Scholars have defined the large, multiple family household to be the typical household organization among Russian peasants. This household was primarily governed by the patriarchal interests of the household head, the peasant commune, and before emancipation, the landlord. Living in a patriarchal and traditionalist culture, the Russian peasant was working to meet his primary needs within the agricultural economy. The peasant woman in this context was suppressed and physically abused. Rather than describing archetypes, this study concentrates on the diversity in household structures displayed in post-emancipation Russian society. The historical research of household structures in Western Europe has showed that there were large differences in household structures according to the household development cycle and geographical location. This study shows that also in the Russian household pattern there existed an extensive diversity that seems to have been largely overlooked in previous research of household structures in Russia. A village community could display a variety of household structures, ranging from solitaries over nuclear families to large, multiple family households containing several conjugal units. The study of the households in Drakino and Spas-Korkodino in the period 1869 to 1886, also shows that this diversity should be attributed to the peasant family's conscious strategy according to the particular circumstances within the household or in the environment. Accordingly, changes in the life cycle of the individual household members led to changes in the household development cycle, and differences in the demographic regime or in economic possibilities contributed to differences in the household organization.
The new occupational opportunities in industry seem to have intensified the diversity in household composition among Russian peasants in the post-emancipation period. In regions and villages heavily involved in industrial activity, the occurrence of relatively small and not very complex households seem to have been quite common in the peasant population. Those peasants who depended entirely or largely on agricultural income, on the other hand, seem to have been more likely to live in large, multiple family households. The peasant household was characterized by both tradition and flexibility in its adaption to the rapid changes going on in Russian society in the post-emancipation period.
Peasant societies depend to a considerable extent on the physical environment in which they live. Geographical differentiation marked the central regions of the Russian Empire in the post-emancipation period. On the one hand the black earth belt was the richest agricultural area in Europe. On the other hand the central industrial region of the forest zone was dominated by poor soils and decreasing agricultural revenues, simultaneously as the region was characterized by increasing industrialization. The peasants living in Drakino and Spas-Korkodino in the post-emancipation period, had to survive in a rather hostile environment. The soil in Moskovskaia guberniia was poor, the weather was shifting, agricultural techniques outdated, the state was demanding ever more taxes and redemption payments, and the mortality rate was high. However, the peasants found ways to manage this situation.
The Russian population was characterized by an extremely high mortality rate, particularly among small children but also in the adult population. The reasons for the high mortality were frequent wars, famine, and repeated epidemic outbreaks, while the deaths of infants were often caused by lack of care and incorrect feeding practices. There always existed a considerable danger for that a child would die in its first year of living. Accordingly, the Russian peasant couple would need to produce many children to maintain the existence of the community, and this had consequences for the marriage pattern among Russian peasants. Young people were encouraged to marry early and marriage was practically universal. Although the mean age at first marriage somewhat increased in Drakino and Spas-Korkodino in the period 1869 to 1886, the marriage pattern of the two villages seems to have totally conformed to the pattern of early and universal marriage regarded as typical for Russia. In the post-emancipation period, the mean age at first marriage was always under 22 years for both men and women in these villages, and very few people remained unmarried throughout their lives.
Marriage seems primarily to have had a utilitarian purpose, and when choosing a marriage partner such factors as looks and personality were probably less important than labour capacity and sobriety. With such criteria in the choice of a marriage partner, it would be easier to achieve a nearly universal marriage, leaving out only those who were physically or mentally disabled. The community seems also to have been very successful in the control of young people's behaviour. This is particularly shown in the low incidence of illegitimate births in the Russian peasant population. There were accordingly also very few moral restrictions on marriage.
Most marriages in European Russia took place according to the church and agricultural calendars in the winter months January and February, or in the late autumn, in October and November. This was also the case in Drakino and Spas-Korkodino, and in these villages most people married when they were eighteen or nineteen years old. In adolescence young girls and boys were prepared for marriage through different rituals, and they probably knew almost exactly the year and month when they would marry, even if they did not know to whom. Even so, they could assume that their spouse would be approximately at the same age as themselves, as the Russian peasants generally preferred spouses to be close to each other in age.
