Violence and Poverty in a City Divided

After a brief and somewhat illusory hiatus, hooligans returned to the Petersburg streets in the 1910s. By this time hooliganism had become a national phenomenon and a symbol with a myriad of uses and meanings. Between 1912 and 1914, when political discontent and labor unrest were also simmering, hooliganism not only became a serious crime problem, but many of its characteristics surfaced in discussions about the working class and destitute poor. Optimism about social stability and assimilation subsided, as a result, and the lower classes were further distanced from the rest of society as all the poor came to be