The Aftermath: Demographic Pressures and Reform Measures

The exact toll of human and livestock deaths during the Great Drought remains unknown. Normal record-keeping procedures fell by the way­side, and the state even delayed its planned 1833 national census until 1835.

Demographic losses during the cholera epidemic and famine were by no means severe enough to relieve the overcrowding that was increas­ingly a problem in the Molochna region. The eighth Russian census, completed in 1835, found 97,450 Orthodox, sectarian, and Nogai state peasant male souls living on crown land in the two mainland uezds of Tavria guberniia.²⁴ Total crown land in the two uezds was 1,494,363 desiatinas, meaning that if all available land had been distributed there would still have been only 15.32 desiatinas per male soul.²⁵ In fact, 245,390 desiatinas remained unassigned; thus, the average allotment was just 12.81 desiatinas per male soul.²⁶ The unassigned land, scattered in the remotest parts of the two uezds, could not be conveniently as­signed to peasants living in the most crowded areas, and this meant that for most state peasants the time when ‘land was free and you tilled where you wished’ was gone.

Overcrowding had been creeping up on Molochna settlers for many years, and the fact that the critical point hit at almost exactly the same time as cholera and drought is sheerest coincidence. However, the ways people reacted to land shortages were heavily influenced by experi­ences of epidemics and hunger.

The first indication of serious overcrowding in Molochna came in 1832, when Molokan villagers appealed to the state for more land.²⁷ Within a year the Orthodox villages of Berestova, Nikolaevka, and Popovka would also ask the state for assistance, requesting that the Ministry of Internal Affairs step in and repartition their land.²⁸ In its typical foot-dragging fashion the state did not address the matter seri­ously until the late 1830s, and the broader issue of repartition will be left for Chapter 6. Nevertheless, information that the state assembled about the villages, based on the 1835 census, shows how crowded things had become in some areas in Melitopol uezd. The three villages were populated by 8,042 male souls and had 56,882 desiatinas of good land - just 7.07 desiatinas per male soul. The state’s first thought was to assign more land. After all, wasn’t Tavria guberniia ‘land rich’? It soon be­came apparent, however, that there was simply no land left to assign. In 1835 there were just 92,940 unassigned desiatinas in all of Melitopol, and these, located on the high steppe, were of questionable value.²⁹ For the peasants in Berestova, Nikolaevka, and Popovka, the six cows, thir­teen sheep, and 0.66 horses that the average Orthodox household had owned in 1827 were already too many for their land. Something had to give.

The state was already in the process of devising a national policy to deal with land shortages among state peasants. Over and over again, dating back into the previous century, plans for reforming the adminis­tration of the peasantry had been considered and rejected, and the early years of Tsar Nicholas’s reign saw a number of serious proposals.³⁰ In February 1836 Nicholas made P.D.

Kiselev’s objective was to improve peasant conditions and his pre­ferred method was standardization. This was not good news for Molochna residents. Peasants in interior guberniias were in far worse condition than those on the periphery, and Kiselev hoped to move peasants from the overcrowded interior to what he perceived to be unoccupied land in the Molochna region.³³ When local protests made it clear that Molochna peasants had no land to spare, the Ministry of State Domains tried to free up land. In March 1841 Kiselev declared the guberniia to be ‘land poor’ and ordered the reduction of all allotments to eight desiatinas per male soul.³⁴ With a stroke of the pen this decision pro­duced 695,149 ‘free’ desiatinas, room enough for 87,000 new male souls to immigrate.

It is easier to order unpopular changes than to enact them, and this would prove the case in Molochna. The Orthodox state peasants re­sponded with protest petitions declaring, ‘On eight desiatinas of poor land one may hardly obtain enough grain to feed oneself.’³⁵ Regional authorities entered the fray on the side of the peasants, for the first time displaying a consciousness of the region’s unique environmental conditions. Baron von Rosen, who headed the guberniia office of the Ministry of State Domains in Simferopol, wrote to Kiselev pointing out that eight desiatinas of land was ‘too little, because the land in this region is for the most part without water, and in places, saline.’³⁶ Admi­ral M.S. Mordvinov, newly appointed governor general of New Russia, joined in the protests, noting that much of the land in question was ‘unsuited to crop-raising.

These protests did not go unnoticed. As George L. Yaney observes, Kiselev relied upon peasant consent to enact reforms and would ‘call off his reform programs on the state lands whenever they aroused de­termined opposition.’³⁸ Although there is no evidence that the state ever officially reversed its decision to reduce land allotments, there is equally no evidence that it implemented this decision. Still, the deci­sion to reclassify the guberniia as ‘land poor’ was not without conse­quences. Prior to 1841 the state’s policy was to maintain allotments of fifteen desiatinas per male soul by allotting new land as the population increased. After 1841 this was no longer the case. The state assigned whatever unoccupied land was available to peasants from other guberniias, and when large tracts of new land became available after the exile of Doukhobor and Molokan sectarians, much of this, too, was distributed to new immigrants. Consequently, landholdings shrank, slowly placing pressure on peasants to alter their land use practices to more intensive agricultural methods.