Self-Government in Peasant Communities of Verkhotur'e District in the 17th Century

Peasant community (obsh’ina) was an important element of the social structure of tsarist Russia. Many investigations are dedicated to obsh’ina as a phenomenon that influenced Russian history, but there are relatively few studies examining practices of specific communities. This research is devoted to self-government in three settlements (slobody) of Western Siberia in the 17th century. It considers the question of who participated in local government and what their field of activity was. The work also discusses the problems of conflicts in the self-government and the role of the state. The source base of the study consists of documents produced by the administrative office of Verkhotur’e (Verkhoturskaya prikaznaya izba). On the basis of types, all written documents are divided into clerical work and accounting records. The study uses a method of combining information from various sources. Drawing on the “elections” and peasant and census books, the short dossiers on elected people and the most active electors were put together. Yard-owners, middle-aged people, who had a big family and lived in the settlement for a long time, but were not necessary rich, were, as a rule, elected. Moreover, the same can be stated about the electors who, drawing on sources, amounted to not more than 20% of the whole settlement. Elected people often led public complaints, and the state in its turn was an arbiter in resolving conflicts between the community and the administration, but rarely interfered in the actual process of self-government.