Population growth of the Russian Empire. Russian demographic victory

The new feudalism of the second half of the 18th century took another step forward compared to the old Moscow one.

We remember that even at that time the estate was not completely self-sufficient: it lived not only to satisfy the immediate needs of its owner, but partly also for the market.

But this was not yet a rationally organized economy of the newest type. Rather, it was a kind of “robber agriculture” - a parallel to the “robber trade” of the 11th - 12th centuries. The landowner of Godunov's time did not achieve the right permanent income - he sought to extract as much money as possible from his estate in the shortest possible time, which was falling in price year after year with a speed capable of causing panic in people, all of whose habits still smacked of a stagnant swamp of subsistence farming. He sold everything he could on the market, and, one fine day, being left on plowed and devastated land with ruined peasants, he tried to turn at least these latter into goods, since no one was buying land anymore.

This orgy of naive people, who saw the money economy for the first time, was supposed to end, like any orgy, with a severe hangover. In the 17th century we have a partial reaction of natural economy: but since the forces that were disintegrating this last century earlier continued to operate now, and more and more, a new flowering of landowner entrepreneurship was only a matter of time.

And this time should have been shorter the denser the population of landowner Russia was, firstly, and the closer its ties with Western Europe were - secondly, because, as we remember again, the desertion of the central districts and the severance of trade relations with the West, thanks to the failure of the Livonian War, greatly contributed to the aggravation of the agrarian crisis at the end of the 16th century. Just in time for the flowering of the “new feudalism”, towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, circumstances in both these respects were developing for landowner's economy unusually favorable.

Peter's wars, as we have seen, greatly thinned out the population of the old regions of the Moscow state, which had greatly increased by the end of the 17th century, but the traces of this devastation were smoothed out even more quickly than the traces of the Time of Troubles. Peter's audit yielded about 5,600 thousand male souls: twenty years later - less than one generation - the Elizabethan audit, which was not carried out with such ferocity as the first, and which probably gave a much larger percentage of "leakage", nevertheless registered 6,643 thousand souls.

The first Catherine's audit, based solely on the testimony of the population itself, i.e. for noble estates, based on the testimony of the landowners themselves and their managers (at the first minute, such a simple method of calculation proposed by the empress stunned even members of the noble senate), however, gave a new and very significant increase - 7,363 thousand souls.

Starting from the fourth revision, the census included provinces that were not previously involved in it, due to a different tax organization in them (Baltic and Little Russian), as well as regions newly acquired from Poland: for all of Russia the figures are thus incomparable with the results of the three first revisions. But already in the 70s (the fourth revision began in 1783), Prince Shcherbatov counted about 8 1/2 million souls within the borders of Peter’s Russia. In other words, in the half century since the death of Peter, the population increased by one and a half times.

Absolute population figures, of course, don’t say anything on their own. What is more important is his relationship to the territory. With an average density for European Russia of 405 people per square meter. mile (about 8 per square kilometer), at the end of the reign of Catherine II there were 11 governorships where this density exceeded 1000 people per square kilometer. mile (20 per kilometer), i.e. almost reached the average population density of present-day European Russia, which, as is known, according to 1905 data, was 25 people per square meter. kilometer.

These were the provinces: Moscow, with a density of 2403 people per square meter. mile (almost 50 per sq. kilometer, i.e. almost as much as now in the central agricultural provinces - Kursk, Ryazan, Tambov, etc.), Kaluga, Tula and Chernigov - from 1500 to 2000 per sq. mile (from 30 to 40 per kilometer, like the provinces of the Middle Volga region, Simbirsk, Saratov, Penza, Kazan), Ryazan, Kursk, Kiev, Oryol, Kharkov, Yaroslavl and Novgorod-Seversk - from 1000 to 1500 per sq. mile, or 20 to 30 per sq. kilometer (denser than Samara and the Don Army region and slightly lower than Minsk or Smolensk).

The city of Moscow must have exerted a certain pressure on the population of the Moscow province, but not as strong as it might seem: at the end of the 18th century there were no more than 250 thousand inhabitants in Moscow. The influence of urban centers on the population of such provinces as Kaluga or Ryazan could have had even less impact. Even if we reduce the population density of the Moscow province by 1/5, we will get up to 40 people per square meter. kilometer of purely agricultural population.

