Political Economy of Rural Self-governance: the Case of the Village Communities in the Russian Empire after the Emancipation

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

This dissertation employs archival records of communal regulations to assess how village self-governance shaped life of the peasants in the Russian Empire after the Abolition of Serfdom in 1861. I focus on the role of the official peasant self-governing mechanisms – the village and volost’ assemblies. I show that assemblies constituted a robust governing mechanism, allowing peasants to respond with necessary collective decisions to the changing social and physical environment. Village self-governance had a distinctive role in the lives of the Russian peasants. That role is far off from that assigned to it by contemporaries, state officials or scholars interested in the grand historic narratives. Perhaps, it alone could not have caused or prevented agrarian crisis or collapse of the Empire. But village self-governance was essential for the day-to-day regulation of rural affairs, and, thus should not be discounted as a factor in sustaining peasant society and commune as the dominant form of their social and economic organization.
Date of Award1 Apr 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorGabriel Leon-Ablan (Supervisor) & Mark Pennington (Supervisor)

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