Mukhina, Z. Z. Legal Status of a Widow in Russian Peasantry: Traditions and Innovations (Second Half of XIX – Beginning of XX Century)

Abstract: The article is devoted to peculiarities of a civil and legal status if a widow in Russian peasantry as well as her common law status from the point of view of legal and historical studies. In the course of studying this issue, the author focuses on transformations caused by modernization in the after-reform time. There are no historical and ethnographic studies devoted to the status of a window in peasantry so the author of the given article tries to fill in this gap in this way or another. After- reform transformations affected St. Petersburg Governorate and the Governorate of the Central District. Therefore, the author of the article uses materials from the archive of V. N. Tenishev’s Ethnographical Bureau providing more insight into the life of Russian peasantry back in late XIX –early XX centuries.

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