The Study Of Peasant Problems During The Process Of Moscow’ Urbanization From The Late19th Century To Early20th Century

Since the second half of the19th century, Moscow has entered a new historicalstage of development. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Moscow was thetenth most populous of the world’s cities. At the end of the nineteenth, almostthree-fourths of the city’s population had been born elsewhere. Most of them werecome from its hinterland, and two-thirds of the peasant estate. At end of the19thcentury to the early twentieth century, Moscow conveyed the images of a bustling,modern European city, on the one hand, and of a scruffy, backward, Asiatic“bigvillage”, on the other. At the turn of the century, what happened to Moscow exactlyunder the influence of peasant, that is the reason why does the author write thisarticle.This paper is divided into three parts：introduction, body and conclusion.The first part is introduction, mainly introduce the significance of the topic of theresearch questions, status, material sources, methods and innovation.The second part is the main body of this article, is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses Moscow and the situation of the peasants fromthe late nineteenth Century to early twentieth Century. As late as the mid-19thcentury, as the second largest city of the Russian empire in the eyes of people andforeign tourists in Moscow is the image of a "big village", the streets are full ofpeasants, pilgrims, vendors, and wearing traditional clothing of Russian people. Justa few decades, especially in the last20years of the19th century, with the rapiddevelopment of the city, establishing a modern enterprise, a new type of industrialsector, large factories, public transportation, museums, etc. But the image of the cityof traditional things such as cottage industries, open-air markets and street vendors still exist and is still active. Moscow presented a dual picture during the period oftransformation.The bulk of the city’s population came from Moscow’s hinterland, the closerfrom Moscow region, the number of population is more, and vice versa. Denselypopulated areas corresponding to send more people to the city, the population of themore industrial areas around Moscow, having more employment opportunies nearhome, had less reason to migrate to Moscow, while persons from more agriculturalareas, were more likely to seek a living in Moscow. Through the examining, we canbe found most people retained some form of tie with their native village, and themajority of people had little urban background, moreover, most of them were notdeficient in literacy or skills. The city attracted not only the adventure someself-motivated talents and highly skilled worker and literate, but also the beggar andvagrants.The second chapter mainly analyzes what kinds of changes have taken place inthe economy; employment and housing market which under the influence ofpeasants. The analysis revealed that Moscow’s economic development is a dualprocess. The city continued to be a mixture of booming trade and manufacture andquaint bazaars and vendor；formal and informal sectors of economy. A dualisticeconomy generated a dualistic labor force. By the end of nineteenth century, therapid development of urban economy has attracted a lager number of peasantimmigrants, more than two-thirds of the labor force were common laborers, and ofthe common laborers, two-thirds were semiskilled or menial workers. The instabilityof the city’s economic development will inevitably lead to turmoil of employmentmarket, employment market turbulence means that there are a lot of people lose theirjobs, many persons were in danger of being reduced to a beggar. In addition, a hugepeasant team has put considerable pressure on the city’s housing market. Thegrowth in housing stock could not keep pace with population growth, a variety ofhousing types, excessive subdivision and living space is very cramped. Such livingcondition makes it hard for the family to live together and form a core family, evenlead to the family relationship fragilely. At the same time also lead to a series of indecent behaviors, such as prostitution, illegal cohabitation etc, which in turn leadto the emergence of the illegitimate son.The third chapter mainly analyzes what measures were taken by the authoritiesto solve the problem of urban poverty. Through establishing the workhouse to helpthe poor, and the foundling home to accept abandoned baby, on the other. However,due to the effects of various factors, these problems have not been completelyresolved.The third part is the conclusion of this article.