Taxable population and capitation census. Household census Taxable population and capitation census

When, with the conquest of Livonia, Estland and Finland, the tension of the Northern War began to weaken, Peter had to think about putting the regular army he created on a peaceful footing. Even after the end of the war, this army had to be kept under arms, in permanent quarters and in government pay, without being sent home, and it was not easy to figure out where to go with it. Peter drew up a sophisticated plan for the quartering and maintenance of his regiments. In 1718, when peace negotiations with Sweden were underway at the Åland Congress, he gave a decree on November 26, stated, according to his habit, in the first words that came to his mind. The first two paragraphs of the decree, with the usual hasty and careless laconicism of Peter’s legislative language, read: “Take fairy tales from everyone, give them a year’s time, so that the truthful ones bring how many male souls there are in each village, declaring to them that whoever hides something, then it will be given to the one who announces it; write down how many souls a private soldier will cost with a share of the company and regimental headquarters for him, putting the average salary." Further, the decree, equally unclear, prescribed the procedure for its execution, threatening the executors with confiscations, cruel sovereign wrath and ruin, even the death penalty, the usual embellishments of Peter’s legislation. […] A one-year deadline was set for submitting tales about souls; but until the end of 1719, fairy tales arrived from only a few places, and then most of them were incorrect. Then the Senate sent guards soldiers to the provinces with instructions to chain the officials who collected the fairy tales and the governors themselves in irons and keep them in chains, not releasing them anywhere until they sent all the fairy tales and the statements compiled from them to the office established for the census in St. Petersburg. Strictness did little to help matters: the presentation of fairy tales was still continuing in 1721. The slowdown was primarily due to the difficulty of understanding the confusing decree, which required a number of explanations and additions. At first it was understood to mean that it concerned only the owning peasants; but then it was ordered that the servants who lived in the villages should be included in the fairy tales, and they demanded additional fairy tales. Another obstacle appeared: sensing that things were leading to a new heavy tax, the owners or their clerks wrote their hearts out, “with great secrecy.” By the beginning of 1721, more than 20 thousand hidden souls had been revealed. […] Finally, with the help of the strictest decrees, torture, confiscations, which lubricated the rusty wheels of the government machine, by the beginning of 1722, according to fairy tales, 5 million souls were counted. […] A secondary revision of fairy tales revealed a huge secret of souls, reaching in some places up to half of the available souls. The initially calculated fabulous figure of 5 million became impossible to guide when deploying regiments on a heart-to-heart basis. […] The auditors were ordered to “completely” finish their work and return to the capital by the beginning of 1724, when Peter ordered the start of the poll collection. None of them returned on time, and all notified the Senate in advance that the matter would not be completed by January 1724; they were extended until March, and the correct poll tax was postponed until 1725. The reformer did not wait six years for the end of the work he had undertaken: the auditors did not return even by January 28, 1725, when he closed his eyes. […]

http://magister.msk.ru/library/history/kluchev/kllec63.htm

The capitation census completed the cruel simplification of the social composition carried out by Peter's orders: all intermediate layers were, without attention to the existing law, squeezed into two main rural states - state peasants and serfs, and the first of these states included single-lords, black-mown peasants, Tatars, Yasash and Siberian arable servicemen, spearmen, reiters, dragoons, etc. The area of ​​serfdom has expanded significantly, but has serfdom suffered any changes in its legal composition? […] The lack of law opened up wide scope for practice, that is, for the arbitrariness of the strongest party - the landowners.

[…] The state of serfdom was addressed to Peter not by its legal side, but only by its fiscal side, and here he well understood his official interest. […] But Peter imposed a tax on the right of slave ownership, imposing a state tax on every male slave soul under the responsibility of the owner. Peter thought about his treasury, and not about people's freedom, he was looking not for citizens, but for tax-payers, and the per capita census gave him more than one hundred thousand new tax-payers, although with great damage to law and justice. For all its apparent financial irrationality, capitation taxation, however, in the 18th century. had a beneficial effect on agriculture. […] Since the time of Peter, the poll tax, detached from the land, tied peasant labor more and more tightly to the land. Thanks to the poll tax, not only to her, but in any case to her. Russian land in the 18th century. swung open like it had never swung open before. This is the meaning of the poll tax: while not being a revolution in law, it was an important turn in the national economy.

