“his wife has married...”: to the problem of the fate of soldiers’ wives in the 17th century

Introduction. The article deals with one important problem in the history of the 17th-century peasant family: the relationship between a woman and her family, as well as the family of her husband, in cases when this peasant was taken to military service for a long time. Methods and materials. The article is based on unpublished materials of the description of the Shenkurskaya and Podvinskaya chetverts of Vazhskiy uyezd in 1665. The author explores different situations of taking peasants in soldiers and further interaction of the volost with the families of these soldiers. The fates of soldiers’ wives are a subject of special attention. Analysis and results. The paper considers various cases that are recorded in the census book: the case of soldier’s wife living in the same yard with relatives of her husband or with her own relatives, the case of soldier’s wife death, the case of “begging inside the parish”. One of these variants was a new marriage of the soldier’s wife. The cases when it took place after the death of the first husband were always recorded. We assume that numerous cases of women’s marriage without remarks of her first husband’s death reflect the practice of a cohabitation among the peasants, which was not consecrated by the church, but was actually recognized by the government and by volost residents.