The concepts of family and family were identical: they meant a collection of close relatives who lived together and kept the same household under the control of one person, who was called the owner. In peasant life, concepts such as house, yard and household were also used. The concept of a family was replaced by the concept of a house to designate a certain single economic, social and psychological whole, whose members were in a relationship of domination and subordination and were equally necessary for its normal functioning. In this case, the household could consist of one married couple, which included parents and unmarried children, or of two or more married couples whose members were in kinship relations, for example, married children who lived with their parents, married brothers who lived with one owner, and etc. The main criteria for the unity of several married couples in one household, or family, was the presence of a common indivisible property and one head who managed this property and, in general, all affairs in the household. All members of one family, or household, lived in one yard, but not in the sense that they lived in one hut (building), but in the fact that they ran one household, had common property. Therefore, the farm, yard and family were used interchangeably. B.N. Mironov identifies five forms of family organization, generally accepted in modern historical demography:

1) a family consisting of one person;

2) a group of relatives or non-relatives who do not form families, but lead a common household;

3) a simple small, or nuclear, family consisting only of spouses or spouses with unmarried children;

4) an extended family, which includes a married couple with children and relatives who are not in a marriage relationship with each other;

5) a compound family consisting of two or more married couples.

The sources clearly show the peasant view of the family as the most important and indispensable condition for the life of every peasant. "An unmarried person is not considered a real peasant among us," wrote an informant from the Rostov district of the Yaroslavl province (Ilyinskaya volost). "They look at him partly with regret, as something incomplete, partly with contempt." A single lifestyle was considered a deviation from the norm, a strangeness. The family was perceived as the economic and moral basis for a correct lifestyle.

The status of individual family members

The head of the family (patriarch or bolshak) was the great-grandfather, grandfather or father, who held the dominant position in the family. The family property, with the exception of the wife's dowry, was collectively owned, but the highway was in charge of it. Bolshak carried out in his family, to some extent like the tsar in the 17th century. in the state, patriarchal government. He disposed of the work of family members, distributed work, supervised and watched it, dealt with intra-family disputes, punished the guilty, followed morality, made purchases, entered into deals, paid taxes, was the head of the family cult and was responsible to the village and the administration for the behavior of family members ... It was the highway that always and everywhere represented the interests of the family. His role was enhanced by the fact that family members could enter into any transactions only through him.

Hierarchism lay at the heart of intra-family relations. Everyone obeyed the head of the family, women obeyed the big women and men, the younger ones - the elders, the children - the adults.

The discussion about the legal status of the Russian peasant woman has been going on since the sixties of the XIX century. Even then, two points of view were formed regarding the rights of peasants. The first of them boiled down to the fact that Russian peasant women are dependent and powerless creatures. Supporters of the second point of view drew attention to the strong legal status of rural women, their broad property rights.

The materials we have studied allow us to conclude that the woman was in the background, she had no right to vote and had to unquestioningly obey the highway. The attitude of a woman to her husband resembled the attitude of a subject to a monarch, a serf to a landowner. "The Russian woman was a constant slave from childhood to the grave," wrote N. I. Kostomarov about the position of women. Men enjoyed the right to mortgage their wives, as well as children. The status of the big woman was somewhat higher than that of other wives, since she had power over them, although she herself also had to obey her husband unquestioningly. In the event of the death of her husband and in the absence of adult men in the house, the power of the highway passed to her, and she, in turn, acted as the sovereign of the family, the complete manager of her property, work and personal life of all household members. However, she retained her high status, as a rule, only until the time when the children became adults, married and had children. Often, women suffered from beatings: for the mistakes they made, according to the man, they were subject to punishment. Control over the purity of morals began even before marriage and continued throughout his life. If premarital intimate relationships became known in the village, then the youth arranged parody evil "weddings", during which the girl's head was covered with a scarf, but in a special manner, so that it was clear that she was not a married woman, but not a girl either. A woman convicted of treason was especially cruel to her husband: she was subjected to terrible beatings and humiliation.

Children, at least until marriage, were completely dependent on their parents and had to be absolutely obedient to them under pain of punishment. Until the age of seven, children were brought up exclusively by mothers, but from the age of seven, the boys passed under the supervision of their father, who passed on to them the skills and abilities that the peasant needed to know, and the girls remained under the supervision of their mother, she taught them everything that the peasant needed to know. Job skills training came first. By about the age of fifteen, girls and boys became full-fledged workers, capable of performing all peasant work. The purpose of upbringing was to develop the fear of God, obedience to parents, church and authorities. Children grew up early and became, as it were, doubles of their parents. “Small children in the peasant life very soon develop, - noted OP Semenova-Tyan-Shanskaya. - Any kid often talks like an adult. This is explained by the simplicity of the peasant life, mainly, then the child's participation in almost all works and in all events of peasant life, where everything is obvious. " Popular pedagogy recognized coercion and violence as normal and important forms of influence on the disobedient. Children were punished physically, especially small ones, but the rod did not bypass grown-up children either. The peasants believed that parental love consists in a strict attitude towards children, that punishment always benefits the child. We do not question the love of peasants for their children, but we do not discount the fact that the use of punishment against them was not uncommon in the Russian countryside.

The tendency towards fragmentation of large families. - The internal structure of the family in the second half of the 19th century. - The role of the head of the family. - The organization of economic life, the division of labor between men and women. - The daily routine in the family.

An understanding of the processes and fundamental changes that took place during the years of Soviet power in the peasant family, in its internal structure and life, is impossible without a detailed acquaintance with the family life of the Russian peasantry in the past. The village of Viryatino is of great interest in this regard, since the traditions of the family-patriarchal way of life were kept in it until the Great October Socialist Revolution and for a long time they made themselves felt under Soviet rule. In particular, large patriarchal families remained in the village for a long time.

The reasons for such a long existence in Viryatina of an undivided family were rooted in the peculiarities of the economy of the village, located in the region of the middle black earth zone, where capitalism developed more slowly than, say, in the steppe provinces of southern Russia, and where the inhibitory influence of the remnants of serfdom was felt in all areas of life. The perepolositsa forced the Viryatinsky peasants to preserve — even during the period of the greatest development of out-of-pocket industries — routine forms of farming that required a large number of workers; therefore, the peasants saw in an undivided family the best way to keep all available labor on the farm.

The need to combine agriculture, which was the basis of the economy of the peasant family in Viryatin, with side income on the side, also had an undoubted impact. Families, large in composition, with an excess of male labor (surplus in relation to the available land allotment), could use the latrine trades on a large scale in the interests of strengthening their economy. At the same time, as shown by an ethnographic survey, large undivided families remained mainly among the well-to-do part of the peasantry. It is unlikely that there were any economic grounds for the existence of a large undivided family among those 28 horseless peasants who in the 80s lived in tiny huts with an area of ​​12-17 m2 and most of their allotment land, due to the lack of tax, rented for processing or for rent. These families also participated in the withdrawal to the mines, but for them it was, perhaps, the only way of existence in those conditions. And they gave the mines no longer the surplus, but the main labor force. Such families never reached large sizes.

At the same time, the development of latrine trades, which facilitated the involvement of the Viryatinsky peasants in the intensive process of commodity-money relations, had a great influence on the internal structure of the family, on the entire family structure. This explains the significant changes in family life that took place in the second half of the 19th century. and especially since the late 1980s. They can be clearly traced when compared with the family way of life of the peasantry in the previous period (60-70s), when many features of the pre-reform, that is, serfdom, life were still preserved.

Our information about the peasant family on the eve of the abolition of serfdom is extremely scarce and does not give any clear idea of ​​its composition and number. Local old-timers, based on family legends, testify that families at that time were mostly large - about 25-30 people 1 . Often there were families in which four or five married brothers lived together. However, as far as can be judged from the surviving memories, even then there was a tendency to single out one or two older brothers 2.

Some light on the size of the peasant family in the pre-reform period is shed by materials related to the sale of peasant families by the first landowner of Viryatina F.A. Davydov 3. Most of the families sold to him consisted of 12-15 people (in 1808-1831). Since seedy peasant families were usually sold, it can be assumed that the number of wealthier families was higher at that time.

The large number of families is evidenced by memories of the presence in many yards of cold summer cages for couples ("hovels" under povets) or, which was typical of wealthy families, of the construction of two on the estate; even three houses while maintaining the common economy. Attention is drawn to the extremely slow up to the last quarter of the 19th century. overgrowth of the village. The population concentrated in Oreshnik, on the so-called Polyana (the center of the village) and in the Upper Lane. Only in the 80s did the village begin to grow rapidly in all directions.

In the first two decades after the peasant reform in the internal structure of the peasant family, apparently, there were no noticeable changes, despite the outlined changes in the economy of the peasantry.

Great shifts in all areas of life and, in particular, in family relations, took place in Viryatin in 1880-1890, with the further development of capitalist relations. Family sections have become more frequent. Partial isolation, and in some cases complete family divisions, occurred at ever shorter intervals. Families were significantly reduced: according to the 1881 census, there were an average of 7 people per hut. This does not mean, of course, that large families have disappeared, but, obviously, along with undivided families at that time there were a large number of small families.

As the old people of Viryaty point out, middle peasant farms were still run by two or three married brothers living together.

In the 900s, in connection with the formation of a cadre proletariat in the mining industry and the growth of the labor movement in Russia, the spiritual image of the migrant peasant changed. The communication of the migrant workers with the regular workers affected their general cultural level. New needs arose - to dress in a city style, to arrange their life in a more cultural way in production, which, in contrast to previous years, required large expenditures on oneself. The growth of needs undoubtedly expressed a certain increase in the consciousness of the individual, which was manifested most clearly among the representatives of the younger generation. And this could not but influence the weakening of patriarchal foundations. In the 900s, internal relations in undivided families became strained, and the tendency towards isolation of young married couples was more pronounced. Hence, the migrant worker concealed a part of his earnings for his personal needs and for the needs of his family, which, according to the testimony of old-timers, was one of the main reasons for family conflicts and divisions. But in general, family life changed slowly and retained traditional patriarchal forms. This manifested the inertia and limited outlook of the communal peasant, forcing the migrant workers, some of whom had the opportunity to fully provide their families with miner's earnings, still hold on to a piece of land and invest in agriculture the funds obtained by working in the mines. Characteristic is the sharply negative attitude of the middle peasant masses towards those migrant workers who broke with the countryside and moved to workers' settlements. The desire to maintain contact with the land was partly due to the lack of earnings on the side.

Straining all his strength to support, save his farm from ruin, the peasant clung to the old family foundations. Internal relationships, rights and responsibilities of family members were strictly regulated. The head of the family was considered a representative of the older generation in the family - the grandfather or, after his death, the grandmother; in the latter case, direct management of the economy passed to the eldest son. In the event of the death or old age of both old men, the eldest of the sons became the head of the family. The head of the family was the guardian of the entire family life. The functions of the head of the family included the management of field work and the distribution of responsibilities among family members, mainly of its male composition. In particular, he established the sequence between the sons (and grandchildren) of going to the mines. He was in charge of all the property and money of the family. All the earnings of family members from retirement and various trades went to the family's general treasury and were spent on the needs of the common household. The family’s cash desk did not only receive income from “woman's” earnings received from the sale of moss, berries, mushrooms collected by women, for whitening canvases, as well as money from the sale of eggs, etc. they won’t buy kerosene and don’t give them up for boots ”4.

A stable age and sex division of labor in the family, undoubtedly associated with the patriarchal way of life, was characteristic of the past.

Household affairs were in charge of the hostess, usually the wife of the head of the family or, in the event of her death, the eldest of the daughters-in-law. The women were responsible for all household chores: cooking, cleaning, washing, caring for children, caring for livestock, and water delivery 5. Men also took part in caring for livestock: they cleaned the barns (removal of manure, bedding), looked after the horses; the women were in charge of the "hut" cattle (feed for which came from the hut): cows, calves, pigs, sheep and poultry. It is no coincidence that the sale of chicken eggs was one of the sources of women's income.

In the autumn-winter period, women spun and weaved all their free time from household chores for the needs of the family. This work was preceded by hard work on the processing of hemp. Girls were also involved in spinning and weaving; they taught spinning from nine to ten years old, weaving - from fifteen, sixteen. Women over 40 almost stopped weaving, as this work in large numbers was considered beyond their power.

Women sewed clothes (with the exception of winter outerwear, which they gave to tailors) and knitted stockings, scarves, and mittens from wool. Weaving bast shoes was a man's business; boys were also engaged in it from an early age.

Field work was clearly distinguished between men and women: as noted above, the duties of men included plowing, sowing, mowing, stacking, stacking, transportation; women in haymaking stirred and raked hay, weeded the crops, then, during the harvest, knitted sheaves and laid them in the rump and heaps, helped to thresh with flails. In the gardens, all the work, except plowing, was done by women and partly by children. A special male job was the transportation of fuel and hay for the cattle (hay was kept in stacks in the meadow).

When distributing responsibilities between married women in an unseparated family, the need to combine household work as a whole with meeting the needs of personal families (children, husband) was taken into account.

Strict priorities were established between the daughters-in-law and the mother-in-law in performing basic household chores. Each of the women had her own day, on which she, as a cook, did all the housework. Teenage girls and girls were attracted to help, moreover, due to the somewhat isolated position of the daughter-in-law (daughter-in-law) in the family, only her own children helped her on the next day. In the same way, the mother-in-law in all work, both domestic and outside, always united with her daughters.

Most of the housework fell on married women, but the girls also had to work hard, especially spinning. They were only not allowed to the oven, as a result of which they did not acquire skills in cooking. Therefore, the young daughter-in-law for the first year of marriage only helped her mother-in-law at the stove and only in the second year was she given, along with other daughters-in-law, another day when she independently prepared food for the whole family. Separately, the sequence (once a week) of baking, bread, the so-called "soup", and in the furnace of the bath, if there was one, the so-called "banno" was established. On days free from common family affairs, they spun, weaved, sewed, repaired, knitted, etc.

Some of the work was carried out collectively, for example, washing floors, washing clothes. The linen was coarse, "proper" (homespun), it was not washed with soap, but "boiled" (just like canvases were boiled during bleaching), which required a significant expenditure of energy; therefore, the women in the family usually did it together. If the daughters-in-law each washed for their own family, the one who had fewer children also washed for the old parents.