Klyuchevsky V.O. Russian history. Full course of lectures. M., 2004. http://magister.msk.ru/library/history/kluchev/kllec63.htm

INTRODUCTION OF THE CAPITAL TAX

From 1678 to 1724 there was household taxation. This meant that the unit of taxation for peasants and townspeople was the “yard”. In other words, census takers traveled around villages and towns and recorded not the people themselves, but the number of households in which they lived. Thus, for each settlement or land holding (votchina or estate), and then for the county, a so-called “yard number” was formed, which formed the basis of all tax calculations.

During the years of the Northern War, taxes and duties grew continuously and at the end of Peter's reign they became very heavy for the peasants. Many payers abandoned their farms, yards and fled to the Don, abroad, to other possessions. A “loss of households” began to form. It was technically very difficult to keep a record of empty, “declining yards.”

In 1710, the authorities nevertheless conducted a new household census, but the expected result – an increase in the “household number” in comparison with the previous census of 1678 – did not happen. On the contrary, it decreased by 20%! In 1715, it was decided to conduct another census. And again, failure - the “yard number” did not exceed the previous value. It is noteworthy that his officials began to receive information that the “yard decline” was caused not only by the flight or high mortality rate of the peasants, but also by their stubborn reluctance to bear heavy duties. This was evident from the fact that the number of households did not increase, but the population of the courtyard meanwhile grew. This meant that peasant families were not divided as before, and young peasants did not build their own courtyards, but lived in the courtyard of their parents. And all this was done in order to avoid paying taxes.

As a radical measure, Peter I decided to change the principle of taxation and make the unit of taxation not the “yard”, but the “male soul”. It is important that Peter I decided to carry out tax reform simultaneously with the reform of the maintenance of the army. An army of 200,000, huge at that time, returned to the country after the war, and it had to be placed somewhere and supported with some money. And here Peter I again resorted to the Swedish experience. For a long time, Swedish soldiers lived in those areas where their regiments received money for their maintenance. It was convenient - money from payers went directly to the cash registers of the regiments assigned to them. Peter I decided to reproduce this system.

On November 26, 1718, a decree was issued to conduct a capitation census in the country. All landowners and elders submitted registers, or, as they said then, “fairy tales,” indicating the number of men living in each village, hamlet, and estate. During 1719, the tales were mostly collected. But the authorities became aware of numerous facts of fraud: every third payer avoided the census. Then they decided to assemble special military teams and conduct a check, or, as they said then, an “audit,” of the number of male souls.

Checking the population turned out to be a difficult task, and the work of the auditors dragged on until 1724. As a result, by 1724 it became known about 5 million 656 thousand male souls. By this time, calculations had already been made for the maintenance of the army. According to the 1720 project, the cost for a cavalryman was 40 rubles, and for an infantryman - 28.5 rubles; in general, expenses for the entire army reached 4 million rubles. The amount of tax per head was determined by dividing 4 million rubles by 5.6 million souls. It turned out that the poll tax amounted to 74 kopecks. This is how the capitation system began its long (over 150 years) history. It was convenient for the authorities - dozens of taxes and taxes were immediately cancelled, and there were fewer problems with collecting and sending taxes to the center. The regiments were located in those districts from which they received money. Regimental officers, together with zemstvo commissars selected from local nobles, collected the capitation directly into the regimental treasury. In general, the poll tax was not heavier than the household tax, but it still turned out to be very painful for the payers. They, as before, had to pay for the dead, those who fled, and the sick. After all, the next check of fairy tales - a revision - after 1724 was organized only in 1742! The soldiers began to settle in villages, which caused more trouble for the peasants. In addition, with the introduction of the poll tax, state control over its subjects increased. After all, everyone should be written down in fairy tales; it became difficult for the peasant to go out to earn money. There was no need to talk about leaving for a new place of residence or work, since until the next revision it was forbidden to leave those places where peasants were recorded in fairy tales. The tax reform of Peter I - the introduction of the poll tax - had a colossal impact not only on finances, but also on the social structure of the population.

