Review: Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914 by: Stephen Frank

Shane Tomashot

           

Crime In Rural Russia

In his book Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914, Stephen Frank focuses on intra-peasant crime in rural Russia.  Most of the study focuses on the province of Ryazan, roughly 120 miles southeast of Moscow.  Frank utilizes a post-colonial argument, providing the perspective of the average Russian peasant.  His main thesis contends that intra-peasant crime, especially toward property, was largely ignored by Russian officials for various reasons, including a lack of resources and a general “colonial attitude” of the educated elites that viewed peasants as “nekul’turnost” (backward).  Peasants were left with a system of “samosud,” or the practice of informal justice, to deal with their local crime issues following emancipation, since the ruling elite had different notions of crime and justice than the peasantry.  The perpetuation of these conditions over many decades of time culminated in the 1905-1907 Revolution.

Frank contends that this study is relevant because the means by which peasants committed crime against one another and the means by which they were essentially forced to police themselves, provides insight into the culture of Russia’s rural communities.  Moreover, the depth of the cultural conflict, elite vis-à-vis peasant, indicates the mindsets and beliefs that purveyed both ends of Russian society.  Understanding these phenomena help us discern the causes of the Russian Revolutions of 1907-1907 as well as the Bolshevik Revolution (or coup) of 1917.  Furthermore, such analyses provide insight into the cultural struggles that continue to divide Russia today.

 Frank’s main points are well researched and documented throughout the monograph.  His first section contains an abundance of examples indicating “the carrying over of pre-reform elite attitudes” toward the peasantry.  Frank quotes a noble official who states rural Russia was experiencing an increase in crime “because peasants lost the careful supervision over them which is required due to the coarseness of their morals” (p. 20).  A police commandant is quoted as claiming “99 percent of them (peasants) are not aware that a person is obliged to be honest and to recognize his duty to obey government orders and lead a patriarchal family life” (p. 21).  Assault crimes committed by peasants carried lesser punishment due to peasant’s “general ignorance” (p. 156).  Officials held the belief that “peasants were unprepared for civil society” into the twentieth century.  

The first part of the book, the quantitative section, includes numerous statistics that Frank claims “do not offer an especially revealing or accurate picture of crime” since numbers were “filtered ‘through the prejudices, assumptions, and administrative capacities of those who [held] power’” (p. 52).  Official Russian judicial statistics of the era do not provide an accurate account of rural crime. The statistics do provide, however, insight into the poor performance of the inept and understaffed Russian judicial and policing system and show the numerous intra-peasant crimes that were not recorded.   His statistics, however, may be too general.  He does not include township or more localized misdemeanor statistics.   

The second part of Frank’s book, which documents numerous vignettes, discusses how emancipation itself created new laws and hence new fears amongst the nobility as well as the peasantry.  A “code of resistance” was formed amongst the peasantry in which they sought to retake land that they had long believed to be their own.  However, the Emancipation laws “redefined” not only which lands essentially belonged to the nobility, but also how the land could be utilized by the peasantry (p. 108).  What was once “‘immemorial custom had become trespass and theft.’”  Nobles were given the best land, including forests and farmland.  Peasants, suddenly without wood for home construction, felled trees on what was now Noble property.  Moreover, noble landowners participated in the lucrative wood trade of the late 1800’s, further diminishing wood supplies across the country’s woodlands.

Alexander III’s assumption of power exacerbated rural crime and the drive toward revolution.  Under Alexander III, administrative bodies under the MVD increasingly dealt with rural crime.  Hence provincial governors, often with little to no legal training, performed  judicial duties.  Moreover, as Frank indicates, this harmed the validity of official criminal statistics.  Hence, rural crime, especially intra-peasant, was even worse than indicated in the official judicial statistics of the day. 

The appointment of land captains, who were often landed nobility, only perpetuated the unfair justice system.  They were given judicial and administrative authority, with the power to fine and jail peasants who violated perplexing laws.  Increasingly, peasants, by the turn of the century, took problems into their own hands rather than waiting for authorities who only dealt with cases that harmed the state itself (such as tax collection) or land owning nobles.    

Colonial tutelage of the peasantry by government officials also fed the animosities that eventually boiled over into revolution.  Long held peasant/village customs were subservient to laws created under Emancipation.  Peasant court rulings were overturned if the Russian government “knew better” (p. 42).  Frank compares this relationship to the relationship between the British and the native inhabitants of their African colonies.

Finally, Frank points to the “turning of intense public attention to the ‘peasant problem’” by the 1890’s and the “belief amongst Russian elites within state bureaucracy of rural disorder and the collapse of traditional peasant society” (309-310).  The media sensationalized stories that fed into the paranoia of the educated elites that the peasantry was out of control. 

A few key problems arise in this study.  How typical is Ryazan Province, which is only 120 miles outside of Moscow?  Is it an accurate test case for generalizing such a vast country with thousands of villages with their own customs and traditions?  Even though Frank draws qualitative examples of crime and injustice from many provinces, many of his statistical models are based on Ryazan.  Moreover, what was the impact of incursions by other ethnic groups on village and regional crime rates?  Also, he points out that the media often sensationalized stories, making them often unreliable, yet bases many of his findings on these same stories. 

    Overall, Frank’s research is useful in documenting the problems inherent in rural transformation and the social integration of Russia’s peasant class that built the foundation of the 1905-1907 and 1917 Revolutions.  This study has excellent qualitative value.  Moreover, Frank does a fine job of providing support to his underlying thesis that historians have not given enough attention to the fact that the 1905-1907 Revolution was not a sudden outburst, but, rather, the culmination of decades of Russian administrative ineptitude and discrimination.  He provides ample evidence that peasants had to resort to unorthodox measures of punishing and dealing with intra-peasant crime, because government officials were understaffed.  Moreover, Russian elite society as well as the Russian government administration was incapable of preventing revolution because of their belief that peasants could not be civilized.  Hence, they ignored intra-peasant crime, especially toward private property, feeding peasant beliefs that the government and gentry held little regard for peasant rights.