Urban encounters

AbstractThis article examines the correlation between estate (soslovie) identity and everyday social realities in Moscow under Nicholas I. Based on a database of 3,555 names from confessional records of Moscow parish churches for 1829, and using literary and memoir texts as additional evidence, the article asks: how were the different estates distributed across the neighborhoods of the city? How commonly did members of different estates live in the same house? How similar or different were the household and family structures of different estates? And, what names did different estates choose for their children? Overall, the article finds a binary polarization of the various estates into a middle and a lower class, but also a process of assimilation by which the culture of the elites spread downward through society.RésuméCet article traite de la corrélation entre l’identité d’un ordre (soslovie) et les réalités sociales quotidiennes à Moscou à l’époque de Nicolas Ier. Fondé sur une base de données de 3 555 noms inscrits dans les registres paroissiaux moscovites en 1829 et étayé par des textes littéraires et des Mémoires ayant valeur de preuves complémentaires, l’article pose notamment les questions de la répartition des ordres selon les quartiers de la ville, de la fréquence avec laquelle les membres de différents ordres vivaient sous un même toit, des similitudes ou des différenciations entre les structures des ménages et des familles, ou encore du choix des prénoms pour les enfants selon l’appartenance à tel ou tel de ces ordres. Dans l’ensemble, l’article pointe sur une polarisation binaire des différents ordres dans une classe moyenne et une classe inférieure, mais aussi sur un processus d’assimilation par lequel la culture des élites se diffusait vers le bas dans les autres couches de la société

«Fruit of Hope»: Recruitment of Kyiv Academy Students to the Hospital Schools in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Russian Empire

The article examines the choice of medical career as a way of social mobility by students of the Kyiv Academy, focusing on the first recruitment campaigns to hospital schools in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in the mid-eighteenth century. Researchers have long noted that students from the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine were a valuable source for imperial domestic physicians. Lesser is known about possible motivations of the volunteers to study medicine in view of their social background. The article argues that a medical career was an active choice for social advancement made not only by clergy students, but Cossacks and commoners as well. Among those who wished to pursue a medical career were also towners. It was rarely attractive to representatives of the Cossack elite at the time under consideration. The article illustrates the process of educational integration of many students from the lower social ranks on their way to becoming participants in imperial project. First, the article examines how this trajectory of social advancement was shaped by the recruitment policy of the imperial medical administration, both declared and implemented. Then, it discusses the students’ travels to the capitals in light of the challenges they faced and the decisions they made on their way to join the medical ranks. The final part examines the social background of the students and their academic performance to understand what the choice of medical profession meant for different social groups and how inclusive this path of social mobility was.У статті на основі аналізу перших кампаній з набору вихованців Київської академії до госпітальних шкіл у Санкт-Петербурзі та Москві в середині XVIII ст. розглядається вибір студентами медичної кар’єри як способу соціальної мобільності. Дослідники давно відзначають, що студенти з Гетьманщини та Слобідської України були цінним внутрішньоімперським джерелом майбутніх медичних чиновників. Менше відомо про можливі мотивації охочих вивчати медицину з огляду на їхнє соціальне походження. У статті стверджується, що медична кар’єра була активним вибором для соціального просування, який робили не лише діти духівництва, а й козаки та посполиті. Серед охочих розпочати медичну кар’єру були і міщани. Для представників козацької еліти в досліджуваний період медична служба залишалася малопривабливою. У статті проілюстровано процес освітньої інтеграції багатьох студентів з нижчих соціальних станів на шляху до участі в імперському проєкті як медичних чиновників. Спочатку розглянуто формування траєкторії соціального просування під впливом політики імперської медичної адміністрації, як задекларованої, так і реалізованої. Далі йдеться про подорожі студентів до столиць у світлі викликів, з якими вони стикалися, і рішень, які вони приймали на шляху до лікарської професії. Наприкінці проаналізовано соціальне походження студентів та їхню академічну успішність, аби зрозуміти, що означав вибір медичної професії для різних соціальних груп та наскільки цей шлях соціальної мобільності був інклюзивним

