Rural administration in the composition of peasant government of the Tomsk province of the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20 century: formation of independence

Abstract

Rural administration in the Tomsk province in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century: independent self-government institutions or appendage of volost administration?

The paper treats on the role of rural officials in the system of local peasant self-government in the Tomsk province of the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX century. The research is based on office work documentation deposited in the funds of the Russian State Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Tomsk Region, the State Archive of the Novosibirsk Region, as well as on memoirs and studies of contemporaries of the events described. Among the researchers of rural self-government, two points of view on the functioning of rural municipality are dominating. Some researchers hold the opinion that the community was a silent instrument of state power for the implementation of fiscal functions. Another part argues that self-government at the rural level was less regulated than the rural municipality. The village headman had more freedom from the volost and local administration than any other representative of peasant self-government. The purpose of this article is to clarify the degree of independence of officials of rural self-government.

For this purpose the list of rights and duties of the rural headman, clerk, tax collectors, sotsky and desyatsky has been presented. Special attention is paid to powers of the headman and clerk as to main “chiefs” in the village. The list of duties of the rural head was very extensive, and for that reason peasants quite often tried to avoid election to this position, giving the most different arguments. The rural clerk had special position in rural society. The duty to know the laws concerning not only life of peasants, but also army and stamp regulations, a set of various circulars and orders increased authority of the clerk among peasants. Position of the clerk has been more closely connected with the official power than that of other members of rural self-government. The latter was more and more closely integrated with the state institutes of the power. The increasing document flow demanded larger responsibility from peasants, distracting them from household. The author comes to a conclusion that despite unwillingness of peasants to fulfill the functions which have lost prestigiousness and independence, they nevertheless adapted to the increasing intervention of the state, using official position for the benefit of community and their own.