In the hut, everyone had their usual places to work. Girls and women were spinning, sitting on benches by the windows, and when it got dark, they sat in a circle near the fire. In the hut, it happened, old women remember, during the processing of hemp, the dust stood in a column 6. During Great Lent, when the women began to fabric, one weaving mills were installed in the hut, and if the family was large, three or four weaving mills.

The family adhered to a certain daily routine. We got up early, went to bed late. In families where they were engaged in carriage, they got up at 2-3 o'clock in the morning. Everyone rose at the same time, but it could not be otherwise with the cramped and crowded hut.

While the cook was lighting the stove, the rest of the women made out the beds, carried out the benches into the canopy and laid the bedding on them, swept the hut, washed the table. Viryatians ate three times a day. We all had breakfast together, and then everyone got down to work (if they had to leave early, they took food with them). Dined at 12 o'clock, dined already at fire, usually with what was left of lunch. Food specially for dinner was cooked very rarely. They were seated at the table in a certain order: in the front corner was the head of the family, next to him was the eldest of the sons; men sat on one side of the table, on benches, women on the other, on side benches. In the last quarter of the XIX century. this tradition was broken - mostly married couples began to sit down. A cook sat at the edge of the table and served it on the table. Children, if there were many, were fed separately. All ate from the common bowl. Order and decorum were observed at the table, but, apparently, without the severity and tension that reigned at the common meal of the family during serfdom 7.

The largest place in the diet of the peasant family was occupied by rye bread 8. They baked it mostly once a week in a Russian oven on the hearth. Sometimes bread was baked on cabbage leaves. Pancakes and pancakes were made from rye and buckwheat flour. Kvass was made from rye malt.

Wheat flour in the Viryatinsky families until the 80s was a great rarity, since it had to be bought on the market. Later, it became a common product in wealthy families, but it still appeared among the poor only on major holidays.

Cabbage soup was the main and almost daily hot dish in all families. Depending on the family's wealth, cabbage soup was made meat or "empty" (without meat) and "painted over" with milk, sour cream, flavored with lard.

In the 900s, probably under the influence of the migrant miners, cabbage soup began to be called "borscht", although the composition of this dish did not change and it was still cooked without beets. Millet soups were very common: plum and, later, kulesh. Slivukha was cooked from millet with potatoes, kulesh - from millet with bacon. At first they boiled the slivukha a little, then they poured out the liquid, which they ate like soup, seasoned with something (butter, lard, etc.); boiled millet with potatoes, when the porridge thickened, was eaten with milk or with hemp oil. Millet porridge in the form of plum, kulesh or milk porridge has been used since the 80s-90s of the 19th century. as often as cabbage soup, that is, almost daily. Buckwheat was cooked from other cereals, but much less often, since buckwheat was more expensive and was not grown by everyone.

Kvass played an important role in nutrition, and not only as a drink. In winter, kvass with sauerkraut and horseradish was prepared as the first dish, and it was eaten with boiled peas, especially during fasting. In the summer, a tyuryu was made from bread crumbled into kvass and chopped green onions. It was the food of the poor. The richer people cooked okroshka, adding cucumbers, onions and eggs to the kvass. On holidays and at weddings, kvass was served with jelly or with meat and horseradish.

By the end of the 80s, potatoes began to gradually replace porridge. It was more cooked "in uniform" (ie, unpeeled) and served with pickles or sauerkraut; sometimes they ate it pounded. “The potatoes will be crushed and poured with butter (hemp). They did not understand frying. A family of 10-15 people - you won't get baked, ”the old-timers say.

Common foods were salamata and viburnum. Having made a dough from rye flour and pounded it in liquid millet kulesh, the salamata was “malted” in the oven. This dish made it possible to save bread; it was eaten with and without milk. The inhabitants of the village, said 88-year-old E. S. Fomina, were called the "Viryatinsky salamatniki". However, wealthy Viryatins ate salamata very rarely: “We ate salamata,” says M. I. Zhdanova, “when the porridge was boring. Fasting will get so tired of everything that they even reached the viburnum ”. Viburnum differed from salamata in that the dough was mixed with viburnum berries, collected after frost, when it loses its bitter taste. Kalina was the food of the poorest part of the peasantry. In the families of wealthy peasants, it was considered shameful to eat it. "It was dishonorable for Kalina to eat because we climb into the rich, but the horns are not allowed" 9.

Almost the same in the method of preparation, the food of different social strata of the peasantry was different in nutritional value and the variety of products included in it. In a strong, prosperous family, for example, which consisted of 25 people and had several horses, cows, pigs, more than two dozen sheep, etc. in its household, a lot of milk was consumed, meat was eaten twice a day (with the exception of fasts) ... In the families of the poor, “they ate more unpeeled potatoes, steamed kvass, plum, viburnum, cooked porridge for supper on a top (on a pole),” says one of the old-timers. “Not everyone had enough bread, they didn't always eat porridge,” adds another.

Ordinary dishes were not particularly difficult to prepare, and therefore the preliminary ordeal to which the daughter-in-law was subjected before taking a place at the stove was probably explained not so much by the fear that she would not be able to cook the food, as by the mother-in-law's desire to keep in her hands the leadership of the family's nutrition. In order to give a higher importance to this duty, the old women extremely meticulously checked the daughters-in-law's adherence to all traditional methods of baking and cooking. Any innovation was met with hostility and rejected. Viryatinskaya cooking, despite the fact that, since the 900s, many purchased food products appeared in the village, with the help of which it was possible to improve daily nutrition, remained unchanged and primitive. That is how she lived to see the socialist revolution.

2. Household relationships in the family

The meaning of the head of the family - The position of daughters-in-law in an undivided family - The order of family divisions - Family ties and mutual assistance in the countryside

The family-patriarchal system determined the nature of everyday relationships in the family, created its general moral atmosphere. The order worked out over the centuries was based on the unconditional authority of the eldest in the family.

Any manifestation of one's own will, which ran counter to customary traditions, was immediately suppressed. “At home they were afraid of old people, that is why they did not introduce innovations, they were also afraid of the condemnation of neighbors,” said I. M. Starodubovo. “In the mines,” he said further, “they ate better than at home, in the family. Here (in the village) they ate potatoes in their uniforms, although there was bacon, but they did not fry on it. The "new manner" (that is, the habits learned in the mines) was not introduced. For their “rude manner” (that is, for disrespecting the elders), the old people were reprimanded: “You came there and set up your own rules” 10.

Household relationships in families largely depended on the everyday tact of the head of the family, on the nature of the daughters-in-law, on the relationship of young spouses with each other, etc. They lived relatively amicably if the head of the family treated the daughters-in-law in the same way; but as soon as he singled out one of them, enmity immediately began between them. Quite often the spouses also lived in disagreement, since most often marriages were concluded at the insistence of their parents, who had little regard for the desires of young people. It happened that the husband brutally beat his wife.

The main source of misunderstandings and quarrels was the earnings of men on the side: family members who went to work in the mines were given the opportunity to contribute something to their family, while those who remained at home could not. This constantly displeased the elderly parents and led to misunderstandings between daughters-in-law. It should be noted, however, that the quarrels of the young were carefully hidden from the old. “We, daughters-in-law, were silent in front of the old people, but there were quarrels among ourselves,” SN Nevorov recalls his life in an undivided, large family 11. The old people were not so much respected as they were feared, since in the event of a release they could not give anything. But the nature of family relationships was still changing; in the 900s, it became much simpler, freer, without those manifestations of the downtrodden and timidity of the younger generation, which were so characteristic of a peasant family in serfdom.

For the characterization of intra-family relationships, family sections are of great interest, when the traditions of customary law manifested themselves very strongly. By decrees of 1906 and 1913 all family division cases were transferred to the volost courts, which, however, according to the testimony of local old residents, in controversial cases usually appealed to village gatherings. In its decisions, the village gathering proceeded from the reasons for the division and from the assessment of the property of the dividing people. It should be noted that, despite the abolition in 1886 of the obligatory consent of an older family member to the division of property, rural gatherings, in the event of intra-family conflicts, first of all reckoned with the statements and claims of the older family member. Direct cases of bribery of a part of the gathering were also frequent 12.

The preparation for the section was done well in advance. “We didn’t come out to a bare hummock,” as G. P. Dyakov put it, ” By the joint efforts of the family, new houses were built in advance, which, as a rule, were empty before the partition. Usually, the family shared when it already had sufficient resources (residential and farm buildings, cattle). During the division, all family property was assessed and divided according to the number of families into equal shares. If the division took place between the brothers after the death of the father, then the shares were usually distributed by lot, which were drawn from each family by the children in the presence of "authorized" - one or two neighbors. If the division took place during the life of the father, then the old man himself distributed which of the sons got what and with whom he remained to live.

The situation in the family of daughters-in-law deserves special attention. Their dependence and irresponsibility in the family is aptly characterized by the proverb used in Viryatin: “Work - what they will force, eat - what they will put on”. This situation was aggravated by the dependence in the family of married men.

In terms of property, the position of the daughter-in-law in the family was somewhat isolated. As elsewhere in Russia, there was a separate female property in Viryatin. First of all, it was the bride's dowry, which not only provided her with the necessary clothing, but also constituted one of the sources of her income (income from the sale of wool from a sheep given as a dowry, from the sale of offspring went to her personal needs). The personal property of the daughter-in-law was also property and money inherited by her 13. At her own expense, the daughter-in-law had to satisfy all her needs and the needs of her children, since, according to the existing tradition, not a penny was spent on the daughter-in-law, except for food and supplying her with outerwear and shoes, from the family funds that were in charge of the head of the family fourteen . She was given only a share of the family's total stock of wool and hemp. Everything else: worn clothes, and not only her, but also children, bed and even such a trifle as soap - she had to acquire herself. In most families, the daughter's dowry, for the most part, was also made for "woman's earnings". Of the family-wide funds, only the wedding itself managed. This order was natural as long as the peasant economy retained its natural character. With the development of commodity-money relations and the emergence of new needs, this tradition fell a heavy burden on the shoulders of a woman, forcing her to search for various third-party earnings. The Viryatinsky women could no longer satisfy the earnings from such small and, apparently, traditional for the village crafts, as collecting moss in the swamp and selling it to the surrounding villages to heal log cabins, collecting and selling berries, etc. : some families carried it on a very wide scale. This trade was extremely difficult and harmful, among the Viryatina women there were many patients with rheumatism and tuberculosis.

Noteworthy is the inheritance rights of the widowed daughter-in-law and her position in the family after the death of her husband. In those cases when the widow remained with the children, the share of the deceased husband passed to his family and the widow usually continued to live in her husband's family. With a general family division, she was singled out on an equal footing with the brothers of her deceased husband. If the widow had no children at the time of the partition, then her position in the family became extremely difficult. She had to either remarry or return to her parents' house. When leaving, she could take her personal belongings and the clothes of her deceased husband. At best, if the father-in-law treated her well, then during her second marriage he gave her a sheep as a dowry.

When conflicts arose, women turned to the zemstvo chief almost always ended in failure; as a rule, such cases were referred to the village assembly, and the latter invariably decided them in favor of the father-in-law. A typical case is told by E. A. Dyakov. His older sister lived in her husband's house for twelve years; after the death of her husband, while the boy was alive, she continued to live in the family. When the boy died, her father-in-law kicked her out of the house. She turned to the headman, he said that she was not entitled to a share. I turned to the zemstvo chief, who referred the case to the public. At the gathering, she was told: “Look for a groom for yourself, but you are not entitled to anything, you have no one” 15.

If the widow had no sons, but only unmarried daughters, she was entitled to a share; however, everything depended on the attitude of the father-in-law towards her, and cases of arbitrariness were very frequent 16. ND Dyakova (75 years old) says that she stayed with the girl. The father-in-law began to drive her away immediately upon receiving the news of the death of his son, who died in the Russo-Japanese war. She turned to the volost foreman, who advised her to go to the apartment and sue her father-in-law. However, the volost court referred the case to the public, and that, as it was customary from time immemorial, refused. Only during the second examination of the case in the volost court was she allocated a land allotment for one soul, a horse and a sennitsa 17.

Widows' families, mostly horseless and cowless, forced to labor all their lives, were the poorest in the village.

All these features of the family system and patriarchal morals were most strongly manifested and retained more in economically strong families. In kulak families, where all life was subordinated to one goal - to increase family wealth, family mores were sometimes extremely cruel. So, in the family of Kulak Kabanov, women were forced to work even on holidays. “We were blind in spinning and weaving,” 18 says Kabanov's wife. In families that were economically weak, in constant need, the traditional order was weakened faster. In particular, women's life was less closed in these families; girls and young married women in the intervals between work in their household were hired as day laborers to local kulaks or to a landowner for weeding and other work. Women who worked for hire developed greater independence, which also affected their position in the family.

In the 900s, young married women enjoyed relative freedom in many families. In the absence of their husbands who lived in the mines in winter, they were not forbidden to go to the “street” (to festivities), to participate in festive festivities. There is information that not only the mother-in-law, but also the daughters-in-law also went to the bazaar during these years. Here, at the bazaar, they took orders for the whitening of canvases, that is, they carried out, to some extent, independent business operations.

Unfortunately, we do not have any clear information about the breadth of kinship and family ties in Viryatin and about the nature of their manifestation. Local old-timers claim only that these ties were much wider and stronger earlier. For example, even second cousins ​​were invited to the wedding. Much, however, depended on the number of relatives: the narrower their circle was, the stronger the family ties were. But reckoning with a cousin, as a rule, was mandatory.

Among relatives, mainly close ones, mutual assistance was widely practiced, mainly labor, especially in exceptional cases. So, after the fire, they helped to rebuild the hut; the cattle fell - they came to the rescue with their working cattle; there was not enough grain until the next harvest - they lent out on borrowed bread, etc. However, in those cases when long-term and systematic assistance was required, purely business transactions were concluded with a relative, as well as with a stranger.

The closest neighbors took part in labor assistance, but in general, neighborly ties were weakly expressed in Viryatin; in particular, the neighbors did not take part in family celebrations. Even in the funeral, as a rule, only relatives took part.

