John Bushnell's Russian Peasant Bride Theft explores the phenomenon of “bride theft” and the practice's role within peasant communities culturally, socially, economically, and religiously in northern Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bushnell presents a rich narrative of the “performative elopement” in which grooms “abducted” their often co-conspiratorial brides to circumvent social, cultural, economic, and even religious expectations for courtship. As Bushnell emphasizes, while bride theft challenged civil and religious legality and morality, the practice fulfilled numerous needs, most importantly to the peasant economy through marriage and reproduction. At the heart of Bushnell's study is the extent of bride theft by the groups collectively known as Russian Orthodox Old Believers. Of particular interest to Bushnell is the use of bride theft by the priestless branch of the Old Rite: Old Believers that while split into several soglasie collectively rejected the legitimacy of any church hierarchy following the Nikonian Reforms in the mid-seventeenth century. Unlike their priestly Old Rite counterparts who relied on converted priests (or later established their own hierarchies), priestless Old Believers often split over debates on the sanctity of many church sacraments, particularly marriage. In this context, Bushnell argues that while priestless communities debated the morality and validity of marriage, the importance of the peasant economy required them to find ways around their religious convictions and made bride theft an “overwhelmingly” Old Believer practice in northern Russia (vii–x).
Bushnell excels in highlighting the significance that bride theft had in some peasant communities as a means for younger peasants to gain some agency in their own courtship while providing elder peasants with some moral and social “deniability” for their youths’ actions. Drawing on records from government and church agencies, Bushnell provides a thorough overview of the many ways in which peasants participated in the “performance” of bride theft. As Bushnell reveals, bride theft regularly allowed a younger couple to circumvent economic and social obstacles, such as the collection of doweries or even parental approval, and thereby gain autonomy in selecting their spouse. Simultaneously, the parents and the larger peasant community, accepted the bride theft practice to a degree, as it offered them the means to feign ignorance as the marriage fulfilled the needs of maintaining the peasant economy and community's continuation. Critical to Bushnell's ties between bride theft and the Old Rite, the practice also provided the new couple with a means to circumvent the ecclesiastical and civil legal obligations often associated with marriage in imperial Russia.
It is within this context that Bushnell builds his argument of bride theft becoming “overwhelmingly” an Old Believer practice throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bushnell presents an impressive and thorough exploration of the origins and evolutions in the debates on marriage as a sacrament among priestless Old Believers. To Bushnell, what makes bride theft predominately an Old Rite phenomenon stems from the need for at least “common law” marriage to propagate future generations while providing Old Believer parents the deniability of giving approval for their children entering into a “sinful” and “illegitimate” marriage. While Bushnell's argument seems logical as presented that some priestless Old Believers would practice some form of bride theft in regions where the practice appeared more common, the conclusion that this would make bride theft “overwhelmingly” an Old Believer practice unfortunately needs further exploration and placement within the historiography. Bushnell regularly admits that records documenting bride theft marriages rarely recorded the partners’ religious affiliation. However, this is regularly presented as evidence of the participants’ association with the Old Rite on the assumption of both officiants’ and participants’ desire to hide any association with the Old Rite in any official matter in order to avoid persecution or penalties. As Bushnell argues early, he concludes this through his own estimates of Old Believers through analysis of assumed populations of Old Believers compared to the notoriously inaccurate “official” counts of Old Believers by both civil and ecclesiastic authorities. Additionally, weakening Bushnell's placement into the larger historiography on the Old Rite is an unfortunate incomplete discussion and absence of a number of works by Irina Paert, Robert Crummey, and Roy Robson that explore the historiography of Old Rite debates on marriage.
Ultimately, Bushnell's work presents a fascinating historical overview of the many factors that played a role in the practice of bride theft in northern Russia. Furthermore, this work now provides a thorough foundation for further exploration into this practice's place within the larger social, economic, and religious debates of both Russian Orthodoxy and the Old Rite in imperial Russia.
