THE RUSSIAN PEASANT

Anyone interested in or wishing to understand the roots of Putin’s ultra-nationalist Russia (and his territorial ambitions!) woild do well to read Ukranian nihilist Sergei Stepniak’s compelling study of The Russian Peasantry. Written over 120 years ago it helps explain not only the social plight of the peasant in 19th century Russia but, more importantly, the influence of revived orthodox and non-orthodox religion that persists at the cultural and political heart of modern-day Russia. Stepniak’s message was clear: “In the heart of Russia, the population is being starved out. Half a million a year virtually dying of hunger, starved to death.”
He carefully presents statistics revealing the abnormally high death-rate due “in the opinion of the Congress of Russian Surgeons, to ‘deficiency of food’.” Debt and usury were eating the hearts out of the villages, and an agrarian proletariat “landless and homeless” was growing through the whole of the Russian Empire. He described mass floggings of hundreds of peasants unable to pay their taxes, and criminal rates of interest charged on collective loans taken out by villages. He attacked the ‘Emancipation’ of the serfs: “Emancipation has utterly failed to realise the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters. . . It has failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole are worse off than they were before the emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in a condition not far removed from actual starvation – a fact which can neither be denied or concealed even by the official press.”