No time to explain. Just plant potatoes!
Myths and Truth about the Potato Riots
Author: Sergey Tashevsky
History textbooks endlessly repeat the same joke about the potato and its "victorious" introduction to Rus': ignorant people, superstitions, the "devil's apple," the priest forbade it, saying it wasn't mentioned in the Bible—and so on. The picture implied is quite touching: on one hand, an enlightened state with potatoes in hand, on the other, ignorant peasants fending off the healthy vegetable as if it were an evil spirit. The story is funny, instructive, and—almost entirely fictitious.
The true story of the potato riots of 1834-1844 is far more interesting. And far more inconvenient for the authorities—then and later.
Let's start with the main myth: when the state enthusiastically began "introducing" potatoes into peasant life, they had already been present there for a long time. Alexander Herzen, who lived in exile in Vyatka and witnessed the events firsthand, wrote with characteristic sarcasm in "My Past and Thoughts": "In many state-owned villages, 'earth apples' were planted long before the potato terror, but what disgusts the Russian government is that things happen spontaneously. Everything must be done under duress."
The word "terror" in Herzen's mouth is not an exaggeration, but an accurate description of the administrative style of that era.
But let's take things one step at a time. So, the potato arrived in Europe in the mid-16th century on the ships of the conquistadors from South America, where the natives had been eating it for nearly ten thousand years. In some places, it is said, the Indians even considered the potato a living being and worshiped it as a deity. But the Europeans initially didn't understand this potato religion and brought the tubers as a curious curiosity. Initially, potatoes were grown in Spain as an exotic ornamental plant, and they were (not without reason) considered quite poisonous. Indeed, raw potato fruits and young tubers, containing the toxic alkaloid solanine, are not safe for health. Only two centuries later, enthusiasts in France demonstrated that potatoes could serve as a base for many dishes and were extremely beneficial against scurvy. They were called "the second bread" and began to be planted wherever possible (how all this happened in France is a separate and rather interesting story, which we will return to). The potato turned out to be a nearly flawless agricultural crop: not too demanding of soil and sun, it produced stable harvests and therefore quickly spread across Europe, and then appeared in Russia.
The first "potato experiments," of course, took place under Peter the Great, who couldn't help but notice any foreign curiosity. But the beds where the tubers were grown were limited to the "apothecary garden" in St. Petersburg and were of interest only to botanists who wrote articles "On the Cultivation of Jerusalem Artichokes." Potato dishes were sometimes served in noble homes to impress guests. In the villages, turnips were traditionally eaten and were a joy to behold. But European experience, as they say, "knocked on the door," and gradually potato plantings began to expand, so that in some peasant households this "devil's apple" (it was indeed called that in some places) became commonplace. Indeed, where had it ever been seen that a Russian peasant could be frightened by something "devilish"? They were baptized, but they planted them—and ate them with relish.
Already at the end of the 18th century "Economic Description of the Perm Province" It was recorded that peasants ate potatoes baked, boiled, and in porridge, and used flour to make pies and shangi—Siberian flatbreads with butter. This, it should be noted, was not some kind of exotic metropolitan culinary delight, but an everyday village staple. And in the same Vyatka province, which was later swept by "potato riots," potatoes had long been grown in many gardens, while the "traditional" turnip was gradually being forgotten.
But Herzen was right—the Russian authorities are always disgusted when something is done freely, of its own accord. They must intervene. And they did.
In 1834, a member of the imperial family visited France, observed the scale with which the French were planting potatoes everywhere, and demanded an "acceleration" in Russia. The first victims of this acceleration were the so-called "appanage" peasants—that is, the serfs living on lands belonging to the imperial family. The Department of Appanages sent orders to their villages to sow potatoes on "communal arable land"—in case of crop failure and to prevent famine.
It seems like a good goal, but the execution of this decree has become extremely clumsy.
The peasants were required to do everything "now and at once"—that is, to plant all the communal "public" lands with potatoes instead of wheat. However, no one provided them with planting materials, and quite the contrary: on orders from local authorities, private gardens where peasants were already growing potatoes were destroyed. The authorities demanded bribes from many farmers to be freed from the "potato duty." It must be said that the "appanage" peasants were more independent than the "landlord" peasants and were not accustomed to such arbitrary action. Therefore, the potato quickly became a symbol of oppression for them, and rumors even spread through the villages that those who planted it would be "registered under the master," that is, converted into private peasants. Unsurprisingly, unrest broke out in the Vladimir and Vyatka provinces by autumn, which the police were unable to suppress, forcing the deployment of troops. Somehow, the ringleaders were caught, tried by a military court, and many were sentenced to punishment with the rod, whip, and lash (apparently, wherever available). Thus, for a short time, order was restored.
