The Standard of Living and Revolutions in Imperial Russia, 1700-1917

Boris Mironov, Gregory Freeze

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781138808423
  9780415608541
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136315190
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This is the first full-scale anthropometric history of Imperial Russia (1700-1917). It mobilizes an immense volume of archival material to chart the growth, weight, and other anthropometric indicators of the male and female populations in order to chart how the standard of living in Russia changed over slightly more than two centuries. It draws on a wide range of data—statistics on agricultural production, taxation, prices and wages, nutrition, and demography—to draw conclusions on the dynamics in the standard of living over this long period of time. The economic, social, and political interpretation of these findings make it possible to reconsider the prevailing views in the historiography and to offer a new perspective on Imperial Russia.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of plates
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Map: The provinces of European Russia
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Living standards in Imperial Russia as portrayed in domestic and foreign historiography
• 2 Historical anthropometrics Goals, biological foundations, methodology
• 3 The sources of anthropometric data Representativeness, accuracy, and homogeneity
• 4 Biological status The eighteenth century
• 5 Biological status The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
• 6 The geography of Russian biological status
• 7 Consumption, health, and biological status
• 8 Wages and prices in Russia from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries
• 9 Contemporary observations on the population's standard of living
• 10 The modernization of Russia and the well-being of the population
• 11 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Sources
• Appendix 2: Selected bibliography
• Appendix 3: Maximum likelihood estimates of the regional mean height of males, 1701–1800, from individual data on recruits
• Appendix 4: Factors in the geographical variation in male height, 1849–1883
• Appendix 5: Factors in the geographical variation in male height, 1880–1900
• Appendix 6: Maximum likelihood estimates of the male mean height from aggregate data on recruits by province and birth year, 1853–1892
• Glossary
•  Notes 
• Index