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“No Place to Lay My Head”: Marginalization and the Right to Land during the Stolypin Reforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Corinne Gaudin
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In the opening decade of the twentieth century, the tsarist government embarked on an ambitious program of agrarian and administrative reforms that dramatically changed the rules of village politics. The most famous of these reforms, decreed on 9 November 1906 by Prime Minister Petr Stolypin, allowed peasants to claim their share of communal land as personal property and enclose it in a single parcel. This reform threatened to undermine the administrative and fiscal means through which the peasant commune had previously controlled its lands. Householders who obtained title to their land, even if they never undertook the second stage of consolidation but kept their scattered strips within the commune's open-field system, gained considerable autonomy from the village assembly of heads of household (skhod).

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Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , Winter 1998 , pp. 747 - 773
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

Research for this article was funded by the International Research and Exchanges Board, by the Joint Committee on the Soviet Union and Its Successor States of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by die National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the University of Ottawa Faculty Research Fund.

1. “Appropriation” refers to application for land tide (ukreplenie), and “consolidation” to the formation of enclosed or semienclosed parcels (vydel k odnomu mestu). In both cases, land became the “personal property” of the head of household and was distinguished from “private property” by the maintenance of certain restrictions on sale and use.

2. On the limited (and even counterproductive) impact of ukreplenie for the regime's goals of land reform, see Yaney, George, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930 (Urbana, 1982), 278–81Google Scholar; Pallot, Judith, “Modernization from Above: The Stolypin Land Reform,” Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia, 1613–1917 (Oxford, 1990), 165–94Google Scholar; Pallot, , “Did the Stolypin Reforms Destroy the Commune?” in McKean, Robert B., ed., New Perspectives in Modem Russian History (Basingstoke, 1992), 117–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Disputes involving communal land were first heard by the land captain. The district congress (uezdnyi s “ezd) heard appeals of decisions made by land captains, while the provincial board (gubernskoe prisutstvie) served as the instance of cassation. Decisions recommended for cassation by the provincial board were forwarded to the Second (Peasant) Department of the Governing Senate in St. Petersburg, whose rulings set judicial precedent.

4. For discussions of some of the ways the new legislation exacerbated tensions within the village, see especially P. N. Zyrianov, “Zemel'no-raspredelitel'naia deiatel'nost' krest'ianskoi obshchiny v 1907–1914,” Istoricheskie zapiski 116 (1988): 103–60, reprinted as chapter 3 of Krest'ianskaia obshchina Evropeiskoi Rossii, 1907–1914 (Moscow, 1992); Macey, David, “The Peasant Commune and the Stolypin Reforms: Peasant Attitudes, 1906–14,” in Bardett, Roger, ed., Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Russia (London, 1990), 220–36.Google Scholar

5. Kachorovskii, K, “Biurokraticheskii zakon i krest'ianskaia obshchina,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1910, no. 8: 138.Google Scholar

6. I have also occasionally drawn on material from the neighboring districts of Moscow province, which shared with Riazan’ low rates of consolidation and high rates of migration. Riazan’ had the lowest rate of land appropriation of the central agricultural provinces, with an estimated 19 percent of communal households receiving title by 1916. Nevertheless, no less than three-quarters of the province's communes saw at least one household receiving individual title to a share of communal land. “Svedeniia o vykhode iz obshchiny,” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 1291, op. 121, 1916, d. 4, 11. 322–27; also Chernyshev, V. I., Obshchina posle 9 noiabria 1906 g. (po ankete vol'nogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva), pt. 1 (Petrograd, 1917), 148 Google Scholar. For a thorough discussion of the difficulties of establishing accurate land reform statistics, see Atkinson, Dorothy, “The Statistics on the Russian Land Commune, 1905–1917,” Slavic Review 32, no. 4 (December 1973): 773–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; V. P Danilov, “Ob istoricheskikh sud'bakh krest'ianskoi obshchiny v Rossii,” Ezhegodnik po agrarnoi istorii, vol. 6, Problemy istorii russkoi obshchiny (Vologda, 1976), 103–6.