3. Family rituals

Marriage and wedding rituals. - The role of the national calendar in family life. - Childbirth and childbirth rites. - Christening parties. - Caring for an infant. - Raising children. - Funeral rituals and commemoration of the dead.

The nature of marriage relations was largely determined by the internal structure of the patriarchal peasant family.

Marriages, as is usual in the Russian countryside, were between the ages of 17-18 for women and 18-19 for men. It was considered a shame for a girl to marry an elderly man. A large difference in age was allowed only in the case of a second marriage of a widowed woman, who usually married a widower with children (“for children,” as it was customary to say). The bride was taken, as a rule, from their village or from the nearest neighborhood.

The current older generation, who married and got married in the 1880s and 1890s, argues that marriages were usually concluded at the choice of their parents: the feelings of young people were hardly taken into account at that time. On this basis, many life tragedies were played out. So, one of the elderly collective farmers says that she had a fiancé whom she loved very much. She went with him to the “street”, and he “approached the porch” (the local custom of courting a girl). The young people agreed that as soon as he returned from the mine, he would send matchmakers for her. In his absence, however, another fiancé wooed, whom his father liked very much as a good worker, and the father decided to give his daughter for him. “I shouted, I didn't want to get married. My fiance sent me letters from the mine, but I was illiterate, I could not answer him. I cried for him - the river flowed, but still my father insisted on his own ”20. There are many such examples, they are typical for that time. As old people recall, there were also such cases when young people first got to know each other under the aisle 21.

When entering into marriages, first of all, the state of the economy was taken into account, as well as the personal qualities of the bride and groom as workers. Often, the bride and groom were judged by their parents: "An apple does not fall far from an apple tree." In the 900s, marriages began to be concluded more often on the basis of the mutual inclination of young people, and in this, perhaps, something new was reflected in the appearance of male youth, who managed to achieve some independence. The testimony of G. II is extremely characteristic in this respect. Dyakov, a former seasonal miner: “I got married - I didn’t ask my father. He picked it up for himself (1908), came from the mines, said to his father: "Well, go and drink as usual." The father was glad, pleased. Before that, a year ahead, my father wanted to marry me, but I put myself on my own. Our brothers and sisters came together by their own accord, not under the yoke of our father ”22. The same is confirmed by the testimonies of other peasants.

It is characteristic that in those same years, in the kulak environment, family mores were much stricter. Families lived more secluded. The girls were reluctant to be allowed on the “street” on holidays, as they were afraid of the emergence of bonds between young people that would be disadvantageous for the family. Hence the characteristic phenomenon is the twinning of kulak families. Local kulaks - the Kabanovs, Sleptsovs, Zhdanovs, Makarovs, Starodubovs - were in close family relationship, which undoubtedly strengthened the social and economic positions of the kulak elite of the village.

The wedding ceremony in Viryatin in the last quarter of the 19th century, as can be judged from the recollections of the old people, retained many of the characteristic features of the traditional South Great Russian rite, but has already significantly changed and collapsed; the meaning of certain moments was forgotten, many parts fell out.

Having conceived of marrying their son and choosing a bride for him, the parents usually sent one of the closest relatives (most often the eldest son with his wife or daughter with a son-in-law) to the bride's parents to find out if they would agree to give up their daughter. In case of consent, the bride's parents said: “Let them come to woo, agree on what the bride needs to buy for the posad” (that is, when the bride is sitting during the wedding).

A few days later, a so-called "small binge" was arranged in the bride's house. The groom's parents came with one of the closest relatives, brought wine (vodka) and snacks. On the part of the bride, only her closest relatives were also present: the bride herself did not come out to the guests. They agreed on the amount of money that the groom gives (part of it was spent by the bride on clothes for the groom), and on the number of dresses he will dress for the bride: they relied on a sundress, shirt, boots, a silk shawl, and, as a rule, a fur coat.

It should be noted that the size of the bride's dowry was not specially stipulated, which was so typical, for example, for the North Great Russian wedding ceremony 23. They also agreed on the number of guests from both sides and on the day of the wedding itself. During the binge they sang songs and danced. In the old days, according to the old people, the promenade sometimes lasted for several days.

The pre-wedding period was rarely long. Immediately after the "little binge" the parents of the groom and the bride went to the market in Sosnovka and there together made the purchases necessary for the wedding (mainly material was bought for "landing" clothes). Then the groom's relatives treated the bride's relatives who took part in the purchases in the Sosnovsky tavern.

In the bride's house, then, until the wedding itself, bridesmaids gathered almost daily to help prepare the dowry. Back in the 900s, the so-called “tailoring” custom was followed in Viryatin, in which the groom treated the women who had gathered at the bride’s place to tailor and sew wedding dresses.

However, in those years, as E. A. Dyakov aptly put it, this custom was already “only glory” (ie, it was preserved as a relic), since seamstresses sewed the dowry not only among wealthy peasants, but even in ordinary middle peasant families.

After getting married, the groom, as a rule, did not see the bride until the “big binge”. The "big binge" took place in the house of nevzst two weeks before the wedding. The relatives of the bride and groom were invited to it (if there were many relatives, then they were limited to cousins). For this day, wine was bought in buckets, a plentiful meal was prepared, usually a table for three or four, depending on the number of guests, which was often ruinous for low-income families. The parents of the bride, her godparents and older relatives were seated at the front table. The groom and the bride were seated at the second table, the closest girlfriends and comrades immediately sat down. Other relatives and children were seated at the third and fourth tables.

"Lunch" began with a prayer "with an agreement that everything would be good and the young people get along with each other." The groom's relatives treated the bride: the groom's father at the front table brought vodka, the groom's mother served the treat at the same table. Then the bridegroom's relatives treated the groom. The party with singing and dancing continued throughout the day.

On the eve of the wedding, two or three of the closest girlfriends gathered in the bride's house and stayed overnight with her. They helped to pack the chest. On the same evening, the so-called "wonderful shirt" (a small shirt, trousers, belt and stockings, exactly reproducing men's clothes), which appeared during the sale of the bride's "bed", was usually sewn. Then the broom was removed with paper tapes. The meaning of this rite is now completely forgotten 24. During the transportation of the bed, this broom, according to some old men, was attached to the arch of the horse; according to the story of others - one of the groom's relatives ("druzhko"), tied over his shoulder with a towel, sat down with a broom in his hands on a young chest and brandished a broom all the way.

On the same evening, the girlfriend braided the bride's braid, weaving into it a ribbon, which the bride gave to her closest girlfriend on the wedding day. The current older generation does not remember that any orations were performed at the same time. Apparently, from the bachelorette party in Viryatin already in the 80-90s, only faint traces remained. However, the very term "bachelorette party" is known to old people.

That evening the groom also had a festivities: young people came to him - relatives and bridesmaids. The groom treated them; walked with an accordion, with songs and dances. The wedding itself lasted at least three days in Viryatyn, and in the old days, up to five or six days.

On the wedding day, early in the morning, the bride and her friend went to the bathhouse. If she was an orphan, then after the bath she went to the churchyard and there (according to the old women) “shouted to her dear mother,” that is, she lamented at her mother's grave.

The bride cleaned herself up to the aisle, the girlfriend only undid her braid, the bride gave her a ribbon, both of them burst into abundant tears. According to the recollections of old women and according to legends they had heard from their grandmothers and related in this way, approximately to the 40-50s of the 19th century, the bride howled and lamented while she was unweaving her braids, and sometimes specialists in welfare were invited 25. After the bride was removed, the parents and godfathers with the mother blessed her with the icon and seated her with her friend at the table.

At that time, preparations were underway in the groom's house for his departure for the bride. The groom dressed himself. His father gave him a two-kopeck piece, and he "forgot it" (put it in a boot) to live it up. Before leaving, the parents blessed the groom with the icon of the Savior. The groom left the house accompanied by a boyfriend and a matchmaker, who now played the main role in the wedding ceremony and traveled in the procession 26. The first person they met was brought two glasses of vodka.

Upon the arrival of the groom at the bride's house, the scene (which was already understood as a joke) was played out, the scene of the redemption of a place near the bride. My friend bought it, the younger brother sold the bride. Druzhko, with a whip in his hands, got up at the table, poured wine into a glass and put money (twenty kopecks). The boy, having bargained with a friend, drank wine, grabbed money and jumped out from the table, while the friend tried to hit him with his whip. After that, the groom took a place next to the bride. Before the crown, the bride and groom were not supposed to eat. He took them out from the table to go to church, either - the priest, if he was invited to the house, or my friend. The bride and groom had kerchiefs tied on the middle fingers of their right hands; the priest, through the surplice, took hold of these handkerchiefs and led the bride and groom out of the table. The friend did the same (if there was no priest).

They usually got married, as has been the custom since olden times, on Mikhailov Day (November 8 was the patronal feast in Viryatin) and on Krasnaya Gorka (the first Sunday after Easter) 27. On these days, up to two or three dozen married couples were recruited in the church; crowned first of all those who paid for the crowns; poor couples often sat in church waiting for their turn until late in the evening.

After the wedding, right there in the church, a matchmaker, on one side, and a girlfriend, on the other, braided the bride's hair in two braids and put on a kitsch; there was a sign - if one braid turned out to be shorter than the other, then the young one would soon become a widow. Since the late 90s of the XIX century. they began to braid their hair in a forelock and put on a silk headdress (hairpin) with lace. When leaving the church, a headscarf was pushed onto the bride's head (i.e., pulled low over her forehead).

The wedding train was heading to the bride's house, where the parents were greeted at the gate with bread and salt. At the entrance to the hut, the young were put at the front table and congratulated "on legal marriage", and then they were seated at the second table "for a treat." A friend, a matchmaker and the groom's relatives sat at the front table (the parents of the young man were not present). The food was placed on three or four tables; festive dishes, traditional for Viryatin, were served: cabbage soup, dry meat, fish, jellied meat, pancakes, pancakes, etc., and always vodka. There was no special ceremonial food at the Viryatinsky wedding. At the table they sang songs, the tipsy and dispersed guests danced.

When leaving for the house of the young bride, the party sold the bed to the boyfriend and matchmaker, while the bridesmaids pulled out a “wonderful shirt”. For every inaccuracy in the manufacture of these things, the friend and the matchmaker reduced the price for the "bed". The money received from the "sale" of the bed, the girlfriends took for themselves, they usually then "gilded" the young. Druzhko and a matchmaker took the young bed and took it to the young man's house. A wedding train followed them with songs and dances, usually ahead of one of the groom's relatives carrying a chicken. It was given to the bride as a dowry "for livelihood."

Upon arrival at the house of the young, their parents met them at the gate with bread and salt. As in the bride's house, the young were placed at the front table and congratulated. Then a friend took the young people to the second table for the so-called "constant conversation." Until the mid-1980s, in Viryatitsa, the old custom of taking young people away under a "torpische" (a cavity made of a slope for pouring grain when transporting on a cart) was kept, that is, they were planted separately behind a curtain 28. From here, by the end of the wedding feast, they were taken out for "gilding". This custom was as follows. The old men from the first table sat down at the table of the young, the young stood at the edge of the table. The groom's parents were the first to "gilded"; a young man served a glass of vodka to his father, a young one to her mother-in-law; they drank, and the young bowed their heads low before them; parents put money in the glass. Then the godfather and mother came up, followed by the parents of the young woman, her godparents, and so, pair by pair, all the guests came up. All this was accompanied by jokes: "Wine is not good", "Bitter", etc. Gilding lasted at least two hours. After the gilding, they sat down to dinner, after which the friend and the matchmaker took the young to bed - a custom that had been outlived in Viryatin already in the first decade of the 20th century. There, a young woman took off her husband's shoes and took the money out of his boot.

The next morning a friend and a matchmaker raised the young. On this day, pancakes were baked in the house, which were treated to the young. Guests gathered again. Young men and women went to invite the bride's parents, in whose house a party was again arranged. Then they went to the house of the young, where in the evening the young were again "gilded".

The third wedding day was celebrated in the same way. On that day, in the evening, the young woman was “uncovered”. Until the mid-1980s, the bride spent all three days behind the curtain; she was taken out to the guests with a "posadny" silk scarf thrown over her head. Later, the young woman no longer wore a headscarf in the house, so they threw a headscarf on her before opening. The young bowed their heads; at this time the pots were beaten; the mother-in-law took off the young headscarf, put it on herself and started dancing to the sounds of the harmonica playing at that moment. After the opening, the young one could already dance and have fun with the guests. According to the recollections of the old people, on the same day the test of the skill and dexterity of the young was played out, which had already assumed a comic character: they brought a pulp and forced the young to crumple the hemp; while she beat the guests on the heads with mochens; they gave her a broom, which, as mentioned, was made for the wedding day, and forced revenge by throwing money at her feet, etc.

Elements of magic were preserved very insignificantly in the Viryata wedding ceremony. These included throwing a large headscarf on the bride's head, offering two glasses of vodka to the first comer when the groom left the house; meeting young parents with bread and salt, investing money in the groom's boot. To this day, one of the very ancient customs, the offering of a chicken, exists in Viryatina: when young people move to their husband's house, in front of the wedding train, they carry a chicken with which they dance, throwing it from one to another.

Special wedding songs associated with certain moments of the ceremony were almost completely forgotten in Viryatin already in the 80s-90s of the 19th century. At the wedding, ordinary songs and ditties were performed. Apparently, very early disappeared and clues. To some extent, this is explained by Viryatin's general weak song tradition (in other places, the South Great Russian rite is richly saturated with wedding poetry). The replacement of wedding songs with messages always took place together with the destruction of the rite.

When comparing weddings played in different years 29, in the wedding ceremony, a number of changes can be traced. The ceremony was shortened and simplified. The timing of the celebration was shortened. So, if in the 80s the wedding itself was celebrated from four to six days, then in the 900s, as a rule, no more than three. The preparatory period, which in the old days was long, was also significantly reduced: in the 80s, for example, they went for several days during matchmaking.

