, and the electors from all curiae then jointly elected the Duma deputies from among their own ranks. Although the law required that one of the peasant electors from each province be elected a Duma deputy, one of its most important consequences was to discriminate severely against the peasantry: for example, it took the votes of 261 members of the peasants’ curia to equal the vote of one member of the landowners’ curia.⁴ Nevertheless, for the purpose of investigating the political mentality of the peasantry, what is critical is not the law’s discrimination; rather, it is that the law did allow an important segment of the peasantry to voice and even to act upon its political attitudes and conceptions.

With specific regard to the peasants’ curia, the first important aspect of the law was that it effectively limited the peasant electorate to a particular group of the agricultural peasantry, male heads of households. It did this by denying the franchise to a large number of other groups: all women; all persons who belonged to the legal peasant estate but otherwise had little in common with the agricultural peasantry (i.e., most workers, many rural professionals, and a significant number of townsmen); and those agricultural peasants who did not own land or who happened to be away from their villages while the elections were taking place (i.e., members of households other than heads, in whose names title to land was vested; heads of landless households; and peasants who were engaged in migratory labor). Furthermore, although the law was tailored to heads of households, it made the participation of the great majority of them extremely indirect: it stipulated that the peasant electorate consist of members of district assemblies (volostnye skhody) who met the criteria outlined above, which meant that most heads of households participated only by virtue of having elected the members of the district assemblies in earlier, local elections.⁵ In short, under the various stipulations of the electoral law, the peasant electorate consisted of peasant heads of households who had strong ties to their villages, who earned some if not all of their income from land, and who enjoyed sufficient status among their neighbors to have been elected members of district assemblies.

The second important aspect of the electoral law is that it opened the way to extensive landowner influence over the elections among the peasants. It did this in two ways: it provided local officials, who were elected by landowners, with numerous opportunities to try to prevent the election of “undesirable” peasants, and it permitted landowner electors to participate directly in the election of the peasant Duma deputies.

Officials were provided with opportunities to try to prevent the election of individual peasants, and in some cases of entire groups, by the complex three-stage process in which the peasants voted. In the first stage, members of district assemblies voted for representatives (upolnomochennye) from their own ranks; in the second stage, these representatives assembled at the county (uezd) level and elected electors (vyborshchiki) from their own ranks; and in the third stage, the peasant electors, together with the electors from all other curiae, met in the provincial electoral assembly and elected Duma deputies from among their ranks by majority vote of all of the electors.

The first two stages in this process were chaired by landowner officials—land captains (zemskie nachal’niki) in the first stage and county marshals of the nobility (predvoditeli dvorianstva) in the second stage. Although the balloting was secret, these officials knew more about the peasants of the district assemblies than did any other non-peasants, which meant that they knew which individuals, villages, or even districts tended to be troublesome. If “undesirable” peasants won election in the first or second stage, officials could try to prevent their election to the next stage in several ways. First, they could seek technical violations on the basis of which to invalidate an election (e.g., inconsistent spellings of a peasant’s name). In practice, formal invalidations were rare and were usually directed against oppositional members of former Dumas who had become particularly obnoxious to high officials in the capital. Second, officials could engage in obstructionism, which was a somewhat more frequent practice: they could fail to inform an “undesirable” peasant of the names of his colleagues or of the time and place of an electoral assembly; they could schedule the assemblies at inopportune times and places, reschedule them on short notice, etc.⁶ Most often, however, the land captains and marshals of the nobility had merely to advise the peasants about “desirable” candidates in order to produce satisfactory results, for they exercised enormous powers over the district assemblies in the course of their routine affairs. In fact, both the peasants and the officials viewed the latter’s role in the elections as so similar to their routine functioning that their actions were rarely described in detail; the best descriptions came from the relatively few provinces in which neither land captains nor marshals of the nobility had been instituted. One such province was Volynia, whose chief of police cited the absence of land captains as the reason for his inability to supply a firm prediction of how the peasants would vote: “. . . in Volynia province the peasant institutions . . . are deprived of that indispensable influence from the side of administrative authority which can be attained in those provinces with land captains. As a result, the peasant institutions are inert, undependable and, in the great majority of cases, are given over, so to speak, to the spontaneous arbitrariness of the little-cultured masses.”⁷ As will be evident in the pages that follow, local officials succeeded in preventing “spontaneous arbitrariness” in the great majority of regions.

While gentry influence was exercised by landowner officials during the first two stages of the electoral process, it was exercised even more directly by landowner electors during the third and final stage. As noted above, the electoral law of June 3 stipulated that all Duma deputies were to be elected by majority vote of the provincial electoral assembly, which was composed of all electors from all curiae. In the overwhelming majority of provinces, these provincial electoral assemblies were so apportioned as to give electors from the landowners’ curia roughly 50 percent of the votes and electors from the first city curia (that composed of the wealthiest townsmen) another 12-20 percent; peasant electors, by contrast, usually had between 15 percent and 25 percent of the votes.⁸ Clearly, then, if the landowner and first city electors were reasonably well united, they would constitute the majority in a provincial electoral assembly. Subject to two important limitations imposed by the electoral law, they would be free to elect whichever deputies they preferred.

The first important limitation upon the freedom of the majority of a provincial electoral assembly to elect deputies of its choice was the requirement that at least one of the electors from each of the major curiae be elected a deputy. In almost all provinces, the law stipulated that the assembly first elect one of the peasant electors a deputy (he became the so-called curial peasant deputy), and that it then elect, in turn, a deputy from among the landowner electors and one or two deputies from among the city electors (the five largest cities of the empire elected their own deputies and thus sent no electors to the electoral assemblies in their provinces). In addition, in several provinces with large concentrations of workers and/or Cossacks, a worker and/or a Cossack deputy was similarly mandated. Finally, in the few non-Russian provinces with substantial Russian minorities, at least one of the deputyships was reserved for Russians, and the Russian electors were sometimes entitled to hold separate electoral assemblies. After an assembly had elected all of its various curial or mandated deputies, it was free to elect the remaining deputies to which its province was entitled without regard to curia (deputies elected in this fashion will here be called “at-large” deputies).⁹ In short, although the electoral law gave landowners and first city electors a majority in most of the provincial electoral assemblies, it allowed them completely free use of their majority only in the election of at-large deputies; in the election of the other deputies, it required them at least to choose candidates who belonged to the appropriate curiae.

The second important limitation upon the freedom of the majority of a provincial electoral assembly was the seemingly inoffensive requirement that each nominee for a deputyship declare his willingness to stand for election.¹⁰ Coupled with the requirement that a curial peasant deputy be elected in the great majority of provinces, this provided the peasant electors of each province with one sure means of maintaining their control over the election of the curial peasant deputy: if they could agree unanimously on one of their number as their nominee, they could compel his election by refusing to accept nominations themselves. Indeed, even if all the non-peasant electors opposed the peasants’ nominee, they could not prevent his election; all that they could do was to compel a second ballot, for the law stipulated that if no candidate received an absolute majority on the first ballot, the candidate who received the highest number of favorable votes (a relative majority) on a second ballot would be considered elected.¹¹

In summary, then, the electoral law discriminated against the peasants and opened the way to extensive gentry influence, but it did allow an important segment of the peasantry to express its political attitudes and conceptions. It placed an extremely high premium on unity and political discipline, for if the peasant electors were sufficiently well united, they could guarantee their control over the election of their curial peasant deputy. Moreover, if they were united while the electors from other curiae were not, they could even gain control of a provincial electoral assembly and play the major role in the election of the other deputies, and especially of the at-large deputies who could be chosen from electors belonging to any curia.

The elections to the Fourth State Duma took place during the late summer and early autumn of 1912, a tranquil period in all the rural regions of the Russian Empire. The last reverberations of the revolutionary turmoil of 1905–1907 had been stilled four years earlier, and neither the Stolypin land reform program nor the new upsurge of strike activity among the workers, which had commenced in the spring of the year, were producing any discernible echoes of unrest among the peasantry. In a few villages, to be sure, disorders were under way; in a few others, rumors about the partitioning of non-peasant lands were circulating; and in a few others still, the disruptions produced by a crop failure and mild famine continued to be felt.¹² But phenomena such as these merely constituted the norm during periods of tranquility.

Despite the overall tranquility, regional differences among the peasants were already apparent as the date of the elections approached. Peasants in all regions except the Baltic remained completely apathetic: they did and said nothing about the elections; no peasant candidates emerged; and they were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the activities of the previous State Duma.

In the Baltic region, on the other hand, peasants were interested both in the activities of the Third Duma and in the elections; several candidates emerged; indeed in Lifland province two Estonian peasant candidates were engaged in a primary campaign that was attracting the attention of townsmen and intelligenty as well as of peasants.¹³

In regions other than the Baltic, Kovno province, and Siberia, the apathy of the peasants resulted not only from the general tranquility in the countryside. It stemmed as well from the peasants’ indifference and hostility to the Duma itself—from feelings that had begun with disillusionment in 1907 and that had been reinforced by the five years’ “inactivity” of the Third Duma.

The creation of the Duma in October of 1905 had initially evoked an enthusiastic response from the peasants. In most regions they had hoped that it would carry out a “black partition,” that is, that it would divide up all non-peasant lands among the peasants. The peasants had traditionally pinned their desires for such a drastic resolution of their problems on the tsar, and they were now confusing, or equating, the tsar and the new Duma. During the spring of 1906, for example, as the date of the convening of the Duma drew near, “in many provinces . . . the peasants . . . were expecting ‘Joy’ from the Tsar. ‘Joy’—the allotment to each man of five desiatiny of land.”¹⁴

But the peasants’ enthusiasm had rapidly given way to disillusionment when neither the First nor the Second Duma produced a radical resolution of the land question. Their disillusionment had then been compounded when the electoral law of June 3, 1907, drastically altered the balance in Duma elections between themselves and the landowners, reducing the number of peasant electors by more than 50 percent while increasing the number of landowner electors by more than 25 percent. This had left the landowners in control of the vast majority of the provincial electoral assemblies, as has been explained above, and the result was a tremendous decline in the number of peasant Duma deputies (for example, from approximately 199 in the First Duma to only 74 in the Fourth Duma) and a commensurate increase in the number of landowner deputies.¹⁵

By the autumn of 1908, when the Third Duma began its debate on the Stolypin land reform program, the peasants had already grown completely indifferent to it. Their attitude was succinctly summarized by some peasants in Tver province, who, when asked whether the Duma should be retained in its present form, reformed, or abolished altogether, replied: “Although [we] are indifferent, [we] see no reason ... [to reform the Duma], for . . . no matter what kind of Duma there is, [we] still won’t get the land for nothing.”¹⁶ And the peasants had remained indifferent from 1908 through 1912, for none of the Duma’s actions, including its passage of the Stolypin land reform program in 1910 and of a bill to facilitate enclosures in 1911, had had anything in common with their desire for a black partition.

