Did abolition of serfdom affect the position of the elderly people in peasant families in the polish lands of the western part of the Russian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

This article characterizes the situation of the elderly people in the Polish countryside in the western part of the Russian Empire both in the late corvée period and after the agrarian reforms that took place in the Romanov Empire in the 1860s. The source basis for the analysis are three parish censuses from 1843, 1882 and 1910. The studies are intended to find out to what extent granting property rights to peasants influenced the coexistence of different generations observed by defining family systems characteristic of this community. The position and role in which the elderly lived to the end of their lives within or outside the home community are treated as a measure of the strength of family ties expressed in greater or lesser support for the senior family members. The article characterizes in detail the values of basic variables describing the family system prevailing among the Polish peasants in the western part of the Grodno Governorate and presents the way in which men and women were accessible as heads of households. Next, the structure of households run by seniors of both genders is characterized, and their position in the household is determined taking into account their marital status. The article closes with an overview of the changes occurring in the patterns of sharing a household by elderly men and women, both married and widowed, between 1843 and 1910. In the family and social situation of seniors in the rural environment in the Polish lands of the western part of the Grodno Governorate, the years after granting property rights to peasants were characterized by change rather than by continuity.