Soviet peasantry of the 20-30s: from tragic to ridiculous
The peasants are enrolled in the collective farm ...
“Whether it was a farmer or a shepherd, or a desert worker,
everyone, being caught, was subjected to this inevitable fate ... "
The Book of Wisdom of Solomon, 17:16
everyone, being caught, was subjected to this inevitable fate ... "
The Book of Wisdom of Solomon, 17:16
History of the Soviet state and law. The publication of materials from the archives of the NKVD about the life of Soviet collective farmers, as always, caused an ambiguous reaction from the VO reading audience.
The funny thing is that these four volumes themselves can be read on the Internet today. But read them only one person, although almost everyone who visits VO declares that they are “interested in the history of the Russian state”. They are interested, but they don't read PSRL, they don't read collections of RGVA documents, there is no talk of Soviet newspapers of that time, but "knowledge" is sprinkled out of them.
Many refer to their ancestors, but this is not the source. Some have it with a plus sign, others have a minus sign. The source is a document, thousands, millions of sheets of originals, which are stored in the archives. Or at least the magazines Rodina and Voprosy istorii. But for all seven years of my stay at VO, only one (!) Person wrote that he reads this magazine. And our readers do not even know about the journal "History of State and Law", for all their "cool" Soviet education.
Also with archives. “Our people” do not go there, and if they do, it is in search of genealogies. We do not have a culture of historical knowledge, alas, until now. And you also need to be able to “be interested in history”.
For example, you are interested in the topic of BTT history and you take and read all the books on it from 1980 to 1991. Both in Russian and in English. And as a result, you learn so much from it that this knowledge is enough to publish your own magazine. And the same is the case with any other topic.
But in the end?
The result is a conversation between the sighted and the hearer with the blind and deaf, who a priori reject everything that goes beyond their blindness and deafness. Although on VO and not all are like that. There are many people who, if they do not know anything, then do not persist in their ignorance, but try to expand the boundaries of their awareness, having received information from VO materials.
However, be that as it may, we continue to publish materials on the history of the Soviet village of the 20-30s of the last century.
Soviet village 1920-1930s
Let's start with statistics: in European Russia, the population has decreased from 72 million people. in 1914 to 66 million in 1920. And the decline in the population as a whole throughout the Soviet Union in 1915-1923 is estimated at 25-29 million people. The proportion of young men killed was disproportionately high, and it is understandable why.
This greatly influenced the proportion of men and women in the countryside, and here it is even stronger than in the city. Thus, in 1920, in forty-five provinces of European Russia, there were 19 women per 29 men in the 100-230 age group.
The demobilization did not change the situation much, since most of the demobilized Red Army soldiers settled in the cities. So even six years later, in the villages of the European part of Russia, among the population aged 25–35, there were still 100 women per 129 men.
There were great losses in people, but there were also great losses of livestock, especially horses, which in wartime were requisitioned into the cavalry. As a result, the number of horses decreased from 34 million in 1916 to 23 million in 1923 and did not reach the pre-war level even at the start of collectivization. In 1922, more than a third of the peasant households in the RSFSR did not have draft animals at all.
Along with economic problems, there were also serious problems in the spiritual sphere. There has already been an article on the elimination of illiteracy here on VO.
But what was the situation under the new conditions with the traditional belief in God?
In 1923, the XII Party Congress especially emphasized, referring at the same time to the opinion of the peasants, that one should not allow insulting the feelings of believers, and even more so mockery of their faith. "Komsomol hobbies regarding the closure of churches" were condemned by the congress as a leftist bend. The following year, at the XIII Party Congress, it was again said that “attempts to combat religious prejudices by administrative measures (such as the closure of churches, mosques, synagogues, houses of worship, churches, etc.”) are unacceptable. Unacceptable, however, the process was underway. The churches were closed, and this dynamics slowly but surely gained momentum.
As for the Orthodox Church itself, in the post-revolutionary period it was, as you know, deprived of its position as a state church, most of its property and suffered from uncertainty about its own tomorrow and internal strife. Patriarch Tikhon, the first elected patriarch in two hundred years, faced enormous difficulties. He had not only to manage the affairs of the church, but also to establish relations with the new government.
And the authorities did not stand on ceremony with the church. In 1922, church property - gold, silver and precious stones - was taken from her to help the starving Volga region. Naturally, this aroused the indignation of the churchmen, and the flock met this step ambiguously. In addition, the church split into two camps: followers of Tikhon and supporters of the "living church". Tikhon himself was arrested and had to sign an undertaking stating that he would renounce any anti-Soviet activity.
But how did all this affect the peasantry?
It's very simple. Parish priests living among the peasants traditionally received little or no financial support from the church. Therefore, they lived on what the parishioners gave them, primarily on payment for the services. The clergy in the countryside were indifferent to the rivalry between the Tikhonites and the "living church", since they were far from the top, but there were plenty of problems of their own.
The fact is that the village councils often took away the land and houses from the priests, because, they say, they are parasites, “living on unearned income,” therefore they have no rights to them. It is not surprising that during the Civil War, priests in droves fled to the whites, and those who remained often renounced their dignity and were appointed teachers, went to secretaries of village councils, became rural clerks, journalists (!), Promoted atheism (!), Were engaged in agriculture and even carpentry. At least one village priest is known who led the drama club and even played on stage himself, and his most favorite roles were the priests, whom (well, of course!), He played simply masterfully.
It is well known that in Russian folklore priests were endowed with a lot of negative features. The priest was portrayed as a curmudgeon, and a lazy person, and a drunkard. Although, of course, this was far from the case.