In summary, then, the peasants of the great majority of the regions of the empire—of those regions which are here being called “estate” regions—had viewed the Duma with indifference or hostility since 1907, the year in which political tranquility had been restored in the Russian countryside. Indeed, the peasants’ disillusionment with the Duma had been merely one of the signs of the restoration of tranquility, like the decline in the number of agrarian disturbances in 1907. The onset of tranquility, the disillusionment with the Duma, and the decline in the number of disturbances had all resulted fundamentally from the dashing of the peasants’ hopes for a black partition. This had been their constant and almost exclusive objective; when it had begun to appear unattainable, they had responded by lapsing into apathy, not by shifting their attention to lesser, more readily attainable objectives.

In the Baltic region, Kovno province, and Siberia, on the other hand, the peasants had never focused exclusively on the land question. Even during the revolutionary upsurge of 1905 and 1906, the peasants of these “class” regions had sought such goals as civil liberties, autonomy for local governments and for minority cultures and religions, increased rural wage rates, and improved agricultural marketing conditions. Moreover, they had sometimes sought these goals with as much fervor as they sought land. In the post-1907 atmosphere of tranquility, the peasants of these regions continued to pursue many of these objectives, and they continued also to view the Duma as a means by which some of these objectives might be attained.

During the 1912 elections themselves, the regional distinctions among the peasantry were revealed very clearly. They were evident even from aggregate data summarizing the party affiliations of the peasant deputies who were elected, despite the fact that the national party labels tended to disguise them to a certain degree.

In all, seventy-four peasant deputies were elected to the Duma in 1912, fifty-four of whom were curial deputies and twenty of whom were at-large deputies. Their breakdown by party in the two major types of regions is illustrated in table 1.¹⁷

The deputies from the class regions stood considerably to the left of the deputies from the estate regions. All of the former belonged to liberal or revolutionary parties, while most of the latter belonged to conservative or moderate parties and none to a revolutionary party.

Although the aggregate figures reveal that there was some distinction between the peasants of the two types of regions, they mistakenly suggest that it was a distinction only of degree. That is because the party names in the table appear to represent a single political continuum, and the distribution of peasant deputies along it implies that a single continuum existed among them too. In fact, however, there was no single continuum, for the party labels meant very different things to the peasants of the two types of regions. Thus, the apparent overlap between the class and estate peasants who joined liberal parties is misleading; as we shall see below, peasants from class regions who joined liberal parties did so because they held liberal positions on a number of political issues, while peasants from estate regions who joined liberal parties did so only because they were clients of gentry patrons who happened to be liberals. Similarly, the apparent political diversity among the estate peasants who joined such a wide range of parties is equally misleading; these peasants shared a common desire for a radical resolution of the land question and a common indifference to other issues, but they joined a range of parties because the local landowners, whom they obediently followed so long as the general political atmosphere seemed to preclude a black partition, led them into a range of parties. An examination of the electoral results in several provinces will illustrate these points.

TABLE 1

Party distribution of peasant Duma deputies by types of regions.

Let us look first at the overlap between the class and estate peasants who joined the liberal Progressist and Kadet parties. Two examples will indicate how different liberal peasants were in the two types of regions.

A typical liberal peasant from a class region was the Kadet Iu. M. Oras of Estonia, whom the local governor described as follows:¹⁸

Oras ... is the chairman of a district court and a prominent member of the local agricultural and all other privately organized societies. . . .¹⁹

Until the outbreak of disorders in the area in 1905–1(906. Oras was a teacher in . . . [a] district school. With the outbreak of disorders he became one of the prominent agitators, took an active part in meetings, and, with the arrival of punitive detachments, went into hiding in Finland. From there he returned in 1907. Presently he belongs to the left wing of the Estonian Progressist-Nationalists. Among the local Estonian population he enjoys great trust and respect and, being an active member of various societies, exercises a prominent influence on the public life of the local peasant population. . . .

His election to the Duma was the result of a decision of a pre-electoral assembly organized by electors [belonging to] the Estonian Progressive group, which nominated him as the candidate from the peasantry. In view of this decision, the other peasant electors—including, by the way, the member of the Third Duma [A. Ia.] Teras—refused to permit themselves to be nominated at the [Provincial] Electoral Assembly.

Two aspects of this report deserve emphasis, the first of which pertains to Oras and the second to his fellow Estonian peasants. According to the report, Oras himself, although an agricultural peasant with only an elementary education,²⁰ was virtually indistinguishable from many members of the intelligentsia. He was dedicated to rational improvements in both the economic and the cultural life of the peasantry, and he was equally dedicated to political liberty. His political activities, moreover, had undergone a transition between 1905 and 1912 that was typical of those of many members of the intelligentsia, and of many Kadet intelligenty in particular: a revolutionary in 1905, he had become a liberal in the years after 1907 and had confined himself to legal activities that helped develop a liberal constituency.

The second aspect of the governor’s report that deserves emphasis concerns the other peasants of Estonia. In compelling Oras’s election by refusing nominations themselves, they displayed both a thorough understanding of the electoral law and a capacity for unity and discipline that was matched only by industrial workers during the 1912 elections.²¹ Other reports strongly suggest, in addition, that not only peasant but also urban electors had participated in the preelectoral assembly that had nominated Oras, and this would indicate that the Estonian peasants concerned had joined together politically with certain groups of non-peasants as well as with one another.²²

In summary, the Estonian peasants (or at least this particular group of them) were “conscious” liberals. They understood political liberty in the same sense in which many townsmen understood it, and they associated it with economic and cultural development. To achieve their aims, they could unite among themselves and with others, and they could manipulate provisions of the electoral law to their advantage.

Let us examine now a typical liberal peasant deputy from an estate region. Such a deputy was the Progressist A. A. Sychev of Ufa province, whom the governor of Ufa described as follows:

Sychev . . . does not work directly in agriculture, but serves in the county zemstvo as agent for road construction. Earlier, Sychev was elected to a term as member of the zemstvo board (1900–1903), and then, when the chairman of this board, Koropachinskii, became chairman of the Provincial Zemstvo Board, he was elected chairman for the remainder of [Koropachinskii’s] term. However, the hopes placed upon him were not fulfilled, [for he] displayed extremely little activity in this post; this was noted by the . . . next zemstvo assembly session in 1903, which did not find it possible to re-elect him to this post and made him only a member of the board. But even in this post Sychev earned such a reputation for inactivity that, when he was again elected by the district assembly as a candidate for the zemstvo assembly ... in 1906, my predecessor [as governor] . . . did not find it possible to confirm him. . . . [My predecessor also] failed to confirm his election ... in 1909.

Sychev has no significance whatever in the life of the local public institutions, and plays no active role with respect to politics. If he was elected a member of the [zemstvo] assembly and then to responsible posts in the . . . zemstvo, it was thanks exclusively to the support of the Chairman of the Provincial Zemstvo Board Koropachinskii, an influential public figure and landowner in Zlatoustovskii county who became his patron.

Displaying no political activity, Sychev even has scarcely any serious, thorough acquaintance with the programs of the political parties; but he was elected a member of the Duma by the Kadetish [kadetstvuiu-shchie] zemstvoites [who formed] an oppositional majority, and by all accounts will join the Constitutional-Democratic fraction or the Progressive Group in the Duma.²³

Unlike Oras, Sychev had displayed no initiative whatsoever in local politics; indeed, he could distinguish the liberal parties from the conservative parties only with difficulty, if at all. The sum and substance of his political career was his client-patron relationship with the landowner Koropachinskii—a relationship so strong that it had survived revolution and counterrevolution alike. Inert and passive, Sychev was a liberal only because his gentry patron was a liberal. An obedient client, he presumably joined the Progressist party at Koropachinskii’s direction, for, although Koropachinskii himself remained in Ufa as chairman of the provincial zemstvo, two of his fellow gentry zemstvoites were elected to the Duma, and both were Progressists.²⁴

Significantly, the attitude of the other peasants toward Sychev was not mentioned by the governor or by anyone else who reported on the elections. In fact, the reports mentioned only one other peasant at all, and they mentioned him only because he too was elected to the Duma. This was the Moslem party deputy G. Kh. Baiteriakov, who was supported by the liberal bloc under the terms of its electoral alliance with the Moslems. Like Sychev, Baiteriakov was the obedient client of a powerful landowner patron, the Moslem nobleman K. B. Tevkelev, a member of the First, the Second, and the Third Dumas, who was reelected in 1912.²⁵

It is clear, then, that the other peasants of Ufa province played no significant role in the elections. Perhaps they followed the directives of their local landowner electors as obediently as Sychev and Baiteriakov followed their patrons. It is evident, in any case, that Sychev’s affiliation with the Progressist party meant nothing more to the other peasants than it did to Sychev himself.²⁶ “Peasant liberalism” in Ufa was not the same thing as “peasant liberalism” in Estonia. Indeed, “peasant liberalism” in Ufa reflected nothing whatsoever about the peasantry there, except that they were subservient to landowning noblemen, some of whom happened to be liberals.

This raises the broader question of what political parties in general meant to the peasants of the estate regions, and thus introduces the second misleading implication of the aggregate figures summarizing the results of the elections. As these figures showed, the peasants of the estate regions joined a wide range of parties, which at first glance would imply that they held a wide variety of political attitudes and conceptions. An examination of the views of several moderate and conservative peasant deputies from estate regions, however, will demonstrate that they all held the same political attitudes. Like Sychev and Baiteriakov, they joined parties not on the basis of their own views, but rather on the basis of the views of local landowners and officials.

A typical moderate peasant deputy was the Octobrist G. G. Mazu-renko of Kherson province. A thorough investigation of his background by local officials revealed that he had “occupied the post of District Elder ... for fifteen years and enjoy[ed] great respect in his milieu. . .. By his political convictions, [he] belong[ed] to the moderate right.” Nevertheless, the governor who was reporting this information felt constrained to warn:

It is difficult to say with assurance what position he will take in the Duma, in view of the attraction of the peasants to the left parties [because of] the land question, which is central to them. However, after the elections he promised the [other] members of the Duma from Kherson province not to sit to the left of them in the Duma.²⁷

This was a promise that he kept, for he joined three of the landowner deputies from his province in the Octobrist party, and none of the other deputies from Kherson sat to the left of the Octobrists. It might be tempting to assume that Mazurenko chose the Octobrists because he knew that they were to the left of the Centrists and the Rightists, the other two parties to which his fellow Kherson deputies belonged, but there is no evidence for this in the reports.²⁸ In all probability, he chose the Octobrists simply because he was more familiar with the particular landowners in that party than with those in the Centrist or Rightist parties; in any case, it is clear that the three parties held essentially identical conservative positions on the land question, which was the only issue of concern to Mazurenko.

