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Updated: May 3, 2025
In both there is a principal personage, who is in a certain sense ruler within and representative as regards the outside world: in the one case called Khozain, or Head of the Household, and in the other Starosta, or Village Elder. In both the authority of the ruler is limited: in the one case by the adult members of the family, and in the other by the Heads of Households.
All the members, young and old, lived together in patriarchal fashion under the direction and authority of the Head of the House, called usually the Khozain that is to say, the Administrator; or, in some districts, the Bolshak, which means literally "the Big One."
It is quite natural, therefore, that when the authority of the landed proprietors was abolished in 1861, the large peasant families almost all crumbled to pieces. The arbitrary rule of the Khozain was based on, and maintained by, the arbitrary rule of the proprietor, and both naturally fell together.
The house and all that it contains belong to the little household community; and, consequently, when it is broken up, by the death of the Khozain or other cause, the members do not inherit, but merely appropriate individually what they had hitherto possessed collectively.
This is shown by the customary terminology, for the Head of the Household is not called by any word corresponding to Paterfamilias, but is termed, as I have said, Khozain, or Administrator a word that is applied equally to a farmer, a shopkeeper or the head of an industrial undertaking, and does not at all convey the idea of blood-relationship.
While at first glance there are many points of similarity between the family life and the village life, yet there are also many points of difference which will be more apparent as we continue. In both, there is a chief or ruler, one called the khozain or head of the house and the other as above indicated, the starosta or village elder.
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