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Book Cover
E-book
Author Dennison, Tracy, author

Title The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom / Tracy Dennison
Published Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (276 pages)
Series Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series
Cambridge studies in economic history. Second series.
Contents Why is Russia different? : culture, geography, institutions -- Voshchazhnikovo : a microcosm of nineteenth-century Russia -- Household structure and family economy -- The rural commune -- Land and property markets -- Labour markets -- Credit and savings -- Retail markets and consumption -- The institutional framework of Russian serfdom
Summary Russian rural history has long been based on a 'Peasant Myth', originating with nineteenth-century Romantics and still accepted by many historians today. In this book, Tracy Dennison shows how Russian society looked from below, and finds nothing like the collective, redistributive and market-averse behaviour often attributed to Russian peasants. On the contrary, the Russian rural population was as integrated into regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts. Serfdom was a loose garment that enabled different landlords to shape economic institutions, especially property rights, in widely diverse ways. Highly coercive and backward regimes on some landlords' estates existed side-by-side with surprisingly liberal approximations to a rule of law. This book paints a vivid and colourful picture of the everyday reality of rural Russia before the 1861 abolition of serfdom
Subject Serfdom -- Russia -- History
Peasants -- Russia -- Economic conditions
Peasants -- Russia -- Social conditions
Russia -- Rural conditions
Russia -- Economic conditions -- To 1861
Peasants -- Economic conditions
Peasants -- Social conditions
Serfdom
Russia
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780511974946
0511974949
9780521194488
0521194482
9781107661707
1107661706