Five Rightist party peasant deputies, including one who was a member of the Union of Russian People, were elected in Volynia province, and their election capped the biggest single conservative victory among the peasants during the 1912 elections.²⁹ The governor, understandably pleased with this success, paused during an otherwise enthusiastic report, however, to warn that the Rightist party peasants were not altogether reliable. “In deciding questions connected with the ownership of the land,” he wrote, “they will be ready during balloting to join with the opposition.”³⁰ The governor did not mean that they might endorse a liberal agrarian program, such as the Kadets’ old program of the compulsory alienation with compensation of gentry lands; he meant that they favored a black partition.³¹

In summary, then, the party affiliations of the peasant deputies from the estate regions, which emerged only upon their election to the Duma, indicated nothing of significance about their political attitudes and conceptions.³² Whatever parties they joined, they expressed profound interest only in the land question, and all but two or three of them favored a black partition.³³ When joining a party they did not consider its position on the land question or on any other issue; the only thing that they did consider was the party preference (or preferences) of the local landowners and officials who were so important in their everyday lives.

Before leaving the topic of the party affiliations of estate peasants, it would be useful to look more closely at the kinds of peasant-landowner relationships that determined them. As we have already seen in the case of Sychev and Baiteriakov of Ufa province, many of the estate peasants were bound to landowners by strong client-patron relationships. These peasant clients automatically affiliated with the parties of their patrons, even when to do so meant to break with the other peasant deputies from their own provinces.

Although almost all the peasant deputies and most of the peasant electors from the estate regions were clients,³⁴ many had patrons who were not personally involved in the electoral process. Instead of exercising relatively greater independence in choosing a political party, however, these peasants in effect chose new patrons to guide their activities in the Duma at the same time that they chose a party. They aligned themselves with the most powerful and most benevolent group of landowner electors during the balloting at the provincial electoral assemblies and then joined whichever party the landowner deputies preferred.³⁵ How they determined which group of landowners was the most powerful and benevolent is illustrated by the following report, which explains why rightist peasant electors in the Don region defected to the opposition:

... on the eve of the elections the rightists [i.e., mostly landowner and clerical electors] controlled 45 purely party votes, the opposition only 40, and the remaining votes belonged to the Octobrists . . . and the non-party Cossacks and peasants, who were more inclined to support the right. . . . However, the leaders of the rightist parties . . . not only did not further the success of their party, but on the contrary aided its complete defeat. While the [opposition] advanced to the struggle in complete discipline . . . the rightists concerned themselves only with the success of personal candidacies, and of discipline there was not a trace. Things reached such an absurdity that all 45 rightists announced their candidacies, and as a result received some 3–4 votes each. . . . Moreover, the rightists behaved extremely scornfully towards the German [colonist] Octobrists, the Cossacks and the peasants, ... as a result of which the Germans, the peasants and a small group of the Cossacks went over to the opposition.³⁶

This produced an oppositional majority that had no trouble electing its slate of candidates, including the Kadet peasant deputy A. G. Afa-nas’ev.³⁷ “Rightist” peasant electors, surprised by the apparent weakness of the conservative landowners and offended by their scornful treatment, had readily aligned themselves with the more powerful and more considerate oppositional landowners. In so doing, they had displayed not the slightest interest in the political views of either group of landowners.

One other relationship between peasants and landowners deserves mention here. Ethnic and religious affinities could sometimes have an effect upon the party affiliations of the peasant deputies in estate regions. In the Right-Bank Ukraine and White Russia, for example, conservative Russian Orthodox landowners were confronted by oppositional blocs composed predominantly of Polish Catholic landowners and urban Jews. The peasant electors of these regions, who were overwhelmingly Orthodox and who identified themselves on official records as Russians rather than as Belorussians or Ukrainians,³⁸ always aligned themselves with the Russian Orthodox landowners during the balloting at electoral assemblies, and the peasant deputies who were elected always joined whichever party these landowners preferred.³⁹ That religious and ethnic affinities played a role in their choice is clear from some of the reports,⁴⁰ but that they played a very large role is doubtful. For one thing, the Russian Orthodox landowners of these regions exercised unusually good discipline within their own ranks and treated the peasants very generously (e.g., they frequently supported peasants for at-large deputyships).⁴¹ For another thing, a solidly rightist group of peasant electors in Tauride province quickly defected to the opposition as a result of what the governor called the “agitational talents” of the Kadet leader Solomon S. Krym. Krym, who was Jewish, was a large landowner and an elector from the landowners’ curia, and he was personally acquainted with “the majority” of the electors,’both rural and urban, through his activities in the zemstvo and the city duma. The peasants’ willingness to follow him, without receiving any at-large deputyships and without being propelled by rightist bungling, demonstrates that a personable landowner leader could overcome religious and ethnic differences.⁴²

Finally, it is important to note that the various types of peasant-landowner relationships discussed above were the only important determinants of the party affiliations of the peasants of estate regions. Socioeconomic and other important distinctions among the peasants themselves were completely unrelated to their party affiliations, as table 2 illustrates (bloc membership rather than party membership is used here for the sake of simplicity).⁴³ Clearly, there was no tendency for the poorer peasants to cluster toward the left end of the political spectrum or for the wealthier peasants to cluster toward the right.

TABLE 2

Socioeconomic status of peasant deputies in estate regions correlated with their political orientation.

In summary, then, the most important factor in determining the party affiliations of the peasants of the estate regions was the party preferences of local landowners and officials—or more precisely the preferences of those landowners and officials who appeared to the peasants to be the most powerful and benevolent. Religious and ethnic affinities also played some role in determining which landowners peasants would follow, and thus also which parties they would join. The political positions of the parties themselves played no role, nor did the peasants’ own position on the land question, which was the only issue of profound significance in their eyes. Socioeconomic and other important distinctions among the peasants also played no role.⁴⁴

In the class regions, on the other hand, the peasants selected their parties on completely different grounds. We have already seen that the Kadet deputy Oras of Estonia province was a “conscious” liberal, whose political biography closely resembled that of many Kadet intel-ligenty. Let us here add a second example, the Trudovik deputy A. I. Ryslev of the Amur region, whose party selection involved the weighing of some rather complex considerations.

Like Oras, Ryslev had been an active participant in the Revolution of 1905; he had then been a railroad clerk in Irkutsk province, a post from which he was dismissed because he participated in “disorders” and was suspected of being affiliated with the Social-Democratic party. In the years following 1905, the program of the Social-Democrats continued to appeal to him in most respects, but he had one serious reservation about it—one that he related quite openly to the governor after his election in 1912:

Ryslev sympathizes with the Social-Democratic Party, but in personal conversations he declared to me that he would remain non-party [in the Duma], since the discipline of any party could, on many issues, conflict with the interests and needs of the [Amur] region.

Arriving in St. Petersburg, Ryslev found the Trudovik fraction both sufficiently flexible to permit him to espouse the local interests with which he was concerned and sufficiently radical to accord with his general programmatic desires. He therefore joined it (nevertheless, it is noteworthy that he was mistakenly listed as a Social-Democrat at one point in the Duma’s official index, and he was the only deputy about whom that rather serious error was made; perhaps he continued to express his general support of Social-Democratic positions).⁴⁵ Thus, although Ryslev was the only Fourth Duma peasant deputy who found it difficult to choose between two revolutionary parties, he closely resembled the other deputies from the class regions in the sophistication with which he approached the question of party affiliation.

On a more general level, it was noted earlier that all nine of the deputies from class regions joined either liberal or revolutionary parties. Suffice it to add here that the issue of economic reforms, and of the land question in particular, was the watershed between the liberal and the revolutionary deputies from these regions: those who favored radical economic reforms joined the Trudovik party, and those who opposed them joined the Kadets or, in the case of one extremely wealthy deputy, the Progressists. The Trudovik deputies tended to be relatively poor, to have only elementary educations, and to be relatively uncommitted to religion (one was even an atheist); the Kadets and the Progressists, on the other hand, tended to be wealthy, to be highly educated, and to be more deeply committed to religion.⁴⁶

In addition to having different conceptions of political parties and different reasons for joining them, the peasants of the estate and class regions differed with respect to their ability to act in a unified, disciplined fashion during the electoral process. In the estate regions, the peasant electors could act in unison only when they were following a unified group of landowners or officials, i.e., only when they were being subservient and passive. When they were acting independently—landowners and officials sometimes permitted them some independence—or on the very rare occasions when they acted aggressively, they were unable to maintain unity and discipline. In the class regions, on the other hand, the peasant electors almost always acted independently and aggressively, and yet they were able to maintain unity and discipline as well. Several examples will illustrate this difference.

In Vladimir province, eleven of the peasant electors were permitted to act independently and immediately began quarreling with one another. These eleven peasants had all been adherents of the rightist bloc, and the governor reported that the rightist and the oppositional blocs would be nearly equal in strength when the provincial electoral assembly convened. The Octobrists would therefore hold the balance, and the governor arranged a rightist-Octobrist meeting at which the two factions agreed to support a common slate of candidates. “Since . . . [the] eleven peasant electors were participating, it was decided to support [as the peasant deputy] whichever candidate they nominated.”⁴⁷

The reason for this “democratic” treatment of the peasants was clear enough: they were a sufficiently large bloc of electors to have been able to tip the balance in favor of the opposition if they took offense at the conservatives. But the “democratic” treatment had some consequences that the governor had not foreseen. Knowing that one of them would receive the support of the majority of the non-peasant electors and would thus be elected to the curial deputyship, “each of the peasants at first tried to get elected . . . [and they all voted against each other], and the peasant deputy [who finally won] was unable to obtain an absolute majority.”⁴⁸

After the peasant deputy had finally been elected, the peasant electors began to quiet down. They voted for the next conservative candidate who had been slated in the Octobrist-rightist agreement (this was the deputy from the landowners’ curia). But a rightist landowner who had not been nominated for a deputyship decided to try to obtain one by taking advantage of the peasants’ instability, and the entire conservative majority threatened to disintegrate:

The elector Gvozdev . . . began to try to convince the peasants not to elect the priest [who had been slated for the at-large deputyship], but to elect a peasant or a person sympathetic to the peasants; he put forward the peasant-boe factory owner Malinin as such a candidate. . . . Then, in place of these suggestions, Gvozdev tried to persuade the peasants to vote for [the Kadet A. A.] Ern [as the deputy from the city curiae, who was being voted upon as this suggestion was being made]. Behind this combination was hidden some hope on Gvozdev’s part to put forward his own candidacy [for the at-large deputyship], once the balloting had been thrown into chaos by these methods.