In a number of cases, they began to omit certain aspects of the traditional rite: instead of small and large drinking bouts, they were limited to one small one; some threw a big binge with the wedding to cut costs. Initiative in this regard was shown by young people, primarily those who have visited the mines. G. P. Dyakov, reporting the details of his wedding (1908), says: “We had a little drinking bout. I did not allow a big binge, I was not needed. Those who were richer, wanted to go for a walk, made a big binge, but I thought it was superfluous ”30. This testimony is extremely characteristic: it was after the revolution of 1905-1907. customs began to get rid of, which ran counter to the new concepts and ideas of the marriage youth; for example, the custom of laying down and waking young people with a friend and matchmaker, which was widespread in the early 900s, has been completely eliminated 31.

The roles of the actors in the wedding ceremony have also changed; in particular, the role of the groom has become much more active. Until the beginning of the 900s, it was unthinkable that the groom himself went to marry with his parents; later it became almost commonplace. From this point of view, the story of Yegor Alekseevich Dyakov's marriage is extremely characteristic. Returning from the mine in the spring of 1911, EA could not find a suitable bride in his village, since the best girls got married in the autumn wedding season. One of his relatives recommended him a girl from the neighboring village of Gryaznoye. Accompanied by his older sister, Yegor Alekseevich himself went to get acquainted with the bride. He liked her very much both by her appearance and by her “conversation” (that is, by her development). EA Dyakov took an active part in the whole further wedding ritual: he went with his parents to the “little binge”, there he sat next to the bride, talking to her animatedly about the upcoming wedding, and then visited the bride more than once. All this is already new, to a large extent contrary to the usual, generally accepted and indicating that the Viryatinsky youth have overcome a number of not only ritual, but also deeper in their meaning everyday traditions, reveals some independence of youth in matters of marriage.

It should be noted, however, that the traditional attitude to marriage as an economic and economic act remained the same and continued to influence the choice of the bride.

The family peasant way of life was greatly influenced by religious ideology, which supported the patriarchal foundations. The alternation of work, the nature of the pastime at leisure, the forms of food were determined by the dates of the church calendar, which, as elsewhere in the Russian peasant environment, was combined with elements of ancient agrarian rituals. The folk calendar, which was of great importance in the life of the peasants, is also mentioned in the next chapter. Here we will dwell only on the nature of the holidays in the family.

Three days before the holiday (especially the "annual" 32), a big cleaning began: they washed the ceilings, walls, floors, whitewashed the stoves; on the eve of the holiday, all family members must wash in the bath; festive food was prepared, part of the food for which was previously purchased at the bazaar. Viryatin is characterized by the absence of special ceremonial food; the exception was pancake cookies for butter and on the days of commemoration of the dead, baking "forty" (March 9, on the day of 40 martyrs), cooking Easter cake with cottage cheese baked in it, dyeing eggs for Easter and Trinity. On any church and family holiday, the same dishes were prepared: cabbage soup with meat, the so-called dry, that is, boiled meat (beef, lamb, less often chicken), fish, jelly, pancakes, pancakes. On the holidays preceded by a long fast (Christmas, Easter), the family broke the fast early in the morning, immediately upon arrival from the church. “Christmas breakfast was supposed to be early,” says K. G. Dyakova. The festive table usually began with vodka, which was brought to everyone by the head of the family. After a festive dinner, the elderly went to rest, in the summer they sat on the heap, young couples went to visit their father-in-law and mother-in-law, young people went to the “street” (folk festivities), which gathered on especially solemn holidays both day and evening (hours until 11-12 at night ). In the evenings on the eve of holidays, on Sundays and on the very holidays, they did not work.

The annual holiday was celebrated for at least two days, Christmastide - almost two weeks, and at least one week - Easter. Thus, holidays occupied an essential place in family life.

Fasts were of great importance for the household and everyday life of the family. Not only great fasts (Great Lent, Filippovskiy, Petrovka, Uspenskiy) were strictly observed, but also weekly - on Wednesdays and Fridays (in total there were more than two hundred fasting days in the year). Observance of fasts determined the family's diet and significantly influenced its general character, sharply reducing the already meager level. During the fasting periods, they ate millet porridge with kvass, potatoes with salt, peas sipped with kvass. Observance of fasts also extended to children: as old-timers testify, “not only on large fasts, but also on Wednesdays and Fridays, small children would not be given a spoonful of milk” 33. The Peter and Dormition posts were especially heavy, falling during the hot field work; it is no coincidence that after the October Revolution, it was precisely these posts that began to be violated in the first place.

Religious ideology has left an imprint on other aspects of family life, especially on those associated with the most important moments in a person's life - birth and death.

A whole complex of customs is associated with the birth of a child. Many children were born in Viryatinsky families, abortion was considered a "sin". The peasants were more happy about the birth of a boy, who was entitled to his allotment in the event of a redistribution of communal lands. However, in the future, parental feelings took their toll, and no special distinction was made in relation to boys and girls.

Childbirth took place in a bathhouse, on a shelf, on straw spread out and covered with litter, and if it happened in a hut, it was on the floor, on some old rags. The very removal of the woman in labor from the house was caused not only by the cramped and crowded premises, but also from time immemorial adhered to the idea of ​​the need to protect the woman in labor and especially the baby from someone else's gaze, from the "evil eye". Only much later (in the 900s) women began to give birth in a hut in more hygienic conditions, on a bed covered with a sack. Gave birth with a midwife (grandmother). The grandmother played the role of not only a midwife: in the attitude of the woman in labor and those around her, older ideas shine through. This is indicated by the observance of some very ancient customs. So, before transferring a woman in labor v house (three or four days after giving birth) "hands were washed away" - the woman in labor poured water on her grandmother's hands and washed her own in the same water, after which she presented the grandmother with a canvas 34. The grandmother also played an honorable role in the ceremony of "krestbin", or "homeland", usually arranged the next day after childbirth.

Baptized the child in the church; the grandmother carried the child to the church, and the godfather was the recipient from the church. Upon arrival from the church, a dinner was organized, festive dishes were prepared: pancakes, jelly, meat and, of course, vodka, with which lunch began. Relatives also brought refreshments. At the table, in a place of honor (in the front corner), the godfather and godfather were seated, next to the godfather - the father of the woman in labor, next to him the father-in-law, next to the godfather - the mother of the woman in labor and meanly her grandmother (according to some reports, the grandmother, along with the mother-in-law, served on the table) ... The gulba lasted two or three hours. Towards the end of dinner, the baby was brought in, and the grandmother put two plates on the table: on one they put money for the grandmother, on the other - for the newborn. It was called "putting on a tooth".

After giving birth, a woman usually got up on the third day and took over the household. “After giving birth, I didn't have to lie down for a long time; on the third day, it used to be, you get up, you get up to the stove, and you raise the cast iron, and you feed the piglets,” says T. E. Kabanova 35.

The child was lying in a "shallow", the bottom and sides of which were made of splint. The shackle was suspended by ropes to the ceiling hook, and hung with a canopy. At the bottom of the shallow straw was put (and not a mattress, so as to change it more often) and covered with a sackcloth. A pillow was placed under the child's head. In the 900s, bast shakes began to gradually go out of use, since 1910 they were no longer sold at the bazaar. Planks with a bottom made of ropes began to come into use. The sides of such a wobble were made with a recess, so that it was more convenient for the mother to feed the child. In more well-to-do families, "fluffy" shakes were used; they were made of four chiseled wooden sticks, fastened in the form of a frame, with a bottom stretched from linen. Such a shake was brought to Viryatino from Sosnovka, where it appeared in 1870-1880. Its spread was facilitated by the frequent cases of marriages between residents of both villages, especially the wealthy top of Viryatin.

They breastfed the child up to one and a half years, and then accustomed to the common table. In the beginning, they fed them thin millet porridge with milk, and “as the teeth go, they eat borshchk, porridge and potatoes with everyone else” 36. They used nipples "bread" and "kashnye": wrapped in a cloth, chewed with sugar bread or millet porridge.

Due to the unhygienic conditions of life, the death rate of children was very high. Any infectious disease (scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, dysentery) grew into an epidemic. Especially many children died in early infancy. This was largely due to the fact that babies, as a rule, were treated by local healers and attendants. The "evil eye" was considered the cause of any disease: the child was carried to the grandmother, and she sprinkled it from the coal three times. If a child screamed a lot, he was treated for "screaming": at dawn they carried him under the chicken coop and pronounced a conspiracy three times: "Dawn-lightning, red girl, as you calm down, as you become silent, so calm down, shut up the servant of God" (name), etc. .d.

The very conditions for raising a child were difficult. In the difficult summer season, the child, along with the unsteady, was taken to the field or left at home, under the supervision of an old grandmother, or an older girl, and sometimes completely alone. “You used to come from the field,” says T. Ye. Kabanova, “and he cries, all wet, flies stick around the whole nipple” 37. In families where there were many children, supervision over them was usually assigned to one of the women in the family, who was distinguished by a calm and fair character, who did not make a distinction between her own and someone else's child. The children were afraid of her and obeyed.

Children were brought up in severity, they demanded unconditional obedience from them: "Once I said, that's all." Parents showed great concern for their children, but there was no particular spiritual closeness between them and the children, as well as between brothers and sisters. E. A. Dyakov, recalling his youthful years, tells how his mother took care of him, but emphasizes that he did not share his feelings with her or with his brothers: it was not accepted. There was great intimacy between mother and daughters; it persisted after their marriage. In addition to natural feelings, the position of a woman was affected here. Joining a new family, she always remained in it to some extent a stranger and in all the difficulties of life she turned for advice and help to her parents, especially to her mother.

From early childhood, children were introduced to hard peasant labor. From an early age, a girl was taught to spin, a boy from seven or eight years old began to help his father, leaving with him in the field (there he ran for water, for firewood); at the age of eight or nine, he was already given as a caretaker, and from the age of thirteen the boy began to help his father in all work. Actually, the guys did not know childhood.

Children were not particularly concerned about their education. “The boys studied, but they were not forced to learn: if you want, learn, if you don't,” recalls U. I. Kalmykova 38. But if for a boy from the beginning of the 900s it was nevertheless considered necessary to go through at least two classes of a rural or parish school, then girls were not paid attention to in this regard. “A girl can't go to military service, but she can spin and weave just like that,” was the common opinion of the village.

Of the family rituals, rituals associated with the burial of the dead were also extremely persistent in Viryatin. The funeral was a church one, but many archaic features were preserved in them. The deceased was washed by old women (both man and woman). Old people were obligatory buried “in their own”, the young, as it became usual from the end of the 19th century, in clothes made of purchased material; old women were buried in ponevs - a custom that was kept even in the first years of Soviet power. Clothes "for death" were prepared by everyone during his lifetime. If a girl or a guy died, paper flowers were placed on their head and chest.

The deceased was placed in the front corner on benches, with his head towards the icons. The benches were covered with a sackcloth and linen over it. They covered the old man of the deceased with "our own" canvas, the young - with calico. All night over the deceased, old people or nuns read the psalter. The deceased lay in the house for more than a day. If they were buried with mass, they would take them out to church in the morning, and if without mass, they would take them straight to the cemetery in the evening. Two hours before the removal of the deceased, they were placed in a coffin. Canvas was spread inside the coffin. Relatives made a coffin and dug the grave. A priest was always present at the take-out.

After a short memorial service, the coffin was carried out on towels. Outside the gate, the coffin was placed on a bench, and the priest served a short litiya. Relatives and neighbors, those who did not go to the cemetery, said goodbye to the deceased. Only the closest relatives usually went to the cemetery. The women "shouted" (lamented) at the deceased. The coffin was carried open in his arms; if it was difficult, they put it on a cart. On the way to the church (or to the cemetery), the procession stopped several times, and the priest served a litiya. At the grave, the priest served a panikhida. Relatives said goodbye to the deceased, the coffin was hammered and lowered into the grave, each throwing a handful of earth. A cross was always put on the grave, after which a panikhida was served again.

Upon returning home, a commemoration was held. First, the priest was treated to, and after he left, all those present were seated at the table. Guests were recruited at two or three tables. Those who were closer in kinship were seated at the first table. The commemoration began with wine, and then there were ordinary cabbage soup, dry meat, pancakes, pancakes, milk noodles (steep), in conclusion, millet milk porridge was served (in the post - porridge with hemp butter). At the end of the meal, they prayed and, singing "eternal memory" and "rest with the saints," went home.

On the ninth, twentieth and fortieth days, the deceased was commemorated. First, they read the psalter, after which they had a supper. Remembered all night until morning. On the fortieth day we went to the cemetery. They also celebrated six months and the anniversary of death. That was the end of the funeral.

The dead were also commemorated on "commemorating" days (that is, on specially set by the church) days 39. The dead in Viryatin were commemorated as follows: on the eve, that is, on Friday evening, each family sent one of its members (an old woman or a girl) with a memorial note and a specially baked pie to the church for a general funeral service. The next morning, the "funeral" was celebrated: pancakes were baked, and one of the women or a girl carried them to church. Having defended the requiem, those present in the church went to the cemetery, and there everyone spread a towel and laid pancakes on the grave of their relative. The priest with the clerk walked around the whole churchyard. Pancakes (and a small monetary reward) were given to the church clergy, some of the pancakes were crumbled on the graves, the rest of the relatives immediately exchanged among themselves in the cemetery. At home, each of the family members necessarily ate a piece of pancakes brought from the cemetery, thus joining in the commemoration of the dead. Several details of this public commemoration of the dead ("parents") point to a number of vestiges of ancient ancestor worship. In this respect, the memorial customs of the Sabbath before the Shrovetide are especially interesting. In the morning of that day, each housewife put the first pancake she baked on a towel or on a dish under the icons - “for parents”. When they started eating pancakes, they remembered their “parents” —all relatives. This interweaving of Christian ideas about death, about the afterlife, with even more ancient ones, testifies to the extraordinary vitality of ritual traditions in relation to the dead.

The presented material allows us to reveal the deep processes that took place in the family life of the peasants of the village of Viryatina before the Great October Revolution. Despite the fact that the stagnant life of a peasant family, held together by traditions and religious beliefs, evolved extremely slowly, already at the beginning of the 20th century. in Viryatin, families began to appear, significantly different in their cultural level from those around them. These were by no means kulak families, which, although they differed in the level of material life from the general peasant mass, but in their cultural appearance and forms of life, not only did not stand out from the general environment, but, moreover, were the most conservative and backward. The formation of new features of family life was in direct connection with the progressive influence of the city and industrial centers, and therefore the families of migrant peasants were the most advanced in Viryatin.

