Russian Peasant Life and Clothing, c. 1850
An illustrated look at the peasant fashions and social conditions of Russia in the mid-1800s.
Russian Life in the 1800s
If you imagine common Russian people in the age of serfdom, you may picture peasants toiling over drab fields, leading mostly unremarkable lives. But writing off a vast nation and all the cultures within it, even from long ago, means missing out on all the beauty and human connection it can offer. These illustrations by F.G. Solntsev, an artist active in the mid-1800s, showcase the lives and fashions of common Russian people at a pivotal point in the empire’s history.
The End of Serfdom in Russia
In 1861, the Russian monarchy under Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia. Prior to that, serfdom functioned much as it had since the medieval era in Europe. Peasants, effectively slaves, were bound to plots of land and the wealthy (typically nobles) who owned them. They provided a certain amount of labor for their lord in exchange for a small plot of land to grow their own food and other materials. Then, overnight, around 23 million people gained the freedom to go where they wanted, pursue other trades, or seek an education. For some, the end of serfdom brought new opportunities and prosperity. For others, it started a slow slide into worse living conditions, fueling the later Russian Revolution.
These portraits were created in the decades just before the end of serfdom. While wealthier merchants, academics, and other professionals in the cities followed wider European fashion trends, rural peasants for the most part still made their own clothing. This led to a wide variety of folk costumes, and people’s hometowns could often be identified by their outfits.
These portraits also capture the era right before Russia’s Golden Age of Literature. By the 1860s and 1870s, authors like Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others, would lead a renewed flourishing of Russian literary arts. Tolstoy, a wealthy estate owner, was notable for his habit of joining his workers to mow hay during the harvest, which he recorded through the character Levin in Anna Karenina.
The Russian Empire’s Slow Decline
Further, this time period represents one of the last stable eras of the Russian Empire at its height. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in Saint Petersburg. Alexander II was the same tsar who liberated the serfs some 20 years prior, but his social reforms were too little too late. A group of revolutionaries carried out a successful bombing attack on his carriage. It was an early rumble of the quake that would shake the world about 40 years later. In the meantime, his successors Alexander III and Nicholas II were both less inclined to work with social reform movements.
As you look through the remainder of these portraits, think about what life must have been like for these people. Their days were 24 hours long, just like our own. How did they fill their time? What joys and sadness did they experience? All we have now is a painting, but each represents thousands of real lives that came and went with little trace. In most cases, only their descendants carry on their legacy today.
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