Gvozdev’s hopes were realized in part. On the first ballot [for the deputy from the city curiae] Gvozdev, Malinin, and three or four peasants defected from the bloc, and the bloc’s candidate and Ern received almost the same number of votes. . . . On the second ballot, either several more peasants or several priests also went over to Ern, and he received 45 votes [an absolute majority], while [the bloc’s candidate] received 42.⁴⁹

Before the at-large deputy, which Gvozdev hoped to become, could be elected, there remained a workers’ deputy to elect. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be the Bolshevik F. N. Samoilov, for all the worker electors supported him and none would accept a nomination. However, the conservative leaders had planned to vote against him anyway, simply to register their own convictions, even at the cost of taking more time than necessary over the workers’ deputy by compelling a second ballot. But for some reason this plan miscarried and “the nucleus of rightist electors voted leftist,” thereby helping to elect Samoilov quickly. The governor interpreted this as a sign that the disarray in the rightist camp was continuing.⁵⁰

There then remained the at-large deputyship to fill, and

... it became clear at once that the intrigues of Gvozdev had succeeded: the [slated] candidate of the clergy, the archpriest Speranskii, received only 35 votes. A whole series of candidates then put forward, some by the rightist bloc and some by the leftists, failed to obtain a majority either on the first or on the second ballots. But Gvozdev himself, seeing such a mood in the assembly, decided not to run. At last the rightist bloc candidate Markov received 42 votes, and . . . the assembly, seeing the futility of further balloting, declared him elected.⁵¹

When all was said and done, then, the gullibility and instability of the peasant electors had cost the conservative bloc only one deputyship. The bloc had otherwise managed to hold together, but only barely.

The contrast between the behavior of the peasant electors and the behavior of the worker electors was striking indeed. The peasants, knowing that they could nominate their own Duma deputy, all ran against each other, while the workers, like the class peasants of Estonia, unanimously agreed upon a candidate of their own and refused further nominations in order to compel his election. Later, at least three or four peasants broke ranks with their fellows and broke their agreement with other conservatives when an intriguing landowner tempted them to run again for a deputyship—a deputyship in which the landowner himself was transparently interested. The workers, on the other hand, remained so steadfast in their unity that they convinced rightist leaders to vote for a Bolshevik so as not to spend any more time than necessary on the election of a workers’ deputy. In general, the peasants were viewing the deputyships purely in terms of the advantages they might bring to the individuals who held them, while the workers were viewing the deputyships purely in terms of the advantages they might bring to a party or a class.⁵²

When invited to nominate their candidate independently, then, the peasants of Vladimir had responded with anarchic rather than with disciplined political behavior. In other provinces, too, instances of peasant “independence” during the elections were usually initiated by landowners rather than by peasants, and they were usually marked by similarly anarchic behavior on the part of the peasants. However, in two or three provinces of the estate regions, peasants tried to exercise a more genuine and aggressive kind of independence: they tried to oppose dominant blocs of landowners in order to gain something for themselves. But even these peasants were unable to maintain unity and discipline. Their demonstrations of opposition were very short-lived and ineffectual, and their unity was very easily shattered when landowners from the dominant bloc offered to support one of them for a deputyship.

One of these oppositional demonstrations occurred in Tula province, where all the peasant electors initially aligned themselves with the opposition:

. . . eighty-five [electors] were present at the [provincial electoral] assembly, and were distributed by group as follows:

rightists—25, and clergy—19; in all, 44 votes.

leftists— 25, and peasants—16; in all 41 votes. (The peasants’ votes went to the leftists because they [i.e., the peasants] are undependable and easily give way to any absurd promises from [the leftists]).⁵³

In this case, then, the peasants’ opposition had not been entirely independent; it had been instigated by oppositional leaders who made “absurd promises.” It is unfortunate that the chief of police, from whose report the above quotation was taken, did not specify what the promises were, for without knowing what they were it is impossible to determine what the peasants hoped to gain by siding with the opposition. In all probability, the promises involved at-large deputyships, for the oppositional leaders were almost certainly liberal rather than revolutionary “leftists.” Still, one cannot completely dismiss the possibility that the promises involved the offer of oppositional support for a radical resolution of the land question, because no policeman in the realm would have called the promise of extra deputyships “absurd.”

Whatever it was that the peasants hoped to gain, they did prove willing to oppose a well-disciplined conservative bloc of landowner electors who completely dominated the assembly. From among their own ranks, these landowners elected two Nationalists and one Rightist to the Duma, and they succeeded in leading a clerical deputy into the Rightist party after his election.⁵⁴

However, the law also required that a peasant deputy be elected ahead of all the others, which meant that the conservative landowners had to select one of the sixteen “leftist” peasants. Their choice fell upon A. M. Sinitsyn, who promptly defected to the conservatives during his own election (he was joined by two other oppositional electors, but it is unclear whether they were peasants⁵⁵) and then rejoined his fellow oppositional peasants while the remaining Duma deputies were being elected. When the elections were over, Sinitsyn switched once more, joining the landowner deputy and the priest in the rightist party and thereby completing the conservative sweep of the Tula deputyships.⁵⁶ Clearly, then, Sinitsyn’s instability closely resembled that of the gullible peasants of Vladimir, for both he and they viewed deputyships only in terms of the personal advantages they entailed.

That Sinitsyn should have resembled so closely his fellow estate peasants is remarkable, for he was one of the few who had availed himself of the full possibilities of the Stolypin land reform program. The governor described him enthusiastically:

[He] was the first peasant in [his] county to remove his allotment land from the commune in order to form a separate khutor.* With the assistance of the land reform commission, [he] established a model farm [on it], which without doubt will be of benefit to the surrounding peasant population.⁵⁷

The governor’s assessment was, at the very least, premature. The model farm’s “benefit” had not prevented Sinitsyn’s fellow peasants from voting against him, nor had the model farmer himself acted any differently during the elections than the ordinary communal peasants of the estate regions.

Even the most aggressive peasants of the estate regions, then, were unable to maintain unity in their effort to obtain whatever benefits they were seeking in the elections. The peasants of the class regions presented a sharply contrasting picture.

We have already seen how the peasant electors of Estonia united in favor of the Kadet Oras and compelled his election by refusing the nominations that the Octobrist majority offered them. Reports from Lifland province suggest that peasant electors used the same tactic there, but it was in Kovno province that peasant electors reaped the largest rewards from maintaining unity and discipline. They exercised the decisive voice in electing all of that province’s deputies, and they managed to win all of the at-large deputyships for peasants.

Although it is unclear from the reports whether the Kovno peasant electors displayed complete unanimity, it is evident that a very solid bloc of at least ten to twelve revolutionary and liberal peasant electors dominated the assembly.⁵⁸ Their votes gave the opposition a one-vote majority over the conservatives and enabled it to elect its slate. With the exception of the landowners’ deputy and the deputy from the city curiae, whose elections were required by law, the oppositional slate consisted exclusively of peasants, and one Kadet and two Trudovik peasant deputies were elected.⁵⁹

The participation of the Kadet deputy in the peasant bloc is worthy of special note because, like Sinitsyn of Tula province, discussed above, this Kadet deputy had formed a khutor under the Stolypin land reform program. The Kadet was M. M. Ichas, and aside from his khutor, he had nothing in common with Sinitsyn. Ichas had remained a steadfast liberal and disciplined adherent of the peasant oppositional bloc throughout the elections, whereas Sinitsyn had first joined the opposition together with his fellow peasants, then deserted the opposition when conservative landowners nominated him for the peasant deputyship, then rejoined the opposition while the other deputies were being elected, then finally deserted it again when he joined the Rightist party after the elections. A more general difference was that Ichas was an intelligent—he had a law degree from Tomsk University and published extensively in cultural and religious journals—while Sinitsyn, who had only an elementary education, was a typical estate peasant client. Finally, Ichas’s involvement in the Stolypin land reform program had resulted from his popularity among his fellow peasants, who had requested his legal services when they decided en masse to enclose their lands, while Sinitsyn’s involvement had probably resulted from the wishes of an official patron and, in any case, had not prevented his fellow peasant electors from voting heavily against him.⁶⁰ In short, the political mentalities of the Stolypin khutoriane differed as sharply in the two types of regions as did the political mentalities of the ordinary peasants.⁶¹

In summary, the peasants of the class regions could almost always act in a unified, disciplined fashion, but the peasants of the estate regions could not. This was true, moreover, despite the fact that the peasants of the class regions differed profoundly over a number of political objectives—some of them, as we have seen, were revolutionaries, and some were liberals, while the peasants of the estate regions almost all held the same position on the only political objective of significance to them, a black partitionist position on the land question. On the basis of their programmatic objectives, therefore, one might well have anticipated unity among the estate peasants and disunity among the class peasants, rather than the reverse.

This completes the list of the major differences between the political mentality of the class peasants and that of the estate peasants. Let us recapitulate them briefly. In the class regions, as we have seen, the peasants took different positions on cultural, political, social, and economic issues, and their different positions corresponded to differences in their socioeconomic positions. In the estate regions, on the other hand, the peasants took the same position on a single issue despite great differences in their socioeconomic positions. Similarly, in the class regions peasants shared the attitudes and conceptions of some nonpeasant intelligenty, workers, and townsmen, and they united both among themselves and with these non-peasants in order to defend their political positions. In the estate regions, on the other hand, peasants affiliated with individual landowners and officials, their principal antagonists on the one issue in which they were profoundly interested, and otherwise failed to act with unity or political discipline.

As a first step in identifying regional variations in social and economic conditions that might have influenced the political mentalities of the peasants, the boundaries of the class and the estate regions should be delineated as precisely as possible. This well help eliminate some regional social and economic variations that might, at first glance, appear to have been significant, and it will also permit some attention to be paid to the “borderland” areas in which peasants displayed a mixture of class and estate political characteristics.

The three Baltic provinces and Kovno province of Lithuania formed a class region, as has been evident from the examples presented above. What is particularly worthy of note here is that these four provinces were the only provinces in the northwestern area of the empire in which peasants manifested a class political mentality. Other peasants with a class mentality were to be found not in the adjacent Russian, Belorussian, or even Lithuanian provinces; instead, they were to be found in Siberia.

