Arshin

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 28 inches (71.12 cm). The standard Russian cloth and trade measure until metrication in 1918.

1 arshin = 0.7112 meters (exactly).

About the arshin

Arshin was the working yardstick of Russian trade, used above all for cloth, ribbon and timber. The word reached Russian from the Turkish world, where a similar unit, the arşın, was the distance from the shoulder to the fingertips, and the Russian version was originally reckoned the same way, as the length of a man's arm. The name also came to mean the measuring rod itself.

Sources from the 16th century describe a Russian arshin of about 27 inches. Under Peter the Great in the 18th century it was fixed at exactly 28 English inches, which is the 71.12 cm used here. Because that definition is tied to the inch, the metric value follows from the 2.54 cm inch and carries no real uncertainty.

Sixteen vershoks make one arshin, and three arshins make a sazhen. Shopkeepers across the empire kept to it until metric weights and measures became compulsory in 1918, and a metre today is a little over 1.4 arshins.

Sources: Wikipedia: Arshin (length); Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian units of measurement

Arshin conversion chart

1 arshin expressed in every other length unit:

More Russian (Imperial) units

• vershok (length)
• sazhen (length)
• verst (length)
• zolotnik (weight & mass)
• funt (Russian pound) (weight & mass)
• pood (weight & mass)
• charka (volume)
• shtof (volume)
• vedro (volume)

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