Nowadays, provinces with such density already suffer from a shortage of land: a hundred and fifty years ago it could not have been otherwise. Here is what Shcherbatov wrote in the 70s about the Moscow province of Peter the Great’s division, which included the later Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vladimir, Tula, Kaluga and Ryazan: “Because of the great number of people inhabiting this province (Shcherbatov counted 2169 thousand souls in it) , many villages remain so landless that with no diligence they cannot get bread for food, and for this they are forced to find it through other work. For the same reason, the forest population in this province has been completely destroyed, and in the midday provinces there have become so few of them, that they have need for heating.”

At the same time, in the Nizhny Novgorod province there were “many great villages and volosts,” which, due to a lack of land, “practicing in handicrafts, crafts and trade,” did not even have vegetable gardens.

He carried out population censuses mainly by mechanically calculating data on fertility and mortality presented by provincial statistical committees. These data, published in the Statistical Yearbook of Russia, fairly accurately reflected the natural population growth, but did not fully take into account migration processes - both internal (between provinces, between cities and villages) and external (emigration and immigration). If the latter, due to their small scale, did not have a noticeable impact on the total population, then the errors due to underestimation of the internal migration factor were much more significant. Since 1906, the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs tried to adjust its calculations by introducing amendments to the expanding resettlement movement. But still, the current system of counting the population did not allow completely avoiding repeated counting of migrants - at the place of permanent residence (registration) and place of stay. As a result, the data from the CSK Ministry of Internal Affairs somewhat overestimated the real population, and this circumstance should be kept in mind when using materials from the CSK Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Population according to the Central Statistics Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Population according to the State Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

According to adjusted calculations by the Office of the Chief Medical Inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the population of Russia (without Finland) at the middle of the year was: 1909 - 156.0 million, 1910 - 158.3 million, 1911 - 160.8 million, 1912 - 164.0 million, 1913 - 166.7 million people.

According to calculations by the Office of the Chief Medical Inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were based on data on fertility and mortality, the population of Russia (without Finland) as of January 1, 1914 was 174,074.9 thousand people, i.e. approximately 1.1 million people less than according to the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But the Department considered this figure to be too high. The compilers of the “Report” of the Office for 1913 noted that “ the total population according to local statistical committees is exaggerated, exceeding the sum of the population figures from the 1897 census and the natural increase figures for the elapsed time" According to the calculations of the compilers of the “Report”, the population of Russia (without Finland) in mid-1913 was 166,650 thousand people.

Population calculation for 1897-1914.

Number, composition and density of population by province and region

Population of Russia in comparison with other countries

Ratio of urban and rural population

In terms of the ratio of urban and rural population, Russia occupied one of the last places among the largest states of the early 20th century.

As can be seen from the table, the largest percentage of the empire's urban population is in the Vistula provinces, followed in gradual order by: Finland, Central Asian regions, European Russia, the Caucasus and Siberia.

If we consider the percentage of the urban population for individual provinces, it is clear that a few provinces with large industrial, commercial and administrative centers influence the increase in the percentage. Of the 51 provinces of European Russia, there are seven such provinces: Estland, Tauride, Courland, Kherson, Livland, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the percentage of the urban population is above 20. Of these, two capital provinces especially stand out (50.2% and 74.0% ). In the Vistula region, out of 9 provinces, there are only two where the percentage of the urban population is above 20 (Petrokovskaya - 40.2%, Warsaw - 41.7%). In the Caucasus, there are four out of twenty such provinces (Tiflis - 22.1%, Baku - 26.6%, Batumi - 25.6%, Black Sea - 45.5%). In Siberia, two out of ten (Amur - 28.6% and Primorsk - 32.9%). Among the Central Asian regions there were no such things, and only in the Fergana region the percentage of the urban population was close to 20 (19.8%). There is also only one province in Finland, Nyland, where the percentage of the urban population exceeded 20 (46.3%). So, out of 99 provinces and regions of the Russian Empire, there are only 14 where the urban population accounted for over 20% of the total population, while in the remaining 85 this percentage is below 20.

In two provinces and regions the percentage of urban population is below 5%; in forty (including three Finnish ones) - from 5% to 10%; in twenty-nine (including one Finnish) - from 10% to 15%; in twenty (including two Finnish ones) - from 15% to 20%.

The percentage of the urban population increases on the one hand to the west and southwest, on the other hand - to the east and southeast of the Ural Range, with exceptions in the form of industrial and commercial provinces: Vladimir, Yaroslavl, etc. In the Caucasus, the percentage of urban inhabitants is greater in provinces and regions lying behind the main ridge, except Kutaisi province, where it is lower than in all other regions and provinces of the Caucasus. In the Central Asian regions, there is an increase in the percentage of the urban population towards the southeast.

