The daily life of the peasants. Life of a peasant family (XVIII - early XX century) Life and life of peasants in the Middle Ages

The usual life of Russian peasants consisted of housework, caring for livestock and plowing in the field. Working days came early in the morning, and in the evening, as soon as the sun was at sunset and a difficult working day ended with an evening meal, reading a prayer and sleeping.

Traditional Russian settlements

The first settlements in Ancient Russia called communities. Already much later, when the first wooden cities were formed - settlements, settlements were built around them, and even further settlements of ordinary peasants, which eventually became villages and villages where a simple peasant lived and worked.

Russian hut: interior decoration

The hut is the main dwelling of the Russian peasant, his family hearth, a place for eating, sleeping and relaxing. It is in the hut that all personal space belongs to the peasant and his family, where he can live, do housework, raise children and while away the time between the working days of peasant life.

Russian household items

The everyday life of a peasant contains many household items and tools that characterize the original Russian way of life and the way of life of a simple peasant family. In the hut, these are the household's improvised means: a sieve, a spinning wheel, a spindle, as well as primordially Russian items, a samovar. In the field, the usual tools of labor: a scythe, a sickle, a plow and a cart in the summer, a sledge-wreck in the winter.

In general, the way of life and everyday life of the peasants were determined by the level of development of the economy and the degree of their exploitation. Most researchers agree that peasant life in the Middle Ages was balancing on the verge of starvation. Hence - poverty, the availability of only the most necessary. Dwellings, food, clothing, utensils were simple, usually created by their own labor; bought little.

The village remained the predominant form of peasant settlement. Even where settlements and farmsteads were widespread, they gravitated toward a larger settlement as an administrative, religious, and economic center. In it, communal and patrimonial affairs were performed, there was a church, often a marketplace, where quitrents were brought. Villages usually numbered no more than 200-400 people. A manor, a peasant's yard is a complex complex that included a house and other buildings, a garden, a vegetable garden, and small plots of land. At the same time, the labor activity of a peasant, even a serf, was not regulated by anyone in his yard.

Economic rise of the XII-XIII centuries. impacted on rural housing construction. Former dugouts and semi-dugouts are everywhere replaced by ground houses. The so-called single-chamber houses (one living room with a stove and a cold vestibule) predominated. Due to the lack of Western Europe scaffolding, the walls of houses were made of a wooden frame, packed with broken stone and clay. But the foundations from the XII century. already everywhere were stone. They covered the roof of houses with straw, reeds, shingles. Only wealthy peasants could afford two-room houses made entirely of stone. The shortage of forests in the west became especially acute after the "great clearings". But the forest was still needed for firewood. There were often no windows in the houses, and in cold weather small holes were plugged with straw. The rich had stoves with chimneys, the rest were content with the smoking method of firing. They cooked food and warmed themselves from the hearths.

Village areas were usually surrounded by fences, primarily to protect livestock from predators. Building more powerful fortifications was the privilege of only the feudal lords.

Little is known about the sanitary condition of medieval villages. Of personal hygiene items, bone combs are more common. They could shave with small thin knives with blunt ends. Dishes with burnt food were usually thrown away, because pottery was made in almost every village and was as fragile as it was cheap. Its fragments are literally dotted with all the settlements explored by archaeologists.

The food of the peasants was dominated by vegetables (especially legumes, cabbage), wild fruits and roots, boiled grain, and fish. Difficulties in threshing grain, the paucity of mills and bread ovens, and the banalities for their use predetermined the rarity of bread and the predominance of cereals and stews in the diet of peasants. Bread, especially white, was given to the sick. Meat was consumed only on holidays. The food was also influenced by church rituals, fasts and holidays, when it was customary to eat meat. Hunting and fishing were restricted by feudal prohibitions. All this made the peasant menu very monotonous and limited.

A peasant family usually consisted of parents with unmarried children and consisted of 4-5 people. The bride had to bring a dowry (usually it was movable property: clothes, bed linen, household utensils or money). The groom also made a gift (depending on the size of his property or the dowry of the bride). But he usually made this gift as a husband, that is, the morning after the wedding (the so-called "morning gift"). The wife was usually under the patronage of her husband, who could also use corporal punishment ("not up to blood"). Even greater was his power over children. Property transactions were carried out with the consent of both spouses. Labor equalized husband and wife in the village. When plowing, the plow was held and directed by an adult man, teenagers ruled draft cattle and cleaned the plow. Men were also responsible for the care of draft animals. The rest of the house was looked after by women, although the communal livestock was usually grazed by men. Harvesting was more often done by women, while mowing was done by men. The harvest was threshed by men and women together. Judging by the miniatures of the 13th-14th centuries, women also took part in uprooting stumps during clearing.