The Siberian peasant deputies—two were Trudoviks and one was a Kadet—closely resembled the peasant deputies from the Baltic region and Kovno province. As we have seen, they shared the same relatively sophisticated conception of political parties, and the same liberal-revolutionary split appeared among them and among their constituents. In addition, they were deeply interested in civil rights and in the autonomy of local governments (in particular, they sought the introduction of zemstvos in Siberia), in cultural issues such as popular education, and in a number of economic issues in addition to the land question. Finally, they too were capable of united and disciplined political activity and of making strong alliances with certain groups of non-peasants (especially with workers and townsmen).

However, whereas the peasant deputies of Siberia displayed all the characteristics of a class political mentality, it is important to note that their peasant constituents did not. Most of the Siberian peasant electors were much less politically sophisticated than either the Siberian deputies or the peasant electors of the Baltic provinces. It will be recalled that in several of the Baltic provinces all or almost all of the peasant electors belonged to political parties, and in Estonia and Lifland they had unanimously supported the peasant candidates nominated by their parties. In Siberia, on the other hand, the majority of the peasant electors were reported to be nonparty moderates and a number were reported to be nonparty rightists; only the relatively few oppositional electors belonged to parties.⁶² It was from among these oppositional electors that the competing Kadet and Trudovik candidates for the peasant deputyships emerged, and the other peasant electors apparently rallied around one or the other of these candidates during the balloting. Whether they did so “consciously” is impossible to determine, for the right wing of the political spectrum in all of the Siberian provinces was represented by the Kadets (with the exception of the rightist peasant electors themselves). Hence, had there been substantial groups of conservative landowners, it is conceivable that some of the Siberian peasant electors might have preferred to vote with them, as their counterparts from the estate regions of European Russia had done. It is clear in any case that the nonparty and the rightist peasants did display some estate characteristics, such as indifference to the elections and, in some cases, subservience to the strongest and most benevolent bloc at the provincial electoral assembly.⁶³

In summary, then, the peasants of Siberia displayed a much wider range of political attitudes than did the peasants of the regions surveyed earlier. Some of them, including the peasant deputies who won election, resembled the class peasants of the Baltic and Kovno province, while others, such as the nonparty rightist electors, resembled the estate peasants of most of European Russia. In this respect, Siberia can be regarded as a “borderland” territory in which the two types of political mentalities were mixed.

A second territory with some “borderland” characteristics was Ar-khangel province in the northern region. The peasant deputy there, P. A. Levanidov, struck the chief of police “as a commonplace peasant, little developed, a rightist,” which is to say that he appeared to resemble the majority of Siberian peasant electors or the estate peasants of most of European Russia. Nevertheless, he joined the Kadet party after his election, and he did so in alliance with a deputy from the second city curia. There were very few landowners in Arkhangel, so Levanidov’s decision might not seem significant; however, there were equally few landowners in neighboring Vologda province, but the peasant electors there proved to be as subservient to those landowners as their counterparts were in the estate regions of European Russia.⁶⁴ The boundary between the class and the estate regions, then, roughly coincided with the boundary between Arkhangel and Vologda provinces.

Finally, one of the peasant deputies from the Lithuanian province of Grodno displayed an unusually clear mixture of class and estate attitudes. He was exceptional, for his two fellow peasant deputies were typical estate peasants, and so was the deputy from the neighboring province of Vilno.⁶⁵ The attitudes of this deputy are nevertheless worthy of note, for he was the third and final khutorianin elected to the Fourth Duma. He was V. F. Sidoruk, a wealthy peasant who was described in part as follows : “Serving in the post of district elder during the years 1905 and 1906 he had enormous influence on the peasants, holding them back from demonstrations on the agrarian question.”⁶⁶

Even before the enactment of the Stolypin reform program, then, Sidoruk had developed a conservative position on the land question—a position that clearly distinguished him from estate peasants. Nevertheless, Sidoruk remained subservient to local landowners, following their directives during the elections and joining the landowner deputies in the Nationalist party after the elections were completed,⁶⁷ and his subservience clearly distinguished him from class peasants. He thus fell between the two types. Similarly, he occupied a position midway between the two other khutoriane who were elected to the Fourth Duma: like M. M. Ichas of Kovno province, Sidoruk was a conservative on land, but he shared none of Ichas’s deep commitment to political liberalism; like A. M. Sinitsyn of Tula province, he was subservient to landowners but displayed none of Sinitsyn’s willingness to join ranks with communal peasants over the land question.

This combination of political attitudes made Sidoruk the truly “ideal” peasant from the point of view of the architects of the Stolypin land reform program. By the same token, it made him a member of a very small minority among the Russian peasantry as a whole, and it made him a minority of one among the peasant deputies who were elected to the Fourth Duma. What is of most significance for our purposes is that the particular combination of attitudes that Sidoruk possessed could be found only in a peasant from a unique borderland region.

This completes the delineation of the boundaries between the class and the estate regions, so let us summarize them. A class political mentality was displayed by almost all the peasants of Estonia, Lifland, Kurland, and Kovno provinces, and by some of the peasants of Siberia; a mixture of class and estate mentalities was displayed by most of the peasants of Siberia and the northern part of the Northern region, and by a few peasants of the Lithuanian provinces other than Kovno; and an estate mentality was displayed by almost all the peasants of the other regions of the empire.

The regional distribution of class and estate peasants cut across several well-known regional variations in social and economic conditions, which suggests that these particular social and economic conditions had little to do with the shaping of the peasants’ political mentalities. First, the regional distribution cut across ethnic and religious lines. As we have seen, some Lithuanian Catholic and Protestant peasants displayed a class mentality while others displayed an estate mentality; some Russian Orthodox peasants displayed a class mentality while others displayed an estate mentality; etc. While it is true that all the peasants who belonged to a few ethnic and religious groups, such as the Moslem Tatars of the Middle Volga region or the Orthodox Moldavians of Bessarabia, displayed only one type of political mentality, it is difficult to attribute much significance to this in view of the political diversity among the peasants of the larger ethnic and religious groups.

The regional distribution of class and estate peasants also failed to correspond with another well-known regional variation in the rural social structure, the relative strength or weakness of landowning gentry. As we have seen, the peasants of most regions of European Russia displayed an estate mentality, and the landowning gentry were predominant in these regions; however, peasants also displayed an estate mentality in Vologda province of the Northern region, where there were scarcely any landowning gentry. Among the class regions, landowning gentry were strong in Estonia, Kurland, Lifland, and Kovno, but almost totally absent in Siberia.

Similarly, the regional distribution of class and estate peasants was unrelated to the degree of urbanization in particular locales. In the two most heavily urbanized provinces, St. Petersburg and Moscow, the peasants displayed an estate mentality, with the significant but still only partial exception of those from the immediate vicinity of the city of St. Petersburg itself;⁶⁸ in Lifland, Kurland, and Estonia provinces, which were also heavily urbanized, peasants displayed a class mentality. In the majority of European Russian provinces, which had small urban populations, peasants displayed an estate mentality, but in Kovno province and Siberia, which also had very small urban populations, they displayed a class mentality or a mixture of the two types.⁶⁹

Finally, the regional distribution of class and estate peasants corresponded very imperfectly to regional variations in the degree of peasant marketing activities. Peasant agriculturalists marketed relatively large portions of their products not only in the Baltic region, Kovno province, and Siberia, but also in New Russia, the Lower Volga region, and the north. In the other regions, they marketed relatively little. Moreover, the peasants in the commercial group of regions marketed voluntarily, so to speak, because they enjoyed relatively stable prices and favorable terms of trade, while peasants in the second group of regions were sometimes forced to market more than they wished in order to meet their annual tax and other cash obligations.⁷⁰

In all the class regions, then, marketing activities were well developed, and that is a correlation of at least some significance. However, marketing activities were also well developed in the New Russian and the Lower Volga regions, and in both these regions the peasants manifested an estate mentality. The mere fact that peasants marketed a large share of their production, then, could not have determined whether they would display a class or an estate mentality.

However, the regional distribution of class and estate peasants did correspond to regional variations in one economic factor: the methods by which peasants farmed, that is, what may generically be called the peasants’ agrarian systems. In all the class regions, peasants farmed by relatively complex, multifield rotational systems;⁷¹ in all the estate regions, they farmed by the simpler and much older three-field system.⁷² Furthermore, in borderland territories, such as Siberia or Arkhangel province, complex systems and the three-field system coexisted.

The question of the relationships between agrarian systems and the types of political mentality that peasants manifested is obviously complicated—too complicated to be fully explored here.⁷³ Nevertheless, some possible relationships can be outlined briefly. First, the different programmatic objectives of the estate and class peasants might have reflected their different agrarian systems. The three-field system of the estate regions produced only grain as a principal product, and only one variety of grain at that (winter rye was the principal grain in the northern and central regions, and winter or spring wheat in the southern and eastern regions). Furthermore, the tight interrelationships among the major components of the system made it impossible for the peasants to substitute new crops for their principal grain or to employ new techniques in producing it, unless they simultaneously changed all of the system’s major components. As a result, peasants could attempt to increase their production in only one way, by acquiring additional land. This might have been the basis of the estate peasants’ single-minded concern with a radical resolution of the land question.

The complex, multifield systems of the class regions, on the other hand, produced both crops and livestock as principal products, and they produced several varieties of each (e.g., several kinds of grains, potatoes and nitrogen-fixing food and fodder crops, as well as mutton, wool, dairy products and beef). As a result, peasants of these regions could attempt to increase their production in a variety of ways: they could substitute one crop for another or one livestock product for another; they could try a different rotational system, new implements, or new techniques; and, of course, they could try to acquire more land. This might have been the basis of the class peasants’ concern with a range of economic issues in addition to the land question.

Second, the presence of a correlation between peasants’ programmatic objectives and their socioeconomic status in the class regions, and the absence of such a correlation in the estate regions, might have reflected certain other aspects of their differing agrarian systems, in addition to those that were just described. In the regions with multifield systems, a peasant’s capacity for increasing his production was a function of his wealth (and, of course, of the correctness of his investment decisions), for he could earn a return on a number of different investments. A wealthy peasant might therefore have had no interest in radical economic reforms or in a radical resolution of the land question, while a poor peasant might have had an interest in such measures.

