Peasant and hunter households in Oulanka, northern Russia, 1710–1910

Abstract

This article examines the family system prevailing among the population of a parish in the subarctic zone of northern Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the beginning of the period, the Oulanka area was occupied by Lapps, who lived chiefly by hunting, and Karelians engaged in agriculture. Although the Lapps later reverted to a more permanent way of life, the area still possessed two distinct communities with differences in their economies. This research relies on demographic sources such as taxation records, nominal censuses, and parish confessional lists.

A high proportion of large, complex households was typical of the population of the area throughout the period studied. The shaping of the family system was crucially affected by the desire of the inhabitants to ensure the vitality of their households by pursuing several labor-intensive forms of economic activity simultaneously. Although the inhabitants were not serfs, their choice of the optimal ways of organizing their lives in different situations was to a great extent determined by the obligations placed upon them by the government. The similarities between the family system prevailing in Oulanka in the 19th century and that observed in ethnic Russians in general are presumably attributable to the fact that both populations came under the same judicial system.

Keywords:

• Family life course
• Households
• Russia

Acknowledgements

This article is part of the ongoing project “The Rural Family in Northeastern Europe” financed by the Academy of Finland. The author wishes to thank Juhani U.E. Lehtonen and Elina Waris of the University of Helsinki, and Tapio Hamynen and Jukka Partanen of the University of Joensuu for their comments on earlier drafts. Malcolm Hicks, MA, did the translation.