“There should be a single law to define what a city is”: a review of the monograph by A. V. Belova "Reform of the City of Catherine II (based on materials from the provinces of Central Russia). M.-SPb .: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 2019, 613 p.

Abstract

The subject of this article is a monographic research of the Senior Scientific Associate of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. V. Belova, which is focused on the large-scale transformations that took place in urban life of the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine II. The author of the monograph seeks to characterize the reforms based on the example of four provinces of Central Russia: Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vladimir, and Kaluga. This work vastly uses published and unpublished sources, as well as a significant array of research literature. The peer-reviewed work leans on the principles of historicism, reliability, objectivity; methodological framework includes systematic approach and comparative method. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the author attempts to give comprehensive characteristics to preparation, implementation and consequences of the city reform carried out by the Empress Catherine, attracting the materials from four Russian “indigenous” provinces. The author believes that despite certain doubts of both, contemporaries and future historians, especially of the liberal school, namely the reforms of Catherine the Great laid the foundations for the fundamentally new type of a city that met the requirements of the time.