But these were all just seeds. Or rather, tops.
Because on August 8, 1840, after a famine began in a number of provinces due to the destruction of the winter crop, Nicholas I decided that he “could do it again” and issued a decree: to establish public potato sowings in all state-owned villages, to reward with bonuses those who distinguished themselves in the cultivation of “this vegetable,” and to distribute special leaflets to the peasants on how to cultivate, store, and prepare it.
At that time, state-owned peasants in Russia outnumbered "appanage" peasants by many times, so the scale of potato adoption increased exponentially. The administrative absurdity of this process also increased exponentially.
Although, yes, the idea was, in general, reasonable. Famines did happen, potatoes really did help, and bonuses were indeed provided. But there's no such reasonable idea that the Russian state can't ruin. And here, as usual, the devil was in the details.
The circular prescribed the allocation of special plots for sowing, and their allocation required the approval of peasants at village assemblies (this was the procedure established in 1837 at the very top, thanks to the famous "Kiselev" reforms). For "state" peasants, this was an integral part of their limited freedom—deciding on such matters at a meeting. And more often than not, they refused to allocate communal lands for potato cultivation. But their superiors insisted. And then the clerks, elders, and volost heads, who were under immediate pressure from "above" to produce results, began falsifying the decisions of these assemblies, forging signatures without the peasants' knowledge...
Reread this paragraph slowly. The state demands the land. The peasants legally refuse at a meeting. Officials falsify the minutes. The peasants find out about it. And it is at this moment that historians say that "the ignorant people rebelled out of a superstitious fear of potatoes."
Yes, some of the rumors that fueled the rebellion now seem absurd—but their logic was absolutely precise. Among the peasants, it was said that the "Minister" had sent the clerks many pounds of money, and in return demanded that they sow potatoes for his own use and take a hundred yards of fine linen from the women. The officials, they claimed, had done everything in secret from the sovereign. Of course, these details seem utter nonsense, but the essence of the matter was captured accurately. The peasants didn't know the word "falsification," but they understood they had been deceived.
Could it have been done differently?
Of course.
And here it's necessary to digress and travel back about half a century before these events, to the western suburbs of Paris. Because it was there that a story unfolded that is generally considered a model of enlightened treatment of that very same potato. And its protagonist was the pharmacist and agronomist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.
In his youth, he experienced an event that would shape his entire life: he was captured by Prussia during the Seven Years' War and spent several years subsisting on potatoes—a food the Prussians fed to prisoners and pigs, seeing no fundamental difference between the two. Parmentier returned from captivity alive and well, drew a scientific conclusion from this, and dedicated the rest of his life to feeding potatoes to France. In 1748, the Paris Faculty of Medicine banned potatoes on the grounds that they allegedly caused leprosy; Parmentier succeeded in having the ban lifted in 1772. But lifting a ban and convincing people are two different things. And Parmentier understood this.
He was a man of the Enlightenment, meaning he believed in science, progress, and well-thought-out manipulation. He decided to persuade the nobility through the royal couple: he persuaded Louis XVI to wear a bouquet of potato flowers in his waistcoat buttonhole, and Marie Antoinette to wear them in her hair. Fashionistas immediately embraced the trend. The potato flower became the social accessory of the season—even though no one ate potatoes yet.
Parmentier's approach to the common people was even more subtle. The king granted him a large field in the village of Sablon, west of Paris. Parmentier planted it with potatoes and spread rumors throughout the surrounding villages that something extremely valuable was sown there. The soldiers guarding the field were ordered to allow curious onlookers in—but to charge a fee, so that everything would appear natural. At night, the guards left, allowing the people to "steal" the tubers and get to know the mysterious plant up close.
The plan worked flawlessly: the forbidden fruit did the rest. Parmentier harvested the crops in the presence of France's most noblemen, after which he hosted a dinner in which every dish was made from potatoes. Even the wine (how disgusting, perhaps!) was made from potato extract.
