Abstract:

This publication brings to scholarly attention three previously unpublished documents from Tula state archives presenting an episode from everyday life in provincial Russia. In 1731, Andrey Inozemtsev, a gunsmith at Tula state-owned arms plant, sent 53 rubles by a messenger from Saint-Petersburg to his brother in Tula. The money had never reached the addressee, and the ensuing long-lasting lawsuit did not lead to its recovery. Unimportant at a first glance, this case reveals the vicissitudes of Tula town-dwellers’ life and helps us better understand the pecking order of social interactions, the contemporary laws and legal system, as well as the relationship between society and state power in eighteen-century Russia. The documents also manifest the style, vocabulary, spelling and grammar used in official documentation of the time

Keywords: Tula Arms settlement, Tula Arms Chancellery, Tula town magistrate; Tula state gunsmiths Andrey and Vasiliy Inozemtsev, burgomasters Afanasiy Petrov, Terentiy Pastukhov, Tula town dwellers Fedor and Nikifor Petrov, Ivan Lashkin, Artemiy Liventsev; legal case, laws, Russia, the 18th century.