The Reading Audience of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

In the first half of the nineteenth century, only a small part of Russia’s population was able to read, and for every reader there were at least twenty non-readers. In fact, readers represented only a very narrow section of the population. The social process that most factored into the growth of reading was the population’s gradual transition from a traditional, rural way of life to a modern, urban one. Historical experience shows that in Russia (as in other countries), books and reading were...