Razdel: The Peasant Family Divided

Abstract

On September 13, 1887, the peasant E. D. M. came before the assembly of Kozlov Volost' [Canton] in the Sarapul District of Viatka with a request that the members of the assembly formally approve the break-up of his extended family; he and his older son, P., had already carried out the break-up without the permission of the community. The record does not explain why E. D. M. decided to seek the assembly's approval after the fact, although he did take the trouble to present the necessary information for putting the new households on a legal footing. He explained that family quarrels had caused the division and placed the distribution of family property that he and his son had agreed on before the assembly for its approval. From an original household that had included E. D. M., his wife, and their unmarried daughter of 14 years; P., aged 23, his wife of 27, and their son, 1 year old, and daughter, 2 years; and the younger son I., 19, and his wife, also 19-two new households had formed. In one, E. D. M. remained with his wife, daughter, younger son and daughter-in-law, while P. and his wife set up a separate household with their young children. The assembly members found the cause for the division to be well-founded and the distribution of property to be just. They also established that each household would have the means to support itself and to meet its financial obligations. The personal decision of P. and E. D. M. to go their separate ways thus received the stamp of approval from their community.1 One family contracted, while another started afresh through the process of family fission, an event in village culture in late Imperial Russia that brought individual choices into the community arena and drew attention to the dynamics of rural family life in a period of economic