An obshchina (/əpˈʃiːnə/, lit. 'commune'; Russian: община, IPA: [ɐpˈɕːinə]) or mir (/ˈmɪər/, lit. 'world'; Russian: мир, IPA: [mʲir]), also officially termed as a rural community (Russian: сельское общество; Ukrainian: сільське товариство) between the 19th and 20th centuries, was a peasant village community (as opposed to an individual farmstead), or a khutor, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word obshchiy (Russian: общий, literally "common").
The mir was a community consisting of former serfs, or state peasants and their descendants, settled as a rule in a single village, although sometimes a village included more than one mir and, conversely, several villages were sometimes combined in a single mir. The title of the land was vested in the mir and not in the individual peasant. Members of the mir had the right to the allotment, on some uniform basis, of a holding that each member cultivated separately. A holding could not be sold or bequeathed without the consent of the mir. As a consequence of its collective tenure, the mir had the power to repartition the land from time to time among its constituent households. The mir dealt primarily with the household and not with the individual. The peasant had a right to a holding but not to a particular holding, and he could not dispose of it freely.
