The History of Taverns in Russia

Ivan Gavrilovich Pryzhov (1827–1885) — Russian publicist, historian, ethnographer and revolutionary. The son of a peasant, a veteran of the War of 1812 who earned hereditary nobility through his service, Ivan Pryzhov was able to obtain a good education, but in his youth he became enamored of revolutionary ideas and ended up among the defendants in the famous 'Nechaev affair', which prompted Dostoevsky to create the novel 'The Demons'. Pryzhov was stripped of his nobility and sentenced to hard labor, but until the end of his days he continued to write and publish. His unique ethnographic observations and investigations, striking in their perceptiveness and the depth of their penetration into their subject, give a key to understanding Russian life, whether it be the way of life of Siberian Old Believers, the daily life of the merchants, or the very bottom of society — beggars, holy fools, shriekers and tavern riffraff. The present edition presents the works of I. G. Pryzhov devoted to the history of the appearance in Rus of drinking houses in place of the traditional korchma. The researcher examines the origin, flowering and decline of a distinctive folk culture and the destructive influence of 'sovereign taverns' on the life and morality of the peasants and townsfolk.