The peasantry and the zemstvo in Smolensk province during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 - 1878: their cooperation in providing assistance to the active army and to the families of peasant soldiers
Автор: Gorskaya N.I.
Журнал: Новый исторический вестник @nivestnik
Рубрика: Российская государственность
Статья в выпуске: 3 (81), 2024 года.
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The purpose of the article is to study charitable activities in the Smolensk province during the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878. On the basis of previously unknown documents stored in the State Archive of the Smolensk Region, the cooperation of the peasantry and the Zemstvo in the framework of providing assistance to the active army and the peasant population of the province affected by the war is considered for the first time. Peasants are viewed both as actors of charitable actions, and as a party affected by the war, which has become the object of Zemstvo social assistance programs. Special attention is paid to the forms of charity and measures taken by Zemstvo to support the peasant population. The study is limited by the geographical scope of the Smolensk province, which was a typical agrarian province of post-reform Russia, and, in the author’s opinion, the local approach makes it possible, with certain reservations, to extrapolate the results obtained to other Zemstvo provinces of Russia. Modern Russian historiography, assessing the sympathetic attitude of the Russian peasantry to the war for the liberation of the Orthodox peoples of the Balkan Peninsula from the Turkish yoke, sees this primarily as an expression of the growth of national consciousness characteristic of the second half of the 20th century. The author concludes that the desire of the peasantry to provide all possible assistance to the Russian army and the families of those drafted and killed in the war was not only a manifestation of its traditional monarchist and religious ideas, but also the result of the intense activity of the Zemstvo. The involvement of the peasantry and the Zemstvo in joint public actions brought the estates of the Russian province closer together, but difficult economic circumstances in the country, limited Zemstvo finances and strict control by the provincial administration stood in the way of their cooperation.
Russian-turkish war of 1877-1878, smolensk province, zemstvo, peasantry, volunteerism, victims of war, charity, social policy, social assistance
Короткий адрес: https://sciup.org/149146215
IDR: 149146215 | DOI: 10.54770/20729286_2024_3_6