Domestic life and customs of the Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries

Nikolai Kostomarov's classic work is dedicated to the everyday life and customs of the Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries. Kostomarov managed to tell in an engaging way about how the Russians lived on the eve of Peter the Great's reforms, and most importantly - to explain many things that serious scholars took for granted, but were not entirely clear to readers of the 19th century, and even less clear now. What was called a city, what was understood as a suburb, how did posad, sloboda, pogost, village, selo, seltso, derevnya, pochinok differ? And in the izbas - what are povalushi, podsennya, reptyastye windows? Or polavochniki, stoltsi, skrynii? And men's clothing like sarafanets, feryazi, opashni, okhabni, etc.? And pies with lodoga, radish in patoka, smoked chicken, and a dish called hangover? And kamchug, frenchug, and other diseases? And how roles were distributed in the family, what they believed in, how they entertained themselves, why they preferred to travel in winter? Everything is explained, everything is laid out neatly. In short, an excellent book.
Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (1817-1885) - historian, ethnographer, writer.