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8 Fire as the Internal Enemy: Peasants as Volunteer Firefighters RUSSIA BEING A DESPOTIC GOVERNMENT DOES NOT ADMIT OF VOLUNTEER FIREMEN, BUT "ELEVATES" THE DUTIES REQUIRED TO BE DISCHARGED BY FIREMEN INTO A MILITARY PUNISHMENT.... IT IS TO BE HOPED THAT THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESS MAY BE SUFFICIENTLY DEVELOPED IN THAT COUNTRY TO LEAD TO THE ESTABLISHING OF AN EFFICIENT FIRE SYSTEM THROUGHOUT THE LAND, OF A CHARACTER AND ON A PLAN COMMENSURATE WITH THE POSITION IT IS SO DESIROUS OF OCCUPYING AMONG NATIONS. -Charles F. T. Young, Fires, Fire Engines and Fire Brigades, I866 From the 1860s to the first decade ofthe twentieth century, in literary depictions and eyewitness reports in newspapers, in government reports and responses to ethnographic surveys, the scene of a rural fire contained srock features and characters that added up to one overriding conclusion: it was complete and utter chaos. From all corners of European Russia, observers noted common peasant responses: disorder, hysteria, passivity, and inability to work together to fight the blaze because of selfish individualism. In one of the earliest efforts to promote better fire prevention and firefighting practices, P. Alabin explained to readers of his 1869 pamphlet on village fires that "most often at village fires, anarchy and disorder reign, made even more powerful by the complete absence ofany instruments suitable to the task." 1 Twenty-five years later, contributors to one of the major firefighting publications asserted that this was still the case. Reporting on a big fire in the village of Ol'khi, Smolensk Province, in September 1894, one correspondent stated: "It didn't occur to anyone to try to put out the burning houses, since each person was trying only to pull his property out of his own house.,,2 Two weeks later, the lead editorial in The Firefighter called for greater zemsrvo support for volunteer firefighting as an antidote to the current scenario 231 at village fires, where "there is an uproar, shouting, absolute chaos, when often a few sensible instructions would be all that is needed to localize the fire and keep it from taking on large proportions."3 In reports to the Tenishev Ethnographic Bureau at the end of the century, such images appeared frequently in local observations. S. Mironov declared that fires gained their power in his neck of Saratov Province because of the panic that prevailed and because the peasants behaved "worse than children.,,4 From Novgorod Province, N. Brukhanskii wrote: ''I've frequently been at fires and witnessed the peasants' panic-stricken inability to join together in common effort to put out the blaze." From Smolensk Province, N. Kuznetsovexplained that peasants so often showed up at fires empty-handed, without any kinds of buckets or other equipment, because they were panic stricken, screaming, crying , and wailing.5 In almost identical terms, A. Vasil'ev reported from Novgorod Province that peasants were panic stricken during fires, when the air filled with "uproar, shouts, cries.,,6 Reports of menstruating women being ordered to run around burning structures three times and ofvillagers throwing milk and eggs at lightning fires convinced Russia's reading public that peasants, as the sole local defenders against fire's voracious power, were at best helpless and at worst dangerously selfish, greedy, inept, and superstitious? Such depictions of peasant firefighting behaviors presumably rested on their authors' sincere convictions. But they also served several purposes for advocates of the alternative of organized volunteer firefighting. First, they highlighted the perils for Russia that resided in the countryside, encouraging alarmist visions of the desperate but futile struggle of peasants on their own against fire. Second, they mobilized activists to join in the battle against Russia's "historical evil." Third, they provided the opportunity to posit volunteer firefighters as Russia's rightful saviors, who would both guard over and teach the hapless peasants and defeat pernicious, capricious, mighty fire. Fourth, they stressed the virtues that peasants lacked and volunteer firefighting units would provide: mutual assistance through collective effort, organization, and cool-headed reason. Behind the apparent chaos and selfishness that so offended educated observers, however, there was a system at work. This is only to be expected, for having been left to their own devices in putting out fires for as long as anyone could remember, peasants had developed their own strategy, which one finds time and again in the accounts of panic-stricken disorder. Before the Emancipation, by custom and by formal law, every peasant head of household was obligated to appear at the scene...

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