Giulio Edoardo Jaeger

At the table

Staple Foods of Ordinary Russian Families

Ordinary families primarily ate rye bread and various porridges, with cabbage soup known as shchi being a staple dish served year-round. Meat was a rare luxury for the poor, typically reserved for major holidays like Christmas and Easter, while fish and vegetables were more accessible.

What people wore

Peasant women's daily and festive attire

Peasant women wore a woolen skirt called a ponyova over a linen shirt, and they protected their hair with headdresses like the soroka, as showing hair was shameful for married women.

Getting around

Variable speeds of land travel

Travel speeds were generally slow, averaging about 50 to 70 kilometers a day, though elite couriers or royal carriages could achieve much higher speeds, sometimes reaching 18 kilometers per hour on favorable routes. During winter, sleighs often moved faster than wheeled vehicles on the packed snow and ice.

Work

Declining wages for Volga boatmen

Earnings for Volga boatmen dropped significantly due to industrialization, falling from about 300 rubles per season in the 1810s to between 60 and 90 rubles by the 1830s. This decline forced many formerly prosperous villages into poverty as traditional crafts were replaced by newer methods.

Music

Traditional khorovod dances and reed instruments

In the Kursk region, women performed traditional round dances called khorovod or karagod while singing and playing kuvichki, a set of pan-flute pipes made of reeds of varying lengths.

Daily life

Low rates of peasant literacy and education

Literacy among serfs was extremely low, with estimates not exceeding 1%. Education was largely confined to home training by local sextons or clerks, often limited to reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.