In the three-field regions, on the other hand, the tight interrelationships among the major components of the system prevented a return on more than a few units of investments, except for investments in land. Furthermore, a number of social and economic mechanisms, which functioned to insure stable per capita production from year to year, vested control over the capital of individual peasants not in themselves, but in their villages or communes.⁷⁴ As a result, a peasant’s capacity for increasing his production was not a function of his wealth alone; in addition, it was a function of the per capita landholdings of his village or commune. On this basis, a wealthy and a poor peasant would have shared a common interest in a radical resolution of the land question.

Finally, the different levels of political sophistication among the class and estate peasants, including their different capacities for unity and political discipline during the elections, might have reflected socio-psychological characteristics engendered by the different agrarian systems. Under the multifield systems of the class regions, peasants had to make numerous economic decisions during the course of each annual cycle, and they could make different decisions from one another or from year to year. In this sense, they governed their lives in the same fashion in which townsmen governed theirs, and they could develop the same conception of human nature that townsmen developed—the conception that the individual has the power and the authority rationally to order his life and the world around him. Possessing this conception, they could readily comprehend the legislative function of the Duma, and they could define and maintain independent political positions throughout the electoral process.

Under the three-field system, on the other hand, peasants had to do the same things during the course of each annual cycle that they had done during the previous cycle, and they had to do the same things that their fellow villagers were doing; to deviate from the past or from one’s neighbors meant to incur the risk of famine. In this sense, the three-field peasants did not govern their own lives, for the rules by which they lived could not be altered by the peasants themselves. On this basis, they might have held a different conception of human nature—the conception that the power and authority to order human lives was superordinate, and that the role of the ordinary mortal was to submit. Possessing such a conception, they would not have been able readily to comprehend the legislative function of the Duma, and they would have had difficulty in defining and maintaining political positions independently of non-peasants who seemed to be powerful and authoritative.

In conclusion, the most significant political division among the Russian peasantry in 1912 was one of region, not one of class. In the majority of regions, peasants were interested only in the land question, and they took a common radical position on it. Yet they were unable to act with unity and political discipline during the elections; instead of joining together, they followed the lead of powerful local landowners, their principal antagonists on the land question. In a few regions, on the other hand, peasants were interested in a number of issues, and the positions they took corresponded to differences in their socioeconomic status. Moreover, despite their programmatic differences, they acted with unity and discipline during the elections.

Neither of the two major existing historiographical schemata about peasant politics can account for these regional differences. Since regional variations in agrarian systems closely corresponded to these regional variations in the political mentality of the peasants, while regional variations in other social and economic conditions did not, the possible relationships between agrarian systems and political mentalities should be further explored.

NOTES

* A khutor is an enclosed farm with the farmar’s house and buildings located on it; an otrub is an enclosed farm with the farmer’s house and buildings located elsewhere (usually in a nuclear village). The formation of khutors was the maximal objective of the Stolypin land reform program.

1. This article presents in condensed form some of the major conclusions of the author’s doctoral dissertation, “The Russian Peasantry and the Elections to the Fourth Duma: Estate Political Consciousness and Class Political Consciousness” (doctoral diss., Columbia University, 1974). For a more detailed exposition of these conclusions and for more detailed evidence, see the dissertation.

2. Despite important differences between Soviet and emigré or Western scholars, it is interesting to observe that these conflicting historiographical conceptions reflect two scholarly generations rather than two ideological traditions. Thus, the older conception found both Soviet and emigré and Western proponents, the most noteworthy of whom were S. M. Dubrovskii, P. N. Pershin, Geroid Tanquary Robinson, and Lazar Volin. Similarly, the new historiographical conception has also found both Soviet and Western proponents. However, the two groups tend to emphasize different factors to explain the political cohesiveness of the peasantry (since the discussion is still barely beginning, one can thus far speak only of “tendencies”). Soviet scholars tend to emphasize the continued domination of the landed gentry and their continued reliance on “feudal” or “traditional,” rather than on “capitalistic” or “modern” methods of exploiting their land and the peasant labor force. Western scholars, on the other hand, tend to emphasize social and economic processes within the peasantry itself and within the peasants’ agrarian system, i.e., what in Marxist terms might be called the “relationships of production.” Major Soviet exponents of the new historiographical conception are A. M. Anfimov and A. V. Shapkarin. The only major Western exponent of the new conception to date is Teodor Shanin, but it has appeared in articles by Maureen Perrie and the present author.

3. E. D. Chermenskii, Bor’ba klassov i partii v IV Gosudarstvennoi Dume (1912–1917 gg.) (2 vols.; unpublished doctoral diss., Moscow University, 1947), vol. 1, pp.123–24.

4. This is calculated on the basis of the number of electors allotted to each curia and the number of voters belonging to each curia. See F. I. Kalinychev, comp., Gosudarstvennaia Duma v Rossii v dokumentakh i materialakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo iuridicheskoi literatury, 1957), p.342. For a copy of the law, see pp.357–95.

5. Most of the stipulations specifically applying to peasants were contained in Article 37 of the electoral law. For it, see ibid., p.364.

It should be noted that the exclusion of migratory laborers was not explicit; rather, it followed from the fact that no provision was made for absentee balloting.

In the few provinces in which district assemblies did not exist, the closest analogous institutions were substituted for them (see Articles 38-41 et passim in ibid., pp.364–65 et passim).

It should also be noted that peasants who earned portions of their income from nonagricultural activities were not excluded, so long as they earned at least some income from agriculture and/or landownership.

6. Obstructions of these types were usually directed at regional groups of peasants who were believed to be oppositional. Several examples are presented in Chermenskii, Bor’ba klassov i partii, vol. 1, pp.108–10.

7. Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Oktiabr’skoi Revoliutsii (hereafter TSGAOR), f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 13, 1. 120b. A report from the governor of Vladimir province explicitly credited the land captains, the marshals of nobility “and partly . . . the police officials” with having successfully counteracted the leftist influence of the workers on the peasants in all counties except two. Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter TSGIA), f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1, 11. 55-56.

8. In the forty-eight European Russian provinces in which landowner and peasant electors can be directly compared, landowner electors numbered 2,515 and peasant electors numbered 1,078. For the apportionment of each of the electoral assemblies among electors from the various curiae, see the Appendix to Article 8 of the electoral law in Kalinychev, Gosudarstvennaia duma, pp.393–95 (it should be noted that the Don region was excluded in calculating the totals given above because the number of landowner electors in that region was omitted because of a misprint). Only in the northern and Siberian provinces, where gentry landowners were very few, did the apportionment of the assemblies leave the election of the peasant deputy largely in the hands of electors who belonged to the peasant estate (some of these were electors from the peasants’ curia and some were electors from the landowners’ curia).

9. See Articles 2 and 123 of the electoral law and the “List of Numbers of Members of the State Duma” appended to Article 5 in ibid., pp.357, 377-78, 389-92.

10. See Article 127 of the electoral law in ibid., p.379.

11. See Articles 124 and 126 of the electoral law in ibid., p.378.

12. Serious research about the peasant revolt movement during this period has been carried out by proponents of the two conflicting historiographical schemata discussed above. Researchers belonging to both groups agree that 1912 (as opposed to 1910 and 1911) was a tranquil year. For a summary of the views of researchers belonging to the older group, see Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaia zemel’naia reforma, pp.530–33 et passim. Dubrovskii here argues that there was an upsurge of disturbances resulting from the Stolypin reform program in 1911, but his data show them to have been dying away thereafter. For a summary of the views of researchers belonging to the younger group, see Shapkarin, ed., Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie, pp.21–23. Shap-karin attributes only minimal significance to the Stolypin reform program in accounting for peasant disturbances. His most complete data (pp.492–623) do show an increase in disturbances in 1911 and, to a lesser extent, 1912, but not a very significant one. Moreover, his data are generally unreliable (as, for that matter, were Dubrovskii’s): from a check of his data against the archival sources, it is evident that his compilers omitted as many disturbances as they included (the check covered four provinces for 1912; for it, see Vinogradoff, Peasantry and Elections, pp.14–16).

For rumors in 1912 of the repartition of nonpeasant lands, see Dubrovskii, op. cit., p.531.

For information about the crop failure and famine of 1911, which was most severe in Western Siberia, see ibid, and Arcadius Kahan, “Natural Calamities and Their Effect upon the Food Supply in Russia (An Introduction to a Catalogue),” in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Sept. 1968, p.375. For a report about the effects of the famine in Tobolsk province, which were still quite notable in June of 1912, see a letter from the governor in TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 76, 1. 30b.

13. The sources for this article consist almost entirely of police and governors’ reports about the behavior of the peasants during the elections and about the characteristics of the peasants who were elected at the various stages of the electoral process (the three-stage electoral process will be outlined below). Contemporary newspapers, the only other major sources of information about the elections, reported very little about the peasantry (they confined themselves largely to landowners, townsmen and workers); moreover, when they did occasionally mention the peasants, they were often unreliable and sometimes even purposefully misleading in order to stir oppositional sentiments among peasant electors while purporting to report their actual behavior.

The reports explicitly describe peasants as indifferent to the Duma in forty-seven provinces as the date of the elections approached. Reports from eleven provinces fail to state that peasants were indifferent, but they also fail to indicate that peasants were displaying any interest in the elections. Only in Iur’ev county of Lifland province, where Estonian intelligenty and peasants began organizing jointly for the elections during the summer, was there any sign of a genuine electoral campaign by and among peasants. The immediate reasons for their interest were the emergence of two competing peasant candidates and the desire of Estonians to nominate Estonian candidates (in the Third Duma elections, Latvians had played the dominant role). See TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 37, 11. 7-12.

14. Petr Maslov, Agrarnyi vopros v Rossi (vol. 2; St. Petersburg: “Ob-shchestvennaia pol’za,” 1908), p.266. Maslov notes that the connection between the date of the “Joy” and the date of the convening of the Duma was first pointed out in Russkie vedomosti.

For a discussion of the peasantry’s “naïve monarchism” in general and their more programmatic desires from the tsar in particular, see Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), pp.1–29.

15. Under the electoral law of August 6, 1905, which governed the elections to the First and Second Dumas, peasants could elect 2375 electors to the provincial electoral assemblies of fifty provinces of European Russia, and landowners could elect 1945 electors. Under the electoral law of June 3, 1907, peasants could elect only 1078 electors, while landowners could elect 2515 (see Kalinychev, Gosudarstvennaia duma, pp.50–52, 393-95. It should be noted that Arkhangel province was excluded in calculating the numbers of peasant and landowner electors under the 1905 law because the landowners’ curia was combined with the city curia in that province, and that Arkhangel, Stavropol, Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces were excluded in calculating the numbers of peasant and landowner electors under the 1907 law for the same reason; in addition, the Don region was excluded from the calculations under the 1907 law because the number of landowner electors to which the region was entitled was omitted because of a typographical error).

