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 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 the inhabitants of the suburbs, 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).
Many times I have seen population growth charts in Europe that look almost like a straight line. That is, the increase in the number of Europeans over three centuries (from the 15th to the beginning of the 18th) was minimal. Pierre Chaunu's book "The Civilization of Classical Europe" contains figures that well explain this phenomenon.
Shonu refers to population censuses, church and tax acts. They became relatively detailed just at the beginning of the 17th century, and from this time on, the main demographic trends can be clearly traced.
Personally, I was struck by the fact that marriage was very late at this time. For peasants (and they made up 80-90% of the population of states), the marriageable age for women was 27 years old, and their husbands were a year younger. Moreover, until this age, for the most part, both women and men retained their virginity (among peasants, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births did not exceed 2-3%).
Among the bourgeoisie, the marriageable age of women generally increased to 27.5 years (in Geneva it was 28.5 years), husbands were 6-7 years older.
Among city dwellers, out-of-wedlock pregnancies increased to 6-10%.
The marriage rate among peasants was 99.2-99.5%, among city dwellers 97-98%.
As Shonu rightly notes, such a late age of marriage was a “subconscious Malthusian act” aimed at limiting the birth rate.
As in our time, the bourgeoisie had the largest number of children: from 8 people in Flanders to 8.7 in the Swiss cantons. This was partly explained by the fact that women in labor did not breastfeed their children, but gave them to wet nurses. That is, as Shonu writes, they did not experience temporary infertility of a nursing woman.
The average interval between the last birth and conception was 8 months.
By the way, Shonu points out that at that time the only true act of social mobility was the dairy brotherhood. As a rule, foster brothers received some significant preferences from the bourgeoisie (for example, they could pay a high fee for a commoner to enter a monastery).
Peasants living on the plain had an average of 5 children, while those living in the forest zone had 5.5 children.
For that time, these indicators actually meant stagnation in their numbers. As Shonu writes, “an indicator above 6 means that the population is growing at an acceptable rate, below 5 it is declining.” The fact is that about 40% of infants then lived to the age of 19.
However, on the “pioneer outskirts of Europe” the number of children per peasant family increases sharply. So in Canada there are 8.3 children per family, in Mexico - 7.6.
I was personally surprised by the age limit for women’s fertility. Thus, 85% became mothers for the last time between 37 and 46 years. The average age at last birth is 41 years.
12 years after the start of marriage, in 60% of families one of the spouses died (in 2/3 of cases it was a woman).
Well, the last numbers. During the period from 1620 to 1750, the population of Europe increased by only 35% (that is, the growth was at the level of 0.2-0.25% per year).
(In one of the next posts I will write about the main factor in the “regulation” of numbers at this time - diseases and epidemics).
Yes, you can see for yourself that these are estimates and not real numbers. Moreover, in some countries they differ by a factor of two.
Secondly, if the population of Europe was still somehow known, then about the other continents there were only very, very vague ideas and very approximate figures. Literally, as we say, floor, ceiling.
In my opinion, the total figure, which is somewhere around a billion, can be safely divided by 2 or even 5-10. Otherwise, the countries of Europe would not have colonies on other continents. One in the field is not a warrior, even if you have a musket. Moreover, while you are reloading it, they can run up to you and simply crush you in hand-to-hand combat.
Another very important point. The names on the sign are not countries. And the territories. Germany and Italy, as states, appeared only 100 years later. And Russia is also a region here. What I already wrote about. Apparently this is the modern European part of Russia with Ukraine and Belarus.
By region Russia. Back in 1722, according to my research, about 7 million people lived in the Russian state. I did not conduct further research. But it is a fact that the population grew very quickly in the 18th century. So 24 million is approximately, approximately, exactly.
In general, this table should rather be considered from the point of view of the proportions of the population of various territories of Europe. And England is surprising here. Like Switzerland, whose mercenaries were famous throughout Europe. How bad was life there that you had to go to latrine work? And the figure itself speaks of the very low standard of living of the then residents of the Switzerland region.
Again, pay attention to the ratio of the figures of the then mistresses of the seas, Portugal and Spain, with America. And this is the second half of the 18th century. What happened before? In the same Russia, back at the end of the 17th century, the entire population did not exceed 2 million people. But Moscow was at the beginning of the 18th century the largest metropolis in Europe, with a population of about 50 thousand people. Well, if in our Eastern Siberia at the beginning of the 17th century about 20 thousand people lived, then in America and Africa there were clearly not millions. Otherwise, they would not have been conquered by such small states as Spain and especially tiny Portugal.
In general, I have a strong belief that the population increases only with an increase in labor productivity. Otherwise, there is simply no way to feed a lot of people. And at that time it was high only in Europe. In the rest of the world everything was very, very sad.
In general, another confirmation of my thesis that history on planet Earth began to develop only in the 16th century. And before that there was simply no one to write it.
The post was written as part of my series -.
The population of the ancient world - small small villages
Original taken from well_p in The population of the ancient world - small small villages
In this post I have collected all my research on the topic of population of the ancient world.
Now let's summarize. In order to write all these posts, I collected a lot of historical maps, including plans of cities around the world. So the earliest of them date back to the second half of the 16th century. There are, of course, earlier ones, but there are only a few of them and they were usually drawn already in the 18th-19th centuries. And this is logical. In those small villages that represented medieval cities, science was simply not needed. They didn't have enough money or time. Again, the process of making paper and ink were very imperfect. This means that the quality of these products did not allow them to be stored for a long time. The first paper was loose and simply fell apart over time. And don't tell me about parchment or anything like that. As far as I understand, the manufacturing process there is approximately the same. This means the quality was comparable.
