Abstract
In the second half of the 19th century, Imperial Russia went through a lot of changes. Reforms of serfdom, administration, clergy and lot of others caused changes in the society and the formation of a new organization within the different social classes. The country was also going through a new era of industrialization. These transformations arguably implied an in-migration in Russia from the countryside into it's cities. Russia being a very extended country, not everyone had, of course, the opportunity to move to the biggest cities of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa. The first remarkable characteristic of the urban transformation in Russia at that time is the increase in the number of cities. However, with the appearance of railroad and the development of industry in big cities, the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg became more and more appealing for rural migrants. Furthermore, the development of trade in Moscow and the modernization of bureaucracy in St. Petersburg respectively brought a bigger population to those cities and municipalities had to adapt the urban transformation according to the increase in population. The policies themselves that they use in order to reach such a goal reveals the modernization of Russia. We will thus study in the paper how the modernization of the urbanization in St. Petersburg and Moscow reflects the social and economic modernization of Russia in the second half of the 19th century.
