patriarch’s wife lorded over younger women in the household; on rare occasions,
widows (with capable sons) joined the council of elders as head of household. If
they fulfilled their central roles in reproduction and in production in the household
economy, women were valued and respected members of the group.
Power in the commune replicated patriarchal authority in a household. The
council of elders oversaw all; they selected officials to manage tax collection,
collective agricultural and construction work, law and order (Figure 10.2). Their
goal was to keep the community running smoothly so that it produced enough food
to live on and enough profit to pay their obligations to the state, the Church, and
the landlord if they had one. Communal government also worked to keep a buffer
between the community and state and/or landlord. Communal officers worked
with state officials to collect taxes and recruits and to manage public services such as
road and bridge upkeep. Landlords actually living on small estates might have
exerted direct control and high exactions, but most villages did not have a resident
owner. The more serfs an owner owned, the less burden he put on individual
households. Landlords’bailiffs generally cooperated with communes, trusting in
peasants’understanding of the agrarian cycle, deferring to peasants’risk-averseness
(because of the precariousness of the climate and burden of taxes). Landlords also
relied on the commune’s self-policing; bailiffs stepped in to provide control, relief,
or coercion in times of famine or crisis, and could be involved in discipline and
coercive processes such as recruitment. But communes preferred to manage for
themselves, including strict discipline.
Figure 10.2This seventeenth-century chapel of St. Nicholas from the Novgorod area
illustrates the straightforward log construction that East Slavic peasants, working communally,
turned into an art of secular and church architecture. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
228 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801