Population in 1800-1913

Other population data

The legal status of the urban population as a special class began to be determined at the end of the 17th century. Then the creation of city government bodies under Peter I and the establishment of certain benefits for the top of the urban population strengthened this process. Further development of the trade and finance industry required the publication of new legal acts regulating these areas of activity.

The original name was citizens (“Regulations of the Chief Magistrate”), then, following the example of Poland and Lithuania, they began to be called burghers. The estate was created gradually, as Peter I introduced European models of the middle class (third estate).

The final registration of the bourgeois class took place in 1785 according to the “Charter of Grant for Rights and Benefits to the Cities of the Russian Empire” of Catherine II. By this time, the entrepreneurial layer in the cities had become noticeably stronger, in order to stimulate trade, customs barriers and duties, monopolies and other restrictions were eliminated, freedom to establish industrial enterprises (that is, freedom of entrepreneurship) was announced, and peasant crafts were legalized.

In 1785 The population of the cities was finally divided according to the property principle into 6 categories:

1) “real city dwellers” who have a house and other real estate in the city (i.e., owners of real estate within the city);

2) merchants registered in the guild (I guild - with capital from 10 to 50 thousand rubles, II - from 5 to 10 thousand rubles, III - from 1 to 5 thousand rubles);

3) artisans who were in the workshops;

4) foreign and out-of-town merchants;

5) eminent citizens (capitalists and bankers with capital of at least fifty thousand rubles, wholesale traders, shipowners, members of the city administration, scientists, artists, musicians);

6) other townspeople.

Belonging to the class was confirmed by inclusion in the city philistine book.

Rights of the petty bourgeois class:

1. Exclusive right: engaging in crafts and trade.

2. Corporate law: creation of associations and self-government bodies.

3. Judicial rights were provided for: the right to personal integrity until the end of the trial, to defense in court.

4. The personal rights of the townspeople included: the right to protection of honor and dignity, personality and life, the right to move and travel abroad.

5. Property rights: the right of ownership of owned property (acquisition, use, inheritance), the right of ownership of industrial enterprises, crafts, the right to conduct trade.

6. Duties included taxes and conscription. True, there were many exceptions. Already in 1775, Catherine II freed residents of posads who had a capital of over 500 rubles from the poll tax, replacing it with a one percent tax on the declared capital. In 1766, merchants were exempted from conscription. Instead of each recruit, they paid first 360 and then 500 rubles. They were also exempt from corporal punishment. Merchants, especially those of the first guild, were granted certain honorary rights (riding in carriages and carriages).

7. The townspeople were freed from public works; they were forbidden to be transferred to a state of serfdom. They had the right to free resettlement, movement and travel to other states, the right to their own intra-class court, to acquire houses, and the right to appoint a replacement in their place for recruitment. The bourgeoisie had the right to own city and country houses, had an unlimited right of ownership of their property, and an unlimited right of inheritance. They received the right to own industrial establishments (with restrictions on their size and the number of people working for them), to organize banks, offices, etc.

According to the “Charter of Grant”, city residents who had reached the age of 25 and had a certain income (capital, the interest charge on which was not less than 50 rubles) were united into a city society. The meeting of its members elected the mayor and the vowels (deputies) of the city duma. All six categories of the city population sent their elected representatives to the general duma; in the six-voice duma, 6 representatives of each category, elected by the general duma, worked to carry out current affairs. Elections took place every 3 years. The main field of activity was urban management and everything that “serves to the benefit and need of the city.” The competence of the city duma included: ensuring silence, harmony and order in the city, resolving intra-class disputes, and monitoring city construction. Unlike town halls and magistrates, court cases were not the responsibility of the city council - they were decided by the judiciary.

Deprivation of petty-bourgeois rights and class privileges could be carried out on the same grounds as the deprivation of class rights of a nobleman (a full list of acts was also given).

Historical demography of the Russian people

How to explain the explosive growth of the Great Russian population from the beginning of the 16th to the end of the 18th century, that is, in a period of time that included the church schism, the Time of Troubles, Peter’s reforms that were most difficult for the population, incessant wars, crop failures and other troubles and misfortunes typical of Russia? And yet, during this by no means vegetarian period, the number of Russians increased fourfold, from 5 to 20 million people! Moreover, it seems that the losses did not restrain, but stimulated the growth of the Russian birth rate. During the same time, the population of France and Italy, which were in incomparably more favorable climatic (and France - and political) conditions, grew incomparably less: the French - by 80%, the Italians - by 64%. Moreover, Russia, France and Italy at that historical time had a similar type of population reproduction.