The Russian Orthodox white clergy in the seventeenth century

The aim of this study is to shed light on the world of the white clergy in seventeenth-century Russia, in order to give a fuller understanding of their role in society and influence in their communities, locally and nationally. In the Russian Church, the white clergy were the married non-monastic priests, deacons and minor clerics who served in parishes, endowed churches, and cathedrals, as well as in non-parochial fields. Pre-Petrine Russia, or Muscovy as it was generally called by foreigners, was an essentially Orthodox society with a strongly religious outlook, within which the clerical estate played a crucial role. Consequently, an understanding of the white clergy promotes a better knowledge of the religious, cultural, and social life of the country, yet there have been few detailed scholarly investigations of the topic this century. In this study I redress this lacuna, in addition to examining common myths and stereotypes concerning Russian priests. Chapter I investigates the processes of ordination and clerical training in the Muscovite Church; chapter II examines the social origins of the white clergy. Chapters III and IV focus on the parish clergy, assessing clerical livelihood and the parish priest's role in his community. Chapter V concentrates on the cathedral clergy and their link with the State, whilst chapter VI considers the contribution to society of extra-parochial ministries such as regimental and hospital chaplaincies. Chapters VII, VIII and IX discuss the widowed clergy, clergy families and episcopal supervision, respectively. Data for this thesis has been drawn from primary source material in diocesan, patriarchal and government archives. The field of study includes all regions of Russia, concentrating in particular on the eparchies of Vologda, Moscow, Ustiug, Kholmogory, Novgorod and Tobol'sk

Experiences of Illegitimacy in England, 1660-1834

This thesis examines attitudes towards individuals who were born illegitimate in England between the Restoration in 1660 and the New Poor Law of 1834. It explores the impact of illegitimacy on individuals' experiences of family and social life, marriage and occupational opportunities, and sense of identity. This thesis demonstrates that illegitimacy did have a negative impact, but that this was not absolute. The stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's gender and, most importantly, the family's socio-economic status. Socio-economic status became more significant as an arbiter of attitudes towards the end of the period. This project uses a range of qualitative evidence - correspondence, life-writing, poor law records, novels, legal and religious tracts, and newspapers - to examine the impact of illegitimacy across the entire life-cycle, moving away from previous historiographical emphasis on unmarried parenthood, birth and infancy. This approach adds nuance to a field dominated by poor law and Foundling Hospital evidence, and prioritises material written by illegitimate individuals themselves. This thesis also has resonance for historical understanding of wider aspects of long-eighteenth-century society, such as the nature of parenthood, family, gender, or emotion, and the operation of systems of classification and 'othering'. This thesis demonstrates that definitions of parenthood and family were flexible enough to include illegitimate relationships. The effect of illegitimacy on marital and occupational opportunities indicates how systems of patronage and familial alliance operated in this period, as well as the importance of inheritance, birth or familial connection as measures of social status. Finally, it questions the assumption that condemnation of illicit sex led to community exclusion of the illegitimate child, and calls for more nuanced understandings of how historians measure and define shame and stigma

‘Dying Irish’: eulogising the Irish in Scotland in Glasgow Observer obituaries

The Glasgow Observer newspaper, founded in 1885 by and for the Irish community in Scotland regularly published both lengthy and brief funereal and elegiac obituaries of the Irish in Scotland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They marshal an impressive, emotive and oftentimes contradictory body of evidence and anecdote of immigrant lives of the kind utilised, and as often passed over, by historians of the Irish in Britain. They contain, however, a unique perspective on the march of a migrant people bespoke of their experiences and, perhaps more importantly, the perception of their experiences in passage, in the host society and ultimately in death. Moreover, the changing sense of Victorian sensibilities over the solemnity, purpose and ritual of death into the Edwardian era finds a moot reflection in the key staples of Irish immigrant obsequies with their stress on thrift, endeavour, piety, charity and gratitude. This article explores Glasgow Observer obituaries from the 1880s to the 1920s to see what they say about the immigrants, their lives, work and culture, the Scots, migration itself, the wider relations between Britain and Ireland, and the place where Irish and British attitudes to death meet in this period. It does so by drawing upon recent sociological perspectives on obituaries and their relationship with the formation and articulation of collective memory

Religion between State and Society

In contrast to mainstream historiography, secularisation was not a distinct process in nineteenth-century Europe, since the century was a period of religious revival. In the late nineteenth century, in spite of weakening church attendance and rising agnosticism brought on by urbanisation and migration, religion remained attractive for the middle class and social movements related to church membership emerged in politics. In this chapter the diversity of religion in Europe is treated. The author distinguishes between hierarchical and nonhierarchical types of Christian churches, and between four religious regions in Europe. This situation had effects on the relationship between state and religion

Word and Image in Russian History

''Word and Image'' invokes and honors the scholarly contributions of Gary Marker. Twenty scholars from Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Ukraine and the United States examine some of the main themes of Marker’s scholarship on Russia—literacy, education, and printing; gender and politics; the importance of visual sources for historical study; and the intersections of religious and political discourse in Imperial Russia. A biography of Marker, a survey of his scholarship, and a list of his publications complete the volume