The public consciousness has long held the idea of ​​the Russian peasantry as a faithful stronghold of patriarchal-traditional values ​​dictating that women should marry and unquestioningly obey their husbands. The research of historian D. Bushnell shows that not all of the peasant world of the 18th-19th centuries corresponded to this idea. The author focuses on the life of peasant women from among the Old Believers of the Spasov Consent, who widely practiced refusing to marry. The number of Spasovtsy in the mid-19th century reached at least a million people, and they settled mainly along the Volga - from Yaroslavl to Astrakhan, so their way of life significantly influenced the economy, demography and village life of this large region. The widespread celibacy among Spasovki, according to the author, led to the interference of the nobility in the marital behavior of their serfs. John Bushnell is a professor at Northwestern University in the USA.