Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov
Everyday life of Russian serfs between 1800 and 1850 is reconstructed from Soviet archival records of one noble family through methods of historical demography. Topics covered include amount and kinds of food available to the peasants, housing conditions, household size, marriage patterns, and methods of social control. The last was maintained primarily by the family patriarchs, only secondarily by the bailiffs on the estate. Hoch (History, Drew) concludes that the distribution of wealth in a village was far more egalitarian than has been previously supposed. Thoroughly researched and documented, this scholarly work will be a valuable complement to Jerome Blum's Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century ( 1961) and Gerold T. Robinson's Rural Russia Under the Old Regime ( 1967) . Recommended for aca- demic libraries. Narcia L. Sprules, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., VermillionCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.