Introduction

Abstract

This interdisciplinary collection of chapters devoted to Russian women in the long eighteenth century (extending to the reign of Alexander I) offers contributions relating to the least-studied areas of the subject. It focuses on the culture and social history not only of noblewomen, who are most adequately documented, but also of merchant and peasant women, about whom relatively little is known, and who are as yet under-researched. It also sheds light on women living in the provinces of the Russian Empire. A number of contributions relate to gender in the less-studied period before the reign of Catherine II (1762–1796).