We are Peter the First Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, and so on and so forth and so forth.

We have already indicated that all army and garrison regiments, both from the qualeria and the infantry, should be distributed according to the number of male souls, and supported by money collected from those souls, and for that purpose, to select zemstvo commissars by the landowner himself, among himself from the best people, one by one or two. And how did the colonel, and the officer, and also the commissar in collecting money: and in other matters, they were ordered to do so, instructions were given to them, and for the people's information, so that no offense or ruin would be caused to anyone from them, and from above I decree nothing They didn’t take it, and by our decree we ordered that it be announced to the people.

1. Why is per capita money required?

From each male soul, which, according to the current correspondence and according to the testimony of the staff officers, appeared to the zemstvo commissar, the zemstvo commissar was ordered to collect seventy four kopecks for the year, and for the third of the year, twenty-five kopecks for the first and second, and twenty-four kopecks for the third: and what’s more, they don’t have any money or grain taxes or carts, and they are not guilty of paying; except for money, as in the subsequent 7th paragraph it is announced: and for such matters, these decrees are signed by our Imperial Majesty’s hand, or by the hands of the entire Senate, and printed decrees will be published among the people.

2. At what time should you collect the per capita money?

It was ordered to collect that money for three terms. Namely: the first third in January and February, the second in March and April, the third in October and November, leaving nothing for milking, so that in the summer months the farmers would be busy working, and the regiments would have no shortage of salaries.

Poster about poll tax and other things on June 26, 1724 // Russian legislation of the 10th–20th centuries. In 9 volumes. T.4. Legislation during the formation of absolutism. Rep. ed. A.G. Mankov. M., 1986. pp. 202–203. http://www.hist.msu.ru/ER/Etext/taxes.htm

THE MAIN REASON FOR THE SCARY INCOME

Since the main reason for the scarcity of income was abuses during the census of households, Peter decided to introduce a capitation census. On January 22, 1719, a decree was issued: for the sake of favoring army regiments among the peasants of the entire state, take tales about male souls in all provinces; for hiding the souls of clerks, elders and elected people, the death penalty without any mercy. January 19, 1720, a new decree: although fairy tales are sent, only peasants are written in them, but courtyard servants and others are not written, which could be the same secret as in the courtyards, and therefore everyone who lives in the villages should be written. On December 16 of the same year, a new decree: the deadline for submitting fairy tales was set for July 20, and all the fairy tales were not submitted, the Landrats and Commissars write that the landowners, their people and peasants do not submit fairy tales, they are running from their yards and hiding, as a result of which those who disobeyed the decree are to be written off villages, and send them out to be searched. The decree of March 15, 1721 says that informers revealed the concealment of up to 20,000 souls, and therefore it was ordered to tell all landowners to announce the concealment without any fear, the guilty will not be punished, otherwise they will be punished according to previous decrees.

CENSUS OF TAXABLE POPULATION AND ITS VERIFICATION – “AUDIT”

Before Peter, direct taxes were levied either on cultivated land or on the yard. Peter introduced a poll tax instead of land and household taxes. According to the latest research, it happened like this: Peter wanted to place the army in permanent quarters in various provinces and entrust the maintenance of the regiments to the population of the district where the regiment was stationed. To do this, it was deemed necessary to calculate the amount necessary to maintain the regiment, list all tax-paying persons in the district and calculate how much money each person was required to contribute for the maintenance of the army. From 1718 to 1722, a census of the tax-paying population was carried out and its verification - “audit”; At first they wrote peasants and arable serfs, then they began to write non-arable dependent people in “fairy tales”; finally, they began to record “walking” (not assigned to classes) people. This census received the official name of a revision, and the censused people were called “revision souls.” Every revision soul was subject to the same tax, and responsibility for the correct receipt of the tax was placed on the landowner. Thus, the landowner received completely equal power over both the peasant and the slave. Here lay the basis for the de facto equation of peasants and slaves that followed.

