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Штрихи к социальному портрету русской преступницы 30-х гг. XVIII в.
The article attempts to reconstruct a social portrait of a Russian female criminal of the 1730s on the basis of a set of judicial and investigative documentation. The self-identification of female criminals and information about their lifestyle from questioning speeches (rassprosnye rechi) often do not coincide with traditional views on the structure of society at that time. The article analyzes these inconsistencies, and also reveals women of which social groups most often committed crimes and what their motives were. As the study demonstrated, the social portrait of a female criminal of the 1730s wore blurred features. The reason of this was, on the one hand, in the problem of self-determination of women, who did not always know exactly what category they should belong to, and, on the other hand, in more general problems associated with the process of social reorganization of Russian society, which was unable to respond quickly to the numerous reforms proposed to (and partly imposed on) it by Peter I.