American Agriculturalist, 1879

The American Agriculturalist magazine featured in several earlier posts (here and here) published another interesting article relevant to Mennonites in 1879 (the same year that Peter D and Sarah emigrated to Nebraska). The unsigned article “How Russian Farmers Live” mentions “the peculiar people called Mennonites” but focuses primarily on Russian peasants and their villages.  So, although the descriptions and illustrations are not directly relevant to Mennonite life in Russia, it is indirectly relevant, in that the article describes the Russian peasant population among whom our ancestors lived.

 How Russian Farmers Live

It seems a long time since we have had a talk about the ways of people in other countries than ours—and for a variety we will take a peep at the way in which the Russian farmers live—and this of course will include the Russian farmers’ boys and girls. We hear much more now about Russia than we formerly did, and we can hardly take up a paper without finding something about Russia. To he sure, it is not all pleasant; we read of the great war with Turkey, of the plague, that dreadful disease, being in Russia, of political troubles in St. Petersburgh, Moscow, and other large cities, of the killing of officers, of the sending of people to Siberia to get the troublesome ones out of the way, and besides many other matters, we hear of the peculiar people called Mennonites, coming to this country. This is perhaps the best thing that we read now-a-days of Russia, for these Mennonites are peace-loving, industrious people, who come here in large colonies of families, settle in some part of the far-West, and form villages and towns of their own, where they lead quiet and useful lives. Their grand-children will be as good Americans as the best. But we were to say something of how the Russian farmer lives at home.

The engraving, fig. 1, … of a farm village in the great wheat region of Central Russia, the neighborhood of the river Volga, where the country is generally level. The Russians have one custom which is common in the farming districts of Europe generally. Instead of having each house near the center of the farm, and the houses a long distances apart, as with us, the farmer does not generally live on his farm. The houses are built in a village, with may be the barns and granaries near the house, or on the home lot, but the land that is cultivated may be two or three or more miles away. The people have to travel far and spend much time in going to and coming from work, but it makes farm-life more sociable, as the people can see one another and enjoy many things that arc not possible where all arc scattered far and wide. It might be well if we adopted something of this plan in this country; both methods have their advantages, and people are slow to give up their old ways.

One writer says that he travelled in that part of Russia for miles and miles, and saw nothing but wheat field after wheat field, varied with wide tracts where horses and cattle pastured, but no fences anywhere. At last he saw some curious green objects in the distance shaped like enormous pears; at length he made out that these were cupolas of the church, and before he was aware of it, he was upon the village, with no other warning than the barking of dogs. Russian farmers, like poor people everywhere, keep an abundance of worthless curs. This writer gives (fig. 1 [above]) a picture of the first of these villages he saw. The small log-houses are all alike, and arranged in several rows, with wide streets between them half a mile or more long. At one end of the village is the church, with its odd cupolas, at the other the larger house of the land-owner (not shown) who rents the farms to the tenants. Small granaries—the square huts without windows—stand in the middle of the street, and long rows of tall poles, show that water is raised here by the old fashioned well sweep.

In some places, where logs can only be had by hauling for great distances, the villages are of mud houses, built of bricks merely dried in the sun; one of these houses is shown in fig. 2, and these, while they can not be called handsome, are said to be very comfortable in the long cold winters. Pigs, poultry, and curs, run at large in the streets, and when a stranger enters these make a great fuss.

Not a very attractive picture of farm-life you will think, yet many thousands of people live in just this way, and it is well to know it. Compare such a farm-house as one of these with one of ours—your own, it may be, with all its pleasant surroundings without, and the many home comforts within. If the comparison makes you the more contented with your own—and it is a fact, that boys, and girls too, are more apt to compare their own lot with that of those who are belter off, than with that of those who are more poorly off than themselves—if, we say, a comparison makes you better appreciate the home, such as it is, and brings that content without which no home can be happy—then it will be well that you have taken a glimpse at the way farmers live in Russia. Recollect: “There is no place like home.”

Work Cited

Anonymous. 1879. “How Russian Farmers Live.” American Agriculturalist 38:273–74. Available online here.