| Summary: | The author considers the banditry of Martha Durova, a prominent landowner in Putivl` uezd, Sevsk province, Belgorod guberniia, in the context of social relations in the Russian-Ukrainian borderlands in the eigthteenth through the first half of the nineteenth century. The government ultimately sent military units to the “porubezhny krai” to secure her arrest. While noble banditry was certainly not unique to Belgorod and Kursk provinces, no other regions of Russia recorded violent, bloody noble banditry and an accompanying governmental military response on a similarly large scale during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author identifies the tradition of “vol’nitsa” (brigands) in the Russian-Ukrainian borderlands, as well as the weakness and corruption of the Crown authorities in the former southwestern borderlands of the Russian state, as the major factors that shaped the Durova incident.
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