7. This explains why it was not uncommon for a head of household to vote for repartition even through he would lose land. P. Veniaminov, for instance, found that in twentyfour communes of Saratov province, more than half of all households lost land during repartitions in the 1880s. The same pattern can be found later in Riazan'. Veniaminov, P., Krest'ianskaia obshchina (St. Petersburg, 1908), 165–67Google Scholar; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoioblasti (GARO), f. 721, op. 1, 1912, d. 777 (Spassk district congress verification of land redistribution), 11. 5–10.

8. Data on the relationship of household size to landholding was available for only 1, 931 of the 5, 105 households surveyed. Information is for Riazan', Tambov, Voronezh, Tula, and Orel provinces. Chernyshev, Obshchina posle 9 noiabria, 21, 48–49, 77–78, 107, 129, 158. For an overview of the results of other surveys, see Dubrovskii, S. M., Stolypinskaia zemel'naia reforma (Moscow, 1963), 213–18.Google Scholar

9. The average size of allotments appropriated during land reform was smaller than the average size of all holdings. In Riazan', for instance, households acquiring land titles held an average of 3.5 desiatins, while the average communal holding in 1905 consisted of 6.7 desiatins (1 desiatina = 2.7 acres). This may not have affected the perception that land was being lost, however, especially when some of the first to separate were households with more than their share of land. N. S. Zuzykina, “Provedenie Stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy v Riazanskoi gubernii, 1907–1914” (candidate dissertation, Moscow State University, 1958), 182; Statistika zemlevladeniia 1905 g., vol. 4, Riazanskaia guberniia (St. Petersburg, 1906), 51.

10. The figure for European Russia includes sales through 1915 only. These involved 22 percent of the land area appropriated. Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaia zemel'naia reforma, 361.

11. Sales by absentees represented 16.4 percent of all those receiving land titles that year. In addition to absentees, 25 percent of 1914 Riazan’ sales of nonconsolidated land were undertaken because of economic difficulties, 11.7 percent in order to migrate or work outside agriculture, 9.7 percent in order to transfer property, 7.4 percent in order to “improve agriculture,” and the remainder for unspecified “miscellaneous” reasons. Simonova, M. S., “Mobilizatsiia krest'ianskoi nadel'noi zemli v period Stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy,” Materialy po istorii sel'skogo khoziaistva i krest'ianstva SSSR (Moscow, 1962), 5: 443–49.Google Scholar

12. Chernyshev, Obshchina posle 9 noiabria, 107.

13. Drozdov, V. P., Okolo Zemli: Ocherki po zemleustroistvu (Moscow, 1909), 66.Google Scholar

14. Polnoe sobranie zakonov, ser 3, vol. 26, 1906, no. 28528, art. 16, 972. It is very difficult to determine how often outsiders effectively bought into the commune. The only historian to have systematically studied the data on land purchases collected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), M. S. Simonova, found that in Voronezh in 1914, 37 percent of allotment land sold was bought by landless peasants. Some of these landless peasants undoubtedly already held a household plot (usad'ba) and were therefore administratively part of the commune. But in most communes, possession of a household plot alone did not give access to the common resources. As one Riazan’ commune's resolution explained, the commune “never received any dues from them and does not have anything in common with them.” In addition, a number of the landless purchasers were undeniably complete outsiders: tavern-keepers, petty merchants, or shopkeepers registered in the volost’ who were not even members of the administrative commune. GARO, f. 695, op. 24, 1914, d. 49 (complaint against obligatory communal support); Simonova, “Mobilizatsiia,” 425–26.

