Living standards in imperial Russia as portrayed in domestic and foreign historiography -- Historical anthropometrics : goals, biological foundations, methodology -- The sources of anthropometric data : representativeness, accuracy, and homogeneity -- Biological status : the eighteenth century -- Biological status : the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- The geography of russian biological status -- Consumption, health, and biological status -- Wages and prices in Russia from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century -- Contemporary observations on the population's standard of living -- The modernization of russia and the well-being of the population -- Conclusion.