Kejsarinnas undersåte i stället för donationsbo: Bondeaktivism och rättvisenormer i 1700-talets ryska gränstrakt

Abstract

Crown subject rather than landed estate peasant: Interaction and aspects of justice in the early modern Russian borderlands

Political disorder and shifts in the distribution of power in early modern Europe both increased the desire of subjects to organise collectively and provided space for potential discontent. As the British social historian E. P. Thompson has emphasised in his theory of the moral economy of the crowd, the mentalities of subjects played a crucial rule when disturbances broke out. To interpret the peasants’ actions as merely the result of agitation is to suggest that peasants should be considered passive agents. A case study of the mid-eighteenth century when Karelian borderland peasants sought to extricate themselves from the dominance of a Russian mining company shows that this was not the case.

By 1758 the mining company operated as a landed estate (donation) across most of the County of Kymmenegård. Almost two and a half thousand peasant households, with their attendant tax revenues and statutory labour obligations, were under its control. When in the autumn 1760 the Russian government set up a commission looking into the company’s alleged abuse of its dominant position, the peasants’ complaints it considered were overwhelmingly grounded on perceptions of old rights and privileges. Strikingly, the reported instances of injustice, whether misuse of the statute of labour or the physical violence of estate officials, were seen as primarily moral problems.

Cooperation and everyday resistance were not restricted to the peasantry only. Interaction between the county’s peasants and local priests proved to be mutually beneficial. Together, they shared a common agenda: rejection of the mining company’s dominance (based as it was on the perceived misuse of power) and a desire to return to the old order. The peasants wished once again to be subjects of the Crown rather than landed estate peasants. Analysis of the arguments and identification of points of common interest in the appeals strongly support the idea that the peasants’ letters of complaint were largely formulated by local priests. In this article, I argue that early modern systems of interaction during periods of political disorder were complex and that research needs to move beyond a concentration on the ruling class and the subjects they controlled.