15. It should be noted that Izhevskoe was under hereditary household tenure. Opposition to land sales in this case, therefore, did not stem from fear of loss of land for redistribution. “Bor'ba obshchiny s obezzemeleniem svoikh chlenov,” Vestnik Riazanskogo gubernskogo zemstva, 1914, no. 1: 101–4.

16. Krest'ianskoe delo, 1911, no. 10: 201. For a discussion of the ambivalence of peasant attitudes toward migrant workers, see Engel, Barbara Alpern, “Russian Peasant Views of City Life, 1861–1914,” Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 446–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burds, Jeffrey, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905 (Pittsburgh, 1998), 29–32.Google Scholar

17. Chernyshev, Obshchina posle 9 noiabria, 76.

18. Ibid., 71 (Riazan’), 48 (Tambov), 105 (Tula), 128 (Orel).

19. “Kartinki derevenskoi zhizni,” Riazanskaia zhizn', 1913, no. 280: 3.

20. Obshchee polozhenie o krest'ianakh (St. Petersburg, 1902), art. 361. For discussions of the shortcomings of communal welfare, see Tsytovich, N. M., Sel'skoe obshchestvo kak organ mestnogo upravleniia (Kiev, 1911), 103–5Google Scholar; Brzheskii, N., Natural'nyepovinnosti krest'ian i mirskie sbory (St. Petersburg, 1906), 183–84Google Scholar; “Nishchenstva iz pripisanogo krest'ianskogo naseleniia,” Statisticheskii sbornik po S. Peterburgskoi gubernii za 1897, vol. 4, Materialy po nekotorym voprosam, kasaiushchimsia krest'ianskikh uchrezhdenii (St. Petersburg, 1898), 104–5; James Mandel, “Paternalistic Authority in the Russian Countryside, 1856–1906” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), 313–22. On Beloomut, see RGIA g. Moskvy, f. 1943, op. 1, 1909, d. 179 (register of assembly resolutions), 11. 12–14, 45–49, 73–75, 104–6; Tenishev, V. V., Administrativnoe polozhenie russkogo krest'ianina (St. Petersburg, 1908), 40.Google Scholar

21. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know how many peasants in Baichits had in fact sold land, and thus whether the skhod was exaggerating the demands on its communal funds. GARO, f. 695, op. 24, 1914, d. 49; also f. 695, op. 24, 1914, d. 48.

22. Peshekhonov, A, “Sotsial'nye posledstviia zemleustroistva,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1909, no. 11: 86 Google Scholar; Burds, Peasant Dreams, 119–31. For a discussion of migration in and out of Moscow, see Bradley, Joseph, Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 1985), 27–34, 347.Google Scholar

23. “Nishchenstvo,” Statisticheskii ezhegodnik Moskovskoi gubernii za 1910 god (Moscow, 1911), 89.

24. Peshekhonov, A, “Sotsial'nye posledstviia zemleustroistva,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 1909, no. 10: 113–14Google Scholar. On the attachment of migrant workers to the communal system, see also Semenov, S. T., Dvadtsat'piat’ let v derevne (Petrograd, 1915), 316–18.Google Scholar

25. Peshekhonov, “Sotsial'nye posledstviia,” 112–13. See also Iakushkin, V, “Kolliziia prava na nadelenie s pravami ukrepivshikhsia chlenov obshchestva,” Vestnik prava i notariata, 1912, no. 45: 1417–18.Google Scholar

26. I have noted the number of petitions filed, rather than the lower number of land titles granted, as the discussion here is about fears, perceptions, and aspirations rather than results. The figures for the following years are from Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaia zemel'naia reforma, 200: 1910—342, 000; 1911—145, 000; 1912—152, 000; 1913—160, 000; 1914—120, 000; 1915—37, 000.

27. “O sporeishei i pravil'nim primenenii st. 1–7 zakona 14 Iiulia 1910,” GARO, f. 695, op. 20, 1910, d. 240, 1. 3.

