How did peasants live in the Middle Ages? Tools of labor and life of medieval peasants. Peasant labor as depicted by Nekrasov

The lesson for the course “Origins” was:

Topic: “Peasant labor”

1.Introduction to the sociocultural category “Peasant Labor”

2. Accumulation of positive experience when working in a circle, in pairs, the ability to listen to each other, and pay attention to the words of the interlocutor.

3. fostering a respectful attitude towards working people.

Progress of the lesson.

ACCESSION,

The class begins with students in national costumes. The girl has a loaf of bread in her hands. Children read poetry. 1(Slide)

1.If we want someone

Greet with honor and honor.

Greet generously from the heart,

With great respect,

We meet such guests

A lush round loaf.

It's on a painted platter

With snow-white sleeves.

2. Loaf of earth and sky

On your table-

Nothing is stronger than bread

Not on the whole earth.

There are fields of grain in every small piece

And on each spikelet the earth rests.

TEACHER: Thank you for the hospitality, for the bread and salt, dear hosts. We accept your invitation.

Guys, why in Rus' were dear guests greeted with bread and salt?

Today we will visit peasant fields, hear sayings about labor and bread, songs about peasant labor, feel how important it is to take care of bread, our native land - our breadwinner,

The topic of today's lesson is “Peasant Labor” (Slide)

Read the words on the board: plowman, farmer, grower, peasant.

What do these words have in common?

If we turn to explanatory dictionaries, we will find out that a peasant is (Slide)

New explanatory and word-formative dictionary of the Russian language. Author.

peasant

PEASANT

Conclusion: these words are about a man who worked on the earth.

The peasant calendar was full of work and completely dependent on nature.

Field work began in the spring. As soon as the earth dried out and warmed up, the peasants went out into the field to plow the land.

The peasants plowed with plows. They harnessed the horse, attached the plow and went out into the field. (slide)

The peasant treated the field as a living creature, observing the biblical commandment: “Do not harm the earth, nor the sea, nor the tree.”

Reader 2

Reader 3

When going out into the field to sow grain, the peasant put on wide winter bast shoes: “In order not to crush the earth - it is alive, it feels heavy, but in bast shoes it is softer, easier for it.”

Reader 4

Even a horse, when working on arable land, steps with its hind hoof in the footprint of its front hoof, i.e. it does not trample the ground in vain.

TEACHER (Slide)

“Work is bitter, but bread is sweet,” our ancestors said. They worked hard to get their food, because they remembered that if you do not sow, you cannot reap. In many sayings, bread and labor are inextricably linked, because without the second you cannot get the first. A respectful attitude towards work was instilled in children from an early age. Any work was revered because it brought bread.. It is believed that a good worker will not be left without food

WORKING WITH THE BOOK 78-79

What does the text say about the peasants' relationship to the land?

What should a person working in the field be like?

How do you understand the expression “where the owner passed, there the bread was born”

Why is haymaking called a real holiday?

(The peasants worked in factories, mines or in auxiliary jobs during the winter, so working in nature gave them pleasure.

RESOURCE CIRCLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOLISTIC PERCEPTION.

Many poets and artists dedicated their works to the work of the grain grower. (Slide show)

Artists (slide)

Van Gogh (slide)

Shishkin. Rye (slide)

Poems about bread. (slide)

Here it is, fragrant bread,

With a crunchy twisted crust,

Here it is, warm, golden,

As if filled with sunshine!

In every home, on every table

He came - he came.

In it lies health, our strength,

It's wonderfully warm.

How many hands raised him,

Saved, protected!

After all, the grains did not immediately become

The bread that is on the table.

People work long and hard

We worked hard on the ground.

In every grain of wheat
Summer and winter
The power of the sun is stored
And native land.
And grow under the bright sky,
Slender and tall
Like the immortal Motherland,
Ear of bread. (ORLOV)

Grains of our days, shine
Gilded carved!
We say: “Take care.
Take care of your native bread...
We did not dream of a miracle.
A live speech to us from the fields:
“Take care of your bread, you people!
Learn to save bread."

People spoke of bread as a living being: bread-breadwinner, bread-father. From time immemorial, people have treated the labor of those who created it in the same way as they did with bread. In Rus', bakers enjoyed special respect; they were never called Ivashka, Fedka, Petrushka - they were called respectfully, with their full names Ivan, Fedor, Peter. Bread was highly valued in Rus'. People who grow and harvest bread were respected. At all times, bread has been and remains a product that can feed a person.

MAIN STAGE (Music + slide)

Take the spikelets in your hands and stand in a circle. Imagine yourself in the middle of a grain field, listen to the sounds, try to understand your experiences.

We will now collect our spikelets together, creating the image of a field. The harvest is ripe, wheat is heading in the field.

Finish the sentence

I went out into the field and see (hear, feel)

REFLECTION

Did you get the feeling that you were in a real field?

Which guys' statements helped you with this?

PHYSICAL MINUTE.

Learning the folk game “Grandfather-Sysoi”

Grandfather-Sysoy,

Don't shake your beard!

Listen to what we say

Look what we show you.

Grandfather - Sysoy answers

Hello kids.

Where were you on copper?

Children: - They walked freely in an open field, and ...... (they showed with gestures what they were doing)

SOCIOCULTURAL TRAINING - work in pairs

Teacher Bread is earned by the sweat of the brow, and farmers value the experience of their ancestors.

Folk wisdom is especially evident in proverbs and sayings.

They instruct, give wise advice, condemn laziness.

What sayings do you know about bread and labor? (slide)

· Seek business like bread.

· You can't cut bread without a knife.

You can't get bread by lying down.

But observing nature, folk signs have developed. They give advice to the peasant when to start this or that work.

Individual card work

Fill in the circle on the left with red for the proverb, and blue for the folk signs.

Group stage

- Listen carefully to the opinion of your seatmate

Jointly choose your one common opinion.

Fill in the circles on the right.

Agree which of you will represent the joint solution

REFLECTION

Were you able to come to an agreement?

What did you find difficult about your job?

What worked best?

SUMMARIZING

At first the grain was sown with grain,

Then the sprouts were nurtured by an agronomist.

Then the combine operator took the ear of grain in his hands,

He rubbed it carefully in his palms.

Having learned that the bread had long since ripened,

He went out into the field to remove it with a combine harvester.

