Perepisnye Knigi

(censuses), manuscript records containing population data for 17th- and 18th-century Russia. They appeared as a result of the change from a detailed description of all taxable objects (pistsovye knigi) to descriptions of households.

In the mid-17th and early 18th centuries, household perepisnye knigi were compiled simultaneously with general censuses of the taxpaying population (1646–48, 1676–78, 1710, and 1716) and with censuses of populations of specific regions or categories (such as dvortsovye krest’iane). The perepisnye knigi of the 1720’s and 1740’s indicated the totals of the census of individuals. In contrast to the pistsovye knigi, they did not contain descriptions of land, and they only incidentally furnished information on trades and agricultural lands; on the other hand, they contained much more complete population data than the pistsovye knigi. In descriptions of taxpaying households in 17th-century perepisnye knigi, all the males in a household were listed, regardless of age or tax status; however, early 18th-century censuses also contained data on the females in each household. The perepisnye knigi indicated the family ties between members of the household as well as the age of each family member. They also listed the various categories to which the household members belonged, data that were usually not included in the pistsovye knigi, and contained information on population migrations, including the number of fugitive peasants.

At the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, the term perepisnye knigi was also applied to opisnye knigi, which contained descriptions of cities, villages, and monasteries, and to smotrennye knigi, which contained data on the location of populated areas, especially frontier settlements, as well as the distance between and the roads connecting these areas.