The work of Le Play, Ducpétiaux and Engel on family budget studies first attracted interest in Russia in the 1890's, at a time when zemstvo statisticians had already started to make some sample household surveys. In the twenty years before the Revolution a number of extensive studies of peasant households and a handful of small studies of workers' households were made.
There were a few isolated Russian studies before this time, but the earliest and most complete studies of peasants and workers in Russia were made by Le Play himself in 1844 and 1853.