Rural Bureaucracy and Peasantry in Yenisei Province of 19^th — early 20^th Centuries

Abstract

The features of the formation and development of the rural bureaucracy as a specific socio-professional group in the Yenisei province at the turn of the 19th — early 20th centuries are considered. On the basis of an extensive set of office documents (official lists of peasant chiefs, personal files of volost and village elders, clerks, journals of meetings of county congresses of peasant chiefs), the dynamics of the number, social composition, educational level, job responsibilities, social and legal status of the main groups of rural bureaucracy are analyzed: peasant chiefs, volost and village elders, clerks. Dualism is revealed in the relations between the rural authorities and the peasantry. It is noted that, on the one hand, the bureaucratization of the organs of peasant self-government led to the centralization of power in the village in the hands of the rural administration and the alienation of peasants from participating in self-government. It was established at the same time that, on the other hand, bureaucratization led to the growth of anarchist sentiments in the countryside. It is argued that the main result of the bureaucratization of the organs of peasant self-government was their decomposition and merging on a criminal basis of the rural administration with the village trade and usury elite and district police officials.

Keywords

• rural bureaucracy
• peasant chiefs
• hairy heads
• village elders
• clerks
• yenisei province