Ul'ianova Galina

Russian Poll-tax Registers (soul revisions) as a Source for the Historical Demography Studies in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

The essay describes the 1950s and the 1960s as an important period in the study of poll-tax registers (soul revisions). This period began with the publication of E. P. Podyapolskaya’s article, titled «Poll-tax registers (soul revisions) as a historical source», in the compendium to the 70th anniversary of academician B. D. Grekov in 1952. Interest in poll-tax registers as a source was resumed after a 35-year period of oblivion, when the change in the political life of the USSR has seen a departure from the former rigid ideological matrix. When considering the socio-economic history of the Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, historians returned to the academic questions. The number of papers that have used poll-tax registers was not large, but they were distinguished by the depth and thoroughness of analysis. A considerable amount of documents, especially from the Russian state archive of ancient acts and the Russian state historical archive, was introduced into research space. The article analyses the works that have studied the different categories of peasants, including the population of the mining districts. The period 1960s has also become an important stage in the study of social structure of cities and their craft specialization based on the poll-tax registers analysis. In the essay special attention is paid to the role of the three researchers in the history of historical demography, such as V. K. Yatsunsky, who created the scientific school in this field, V. M. Kabuzan, who introduced poll-tax registers into investigation of various aspects of the demographic history of the Russian Empire, and N. A. Gorskaya, who analyzed in detail the vast historiography of the research fi eld.

Keywords

historical demography, historiography, urban and regional history, russian poll-tax registers (so-called revisions), 18th and 19th centuries russian history, imperial Russia.

References

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Ul'ianova Galina