@ Solar Sun
Countryside peoples are good and deeply moral in most of locations, so Russia is not an exception in this respect.
Generally in the countryside worldwide a handshake is still a contract and verbal agreements are considered binding.
You will find that to be a truth in so different locations like rural Russia, US, or Malaysia or Japan.
Actually it is not very easy to find rural location where these moral values are not holding.
Perhaps it is the easiest to find exceptions in rural areas affected by wars/civil wars, severe famine or nutty state policies.
However it is uniformly true that urban locations are not upholding discussed values.
That is because in urban areas profit is usually trumping moral values of any imaginable kind.

Thank you, solar sun.

From my partial browsing through it, it certainly paints a rather brighter portrait of peasant life in old Russia than is usual amongst current historians (e.g. O. Figes), who emphasize its brutality. Certainly added to "to read" list, which unfortunately is ridiculously overflowing.

PS. For those having problems with the huge .pdf, here are two alternative sources:

1. The full text in HTML
2. Google books

One particularly fascinating passage:

"How much vodka does your village consume in a year?"

"No one knows; thousands of bottles, for even the priest is drunken. To-day, even in the procession he was drunk; some people say he only keeps the holiday so that he can go to our houses and drink and not pay for it."

"Surely someone knows how much vodka is sold.

There must be some way of finding out. Now, you for instance, how much do you drink in a year?"

He grinned at me, and his face seemed to suggest that I had been trying to entrap him into something. Then he said, "I might reckon it if I were sober, but you see I'm —not". He snapped his fat thumb and first finger on his red neck under his ear, half shut one eye, showing the whites of the other, meaning to imply some vulgarism which might express an advanced stage of inebriety. The Russian language has as yet no expression for "screwed" or "half-seas over."

"But," said I, "I should think you might often hear at the vodka shop, how trade was going. Doesn't the shopman himself sometimes get drunk?"

"No," said he. "There is no conversation in the monopoly, and for this reason — there never is a man behind the counter. They're all women. If they were men we could make up to them, get round them and talk, but a woman's a different matter. They used to have men, but they found the women more reliable."

"Don't the women drink?"

"Oh no, not at all. Men may drink, but not women. Women can't drink. They take a glass of vodka and their reason is gone — they become skonfusny (a new Russian word for me, but evidently meaning confused; however did the peasants find it!). Only public women drink, and they drink in the towns. It's not considered decent."

"That's very interesting," said I. "Now in England many women drink, and drink heavily, especially in London and the towns. They say English children often are drunk before they are born."

The peasant blinked his eyes, then suddenly tapped his neck again to signify that he was too drunk to understand.

"The reason why you Russians turn out strong and healthy, generation after generation, though the fathers be nevertheless drunken, is because the women are sober and clean-living. The health of a nation depends more on the mothers than on the fathers."

The moujik steadily helped himself to vodka, no doubt encouraged by the fact that it was the women that counted. Presently when he noticed my camera, he begged to be photographed. I therefore took a picture of this man, who though tipsy, had explained to me how it is Russians are at the same time healthy and drunken...

Matthew Raphael Johnson has posted a link of a book called Undiscovered Russia by an American traveller Steven Graham throughout Russia in 1912 detailing the social/economic reality of Russia prior to the events of 1917 on his site The Orthodox Medievalist
.

Undiscovered Russia a free (public domain) book in .pdf format written by Steven Graham in 1912.
It is an account of Mr. Graham's months of travels through 1912 Russia, explaining her holiness, prosperity and general sense of justice.
This is a very rare book where Mr. Graham clearly shows how traditional economic and social patterns are superior to mechanized and modern ones. Graham also argues that the Russian peasant is a deeply moral person, happy, and truly the center of the nation.