Pteranodon's View

Teranodon Visioneering

"Teranodon" is the way to say "Pteranodon" -- the name of a huge winged creature Pteranodon that saw the world develop over a hundred million years. This is the section on:

Life in Late Imperial South Russia, (Novorossiya), i.e. Northern Black Sea Region.

Life in Late Imperial South Russia, (Novorossiya) i.e. the Northern Black Sea Region from Bessarabia to Rostov and the Kuban was similar in many ways to life anywhere in the vast Russian empire, but there were differences.

The lifestyles of the nobility are of interest to this author only so far as they provide insight into how most people lived and their social consequences.  But we should note that Russian society was obsessed with rank.  Tsar Peter the Great (1689-1725) established the "Tchin" or table of ranks for the nobility in 1722.   This assigned people of substance to a military or civilian rank in fourteen categories.  Even the lowest grade (14th) of these "Tchinoviks", such as a college registrar was was entitled to be addressed as "Your Nobility".  As the rank increased so did the magnificence of the address: "Your High Origin", "Your Excellency", and "Your High Excellency".  Achievment of he 8th rank gained hereditary nobility.  Bucknell University has posted a table showing the ranks for the civil service, army, and navy.

Russia's attempted Westernization was reflected in the use of the Western titles prince, count and baron.  The only titles from the pre-Petrine era were those of tsar, and of Grand-Duke, which was used only for the imperial family.  Imperial Russia was generous in granting the title of prince.  It extended the honor to all with direct descent from someone who had ruled over any part of the empire at any time in the past.  Thus Tatar chiefs, Central Asian khans and Caucasian clan heads were all princes of the empire.    Imperial Russia also had many counts.  As for barons, they were less abundant, but included wealthy non-Russians (Scots, Jews, Germans) in finance and industry.

Late Imperial Russia had perhaps two million persons (out of a population of 125 million) who could claim to be noble.  Some were hereditary.  Some were the result of appointment to relatively minor positions.  Many had become impoverished by the late 19th century -- a frequent theme in Russian literature.   Those who were rich, were very rich.  Their lives were in a world unconnected to the existance of most people.  They usually ignored political issues and did nothing to make society function well.

The nobility had country estates but they never became a squirearchy involved in provincial issues beyond their estates.   The major landowners had estates scattered in many provinces and often never even visted them.  This in itself was enough to preclude the development of local power.

In the new lands of Imperial South Russia there were fewer country estates than in "Great Russia," which generally consisted of the lands conquered by Muscovy before 1552 -- when Ivan IV conquered the khanate of Kazan.

The imperial court rotated provincial governors before they could make local ties so that they, like the nobility, were isolated in their mansions.  Thus local authority, particularly in the provinces outside Great Russia, was the monopoly of tsarist officials, poorly paid, ignorant and corrupt.

Nevertheless, Imperial South Russia had some noble country estates -- notably Vorontosov's palace at Alupka, on the Southeast coast of Crimea, and in the same region at Livadiya near Yalta, the summer residence of the tsars.  Country estates were islands of wealth that dominated rural life in ways similar to the plantation owners of the southern US before the Civil War, and their owners saw themselves as the heart of Russian culture and values.   The manner in which the the nobility operated their country estates had major consequences for Russia, even in the remote provinces of Imperial South Russia.  The country estates were an extremely patriarchal society but torn with contradictions produced by the conflict between Russian traditional values and Western modernization.  Despite their generally conservative nature, they were often the source of attempts to reform society.

The world of the country estate is brought to life in a recent book by Priscilla R Roosevelt, Life on the Russian country estate: a social and cultural history, (Yale, 1995) DK142.R66 1995 ISBN 0-300-05595-1, 72 color & 158 b&w illustrations.  Roosevelt explores social, family, and cultural life on the estates, and appraises its strengths and weaknesses.  She also discusses the origin, design, and decoration of the houses;Here are some brief excerpts that set out the role of the country estate in Russian society:

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[There were] three quite different visions that seemingly ordered the world of the Russian landowner. The first ... celebrated the estate as an aristocrat's playground, a luxurious area of delight and fantasy. The second enshrined the estate as a patriarchal, self-contained world of ritualized tradition and festival. The third transformed the estate into the pastoral arcadia of poets and artists.

