Aleksey V. Belov

Doctor of Sciences (History), Senior Researcher of the Center for the History of Russian Feudalism

Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

(Moscow, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-4-8-15

Abstract. The article analyses the structure and state of the city and the surrounding ‘suburban’ space included in the orbit of its life. The work considers the processes that took place directly on the eve and during the reforms of Catherine the Great: administrative-territorial, urban (social), and reform of the Russian city (city as an administrative center). Thus, the author proposes to assess the state of both the urban space and the structure of the city, and partly the nature of the Central Russian urban settlements, with which the reformers came into contact in the course of their transformative policy, forming its course, assessing opportunities and choosing tasks. The author pays special attention to the relationship and interdependence of different parts of the city (radii of the city spatial structure). At the same time, the work describes both the city itself and the adjoining settlements and territories. They were not officially part of the urban space, but were in unity or close neighborhood with it, becoming an element of the urban pasture. The author also highlights features of the actual merger of the suburbs and the city, at all stages of this process: from the stable economic independence of the former service settlements (which owned extensive land holdings), to the merger of part of these settlements with urban pasture and residential territory. The article gives examples of the spread of urbanization processes to the outskirts of rural settlements, as a result of which they acquired pronounced forms of urban economy. The article shows the transitional character of the 18th – 19th centuries turn for the formation of the New Age city. The material for the study is the Kaluga province, which the author considers as a possible model (reference point) for comparing and analyzing the structure of urban space and its evolution in different parts of Central Russia, as well as for assessing the evolution process and the results of reforming the Central Russian city in the middle of the 18th – early 19th century.
Keywords: pre-reform city, Russian city, Catherine the Great’s city reforms, urban space, settlement.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Belov, AV 2024, ‘Central Russian City at the Beginning of Catherine the Great’s Reforms: Peculiarities and Patterns’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (20), pp. 8–15, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-4-8-15 (in Russ.)

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