Meanwhile, the peasants who moved to cities during industrialization, just like the peasants in Western Europe, quickly lost their piety there, which most often was expressed in the fact that they ceased to observe church rites. Even before the revolution, the government received a lot of complaints that the expenses for the maintenance of parish priests were growing without a positive return, that they were demanding exorbitant fees for christenings, weddings and funerals.
As a result, the following situation arose, which one of the clergy described as follows: "People who have been to cities and factories are cold and even hostile to religion." All the same was observed in the USSR. The mobility of the peasant population increased, the role of migrant workers increased, but at the same time, a decline in religious feeling began among the mass of the post-peasant population.
Although it also happened that the community helped a priest respected by it. He was given a land plot or he was helped to cultivate it. In one of the villages, with all the outward indifference to religion, its inhabitants “fed 8 people serving the church, and could not feed one teacher's children,” that is, a teacher, although they stated that they understood the importance of school education.
But this is especially interesting: at the end of the 20s, two types of expenses burdened the average peasant family the most. This is ... vodka and payment to the priest for performing various rituals. That is, the rejection of religion allowed the peasants to leave more money on their farm.
An indicator that in the 20s the peasants understood this was the spread of civil marriages and divorces. Most of the peasant couples, of course, as before, still got married in the church, but marriages outside the church became a "common occurrence", at least in the non-black earth zone of European Russia. And what is most curious - the peasants were kind to those who chose just such a marriage as a painting in the village council. Some peasants, especially young ones, declared themselves atheists, and they were not bullied or ostracized.
Some young men, especially those returning from the army, agreed to get married in church at the insistence of their parents, who asked them to be "respected." But, having married, they no longer went to church, since they did not feel any spiritual need for this. Here are the elderly women - those, yes, usually remained firm in the faith and very often defended the churches with a "human shield" when they came to be closed in order to convert them into a club or a grain warehouse.
So in the Soviet village of the 20s, there was an acute conflict of generations, especially in the provinces of the Non-Black Earth Region with a developed industry. Young people did not want to wear an old village costume, considering it a symbol of age-old backwardness. Among men, a military or paramilitary costume was popular, which was also due to the fact that many peasants retained uniforms from the First World War and the Civil War, as well as stocks of uniform fabric. So the teenage boys were terribly jealous of former soldiers, rural activists, and Komsomol members in such “dress”.
At the same time, the ultimate dream for them was to dress up in an army overcoat or a priest's Budenovka. Well, rural girls, to the great horror of their mothers, began to use cosmetics: powder and blush. For example, in the story "Jack-Vosmerkin - American" by Nikolai Smirnov, his sister appears in the village under an umbrella and wearing gloves, which causes the fierce envy of her friends, and also tries to smoke her brother's cigars, but her mother caught her and spanked her for this. Tango and foxtrot, even in the countryside, are beginning to supplant traditional folk dances, although the old people speak of them as "shame".
And here is the opinion of an ethnographic student, expressed by him in 1923 regarding his native village near Volokolamsk, not far from Moscow:
“Old people are fools. They break, break, but everything is nothing. They have nothing else to do but plow. All the same, there is nowhere to go. " And what about the young? What did they want? And they wanted this: “Run, run faster. Somewhere, just to run: whether to factories, to the army, to courses for commanding officers - all the same. I wish I could live as a free bird! "
Now sons, daughters less often, already resolutely refused to wear the cross (even if not all and not everywhere), although mothers, and even fathers, scolded them and begged them to change their minds.
There is a point of view that the denial of religion in the countryside had deep historical roots, and that mockery of the clergy, as well as disregard for religion, was brought into the village not by city activists, communists and Komsomol members, but it was latently present in it, at least , two centuries.
Here it is worth recalling at least the same A.S. Pushkin and some of his works, which are clearly anti-religious in nature. On the contrary, the Marxist revolutionaries merely picked up the attitude of the peasants towards priests and the faith that was prevalent among the masses and put it at their service. By the way, linguistic studies conducted with the aim of finding out how deeply the peasants understand the vocabulary of the new Soviet life, have shown that, for example, a word like "communist" very often meant for them someone who does not believe in God, and by no means a fighter for the bright future of all mankind.
Well, with the beginning of industrialization, a company was also held throughout the country to melt church bells into metal for factories.
The bells were removed and sent for rework. At the same time, church icons were burned at the same time, because if the church stands without bells, then it does not need icons either. And in Donbass, in Horlivka, in 1929 there was an episode when 4 icons brought from different churches were simultaneously burned in a city square in a solemn atmosphere. At the same time, the crowd of merry and dancing miners numbered, according to estimates, 000-15000 people.
PS
On the topic of the socio-political and spiritual life of the peasants of the Soviet village of the 20s of the twentieth century, many interesting dissertations have been defended in our country for the degree of candidate and doctor of historical sciences. On the Internet, if desired, VO readers can find many similar works.
In the meantime, it is worth limiting ourselves to these studies:
1. "Socio-political views of the peasantry of the northern village in the 20s of the XX century": the topic of the dissertation and abstract on the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation 07.00.02, Candidate of Historical Sciences Eremina, Elena Viktorovna, 2007, Syktyvkar.
2. "Social psychology of the peasantry of the Urals in the period of continuous collectivization: 1929–1933": the topic of the dissertation and abstract of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation 07.00.02, Candidate of Historical Sciences Serebryakova, Irina Gennadevna, 2006, Yekaterinburg.
3. "Social and political moods of the peasantry in 1921-1927: on the materials of the Ryazan province": the topic of the dissertation and the abstract on the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation 07.00.02, candidate of historical sciences Mitrokhin, Andrey Vladimirovich, 2012, Moscow.
To be continued ...
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