In the village, the families of the Nagornov brothers were especially prominent, who, according to the general opinion of the Viryatins, had a great cultural impact on their fellow villagers. By profession, these were cabinet-makers (their fathers and grandfathers were also engaged in this craft), who every year left for large cities: Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, etc. From the Nagornov family. Then the first representatives of the Viryatinsky intelligentsia came out.

One of the brothers, Vasily Kuzmich Nagornov, was a well-read man, subscribed to the works of L.N. Tolstoy, N.A.Nekrasov, received a newspaper. He constantly communicated with fellow villagers, he had guests with whom he talked on political topics. This feature was completely new for Viryatin, where even a simple visit was not accepted.

The Nagornovs' family lived on handicraft work; the allotment of land per person on the farm was leased out. The horse was kept only for the transportation of firewood and feed for livestock. In this family, they did not spin, and. the younger generation dressed like the city.

The whole domestic life of the Nagornovs was put in a city style. This found expression in the interior decoration of the house, in food, clothing. The upper room in this house had a completely urban look: the table was always covered with a tablecloth, near the table there was a soft armchair, on which the owner of the house liked to sit while reading; besides stationary benches, there were chairs, there was a wardrobe in the corner, curtains hung on the windows; the walls were decorated not with lurid popular prints, as was customary in the rich families of the village, but with oil paintings in glazed frames.

In comparison with those around them, the food of the family was also of a different nature. The urban tastes of the owners were manifested in tea drinking, the use of meat not only boiled (as is customary in Viryatin and still), but also fried and stewed. A novelty for the village was the pies baked in this house: they were stuffed (with rice, eggs, raisins, etc.), which the Viryatins did not do. Food for small children was prepared in a special way, and even during the fast, when the whole family was fasting strictly, milk dishes were prepared for the children. This was already reflected in a certain departure from the observance of religious traditions, which did not prevent, however, the women of this family from adhering to many superstitions and prejudices. The family of the second brother, Andrei Kuzmich Nagornov, was of the same cultural level.

Individual families of migrant miners also belonged to the number of families that were significantly distinguished by some features of their life. Such was, for example, the family of Daniil Makarovich Zhdanov. He began to go to the mines from the age of fourteen. He was a great lover of reading and, returning from the mines, always brought books to the village. He also had political literature, including some of the works of V. I. Lenin (unfortunately, it was not possible to establish the names of these works). All his free time, much to the indignation of his wife, Zhdanov devoted to reading. He was an atheist, and his son, born in 1918, gave the name Leo - in honor of Leo Tolstoy. However, Zhdanov's personal views had little effect on the family's home life.

A radical breakdown of family foundations, the development of new forms of domestic life, an increase in the general cultural level of the Viryatinsky families took place only after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Notes:

1 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1953, p. 245, p. 6; TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 128.

2 Extremely indicative in this respect is the genealogy of the prosperous Makarov-Ionkin family, restored by M.I. Zhdanova (nee Makarova) from the recollections of her grandmother, Anna Stepanovna, born in 1819, who entered the Makarov family in 1837 and in its entirety five married brothers, with old parents) who lived there until 1868-1869 (see Archive of the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, pp. 125-127); the same is the pedigree of G.P. Dyakov.

3 GATO, f. 67, units. xp. 29, l. 123, 124; units xp. 155, l. 187-189.

4 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 12.

5 Even when heating a bath, when water was required in large quantities, women carried water.

6 “I grew up - Serb, gray, Serb!”, U. I. Kalmykova recalls her childhood. (Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 232.)

7 As the old people recall, the grandfather (the head of the family) held a twig in his hands and hit everyone who was guilty for loud laughter, conversations, etc.

8 The section on food was written by M.N.Shmeleva.

9 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1953, p. 281, p. 14

10 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1952, p. 245/1, p. 109 and 113.

11 Ibid, - 1954, p. 275, p. 171, 231.

12 For material about this, see the folder "Files on the request of peasants for family divisions" for 1913 (in the Morshansk district), stored in the GATO.

13 The most typical and frequent was the inheritance of orphans-children. According to the customary law, a widow who married a second time lost her right to the property of her deceased husband (a hut, yard buildings, cattle), which was sold, and the proceeds were distributed among orphans-children until they came of age. For this, the rural society chose at the gathering a guardian from among the relatives who were "independent", and if there was none, then an experienced stranger. The inherited money was the personal property of the girl, and after she got married, she spent it at her own discretion. (Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO-1954, p. 275, pp. 18-19.)

14 The same order was generally followed in the kulak families. Hence, the relationship between daughters-in-law and her husband's parents often took on a particularly aggravated character in the kulak milieu.

15 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 254, p. 24.

16 As women point out, one of the frequent reasons for the unfriendliness of the father-in-law was the daughter-in-law's refusal to cohabit with him.

17 Archive of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 254, p. 46.

18 Ibid., TO - 1953, p. 245/3, p. 36.

19 Thus, the sister of E.A. Dyakova married into a family where her husband's father was not his own. The stepfather had children of his own and the situation of the stepson was difficult; he lived almost in the position of a farm laborer. Then the parents of E.A. advised their daughter and son-in-law to go with them and live with them until they rebuild and acquire their own household. The life of the family together proceeded on the following conditions. We ate together, but kept separate scores. They lived at the rate of one pood of grain per month per person. It was easy to reckon with cattle: straw was taken from the sons-in-law of the field and given to the family, since they ate milk from a cow that belonged to their parents. The son-in-law of the earth had two souls. He did not have a horse, his family was cleaning his land. This was estimated at about 35-40 rubles, but since the son-in-law and his wife participated in the field work, their work was also counted. In winter, the son-in-law went to the mines, the money sent was saved up for the construction of a house. Expenses for shoes, clothes, taxes came from the earnings of the young couple.

20 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954. p. 275, p. 233, 235.

21 E. S. Fomina says: “Now they themselves (the bride and groom come to an agreement), but they got me. I screamed. He doesn't know me, and I don't know him. He was four years younger than me. His parents decided to marry him, since they were elderly and were afraid that they would die, but his brothers would not marry him ”(Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR. F. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 199). S. S. Kalmykov testifies to the same. In Viryatyn, they still talk about how they substituted brides at weddings. Such a case also happened to the peasant Dyakov, who discovered only in the church that he had been replaced by a bride. But Dyakov did not dare to abandon her, fearing the wrath of his parents. So he lived all his life with his "unwelcome" wife and beat her to death. (Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR.f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 254.)

22 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 108.

23 See "Materials on the wedding and family structure of the peoples of the USSR." JI., 1926, pp. 36, 37. The presence of masonry from the groom's side, while the bride's dowry was not specifically mentioned, is also typical for the Voronezh wedding ceremony, in all other moments close to the Tambov one. (See Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1952, p. 236/1. Materials collected in the village of Staraya Chigla, Annensky district, Voronezh region).

24 Some old people say that the broom was made in order to "sweep the bride out of the house, so that the ode would not look back, get along well in the new house and would not return home to her father." On the third day of the wedding, the young woman had to sweep the floor in her husband's house with this broom.

25 Archive of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 282, p. 55. This is extremely curious and valuable in its rarity evidence of the existence of female captives in the southern Russian regions.

26 The godfather and mother of the groom were usually the friend and matchmaker; if both or one of them was not alive, then at the direction of the groom's father, the appropriate person was selected, who later directed the wedding ceremony.

27 According to family legends, under serfdom, the wedding was played only on Michael's Day, that is, once a year. (Message from E. A. Dyakov).

28 E. S. Fomina, who got married in 1888, tells about it this way: “The young (upon arrival at the father-in-law's house) were seated forward at the front table: a friend brought them a glass. Then the groom and the bride were ordered under the torpische (the table was set up and the curtain was curtained). We gnawed and gutted the seed behind the torpische. All three days we sat under the torpshut. Everyone walked around. From here we were taken to the front table to gild. " The custom of withdrawal under torpische was typical for the wedding ceremony of the serf era. (See M. N. Shmeleva's entry from M. I. Zhdanova, who knew about this from the words of her grandmother who married in 1837; Archive of the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 282, p. 55 .)

29 We are based on descriptions of weddings in 1888, 1904 and 1911. (Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, pp. 199-202, 235-239 and 24-36.)

30 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 110.

31 The custom of withdrawing young people under the torpische, which had lost its original meaning, fell away even earlier. The customs of crushing, sweeping the young sex and others have also disappeared, which was already considered superfluous by the youth.

32 The annual holidays in Viryatina included Christmas, New Year, baptism, carnival, annunciation, Palm Sunday, Easter, Ascension, Trinity.

33 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 97.

34 It is interesting to note that this custom was kept in Soviet times, right up to collectivization.

35 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1953, p. 246/3, pp. 30 and 46. I had to hear that in some families, small in composition, where the mother-in-law ran the main household, the woman in labor was not taken to hard housework for up to forty days. (Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO - 1954, p. 275, p. 38).

36 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE TO - 1953, p. 246/3, p. 46.

37 Archive of IE Academy of Sciences of the USSR, f. RE, TO-1953, fol. 246/3, p. 47.

38 Ibid., 1954, p. 275, p. 231.

39 These were: Dmitrov's Saturday, the last Saturday before Shrovetide; Saturday in the second week of Lent; Tuesday in Foma week ("rainbow") I am Saturday before Trinity day.

The peasant family had many peculiarities. First of all, it was a collective of people who managed jointly, and this trait determined a lot in family relations.

The peasant family had many peculiarities. First of all, it was a collective of people who managed jointly, and this trait determined a lot in family relations.

Much, but not all. The peasants showed the deepest marital and parental feelings. It would seem that there is nothing to prove here. The lyrics of Russian folklore, reflecting the richest range of strong and subtle feelings, are well known. However, a lot of bad things have been said in the literature about relations among the peasantry. As a rule, superficial observers snatched gloomy, not at all typical cases from the general calm and clear picture and on their basis made far-reaching conclusions. The basis for such dark colors, as noted by the modern researcher of the peasant family of the 18th-19th centuries N.A. ... Of course, if we proceed from court materials, it is possible to denigrate the life of any social stratum of any era. But, fortunately, historians and ethnographers have other documentary materials at their disposal.

“To my most lovable and most prejudicial concubine and our guardian of honor, and our health patroness, and all-honorable by the name of our common pleaser and our house, the most honest ruler Anna Vasilyevna, I send you my most humble bow and tearful petition and with our sincere, our reverence to you we wish you many years of health and spiritual salvation<...>I ask you, as you can, to write about your health, our all-gracious concubine, ”- this is what a peasant from Western Siberia Ivan Khudyakov wrote to his wife in 1797.

Ivan's style is bookish, florid. His fellow countryman, the peasant, Yegor Tropin, expressed the same feelings more simply. When they took him to the obligatory mining work, he fled from there to his native village, "with the intention of seeing his wife." After seeing his wife, Tropin came to the volost authorities to declare his act: he left without permission, “not enduring the extraordinary melancholy” that “attacked him” in separation from his wife (Minenko-1979, 123-124, 137-138).

NA Ivanitsky, who in the last quarter of the last century collected extensive and reliable material about the life of the peasantry in the Vologda province, considered the opinion about the underdevelopment of feelings in the peasant environment "completely false." To be convinced of this, it is enough to look at any of the many collections of songs that exist and are composed in the peasant environment, and in this collection, in particular, the section of love songs. “Any impartial person,” wrote Ivanitsky, “will say that such beautiful songs could only pour out of a heart filled with sincere love. There are love songs distinguished by such tenderness and depth of feeling and so impeccable in form that in fact it is somehow impossible to believe that they could be composed by illiterate village girls who do not have the slightest idea of ​​versification, meanwhile it is known reliably that girls -that is the songwriter; guys - poets are incomparably less common. "

According to Ivanitsky, the people themselves recognize a serious feeling in love, which cannot be joked with. On the basis of proverbs and conversations with peasants, he argued that for them "the feeling of love is the main incentive that makes a person work and take care of acquiring property in view of the future welfare of his family"; “Cordial relations between husband and wife are preserved until the end of life” (Ivanitsky, 57-58).

The sources clearly show the peasant view of the family as the most important and indispensable condition for the life of every peasant. It is expressed in petitions on various issues, in which they refer in support of their request to the need to start a family, provide for a family, etc .; in the verdicts of assemblies concerning family matters and the relationship of young people; in worldly decisions containing individual characteristics (when appointing guardians, choosing elders, issuing feed passports, etc.).

"An unmarried person is not considered a real peasant among us," wrote from the Ilyinsky volost of the Rostov district of the Yaroslavl province. A single lifestyle was considered a deviation from the norm, a strangeness. The family was perceived as the economic and moral basis for a correct lifestyle. “Society forbids a single person to be a master,” it was reported at the end of the 19th century from the Volkhov district of the Oryol province.

The peasants' recognition of the role of the family in the material and moral well-being of a person, the continuity of generations was reflected in numerous proverbs that were widely used throughout the territory of the settlement of Russians: single - half a person; the family pot is always boiling; family porridge boils thicker; the porridge is thicker in the family; family and thresh peas; family consent is the most expensive; as our parents lived, so they told us to live; our fathers did not do this, and they did not tell us; our fathers did not know this, and they did not order us; the king himself will not judge father and son; husband to wife father, wife to husband a crown; children can live by their father's mind, but they cannot live by their father's goodness. (GME, 912, fol. 28; 1806, fol. 8v .; Dal, II, 724, IV, 11, 173; Minenko, 1983, 87-88.)

At the head of the peasant family was one person - a highway. His position as a leader in moral, economic and even administrative terms was recognized by all members of the family, the community and even the authorities. The meeting of the community consisted of such heads of each family, and, consequently, of the household yard.

Bolshak, as a rule, became by the right of seniority. The oldest man in the family could transfer his rights to another family member.