(from the book “All-Russian Population Census 2002: Experience of Organization and Conduct”, authors Kiselnikov A.A., Bessonova G.A., Simonova O.V.)

The history of population is the history of society. Changes in population size and composition, as well as those demographic processes that determine these changes, reflect complex, sometimes contradictory, and sometimes tragic events in the life of countries and the peoples inhabiting them.

Population censuses have a long history. There are references in the Holy Books of the Old Testament that when Jesus Christ was born and came to earth, a population census was taking place in the Roman Empire. According to the Gospel of Luke, when “the command came from Caesar Augustus to make a census of the whole earth,” the Mother of God Mary, together with the named father of Christ Joseph, went to Bethlehem (as we would say today - to the census point). And on the occasion of the census, they did not have the opportunity to stay in a hotel - all the places were taken. That is why Christ was born in a cave where cattle were driven. This year marked the beginning of a new calendar.

Rulers and states have been engaged in population census at all times. Tamerlane counted his warriors using stones thrown into a pile. The Scythians used the same "technique", but they used arrowheads rather than stones. “Taxpayers” were regularly registered in literate Ancient Egypt. It is known for certain that in China the population was counted more than 4 thousand years ago.

Population censuses in our country also have a long history. It is known that they were carried out already in the 7th century. in Kievan Rus and Novgorod land in order to collect taxes from the population.

During the Tatar-Mongol invasion, accounting was non-economic: houses or “smoke” were taken into account for tribute. The first census conducted by the Tatars dates back to 1245. Following it, three more censuses were carried out, approximately 14 years later each. The changing nature of the units of taxation ("from the yard", "from the husband", "from the smoke", "from the plow", etc.) was reflected in the nature of the information collected. The censuses were not universal, since they did not include the part of the population exempt from taxation. The chronicles of the most ancient period emphasize that although the Tatars “destroyed the entire Russian land,” they were “not the same as priests, priests, and those who served the holy churches,” i.e. that privileged category of the population that was exempt from collecting tribute.

The need to transform non-economic records into a legal document determined the correctness of the records confirmed by the taxable household. The elements of the economy were not always correctly reproduced in the “numbers” and, as the chronicler admitted, “the boyars do good to themselves and evil to the lesser,” which caused protests from the taxed and the need for repeated descriptions.

In Russia in the XIV-XVI centuries. there were land and economic descriptions. Their results were recorded in the so-called scribe books. The importance of scribe books as documents on the basis of which taxation was carried out increased, but they acquired the character of land inventories.

The coverage of economic life phenomena was very wide - from information about the towers of the city Kremlin to news about the types of fish caught in the lakes. At the same time, the scribal descriptions were not population records. In the course of them, only the owners of the yards were identified.

Data from land inventories could serve only as temporary sources for determining taxation. Trade and fishing activities remained under such a system without taxation, which was unprofitable for the state fiscal and necessitated the search for new units of taxation. Such a unit became the yard - the household in the modern sense.

Scribal books occupy an honorable place among the predecessors of modern statistics. In them you can find a lot of interesting information about the Russian economy of that time.

In the 15th century Due to the fact that land plots became the unit of taxation, land censuses became widespread, in which the population was also taken into account. In the 17th century as a result of the development of trade and crafts, the unit of taxation becomes the “yard” or “farm” and Russian censuses turn from land censuses into household ones.

An important role in the history of censuses was played by one of the petitions submitted in 1645 to the 16-year-old Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The nobles who composed it, of course, thought least of all about census affairs. They were concerned about something completely different - that they “were impoverished from their services, and from great debts and horses fell, and their estates and estates were empty and their houses became impoverished and ruined without a trace from the war and from strong people.” However, this petition served as the reason for serious changes in the organization of population registration.

The “powers of the world” mentioned in the petition were the largest landowners - boyars, who sometimes owned thousands of peasant households. They often captured and hid peasants who belonged to their weaker neighbors, and after the “class years” - the statute of limitations for tracking down fugitives - had passed, they enrolled the peasants in their name.

