David Moon

PEASANT MIGRATION AND THE SETTLEMENT OF RUSSIA'S FRONTIERS, 1550–1897

This article surveys the expansion of Russian peasant settlement from 1550, when most of the 6·5 million peasants lived in the forest-heartland of Muscovy, to 1897, when around fifty million Russian peasants lived throughout large parts of the immense Russian empire. It seeks to explain how this massive expansion was achieved with reference to different facets of the ‘frontier’: the political frontier of the Russian state; the environmental frontier between forest and steppe; the lifeway frontier between settled peasant agriculture and pastoral nomadism; and the ‘hierarchical frontier’ between the Russian authorities and the mass of the peasantry. The article draws attention to the different ways in which peasant-migrants adapted to the variety of new environments they encountered, and stresses interaction across each facet of the frontier. Nevertheless, by 1897, the coincidence between the two main types of environment and the two principal lifeways of the population had been virtually eliminated in much of the Russian empire outside central Asia. This was a consequence of the expansion of Russias political frontiers, mass peasant migration, the ploughing up of vast areas of pasture land, and the sedentarization of many nomadic peoples. The expansion of peasant settlement helps explain the durability of Russian peasant society throughout the period from the mid-sixteenth to the late-nineteenth centuries.

The Environmental History of the Russian Steppes: Vasilii Dokuchaev and the Harvest Failure of 1891

This article examines aspects of the environmental histories of the Russian steppes in the long term and in a comparative framework by focusing on the work of the prominent Russian scientist Vasilii Dokuchaev in response to the drought and harvest failure that afflicted large part of the steppes in 1891. Dokuchaev analysed the causes of the disaster in the long-term context in natural and human-induced changes in the environment. He drew up a plan to address the environmental constraints on agriculture in the region, and led a scientific expedition to examine the feasibility of putting parts of his plan into practice.

Peasant rebels under Stalin

Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp.xii + 312; notes; glossary; bibliography; index. £45. ISBN 0 19 510197 9

Reassessing Russian Serfdom

decree banning peasant movement throughout Muscovy in 1592/3, and that this measure marked the formal start of serfdom,~ then Russian serfdom lasted for a total of 268 years. Even if we date the start of serfdom from 1649, the year of the Muscovite Law Code that bound serfs to the estates of their landowners in perpetuity,3 then Russian serfdom still lasted for 212 years. For most of these two or two-and-a-half centuries, serfs made up very approximately half the population of Russia,4 and serfdom was one of the foundations of the autocratic, tsarist, Russian state.5 Serfdom had st~nk such deep roots into Russian rural society, moreover, that it took several decades after its formal abolition to untie the centuries-old bonds of servitude.6 6

In the Russians’ steppes: the introduction of Russian wheat on the Great Plains of the United States of America *

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wheat varieties from the Russian steppes were introduced on the Great Plains of the USA, a region with a similar environment. The introduction was partly a by-product of the migration of German farmers from the steppes to the Great Plains in the 1870s. The US Department of Agriculture, eager to promote American wheat production in a competitive world market for grain in which Russia was in the lead, sought out wheat varieties on the steppes that were suitable for the Great Plains. Russian wheat varieties became mainstays on the Great Plains for the next few decades, while Russian agriculture declined under Soviet power. On the basis of research on both sides of the Atlantic, this article sheds light on an important aspect of the global exchange of peoples and crops that has shaped the agricultural and economic history of societies around the world since the invention of agriculture.

Review Article : Agriculture and Peasants, Industry and Workers, Political Parties and Revolution: Recent Books on Russian History

Judith Pallot and Denis J. B. Shaw, Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia 1613-1917, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990; xvii + 318 pp.; £35.00. Ben Eklof and Stephen P. Frank, eds, The World of the Russian Peasant: Post-Emancipation Culture and Society, London, Unwin Hyman, 1990; vi + 234 pp.; £10.95. Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917-1921), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989; xix + 401 pp.; £40.00. Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution, Vol. I: Life and Work in Russia’s Donbass, 1869-1924, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989; xviii + 361 pp.; US

The international dissemination of Russian genetic soil science (pochvovedenie), 1870s – 1914

45.00. Diane P. Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989; xix + 393 pp.; US

What should we remember : A global poll among environmental historians

39.50. Paul LeBlanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, Atlantic Highlands NJ, Humanities Press International, 1990; xxxiv + 399 pp.; £45.00. Ziva Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989; xviii + 448 pp.; US

‘Misunderstanding’ Legislation: Peasants’ Aims, Mentalité and Behaviour

45.00.

Peasant Volunteers for Military Service during the Crimean War

This article considers the international dissemination of the Russian innovation of genetic soil science, devised by a team of scientists led by V. V. Dokuchaev in the 1870s and 1880s, over the decades down to 1914. Russian soil science was disseminated by articles in foreign languages, exhibits at world fairs, papers read by Russian scientists at international conferences, visits by Russian soil scientists abroad and correspondence with foreign scientists. Acceptance came sooner in Europe, but took longer in the United States where, in spite of attempts to disseminate the innovation, it encountered institutional resistance.