Reader 2

Then flour was ground from the grain

And she went to the baker.

And he was able to try:

You baked such delicious buns!

Appreciate, love and respect the one

Who sowed bread, raised it and baked it!

How do you understand the proverb “What goes around comes around?” They not only sowed bread, they sowed the habit of working, so from early childhood the child developed a respectful, respectful attitude towards a good worker.

We bring salt with the loaf,

As we worship, we ask you to taste:

Our dear guest and friend,

Take the bread and salt from your hands.

Rating: 1 - impressions of the lesson

2- your work during the lesson

d/z We will create a book of sayings and proverbs about bread. Everyone will design their own page with their own proverb.

peasant, treated the field as a living being, observing the biblical commandment: “Do not harm the earth, nor the sea, nor the tree.”

Reader 2

The field is alive. It’s breathing—if I cover it with my hand, don’t let in any air, it will suffocate. Hence the respect for the earth: do not trample it, do not roll it around unnecessarily.

Reader 3

When going out into the field to sow grain, the peasant put on wide winter bast shoes: “So that the earth does not crush - it is alive, it feels heavy, but in bast shoes it is softer, easier for it.”

Reader 4

Even a horse, when working on arable land, steps with its hind hoof in the footprint of its front hoof, i.e. it does not trample the ground in vain

“Work is bitter, but bread is sweet,” our ancestors said. They worked hard to get their food, because they remembered that if you do not sow, you cannot reap. In many sayings, bread and labor are inextricably linked, because without the second you cannot get the first. A respectful attitude towards work was brought up in children from an early age. Any work was revered because it brought bread. It is believed that a good worker will not be left without food. But laziness is not held in high esteem; no one needs parasites.

· If they give you some bread, they will also give you a businessman.

· Seek business like bread.

· Sweat on your back means bread on the table.

· Don’t leave things for tomorrow, but leave bread.

· Then the bread obtained and stale is sweet.

· You won’t be satisfied with conversation if you don’t get bread.

· Work until you sweat, eat bread when you want.

· He who works tirelessly cannot live without bread.

· To get up early is to get a lot of bread, and to sleep long is to earn a lot of bread.

· Without bread and without porridge, our labors are worthless.

· You can't cut bread without a knife.

· The harvest is ripe, and the sickle is sharpened.

· Don’t sleep on this bread: if you reap, you won’t have time to sleep

You can't get bread by lying down.

The meaning of the word "PEASANT"

New explanatory and word-formative dictionary of the Russian language. Author.

peasant m. 1) A villager whose main occupation is cultivating the land.

Explanatory Dictionary, ed. S. I. Ozhegova and

PEASANT,. A rural resident engaged in cultivating crops and raising farm animals as his main job. Peasant farming.

Bread and porridge are our food.

Bread and water are heroic food.

It is not the fur coat that warms you, but the bread.

Without bread and honey you will not be full.

Without a piece of bread there is sadness everywhere.

There would be a head on your shoulders, and there would be bread.

Where the owner walks, there the earth will give birth to bread.

Buckwheat porridge is our mother, and rye bread is our dear father.

Just as there is a land of bread, so there is paradise under the spruce tree, but there is not a piece of bread, so there is melancholy in the mansion.

Not a piece of bread - and there is longing in my throat.

If there is more bread, the country cannot be defeated.

The earth is mother, and bread is father.

Rye bread - grandpa rolls it.

A well-fed man counts the stars in the sky, but a hungry man thinks about bread.

The hungry godfather has bread on his mind.

Bread on the table - and the table is a throne, but not a piece of bread - and the table is a board.

A well-fed man thinks about business, and a hungry man thinks about bread.

The plowman's hand is black, but his bread is white.

A beggar has bread on his mind, a stingy man has a crust on his account.

Without salt, without bread - half a meal.

If you want to eat kalachi, don't sit on the stove.

REMEMBER THE BREAD

You know, one day I saw
Like an old man asking for forgiveness.
He offended a loaf of bread
By suddenly dropping it to the ground

He knelt before her,
Bent in half, somehow.
He shook the litter off the top... Clumsily
He hung the sign of the cross on himself.

“Forgive me a piece of bread,
I became awkward in my later years.
Let the blue sky be a witness,
There is nothing more important than you here.

You were the farmer's reward,
It was a consolation to the traveler.
Prayers were sent to God for you,
And they carried out military affairs.

And I also remember my childhood,
Difficult war years.
The grief that we inherited
And bad, meager food

And the boys like gingerbread, like sweetness
A small piece was given out
Black bread is a simple joy...
Who could have thrown him to the ground?”

The old man stood still for a little while,
And he wandered off into the distance alone.
Remember bread, for God's sake,
With him the people are forever invincible

In every grain of wheat
Summer and winter
The power of the sun is stored
And native land.
And grow under the bright sky,
Slender and tall
Like the immortal Motherland,
Ear of bread. (ORLOV)

So the summer has flown by, the cold is coming from the river.
The rye has ripened, turned yellow, and bent its ears.
Two combines are in the field. Back and forth, from end to end.
They reap - they thresh, they reap - they thresh, they harvest.
In the morning the rye stood like a wall. By nightfall, the rye was gone.
As soon as the sun set, the grain was empty.

It's spring day, it's time to plow. We went out into the tractor field.
They are led by my father and brother, hunchbacked over the hills.
I hurry after them, asking them to give me a ride.
And my father answers me: “The tractor plows, but doesn’t roll!”
Wait a minute, when you grow up, you’ll lead one yourself!

Bread as an object of worship.

There are many rituals associated with bread. It was customary among the Eastern and Western Slavs to place bread in front of icons, as if thereby testifying to their loyalty to God. They took bread with them when they went to get married; they greeted the guest with bread and salt, the newlyweds upon returning from church after the wedding; they brought bread along with the bride's dowry. Bread was often used as a talisman: it was placed in the cradle of a newborn; They took him with them on the road so that he would protect him along the way. A loaf of bread and each piece, especially the first, or crumb, embodied a person’s share; it was believed that his strength, health and luck depended on his handling of them.

