Abstract
According to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘Jacquerie, also Anglicised -ery’ is the ‘revolt of the villains or peasants of northern France, hence, any rising of Peasantry’. Somewhat humorously for those who look at it ex post factum, the 1901 edition of that major repository of standard knowledge and common sense proceeds thus to exemplify the term: ‘In Russia … the villages scattered here and there in the midst of great steppe do not afford material even for a successful Jacquery’. The Encyclopaedia Britannica explicated the initial event as caused by ‘the hardship endured by the peasants in the Hundred Years War and their hatred for the nobles who oppressed them’. The peasants, it said, ‘destroyed numerous chateaux … subjected the whole countryside to fire and sword, committed the most terrible atrocities’. This was brought to an end when ‘an army of Charles the Bad … crushed the rebels … and the nobles then took violent reprisal’.1 Notice the adverb ‘then’ and the description of the popular nickname of the nobles’ commander.
It is not the little books which are terrible …
It is that there is nothing to eat for man and beast.
(Peasant elder questioned about the impact of revolutionary propaganda on the 1902 ‘agrarian disturbances’ in Poltava.)
Worse than poverty, more bitter than the hunger is the oppression of the people by their absolute powerlessness.
(Resolution of the assembly of the village Shnyak, Kazan’ guberniya, 1907.)
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Notes and References
3A The Jacquery
Quoted after J. le Goff, ‘The Town as an Agent of Civilisation’ in C. M. Cipolla, The Fontana Economic History of Europe: The Middle Ages (London, 1977) p. 71
A. Peshekhonov, Agrarnaya problema (St Petersburg, 1906) p. 46
See P. Longworth, The Cossacks (London, 1969)
J. Bloom, Lord and Peasant in Russia (New York, 1964) pp. 551–8, 591;
P. Silver, Peasant Disturbances in Russia, 1826–1917 (an unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1977)
S. Dubrovskii and V. Grave, Agrarnoe dvizhenie v 1905–1907 gg. (Moscow, 1925)
followed up by S. Dubrovskii, Krest’yanskoe dvizhenie v revolyutsii 1905–1907 gg. (Moscow, 1956)
For such compilations see P. Maslov, Agrarnyi vopros v rossii (St Petersburg, 1908) vol. 2
V. Veselovskii, Krest’yanskei vopros i krest’yanskoe dvizhenie v rossii (St Petersburg, 1907)
A. A. Vasilev etc., Krest’yanskie nakazy samarskoi gubernii (Samara, 1906); Dubrovskii, Krest’yanskoe op. cit.; Also notes 28 and 31 in section 3C
E. Zhivolup, Krest’yanskoe dvizhenie v kharkovskoi gubernii v 1905–07 godakh (Kharkov, 1956) pp. 106–7
V. Nevskii, Revolyutsiya 1905 goda (Kharkov, 1925) p. 186
A Shestakov, Krest’yanskaya revolyutsiya 1905–1907 gg. v rossii (Moscow, 1926) p. 46
M. Bok, Vospominaniya o moem ottse p.a.stolypine (New York, 1953) pp. 147, 151, 152
E. Morokhovets, Krest’yanskoe dvizhenie i sotsial-demokratiya (Moscow, 1926) pp. 60–1
3B The Peasant Rule
Tan (Bogoraz), Novoe krest’yanstvo (Moscow, 1905) p. 39
B. Veselovskii, Krest’yanskii vopros i krest’yanskoe dvizhenie v rossii (St Petersburg, 1907) (following a report in Russkie vedomosti) p. 96
I. Pavlov, Markovskaya respublika (Moscow, 1926)
V. P. Danilov, M. P. Kim and N. V. Tropina, Sovetskoe krest’yanstvo (Moscow, 1973) pp. 15–16
A. Shcherbak, ‘1905 v sumskom uezde’, Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, 1926, vol.(54)7. Also Danilov, et al, op. cit., p. 252; Shestakov, op. cit.; Maslov, op. cit., p. 252;
V. Groman, Materialy po krest’yanskomu voprosu (Rostov, 1905)
Shcherbak, op. cit.; Also E. Kiryukhina, ‘Vserossiiskii krest’yanskii soyuz v 1905 g.’, Istoricheskie zapiski, 1955, no. 50, p. 131
E. Kiryukhina, ‘Mestnye organizatsii VKS v 1906 godu’, Uchennye zapiski (Kirov Pedagogical Institute, 1956) no. 10, p. 139, for the way the estimate was made
Karl Marx, ‘The Class Struggle in France 1848–1850’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1950) vol. 1, p. 159
3C The Peasant Dream
See the codification of peasant common law by V. Mukhin, Obychnyi poryadok nasledovaniya u krest’yan (St Petersburg, 1888)
For discussion see also T. Shanin, The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972) Appendix B and Russia as a ‘Developing Society’ Chapter 2
See for example T. Sushkin, Agrarniki: siluety 1905–1907 gg. (Moscow, 1927)
A. Studentsov, Saratovskoe krest’yanskoe vosstanie 1905 goda (Penza, 1925) p. 42, 46
A. Shestakov, Krest’yanskaya revolyutsiya 1905–1907 gg. v rossii (Moscow, 1926);
V. Groman, Materialy po krest’yanskomu voprosu, (Rostov, 1905)
P. Maslov, Agrarnyi vopros v rossii (St Petersburg, 1908) vol. 1, pp. 277–281
B. Veselovskii, Krest’yanskii vopros i krest’yanskoe dvizhenie v rossii (St Petersburg, 1907) p. 138
M. Gefter in Istoricheskaya nauka i nekotorye problemy sovremennosti (Moscow, 1969) p. 22
For comparative context see E. R. Wolf, Peasants (Engelwood Cliffs, 1966) part 4;
T. Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies (Harmondsworth, 1971) part 4;
G. M. Foster, ‘The Peasants and the Image of Limited Good’, American Anthropologist 1965, vol. 62, no. 2;
J. Berger, Pig Earth (London, 1979);
E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Peasants’, The New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, 1979) XIII
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© 1986 Teodor Shanin
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Shanin, T. (1986). Revolution from Below: Land and Liberty!. In: Russia, 1905–07 Revolution as a Moment of Truth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18273-2_3
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