Again, the level of technological progress in such villages in the 16th and 17th centuries was at a very low level. Trade was practically in its infancy, compared to modern times, of course. The armies consisted entirely of nobles who served in them as privates. And the armies themselves were small in number. There were no states as such, in the modern concept. The bureaucracy was minimal; there was simply no money for it. The province lived by its own laws and rules. And interaction with the state took place about once a year, when tribute was collected. You can't call it taxes. Because the local residents themselves collected them. Then they chose a trusted person and he already took this money to the capital.
Almost no documents have survived from that time. And they weren’t particularly needed. Everyone already knew each other, who, what and to whom belonged, and there were only one or two literate people and that’s it.
Therefore, the most important conclusion from this cycle of my research is this: in Russia we practically do not know history before the second half of the 16th century. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the European documents in the originals due to my lack of knowledge of languages, but I think that everything is about the same there. Only adjusted for a higher and faster level of development compared to Russia. This means the second half of the 15th century maximum. And these are the best results. The rest of the world lagged even further behind Europe in development.
Addition, posts on the same topic:
Chronology in Rus' from the birth of Christ.
And now about the conclusions. The fact is that every time I read ancient decrees and documents on the topic of censuses, I was perplexed. The figures indicated there very much did not coincide with those cited by historians. Moreover, by several times and not by tens of percent.
I found a very interesting text in one book. Book: Herman, Karl Fedorovich (1767-1838). Statistical studies regarding the Russian Empire, / Essay by Karl Hermann. - St. Petersburg: Printed at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1819.
Russia's population figures date back to the early 19th century. Can you imagine the range in estimates, from 14 to 42 million? And in the end there is a very interesting conclusion that either the authorities never really dealt with this, or the information was kept secret. And then I realized this is the key to the riddle.
Any state can exist only if it can and knows how to collect taxes. Moreover, an accurate assessment of the amount of these taxes is one of the most important tasks of any government. Underestimation leads to incorrect planning. And overestimation threatens to result in budget losses, an urgent increase in taxes and subsequent turmoil in the state. And with this, with the censuses, the authorities in Rus', at the very least, coped with it. I have read many documents on this topic. Censuses usually indicated the exact number of households in a particular settlement or area. It also described in detail who lived in these yards and what their names were, indicating their rank, if any, profession and other identifying information. In one census of Moscow, somewhere in the early 17th century, even the weapons available in each specific yard were indicated. Half of Moscow then had arquebuses, many sabres, and all the rest, without fail, had spears. The times were harsh.
To estimate the budget, the total number of households was considered as the main unit of taxation at that time. It was also needed for a clear understanding of how many recruits can and should be recruited to form an army. To estimate the total population, demographers recommend multiplying the number of households by 8. But this is usually the maximum. In reality it was less.
And this is where the whole problem of estimating the population of that time lies. To make it clearer for you, I will give an excerpt from my study of the population of Siberia at the beginning of the 17th century. Then the authorities counted only 3,000 yasak people. This is an analogue of our yards. And more than a hundred years before that, the then authorities of Siberia said something completely different.
I have my doubts about the death of foreigners. Firstly, there is so much space there. Taiga. It’s very difficult to simply find people there. And secondly, even if our Cossacks had destroyed the entire male population during the conquest, and this is usually 14 percent of the total number, (by the way, this is where demographers came from with the number 8), then even then there would have been much more than the 3,000 thousand that were counted Then. Not to mention the fact that by this time the population could have simply recovered naturally.
You see, population size was strategic information back then. It made it possible to assess the financial and human resources of a country in the upcoming war. Therefore, in open sources it was always shamelessly overestimated, for the sake of psychological effect. Like those Ediger ambassadors. . It really didn't help them.
Do you think differently now? Yes, the same thing, only for different reasons.
The All-Russian Census of 2002, unfortunately, took into account only the permanent population, depriving demographers of the opportunity to control the repeated counting that arises due to double counting of the same people - at their location and at their place of permanent residence. The result was a huge exaggeration of the population in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Apparently, the residents themselves were interested in it, counting on receiving compensation for the loss of property and various benefits and therefore classifying themselves as several places of permanent residence at once (a refugee camp, their native village, the city of Grozny, where the opportunity arose to occupy an apartment, Moscow or Krasnodar, where some relatives have already moved and others are planning to move). Local authorities, whose budget and prestige are directly dependent on the number of citizens under their care, most likely also took an active part in distorting the census results. Memorial activist A. Cherkasov reports on one of the assessments of the census error. According to his information, in the Shali region, with a population of 104 thousand people, “dead souls” accounted for 27%.
The statisticians who processed the census did not take the necessary measures to eliminate errors and published results that largely contradicted common sense..
For example, in my city of Perm, even under Soviet rule, they tried in every possible way to increase the city’s population to a million. Then we could count on the construction of a Metro in our city at the expense of the federal budget. And they did it. But it didn’t work out with the metro. Geology, long distances (Perm is almost second in area after Moscow) and other difficulties prevented the cherished dream of our local authorities from being realized. Now our population is again below the million-person mark. And again, our authorities from time to time try to increase it by including some nearby villages within the city limits. Suspecting again in the hope of Moscow subsidies.
Therefore, in one way or another, I always try to objectively assess the country’s population figures, which historians usually give.
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.
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