Introduction

Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, a former serf from Yaroslavl’ province, wrote his memoirs shortly before his death in 1868. The literary and political journal Russkii vestnik (Russian messenger) published them in 1877. Their publication epitomized the intellectual interest in the life of common people during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this era several serf memoirs appeared in Russian literary journals or were published as books. But Purlevskii’s memoirs stand somewhat..