Об уровне и роли грамотности в мирском самоуправлении иркутского и верхотурского уездов в последней четверти XVII века

Quaestio Rossica. 2025. Т. 13. № 2. С. 612–632.

Parfenya M.

The article presents a quantitative study of the literacy level among the taxable population of the Verkhoturye and Irkutsk districts in the last quarter of the 17th century. This allows for a comparison of literacy levels in these two Siberian districts with several regions in European Russia, where similar studies have already been undertaken. For this purpose, the analysis focuses on how many of the participants in elections for communal offices, recorded in election acts, were able to 'handwrite' their involvement. A total of 88 such 'elections' were analyzed, sourced from the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and the Scientific-Historical Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. Since not all residents of the districts participated in these elections, possible sampling errors were calculated. The calculations showed that in the studied districts, the literacy rates among urban inhabitants (posadskie) who participated in the elections ranged from 18,8% (Irkutsk district) to 31% (Verkhoturye district), while among peasants (krestyane), it was around 8%. However, since more affluent individuals tended to participate in communal meetings, these figures may be somewhat inflated. The study also revealed that the percentage of literate individuals among elders and headmen was not higher or even lower than the overall percentage in the districts. Within a single family, there was usually no more than one literate member, meaning the ability to write was not commonly passed down through generations among the common population.

Keywords: Сибирь, крестьяне, Siberia, грамотность, literacy, peasant community, русская община, новое время, 17^th century

Publication based on the results of: Biographical, prosopographical and genealogical approaches to the study of the social history of early Modern Russia (2023)