It's a beautiful story. And the contrast with the Russian experience is striking. Indeed, Parmentier didn't coerce. He didn't take away the best fields, falsify the minutes of village meetings, or call in the artillery. He created desire. And the French peasants (who, by the way, were also considered ignorant and superstitious by the city dwellers) willingly stole potatoes from the guarded field—because it was their decision, albeit orchestrated by someone else's cunning. The difference between "stealing what you want" and "accepting what is imposed" is fundamental, even though in both cases we're talking about the same tuber.
But let's return to Russia. The scale of the potato riots that began in 1840 defies the familiar image of "spontaneous popular discontent." In the provinces of the North, the Urals, and the Middle and Lower Volga regions alone, over 500 peasants rebelled. The rebels destroyed potato crops, beat up officials, arbitrarily re-elected village elders, and attacked punitive detachments with weapons. Along with Russians, the movement included Mari, Chuvash, Udmurts, Tatars, and Komi. It was the largest peasant uprising in Russian history since Pugachevsky!
The specific stories that unfolded during these uprisings are no less telling than the statistics, and in some ways are reminiscent of Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter." For example, among the leaders of the Nolinsky district was 66-year-old Yefim Kalinin from the village of Kalininskaya, whom the peasants obeyed unquestioningly. Therefore, when the volost assessor Matushkin came to arrest him, nothing came of it: the outraged peasants seized the official themselves and took him to a neighboring village, where by then the captured elder and headman were already in custody. And in the town of Dolmatovo, the peasants seized the volost official's head, stripped him naked, and attempted to drown him and three clerks in the river. They didn't drown them, however—the people's justice, apparently, served only as a form of instruction. But not everywhere did scribes and elders come out “dry from the water.”
Especially the clerks. They were the ones who bore the brunt of the people's wrath. It's not surprising—they appeared out of nowhere, sporting beautiful uniforms embroidered with gold, and turning up their noses at the peasants. It was obvious they were the main instigators of the forgeries. So they were the first to suffer.
In some places, scribes had to save their lives by hiding from the peasants, as if from a Tatar invasion, in monasteries. However, this didn't always help—and sometimes even harmed the monks themselves. Bazhov, for example, has a story called "About the "divers", which describes the execution carried out by peasants against the clergy (who allegedly participated in the “forgery” of the Tsar’s manifesto):
"They, the priests, need to be tested. And the test must be done skillfully. Beating them or dragging them by the hair is absolutely not appropriate. Because their rank prevents it. And they need to be tested with clean water. Lower them into a well, for example, or even better, cut two holes in the river and pull them from one to the other with reins. Pull them through and ask: 'Will you show me the paper?' Well, if someone refuses, pull them again. Then they'll show it!"
So our old men conspired in the villages, grabbed their priests, and took them to the river to test them. Well, where the rivers are small, there are wells.
Since then, we have been calling priests divers."
Naturally, the rebellion, which escalated to such "water ordeals," provoked an immediate government response. The suppression was harsh. Military teams with artillery were used to subdue the peasants, and there were even actual battles. For example, in Perm Province in 1842, several clashes occurred in which more than 70 people were killed. Naturally, the state always won these battles. The instigators of the rebellion were flogged, sent to Siberia for hard labor, or recruited. But at the same time—and this is a detail that is often forgotten—the state did make concessions: mandatory public potato plowing was abolished, and some land was returned. The rebellion, in other words, worked. Not completely and not for everyone, but the peasants achieved their goal.
This entire scheme, which creates obstacles for any undertaking out of the blue, has been reproduced in Russian history with enviable regularity: the ruler seems to want the people's best interests, comes up with a reasonable measure, passes it down the bureaucratic chain of command, the chain of command takes everything to the point of absurdity, the people revolt, and the authorities are astonished. From Peter the Great's beards to Soviet corn—the story is the same. Nikita Khrushchev, who was driving corn into the Arctic, didn't read the reports on the potato riots. And in vain: everything you need to know about the forced introduction of healthy crops was written there. However, Khrushchev, like all Russian rulers, sincerely believed that the people understood only the language of coercion. The current government believes the same, too, and (though this may be its least serious sin) it is now busy exterminating livestock. The same administrative methods. And the same idiotic result.
It seems the best government in Russia is the one that wants nothing and does nothing. After all, despite all the bureaucratic idiocy, by the end of the 19th century, Russia had become one of the largest potato producers in the world. Peasants grew them willingly, ate them with relish, and distilled moonshine from them with enthusiasm. No coercion was required. It was enough to leave the people alone.
But where can one get such power?
