The Politics of Numbers: Zemstvo Land Assessment and theConceptualization of Russia's Rural Economy

Darrow, David W.

doi:10.1111/0036-0341.00108

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Zemstvos conducted regular statistical inquiries, which together formed 'the largest collection of statistics on an agrarian society' . 7 The zemstvo statisticians were well versed in Quetelet's ideas and the German Historical School's criticism of it. The first Great Russian statistical congress took place in 1870, assembling hundreds of statisticians from all parts of the empire.…”

Section: Statistics In Eastern Europementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sadder and wiser’: St Petersburg 1872 and Budapest 1876

Randeraad¹

2020

States and Statistics in the Nineteenth Century

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Section: Statistics In Eastern Europementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Sadder and wiser’: St Petersburg 1872 and Budapest 1876

Randeraad¹

2020

States and Statistics in the Nineteenth Century

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“…These derive from the extraordinary efforts of local government (zemstvo, pl. -a) statisticians, who collected hundreds of thousands of peasant household budgets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Seneta, 1985;Darrow, 2000). In carrying out tax assessments, zemstvo statisticians were also tasked with collecting data suitable to the development of informed policies for rural development.…”

Section: Household Budgets In Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

On Historical Household Budgets

2016

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The paper argues that household budgets are the best starting point for investigating a number of big questions related to the evolution of the living standards during the last two-three centuries. If one knows where to look, historical family budgets are more abundant than might be suspected. And statistical techniques have been developed to handle the associated problems of small, incomplete, and unrepresentative samples. We introduce the Historical Household Budgets (HHB) Project, aimed at gathering data and sources, but also at creating an informational infrastructure that provides i) reliable storage and easy access to historical family budget data, along with ii) tools to configure the data as it is entered so as to harmonise it with present-day surveys.

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“…As an increasing number of Russia's zemstvos turned to collecting statistical data for local tax assessment, these data (which also calculated allotment income using market prices) supported Ianson's conclusions and further disseminated the notion of insufficient allotments among the reading public. 66 Moscow statistician V. I. Orlov noted in his study of the peasant economy that the lack of correspondence between payments and allotment income was one of the chief factors contributing to peasant abandonment of allotments and frequent communal repartitions. These actions increased the burden on other villagers who, because of the principle of collective responsibility, became responsible for the additional dues.…”

Section: Statistical Research and The "Insufficient Allotment"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistics and ‘sufficiency’: toward an intellectual history of Russia's rural crisis

Darrow

2002

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The article examines the impact of the ‘rise of statistical thinking’ and statistical measurement on elite perceptions of the condition of the Russian Empire's post-emancipation peasant economy. Using archival and published sources, it argues that the increased use of statistical measurement did much to concretize in numerical (‘objective’) terms the idea of rural crisis. In particular, the combination of traditional paternalistic concerns about the sufficiency of peasant resources and the use of cadastre measurement yielded an image of the peasant household economy in which the value (the income-producing capabilities) of post-emancipation peasant allotments nearly always fell short of subsistence requirements and tax/payment obligations. Thus, because of how observers measured peasant well-being, it appeared as if peasants had been over-changed for their post-emancipation land allotments and were doomed to exist in a permanent state of crisis.

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The Politics of Numbers: Zemstvo Land Assessment and theConceptualization of Russia's Rural Economy

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

‘Sadder and wiser’: St Petersburg 1872 and Budapest 1876

‘Sadder and wiser’: St Petersburg 1872 and Budapest 1876

On Historical Household Budgets

Statistics and ‘sufficiency’: toward an intellectual history of Russia's rural crisis

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