Digital Russian Peasant Project

The purpose of the Digital Russian Peasant Project (DRPP) is to create a fully searchable and shareable database, cataloging information regarding documented primary sources that describe the various aspects of Russian peasant life, as well as providing a reference point for available secondary source material. Information collected in the database will then be used to create online tools capable of allowing the user to specify complex search queries or visualize the data on an interactive platform in order to facilitate drawing broader connections across the source-base.

Beginning Goals and Needs

As of 3 December 2010 this project is still in its infancy and requires a few aspects to be worked out. Here are the areas that are of initial, broad concern:

1. Standardization of data input, including choice of database format
2. Discussion of what topics on peasant life should be prioritized, if any
3. Brief sketch of what types of online tools would be preferred to search/view the cataloged data
4. Bibliography of source-base

Questions/Suggestions should be sent to jantley@gmail.com.

Data Submission Standards

Please post ideas in the 'Discuss' tab forum.

Topics covered in Catalogued Sources

Please post ideas in the 'Discuss' tab forum.

Online Tools Desired

• Interactive Map, allowing for quick visual display of search terms and ability to chart change over time.
  • See EU Fish Vessel Subsidy data map example.
  • Project Quincy developed by Jean Bauer that uses Ruby on Rails to help display Early Foreign Service Data, found here.
  • Libyan Crisis Map from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Users can set search filters, zoom and pan out on map, and even download reports that the map is built upon. An excellent model.
• Visualization tool like 'Overview', as explained by Jonathan Stray on his blog post, "A full-text visualization of the Iraq War Logs"
• Text/Data Mining
  • See SEASR- Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research

Background Reading

Secondary sources that provide more detail on Russian peasant life. Please alphabetize entries, use Chicago Style citation and link to WorldCat entry, if possible.

Books

• Blum, Jerome. 1961. Lord and peasant in Russia, from the ninth to the nineteenth century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Edelman, Robert. 1987. Proletarian peasants: the revolution of 1905 in Russia's southwest. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Review by Jeremy Antley.
• Engelstein, Laura. 1999. Castration and the heavenly kingdom: a Russian folktale. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
• Farnsworth, Beatrice, and Lynne Viola. 1992. Russian peasant women. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Moon, David. 1999. The Russian peasantry, 1600-1930: the world the peasants made. London: Longman.
• Radkey, Oliver H. 1976. The unknown civil war in Soviet Russia: a study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920-1921. Hoover Institution publication, 155. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University.
• Ryan, W. F. 1999. The bathhouse at midnight: an historical survey of magic and divination in Russia. Magic in history. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Viola, Lynne. 1996. Peasant rebels under Stalin: collectivization and the culture of peasant resistance. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wildman, Allan K. 1996. The defining moment: land charters and the post-Emancipation agrarian settlelment in Russia, 1861-1863. Pittsburgh, PA: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

Articles

Kritika

• Tolz, Vera. 2009. "Imperial Scholars and Minority Nationalisms in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 10 (2): 261-290.

Population (English Edition)

• Avdeev, Alexandre, Alain Blum, Irina Troitskaia, and Heather Juby. 2004. "Peasant Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Russia". Population (English Edition). 59 (6): 721-764.

Russian Review

• Marrese, Michelle Lamarche. 1999. "The Enigma of Married Women's Control of Property in Eighteenth-Century Russia". Russian Review. 58 (3): 380-395.
• Smith-Peter, Susan. 2007. "Educating Peasant Girls for Motherhood: Religion and Primary Education in Mid-Nineteenth Century Russia". Russian Review. 66 (3): 391-405.

Slavic Review

• Blitstein, Peter A. 2006. "Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context". Slavic Review. 65 (2): 273-293.
• Easley, Roxanne. 2002. "Opening Public Space: The Peace Arbitrator and Rural Politicization, 1861-1864". Slavic Review. 61 (4): 707.
• Edgar, Adrienne L. 2001. "Genealogy, Class, and "Tribal Policy" in Soviet Turkmenistan, 1924-1934". Slavic Review. 60 (2): 266-288. Review here by Jeremy Antley.
• Hoch, Steven L. 2004. "Did Russia's Emancipated Serfs Really Pay Too Much for Too Little Land? Statistical Anomalies and Long-Tailed Distributions". Slavic Review. 63 (2): 247.
• Weickhardt, George G. "Legal Rights of Women in Russia, 1100-1750." Slavic Review 55 (Spring 1996): 1-23.

Primary Source Bibliography

Submissions to the bibliography should be alphabetized and formatted in Chicago Style with a link, if possible, to the WorldCat entry for easy reference.

• Predtechenskiĭ, A. V., and Z. I. Kudri︠a︡vt︠s︡eva. 1961. Krestʹi︠a︡nskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1826-1849 gg.: sbornik dokumentov. Krestʹi︠a︡nskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v XIX-nachale XX veka. Moskva: Izd-vo sot︠s︡ialʹno-ėkonomicheskoĭ lit-ry.

Video/Image Resources

• Prokudin-Gorskii Collection at the Library of Congress- photos of the Russian Empire, 1905-1915
• Russian Imperial Provincial Maps at Wikimedia, circa 1820

Online Reference Materials

• ArcheoBibilioBaase- Searchable index of archives located in the Russian Federation.