Thus, marriage in the Russian peasant society seems largely to have been controlled by community interests. The choice of a marriage partner and timing of the marriage consummation, were ruled indirectly by community norms and more directly by agreements between parents, or by the activities of the matchmaker.
After marriage the young couple usually moved into the husband's parental household. In other words, they did not establish their own household in connection to marriage, but lived in the household of the husband's father, so-called virilocal residence. The lack of neo-local rules for establishment of new households in Russian society allowed young men and women to marry early, and it also contributed to the prevalence of large and complex households among Russian peasants. In Drakino and Spas-Korkodino as well, the multiple family household prevailed in the post-emancipation period. Most people in these villages were living in multiple households consisting of several conjugal family units. However, the study of Drakino and Spas-Korkodino also shows that their population displayed a variety of household structures. The nuclear family was for instance an important single household categories in these villages.
This should be attributed to the development cycle of the Russian peasant household. As the Western household, also the Russian household went through different stages as the household members married, gave birth and died. The Russian household's development cycle was governed by such factors as virilocal residence, patriarchal principles saying that the household could develop only according to the male kinship line, seniority in the attainment of headship, and partial inheritance of property in connection to household divisions. Accordingly, young couples in Drakino and Spas-Korkodino moved in with the husband's parents and lived in this household until they could establish their own household. Young married couples in these villages faced a period of about ten to fifteen years as junior household members, before they possibly could establish their own household. Even so, establishment of new households was obviously not always possible or not requested, as most married couples lived in extended or multiple family households. As the married couple in the nuclear family became older, their household would most likely develop into a household consisting of several conjugal units when their children and grandchildren started to marry. Eventually the parents in this multiple family household would die, but the household would often continue to exist with the oldest son as household head. The household could also develop into a household consisting of uncles and nephews, or a household consisting of co-resident cousins.
However, in the post-emancipation period most households seem to have divided into separate households before these last stages in the household development cycle occurred. The household division formed the last stage in the Russian peasant household's development cycle. It can be compared to inheritance because it was through household division the younger generation received their part of the household property, either before or after the patriarch's death. Before 1861 the state and landlord authorities tried to prevent divisions of serf and state peasant households. It is not surprising that landlords in the pre-emancipation period regarded household divisions among their serfs as harmful. Apart from the potential economic risk inherent in household divisions, the idea of inheritance among the serfs might also undermine the authority of the landlord. The peasants in Drakino were state peasants and were accordingly not so closely supervised as serfs. Thus, Drakino's population probably divided their households according to local custom already before emancipation.
In the period 1869 to 1886 the mean household size in Drakino was reduced and the proportion of very complex households were also reduced. This can be attributed to household divisions. During the post-emancipation period indications appeared of more frequent household divisions among Russian peasants, and this alarmed state officials and members of educated society, who attributed the divisions to increasing individualism and the weakening of patriarchy in the countryside. The zemstvo statisticians also believed that divisions resulting in small households would ruin the agricultural and by that the national economy.
Household division (razdel) was the way to establish new households in Russian peasant society. Sometimes the household division involved all the conjugal units of the household. Large, complex households were by such razdely divided into two or more separate households, each provided with the movable and real property it needed for survival. Partial divisions were also quite common in Russian peasant villages. According to these divisions, a junior member with his wife and children would leave the household to establish his own household. This division could happen with or without the consent of the household head. In the period 1869 to 1886 there were several household divisions in Drakino, often leading to the establishment of households containing only one married couple with children. The divided households were all multiple family households, suggesting that division preferably should take place when the household was at its most complex stage.
