MORTALITY IN RUSSIA DURING THE 18TH AND 1 9TH-CENTURIES - LOCAL ASSESSMENTS BASED ON THE REVIZII

Little is known about the historical demography of the Tsarist empire, as the study of historical demography never really developed in Russi a. But there exist valuable sources, richer than in most European stat es, during the eighteenth century which can be used by researchers. In this paper we briefly describe the revizii - census-type nominal data which were preserved for the most part, and which cover the period fr om the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and use them to construct mortality tables for the Moscow region between 1750 and 1850 . We compare our estimates with other mortality tables for the period, and with attempts to construct tables in Russia during the later half of the nineteenth century. We show that in the middle eighteenth cent ury mortality in Russia was comparable to that in France. but that a c entury later, Russian mortality remained unchanged, whereas French mor tality had declined markedly.