The connection of the villagers with outside world was limited. Life was closed, patriarchal. All the interests of the peasants were concentrated in their native village, they were connected with their neighbors, their own and neighboring lords. Feudal custom forbade peasants to carry weapons. For the same reason, armed clashes between peasants were also prohibited. The duality of their position also affected the behavior of the peasants. On the one hand, they depended on the feudal lord - the owner of the land, and on communal routines. Moreover, these routines served as a kind of guarantee of the stability of peasant farms. On the other hand, the peasants had allotments and ran individual households. And gradually their private interests come into conflict not only with the interests of their lords, but also with the authority of the communities.

An important element of the social and spiritual life of the peasantry was the church and the parish priest. The local, parish church was a social center in the village; various brotherhoods were created under it not only for religious purposes, but also for repairing roads, protecting fields, etc. Before active internal colonization and strengthening of ties with urban markets in the 11th-13th centuries. the parish priest was the main adviser and authority among the peasants.

Living conditions of people left their imprint on the system cultural property especially for the upbringing of the next generation.

By everyday life it is customary to understand the way of everyday life and the system of intra-family relations, which are different for different social groups, in the city and in the countryside.

In what living conditions peasants lived? N. I. Kostomarov describes the dwellings of peasants in the 16th–17th centuries as follows: “The huts of the common people were black, that is, without roughness, the smoke came out through a small window; there were extensions at the huts ... A poor Russian peasant lived in this space with their chickens, pigs, heifers amid an unbearable stench. The stove served as a lair for the whole family; and from the stove, floors were attached to the ceiling. "

The hut with low ceilings and the same doors is the main type of peasant dwelling. The small windows, covered with a frame with a stretch bull bubble (window glass began to spread only from the 19th century), let in little light; The oven did not have a chimney. In the hut they cooked food, slept, spun, weaved, did housework, but here they kept goats, calves and piglets almost all winter.

A large adobe stove occupied a lot of space in the room, which served for heating, cooking, and they slept on it. Diagonally from it was a red (holy) corner, where there was a table and icons hung. Benches were fortified along the wall, and behind the side wall above the bench there were beds, where they also slept, stored things. In a hut measuring 16-20 square meters. m passed the life of a family, consisting of 7-8, and often of 15-20 people.

Overcrowding, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions in the hut, where light and fresh air hardly penetrated, were noted in many peasant dwellings even at the beginning of the 20th century. Life in such conditions, especially in winter, was one of the causes of high infant mortality.

The peasants lived much better in the north of Russia and in Siberia, where the dwellings were high, with different buildings.

The moral and material well-being of a person was determined family which provided the most important function of raising children. The transfer of life experience to the young, the preservation of the traditional way of life, culture, the development of moral principles by the child were carried out primarily in the family. The family was considered a sacred union, marriage was not only a guarantee of well-being, but also a moral duty; the Church also supported such views.

At the head of the classical family, which usually united relatives of several generations, was highway; this role was passed down from father to son. The eldest man managed the entire life and household of the family. In the absence of the father, his duties were performed by the eldest son, which is why he had greater rights in comparison with other children. Only at the end of the XIX century. families began to stand out more often from a large team, the cohabitation of families of brothers was already a rare occurrence.

The owner, a highway, bore the brunt of agricultural work, construction, gathered the whole family for a family council; in the presence of children, important economic matters were decided, such as the choice of crops for sowing, the purchase, sale of things, or the marriage of sons. The opinion of the elders had the greatest weight in resolving family issues, while the children received a clear lesson in the joint and harmonious discussion of affairs and respect for the elders. Actually, the whole culture of behavior was built on the principle of respect for men and elders. Even the hut had half for men and separately for women with children. In the front corner, under the images, the senior men of the family and honored guests, also men, always sat at the table.

The distribution of household work among the female part of the family - daughters, daughters-in-law, widows, soldiers who lived in the house - led big woman(senior woman) - the wife of the big man, mother and mother-in-law. She not only determined who would do what, gave specific instructions on cases, controlled and carried out their implementation, "reprimanding" in case of negligence, but she herself worked a lot on the housework.

