Word: serfs
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...mystical cult in the latter part of the 19th century. Illiterate, impoverished and much abused, the peasants were known for their generous nature and a predilection for violence that sometimes led them to burn down the manor house, or even murder the squire, as happened to Dostoyevsky's serf-owning father. To foreigners they seemed a dismal, squalid lot-the men with their scraggly beards and hair, the women with their inevitable head scarves. Though the peasants were in fact a rich repository of folklore and folk art, intellectuals invested them with other qualities. The populists believed them...