It was universally accepted that the highway should be in charge of the entire economy and be responsible for the welfare of the family. He solved the issues of buying and selling, leaving to earn money, distributing work in the family. The sensible head of the household usually consulted with the whole family or with one of the elders on significant issues. This is how they talked about it in 1897 in the Zadneselskaya volost of the Vologda region: the highway “acts independently, but almost always consults with some family members beforehand, especially in important matters. With whom to "advise" in this case - at the will of the highway, but, of course, mainly with the elders in the family. "

Bolshak had the right, according to peasant ideas, to elect and reprimand for laziness, economic omissions or moral misconduct. A correspondent from the Bryansk district of the Oryol province wrote that the owner treats his household strictly, imperatively, and often takes a commanding tone. Of course, much depended on the character of the head and the general spirit of the family.

In the evening, the highway distributed the work for the next day, and its orders were subject to strict execution. There was a long-term practice of distributing household chores in a Russian family by sex and age. But each area had its own characteristics.

In the Velsk district of the Vologda province, for example, men worked in the field during sowing. The eldest son plowed, the father sowed, the teenager harrowed. At this time, married women were planting vegetables, and the girls were weaving. After the end of the sowing of spring crops and before the start of haymaking, the men prepared the fields for winter crops, and the women and girls went to the forest for birch bark - prepared for sale. At the same time, the girls' money went to themselves for new clothes, and from women - for general family needs.

During the harvest and haymaking, everyone united. After the harvest, the men used to carry the grain from the fields, while the women harvest the vegetables. As a rule, the girls were in charge of the flax harvesting. During threshing, the whole family got up at two in the morning and finished work at the threshing floor by 10 in the morning. The rest of the day the men used to trim the hedges, or harvest pitch, or go hunting. The women spun flax and tended livestock.

Yarn and caring for livestock remained women's work in the winter.

Cooking was their concern all year round. In winter, men drove tar, prepared firewood, transported logs from the forest, repaired sledges, carts and harness, weaved baskets, and hunted. Children and adolescents helped both.

In the story of a resident of the Smolensk region of the same time (Dorogobuzhsky district), the distribution of jobs by sex and age looks similar, with only slightly different details. Men uprooted stumps, plowed, mowed, brought firewood from the forest, etc. The women prepared food; looked after poultry, pigs, cows; were engaged in a vegetable garden; washed, sewn, spun, weaved; women's work was also harvesting, rowing hay, helping with threshing, etc. The girls participated in the harvest, raking up hay, carrying sheaves, harrowing; they sewed, spun, looked after minors. The adolescents rode with horses at night, drove manure, helped to harrow, carried lunch in the field, and looked after young children during the harrowing season.

A. A. Lebedev from the village of Sugonov, Kaluga district, noted that they did not have a clear distinction between male and female jobs. For example, the mowing of meadows and grain was a man's work, but it was also done by women. Yet he showed the basic distribution of occupations. Men corrected and procured tools; worked with an ax near the house; they chopped down and brought in timber, fixed the hut; they surrounded the estate with a tynom, transported and carried weights; sowing, etc. The women stoked the stoves, milked the cows, fed the cattle, looked after the birds, looked after the children (if there were no adolescents). Of agricultural work here, plowing, harrowing, harvesting (with a sickle), tying mown crops, pulling flax and hemp, planting potatoes, turning hay, winding manure were considered women.

The traditional scheme of distribution of work, naturally, required concrete decisions on a daily basis, depending on the season, the weather, the real possibilities of the family, etc. This was done by the highway. The life of each family made many amendments to the common tradition. In particular, the temporary care of men to earn money led to the fact that many men's jobs had to be done by women.

The distribution of household chores between the female part of the family was carried out not by the highway, but by his wife, the big lady (elder). Usually it was the mother and mother-in-law for the rest of the women. With widows on the highway (grandfather, father, uncle or brother), the elder daughter-in-law or the unmarried sister of the highway, according to his decision, was a big one. The Bolshaya ran the entire household, was, as it were, the right hand of the highway, distributed the "outfit" for work to other women and specific instructions on cooking and other matters, in case of negligence or slovenliness "reprimanded".

This is how, for example, women's household chores were distributed in the middle of the 19th century in the Voronezh province (villages on the left bank of the Voronezh River). In turn, the women were "orderlies". That was the name of the woman who on that day did all the main housework: stoked the stove, cooked food, “put on the table”, washed dishes, fed chickens and pigs, and milked cows. The rest of the women, as a rule, did not help her - after all, they had to do the same in their turn. The women baked the bread one by one, as well as the cakes for the holidays.

But here's what is remarkable. The mother-in-law provided the newly arrived daughters-in-law in the family for a year or even two privileges: she released them from the duties of a "orderly", "sent the day itself for them." How much the real life of a peasant family was more complex and subtle in relationships than it looks in conventional schemes!

The one of the daughters-in-law who entered the family first, enjoyed the right of “first marriage,” that is, some seniority that did not depend on age. The girls in the family did not have their next day. Before marriage, the girls worked only “for themselves,” that is, they spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered their dowry and their maiden clothes. Or they did something for sale with the same purpose: to buy fabric, clothing, shoes, jewelry or trimmings.

If a daughter remained forever in girls, she had an advantage over her daughters-in-law in her own home, became the second mistress after her mother. But after the death of her father and mother, she became, according to custom, on a par with her daughters-in-law, was an orderly and “worked for the family,” and not for herself. Her position in the family then became the same as that of a single man.

Having told about all these customs of the "usmans", as he calls them, that is, the peasants of the modern Novo-Usmansky district of the Voronezh region, the priest of the village of Tamlyk Nikolai Scriabin concluded: "There are no disputes, enmity and fights between women in a family" (AGO - 9, 66, l. 18-20; GME, PO, l. 1-2; 516, l. 15; 1564, l. 10; TsGIA, 381, 1475, l. I, 70).

Tidiness in the house was the responsibility of the hostess. If she was not very burdened with small children, then even in a residential hut (a peasant house was usually divided into a hut and an upper room), the floor was always clean. But they especially monitored the cleanliness in the upper room. They washed and scrubbed the floor, benches, table, and before the holidays - and the walls.

There were certain prayer duties on the highway and the bolshukh. So, the owner read a prayer before the general meal. General women's work began to be performed only after the prayer of the big woman. The eldest of the women baptized the water and all the food left overnight (IE, 355, fol. 41v .; GME, 980, fol. 3; AGO-61, 12, fol. 16).

As a rule, the eldest man in the house became the highway, but if he did not cope well with the duties of the head of the household, the custom allowed the family to change him. After all, any, even a modest, peasant farm demanded attention, ingenuity, knowledge. Under certain circumstances, the change of the highway is reported from different provinces.

From the Vologda province (Zadneselskaya volost) they wrote that the highway can be displaced "by the common consent of the testes," that is, family members. About the village of Davshin, Poshekhonsky uyezd, Yaroslavl province, the following characteristic remark was written on this occasion in 1849: “Each complex family obeys one master (in the local way - a highway), and women, besides the owner, also a mistress (the eldest of them is a bolshoi) ... Everyone in the family firmly knows and has been taught by experience that for the happiness of the family it is necessary that everyone obey the one eldest, smartest and most experienced in the family, on whom all economic arrangements would depend. Therefore, where there is no father, there, with the general consent of family members, either an uncle, or one of the brothers, depending on reason, experience and quickness, is chosen to go to highways. that sometimes the younger takes precedence over the older in years, without offense to them. The same should be said about women. "

We find a similar statement about the Russian peasants of Altai. “If a family is dissatisfied with its highway, if the latter drinks a bitter one, if he is“ spoiled ”and carelessly manages the household, the family, by its own collective discretion, puts someone else in its place, and in case of a dispute resorts to peace, which replaces the unfit highway. ".

If the family could not decide on its own the issue of changing the highway (whether due to its stubbornness or disagreement between the "testisers"), peace entered the business. In the Tula district in the 70s of the XIX century, it was noted that the "society" itself appointed a new highway in the family in the event of a malfunction in the discharge of the old obligations to the world. For the Novgorod province, the right of the community to appoint a highway is described in the absence of the previous owner. The responses of the residents of the Vladimir province also indicated that the world could deprive the highway of its rights for drunkenness, wastefulness, or negligence; the gathering did this at the joint request of family members. Sometimes the highway was set aside by the volost court. In general, those offended by the highway or the big one could find protection from the world and the volost court (TsGIA -381, 1475, fol. 11; GME, 51, fol. 2; Arkhangelsky, 47; Chudnovsky - 1894, fol. 60-, 65; Annual meeting , 32; Mikhalenko, 296).

So, the highway is the head of the family, the older man, but if he does not manage the household well, then he is deprived of this right: the family itself or the community replaces him. The peasant social consciousness recognized the hereditary head - but only as long as he was fit for this role. Accordingly, as we will see below, the peasants did not treat unconditionally to the hereditary rights of the monarch. The family life of the peasants, the family, as the main economic unit, does not give grounds to see the roots of modern social passivity in the “patriarchalism” of the old village.

The peasant's commitment to preserving the inviolable right of the "yard", the family as a whole, to own the entire farm was condemned by some authors in pre-revolutionary journals, and modern historians sometimes interpret this as a feudal relic, backwardness, an obstacle to capitalist development. But if you take a closer look at peasant life and think about the problems of the countryside in the light of the path traveled later, it turns out that in this peasant position there was much that was reasonable, ensuring the stability of the “yard” as the primary and basic economic unit. With this view, the mythical "backwardness" turns into a valuable social experience that takes into account national, natural and other peculiarities.

General sections of the economy, the allocation of individual sons who wished to live independently - this was possible according to customary law and was done by the decision of the family itself or the community (in the event of a conflict in the family). But the peasantry did not want to allow the allocation of a share of the farm for sale, that is, to give the opportunity to ruin the courtyard to those family members who do not want to manage in the countryside, found work for themselves in the city. However, the interests of such family members were reasonably taken into account. They were allocated, as a rule, a sum of money in compensation for their share in the economy, according to peasant ideas.

S. L. Chudnovsky, who observed the life of a Russian village in Altai in the 80s of the last century, wrote: “Usually, when a parent leaves home, when he leaves home, he thinks about the degree of his participation in the acquisition of family property, and partly about his personal disposition to the one that stands out. The world almost never interferes in this matter, unless the father or his substitute most of the time themselves want it. "

Of all the relatives, the elderly or sick parents had the greatest rights to security, according to customary peasant law. They were certainly provided, regardless of whether they remained in the house of their son, who became an independent owner, or lived separately.

Women had special rights to property in the peasant household. This is at odds with the conventional belief that women were powerless in property matters. In fact, peasant customary law provided for various possibilities here. Everywhere among Russian peasants there was a custom, according to which the father had to provide his daughters with a dowry. This rule was the same both in written state law and in popular customary law. If the father died, the brothers had to give the dowry. As a rule, movable property was given as a dowry: the allocation of a dowry was not supposed to violate the foundations of the economy. The property received as a dowry remained to a certain extent at the personal disposal of the wife in the husband's house. The degree of its independence in this respect had differences - local, as well as by types of property. In the Urals, for example, the personal (not family-wide) property of women was considered to be income from that part of the land that the family rented with money brought in as a dowry. It was also there that it was customary to allocate garden beds to women, the income from which went to their personal disposal. If sheep were given as a dowry, then the income from the sale of wool from them also belonged to the woman personally. Among the Ural Russian peasants, in general, the cattle brought as a dowry was considered the property of the daughter-in-law, and the offspring from it belonged to the whole family. The income from flax sowing was widely allocated to women as personal property.

For widows, as we noted above, the community often allocated land even without the obligation to pay taxes. The world especially defended the provision of a widow left with a young son, seeing in him the future master. For example, in the serf still in the village of Yaroslavl ( 80s

18th century), the daughter-in-law of Maremyan Yakovleva left her father-in-law's house with her son. According to the agreement approved by the world, the father-in-law allocated to her and her grandson a part of the allotment and part of the purchased land, and, in addition, a share of bread, clothes and two cows. Such decisions were not uncommon.

If the widowed daughter-in-law had a daughter, not a son, then, as a rule, the land was not allocated to them, but the existence had to be ensured. The same community that gave land to Maremyana Yakovleva, at the beginning

XIX century decided: the father-in-law should provide the widow-daughter-in-law, left with the young daughter, with a “cell” (that is, a separate house), a cow and nine quarters of grain. In another case, the same world ordered the peasant Mikhail Emelin to support his daughter-in-law and his daughter, and if they want to live separately, give them 300 rubles to build a "cell".

For girls who did not marry, but wanted to live independently, the family had to provide housing and a share of movable property. This was done regardless of what kind of relationship they were with the highway: whether they were daughters, sisters, aunts, sister-in-law, daughters-in-law, etc. “In 1781, in the Nikolskaya estate, the Tyakin brothers, dividing the parental house among themselves, decided to the sister and aunt, if they wish to live separately, from “common capital” to build on their land a “cell with special peace” and “reward” with cattle, bread and clothes “without any offense”. In 1796, the Fedorov brothers undertook to provide their sister with "cells", grain and money. In 1812, the Ivanov brothers, fulfilling the will of their late father, ensured the independent existence of sister Pelageya with a “cell”, a cow, a grain supply and 150 rubles, etc. " (Chudnovsky, 1888; Alexandrov, 1979, 47-48; Alexandrov, 1984, 207, 212).

These are cases from the Rybinsk district. But the same was done in other areas, albeit with some local differences. Customary law was based on firm, stable principles, but the real practice of the village took into account the fate of a particular living person with all its features. Thus, collective social experience was accumulated, permeated with peasant economic knowledge and moral ideas.

But we lingered too long on the property matters of the family and community. Isn't it time to remember about completely different and very significant aspects of their life?

The peasant family had many peculiarities. First of all, it was a collective of people who managed jointly, and this trait determined a lot in family relations.

The peasant family had many peculiarities. First of all, it was a collective of people who managed jointly, and this trait determined a lot in family relations.

Much, but not all. The peasants showed the deepest marital and parental feelings. It would seem that there is nothing to prove here. The lyrics of Russian folklore, reflecting the richest range of strong and subtle feelings, are well known. However, a lot of bad things have been said in the literature about relations among the peasantry. As a rule, superficial observers snatched gloomy, not at all typical cases from the general calm and clear picture and on their basis made far-reaching conclusions. The basis for such dark colors, as noted by the modern researcher of the peasant family of the 18th-19th centuries N.A. ... Of course, if we proceed from court materials, it is possible to denigrate the life of any social stratum of any era. But, fortunately, historians and ethnographers have other documentary materials at their disposal.

