The Struggle for Survival 199
what circumstances a woman who married a soldier (before or after his induc-
tion) would opt for army life in preference to remaining in the safer but more
solitary^1 5° environment of her native village. Economic considerations pro-
bab!y \^1 .'eighed more heavily th~n emotional ones; anyw·ay, the dt:l:i:'.)iu11 wiii
have been made for her by the husband, with other relatives, the landowner
and/or village authorities having a say in the matter. The practice of joining
the husband's unit seems to have been fairly infrequent, although it dates at
least from Peter's reign.^151 A wife could not be accepted there until its com-
mander so ordered; she was subject to milirary regulations and remained at
headquarters when the troops went off to fight; if her husband chose to send
her back home, the commander was under instructions to comply with his
wishes.^152 It goes without saying that a serving soldier could marry only with
his colonel's permission. Von Hupel infers that Russian practice was relatively
liberal (compared to that in Prussia, for example), since a commander was
glad to have the unit's domestic tasks taken care of in this way.^153 On the other
hand, if he had too many womenfolk attached to his unit, this created prob-
lems of an administrative and social nature. Their presence probably became
less common after 1796, when the tenor of army life became more strained,
campaigns and troop movements more frequent, and the turnover of personnel
more rapid.
For once the higher authorities do not seem to have interested themselves
much in these matters. Potemkin looked at them from the standpoint of demo-
graphic growth: the presence of soldiers' wives in the newly annexed southern
territories would help the population to multiply, and so a decree was duly
promulgated encouraging such migration.^154 One wonders how effective it
was. Alexander l's government tried to get soldiers' wives to join their
husbands in the Caucasus, evidently with the same aim in view, but acted with
typical bureaucratic clumsiness; a number of women sent there from Vil'na
died of starvation en route.^155
By this time officials were also becoming aware of the harmful effects of the
low reproduction rate among the population at large. Soldiers in particular
could seldom marry and beget lawful offspring; however, little was done to
change matters.^156 Instead attention was centred on a secondary aspect of the
problem. From time to time the idea surfaced that soldiers' sons, being
habituated to the military environment and brought up under close super-
vision during childhood and adolescence, represented a valuable reservoir of
ISO Masson (Memoires, ii. 65) observes thal recrui1s' wives might be encouraged or ordered by
their proprietors to remarry-although this would have contravened Church laws.
151 'Doneseniya Pleyera', in Ustryalov, lstoriya, iv (ii). 564.
152 PSZ xvii. 12543 (14 Jan. 1766), XXV, § l; xxxiii. 26129 (7 Feb. 1816).
· IS3 PSZ xxxix. 29919 (19 May 1824); von Hupel, Beschreihung, p. 109.
IS4 PSZ xxii. 16130 (14 Jan. 1785).
1ss PSZ xxxvii. 28714 (2 Aug. 1820); cf. II PSZ i. 283 (27 Apr. 1826). Nicholas 1 promoted such
migration to Siberia as well: ibid. i. 764 (21 Dec. 1826), vii. 5135 (6 Feb. 1832).
156 Keep. 'Catherine's Veterans', pp. 391-3.