The Russian estate's lifespan [was] slightly over two centuries, from the reign of Peter the Great to the Bolshevik revolution ....  the majority [of great houses] were constructed during the nobility's brief "golden age" -- from the reign of Catherine II (1762-95) through that of Alexander I (1801-25).

Serfdom and Russian custom made the estate, like the nation to which it belonged, a study in contrasts, paradoxes, and extremes.

Russia's country estates began as isolated islands in a rural vastness. As these islands multiplied to form an interconnected archipelago, they acted as powerful cultural agents. Up to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 estate owners were the main, if not the sole purveyors of culture in the Russian provinces, bringing new styles,

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manners, information, and entertainment to the countryside. Moreover, the art, music, and ideas the cultural world of the estate engendered both set the tone of Russian high culture and transformed it during the imperial period.

Russians measured their wealth in terms of the number of dushi (literally "souls," refering to adult male serfs) they owned. Five thousand or more souls signified that the landowner was enormously wealthy; from eight hundred to five thousand, extremely well off; from two hundred to eight hundred, prosperous; from eighty to two hundred, average; and below eighty, not self sufficient. The vast majority of Russian nobles were the last two categories -- that is, too poor to do more than subsist on thier estates."

Although the decline of the state accelerated after 1861, its economic decline was well under way long before, and its cultural significance strong well after that date. Prior to the emancipation, estate life and nobility were virtually synonymous in that only hereditary nobles could own populated estates. Even after this bond was ruptured, the vision of the good life associated with the estate continued. Between emancipation and revolution a veritiable flood of memoirs and several new journals devoted to estate life appeared. Wealthy merchants, the new would-be aristocracy, commissioned country mansions designed in the evocative neoclassical style of a century earlier or bought out impoverished nobles --  a phenomenon Anton Chekov imortalized in The Cherry Orchard .

A major reason for the the resonance of estate culture was that on the estate landowners could replicate, transform, or reject the ruling, heirarchical structures of imperial Russia -- the autocracy, the bureaucracy, and the family -- in any way they found psychologically satisfying. Each of the three forms of estate life ... had deep roots in the idiosyncrasies of Russian culture and affected its further development, for each reflected a particular notion of the landowner's personal identity and of his larger social and cultural role. The first, that of the aristocratic playground, inaugurated state culture and gave it color. From the reign of Catherine to the war of 1812, courtiers and grandees used their palatial estate complexes for cultural fantasy and displays of personal refinement. The regal entertainments ordered by the aristocrats reflected a sense of boundless power within a realm where their word alone was law. This approach to estate life rapidly became anachronistic, for such levels of spending could not be sustained and a more refined morality began to condemn excess. Yet the habits of these early aristocats cast a long shadow on Russia's cultural development.

But in imperial mythology the tsar was was not merely an autocrat but also the father of his people: the Russian realm was his votchina, or patrimony. Many owners of estates both large and small considered themselves "little fathers" to their peasants. They viewed the estate as a patriarchy; its traditions embodied the best characteristics and the proper role of their social class. Indeed, in the absence of access to real political power, the landed nobility clung to this vision of estate life as a compensatory way of defining its position. The patriarchial approach to the countryside outlasted the emancipation of the serfs, persisting as the mainspring of estate life in a Russia poised on the brink of the industrial era.

Russia's educated elite -- its writers, artists, visionaries, and prophets -- had yet a third vision of estate life. For many of them the estate was a retreat, a refuge from the official world they despised. It offered an idyllic space where ideas could be expressed without fear of cnesorship, where the true Russia might be found, where artistic talent

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could be nurtured. On the estate the cultured were free to develop their ideas and gifts. Some also championed the talents of the numerous serfs whose work as craftsmen, artists, musicians, and actors made the splendor of estate life possible and who were laying the foundations for Russian culture at its height. Others seized on the thorough but inefficent exploitation of serf labor as the most glaring example of Russia's inequalities, injustices, and economic and social backwardness. Among a critical minority of nobles ... this aroused a call for rebirth in the image of the West. But other thinkers, concerned by the elite's apostacy from the culture of Old Russia, searched for their native roots in the countryside and found them in peasant traditions and values. By the 1830s this search had given birth to Slavophilism, which embraced patriarchial estate life as the natural order for Russia. Even after the emancipation a cultural elite no less obsessed with peasant Russia continued to use estates to esperiment with reclaiming its native heritage, a cultural ricorso cut short by the Bolshevik revolution.

