Rural Crime in Tsarist Russia: The Question of Hooliganism, 1905-1914

Abstract

The period of Russian history between 1905 and 1914 has been the subject of continuing controversy. Coming as it did before the traumatic shock of world war and revolution, the decade has been a battleground between those who see tsarist society as one that was undergoing a process of gradual but positive evolution in response to the revolutionary crisis of 1905 and those who insist that social tensions within the empire were moving it toward yet another revolutionary outbreak. Although initially concentrated on the urban sector of Russian society, attention in the debate has also been extended to rural areas of the empire. Here, as in the city, the question of the nature and direction of change is complex, and its resolution requires the investigation of a variety of phenomena, not the least of which is rural crime.