Abstract: When considering the sphere of social deviations, one should give attention to gender factors, i.e. the peculiarities of criminal and deviant behavior of men and women. In the period of modernization of the late 19th – the early 20th century, part of Russian population chose deviant model of behavior, and the crime rate increased. Among typical female crimes of that period the author points out child abandonment and infanticide. The subject of crime was a female person, specifically, a mother, and the object of crime was a child, more often, illegitimate. The author studies the Central Black Earth Region – a rural, patriarchal, peasant, weakly urbanized provincial region of European Russia. The study is interdisciplinary. The methods of social history and legal analysis reveal the problem under study from different scientific positions and as a historical and legal phenomenon as a whole. The scientific novelty consists in the variety of the applied approaches. The author introduces previously unpublished scientific data. The problem under study is topical. The phenomenon of infanticide is still present in Russian society in marginalized segments of the population. Gender factors are still important for the study of modern forms of deviant behavior. 

Abstract: The subject of this article is the most widespread type of crime against property in cities and counties of the Russian province of the stated period – theft. Based on the extensive circle of sources, the author reveals the following questions: legal assessment of thievery in the official criminal legislation of the Russian Empire; criminal statistics of thefts in Voronezh governorate; criminalistics characteristics of thefts conducted by the persons of lower urban classes. Special attention is given to thefts, which took place in the provincial cities. The main conclusion consists in the fact that the status of the agricultural Voronezh governorate along with the neighboring Black Earth governorates, on the “periphery” of Russian modernization, decrease the number of grand thefts. The incidence of thievery in urban society exceeded the incidence of thievery in rural society. During the period economic instability, which accompanies modernization in the Russian province, small thefts prevailed over the large thefts in the overall crimes. The lower urban classes, primarily peasants and male commoners, were the main actors of similar criminal acts.