Page 1

The work of a real peasant, just like a real artisan, is solitary creativity: in quiet absorption he devotes himself to his occupation. He lives in his creation, just as an artist lives in his; he most likely would not have given it to the market at all. With bitter tears in their eyes, the peasant women take their beloved pawn out of the stall and take her to the slaughterhouse; an old artisan is fighting for his pipe, which a merchant wants to buy from him... The peasant, just like the artisan, stands behind his work, he vouches for it with the honor of the artist.

Under feudalism, the division of peasant labor into necessary and surplus appeared in an open form: during the necessary working time, the peasant ensured the existence of himself and his family. During surplus time, he created a surplus product, which was appropriated free of charge by the feudal lord in the form: eat.

The landowners, deprived of the free labor of the peasants, were forced to rebuild their farms in accordance with the new conditions. However, the transition from the feudal system of farming to the capitalist one could not be carried out immediately, since the old system was only undermined, but not destroyed. Therefore, the landowner economy was based on a combination of two systems - labor and capitalist.

The labor of peasants is used to an even lesser extent in various crafts. The erroneous attitudes that existed at one time led to the fact that handicraft industries gradually fell into decline and were eventually almost completely eliminated. This had a detrimental effect on the financial situation of the village, and socially led to the fact that the country lost a large number of products satisfying the household needs of the population. Let us also note that the labor resources of the village were not fully used, and there were great losses in the income that these trades brought when selling products both within the country and abroad.

During the 15th century, while the labor of independent peasants and agricultural workers, engaged in independent work along with hired work at the same time, went to their own benefit, the standard of living of the farmer was as insignificant as the scope of his production.

What conditions should be created to make the peasant’s work easier? There must be machines, and machines can only be used effectively in a cooperative. As a communist, I am interested in people, regardless of what nation they are, what language they speak, what faith they worship, to live well. Working people are the same everywhere. The working people earn bread by the sweat of their brow, and I want the working people to shed less sweat and receive more products from their labor. This is what I am interested in as a person. I am also interested in you achieving the same things that we, the Soviet people, achieved, and even better results, using the experience of our peasants.

A theoretical reflection of the economic productivity of the land (along with the labor of the peasants) was the teaching of the French physiocrats (Quesnay, Boisbilguera, Turgot) that only agriculture has a productive nature, allowing not only to reimburse its costs, but also to obtain a surplus product. In other branches of handicraft and industrial production that do not cultivate the land, supposedly only their costs are reimbursed, nothing more, and therefore no surplus product is created by them.

Similar problems arise in socialism - whether the peasant’s labor on his plot should be taken into account.

This acceleration, which was based on the principle of material stimulation of peasant labor, in the second half of the 20s. began to slow down, but not through the fault of the rural worker.

The transformation of the nobles into a privileged class was accompanied by an expansion of their rights to the personality and labor of the peasant.

Under feudalism, the source of land rent was the surplus (partially necessary) labor of personally dependent peasants.

This means that the landowner's land is cultivated with the same peasant implements, the labor of a ruined, impoverished, enslaved peasant. This is what it is, the culture that the deputy Svyato-polk-Mirsky spoke about and which all the defenders of landowners’ interests talk about. Landowners, of course, have the best livestock, which live better in a master's stable than a peasant in a peasant's hut. The landowner, of course, has the best harvests, because the landowner committees back in 1861 took care to cut off the best lands from the peasants and assign them to the landowners.

The social policy of the party and the Soviet state is to, on the basis of modern technology and science, increasingly bring together the nature of the work of a peasant and the work of a worker, improve the life of the village, and improve the culture of rural life. All this practically leads to the gradual elimination of socio-economic, cultural and everyday differences between city and countryside, between the working class and the peasantry.

Over time, the monasteries from labor communities, where everyone worked for everyone and everyone spiritually supported each of their brethren, turned into large land owners who used the forced labor of peasants.

The reduction in the sources of recruitment for slaves, as well as the blurring of the lines between them and the peasants, entailed the elimination of the archaic form of exploitation: the labor productivity of a slave per month was lower than the labor productivity of a peasant who cultivated his allotment.

“...In the series of essays “The Peasant and Peasant Labor,” Uspensky set himself the task of determining the principle that governs the life of a peasant worker, shapes his mental interests and moral ideals. Uspensky recognized agricultural labor as this beginning. Observing the life of Ivan Ermolaevich, the narrator, and with him the author, come to the conclusion that, despite the difficult conditions of the post-reform village, the peasant farmer loves his work, subtly understands its beauty and poetry. The whole life of a peasant worker, his entire household and family structure, all his views on the world around him are subordinated to work, and this gives internal integrity to his existence. Uspensky considers Koltsov’s poetry to be the best expression of the poetic ideals of the people, inextricably linked with labor...”

* * *

The given introductory fragment of the book Peasant and peasant labor (G. I. Uspensky, 1880) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

II. General view of peasant life

But what is most striking in this mutual misunderstanding of each other is that Ivan Ermolaevich shows a particularly strong misunderstanding precisely regarding peasant affairs, issues of peasant life, about which I find it necessary to talk with him very often. It is remarkable that whenever the speech touches on the so-called peasant interests, that is, interests directly related to Ivan Ermolaevich, then he especially somehow becomes stiff, here he “does not lead with his ear”, does not hear anything, obviously does not want hear and yawn in the most terrible way. This is complete indifference to "your own" interests amazed me to the highest degree. In my opinion, the life of the modern peasant at every step seems to cry out that only friendship, camaraderie, mutual awareness of the benefits of communal, collective labor for the common good is the only hope of the peasant world for a more or less better future, the only opportunity to “reduce » those incredible amounts of labor absorbing all peasant life, without leaving leisure, which now lies on the peasant with such a heavy and, as it seemed to me (and it seems), a fruitless burden. Really look at what kind of life this is, and judge why a person is fighting. A peasant proverb says: “summer works for winter, and winter for summer.” And for sure: in the summer, from morning to night, without a break, they fight with mowing, with stubble, and in the winter, the cattle will eat the hay, and people will eat the bread, spring and autumn, they go to the trouble of preparing arable land for people and animals, in the summer they will collect what the arable land gives, and in the winter they will eat it. The work is constant, and there is no result except manure, and even that remains, for it also goes into the ground, the earth eats manure, people and livestock eat what the earth gives. God himself, the heavenly father, is remembered only as a participant in this laboratory, fruitless in terms of the results of its activities. God gives the rain, the bucket needed for hay, oats, which are needed for horses, sheep, cows and people, and as a result - the manure needed for the land, etc. ad infinitum. Having suffered (in my opinion) in this way for seventy years, the average person himself goes to the ground.

