ABSTRACT
Peasants made up the vast majority of the population of Russia throughout the period covered by this book. The numbers of Russian peasants, moreover, grew considerably between the early seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter starts by examining the peasant population of the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the different ways peasants have been defined and the composition of the peasantry. The chapter goes on to consider the reasons for the massive increase in the Russian peasant population over the preceding three centuries. Like most pre-industrial populations, Russian peasants lived in an uncertain world of high and unpredictable mortality. The lives of the very young and old were particularly precarious. The Russian peasantry also had very high birth rates, which in the medium and long terms more than compensated for the high death rates. The growth in the numbers of peasants, especially in relation to the amounts of land available for cultivation, were important factors affecting many aspects of the Russian peasantry’s ways of life.
