| Summary: | The author considers the banditry of Marfa Durova, a prominent landowner in Putivl` uezd, Sevsk province, Belgorod province, in the context of peculiarity of social relations in the Russian-Ukrainian borderlands in the eighteenth 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 recorded violent, bloody noble banditry and an accompanying governmental military response on a similarly large scale during the eighteenth and early nenteenth centuries. The author identifies the tradition of “volnitsa” in the Russian Ukrainian borderlands, as well as the weakness and corruption of the Crown authorities on the former southwestern borderlines of the Russian state.
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