"This study importantly changes the focus to what happens before a famine comes, and how the peasants prepare for it. Paradoxically, the author concludes that it is in the years of recovery that the seeds of famine are sown. The study revolves around a case study in the awraja (…
"The theme of the peasantry is central throughout almost the whole of Tolstoy's long career. His obsession with this class is seen not just as a matter of social or humanitarian concern, but as a response to the questions of "how to live a good life" and "what is the meaning of …
In 1649 a Code of Laws was issued in Moscow completing, at least in law, the process of enserfment of the Russian peasantry. This book illustrates this process with fifty-six documents of the twelfth to seventeenth centuries. They relate mainly to the central and northern area o…
