1. | Sep 1, 2013

That was fascinating hlenstoy, I think I could fall in love with trivia for its own sake, because it's like getting a few more pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.Talking about why these men returned . I can think of a couple of possibilities. For one, unless they settled in areas with sizeable Russian enclaves, they had probably encountered isolation and loneliness. An amnesty that meant they could not only go home but be free would settle all their problems at once supposedly. Second, they had entered on a voluntary self-exile, but there does seem to be a strong theme in Russian culture that being exiled is only about two steps better than being dead. You're cut off, you've been sent to the outside. So the pull to go back could be very strong, even if they were living in an otherwise supportive or prosperous environment. And of course, as you suggested, they may have had families back home.(I too am familiar with the wish-I'd-found-that-earlier bug, as I think most historians/historical writers are. He's an itchy little pest.)Thanks for a fun post!

2. | Aug 31, 2013

This is so interesting, John! First, I feel like I see a spike of cases of popele firming up their status in the early 1760s, too and my theory is that it has a lot to do with the third revision. The action of cleaning up the books certainly affected individuals and societies in terms of having them register properly, and I can also see it having the effect of making societies guard their privilege more carefully.As far as what makes it in to the PSZ, there's also the factor that apparently Nicholas didn't open all state archives and files to Speransky et al (see here: Marc Raeff, “Preface,” Catherine II’s Charters of 1785 to the Nobility and the Towns,, trans. and edited by David Griffiths and George E. Munro (Bakersfield: Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher, 1991), xii.)Then there were a number of books in the early 1800s in which individual authors tried to recover all the laws (or a lot of the laws) pertaining to various subject. I looked at one of them: P. Khavskii, Sobranie zakonov o kuptsakh, meshchanakh, posadskikh i tsekhovykh, ili Gorodovoe Polozhenie so vkliucheniem zakonov predshestvuiushchikh i posleduiushchikh s 1766 po 1823 god (SPb, 1823). I sat there in the Publichka using a usb modem to search through the PSZ online as I looked through the book, to see what wasn't in one or the other. Somewhat to my surprise, the things missing in the PSZ were mostly ukazes from Alexander's reign (and I should note that they may be there, hidden under a different date I had that problem, too, that things were reported oddly).