By giving landowner electors control of most of the provincial electoral assemblies, the 1907 law allowed them to elect landowners rather than peasants to the “at-large” deputyships and thus to produce the decline in the number of peasant deputies that was noted. In both the First and the Fourth Dumas, for example, there were 53 or 54 curial peasant deputies (the number varies depending upon how one counts a peasant deputy from the Amur region, in which the peasants’ curia and the city curia were combined); however, there were 145 or 146 “at-large” peasant deputies in the First Duma and only 20 or 21 in the Fourth Duma.

For information about deputies of the First Duma, see Gosudarstvennaia duma, Ukazatel’ k stenograficheskim otchetam. 1906 god. Sessiia pervaia. Zasedaniia 1-38 (27 aprelia-4 iiulia 1907 g.) (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1907), pp.3–17, and Knigoizdatel’stvo “Vozrozhdenie,” Gosudarstvennaia Duma pervago prizyva: Portrety, kratkiia hiografii i kharak-teristiki deputatov (Moscow: 1906), pp.5–110; for information about the peasant deputies of the Fourth Duma, see Vinogradoff, Peasantry and Elections, pp.196–315.

16. TSGAOR, f. 102, 1907 g., 00, d. 615, 1. 91. The question was put to the peasants by a police interviewer as part of a questionnaire on peasant attitudes towards the Duma. (In addition to Tver province, the questionnaire was circulated in Orel, Bessarabia and the Nikolaev region.) The questionnaire originated in the Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which intended that it be circulated by local S-D committees. No local S-D committees appear to have received it, however, and, through a series of bureaucratic misunderstandings, police in the abovenamed regions circulated it by mistake and reported the responses to their superiors. For a summary of the questionnaire and responses, which constitute the only direct evidence of rank-and-file peasants’ attitudes towards the Duma between 1907 and 1912, see Vinogradoff, Peasantry and Elections, pp.48–63.

17. The parties are listed from right to left. As noted earlier, the “class” regions include the three Baltic provinces, Kovno province, and those Siberian provinces with a significant number of agricultural peasants (specifically, the Amur region and Eniseisk, Irkutsk, Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces); “estate” regions include all other European Russian provinces. Polish, Caucasian, and steppe electoral districts have been omitted.

The information used in compiling the table is from Gosudarstvennaia duma, Ukazatel’ k stenograficheskim otchetam (Chasti I-III). Chetvertyi sozyv. Sessiia I. 1912–1913 gg. Zasedaniia 1-81 (15 noiabria 1912 g.—25 iiunia 1913 g.) (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1913) (hereafter Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia), pp.9–24. See also Vinogradoff, Peasantry and Elections, pp.348, 359-72.

18. TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 3, 1. 177.

19. The public career that the governor was here summarizing included the following particulars: elector to the Third Duma in 1907; chairman of district court (1908-12); secretary of the local agricultural society and board member of another agricultural society; board member of a credit association; and board member of a dairy cooperative. See Vinogradoff, op. cit., p.266.

20. Ukazatel’. . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, p.162, and Izdanie N. N. Ol’shanskogo, 4-i sozyv Gosudarstvennoi Dumy. Khudozhestvennyi fototipi-cheskii al’bom s portretami i biografiiami (St. Petersburg, 1913) (hereafter Chetvertyi sozyv . . . al’bom), k tablitse 37; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit.

21. In fact, the unity of the Estonian peasant electors was even more noteworthy, for a large Octobrist majority at the Provincial Electoral Assembly actively tried to prevent the election of Oras by convincing one of the other peasant electors to accept a nomination. As a result, Oras was elected only on the second ballot, and then only by the relative majority of sixteen in favor and twenty-five opposed. For the majority, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 35, ch. 2, 1. 109; for reports on the Octobrist leaders O. R. Brashe and K. Iu. von Brevern, who easily won the other two deputyships from the province, see Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, pp.18, 21-23, 73.

22. A joint peasant-urban nominating assembly seems to be what the governor meant by “a pre-electoral assembly organized by electors [belonging to] the Estonian Progressive group,” for the Estonian Progressists were strong among townsmen (e.g., in addition to the four peasant electors, they also had twelve electors from other curiae, as Oras’s majority indicated). For additional information about the Estonian Progressists, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 88, 1. 6. It is also noteworthy that Estonian peasants and townsmen had united politically in Lifland province, where they conducted a joint primary; see TSGAOR, loc. cit., ch. 37, 11. 706-12.

23. TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 3, 11. 116-117 ob; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.296–97.

24. The two Progressist landowner deputies were N. V. Katanskii and A. P. Mel’gunov. For reports on them, see Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, pp.17, 23, 116, 146, and Chetvertyi sozyv . . . al’bom, k tablitse 33.

25. See TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 35, ch. 2, 1. 155 for the governor’s report. For additional reports on Baiteriakov, see Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, p. 66, and Chetvertyi sozyv . . . al’bom, k tablitse 33; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.200–201. For reports on Tev-kelev, see Ukazatel’. . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, p.198, and Chetvertyi sozyv . . . al’bom, k tablitse 33.

26. The other Moslem peasant electors did play a significant role in Baiteriakov’s election: none of them were willing to accept a nomination, which left Baiteriakov as the only candidate. However, this did not signify their support of Baiteriakov, whose election was already assured by an agreement between Tevkelev and other Moslem leaders, on the one hand, and Koropachinskii and other liberal leaders, on the other; rather, it signified only their complete indifference to the Duma. On this basis, the governor reported that Baiteriakov had been “elected to the Duma accidentally”; for his report, see TSGIA, loc. cit.

27. TSGIA, loc. cit., ch. 3, 1. 147; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.92 and 251.

28. Of the nine deputies elected from Kherson, one (Mazurenko) was a peasant, one was a German colonist, and seven were noblemen (some from the landowners’ and some from the city curiae). Mazurenko, together with three of the noblemen and the German colonist, joined the Octobrist party; three noblemen joined the Centrist party; and one nobleman joined the Rightist party.

29. The conservative victory was overwhelming among the peasant electors as well as among the peasant deputies: forty of the total of forty-two electors were rightists or nonparty conservatives. For a report on the electors, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 13,11. 17-2406.

30. Cited in Chermenskii, Bor’ba Klassov i partii, vol. 1, p.123.

31. This is evident in part from the fact that the Volynian peasant electors and deputies had shown themselves undisposed to defend wealth in general, let alone a conservative position on land in particular. This they did, in part, when they defeated the popular Third Duma peasant deputy G. A. Andreichuk only because “they openly recognized that [he] had gotten rather wealthy” (TSGAOR, loc. cit., 1. 14); see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.85–86.

32. Even the more general political labels attached to the peasant electors in estate regions indicated nothing of significance about their views. A high official summarized the results of the second stage as follows: “ ... almost all peasants, especially those holding official posts, are categorized as ‘rightists.’ Whether they will all turn out to be rightists at the provincial electoral assemblies as well, that is, whether or not they will cast their votes for the left, is difficult to say in advance.” See TSGIA, f. 1276, op. 1, ed. 35, 11. 23–30 (this contains a confidential report on the Fourth Duma elections prepared for the Ministry of the Interior, attributed to I. Ia. Gurliand), cited in Gibert Doctorow, “The Government and the Fourth Duma” (unpublished article).

33. The most significant exception was V. M. Tiatinin, a Rightist party peasant deputy from Nizhnii Novgorod province who was “completely reliable even on the land question” (the quote is from the governor and is cited by Chermenskii in Bor’ba klassov i partii, vol. 1, pp.116–117). Tiatinin, however, was an innkeeper with no reported landholdings or agricultural income (see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.303–304). He was thus not representative of agricultural peasants, and his election probably violated the provisions of the electoral law cited about (see pp.221–22).

In addition to Tiatinin, P. M. Makagon, an Octobrist peasant deputy from Ekaterinoslavl province, was reported to oppose “the peasants’ being allotted state and crown lands without compensation,” but what is most significant about this quotation is the omission of gentry lands from it (the quotation is from the governor; for it, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1,1. 182; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., p.247.

Finally, V. F. Sidoruk, a Nationalist peasant deputy from Grodno province, was reported to be a conservative on the land question, but he was a very unusual type of peasant, as will be explained below.

34. Although direct descriptions of client-patron relationships were not numerous, the holding of an administrative or zemstvo post by peasants can be taken as a rough indicator of their client status. All except one of the peasant deputies from the estate regions had held an administrative or zemstvo post prior to his election, and more than 50 percent of the peasant electors were reported to hold such posts (and it is clear that there was some under-reporting of posts held by electors). See Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.150–53, 350, 373-402.

35. For tables illustrating the alignment of peasant deputies with the largest, or at least with a large group of landowner deputies, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.352–56.

36. The report was from the ataman (the equivalent of a provincial governor). See TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1, 1. 219.

37. For a summary of the reports about Afanas’ev, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.197–98.

38. All the peasant deputies elected to the Duma from these regions listed their religion as Orthodox and their nationality as Russian on the forms used in compiling the Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia; see pp.57–224.

39. In Volynia, as we have seen, the landowners’ party was the Rightist party. In all other provinces except Smolensk, it was the Nationalist party, and in Smolensk it was the Octobrist party.

40. In Volynia province, for example, the police reported even before the first stage of the elections that “alien ethnics [inorodtsy], German colonists and Czechs, will not be elected representatives at the district assemblies because of the native mass’s antagonism towards them and because of their desire to reserve for themselves the salaries of the deputies, which enrich the peasants.” See TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 13, 1. 120b.

41. Ten of the twenty at-large peasant deputies who were elected to the Fourth Duma came from the Right-Bank Ukraine and White Russia. See Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, pp.57–224, and Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.197–315.

42. For the governor’s account of the provincial electoral assembly, where Krym’s “agitational talents” were employed, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 3,1. 24.

43. For a table correlating socioeconomic status and party membership, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.358–72 (also the source of the present table).

The principal criterion used for distinguishing between the different socioeconomic categories of peasant deputies was the amount of land held. Allowance for regional variations in both the norms held and the productivity and market accessibility of land was made by comparing a deputy’s holding only to the holdings of other peasants within the same province, as follows: a “poor” peasant was considered to be one who held less than half the average amount of land per peasant household in his province; a “middle” peasant was one who held from one-half to twice the average amount of land per household; and a “rich” peasant was one who held more than twice the average amount.