Certain duties of a religious nature were also assigned to the elders in the family. So, the bolshak read prayers before a common meal, and the bolshak read prayers before they began to perform common women's work.

Women in a peasant family were in different positions and had unequal rights. For example, the hostess and daughters-in-law with many children enjoyed an advantage in discussing common affairs and behaved freely. But they also had to be restrained and respectful towards the men of the family. Young daughters-in-law found themselves in a humbled position, they had to obey not only their husbands, but also all older relatives, they were entrusted with the most difficult household chores. It happened that family conflicts between parents and the "young" ended in a family division - the young, arbitrarily or with the consent of their parents, built a separate house and formed a separate family.

In a special position before marriage in a peasant family were girls. They were more free in the choice of clothes, hairstyles. A girl could walk with simple hair, with one braid, decorate her head with a ribbon, while a married woman was obliged to cover her head with a scarf or wear a cap, kokoshnik - the appearance of her simple hair was considered immoral. Daughters were exempted from many household chores if there were daughters-in-law in the family, but they always worked in the field. They were allowed to spend a lot of time in other villages, getting to know young people.

If there were two unmarried girls in the family, then the younger sister should not have been particularly active in the festivities, and if young people came to the house, she was generally escorted out of the hut. The youngest had to wait for her turn to get married, and if she was wooed earlier, it was considered a shame for the family.

Respect, special respect was traditionally surrounded in a peasant working family mother. Such an attitude towards the mother was an important element of moral education, and it was laid down from the very beginning. early childhood. In many families, the father, supporting the authority of the mother, addressed her by her first name and patronymic, called her "hostess", "mother". But there were also examples of a different kind, when the husband raised his hand to his wife, dragged her by the braids, and scolded her rudely. "Whom I love, I beat" - this is how the husband's attitude towards his wife was explained.

The mother showed the children a personal example of love for them, tenderness and affection, daily care for them. In turn, in her old age she could count on the respect and care of her children. If adult children forgot about their duty to their mother, society stood up for her protection, demanding the punishment of the ungrateful.

The attitude of the head of the family towards household members, wife and children was distinguished by the strictness prescribed by the church. And having matured, the children did not dare to disobey their parents, they respected and obeyed even a weak-willed father.

The relationship was special. son-in-law and mother-in-law distinguished by respect and attention. The son-in-law visited his wife's parents with gifts, helped them in household affairs, and the mother-in-law tried in every possible way to please the son-in-law, treating him kindly. It is in urban folklore that a mocking attitude towards this related couple is reflected, while in the peasant environment it has its own ritual: "A son-in-law in the yard - a pie on the table", "A mother-in-law for a son-in-law and a mortar is milked." But about worthless sons-in-law one could also hear this: "A father-in-law gave a ruble for a son-in-law. And then he gave one and a half to bring him out of the yard."

An important feature of the peasant family was its wide range of kinship - often all the inhabitants of the village were related.

Regardless of the number of family members, there was a gender and age distribution of responsibilities. Men did all the hard work: arranging firewood and fodder for livestock, caring for draft animals, construction, plowing, sowing.

Cultivating the land, growing crops is a laborious task that required great knowledge, skill, and intuition. I had to plow the land with a plow two or three times, then harrowing went on. In the spring, it was necessary to guess the date of spring sowing, which was taken very seriously. They even prepared especially for sowing - they washed themselves the day before in a bathhouse so that the bread would be born clean; they went out to the arable land in a clean white shirt, as if setting an example for the earth and calling it to imitate - the remnants of pagan ideas.

In winter, men carried logs from the forest, repaired sledges, carts, harrows, wove baskets, and hunted.

Women's duties included caring for cattle and poultry, planting vegetables and caring for them, field work, harvesting herbs and brooms in summer; women stoked stoves, milked cows, harvested bread, knitted sheaves, pulled flax and hemp. And of course, their main business was housekeeping and raising children.

During the harvest and haymaking, everyone united: women, men, children. Together they reaped, knitted sheaves, mowed the grass, turned it with a rake, etc.