Looking closely at the continuous labor woven into this eternal chemical process of life, I (a person completely outside the village) cannot explain to myself this continuous tirelessness of labor in any other way than by the fact that all living beings participating in it “must be fed” to maintain their own existence. I know and understand very well that in addition to continuous labor, the chemical cycle of the life I observe is also intertwined in all directions with the suffering of the heart, joys and sorrows; here weeping, there groans, there gnashing of teeth; I know very well that in addition to the chemical element in this whole process, “man” is constantly heard and felt, but precisely because I understand this, I am also struck by the futility of labor, the futility in relation to a person, to his tears, joys and gnashing of teeth. It is precisely in the human sense, or, more precisely, “in the human sense,” that the futility of tireless labor turns out to be amazing. No matter how closely I look at it, no matter how horrified I am by its size, I absolutely do not see that in the depths of this work and in its final result there lies thought and care for a person on a scale worthy of this tireless work.

I repeat again: this concern exists, but it does not dare be equal to concerns, for example, about cattle. For example, Ivan Ermolaevich’s ram, named “Senka,” killed a boy with its horns; the boy lay unconscious for some time, then, waking up, he sobbed for a while, like a madman, from fright. And now it is unlikely that this fear will not remain in him for the rest of his life; Ivan Ermolaevich and his wife both “suffered” over the boy: they applied something, for example, warm manure, gave herbs to drink, generally treated him and hurt his soul; but they treated him with means that could be found “around the house,” just as peasants are treated in general; But Ivan Ermolaevich’s mare went lame, he also treated her with his own means, also spread some kind of rubbish on a rag (a rag in itself in the village is like a medicine), and ended up going and bringing a farrier and three silver rubles to him I didn't regret it. I know very well how they can explain to me this difference in Ivan Ermolaevich’s relationship to a horse and a person, but I can’t help but draw attention to the fact that for a horse among the people there is already a profession of farrier, and the profession is not entirely charlatan; Cultural horse owners also resort to the services of a farrier. The farrier has “tools” invented by the people, there are “true”, precise means, but for a person nothing of this kind has been invented except for the healers, who are far inferior in knowledge to the farrier and, as everyone knows, are full of charlatanism, ride on ignorance, then like a farrier, it is in no way possible to go out without knowing his business: every peasant himself understands a lot about these (horse) matters. But when the boy yells, they can only cry and apply a rag with manure or something else that is lying around “near the house” like worthless rubbish. The only way I can explain such attention to the horse is that it is needed for daily and tireless hard labor, since without this labor neither Ivan Ermolaevich nor his boy would have anything to eat. And Ivan Ermolaevich himself, summing up his annual work, says that in the end “we’re just full, nothing more!” I see this well and deeply regret Ivan Ermolaevich and everyone like him, but at the same time I am struck by the following circumstance.

In the very place where Ivan Ermolaevich “struggling” over work just to be fed, they struggled in the same way for no less than a thousand years, his ancestors, and, you can imagine, absolutely did not invent anything and did not They did it in order to make it at least a little easier for him to be “well-fed.” The ancestors, who lived for a thousand years in this very place (and now have long been plowed “for oats” and eaten by cattle in the form of oats), did not even leave the thought that hard labor due to the need to be well-fed should be made easier, did not leave it to their descendants ; in this sense, there is not the slightest memory of our ancestors. From Solovyov, in “History,” you can still learn something about the local past; but here, in the very place, “no one” and “nothing is known.” It is impossible to imagine a worse situation in which the peasant’s labor finds itself, and one must think that a thousand years ago there were the same bast shoes, the same plow, the same cravings as now. There are no means of communication left from the ancestors, no bridges, not the slightest improvements to make work easier. The bridge you see was built by descendants and is barely standing. All the tools of labor are primitive, heavy, inconvenient, etc. The ancestors left Ivan Ermolaevich an impassable swamp, through which he could only cross in winter, and, it seems to me, Ivan Ermolaevich will leave the swamp to his boy in the same form. And his little boy will get stuck, “fight with the horse,” just as Ivan Ermolaevich fights. But, leaving my ancestors aside, I, as an outsider to village life and village work, am decidedly perplexed and at a loss, explaining to myself this indifference that is visible to me and completely incomprehensible to me - let’s say, even in Ivan Ermolaevich - regarding the “relief” of this the need to be “full.” I absolutely don’t understand why Ivan Ermolaevich, who certainly picks up a piece of rope or a nail if he comes across one on the road, loses, in the person of many true “peasants” like him, hundreds, thousands of rubles on the products of his own convict labor, hundreds, even thousands, which would undoubtedly facilitate and improve his well-being. and would give the opportunity to take care of the boy more than a foal. In relation to this indifference to one's own benefit, amazing absurdities are happening before my eyes. For example, hay in these places is a product that can provide almost the same monetary support as flax in Pskov or wheat in Samara, with the difference, however, that hay grows “for nothing.” All the peasants mow it here, including Ivan Ermolaevich, and because it is impossible to take it out in the summer, since the area is cut off by a swamp, he sells it “out of need” on the spot for the most insignificant price to kulaks and dealers, who, having waited until winter, that is, the time when the swamp freezes, they take the hay to St. Petersburg and sell it at exorbitant prices. Before the eyes of all the local peasants, constantly, from year to year, such things happen, for example: a local kulak, who has nothing but greed for now, borrows at his own risk from a neighboring loan partnership one and a half hundred rubles and begins during the months of May, June, July, the most difficult thing in peasant life, buying hay for five or many many ten kopecks per pood; at the first snow, he takes him out onto the main road, where he is immediately given thirty or more kopecks per pood. In front of the entire honest world, a person, without lifting a finger, makes a truly heap of money, which he puts in his pocket in front of everyone. How does Ivan Ermolaevich value a nail, saying: “it’s worth money,” and not value the hundreds of rubles that he throws at his fist for a living? Every year the village mows up to forty thousand pounds of hay, and every year the little kulak puts more than five thousand rubles in silver peasant money into his pocket in front of everyone, without lifting a finger. Does a person value his work by doing this? If he values it, then really the whole village (twenty-six households) cannot, in the name of facilitating common labor, do the same as the little kulachishka? They can borrow “for needs” twenty-six times more than a fistful, and, therefore, “may” not be in bondage, “can” even “make” the price of their goods, can wait for prices, etc. And none of this No. For a thousand years they cannot fill up the swamps for a quarter of a mile, which would immediately enormously increase the profitability of these places, and yet all the Ivan Ermolaevichs know very well that this work “forever and ever” can be done in two Sundays, if each of the twenty-six households puts up man with an ax and a horse.