...The backwardness of rural Russia and the plight of its peasants polarized Russian public opinion both before and after 1861, coloring much of what was written about estate life. ... The revolution of 1905, the outbreak of war in 1914, and a second, greater revolution in 1914, followed by civil war, brought doom to the Russian estate.

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In Eugene Onegin Alexander Puskin was perhaps the first to portray country living as the source of natural Russian virute, a theme taken up by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and continued by writers right up to today. ...  In reality Russian estate owners, like their European counterparts, were divided between transient aristocrats and permanent inhabitants, sensitive, cultivated men and women and semiliterate boors. ...  Pushkin's lyrical portrait of the Larin family on its rural estate was soon challenged by its literary counterimage, evident in the chicancery of Nikolai Gogol's provincial traders in dead souls.

... Gogol's stories of the Ukrainian countryside of his boyhood...

... Chekhov's later portraits of estates populated by bewildered nobles unable to deal with their new circumstances, a world ... that evokes an ominous grayness, a mood of uncertainty and pathos, the suggestion of an imminent, menacing storm. ...  [ Also see.]

... the literary portraits are brilliant but oversimplified and, even when nostralgic or elegiac, largely negative. ... We are presented with the hedonistic, cruel, or improvident arisocrat, the ignorent, coarse, or helpless smallholder, or the "superfluous man," as Russian intellectuals dubbed the many eccentric or aimless nobles to be found in the provinces.

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The Crimean War ... aroused widespread partiotism, anger, and despair. ... Nicholas's troops were magnificent on parade but unprepared for battle. ...  The recruits were serfs; for want of railroads, they had to march thousands of miles on scant provisions, to confront an enemy far better equipped and trained than they. ...  Russian defeats in this war, which revealed the nakedness of the old system, made the end of serfdom inevitable.

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The Emancipation Proclamation of February 19, 1861, fundamentally altered the age-old compact between noble and tsar, and the relationship between lord and peasant, thereby dooming estate culture as it had existed for over a century. ... Most landowners understood the moral necessity of emanicipation and the social chaos that might ensue if their villagers were merely emancipated and not given land to support their families. ...  But many, already in dire economic straits, resisted giving up more land than they had to, resorting to ploys, such as the hasty transfer of village serfs to their houshold staff to lower the number of serfs entitled to land. ... The emancipation ruined struggling landowners, though historians still debate the devastating effect on the nobility as whole.

For Russian Orthodox Church use of icons and other features and practices go here.

The reforms of Peter the Great had incorporated the Chruch into the state apparatus.  It was subordinate to the state but the state required the people to use its services for the registration of the changes in daily life -- birth, marriage, and death.  The working level priests lived in poverty on a meagre salary of sixty rubles a year and fees from the peasants, who saw him as greedy.  

The Church heirarchy did not promote village priests.   Rather, they they drew from the thousands of monasteries in Imperial Russia.  The monasteries limited their activites to contemplation and prayer -- they did not provide teaching or healing for the outside community.

Read I.S. Belliustin, Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia: The memoirs of a Nineteenth Century Parish Priest.

For an Orthodox Church view of the Origin of the Muscovite patriarchate and relations between patriarch and tsar go here.

For an Orthodox Church view of the Orthodox Churches in Imperial Russia in the 19th Century go here.

Daily life included much religious ceremonial.  The Orthodox Russians and Ukrainians observed rigorous fasts, with total abstinence from animal products, including eggs and milk. --  Most kept the Great Fast of seven weeks in Lent and attemded the Easter Mass. nbsp;They could also fast for the six weeks before Christmas Eve, for the five weeks of St. Peter's Fast in May and June, and for the two weeks of the Assumption in August.  The pious could even fast for two days each week during the remainder of the year -- on Wednesday to mark the treachery of Judas and on Friday to mark the death of Jesus.

