The Peasant Movement during the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907) : An Analysis of the Prigovors

Abstract

The present paper seeks, by analysing the prigovors (resolutions of peasant assemblies), (a) to give a picture of the peasant movement in its diverse manifestations during the First Russian Revolution, and (b) to shed some new light upon the social consciousness of Russian peasants who gathered at village and regional (volost') assemblies (skhod). In accordance with the right of petition, which had just been granted them from above for the first time, Russian peasats sent a great number of the prigovors to the Tsar' and his officials during the spring and summer of 1905. In these prigovors, while demanding an agrarian reform, peasats often expressed their faith in the Tsar' himself. In this expression of faith to the Tsar' there was a possibility of their subordination to the tsarism. Simultaneously, influenced by Liberals, the Peasant Union began to organize a movement for the abolition of landed property, for reforms of the administrative system, and for improvement of people's welfare. The Union intended to back up its demands by compiling the prigovors at the peasant commune assemblies. During the period of "free days" (dni svobody) peasants also tried to reform their communities and to free themselves from governmental controls. They compiled the prigovors expressing their own revolutionary consciousness, which stemed from their own historical tradition. The Peasant Union, accordingly, expanded its network of subordinate organization in villages and districts. The defeat of the working-class struggle in towns, however, brought an end to the "free days" in villages, and preserved the peasants' faith in the Tsar'. Thus, the faith in the Tsar' turned into a "constitutional illusion" among those peasants who had such illusion, and they sent many prigovors and nakazes to the first two State Dumas, where their representatives received important assignment. By supporting the trudoviks' struggle in the first two State Dumas and by causing disturbances in villages, peasant movement retreated befor the reactionary tide of the First Russian Revolution.