Russia on the Move

Western scholars of Tsarist Russia emphasize the continuity of collectivism on the Russian plain. Numerous endogenous factors explain the human clustering that occurred as kinship structures evolved into territorial agrarian communal patterns. In my dissertation, combining the Westernizers’ and the Slavophiles’ conceptualization of the mir—the village commune—it is argued that precarious climatic conditions, uncertain yields, and the high frequency of famines and other calamities caused peasant