ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how, as a result of Peter the Great’s tax system, the peasant mir, which had existed for centuries, began to play a larger and more diversified role in Russian life. As a result, the government found it necessary to regulate the institutions of peasant self-government. In 1837 the Ministry of State Property was established; state peasants under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance were transferred to its jurisdiction. On December 13, 1843 the governor of Olonek reported to the minister of internal affairs about the peasants of the village of Vorobev refusing to conduct volost elections by the new rules, under which village and volost chiefs would be elected not directly but through electors, two for every ten farmsteads. The village assembly and the village elder, who was chosen by the assembly for a three-year term, were the primary institutions of peasant self-government.