28. In contrast, the Soviet historian S. M. Dubrovskii maintained, as part of his general argument that land reforms were better received in areas with more highly developed capitalist relations, that rates of migration correlated with rates of land appropriation. This may indeed be the case for the macroregions with which he deals, but he cites no figures to back his claim. Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaia zemel'naia reforma, 202; see also Oganovskii, N. P., Agrarnyi vopros v Rossii posle 1905 g. (Khar'kov, 1914), 41.Google Scholar

29. Zuzykina, “Provedenie Stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy v Riazanskoi gubernii,” 182; “Otkhozhie promysly v Riazanskoi gubernii,” Vestnik Riazanskogo gubernskogo zemstva, 1916, no. 4—5: 40. I have used Zuzykina's percentages, although they are problematic, because she uses the 1905 landholding survey as her base. This leads to somewhat inflated figures, since household partitions continued after 1905. For the purpose of district by district comparison, however, it can be assumed that these figures are internally consistent.

30. GARO, “Svedeniia po uezdam Riazanskoi gubernii ob obshchinakh i seleniiakh gde ne proizvodilos’ obshchikh peredelov s samogo nadelenie zemli,” f. 695, op. 21, sv. 232, 1911, d. 12, 11. 123–25.

31. For instance, data from Vladimir province indicated that three-quarters of that province's repartitional communes conducted illegal skidki-nakidki in the 1890s. Kachorovskii, “Biurokraticheskii zakon i krest'ianskaia obshchina,” 53–55; Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv goroda Moskvy (TsGIAgM), f. 748, op. 1, d. 62 (report on the progress of land reform), 1. 166.

32. GARO, f. 695, op. 18, sv. 197, 1907, d. 60 (verification of land redistribution), 1. 2–2ob.

33. RGIA, f. 1291, op. 31, 1909, d. 149 (inspection report of Riazan’ local administration), 11. 222ob., 245ob. The prevalence of cases of land alienation after 1906 were reported from other provinces as well, although precise statistical figures were rarely provided. Penza, however, did report that 22 percent of the district congress caseload relating to the 9 November decree between 1908 and 1910 dealt with disputes over allotment and alienation, while the proportion in Nizhnii Novgorod was 18 percent. “O sudebnykh delakh i agrarnykh bezporiadkakh na pochve primenenii zakona 9 noiabria 1906 i 14 iiunia 1910,” RGIA, f. 1291, op. 120, 1911, d. 17, 11. 112, 147.

34. IZO, 1906, no. 5: 213; 1907, nos. 7–8: 301–2; MVD explanation, RGIA, f. 1291, op. 54, 1911, d. 253, 1. 3ob.; “Po ukazu Pravitel'stvuiushchego Senata po voprosu ob ostanovlenii po peredel'nym prigovoram zapasnykh nadelov dlia otsutstvuiushchikh,” RGIA, f. 1291, op. 50, 1911, d. 86.

35. Selivanov, A., ed., Svod dannykh ob ekonomicheskom polozhenii krest'ian Riazanskoi gubernii (Riazan', 1892), 143.Google Scholar

36. “Selo Pokrovskoe, Riazhsk,” Riazanskii vestnik, 1907, no. 296: 3; see also Zuzykina, “Provedenie Stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy v Riazanskoi gubernii,” 102.

37. TsGIAgM, f. 748, op. 2, 1914, d. 24 (village assembly resolutions), 11. 3, 47, 49; op. 1, d. 68 (volost’ administration correspondence), 11. 22, 65–67, 127; GARO, f. 695, op. 23, 1913, d. 27 (complaint against refusal to allot land).

38. IZO, 1912, no. 9: 389. Although communes were theoretically obligated to set aside shares for returnees, the amount of land reserved was always grossly inadequate, sufficient only for a handful of those returning.

