Rural and Urban Crime in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

The fall of the Russian Empire is a highly contested topic that splits scholars into two main schools of thought: the optimist view that argues Russia only fell due to the instability that came with World War I, and the pessimist view that argues the collapse of the Russian Empire was inevitable due to deeply embedded issues that were prevalent decades before the war. This research paper highlights crime as one of the many endemic issues that led to the eventual collapse of the empire. This paper discusses the differences between rural and urban crimes, how crime changed over time, as well as how culture played a role in its prevalence. It explores aspects of peasant criminality in the countryside, specifically violence and property crimes, and compares them to urban crime, mainly hooliganism in towns and cities.