And at the same time, the most, in my opinion, trivial, worthless worldly affairs, like even a mundane fence or dividing up a fish, absorb a lot of public attention: here they measure twenty times what has long been measured, they measure it with ropes and fathoms, and stakes and bast shoes, so that the toe would certainly hit the heel; here there are badges, and lots, and badges on lots - in a word, everything is elaborated here, even beyond necessity, here the matter is even brought to artistic perfection, turned almost “into a ceremony.” I understand very well that the basis for such thoroughness in the most trivial matters is the desire to get things done “without offence”; but why is it necessary to be torn for not paying taxes, why is it necessary to be torn or to watch how they are torn, at a time when everyone can see that the torn person does not pay because he is fattening his fist - I don’t understand this.

No less incomprehensible to me are those cases when a local peasant, thanks to some unexpected circumstance, seemed to come to his senses and began to understand “his own benefit” in the form in which it should be understood, and, most importantly, took into account the fact that time is now not what it was recently, that now the village must think about collective defense. One such case occurred among local peasants and is as follows. One unsuccessful landowner, who decided to run a “big” farm according to “foreign models,” as usual, went bankrupt and left here completely. After him, a hay press appeared in the village. The machine united the disparate peasant world. The best thing is that, due to the absence of the master, it was a “draw”. They came up with the idea of baling hay with the whole world, renting a wagon together and selling it in St. Petersburg. Things went great, but next year in St. Petersburg They did not accept the local hay in compressed form.“Have mercy! they say, they were glad that it was profitable, and so they shoved all sorts of rubbish into the inside: now a log, now a stone, now they will stuff it with manure, fortunately you can’t see it from the sides...” Now the local hay was bought in St. Petersburg only from carts. This peculiar understanding of benefit, of course, has many reasons, but here’s what’s not good: about two years ago, two Englishmen came from London to the provincial town closest to our place. They didn’t and don’t speak a word of Russian; They arrived honorably, rented the best house, got some extraordinary carriages, on high wheels, etc. In these carriages they drive around the city with their families before and after dinner and live for their own pleasure. How could it happen that immediately upon their arrival the entire hay operation for hundreds of miles ended up in their hands? Meanwhile, this is a fact, and the hay business is now in the following form: the kulachishko, having borrowed money from a loan partnership, buys it from the peasants at the “right” time, in the summer, for next to nothing and delivers it to the “Englishmen,” and the Englishmen supply it to St. Petersburg at various government institutions. The press operates as before, but it no longer works for the world, but for the Englishman. “Who are you pressuring?” - “Charles!” - the men answer. Kulachishko, he simply reveres the “English,” and precisely because they don’t seem to lift a finger, they all only ride in carriages on red wheels, and have taken the whole matter into their hands. “Oh my gosh! - says the little fist. - One word! If only we could take Charles Ivanovich or Dixon Petrovich - one word, no matter how you turn it, - gentlemen, finishing work! Thus, while Dixon Petrovich and Charles Ivanovich drive around with cigars in their teeth in their excellent carriages, “resting” after breakfast and lunch, the local peasant continues to perform sacred acts in front of such a huge public need as the countryside, giving whole dramatic performances when hiring a shepherd or when buying a bull - in a word, he tries in every possible way so as not to “offend” either himself or his neighbor even by a grain of powder, and absolutely does not find the opportunity to pave a quarter of a mile of the swamp, in which lies the root of so many of his daily and hourly grievances.

One could give many examples of such boundless indifference to “one’s own benefit,” as it should be understood under the new conditions of peasant life. Positively, at every step, I, a person completely outside the village, could point out that here the peasants are losing this and that, and here they are clearly upsetting their well-being. And, due to my inexperience, explaining this convict existence visible to me only in order to somehow get through, “to be full,” I could not help but worry, and at times not lose my temper positively, seeing the deepest inattention of such genuine guardians “ peasantry,” like Ivan Ermolaevich, to everything that makes labor easier, that transfers the benefits of this labor into those hands to which these benefits belong in fairness, etc. I sometimes expanded a lot and for a long time on the topic “about the lack of understanding of one’s own benefits,” about the robbery that the Ivan Ermolaevichs serve with their labors and hands, etc. And everything is like peas against the wall! There could be no talk of any collective defense against all sorts of modern evils coming to the countryside.

– You wanted to join our people! Would you like to invite our people? What does he understand?

These were Ivan Ermolaevich’s answers to my ranting about “their benefit.” Such a tireless worker did not know where, to whom and why he was paying, having no idea about the zemstvo, about election to the vowels, etc. He was firmly convinced that all this had nothing to do with him. I understood absolutely nothing about the savings and loan partnership from all my reasoning and only remarked: “It’s good to take, but how to give?.. You’ll get involved... God bless him.” And when I pointed to the kulak who takes and gives and has a profit, Ivan Ermolaevich said: “Well, the dog is with him... that’s their calculation... Otherwise, if you get tied up, you won’t be able to get rid of them”...

One day he struck me in the most unexpected way in a conversation about public peasant positions:

- All of them (elected) are unreliable people... As long as they live as peasants - nothing, but once they are elected to office - the dog becomes clean. As soon as he took the oath, he seemed to turn into a beast... For me, I think I wouldn’t have agreed to this for a million.

- For what?

– For example, take the volost oath. I listened to it once and was completely speechless. As soon as the priest began to read - “renounce your father, renounce your mother, renounce your brothers and sisters, renounce your family and tribe” - the hair on the top of my head even stood on end. Before God! Once a person has cursed himself in such a manner, he becomes nothing less than a villain.