The motivation for household divisions was often emotional stress within the multiple family household. Conflicts between the household members are reported to be the main reason why Russian peasant households divided. However, household division should probably also be attributed to practical circumstances. Households could not grow eternally because the space of the peasant izba did not allow it, but also because the Russian peasants seem to have preferred the household members to be relatively closely related to each other. The timing of division was decided by the household's economic viability. Ideally should both the divided household and the new households be economically balanced after division. The largest and most complex households were the wealthiest households in the village, and could therefore provide new households with the necessary equipment and property. The multiple household containing several conjugal family units ensured the labour capacity of the new households. Thus, the growth of the different nuclear family units within the multiple household was a decisive factor in the timing of household division.
In the period 1869 to 1886 the last stage of the development cycle differed considerably between Drakino and Spas-Korkodino. The study of the households in Spas-Korkodino show that they went through very much the same development cycle as the households of Drakino, but even so they were not divided, and some households were even merged into larger units. Most of the household mergers in Russian peasant society happened because of economic inadequacy or a breakdown in family structure. The merger combined two or more households into a unit of larger size and with a larger amount of available labour, land, and equipment. In Spas-Korkodino the mean household size increased considerably, and the proportion of very complex households were also increased. Thus, the acceleration in the frequency of household divisions in the post-emancipation period, cannot be attributed to all villages.
The different economy of Drakino and Spas-Korkodino is probably the decisive factor in explaining why the household structures developed in different directions in these villages. Income from agriculture was most important in the economy of Spas-Korkodino's households. Work in the textile industry provided the households only with supplementary income, and it was mainly adult, married sons who were working in this industry as calico weavers. Other household members, including the household head, were almost exclusively working in agriculture. In Russia the peasant commune (obshchina) organized the agricultural activities of a village. The peasant commune officially owned the arable land and allotted it to the households according to the size and composition of each household, the determining criteria being a household's labour capacity. The communal land was further regularly repartitioned to reflect changes in the household composition. Within this agricultural system large, complex households were an asset, while small households were more likely to find themselves in a difficult economic situation, depending on non-agricultural income or communal welfare. In the post-emancipation period this situation was intensified in the central industrial region. Heavy economic obligations, agrarian overpopulation due to an extensive population growth during the nineteenth century, and increasing shortage of land combined to make the agricultural conditions in the central industrial region very difficult. Increasing numbers of peasants in this area were forced to find work in domestic or factory industries, but in Spas-Korkodino industrial work was not very important in the village economy. The multiple family household was instead consolidated, while establishment of new households through division does not seem to have been possible.
The peasants of Drakino were also cultivating communal land, but in the post-emancipation period, industrial activity was very important in the village economy. Industrial work supplied the peasants with extra income, although their wages were meagre. Those who found employment in industry were thus not so dependent on the agricultural economy. The surplus income from industrial work could have provided the peasants of Drakino with the economic means that made household division possible. All population groups, men, women, and children were employed in the rapidly expanding cotton weaving industry. Most men in the village were working as calico weavers, and so were many unmarried women, while married women were more likely to be working in agriculture. This labour division was intensified by the late nineteen-century change in the organization of the cotton industry, in which calico production was moved out of the peasant homes and workshops into mechanized factories.
Increasing numbers of peasants were leaving their village to find work in the
factories. Migrant peasant workers composed the main industrial work force in
the central industrial region, but were connected to the village through
marriage and a continuing pattern of two-way migration. Even so, in areas of
heavy outmigration, women were left with the main responsibility for the
agricultural production and the family economy for large parts of the year.
Some scholars claim that this could have altered the power distribution in the
patriarchal multiple family household. Women's wish to become mistresses of
their own households could under such conditions contribute to household
divisions. Migrant workers also earned more money than domestic industrial
workers. The industrial work provided young household members with the economic
means and a sense of independence necessary to enforce a household division.
Thus, the widespread industrial activity of the peasants in Drakino provided
them with economic means that could counterbalance the negative effects of the
agricultural development in the post-emancipation period. They were not forced
to restrict their household's development cycle by not establishing new
households through division. Industrial work could also somehow have changed
the cultural contents of the patriarchal household system, maybe leading to an
acceleration of household divisions in the last decades of the nineteenth
century.