Javochnye chelobitnye' (petitions) of the eighteenth century as a historical source (in the example of the year 1722 petition book of Moscow police сhancellery)

Javochnye chelobitnye' (petitions) of the eighteenth century as a historical source (in the example of the year 1722 petition book of Moscow police сhancellery)The general purpose is to analize/caracteraze javochnye chelobitnye as a historical source. This general purpose subsumes more specific objectives to describe most salient features of this source (structure, format, authorship, to assess the occurrence of petitions` different social background/estates in the source base), to reveal types of evidence that can be derived from the petitions (e.g. petitioners` welfare, everyday life).To achieve this objective, the study has been divided into four main chapters. In Chapter One, it is present characteristic of this historical source. In Chapter Two, Three and Four it is analyzed the information potential of petitions for the studying the social structure and everyday life of Russian cities, as well as the welfare of city inhabitants in the first half of XVIII century.The studying the social structure of the Russian city of the eighteenth century is based on analyzing the data which we could explore through this source – how petitioners identified themselves by noting their social estate in javochnye chelobitny. Javochnye chelobitny include the information about such aspects of everyday life, as crime and conflict, housing of city inhabitants and clothing. The information about household items of inhabitants could be drawing from javochnye chelobitny about the house thefts. Also javochnye chelobitny illustrate the following types of crimes: domestic theft, robbery, brawls, threats and insults. Javochnye chelobitny about the house thefts, robberies involve lists of stolen property indicating the price, which allows obtaining the data about the well-being of city inhabitants of different social groups.