39. GARO, f. 695, op. 23, sv. 249, 1913, d. 259 (dispute over ukreplenie).

40. GARO, f. 695, op. 21, sv. 234, 1911, d. 43 (complaint against refusal to allot land), 1. 2–2ob.

41. GARO, f. 695, op. 26, 1916, d. 33 (complaint against refusal to allot land). On the ambivalent attitudes of some rural officials toward the land reforms, see Yaney, Urge to Mobilize, 288–95; Macey, “The Peasant Commune,” 228–30. This ambivalence is also evident in a 1912 report from the Riazan’ authorities to the MVD claiming that the land reforms contributed to disorder in the countryside by allowing parents to disinherit their children and by fostering drunkenness. GARO, f. 695, op. 22, 1912, d. 23 (report on hooliganism), 1. 13ob.

42. For more on this issue of peasant “litigiousness,” see Gaudin, C., “Note de recherche: Tribunaux paysans en Russie, 1889–1914,” Histoire sociale/Social History 30, no. 59 (May 1997): 109–26Google Scholar; Moon, David, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform: Interaction between Peasants and Officialdom, 1825–1855 (Basingstoke, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank, Stephen, Crime, Cultural Conflict and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Frierson, Cathy, “I Must Always Answer to the Law …’ Rules and Responses in the Reformed Volost'Court,” Slavonic and East European Review 75, no. 2 (April 1997): 308–34.Google Scholar

43. In the northern volosti of Kasimov, Riazan', Spassk, and Egorevsk, taxes could exceed the productivity of the land by as much as two times, while payments in southern areas ranged between 18 and 43 percent of income. Selivanov, Svod dannykh ob ekonomicheskom polozhenii krest'ian, 302; Druzhinin, N. M., Derevnia na perelome, 1861–1880 (Moscow, 1978), 128–29.Google Scholar

44. Tikhonov, B. V., Pereselenie v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX v. (po materialam perepisi 1897g. i pasportnoi statistiki) (Moscow, 1978), 117–21, 128–29Google Scholar. For discussion of the effects of collective responsibility on communal social relations, see Burds, Jeffrey, “The Social Control of Peasant Labor: The Response of Village Communities to Labor Migration in the Central Industrial Region, 1861–1905,” in Kingston-Mann, Esther and Mixter, Timothy, eds., Peasant Economy, Culture and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921 (Princeton, 1991), 52–100.Google Scholar

45. GARO, f. 714, op. 25, 1914, d. 86 (complaint against refusal to grant land title), 1. 1lob.

46. GARO, f. 695, op. 18, sv. 197, 1907, d. 60, 1. 2ob.; Kachorovskii, K., Narodnoe pravo (Moscow, 1906), 156.Google Scholar

47. “Obshchina, lichnoe zemlevladenie i peredely nadel'noi zemli,” Sel'skii vestnik, 1908, no. 7: 2–3.

48. GARO, f. 695, op. 18–1, sv. 209, 1908, d. 19 (report on administrative cases relating to ukreplenie), unpaginated.

49. GARO, f. 695, op. 23, sv. 246, 1913, d. 27 (complaint against refusal to allot land), 11. 3ob.-5ob.

50. GARO, f. 695, op. 21, sv. 235, 1911, d. 123 (complaint against refusal to grant land title), 1. 2ob.

51. GARO, f. 695, op. 18–1, sv. 209, 1908, d. 129 (complaint against refusal to grant land title), 11. 2–6.

52. On the conflicting and changing goals of the reforms, see David Macey, “Government Actions and Peasant Reactions during the Stolypin Reforms,” in McKean, ed., New Perspectives in Modem Russian History, 135–44; Macey, , Government and Peasant in Russia, 1861–1906: The Prehistory of the Stolypin Reforms (DeKalb, Illinois, 1987)Google Scholar; Zyrianov, Krest'ianskaia obshchina, 72–93; Yaney, Urge to Mobilize, 144–94.