From the beginning of the 16th century. and for almost four centuries there was an explosive growth in the size of the Great Russian population. During the first three centuries, to the end of the 18th century, the number of Russians increased 4 times, from 5 to 20 million people, and then, during the 19th century, by more than two and a half times: from 20-21 to 54 -55 million people. Any possible inaccuracies in the calculations do not change the order of the numbers. It was truly phenomenal, unprecedented demographic dynamics for the world at that time, especially since we are not talking about the population of the Russian Empire in general, but only about the dynamics of Russians, taken without Ukrainians (Little Russians) and Belarusians. Moreover, at the start of this demographic race, the Russian position looked rather weak: at the beginning of the 16th century. The Great Russians were numerically inferior to the Italians by more than two, and the French by more than three times: 5 million Russians against 11 million Italians and 15.5 million French. By the beginning of the 19th century. positions have more or less leveled out: 20 million Russians against 17 million Italians and 28 million French.

A century later, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Russians had already become the third largest people in the world - 55.7 million people, second (though significantly) only to the Chinese and the peoples of British India, but ahead of the Germans (a little over 50 million) and the Japanese (44 million people). The total number of subjects of the Russian Empire (129 million people) was almost equal to the population of the three largest European states - Great Britain, Germany, France and exceeded the number of residents of the United States. At the same time, the 19th century. In general, it was marked by a sharp - from 180 to 460 million people - growth in the population of the West, causing hitherto unprecedented European migration, including to the colonies.

But even against such a background, the Russians and Russia stood out clearly in terms of the size of their absolute annual population growth. In the second half of the 19th century. natural population growth in European Russia was 20% in the first decade of the 20th century. - 18%. According to this indicator, only China was ahead of Russia (and even then not for sure).
If in 1800 the share of Great Russians was 54% of the empire’s population, then a century later, according to the 1897 census, it had already decreased to 44.3% (17.8% were Little Russians and 4.7% Belarusians). For comparison, ethnic Turks in the mid-19th century. constituted only 40% of the population of the Ottoman Empire. In the Habsburg Monarchy, the Germans at the beginning of the 20th century. made up less than a quarter of the population (together with the Hungarians - 44%; coincidentally the same as the Russians in the Russian Empire).

V.D. Nightingale. Blood and soil of Russian history. M., 2008. pp. 87-88, 93-94, 113-114

In 1719, the population of Russia can be considered clarified: it was equal to 15.5 million people. In 1678, the population size was also clarified: without Left Bank Ukraine, the Don and the non-Russian population of Siberia, it was about 9 million people.

What was the population of Left Bank Ukraine and the Don at the end of the 17th century?

The population of the Don increased mainly through resettlement from the central regions of Russia. In 1719 it was 29,024 males, which means that in 1678 it was even less.
In Left Bank Ukraine, population censuses were carried out only in 1731-1732. and registered 909,651 people. m. p. For 1678-1719. Russia's population increased by about one third. During the same time, the population of Ukraine should have increased faster, since, in addition to natural growth, there was also resettlement. But for simplicity, we will assume the same percentage increase. Then, in 1678, there were about 1.4 million people of both sexes in Ukraine (according to other estimates - 1.7 million people).

The total population in 1678 will be determined in round numbers at 10.5 million people. Let's go even further - to the 16th century. Let's be careful and take for the second half of the 16th century. the smallest value (5%) of natural increase among those proposed, and for the first half of the 17th century. Let's assume that there was no increase at all. Thus, the population at the end of the 16th century. is determined at 7 million people, and in the middle of the 16th century. - 6.7 million people.

In 1552-1556. The Kazan and Astrakhan khanates became part of Russia. The population of these khanates in the middle of the 16th century. We define several hundred thousand people, based on the fact that at the end of the 18th century. there were about 2 million people in this territory. This figure should be subtracted, and then the total for the middle of the 16th century. will be approximately 6.5 million people.