This view of the oath surprised me beyond words. He surprised me quite a bit another time, when I accidentally caught him teaching his little son prayers. Ivan Ermolaevich believed in God firmly, unshakably firmly, he felt the closeness of God almost to the touch, and he read prayers in his own way: “I believe in one God, the father,” he taught his son, “and in heaven and earth. Apparently invisible, audible inaudible. You were a show-off, you were sawed off...” And then God knows what happened. “I Believe” ended like this: “from the evil one. Amen".

All this, however, is trivial compared to the lack of attention to determining one’s position not only in this world, but even in the circle of even the twenty-six households among which Ivan Ermolaevich lived, lives and will live. Not to mention indifference to social orders that do not directly concern the economy, I noticed in Ivan Ermolaevich inattention to people. For example, he knew perfectly well how much cattle and grain someone had, what was “given” for a horse in such and such a yard; in a word, how many physical resources someone has for subsistence. But if some out-of-the-ordinary event happened in this yard, which can only be explained by knowing the “people” who participated in it, it will not be explained. There were two suicides in the village, and no one could explain anything. “I must have drunk the money away,” they said about the soldier who just yesterday was working in the garden, weeding cabbage, and today he was found under a fence. “After all, brother, how can I say - why? Therefore, that’s how it’s supposed to be for him. Just last year, a single widow also passed away without permission. And after that she was left with thirty rubles of money, two cows and four sacks of potatoes - just think about it! I was bored, bored, and lo and behold, I choked myself!”

More than once, looking at this almost voluntary giving of myself to be devoured by everyone who wishes, by everyone with a raking paw, I exclaimed in deep despondency, of course in my thoughts: “My God! What other Egyptian executions are needed to crush in Ivan Ermolaevich this unshakable inattention to “his own benefit”!” After all, this inattention means that in ten years (many, many) Ivan Ermolaevich and others like him will not be able to live in the world: by that time they will reproduce two new classes that will squeeze and press on the “peasantry” from two sides: from above there will be a representative of the third estate is pressing, and from below is the same brother, a peasant, but already a representative of the fourth estate, which must inevitably exist if there is a third. This representative of the fourth village estate will certainly angry(about the origin evil man will be said in the next passage) and is relentless in vengeance, and he will take revenge for having been made a fool, that is, he will finally (and very soon) understand that he is paying for his stupidity, that he was and is a fool, a dark fool, that's why I got angry on himself. And all those who, through evil, cunning intent, through inattention or indifference, put him in this “stupid” position will pay bitterly for this. There is no other word to define this situation, for if there is a chronic beggar in the Russian village, it is only by the existence of some kind of stupid place in a social organization, nothing else can explain this phenomenon. Everything is there so that such a phenomenon does not exist, but it already exists; no reasons that even come close to what is defined by the words “necessity” and “inevitability” can explain this phenomenon. The representative of the Russian fourth estate is a product of heartless social inattention - nothing more. However, more on that later; Now let's return to Ivan Ermolaevich.

Ivan Ermolaevich’s immense indifference to the misfortunes pressing upon him, in the form of the third and fourth estates, and, finally, in the form of an alien migrant from the Baltic provinces, more than once stumped me, and I was perplexed: what exactly gives Ivan Ermolaevich the strength to endure his toiling existence? what keeps him in the world and from what tasty seasonings is that lentil stew for which he is clearly selling his birthright made? Are Ivan Ermolaevich and his thousand-year-old ancestors really “fighting” only because of taxes? Or really because of a piece of bread? But if this were so, Ivan Ermolaevich would not have endured the pleasure of paying taxes not only for a thousand years, but also for a thousand minutes. When does he need something? I do not like, gets boring he is impatient; he doesn’t even observe outward decency when he doesn’t like something; After all, he yawns in the most amazing way when I talk to him about things that he doesn’t want to listen to. Every time I start talking about the collective defense of the village, in one form or another, Ivan Ermolaevich will immediately find an excuse to sneak away from me: either he wants to sleep, or his leg hurts, or he needs to see why the dogs are barking? In a word, he will always find an excuse to evade, and he will evade. What kind of pleasantness is there in taxes? What pleasure is it to fight all your life over them or just over bread? Can such an existence really be called life? Meanwhile, Ivan Ermolaevich, in my opinion, is fighting precisely because of bread, for he himself quite rightly assures that in the end he has just been “full.”

The whole life of the peasants was spent in constant work and worries. Day after day, year after year, the peasant worked from morning until late at night.

Plowing his own and his master's land took most of his time and effort. Plowing was followed by sowing, and sowing followed by harvest.

The harvest was harvested by hand using a sickle. The ears were tied into sheaves and threshed with flails to extract the grain.

After this, it was necessary to winnow and separate the wheat from the chaff.

No less effort had to be spent on processing agricultural products into bread, butter, cheese, sausage, and preparing food for the winter.

The garden, where beans, peas, cucumbers, radishes, pumpkins, and cabbage were grown, took up a lot of the peasant’s time. Almost all peasants kept livestock, and in swampy and mountainous areas, cattle breeding played an even greater role than agriculture.

Every household had poultry.

The forest was a great help for the peasants, where they collected mushrooms, berries and nuts, chopped firewood and collected brushwood. The forest provided wood, which was used to make furniture, barrels and dishes.

Long winter evenings were devoted to this home craft.

Peasant women did not do arable work, but they had no less worries. All the housework was on their shoulders, they fed livestock and poultry, milked cows and goats.

The production of yarn and household linen, from which they sewed clothes for the whole family, took especially much time and effort.

Medieval village labor of peasants

Humility and obedience have always been ranked among the first virtues of Russian peasants. True, these virtues were surrounded by endless misunderstandings, voluntary and involuntary false interpretations. The followers of the communist doctrine especially distinguished themselves in this regard. Very often they mixed them with servility, sycophancy, servility, and, at best, classified them in the same category as backwardness and mental immaturity. “The idiocy of village life” migrated from one study to another, which had at least some connection with the history of the Russian peasantry. The authors were not at all embarrassed that Russia is an Orthodox country, and these qualities do not fall out of the blue, but have an objective basis. The entire structure of the life activity of peasants not only gives birth to, but also strengthens them.

Feverish activity is alien to the peasants; When dealing with nature, they are forced to resign themselves to circumstances, blows of fate, the inability to achieve the desired goal, to submit willy-nilly to the laws of nature and their fatal inevitability. And indeed, what we cannot avert, we must courageously submit to, without faint-heartedness, without running away from reality into the realm of empty illusions. Humility and submission in these cases have nothing to do with servility and humiliation; they raise, rather than humiliate, a person’s moral dignity.

