Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century

Description

To understand Russian history without understanding serfdom--the peasant-lord relationship that shaped Russia for centuries--is impossible. Still, before Jerome Blum, no scholar had tackled the subject in depth. Monumental in scope and pathbreaking in its analysis, Lord and Peasant in Russia garnered immediate attention upon its publication in 1961, a year that also marked the one hundredth anniversary of the emancipation of the Russian serfs. As one reviewer remarked, No better book on the subject exists; it is indispensable to the serious student of Russia.? On a scale befitting Russia--a sixth of the earth's land mass--Blum's book explored in almost seven hundred pages the legal and social evolution of its predominantly agricultural population, the types of peasant status, and the multifaceted nature of the master-peasant relationship. More important, Blum was the first to articulate the necessity of placing serfs front and center in the study of Russian history. As a reviewer for the Economist wrote, Mr. Blum has written not just a monograph on landlords and peasants in Russia but a history of Russia from a particular point of view. There is no denying that the history of a country where . . . a bare 13 percent of the population was urban can with impunity be written in terms of landlords and peasants. In 1962, it was awarded the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association; it remains a cornerstone of Russian historiography. Foreword Contents Abbreviations Introduction Kievan Russia 1 The First Age of Expansion 2 Peasant Communes and Private Landowners 3 Estate Organization and Labor Force The Mongol Era 4 The Tatar Yoke: Age of Decline 5 Landlords of the Mongol Era 6 Black People and Landlords’ Peasants 7 Peasants, Slaves, and Peons The 16th and 17th Centuries 8 A New Era of Economic Expansion 9 Absolutism and Aristocracy 10 Depression and Slow Recovery 11 Landlords in an Age of Revolution 12 Changes in the Seignioral Economy 13 The Plight of the Peasantry 14 The End of the Road The Last 150 Years of Serfdom 15 Trade and Industry 16 The Factory Labor Force 17 Agriculture 18 The Dvorianstvo Ascendancy 19 Rich Noble, Poor Noble 20 The Seignioral Economy 21 Masters and Serfs 22 Silent Obedience 23 The Non-Seigniotal Peasantry 24 The Village Community 25 Reformers, Rebels, and Abolitionists 26 The End of an Era 27 Some Conclusions and Generalizations Glossary List of Works Cited Index