“To my most lovable and most prejudicial concubine and our guardian of honor, and our health patroness, and all-honorable by the name of our common pleaser and our house, the most honest ruler Anna Vasilyevna, I send you my most humble bow and tearful petition and with our sincere, our reverence to you we wish you many years of health and spiritual salvation<...>I ask you, as you can, to write about your health, our all-gracious concubine, ”- this is what a peasant from Western Siberia Ivan Khudyakov wrote to his wife in 1797.

Ivan's style is bookish, florid. His fellow countryman, the peasant, Yegor Tropin, expressed the same feelings more simply. When they took him to the obligatory mining work, he fled from there to his native village, "with the intention of seeing his wife." After seeing his wife, Tropin came to the volost authorities to declare his act: he left without permission, “not enduring the extraordinary melancholy” that “attacked him” in separation from his wife (Minenko-1979, 123-124, 137-138).

NA Ivanitsky, who in the last quarter of the last century collected extensive and reliable material about the life of the peasantry in the Vologda province, considered the opinion about the underdevelopment of feelings in the peasant environment "completely false." To be convinced of this, it is enough to look at any of the many collections of songs that exist and are composed in the peasant environment, and in this collection, in particular, the section of love songs. “Any impartial person,” wrote Ivanitsky, “will say that such beautiful songs could only pour out of a heart filled with sincere love. There are love songs distinguished by such tenderness and depth of feeling and so impeccable in form that in fact it is somehow impossible to believe that they could be composed by illiterate village girls who do not have the slightest idea of ​​versification, meanwhile it is known reliably that girls -that is the songwriter; guys - poets are incomparably less common. "

According to Ivanitsky, the people themselves recognize a serious feeling in love, which cannot be joked with. On the basis of proverbs and conversations with peasants, he argued that for them "the feeling of love is the main incentive that makes a person work and take care of acquiring property in view of the future welfare of his family"; “Cordial relations between husband and wife are preserved until the end of life” (Ivanitsky, 57-58).

The sources clearly show the peasant view of the family as the most important and indispensable condition for the life of every peasant. It is expressed in petitions on various issues, in which they refer in support of their request to the need to start a family, provide for a family, etc .; in the verdicts of assemblies concerning family matters and the relationship of young people; in worldly decisions containing individual characteristics (when appointing guardians, choosing elders, issuing feed passports, etc.).

"An unmarried person is not considered a real peasant among us," wrote from the Ilyinsky volost of the Rostov district of the Yaroslavl province. A single lifestyle was considered a deviation from the norm, a strangeness. The family was perceived as the economic and moral basis for a correct lifestyle. “Society forbids a single person to be a master,” it was reported at the end of the 19th century from the Volkhov district of the Oryol province.

The peasants' recognition of the role of the family in the material and moral well-being of a person, the continuity of generations was reflected in numerous proverbs that were widely used throughout the territory of the settlement of Russians: single - half a person; the family pot is always boiling; family porridge boils thicker; the porridge is thicker in the family; family and thresh peas; family consent is the most expensive; as our parents lived, so they told us to live; our fathers did not do this, and they did not tell us; our fathers did not know this, and they did not order us; the king himself will not judge father and son; husband to wife father, wife to husband a crown; children can live by their father's mind, but they cannot live by their father's goodness. (GME, 912, fol. 28; 1806, fol. 8v .; Dal, II, 724, IV, 11, 173; Minenko, 1983, 87-88.)

At the head of the peasant family was one person - a highway. His position as a leader in moral, economic and even administrative terms was recognized by all members of the family, the community and even the authorities. The meeting of the community consisted of such heads of each family, and, consequently, of the household yard.

Bolshak, as a rule, became by the right of seniority. The oldest man in the family could transfer his rights to another family member.

It was universally accepted that the highway should be in charge of the entire economy and be responsible for the welfare of the family. He solved the issues of buying and selling, leaving to earn money, distributing work in the family. The sensible head of the household usually consulted with the whole family or with one of the elders on significant issues. This is how they talked about it in 1897 in the Zadneselskaya volost of the Vologda region: the highway “acts independently, but almost always consults with some family members beforehand, especially in important matters. With whom to "advise" in this case - at the will of the highway, but, of course, mainly with the elders in the family. "

Bolshak had the right, according to peasant ideas, to elect and reprimand for laziness, economic omissions or moral misconduct. A correspondent from the Bryansk district of the Oryol province wrote that the owner treats his household strictly, imperatively, and often takes a commanding tone. Of course, much depended on the character of the head and the general spirit of the family.

In the evening, the highway distributed the work for the next day, and its orders were subject to strict execution. There was a long-term practice of distributing household chores in a Russian family by sex and age. But each area had its own characteristics.

In the Velsk district of the Vologda province, for example, men worked in the field during sowing. The eldest son plowed, the father sowed, the teenager harrowed. At this time, married women were planting vegetables, and the girls were weaving. After the end of the sowing of spring crops and before the start of haymaking, the men prepared the fields for winter crops, and the women and girls went to the forest for birch bark - prepared for sale. At the same time, the girls' money went to themselves for new clothes, and from women - for general family needs.

During the harvest and haymaking, everyone united. After the harvest, the men used to carry the grain from the fields, while the women harvest the vegetables. As a rule, the girls were in charge of the flax harvesting. During threshing, the whole family got up at two in the morning and finished work at the threshing floor by 10 in the morning. The rest of the day the men used to trim the hedges, or harvest pitch, or go hunting. The women spun flax and tended livestock.

Yarn and caring for livestock remained women's work in the winter.

Cooking was their concern all year round. In winter, men drove tar, prepared firewood, transported logs from the forest, repaired sledges, carts and harness, weaved baskets, and hunted. Children and adolescents helped both.

In the story of a resident of the Smolensk region of the same time (Dorogobuzhsky district), the distribution of jobs by sex and age looks similar, with only slightly different details. Men uprooted stumps, plowed, mowed, brought firewood from the forest, etc. The women prepared food; looked after poultry, pigs, cows; were engaged in a vegetable garden; washed, sewn, spun, weaved; women's work was also harvesting, rowing hay, helping with threshing, etc. The girls participated in the harvest, raking up hay, carrying sheaves, harrowing; they sewed, spun, looked after minors. The adolescents rode with horses at night, drove manure, helped to harrow, carried lunch in the field, and looked after young children during the harrowing season.

A. A. Lebedev from the village of Sugonov, Kaluga district, noted that they did not have a clear distinction between male and female jobs. For example, the mowing of meadows and grain was a man's work, but it was also done by women. Yet he showed the basic distribution of occupations. Men corrected and procured tools; worked with an ax near the house; they chopped down and brought in timber, fixed the hut; they surrounded the estate with a tynom, transported and carried weights; sowing, etc. The women stoked the stoves, milked the cows, fed the cattle, looked after the birds, looked after the children (if there were no adolescents). Of agricultural work here, plowing, harrowing, harvesting (with a sickle), tying mown crops, pulling flax and hemp, planting potatoes, turning hay, winding manure were considered women.

The traditional scheme of distribution of work, naturally, required concrete decisions on a daily basis, depending on the season, the weather, the real possibilities of the family, etc. This was done by the highway. The life of each family made many amendments to the common tradition. In particular, the temporary care of men to earn money led to the fact that many men's jobs had to be done by women.

The distribution of household chores between the female part of the family was carried out not by the highway, but by his wife, the big lady (elder). Usually it was the mother and mother-in-law for the rest of the women. With widows on the highway (grandfather, father, uncle or brother), the elder daughter-in-law or the unmarried sister of the highway, according to his decision, was a big one. The Bolshaya ran the entire household, was, as it were, the right hand of the highway, distributed the "outfit" for work to other women and specific instructions on cooking and other matters, in case of negligence or slovenliness "reprimanded".

This is how, for example, women's household chores were distributed in the middle of the 19th century in the Voronezh province (villages on the left bank of the Voronezh River). In turn, the women were "orderlies". That was the name of the woman who on that day did all the main housework: stoked the stove, cooked food, “put on the table”, washed dishes, fed chickens and pigs, and milked cows. The rest of the women, as a rule, did not help her - after all, they had to do the same in their turn. The women baked the bread one by one, as well as the cakes for the holidays.

But here's what is remarkable. The mother-in-law provided the newly arrived daughters-in-law in the family for a year or even two privileges: she released them from the duties of a "orderly", "sent the day itself for them." How much the real life of a peasant family was more complex and subtle in relationships than it looks in conventional schemes!

The one of the daughters-in-law who entered the family first, enjoyed the right of “first marriage,” that is, some seniority that did not depend on age. The girls in the family did not have their next day. Before marriage, the girls worked only “for themselves,” that is, they spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered their dowry and their maiden clothes. Or they did something for sale with the same purpose: to buy fabric, clothing, shoes, jewelry or trimmings.

If a daughter remained forever in girls, she had an advantage over her daughters-in-law in her own home, became the second mistress after her mother. But after the death of her father and mother, she became, according to custom, on a par with her daughters-in-law, was an orderly and “worked for the family,” and not for herself. Her position in the family then became the same as that of a single man.

Having told about all these customs of the "usmans", as he calls them, that is, the peasants of the modern Novo-Usmansky district of the Voronezh region, the priest of the village of Tamlyk Nikolai Scriabin concluded: "There are no disputes, enmity and fights between women in a family" (AGO - 9, 66, l. 18-20; GME, PO, l. 1-2; 516, l. 15; 1564, l. 10; TsGIA, 381, 1475, l. I, 70).

Tidiness in the house was the responsibility of the hostess. If she was not very burdened with small children, then even in a residential hut (a peasant house was usually divided into a hut and an upper room), the floor was always clean. But they especially monitored the cleanliness in the upper room. They washed and scrubbed the floor, benches, table, and before the holidays - and the walls.

There were certain prayer duties on the highway and the bolshukh. So, the owner read a prayer before the general meal. General women's work began to be performed only after the prayer of the big woman. The eldest of the women baptized the water and all the food left overnight (IE, 355, fol. 41v .; GME, 980, fol. 3; AGO-61, 12, fol. 16).

As a rule, the eldest man in the house became the highway, but if he did not cope well with the duties of the head of the household, the custom allowed the family to change him. After all, any, even a modest, peasant farm demanded attention, ingenuity, knowledge. Under certain circumstances, the change of the highway is reported from different provinces.

From the Vologda province (Zadneselskaya volost) they wrote that the highway can be displaced "by the common consent of the testes," that is, family members. About the village of Davshin, Poshekhonsky uyezd, Yaroslavl province, the following characteristic remark was written on this occasion in 1849: “Each complex family obeys one master (in the local way - a highway), and women, besides the owner, also a mistress (the eldest of them is a bolshoi) ... Everyone in the family firmly knows and has been taught by experience that for the happiness of the family it is necessary that everyone obey the one eldest, smartest and most experienced in the family, on whom all economic arrangements would depend. Therefore, where there is no father, there, with the general consent of family members, either an uncle, or one of the brothers, depending on reason, experience and quickness, is chosen to go to highways. that sometimes the younger takes precedence over the older in years, without offense to them. The same should be said about women. "

We find a similar statement about the Russian peasants of Altai. “If a family is dissatisfied with its highway, if the latter drinks a bitter one, if he is“ spoiled ”and carelessly manages the household, the family, by its own collective discretion, puts someone else in its place, and in case of a dispute resorts to peace, which replaces the unfit highway. ".

If the family could not decide on its own the issue of changing the highway (whether due to its stubbornness or disagreement between the "testisers"), peace entered the business. In the Tula district in the 70s of the XIX century, it was noted that the "society" itself appointed a new highway in the family in the event of a malfunction in the discharge of the old obligations to the world. For the Novgorod province, the right of the community to appoint a highway is described in the absence of the previous owner. The responses of the residents of the Vladimir province also indicated that the world could deprive the highway of its rights for drunkenness, wastefulness, or negligence; the gathering did this at the joint request of family members. Sometimes the highway was set aside by the volost court. In general, those offended by the highway or the big one could find protection from the world and the volost court (TsGIA -381, 1475, fol. 11; GME, 51, fol. 2; Arkhangelsky, 47; Chudnovsky - 1894, fol. 60-, 65; Annual meeting , 32; Mikhalenko, 296).

So, the highway is the head of the family, the older man, but if he does not manage the household well, then he is deprived of this right: the family itself or the community replaces him. The peasant social consciousness recognized the hereditary head - but only as long as he was fit for this role. Accordingly, as we will see below, the peasants did not treat unconditionally to the hereditary rights of the monarch. The family life of the peasants, the family, as the main economic unit, does not give grounds to see the roots of modern social passivity in the “patriarchalism” of the old village.

The peasant's commitment to preserving the inviolable right of the "yard", the family as a whole, to own the entire farm was condemned by some authors in pre-revolutionary journals, and modern historians sometimes interpret this as a feudal relic, backwardness, an obstacle to capitalist development. But if you take a closer look at peasant life and think about the problems of the countryside in the light of the path traveled later, it turns out that in this peasant position there was much that was reasonable, ensuring the stability of the “yard” as the primary and basic economic unit. With this view, the mythical "backwardness" turns into a valuable social experience that takes into account national, natural and other peculiarities.

General sections of the economy, the allocation of individual sons who wished to live independently - this was possible according to customary law and was done by the decision of the family itself or the community (in the event of a conflict in the family). But the peasantry did not want to allow the allocation of a share of the farm for sale, that is, to give the opportunity to ruin the courtyard to those family members who do not want to manage in the countryside, found work for themselves in the city. However, the interests of such family members were reasonably taken into account. They were allocated, as a rule, a sum of money in compensation for their share in the economy, according to peasant ideas.

S. L. Chudnovsky, who observed the life of a Russian village in Altai in the 80s of the last century, wrote: “Usually, when a parent leaves home, when he leaves home, he thinks about the degree of his participation in the acquisition of family property, and partly about his personal disposition to the one that stands out. The world almost never interferes in this matter, unless the father or his substitute most of the time themselves want it. "

Of all the relatives, the elderly or sick parents had the greatest rights to security, according to customary peasant law. They were certainly provided, regardless of whether they remained in the house of their son, who became an independent owner, or lived separately.