Foreigners, whose consciousness was not poisoned by hatred of Russia, could, even in the era of serfdom, see in the Russian peasants people worthy of all respect. I will give one of these judgments recorded by A.S. Pushkin: “Look at the Russian peasant: is there a shadow of slavish humiliation in his step and speech? There is nothing to say about his courage and intelligence. to someone else's... our peasant is neat by habit and rule" [ 1 ].

A peasant, if he is a real householder, acts as a representative of a peasant civilization that has many millennia of organic development. He personifies this culture, reflects it not only with his internal content, but also with his external appearance. The Russian village has never been simply an economic category, a specific way of producing agricultural products. This is a special type of civilization, as K. Myalo writes about it [ 2 ], - with its own economic structure, represented by several types of agriculture, a structure that allows economic entities to fully realize their capabilities. A civilization with its own morality, art and religion. It is known that Russian Orthodoxy has absorbed many ancient agricultural holidays that span the entire year and are correlated with the cycle of church services.

A.N. Radishchev wrote about one of them like this: " But the sun, returning activity to all nature, returns it to man. Sacred rites reinforce the cheerful beginning of spring in Russia, for soon after the equinox, when the prolonged illumination of Father Nature begins to deaden the frozen breath of winter, the greatest and most revered celebration in all Greek lands, Easter, was instituted. Having exhausted his body with seven-week fasting, the peasant renews his strength with fat food and kindles and ignites his thickened blood with strong fermented drinks. The holiday of Easter will be sacred in Russia for a long time, even if its confession has changed, for at this time the rays of the sun, falling on the earth more plumb than before, dissolve its frozen interior and make it convenient for cultivation and the reception of nutritious grains" [3 ].

Every day out of three hundred and sixty-five had countless signs, mainly associated with agricultural peasant labor. Here is one of the signs that existed in Rus'. “If there are blue clouds at noon at Epiphany, it means a harvest.” How much attentiveness, and therefore the expenditure of one’s own thoughts, is needed in order to notice, for example, the color of the clouds at noon on Epiphany, to find in this a connection with the harvest, which can be determined in August, that is, in seven months. Of course, in order to consolidate this sign in the people's consciousness, to bring the August bread into connection with the color of the clouds at Epiphany, and even at noon, it was necessary to think a lot and in a unique way, and, moreover, to think precisely “agriculturally.” There are many similar signs that can be cited. They are evidence of how much attention the peasant paid to nature, the land and everything connected with them" [ 4 ].

Not only was the day marked with some memorable sign, even the hour, time of day was noted, the shine of the stars was noted at night, etc. All this knowledge together can be classified as “tacit” knowledge, but it is very important and irreplaceable in the life of a peasant. Humility and submission have another meaning. Their self-worth increases against the background of opposing qualities.

Pride, arrogance, self-aggrandizement or claims to become a hegemon, lust for power, finally - all this contradicts the normal position of a person among people and violates their natural equality. Everyone is nothing more than a member of the hostel.

In close connection with humility and submission to the inevitable, the peasants had faith and hope. Faith and hope are the ether in the spiritual structure of a person that maintains good spirits, not allowing the will to live to fade away, thereby allowing it to withstand the blows of fate. The loss of optimism leads to paralysis of a person’s conscious activity and a decline in his spiritual strength. We can say it this way: with the loss of faith and hope, a person’s individual, personal life collapses.

If we talk about the relationship between faith and knowledge, then the soul needs faith even more than knowledge. We need faith as a strong and creative foundation of life.

These specific qualities and life attitudes, characteristic of the overwhelming majority of Russian people, created that moral and spiritual atmosphere in Russia, which later vulgar sociology, mixed with flat “technological progressivism,” would call cultural backwardness.

Leo Tolstoy, who fell ill with the “death disease” that was fashionable in his time in the West and was already infecting the Russian intelligentsia with its bacilli, did not die, did not go crazy and did not lose his creative powers only due to the fact that in Russia there was still continued in that era exist such an atmosphere, and he could fall to this life-giving source.

And if for Leo Tolstoy the spiritual crisis was resolved successfully, then for many far from untalented representatives of Western culture, the “disease of death” usually ended in a tragic outcome. It is enough to recall how such an illness progressed in F. Nietzsche, which ended in complete darkness of reason.

Yu. Davydov connects such psychosis among the Western intelligentsia with the growing trend of “alienation” of all human relations from nature, the trend of mutual alienation of people, aggravated by the “atomization” of society, the withering away and atrophy of all human feelings; with the gradual transformation of human society into a terrible crowd of “egoists” absolutely alien to each other [ 5 ].

On my own behalf, I would add that the “progressive” Western civilization did not leave any points of support for the individual touched by spiritual illness, since it was rapidly eliminating the last islands of “patriarchalism”, “Asianism”, on which, following the example of Leo Tolstoy, one could rely for salvation.

The peasant wants to be and indeed is the master of his plot. Here he renews his life resource and, being an autonomous economic entity, performs all work - managerial, organizational, planning, executive - himself or allows a small number of workers to do it on especially busy working days.

The peasant produces (to use modern terminology) not exchange values, determined purely quantitatively, where all the qualitative features of labor die, fade away, he produces use values, qualitatively, materially living products for him.

The work of a true peasant is purely creative labor, it cannot be approached with mercantile standards. Arshin is not the same! Like a true artist, he lives in his creation. We will encounter numerous facts of the touchingly kind attitude of Siberian peasants towards their cows and cows. These facts cannot be correctly assessed while remaining captive of economic determinism, without coming into contact with the ethics and philosophy of “consumable economy” [ 6 ].

The personal nature of management is expressed in traditionalism. They manage things the way they learned from their fathers, the way they learned from childhood, the way they finally got used to it. When making certain economic decisions that can radically change the life of a peasant and his family, they first look not at the goal, not at the result, even if it promises direct benefit, but look back at examples of the past, imprinted in memory, at previous experience. In a peasant family they know and honor traditions.

Such prudence helps to avoid unnecessary risks and is ultimately rooted in human nature, in the desire of the human soul for constancy. There is a well-known saying among Russian peasants: “Better a bird in the hand than a pie in the sky.”

