This is by no means a historical account, but Dead Souls is one place to start. Written by Gogol in the mid 1800s, it's intention was to be a critique of the flaws in common Russian character. The book specifically explores poshlost, a word used to describe shameless greed and abuse of others (i.e. so without shame, that it takes on by surprise).

It's an interesting look at ways life was different vs the same between pre-communist Russian, communist Russia, and post-communist Russia (the latter two being things that are common knowledge). In the book's story line, the main character has developed an income stream based entirely in the siphoning of government funds for things that hold no value, an idea central to the corruption of the latter-half communist Russia and corruption found in present-day Russia. The difference was that in those days, people tended to be worse off, they tended to live among that abuse of them by both the government and people like the main character that had gamed the system, justified by whatever the government espoused as what made the current order of things legitimate.

When taken together with other such critiques in the form of Russian literature, such as by Pushkin and Chekhov, you can assume on a base level that this is a common trend in tsarist Russia. But the interesting thing is how similar it is to the way it was in communist corruption and present-day corruption.

So the common people progressed in 1917 and then again in 1991 (with huge initial setbacks in both cases to be sure), but they generally tend to middle around, eventually succumbing to the abuse of more powerful people until the next revolution took place.