Megan McMorrine
Brinker, 3rd
Russian Revolution research paper
19 April 2013
Home Style Life and the Abuse of a Peasant in the Russian Revolution Life in Russia in the early 1900s was extremely repulsive, especially for the peasants. The peasant class lived in dirty huts, had to deal with abuse from family members, and had to find a way to survive in the poor community. The peasants of Russia lived a hard long life in horrible conditions day after day.

Russian peasant houses were often unclean, stuffy, and dark. Peasant dwellings consisted of a main structure for sleeping and food preparation, as well as outbuildings, including a barn, shed, and cellar. Peasant huts also included a covered lawn in which livestock and plow equipment were kept. A lot of people now a days have something like this in there back yard to cover yard tools and equipment. Peasant houses were either made of wood or clay, and had thatched roofs. Houses were generally built as one large room. The main feature of the house was the stove. This stove was used for cooking and heating the house. If the stove had no chimney, which was often the case, the smoke from the straw or manure that was burned as fuel would fill the inside of the house. Houses did exist with chimneys, this made the house cleaner and healthier for the people living there.

Wife beating in peasant Russia was the most common form of domestic violence, also, other members of the household could abuse their son's bride, and the children produced by any marriage were often punished physically. Culturally, wife-beating was seen as natural, healthy, and necessary. Peasants even exchanged stories about the advantages of beating their wives, which described how physical abuse would make a woman work harder, speak less, and tolerate more from her husband. Even during the Russian peasant wedding ceremony, the groom often held a whip to symbolize the wife-beatings that were to come after he brought his bride home to his family. As you can see abuse from family members was an easy way to keep control in the household. Members of lower class Russia have had to take the hardest, lowest-paying jobs. Peasants worked the fields for landowners; slaves hauled water if wells or plumbing were not available; members of the lower classes were rounded up, against there will for demanding construction projects. "There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them"(Eugene Chadbourne) is a quota that shows how much the peasants worked for what they had. In addition, peasants had to