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Russian History from the Great Reforms to the February Revolution
is a survey of the principal political, social, economic, intellectual
and cultural developments from the accession of Aleksandr II to
the fall of the monarchy. The text and its companion volumes,
Russian History from the February Revolution to the Great Patriotic
War and Russian History from the Great Patriotic War to
the New Russia, provide a comprehensive survey of Russian
history since 1855 from the perspective of two internationally
distinguished Russian historians.
The authors utilize the previously unpublished state papers,
memoirs, and correspondence found in the Russian State Archives.
The memoirs of P.N. Bogatyrev, a popular singer from the period,
record society's acceptance of the judicial reforms that accompanied
the emancipation of the peasants in 1861. Ordinary Russians found
swift, impartial justice regardless of social class for the first
time in their history. Despite the initial fears that they would
be incapable of rendering accurate verdicts, the first sworn jurors
performed their duties with a "feeling for justice, knowledge
of life in its diverse manifestations…and the humane."
The volume sheds new light on the social changes accompanying
the industrialization process that gave rise to two new classes,
the factory owning bourgeoisie and the working class proletariat.
F.I. Shaliagin's Mask and Soul cited in the text traces
the new middle class's origins to the village. Still peasants,
the first generation diligently studied grammar and rose above
their condition by leaving the village for the town. On the road
to becoming a merchant or industrialist in Moscow, the peasant
would peddle his articles. Eventually success would bring a shop
or factory and admission into the merchant guild. His son would
become the "first to purchase a Gogan…."
The passages on match-making from the poet I.A. Belousov's memoir
show that success did not guarantee the merchants a place in public
life. Public appearances were limited to business contacts, and
middle class fathers were just as determined to preserve the morality
of their offspring as Victorian fathers were in the West. Because
their children were deprived of the opportunity to meet suitors
in public, marriages were arranged through professional match-makers
hired by the parents.
The Russian proletariat did not share the bourgeoisie's rising
affluence. The memoirs of a Moscow worker (E.N. Nemchinov) describe
the workers' life in the barracks in the 1880s. After a sixteen
hour workday, the workers were so exhausted that the bugs and
lice in their common bedroom did not disturb their rest. Without
labor unions or political parties, many saw revolution as the
only exit from poverty.
 Hammond, Vincent Elwood (1947-) PhD in Russian,
British, and Modern European History, University of Illinois.
Associate Professor of History, University of Central Arkansas.
Author of One World (2003), Our World from the Renaissance to
the Second World War (2005), and State Service in Sixteenth Century
Novgorod: The First Century of the Pomestie System (forthcoming).
Translator and editor of A.A. Danilov and A.N. Souzdaltsev's From
the February Revolution to the Great Patriotic War ((2004), From
the Great Patriotic War to the New Russia (1st edition, 2003,
2nd edition 2006) and A.A. Danilov's History of Russia: The Twentieth
Century (1996). Other edited and annotated translations include
A.F. Kiselev's The Trade Unions and the Soviet State (2001) and
A.V. Lubkov's War, Revolution and the Cooperative (2002).
 Danilov, Aleksandr Anatolevich (1954-) Author
of From the Great Reforms to the February Revolution, From the
February Revolution to the Great Patriotic War, and From the Great
Patriotic War to the New Russia. Doctor of History, Professor
and Head of the History Department, Moscow State Pedagogical University.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Active
member of the New York Academy of Sciences. Academician and Secretary
of the Division of History of the International Academy of Pedagogical
Sciences. Author of 260 scholarly works and textbooks with more
than five million copies published (including publications in
the United States, Great Britain, and Lithuania). Dr. Danilov
has trained twenty-eight Doctors of History and twenty-eight PhDs
in History. Chairman of the Dissertation Council for the Defense
of Doctoral Dissertations, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Historians
of the Higher Certification Commission of the Russian Federation.
He has participated in international conferences in Moscow, Khabarovsk,
Warsaw, Paris, Rome, New York, Boston, Nanking, Athens, Barcelona,
and Helsinki.
 Souzdaltsev, Igor Nikolaevich (1962-) Co-author
of From the Great Reforms to the February Revolution, From the
February Revolution to the Great Patriotic War, and From the Great
Patriotic War to the New Russia. Chairman of the Institute of
Natiology (Moscow), PhD, Member of the Russian Academy of Social
Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences. Author of Natiology:
Social Science for the Third Millennium (1999) and other books
and articles on the theoretical origins and development of nations
published in the United States and Russia. Dr. Souzdaltsev has
been a participant in international academic conferences in New
York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and Moscow.
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