When additional information about a deputy’s socioeconomic status indicated that he had substantial nonland holdings or that he derived a substantial portion of his income from nonagricultural activities, it was used to supplement the information about his landholdings and occasionally to change the category into which he would fall on the basis of landholdings alone.

On the basis of these criteria, the socioeconomic status of two deputies was so far above the norm for “rich” peasants that a fourth category, “extremely rich,” was added.

The information about landholdings, other holdings, and nonagricultural incomes of the deputies was taken from Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.196–315. Data on the number of peasant households and amounts of allotment and privately owned land per province were taken from Dubrovskii, Stolypin-skaia zemel’naia reforma, pp.570–73, and from Oganovskii, Sel’skoe kho-ziaistvo Rossii, pp.20–21, 54-58 (the data in the former were derived from the 1905 agrarian census and in the latter from the 1905 and 1916 agrarian censuses).

44. In addition to varying with respect to socioeconomic status, the peasants varied with respect to what might be called their “political experience.” In particular, some peasants had held posts in the administration, some had held posts in the zemstvo, and a very few had held no posts in either institution; further, within the administrative and zemstvo groups, some had held high posts and some had held minor posts. None of these distinctions, however, was related to the peasants’ party affiliations; for a table illustrating this, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.373–402.

Finally, these peasants did not vary significantly with respect to level of education, except that some had had no formal education while others had had elementary educations. Again, this distinction was not related to their party affiliations (see ibid., pp.196–315).

45. Most of this information about Ryslev is from the governor’s report on his election; for it, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 3, 11. 241-42. For his mistaken listing as a Social-Democrat in the Duma, see Ukazatel’ . . . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, p.182. For these and other reports, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.282–83.

46. For available reports about these nine deputies, see Vinogradoff, op. cit, pp.212–13 (for A. A. Durov of Tomsk); 220-21 (for la. I. Gol’dman of Kurland); 224-25 (for N. O. Ianushkevich of Kovno); 226-27 (for M. M. Ichas of Kovno); 235-36 (for F. O. Keinis of Kovno); 266–67 (for Iu. M. Oras of Estonia); 277-78 (for I. M. Ramot of Lifland); 280-81 (for M. S. Rysev of Tobol’sk); and 282-83 (for A. I. Ryslev of the Amur region).

47. TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1, 11. 5606–57.

48. The victor in this free-for-all was P. V. Tarutin, who was elected after repeated balloting by the relative majority of 40 to 48. See TSGIA, loc. cit.; for Tarutin’s majority, see TSGIA, loc. cit., d. 35, ch. 1, 1. 38.

49. TSGIA, loc. cit., d. 33, ch. 1,11. 57–5706.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 11. 5706-58.

52. The peasants’ view of the deputyships as sources of only personal advantages was manifested in many provinces and sometimes had ludicrous consequences. During the early stages of the elections, for example, no peasants at all would come forward in some districts as candidates for representatives, but all representatives elected then would “campaign” for elector with the hope of eventually winning the deputy’s salary. As a result, each representative would sometimes receive one vote, his own, and none could be elected electors. For an example, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 62 (Saratov province), 1. 22; for other examples of peasants’ views of deputyships purely as sources of income, see ibid., ch. 4, 1. 10b; ch. 7, 1. 3; and op. 121, d. 274, II. 75–77. This attitude led to the defeat during the early stages of the electoral process of most of the peasant deputies in the Third Duma. Commenting upon their defeats, a high official reported to the Ministry of the Interior that “they were not re-elected as a matter of principle. They [i.e., the peasant electorate] say: ‘he’s had his fill [pokor-milsia i dovoVno]’ " See TSGIA, f. 1276, op. 1, ed. 35, 11. 23-30, cited in Doctorow, “The Government and the Fourth Duma.”

53. TSGAOR f. 102, 1912 g., op. 121, d. 274, 11. 68-6806.

54. For the estate and party memberships of the deputies elected from Tula, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., p.355; see also pp.106 and 291-92.

55. As noted in the quotation above, the rightist bloc controlled forty-four votes. Sinitsyn was elected on the first ballot by a majority of forty-seven to thirty-seven, which indicates that three oppositionists probably supported him and one did not vote (there were eighty-five electors present, according to the police chief). For Sinitsyn’s majority, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 35, ch. 2,1. 150.

56. Ukazatel’.. . Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia 1-aia, p.189.

57. TSGIA, loc. cit., d. 33, ch. 3,11. 108-10806.

58. Twenty-two peasant electors were elected. They ranged from a nonparty rightist to a Social Democrat, and the largest groups consisted of ten nonparty peasants, six or seven revolutionary “leftists” and three or four liberals (the ambiguity in the latter two numbers stems from the fact that F. O. Keinis, a Trudovik deputy in the Third and Fourth Dumas, was reported to be a Lithuanian Nationalist [and was thus grouped with liberals] after his election as an elector.)

None of the reports indicate whether the nonparty electors and the rightists united with the liberal-revolutionary bloc, but it seems likely that they did because all the peasant electors were said to be “sympathetic” to Lithuanian Nationalism. For the report on the electors, see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1, d. 26, 11. 2-18; for a summary of this and other reports, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.137–42, 224-27, 235-36, 344.

59. In addition to the peasants, a member of the Belorussian-Lithuanian-Polish group was elected the landowners’ deputy and a Kadet was elected the deputy from the city curiae. The peasants were N. O. Ianushkevich, M. M. Ichas, and F. O. Keinis; for reports on them, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.224–27 and 235-36.

60. TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1, 11. 1660b-167; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.226–27 and 291-92.

61. It has long been known that the peasants of different regions responded very differently to the Stolypin land reform program. The enclosure movement in particular was received much more favorably by the peasants of the Baltic littoral and Kovno province, where it facilitated their production for the market, than by the peasants of the Central Black-Soil region, where market production was less well developed than in any other region of the empire. See P. N. Pershin, Uchastkovoe zemelepol’zovanie v Rossii. Khu-tora i otruba, ikh rasprostranenie za desiatiletie 1907-1916 gg. i sud’by vo vremia revoliutsii (1917-1920 gg.) (Moscow: “Novaia derevnia,” 1922), pp.8–9.

62. For the most complete report on Siberian peasant electors, which illustrates this point, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 20, 11. 6-606. For additional information, including these electors’ behavior during the balloting at the Provincial Electoral Assembly, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.124–26.

63. Prior to the first stage of the elections, peasants were reported to be indifferent toward the elections and the Duma in all Siberian provinces from which reports were forthcoming, and the rightist and nonparty electors shared this attitude. During the balloting at electoral assemblies, even non-peasant Trudovik candidates sometimes approached the peasant electors much as landowners in European Russia did, relying very heavily on personal appeals (e.g., one met with success by dressing “simply and even sloppily” in order to appear more sympathetic to the peasant electors; see TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 3, 11. 252-53) and on attestations of good character from other non-peasants.

64. For the police chief’s report, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 1,1. 8. For the principal report on the electors of Vologda, see ibid., ch. 12, 11. 9–12. For a summary of reports on Levanidov, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., p.246.

65. The other two Grodno peasant deputies were the Nationalists P. D. Pesliak and T. Ia. Tarasevich; for summaries of reports about them, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.272–73, 298. For information about the Vilno deputy M. E. Tsiunelis, see in addition TSGIA, loc. cit., ch. 1,11. 300b-31.

66. TSGIA, f. 1327, 1912 g., op. 1/1430, d. 33, ch. 1, 11. 73–730b; see also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.189–90.

67. Vinogradoff, op. cit.

68. For the report on the St. Petersburg representatives and electors, see TSGAOR, f. 102, 1912 g., op. 104, d. 130, ch. 61, lit. B, 11. 2-4 and 10-15; for reports on I. T. Evseev, the peasant deputy from the province who displayed all the characteristics of estate peasants, see Vinogradoff, op. cit., p.215.

69. In 1914, the population of St. Petersburg province was 73.9 percent urban; of Moscow—52.9 percent; of Lifland—39.1 percent; of Kurland—27.0 percent; of Estonia—22.1 percent; and of Kovno—10.5 percent. For these and similar figures for other provinces, see A. G. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii za sto let (1811–1913 gg.). Statisticheskii ocherk (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe statisticheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1956), p. 101.

70. For the most recent general survey of regional variations in peasant marketing activities, see P. N. Pershin, Agrarnaia revoliutsiia v Rossii, vol. 1, pp.63–79. The Witte system in particular tended to force the peasants of the central regions of European Russia onto the market while giving the peasants of the peripheral regions more favorable terms of trade.

71. For information on the multifield systems of the Baltic region and Kovno province, see Michael Confino, Systemes Agraires et Progres Agricole. L’assolement triennal en Russie aux XVIIIe-XIXe siecles. Etude d’economie et de sociologie rurales (Paris, The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1969), pp.216–18 (Confino here summarizes the researches of H. Strods and N. N. Ulashchik), and A. S. Ermolov, Organizatsiia polevogo khoziaistva. Sistemy zemledeliia i sevooboroty (2d rev. ed.; St. Petersburg: Izd. A. F. Devriena, 1891), pp. 25–26. See also Vinogradoff, op. cit., pp.189–91.

72. Confino, op. cit., pp.26–55. For a different analysis of the three-field system, see Eugene D. Vinogradoff, “The ‘Invisible Hand’ and the Russian Peasant,” in Peasant Studies Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1975, pp.6–19; see also the commentaries of M. P. Moore and Teodor Shanin and Vino—gradoff’s reply in ibid., vol. 5, no. 2, April 1976, pp.18–25. The specific information about the three—field system presented below is taken from this article.

73. For the present author’s thoughts about the possible relationships between the three—field system and the estate mentality of the peasants of most of European Russia, see Eugene D. Vinogradoff, “The Political Consciousness of the Peasantry of Central Russia during the Early Twentieth Century,” in Russian History (forthcoming).

74. The powers of villages over their constituent households (including the de jure powers of communes in Great Russia) constituted these insurance mechanisms, in the opinion of the present author, and so did a number of traditional social practices, such as the partitioning of wealthy households. For an exposition of this view, see Vinogradoff, “Household and Systemic Insurance Mechanisms among the Peasants of Central Russia, 1861–1929,” presented to the First Annual Conference of the Social Science History Association, 1976.

Partitions of wealthy households and mergers of poor households produced cyclical socioeconomic mobility patterns among three-field peasants, according to the recent work of Teodor Shanin (The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Country: Russia, 1910–1925 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972]). Such mobility patterns would obviously have tended to prevent the emergence of different programmatic objectives among wealthy and poor peasants.