THE POOR AND DISABLED IN EARLY 18TH-CENTURY RUSSIAN TOWNS

This paper assesses the frequency and character of urban poverty in Pe trine Russia on the basis of twelve population inventories carried out in ten central Russian cities between 1710 and 1720. Although there i s substantial variation among censuses, the sources isolate as poor or tax-exempt about 10 percent of Russian city populations. Legislation from the era indicates that the Russian government attempted to depres s the levels of poverty, perhaps explaining the relatively low percent age of the poor recorded in the town censuses. The disabled do not occ upy a prominent place among the poor; for the most part, they resided in regular, tax-paying households. But both age and sex were highly as sociated with poverty. The mean age of poor heads-of-households was ab out 50, and the aged predominated in urban poorhouses. Women appeared among the poor in numbers significantly greater than their percentage of the population; widows comprised an especially sizable proportion o f all poor householders. Orphans are less visible in these sources, al though some households clearly sheltered orphans, ostensibly as an act of charity, but perhaps also as a source of labor and income.