In a post on this thread I wrote:
"Let's put it in historically context. What was the Russian Empire just a short time before? A country that conceived of itself as a theocracy that was not very far removed from midieval. What was the worldview of the majority of Russians at that time? Not the people in Moscow and St. Petersburg who wrote the great books, not the aristocracy, not the officer class, not the urban working class or bourgeousie. What did the average person believe?" http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050110/000649.html
The kind of culture I was talking about is amply illustrated by the passage from And Quiet Flows the Don, the Soviet novel about a Red Cossack. This is a description of a not atypical event in a mid-19th-century Russian (in this case Cossack) village, i.e., 85-90% of the population:
A few minutes later Maura, her face flushed and her kerchief awry, was entertaining a crowd of women in a by-lane:
'And what could he have seen in her, my dears? If she'd only been a women now, but she's got no bottom or belly; it's a disgrace. We've got better-looking girls going begging for a husband. You could cut through her waist, she's just like a wasp. God forgive me. She must be near her time, God's truth.'
'Near her time?' the women marveled.
'I'm no babe! I've reared three myself.'
'But what's her face like?'
'Her face? Yellow. Unhappy eyes - it's no easy life for a woman in a strange land. And what is more, women, she wears ...Prokoffey's trousers!'
'No!' the women drew their breath in abrupt alarm.
'I saw them myself; she wears trousers, only without stripes. It must be his everyday trousers she has. She wears a long shift, and below it you see the trousers, stuffed into socks. When I saw them my blood ran cold.'
The whisper went round the village that Prokoffey's wife was a witch. Astakhov's daughter-in-law (the Astakhovs lived in the hut next to Prokoffey's) swore that on the second day of Trinity, before dawn, she saw Prokoffey's wife, straight-haired and barefoot, milking the Astakhov's cow. From that day the cow's udder withered to the size of a child's fist, she gave no more milk and died soon after.
That year there was unusual mortality among the cattle. By the shallows of the Don the carcasses of cows and young bulls littered the sandy shore every day. Then the horses were affected. The droves grazing on the village pasture-lands melted away. And though the lanes and streets of the village crept an evil rumor.
The cossacks held a village meeting and went to Prokoffey. He came out on to the steps of his hut and bowed.
'What good does your visit bring, worthy elders?' he asked.
Dumbly silent, the crowd drew nearer to the steps. One drunken old man was the first to cry:
'Drag your witch out here! We're going to try her...'
Prokoffey flung himself back into the hut, but they caught him in the porch. A sturdy cossack nicknamed Lushnia knocked Prokoffey's head against the wall and exhorted him:
'Don't make a sound, not a sound, you're all right. We shan't touch you, but we're going to trample your wife into the ground. Better to destroy her than have all the village die for want of cattle. But don't you make a sound, or I'll smash your head against the wall!'
'Drag the bitch into the yard!' came a roar from the steps. A regimental comrade of Prokoffey's wound the Turkish woman's hair around one hand, pressed his other hand over her screaming mouth, dragged her at a run through the porch and flung her beneath the feet of the crowd. A thin shriek rose above the howl of voices. Prokoffey sent half a dozen cossacks flying, burst into the hut, and snatched a sabre from the wall, Jostling against one another, the cossacks rushed out of the porch. Swinging the gleaming whistling sabre around his head, Prokoffey ran down the steps. The crowd shuddered and scattered over the yard.
http://www.cyberspace.org/~rudolf/aqftd/Chapter.1.html
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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