Maimed and dead people: tragic aspects of the daily life on the Russian roads in the 19th and early 20th centuries
The "culture of the road", the "traditional culture of travel", the "road tradition" of Russia and the circumstances of road movements in the Russian Empire have been studied by historians, anthropologists, ethnographers only the end of the last century. In scientific and popular literature, attention is usually not paid to threats to the life and health of those who used horse-drawn transport or rode horseback in the 19th - early 20th centuries. This article considers threats not from robberies or other emergencies, but from those constant and ubiquitous circumstances that made almost every road movement unpredictable and dangerous. This topic is investigated using generalized data that was collected before the revolution by local officials and employees of statistical committees. Some data were published at the same time, much was deposited in archives. Despite all the conditionality of the data contained in official documents, their analysis allows us to identify trends and trace comparative ratios (for example, road deaths against the background of other deaths). The impressions of contemporaries, which are contained in memoirs, correspondence, and journalism, are also very important. Works of fiction are an essential addition. At the same time, it is important that the road theme in personal documents and narrative sources is not the main, plot-forming one. It turns out that traveling in a cart, sleigh or riding a horse in the 19th - early 20th centuries was no less life-threatening than rapid movement on a motorcycle or car in our time. At much lower speeds than now, there were many situations that threatened fatal consequences. Collisions during a meeting and overtaking, overturning of carriages, sudden breakdowns at full gallop were everyday incidents. Riding and coachman's horses -animals large, strong, with strong hooves - could also be the cause of injuries and even death. And this is in addition to the fact that every long journey already caused a lot of inconvenience and trouble. Meanwhile, if we do not take into account this aspect of everyday life on the road, historians will not fully understand the specifics of the management of the Russian state and the conditions of its functioning even at that relatively late time. In the most extensive country in the world, maintaining the unity and connectivity of the territory (with non-modern means of land transportation) was the most important and very difficult task.