Between the Fields and the City

This book charts the personal dimensions of economic social change by examining the significance and consequences of Russian peasant women’s migration from the village to the factory and/or city in the years between the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the outbreak of World War I. The author uses case studies to explore the effects of urbanisation and industrialisation on the relationship of the migrant to the peasant household, and on family life and personal relations. It differs from other studies in looking at both village and city; in the treatment of personal life, and in drawing on a wealth of archival data, most of it for the first time. The focus on women and the family provides a fresh perspective on the social history of late Imperial Russia.