Trading Peasants and Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century Russia

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1987, this book is based on research concerned primarily with the Central Industrial Region. It uses archival and published sources, focusing on a category of immigrants which is comparatively well documented in official records - those who enlisted formally in the urban burgher classes. The book follows two key lines of enquiry. The first seeks clarification of the legal provisions governing such enlistment, and the second introduces a large amount of data on this enlistment. The book uses the data of individual case records and of other materials to illuminate the processes by which peasants were absorbed into the urban population in eighteenth-century Russia.