They are accurate descriptions of contemporary Russian rural life, I would say, or at least broad swathes of it. I mean, I don't want to say that every single Russian male peasant is an alcoholic wife-beater, but an awful lot of them are.
> > There's been a good deal of historical reasearch into this, hasn't > there? There is, for instance, Christine Worobec's _Peasant Russia: > Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period_ which summarizes > a good deal of work by others . What she describes is a paranoically > suspicious "misogynist patriarchalism" with "severe penalties for > deviant behaviour." David Ransel's _Mothers of Misery: Child > Abandonment in Russia_ describes infant and child care practices > consistent with this. Are these descriptions accurate?
