‘Waiting to die? Life for elderly people in late Imperial Russian villages’
Professor Sarah Badcock
(University of Nottingham)
RHS Lecture on 3 February 2023, Online
What was daily life like for old people in Russian villages at the turn of the twentieth century?
This lecture shows that non-able elderly people were often left ‘waiting to die’, de-sexed, de-valued and disempowered. Exploring the parameters of able/visible and disabled/invisible allows us to ask questions about the values accorded individuals within rural communities, and the extent to which families, communities and legal structures could and did intervene in the private sphere. The lecture also places the experiences of elderly Russians in a broader comparative picture of older people’s lives in other countries at the turn of the century.
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More about the event: Lecture abstract and speaker biography
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Watch the lecture: including audience questions and discussion
HEADER IMAGE: Ilya Efimovich Repin, ’The watchman Yefimov’ (c. 1870, Tretiakov gallery), public domain