Women had special rights to property in the peasant household. This is at odds with the conventional belief that women were powerless in property matters. In fact, peasant customary law provided for various possibilities here. Everywhere among Russian peasants there was a custom, according to which the father had to provide his daughters with a dowry. This rule was the same both in written state law and in popular customary law. If the father died, the brothers had to give the dowry. As a rule, movable property was given as a dowry: the allocation of a dowry was not supposed to violate the foundations of the economy. The property received as a dowry remained to a certain extent at the personal disposal of the wife in the husband's house. The degree of its independence in this respect had differences - local, as well as by types of property. In the Urals, for example, the personal (not family-wide) property of women was considered to be income from that part of the land that the family rented with money brought in as a dowry. It was also there that it was customary to allocate garden beds to women, the income from which went to their personal disposal. If sheep were given as a dowry, then the income from the sale of wool from them also belonged to the woman personally. Among the Ural Russian peasants, in general, the cattle brought as a dowry was considered the property of the daughter-in-law, and the offspring from it belonged to the whole family. The income from flax sowing was widely allocated to women as personal property.

For widows, as we noted above, the community often allocated land even without the obligation to pay taxes. The world especially defended the provision of a widow left with a young son, seeing in him the future master. For example, in the serf still in the village of Yaroslavl ( 80s

18th century), the daughter-in-law of Maremyan Yakovleva left her father-in-law's house with her son. According to the agreement approved by the world, the father-in-law allocated to her and her grandson a part of the allotment and part of the purchased land, and, in addition, a share of bread, clothes and two cows. Such decisions were not uncommon.

If the widowed daughter-in-law had a daughter, not a son, then, as a rule, the land was not allocated to them, but the existence had to be ensured. The same community that gave land to Maremyana Yakovleva, at the beginning

XIX century decided: the father-in-law should provide the widow-daughter-in-law, left with the young daughter, with a “cell” (that is, a separate house), a cow and nine quarters of grain. In another case, the same world ordered the peasant Mikhail Emelin to support his daughter-in-law and his daughter, and if they want to live separately, give them 300 rubles to build a "cell".

For girls who did not marry, but wanted to live independently, the family had to provide housing and a share of movable property. This was done regardless of what kind of relationship they were with the highway: whether they were daughters, sisters, aunts, sister-in-law, daughters-in-law, etc. “In 1781, in the Nikolskaya estate, the Tyakin brothers, dividing the parental house among themselves, decided to the sister and aunt, if they wish to live separately, from “common capital” to build on their land a “cell with special peace” and “reward” with cattle, bread and clothes “without any offense”. In 1796, the Fedorov brothers undertook to provide their sister with "cells", grain and money. In 1812, the Ivanov brothers, fulfilling the will of their late father, ensured the independent existence of sister Pelageya with a “cell”, a cow, a grain supply and 150 rubles, etc. " (Chudnovsky, 1888; Alexandrov, 1979, 47-48; Alexandrov, 1984, 207, 212).

These are cases from the Rybinsk district. But the same was done in other areas, albeit with some local differences. Customary law was based on firm, stable principles, but the real practice of the village took into account the fate of a particular living person with all its features. Thus, collective social experience was accumulated, permeated with peasant economic knowledge and moral ideas.

But we lingered too long on the property matters of the family and community. Isn't it time to remember about completely different and very significant aspects of their life?

Russian families in the foreseeable historical period were:

1. simple, small, consisting of two generations of relatives in a straight line (parents and children);
2. complex, uniting 3 or 4 generations, sometimes relatives on the lateral line and in-laws (such families were also called large or undivided);
3. 3) folding, contractual, uniting not necessarily relatives, but also non-native strangers - for economic reasons.

In Russian families, despite the presence of different generations of relatives, they never entered into marriages within the family; there were no marriages even between second cousins ​​and sisters. Only relatives in the sixth generation could marry. In addition to the prohibition on marriage with close relatives, marriages with other religions were prohibited; in addition, society condemned unequal marriages (people from different social strata) and multiple marriages.

Peasant family life was based mainly on the observance of old customs and traditions; formal legislative marriage and family law did not play such a significant role in the life of peasants. So, even in ancient Russian documents, the rights of a woman to property acquired with her husband, the right to divorce, etc. were attested. But in fact, there was no question of any "equality" of men and women - the man always remained families".

For peasants, marriage was not only a guarantee of prosperity, independence and weight in society (community), it was also a moral duty. This view of the family was also supported by the church. Family and marriage relations were in the field of vision of the entire rural society and depended on public opinion. Only married people were eligible at rural gatherings, had the opportunity to get land for allotment, to start an independent farm, for the normal existence of which both male and female hands were needed. Hence the high level of marriage in the Russian countryside in the 18th - early 20th centuries.

Although with the more frequent departure of individual family members to the city and the outlined weakening of family ties, large families began to lose their economic importance, at that time the old fertility rates were still in force. On average in Russia, a peasant family had three children.

Many of the old features of the marriage relationship persisted into the 1930s. This primarily refers to the nature of premarital communication among young people, their behavior and conditions of marriage. In the countryside, communication among young people was of a narrow-territorial nature; at the conclusion of marriage, the role of residence and joint work was predominant. Communication of young people and courtship in the premarital time took place in winter at gatherings and parties, and in the summer - at festivities.

Parents played a decisive role in the marriage of children. It was believed that the choice of married couples was exclusively their business. Young people were rarely given freedom of choice; however, parents could enter into marriage contracts, taking into account the mutual inclination of the children. The parental decision was indisputable, they obeyed him unquestioningly.

Before the matchmaking, they usually found out the financial situation of the bride's family, the family's reputation, and inquired about the girl's qualities. Public opinion in youth marriages also played a role, they listened to it, especially the assessment of the bride and groom - "are they suitable for each other." When entering into marriage, economic considerations were decisive: the desire to enter a well-to-do family, to get extra working hands, to bring an employee or a worker into the house. Diligence and endurance were most often valued in the bride and groom, and the good reputation of their families was also important.

Early marriages were also driven by economic considerations. Singles did not receive a land allotment, and therefore did not have rights either in the family or in society. Unmarried women did not have independence. Economic and moral necessity forced the peasants to start a family at the earliest opportunity, and hence the early marriages, and the age inequality of the spouses (it happened that the bride was older than the groom).

Since 1874, with the introduction of universal military service in Russia, the age of marriage for men rose to 24-25 years (after serving in the army), for women it averaged 18-22 years. Later, it remained unchanged, there were only differences in individual regions.

The peasants attached great importance to pre-wedding customs - matchmaking, collusion about the conditions of marriage ("binges", "conceptions"), final consent to marriage ("mating"), the bride's dowry, the groom's contribution to wedding expenses ("laying"). These customs had the status of legal principles in the registration of marriage, which after them could be dissolved only in exceptional circumstances. The groom in such cases compensated for the broken word with a sum of money, and the church, in addition to this, took a fine in its favor.

The girl had to marry necessarily with a dowry. The dowry was prepared in the family, mostly by the bride herself, and usually consisted of clothes and household utensils; however, cattle, land, money could also be given. It was the property of a married woman who was inherited by her children or her paternal family in the event of her death.

There were special traditions associated with marriage. In addition to the already mentioned prohibitions on marrying close relatives, non-believers and members of another social circle, there was also a prohibition of marriages with godfathers and their offspring, with godparents and godchildren, since they were considered relatives in a spiritual (religious) sense. There was also a custom of seniority in marriage (older children married earlier than younger children, they preferred to see sons married before daughters), but it was not strictly observed: very often economic considerations made it possible to bypass this rule.

Getting intimate before marriage was considered a shame. The birth of children out of wedlock in the Russian countryside invariably met with condemnation from society and led to material deprivation of the family, since such children were considered illegitimate and they were not supported by their fathers. Under conditions of general condemnation, and sometimes even ridicule, the illegitimate birth rate remained steadily low. The financial situation of children born out of wedlock was difficult. Although the boys, growing up, could receive land, but when families were divided, before they became adults, they were deprived of their assigned share.

Divorce in the peasant mind was a sin, and the church held the same position. Adultery, infidelity of one of the spouses were not too reprehensible acts in the system of moral coordinates of the Russian peasant to be considered as a basis for divorce and the creation of a new family. In this case, the peasant world expected from the husband not a divorce from the unfaithful wife, but her punishment. At the same time, the infidelity of the spouse was condemned by public opinion less severely than the betrayal of the wife. In extremely rare cases, divorce was considered permissible: in cases of escape from the village, conviction to hard labor, etc. However, dissolution of a marriage in rural families was almost impossible - for his marriage, the permission of the highest spiritual authority, that is, the Synod, was required. Re-marriages of divorced people were also rare. Remarriages usually occurred among widows.

The functions of the rural family as a family of a production nature contributed to the preservation of the gender and age division of labor and the various responsibilities of its members, regardless of whether the family was small or remained undivided. Men performed field work, care for livestock, procurement of firewood, fodder for livestock, construction; women were engaged in housekeeping, raising children, doing field work easier.

With such a strict delineation of responsibilities, a significant role of a woman has always remained as the main manager of household chores, organizer of family life, comfort, leisure and educator of children. A special position in the family was occupied by a “big woman” - the wife of a man who was older in age and status in the family. She subordinated to herself the entire female composition of the family, taking advantage of her position as the person closest to her head, and was often the first adviser to her “master”.

Village children have always had their responsibilities in the family. They helped with household chores (cleaning the house, working in the garden); boys were taught early on to male work - to graze cattle, handle horses, work in the field; girls were taught to sew, knit, take care of younger children. But children were introduced not only to work, but also to their spiritual experience, educating each child's character, making sure that each one eventually becomes a creator, the creator of his own family. The older generation of relatives (grandparents) rather than parents passed on family traditions and experience (especially work skills) to their grandchildren. In this they relied on the law, custom, the example of ancestors, thereby instilling respect for elders, hard work, the ability to behave decently in society, and gave moral education in a religious form. The means and methods of education depended on the age of the child. For the elders, it was compulsory to be included in the working life of the family and the community, for the younger ones, participation in games and festive amusements, especially the folk calendar. Upbringing was more complete when several generations were present in the family, and here the role of not only the elders, but also children of all ages was important, for their self-education took place. The role of the spiritual parents of children - godparents is also great.

Intergenerational ties with relatives have never been interrupted. In the village, they were everyday and versatile. Assistance in various jobs was facilitated by the territorial proximity of relatives. In addition, in the process of sharing leisure time (family events and holidays), family members could receive moral support, advice, and the exchange of life experience.

The children helped the separated parents in all household chores, and the parents and other older relatives, in turn, raised the children. Brothers and sisters were also strong in the Russian countryside, based on mutual assistance and moral support. In cases of the death of parents, the older children took care of and raised the younger ones: "We went up after the brother," they said in such cases.

The employment of people at work and in household chores has always been great, but different depending on the season. In agricultural areas, men were more busy working in the spring, at the end of summer and in autumn, in areas with livestock farming - in winter, when there was harvesting and removal of manure to the fields and the delivery of fodder. For women, the whole year passed in work and household chores. Rest came only on Sundays and holidays, as well as at family celebrations (weddings, baptisms, name days). However, on Sundays and holidays, wedging into the working rhythm, there were 110 days a year. Thus, a fairly even distribution of rest and work was observed in the village.

The way of life and the whole way of life of the inhabitants of the city differed in many respects from the structure of a peasant family. In the second half of the XIX century. - the beginning of the twentieth century. in the working environment, the most common was a small family of two or three generations - only one of the married sons, usually the youngest, remained to live with their parents.

The size of the working family was different in the provinces of Russia. In large cities during this period, half of the families of workers were two-generation families with 1-2 children. In small towns and industrial villages, families had more children (up to 3-5 children). This family composition was due to the low standard of living; in addition, infant mortality was high.

The working family differed from the peasant family in economic terms. Women among workers often worked in factories and factories on an equal basis with men, and since the earnings of a working family consisted of the "shares" of husband and wife, which often differed little, this in turn created the basis for more equal relations than in a peasant family. For working women, marriage under duress was not typical - a common occurrence among the peasantry until the 1920s.

The workload of a woman in a working-class family at the beginning of the 20th century, if she worked in production, was enormous. Laws on labor protection of pregnant women and nursing mothers were absent until 1912. Women worked until the very birth, sometimes giving birth at the machines, which led to high child mortality, postpartum complications, and serious female diseases. If in peasant families little children were always looked after by one of their own - old people or older children, then in workers' families children were often left either unattended or in the arms of seven or nine-year-old nannies. (Ten-year-old female workers in Russian factories were common.) Girls in working-class families often faced a much more severe school life than their peers in the countryside.

The cultural and everyday life of the working family was not the same in different regions of Russia, since the composition of the working class was heterogeneous, but the assimilation of urban forms of life was characteristic of all strata. In the area of ​​spiritual life, this was manifested in relation to marriage. Young workers were more free in choosing a marriage partner than peasants. The age of marriage in the working environment is higher: from 20 to 24 years for women, 25-26 years for men. However, collusion such as pre-registration of marriage, the bride's dowry and the groom's contribution to the wedding expenses were common in the work environment.

The main form of marriage was church - a church wedding. The church wedding was followed by parties. If a worker took a bride from his village, then the wedding was celebrated according to folk custom. Civil marriage was rare, mainly when one of the spouses was not divorced from his first wife. But the attitude of workers, especially women, towards civil marriage was extremely negative.

Relations between generations were formed differently than in the countryside. The younger generation became more independent, the power of the older one weakened. But the most characteristic phenomenon of this period was family divisions. The residence of parents with married sons now often became short-lived and was due to the lack of funds for a complete partition. Cohabitation of brothers' families happened very rarely. The separated small families became independent, and their ties with relatives increasingly began to manifest themselves in the form of everyday kindred mutual assistance and elementary kinship relations.

The family life of workers was complicated by such reasons as difficult working conditions, the lack of necessary housing conditions, the prevalence of social vices (drunkenness, prostitution, illegal abortions, cases of throwing children). Drunkenness was especially terrible, because of which many families were destroyed.