The welfare of Moscow residents in the eighteenth century as represented by merchants’ and commoners’  sgovornye zapisi  (plight records) ”

Abstract.The source, which was used in the study - sgovornye zapisi of merchants and commoners of eighteenth century Moscow, published Natalia Vadimovna Kozlova .The purpose of the study is to prove that sgovornye zapisi of merchants and commoners are valuable source for studying their welfare.Tasks that were put in relation with the purpose:1) Consider sgovornye records as a source of information about the welfare of urban inhabitants.2) To test a methodologyof the analysis of the welfare of urban inhabitants of the eighteenth century, based on the analysis of the complex sgovornyh Moscow merchants and commoners.Methodology of my work - developed by the Russian historians (such as Kashtanov) methodology of analysis of acts. Also in the study some statistic methods were used.In the first chapter, I considered sgovornye zapisi as a historical source and did an analysis of their structure. I also compared the structure of the sgovornye zapisi of merchants and commoners with the structure of the sgovornye zapisi of peasants and the structure of the sgovornaya zapis of the princess Varvara Alekseyevna Cherkaskaya and concluded that there is no much difference in the structure.In the second chapter, I presented the data for whom zgovornye zapisi were compiled ( for daughter, for sister, niece). It is also said about what social groups are presented in the sgovornye zapisi, published by Kozlova . In this chapter I also systematized sgovornye zapisi by two criteria: social status of its authors and the time, when it was written. I identified several social groups, merchants, townsmen and inside this group people of Gostinnaya sotnya, the soldiers (the wives and widows of soldiers, retired soldiers and their wives and widows), clergymen and officers. Within each group, I considered the dowry that representatives gave in different time periods (from 1700 to 1725, from 1725 to 1740, from 1740 to 1760 and from 1760 to 1800) and also the quantity of published records for each period. I have come to the following conclusion. Sgovornye zapisi is remarkable and poorly-studied source for studding welfare, because giving their relatives married representatives of different social groups tried to collect a dowry that would be appropriate to their social status.