Russian Society in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Everyday Life and Structural Transformation in Peasant and Worker Communities (1861–1917)

This review synthesises historical scholarship on everyday life and social structure in the Russian Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a focus on peasant and worker communities between the emancipation of 1861 and the revolutions of 1917. The first part examines daily life: birth, childhood and family; food and drink; clothing, housing and household goods; markets and consumption; education and literacy; transport and mobility; health, work and leisure. The second part turns to the wider social and political setting, including estates and social hierarchy, famine, rural and urban labour, the market economy, and the political movements of the late imperial period. The review draws on 224 sources, including monographs, journal articles, theses, ethnographic field reports, museum collections and contemporary statistics. Throughout, it separates what the evidence shows from what it cannot show, and warns against generalising findings from one region, ethnic group or social class to the whole empire. Appendices provide a chronology and a glossary of Russian terms. Available in Turkish (original) and English. Note: AI tools (Anthropic Claude and OpenAI ChatGPT) assisted with literature search, drafting and editing. The author defined the scope, checked the sources and citations, and takes full responsibility for the content.