For current Orthodox Church guidelines on fasting in the US go here, or here.

For the official Web server of the Moscow Patriarchate go here.

For Orthodox Christian resources on the internet go here.

Millions of the Orthodox continued to reject the Church reforms of the 17th century.  These "Old Believers" ( raskolniks) were a perennial problem for the tsarist autocracy.  Their actions included refusing to accept military service -- which was mandatory.

Unfortunately people who were not Orthodox Christians had a difficult time, particularly after the Russification programs began in the 1880's.  Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and particularly Jews, all suffered discrimination.  Many emigrated to North America

The inteligentsia were mostly atheist but were rare in Imperial South Russia, being found mostly in urban areas and country estates.

During the late 19th century there was explosive growth of industrialization.  By the early 20th century Imperial Russia was the fourth largest industrial power in the world, with the highest growth rate of any major country, and was being flooded with foreign investment capital.

Imperial Russia also experienced an explosion in the number of industrial workers.  Working conditions and wages were improving but most of the new wealth went to the rich nobility.   However, the worker's cost of housing and food was lower than in the west, which compensated for lower pay rates and produced a comparable disposable income.  Communist propaganda, both before and after the Revolution of 1917, considerably overstated their material exploitation  Workers were not noticeably worse off than their western European counterparts.  Their main problems related to the abuse of power by the autocracy, rather than to their economic circumstances.

There was no elected parliament in the 19th century to cushion the shocks between the autocracy and the people.  Instead the people were subjected to the full force of a vast and venal bureaucracy with centralized bungling and petty tyranny, that became the archetype for future statist systems.

The state controlled much of trade and industry and there was little in the way of independent bourgeois classes.  Most Russian towns, including those in Imperial South Russia, were military bases, administrative centers, or as in the case of Yalta in the Crimea, wintering places for the nobility. Odessa, established as a free city by the Duc de Richelieu in the late 18th century, was a rare exception.

Meanwhile, the rich nobility continued to get richer and to live in their separate world of privilege.  They spent carefree days with little worry -- at least before the early 20th century -- their privileged and comfortable existence would ever change.  However, there was increasing political agitation to make them aware of the problems of injustices and poverty that accompanied the rapid industrialization that provided the new wealth.   However, literacy spread rapidly, particularly in the cities, and critics were increasingly successful in by passing tsarist censorship and repression.

The rigidity of the autocracy continued to marginalize those reformers who sought incremental change on the British model.   Thus terrorism against autocratic rule -- which was developed in the 18th century as the main political alternative to autocracy -- remained a major political factor.   In 1881 this reached the tsar himself, when a bomb blast tore off Alexander II's leg and killed him.  Ironically this led to replacement of a relatively liberal tsar -- Alexander II had liberated the serfs -- with the the reactionary Alexander III.   In 1894 he was succeeded by Nicholas II, a gentle recluse devoted to his family.  But Nicholas lacked any response to the need for change other than to continue the autocracy.  He lacked the verve and ruthlessness necessary for a successful autocrat in difficult times, such as was demonstrated by Peter I -- who executed his own son for treason -- and Catherine II  -- who eliminated her husband to become tsarina.   Both Peter and Catherine gained the the tile"the Great" because of their skill in autocratic rule.

After the trauma of a revolution that nearly overthrew tsarism, the tsar called the First Duma in 1906.  The prime minister, and interior minister, Piotr Arkadevich Stolypyn introduced reforms, which replaced the cumbersome and unjust system of payment and of land distribution that had followed the emancipation edict.  This had allocated land to the mir (peasant community) rather than to individuals, which had proved impractical.  Stolpyn's reforms broke many of the mirs into individual holdings.  This vigorous campaign to transfer land to the peasants was designed to create a class of loyal peasant landowners.  He actively enforced the policy of repression of revolutionary activities.  In 1911 he was assassinated and the autocracy lost its vision of reform.

The Great War and the Communist system of totalitarianism established by Lenin and Stalin would soon make the lives of peasants, and almost everyone else, far more miserable than they had been under the tsarist autocracy.

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