53. Chernyshev, Obshchina posle 9 noiabria, 156, 48, 115.

54. Bohac, Rodney, “Widows and the Russian Serf Community,” in Clements, Barbara et al., eds., Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley, 1991), 101.Google Scholar

55. Barykov, F. L., Sbornik materialov dlia izucheniia sel'skoi pozemel'noi obshchiny (St. Petersburg, 1880), 172 Google Scholar, see also 118, 136 (Riazan', Dankov), 172 (Riazan’), 203 (Tula), 252 (Tver’). Overviews of ethnographers’ findings on the rights of widows can be found in Brzheskii, N., Ocherki iuridicheskogo byta krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1902), 59–81 Google Scholar; Mukhin, V. F., Obychnyi poriadok nasledovaniia u krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1888), 243–75Google Scholar; Leont'ev, A. A., Krest'ianskoe pravo: Sistematicheskoe izlozhenie osobennostei zakonodatel'stva o krest'ianakh, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1914), 323–37Google Scholar; Iakushkin, E. I., Obychnoe pravo: Materialy dlia bibliografii obychnogo prava, vol. 2 (Iaroslavl', 1896), xxiv–xxix Google Scholar. For a general discussion of peasant inheritance, see Worobec, Christine, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton, 1991), 42–75.Google Scholar

56. Tsentral'nyi statisticheskii komitet, Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 (St. Petersburg, 1903), 35: 28–35. It is more difficult to know how often these widows were heads of households. The household lists (posemienye spiski) from twelve Riazan’ villages in 1908 show a wide variation from village to village, with women heading from 0 to 30 percent of all households (for an average of 12.5 percent).

57. GARO, f. 695, op. 24, 1914, d. 48, 1. 6.

58. Calculated from RGIA, f. 1290, op. 7, dd. 464, 474 (sales of allotment land).

59. GARO, f. 1255, op. 1, sv. 1, 1908, d. 13, 11. 2ob.-4; f. 721, op. 1, sv. 6, 1916, d. 924; f. 721, op. 1, sv. 6, 1908, d. 132 (reviews of land redistributions).

60. See Senate rulings in IZO, 1908, no. 1: 7; 1908, no. 9: 367; 1909, no. 2: 38–39; “Raz “iasneniia MVD, no. 65,” IZO, 1908, no. 3: 163.

61. GARO, f. 695, grazhdanskii otdel, op. 20, sv. 92, 1909, d. 6 (complaint against refusal to allot land), 1. 2.

62. According to a Nizhnii Novgorod report, in 1910 nearly 10 percent of all administrative cases resulting from land reform consisted of disputes between family members over the title of head of household. RGIA, f. 1291, op. 120, 1911, d. 17, 1. 112.

63. The procedure in place until 1911, requiring a preliminary investigation by the governor's office which then transferred the case to the skhod, was simplified by the 18 May 1911 law that gave jurisdiction for these cases to the volost’ courts. The authorities had to repeatedly remind petitioners that the desire to sell allotment land was not in and of itself a proof of squandering, although it is doubtful that this was of any comfort to the petitioners. As one frustrated wife exclaimed, “If one agrees [with that view], then trusteeship can only be established over people who already have nothing.” TsGIAgM, f. 62, op. 2, d. 3274 (request for trusteeship).

64. TsGIAgM, f. 62, op. 4, 1910, d. 1649 (complaint against removal of allotment). Similar examples can be found in RGIA, f. 1344, op. 264, 1912, d. 708 (ukreplenie); GARO, f. 695, op. 20, sv. 225, 1910, d. 58 (complaint against refusal to allot land), 1. 7; f. 930, op. 1, op. 16, sv. 2, 1909, d. 7 (complaint against village elder).

65. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tverskoi oblasti, f. 256, 1911, d. 13, 1. 18.

66. GARO, f. 714, op. 25, 1914, d. 1 (complaint against refusal to grant land title).

67. TsGIAgM, f. 62, op. 1, 1912, d. 4405 (complaint against refusal to allot land), 1. 3ob; f. 62, op. 1, 1908, d. 2809 (complaint against removal of allotment).

