On September, 21-23, the I.A. Bunin Yelets State University, supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFFI), held an All-Russian scientific conference ‘In the time of change: Revolt, insurrection, and revolution in the Russian periphery in the 17th – early 20th centuries’. Scientists from various Russian regions participated in its work. The conference organizers focused on social conflicts in the Russian periphery. The first series of reports addressed the Age of Rebellions in the Russian history. They considered the role and the place of the service class people in anti-government revolts. Some scientists stressed the effect of official state policy on the revolutionary mood of the people. Some reports paid attention to jurisdictions and activities of the general police in the 19th – early 20th century and those of the Provisional Government militia. Other reports analyzed the participation of persons of non-peasant origin in the revolutionary events. They studied the effect of the revolutionary events on the mood and behavior of local people and the ways of solving conflicts between the authorities and the society. Most numerous series of reports were devoted to social conflicts in the Russian village at the turn of the 20th century, studied forms and ways of peasants' struggle against the extortionate cost of the emancipation, and offered a periodization of peasants' uprisings. The researchers stressed that peasants remained politically unmotivated; analysis of their relations with authorities shows that they were predominantly conservative and not prone to incitement to against monarchy. Some questions of source studies and methodology of studying the revolution and the preceding period were raised. Most researches used interdisciplinary methods, popular in modern humanities and historical science.