Thus, according to our calculations, which may have given inflated, but not underestimated figures, the population of Russia increased from 6.5 million people in the middle of the 16th century. up to 15.5 million people at the beginning of the 18th century. (conditionally for 1719):

Mid-16th century - 6.5
End of the 16th century - 7.0
1646 - 7.0
1678 - 10.5
1719 - 15.5

Ya.E. Vodarsky. Population of Russia over 400 years (XVI - early XX centuries). M., 1973. S. 24-27

It can be said that the rapid population growth was a boon for Russia, as it allowed it to colonize vast territories and become a great power in terms of population, resources, military and economic power. Without the 35-fold increase in population and 8-fold increase in territory between 1550 and 1913, Russia would have remained a small and backward European country, which it actually was until the 16th century, with no major achievements to be expected in the fields of literature, art, science and technology it would not be necessary, just as it would not be possible to count on a high standard of living for citizens.

Boris Mironov. Causes of Russian revolutions // Rodina. No. 6. 2009. P. 81

That is, according to Mironov, in 1550 the population of Russia was about 5 million people.

Kolyankovsky himself cites data that contradicts his thesis about the balance of power in Eastern Europe in the 60-70s that was allegedly unfavorable for Kazimir. He emphasizes the material superiority of Lithuania over the Muscovite state, pointing out that Muscovite Rus' at that time had 84 cities, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (without Poland) had 190 cities (L. Kolankowski. Dzieje Wielkiego ksiestwa Litewskiego za Jagiellonow, t. I, Warszawa, 1930, page 311).

I.B. Grekov. Essays on the history of international relations in Eastern Europe in the XIV-XVI centuries. M., 1963

That is, judging by the number of cities, in the 1460-1470s. The population of Lithuania was more than twice the population of Rus'.

By the 17th century The Crimeans perfected the tactics of mass round-ups of slaves to such perfection that neither the defensive system of the Russian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, nor the system of military self-defense of the Don and Zaporozhye Troops could completely prevent the theft of the population. To limit the size of this disaster, 5-6 million people in Russia, 8-10 million people in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and 5-6 million people in Iran, not to mention the vassal Circassia and Moldova, were forced to spend funds not only on defense, but also on cash payments Khanate, whose population in the second half of the 17th century. amounted to 250-300 thousand (“Perekop Horde”) and up to 707 thousand people together with the Nogais and Circassians.

V.A. Artamonov. About Russian-Crimean relations of the late XVII - early XVIII centuries. // Social and political development of feudal Russia. M., 1985. P. 73

That is, according to Artamonov, in the 17th century. (more precisely, in its first half), the population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was almost 2 times larger than the population of Russia.

The population of the Russian Empire was multinational in composition. Only peoples numbering more than 10 thousand people lived in the empire over 20. Most of all in the Russian Empire there were Russians. However, the share of the Russian population in Catherine’s era decreased: from 62.8% in 1762 to 48.9% in 1796. This was due to the fact that new territories were annexed to Russia, in which representatives of other nationalities lived.

Second place in population in the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century. Ukrainians occupied third place, Belarusians took third place. Next came the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Tatars, Finns, and Jews. The list was completed by peoples whose number did not exceed several hundred people.

The position of non-Russian peoples was different. The rights of some of them were limited. Thus, for Jews in 1791, the so-called Pale of Settlement was introduced, outside of which they were forbidden to live permanently.

The Pale of Settlement covered a significant part of the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Bessarabia, Courland, and most of Ukraine. Jews were allowed to settle only in cities or so-called shtetls.

Subjects of the Russian Empire professed different religions. The majority of the population was Orthodox.

The annexation of new territories to Russia entailed an increase in the number of Catholics (residents of Western lands) and Muslims (Crimea). In 1773, Catherine II signed the Decree on Tolerance. All religions in the Russian Empire received the right to exist, and forced conversion to Orthodoxy was abolished.

The principle of religious tolerance was easily detected on the main street of the capital of the Russian Empire. On Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, in close proximity to each other, in the second half of the 18th century there were: the Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (on the site of the Kazan Cathedral), the Lutheran Church of St. Peter and Paul, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Catholic Church of St. Catherine , Armenian Church of St. Catherine. The last two churches were erected under Catherine II.

The social status of subjects of the Russian Empire was different. People living in Russia belonged to various classes and social groups. They all differed from each other in their rights and responsibilities. There were three main social groups: Material from the site

• nobility ( see Nobility under Catherine II) - the smallest population group;
• peasantry ( see Peasants under Catherine II);
• merchants ( see Merchant Guild).

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