Entre ville et campagne

AbstractBetween town and country. Peasant households and their occupations in Russian economic statistics, 1861-1926.How is one to evaluate the Russian peasant’s different occupations (agricultural and non-agricultural, occasional or for extra income) and distinguish him from a rural craftsman ? This question is crucial for the evaluation of economic dynamics and the way they fit in institutional classifications of social classes (“estates” -- sosloviia in tsarist times, “classes” under the Soviets). In this respect, the problem does not concern Russia alone but any country in the midst of industrialization and deruralization. Thus, after a preliminary survey of the main terms of the debate on proto-industrialization, the present article starts with an account of the difficulties one encounters in defining the categories mentioned in the major Russian dictionaries and encyclopedias from the late eighteenth century to the present. The author then studies the debates over these very same definitions that occurred in zemstva, societies and major institutions (ministries, commissariats) dealing with economics and statistics between 1861 and 1926. The author presents the origins of this predicament and its consequences on adopted policies