It now seems possible to put forward very tentatively a simplified model of production and consumption in the isolated farm household in the core of European Russia. This household was the basic unit of society for many centuries and throughout the period dealt with here the majority of Russian people lived out their lives within its framework. Yet it is this unit which is almost entirely concealed from us both by the relative paucity of documentary evidence and by the nature of that evidence. This unit is so important for any deep understanding of the long-term history of the Russian peasantry that it seems worthwhile attempting to describe it, however hesitantly.

First, it must be stressed that this attempt at a model starts with the isolated farm. The importance of this is that the resultant picture initially leaves out of account complexities which in all probability affected the majority of Russian medieval farms; here no attention is paid to relations with other farms, with the lord of the land or with the government; my estimates leave out of account dues and taxation, as well as incomings from crafts and trades. This is done for the sake of simplicity. The model would have to be modified to take these complicating factors into account, and be extended by including other elements, in order to approximate to the real situation.

The ‘normal’ amount of land held by such a farm unit is very hard, if not impossible, to determine.