68. Khaukhe, O. A., Krest'ianskoe zemel'noe pravo (Moscow, 1914), 210.Google Scholar

69. RGIA, f. 1344, op. 287, 1914, d. 642 (dispute over land title).

70. The final outcome of this case is unknown. RGIA, f. 1344, op. 287, 1914, d. 769 (dispute over land title).

71. RGIA, f. 1344, op. 252, 1911, d. 1158 (dispute over land title). Yet, in another case, where the widow was registered as head in the household registers, the provincial board chose instead to follow the land redistribution list drawn up by the skhod after she filed for title, where her absentee son was listed. GARO, f. 695, op. 22, 1912, d. 169 (dispute over land title), 1. 5–5ob. On the lack of documentation for household divisions, see Frierson, Cadiy, “Peasant Family Divisions and the Commune,” in Bartlett, , ed., Land Commune and Peasant Community, 303–20.Google Scholar

72. RGIA, f. 1344, op. 217, 1909, d. 640 (land redistribution), 11. 3–4ob.

73. On the disorder in local administrative practices, see Gaudin, C, “Les zemskie načal'niki au village: Coutumes administratives et culture paysanne en Russie, 1889–1914,” Cahiers du Monde russe 36, no. 3 (1995): 249–72.Google Scholar

74. Glickman, Rose, “Women and the Peasant Land Commune,” in Bartlett, , ed., Land Commune and Peasant Community, 321–38.Google Scholar

75. “MVD circular no. 70,” 9 December 1906, IZO, 1907, no. 1: 19.

76. Sh. M. “Nasledovanie u krest'ian,” Vestnik prava i notariata, 1913, no. 38: 2043.

77. Khaukhe, Krest'ianskoe zemel'noe pravo, 112; Leont'ev, Krest'ianskoe pravo, 336.

78. Vorms, A. E., “Primenenie obychaia k nasledovaniiu v lichnoi sobstvennosti na nadel'nye zemli,” Iuridicheskie zapiski, 1912, nos. 1–2: 112–13, 137Google Scholar. The MVD was well aware of the contradictions and confusions in peasant inheritance laws and drew up a project for their reform in the prewar years. RGIA, f. 408, op. 1, d. 421 (reform of inheritance laws); “Zakonoproekt o krest'ianskom nasledovanii,” Pravo, 1913, no. 30: 1777–81.

79. “O nasledovanii v krest'ianskikh zemliakh,” GARO, f. 695, op. 22, 1912, d. 238, 11. 9, 27. The confusion over the applicability of the civil code as opposed to “custom” predated the Stolypin reforms, which only exacerbated conflicts. See, for instance, Leont'ev, A. A., Volostnoi sud i iuridichskie obychai krest'ian (St. Petersburg, 1895), 69–80 Google Scholar; Rittikh, A. A., Krest'ianskii pravoporiadok (St. Petersburg, 1904), 57–59.Google Scholar

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81. TsGIAgM, f. 62, op. 2, d. 3275 (inheritance dispute), 1. 4.

82. Butovskii, A. N., “Vdov'i stony,” Pravo, 1911, no. 16: 979–80Google Scholar. On alternative inheritance strategies, see Worobec, Peasant Russia, 57–62; Bohac, Rodney, “Peasant Inheritance Strategies in Russia,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 1 (Summer 1985), 36–39 Google Scholar; Brzheskii, Ocherki, 81–99; Leont'ev, Krest'ianskoe pravo, 330–37; Iakushkin, Obychnoe pravo, xxiv-xxix.

83. Sh. M., “Nasledovanie u krest'ian,” 2039; A. A. Leont'ev, “Priimaki i zakon 14 iiunia 1910 g.,” Vestnik prava i notariata, 1911, no. 8: 232–34.Google Scholar

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