An excellent expert on the self-reproducing or “consumable” economy, Aristotle wrote: “In the art of making a fortune there is never a limit in achieving the goal, and the goal here is wealth and the possession of money. On the contrary, in the field related to the household, and not to the art of making a fortune, the limit available, since the purpose of the household is not to accumulate money" [ 7 ].

Two guiding goals are characteristic of this type of economy - the principle of covering needs and the principle of tradition. Taken together, they are nothing more than the essence of the principle constancy . The main feature of people running a household economy is the confident peace inherent in all organic life. As we have already noted, they are alien to the feverish activity and fussiness that the city provokes and perpetuates with its often artificial needs, this truly insatiable polyp that sucks out the vital juices of the village.

This is how one of the famous economists of the 19th century, Sismondi, described the free life of the independent peasantry: “Wherever one can find peasant land ownership, one also encounters that prosperity, that security, that confidence in the future, that independence, which simultaneously guarantees both happiness and virtue.” The peasant who, with the help of his children, does all the work on his little inherited property, pays neither rent to anyone above him, nor wages to anyone below him, he adapts his production to his consumption, eats his own bread, drinks his own wine. , wears a dress made from wool prepared at home and from flax grown by himself. Such a peasant cares little about market prices, because he sells and buys little, and will never be ruined by a trade crisis. Far from being afraid for the future, he represents it to himself in rainbow colors; after all, he uses in the interests of his children, one might even say for the benefit of future centuries, every moment that remains free from ordinary work. He needs a little time to throw grain into the ground, which in 100 years will grow into a mighty tree, to dig a ditch that will dry up his field forever, to conduct spring water, to improve all the types of livestock and plants around him by tirelessly repeated efforts that shorten the minutes of his rest. His small inherited estate is a real savings bank, always ready to accept all his small savings and turn every minute of his rest into value. The ever-active force of nature fertilizes his land and rewards his work a hundredfold. The peasant most vividly feels the happiness associated with his property" [ 8 ].

Sismondi is an economist, and his attention is drawn primarily to the organizational and economic activities of the peasant, although he also touches on ethical issues. Yes, the peasant as a subject of economic activity is self-sufficient. Sismondi rightly notes that the peasant adapts its production to its consumption . This is one of the principles of organizing peasant farming - the principle of covering needs. The peasant runs his farm economically and prudently. It should not be overlooked that the peasant never felt alone and helpless before the powerful forces of nature. He, as one of the members of the rural community, could and did feel its collectivist spirit and protection. The worst that could befall him was a crop failure, a fire, or an invasion by an enemy army. But even these blows of fate were only temporary disasters: they did not destroy the sources of his existence. Most often, large reserves stored in a barn protected against the consequences of a crop failure; livestock provided milk and meat; forests and waters also provided food. There was also building material in the forest to build a new one in place of the burned house. The peasant, along with livestock and other property that could be taken away, hid in the forest from the enemy, and then returned again when the enemy left. No matter how devastating the enemy raid was, it could not destroy arable land, meadows, forests, these foundations of peasant existence. If the necessary labor force was available, if people and livestock remained intact, then the losses were soon restored.

And yet, the most important thing that does not find direct external expression, but constitutes the greatest personal benefit of the peasant, is independence, which allows us to feel that our joys do not depend on the authorities or on fate, as well as mental activity, good mood, resulting from labor constantly applied for purposes whose intrinsic value is obvious to the worker himself. These are the qualities without which a normal and fair life is impossible in principle, since its main condition is missing - human self-esteem.

Family cooperation of labor efforts in the conditions of a peasant subsistence economy is subordinated to the reasonable goal of life support for the family collective itself, as the main goal of production. The market sale of a free product (it is incorrect to call it superfluous) merely accompanies the main goal. “Yes, we’ll sell, no, we’ll wait.” Therefore, here, in principle, an economic idol cannot appear, disfiguring the normal life of the peasantry - a continuously growing profit in monetary terms, which has become the goal and raison d'être of those who desire intrinsic wealth. In the conditions of the peasant way of life there is no place for such a pathological figure as a “partial worker.” Each participant in the labor process is quite universal within the limits of the demands presented by the very nature of agricultural work. He is simply not needed by life here, this unfortunate one, about whom it would be fatal for the human personality to say: “part of a partial machine.”

There is another serious obstacle to the phantom of the degeneration of peasant subsistence farming into forms of capitalist entrepreneurship - the cordial relations of close relatives who are alien to naked rationalism and its indispensable companion - mercantilism.

The idea of capitalist entrepreneurship, the idea of a mass consumption society could not arise on the soil and in the depths of traditional forms of economic activity. Capitalism, which arose outside their borders, appeared to the peasant farmstead as a purely external and fierce enemy. He destroyed the integral existence of the farmer, turning the owner, the owner into a proletarian and forced him, as a “six,” to join the ranks of low servants in the new society.
Bolshakov Vladimir Pavlovich, doctoral student of the Tyumen Agricultural Academy

Notes:

1 - Pushkin A.S. Thoughts on the road (1833-1834) // Pushkin A.S. Collection op.; In 10 volumes. T.7. - L.; Science, 1978.
2 - K. Myalo. A broken thread (peasant culture and cultural revolution) / K. Myalo // New world. - 1988. - No. 8.
3 - Radishchev A.N. Selected philosophical and socio-political works / A.N. Radishchev. - M.: Politizdat, 1952.
4 - One of the remarkable Russian writers of the 19th century G.I. Uspensky rightly believed that for the peasant, in addition to worldly, civil power, there is “the power of the land.” Submitting to this power, the peasant faithfully serves until the end of his life and does not complain, giving all his physical and spiritual strength to “Mother Earth.”
5 - Davydov Yu. Ethics of love and metaphysics of self-will / Yu. Davydov. 2nd ed. - M.: Young Guard, 1989.
6 - “Expense management” V. Sombart calls such forms of farming in which expenses are first given, by which income is determined. He classifies, with rare exceptions, all types of management of the pre-capitalist era as such farms.
7 - Aristotle. Works: In 4 vols. T. 4 / Aristotle. - M., 1983.
8 - Kautsky K. Agrarian question / K. Kautsky. - Kharkov: Proletariat, 1923.