Abstract

The study examines the strategies of interaction of the peasant community and manorial administration with the uyezd authorities at the microhistorical level. It is based on the materials of the archive of the Buturlins’ Palekh manor, i.e. expenditure books and primary documentation on travel expenses, duty receipts of the uyezd authorities and community sentences. Upon studying the legislative base and practice, the author concludes that peasants almost did not deviate from legislative norms. They tried to optimize their expenses, for example, they did not resort to the uyezd court or they visited the town for several cases at the same time. The article reconstructs the schedule and approximate travel time consumption, examines which officials and peasants were involved in interaction with the uyezd authorities depending on the situation. The author establishes that a considerable part of the time of the manorial administration was spent on traveling to the uyezd town. She estimates the transport costs of Palekh residents to the neighboring towns — Gorokhovets, Vyazniki, Vladimir and Shuya. The main criterion of convenience of a uyezd town for peasants was reliability of the way to it and its proximity to their village. Th e case of the administrative reform in 1796–1797 in Vladimir guberniya allows us to consider how Palekh residents tried to prevent their manor from being assigned to a less attractive uyezd town. It is proved that peasants’ attempts could not succeed, because the reform was carried out at the guberniya level (while peasants appealed to the uyezd authorities), and the decisions were made before peasants tried to intervene. The author concludes that the legislation in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries worked in favor of peasants and it was aimed at reducing transportation costs for them, but their opinion was not taken into account in the formation of specific administrative boundaries.

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