Children in the family, they not only mastered their future labor duties, mastering practical skills, but also realized their functions in future adult life. The girl adopted her mother's style of behavior in the family, learned to build her relationships with other family members, recognizing the unconditional authority of the man - the head of the family. The innate instinct of motherhood developed through the constant practice of participating in the upbringing of children (babysitter, looking after the younger ones). From early childhood, the girl began to take care of her future family life, preparing a dowry for herself, she spun, wove, embroidered. Society valued in girls humility, kindness, thriftiness, diligence, health; she tried to live up to this ideal.

The boy also began to realize his future responsibility for the family, getting involved in various kinds of labor activity and gradually entering the established system of relationships. The virtues of a young man were considered dexterity, strength, sobriety, diligence.

WITH early years children knew that their family future was determined by their parents, their choice, which was considered indisputable, and the young obeyed him. The conditions that were taken into account by parents when choosing a groom or bride were also known: health, the financial situation of the family, the ability to work, the size of the bride's dowry, her chastity. From childhood, the girl in the family prepared utensils, clothes for a dowry, and, as already mentioned, she herself took an active part in this. The parental family, thus, served for the children as a prototype of their future life arrangement.

Traditionally, love and sincerity, benevolence and tolerance, hospitality and sensitivity to the state of mind of relatives reigned in a peasant family; in the family they found solace in times of adversity. Quiet home comfort can also be judged by folk vocabulary, in which there are many diminutive names and names of objects, phenomena ( morning, water, chicken, kitten, cat, dear, my little blood etc.). Soft, melodious, as if pouring from the depths of the soul was everyday colloquial speech.

The warmth of the hearth was felt even by a wanderer, getting into an unfamiliar family. The hosts fed him what they could, sympathetically and patiently listened to his complaints about the hardships of life, sincerely sympathized with him, switching to the sad emotions of the guest, even when they themselves had reasons for a different mood. The kindness of a Russian person, noted N. O. Lossky, sometimes even prompted him to lie, just so as not to offend the interlocutor, not to disturb the peace and good relations.

Simplicity, frankness, ingenuity were characteristic of the relationships between members of the family team, as well as cordiality and hospitality. It was believed that "the native hut is both bad and sweet." Nevertheless, external manifestations of emotions - love, tenderness, etc. - were rare in the relationships between adult family members. Husband and wife could not walk side by side along the village street, even talk to each other in public. In some areas, daughters-in-law with children did not sit at a common table, but ate in the kitchen half.

In relations with children, parents resorted not only to affection, but also to punishments for misconduct. Moreover, while the child was small, he was most often not punished, but frightened. “Look, you will meet a forest man, I saw him once, he is as tall as a birch, and his eyes are cloudy, his beard is white, God forbid you meet him,” they said to a child who was walking until late in the evening. Or: "I sat down at the table with dirty hands, and immediately a demon joined you. It is he who is looking to grab a piece," etc. The older child has already been punished. It could have been his mother's swearing when he came in from the street in torn clothes; strict reprimanding for dirt in the house, damage to things; could be flogged for careless handling of fire. A crying, repentant child was usually forgiven. The friendly, affectionate attitude created a sense of security in children. But, of course, there were also such families where parents deprived their children of all freedom, punished them for games, noise, running around, demanded that they be serious, like adults. If children caused material damage to the family, their punishment could be very cruel: for example, a child was driven with a whip into a hut across the yard, like cattle, not to mention kicks and clicks, which are not uncommon in a peasant environment. By the way, the authors of numerous "instructions", "teachings" and "parables about education" insisted on the need for severe punishments. Advice was given, for example, of this kind: "He who loves his son will not spare a stick for him, so that the fear of God takes root in him" or "Do not leave children without punishment: if you beat with a stick, you will not die, but will be even healthier. Punish your children not only word, but also beatings. And although parents listened to such advice, especially since they were promoted by the church, in practice, physical punishment was considered an extreme measure, since "an affectionate word is thicker than a club."

Thus, the family with its way of life and traditional relationships, reflecting the economic and moral foundations peasant life, was for the child a prototype of his future family and the main educator.

Old log cabin covered with shrapnel Mazanka, outskirts

The way of life of the peasants also changed very slowly. The working day still began early: in summer at sunrise, and in winter long before dawn. The basis of rural life was a peasant household, which (with a few exceptions) consisted of a large family, where parents lived under the same roof with married and unmarried sons, unmarried daughters.

