Historians have not been at their finest in attempting to measure standard of living, and late imperial rural Russia is no exception. Given the absence of reliable measures for personal or household income or even of real wage trends—the most common proxy for the standard of living—scholars have been forced to employ a variety of other surrogates, often with unfortunate results. For Russia, recourse has been made to peasant tax arrears, mass consumption of “luxury” or nonfood items, and rye-wages. Shifts in the size of land allotments, numbers of livestock and patterns of land tenure often have been the focus of study; others have emphasized trends in net national product, grain retained in the village or grain yields generally. Diet has been assessed both quantitatively, in terms of caloric intake or protein derived from meat products, and qualitatively, underscoring harvest variability. Still other studies have looked at population trends, at times addressing the malthusian dilemma and suggesting that Russia was overpopulated. And frustration has recently led one historian to suggest we give up.
On Emotional Grounds: Private Communication of Muslims in Late Imperial Russia