The larger the yard was, the easier it was for him to cope with the short, four to six-month period allotted by the nature of the middle zone for field work. Such a yard contained more cattle, could cultivate more land. The solidarity of the economy was based on joint work under the leadership of the head of the family.

Peasant buildings consisted of a small and low-height wooden hut (in the common people they called "huts"), a barn, a cattle shed, a cellar, a threshing floor and a bathhouse. The latter were not for everyone. Baths were often heated in turn with neighbors.

The huts were cut from logs, in the forest areas the roofs were covered with shreds, and in the rest more often with straw, which caused frequent fires. In these places they were devastating due to the fact that the peasants did not have gardens or trees around their houses, as in the southern regions of the Chernigov province. Therefore, the fire spread quickly from building to building.

In the districts of the Bryansk Territory, which then belonged to the Chernigov province, one could meet mud huts - a type of house characteristic of Little Russia. They were with a pipe, but without floors. The walls of such a house consisted of a wooden frame (thin branches) or mud bricks and were covered with clay both from the outside and from the inside, and then covered with lime.

In most peasant dwellings throughout the 19th century, stoves with a chimney continued to be absent. It was not only and not even so much the complexity of their manufacture.

S. Vinogradov. In the hut.

A.G. Venetsianov. barn

Many peasants were convinced that the “black” or smokehouse (without a pipe) hut was drier than white (with a pipe). In the "black" hut at the top, a window was cut through to let the smoke out. Additionally, when the stove was lit, a door or window was opened. The influx of fresh air cleansed the atmosphere of a cramped dwelling, in which there was not only a large peasant family, but often a calf or lambs, which had to be kept warm for some time after birth. However, at the same time, the walls of such huts, the clothes of people were constantly covered with soot.

The interior decoration of the hut did not differ in variety. Opposite the door in one corner was a stove, in the other - a chest or box, above which were placed shelves with dishes. The stove was rarely laid out of brick because of its high cost. More often it was made of clay, making a vault on wooden hoops, which were then burned out after drying. Several dozen fired bricks were used only on the surface of the roof for laying out the pipe.

In the eastern corner, opposite from the stove, there are icons and a table. From the stove, a platform was made along the wall, which served instead of a bed, and benches were located along the remaining walls. The floor was rarely plank, and more often earthen. The stove, with or without a chimney, was made in such a way that there was always a warm place on which several people could fit. This was necessary for drying clothes and heating people who had to spend the whole day in the cold, in slush.

However, in the hut all members of the family gathered only in the coldest winter time. In summer, men spent the night in the field with horses, in autumn, until severe cold, while threshing continued, on the threshing floor, under the barn.

In addition to the hut, there were unheated cages or barns in the peasant yard. Fabrics, clothes, wool were stored here; self-spinning wheels, as well as food supplies and bread. Before the onset of winter cold, married family members or unmarried daughters lived here. The number of cages depended on wealth and the presence of young families. Many peasants kept dry grain and potatoes in special earthen pits.

Sheds or sheds for livestock were most often built without large expenditures on materials: from thin logs and even in the form of a wattle fence with a large number of holes. Cattle feed was laid along the wall and served as bedding at the same time. Pigs were rarely placed in separate rooms and simply wandered around the yard, chickens were in the hallway, in attics and in the hut. Waterfowl ducks and geese were more often bred in those villages and villages that stood near lakes and rivers.

In nutrition, the peasants were content with what was produced on their own farm. On weekdays, food was seasoned with bacon or milk, and on holidays ham or sausage, chicken, piglet or ram were in store. Chaff was added to flour for making bread. In the spring, many peasants ate sorrel and other herbs, boiling it in beetroot brine or seasoning it with kvass. A soup called “kulesh” was prepared from flour. Bread at that time was baked only by wealthy peasants.

According to the description left, peasant clothing was also still made at home. For men, its main part is a zipun (caftan] made of knee-length domestic cloth, a shirt made of domestic canvas, felt yarmulkes on the head, and in winter, sheep's hats with ears and a cloth top.

Women's clothes were made of the same material, but differed in a special cut. Going out into the street, they put on a cloth swing jacket (scroll), under which a fur coat was worn in winter. The scrolls were mostly white. Women also wore poneva, that is, a piece of woolen colored fabric with a canvas apron. Long fur coats were rare. On ordinary days the head was tied with a canvas scarf, on holidays - with a colored one.