The government order clearly defined the feudal goals of the census. “As the peasants and peasants and their households rewrite,” it said, “according to those census books, the peasants and peasants, and their children, and brothers, and nephews will be strong and without a lesson... And which people, after that correspondence, they will take into account the fugitive peasants to accept and keep with them, and the patrimonial owners and landowners of those peasants, according to the court and according to the investigation and according to those census books, to give back ... ".

The census of 1646, unlike previous scribal descriptions, was, first of all, a census of the population. The census takers recorded all male taxable persons, including children (the latter with an indication of age). The census results then served a double service - they became a legal basis for even greater enslavement of the peasants and a basis for levying taxes.

The next census was carried out in 1676-1678. Many documents have been preserved that make it possible to recreate the atmosphere in which they were carried out, to outline the portraits of the census takers, and to find out the attitude of the population towards the censuses. Using them, we will try to imagine how the population census took place in Russia in the 17th century.

The census was carried out, first of all, by scribes and clerks who served in the Moscow orders - central government bodies responsible for one or another area of ​​government affairs. The most senior clerks occupied important administrative positions, while the others were responsible for drafting numerous orders.

“The state of the nobility,” wrote academician M.N. Tikhomirov, “relied to a large extent on this command company, which, it must be said, was bitterly hated by the population. From them came the possibility of changes in order documents, they produced various kinds of red tape, which in the 17th century, even in tsarist documents, was called “Moscow red tape”... Clerks were often ruined during uprisings, sometimes they died. Since the 17th century, they have had a very poetic name - “nettle seed.”

To conduct a census in a particular district, a scribe and several of his assistants, clerks, were sent there, who were divided into “old” (senior) and young. The work of a scribe was complex and required special knowledge. The trip was expected to be long, and serious preparations were made for it.

First of all, the scribe was provided with a mandate - instructions on how to conduct a census. In addition, he was given “seasoning books” - copies of materials from previous descriptions of the area to which the scribe was sent. As "seasoning" during the census of 1676-1678. For example, census books of 1646 were used. It is clear that the “seasoning books” served as a great help for the scribe - they were both a kind of guide to the area, and a model for compiling new books, and, finally, a means of comparing the results obtained with the data of previous years, and therefore, a control tool.

The local governor was obliged to assist the census takers who arrived in his district, assign them assistants from among the local population and provide them with everything they needed, starting with food. In the 20s of the 17th century. The census commission was supposed, for example, to give out “a lamb carcass, a chicken, and onions, garlic, eggs and butter on the fast day, and on the fast day - where the best fish are.”

The direct work of the census takers began with the fact that, having arrived in the camps and volosts, in the monastery estates and estates, they had to “in those estates and estates ... read the sovereign decree (on the census) ... so that the nobles and boyar children and their clerks and elders and kissers brought fairy tales to them..." “Fairy tales” in this case meant reports on the number of peasants in a feudal estate or townspeople in a tax yard. But fairy tales often did not reflect an objective picture; their compilers deliberately distorted the true state of affairs.

The taxing population, of course, tried with all its might to reduce the amount of taxes it was subject to based on the census results. There were various ways to deceive scribes, and they were well known, listed in instructions to scribes, but this did not help much. The simplest way that allowed “residential courtyards to be written empty” was that during the census period the townspeople simply went to their relatives or even left the city for a while, leaving the courtyard empty.

As for the nobles, in principle, of course, they could not help but support the holding of censuses, however, when it came to their own estates, the situation changed dramatically. To reduce the number of households subject to taxes, peasants were “transferred from many households into one,” two households were fenced off with one fence, and sometimes the households were simply hidden from the census takers.

Household censuses were extremely limited in the range of registered characteristics and did not have a specific form and uniform concepts not only for counting the population, but also for the property and economic status of a person. They lasted from a year to ten years, sometimes carried out by completely illiterate persons, accompanied by extortions and gave rise to massive concealments, distortions and flight from registration. In addition, there was a systematic lack of scribe books and the absence of a single control center for the activities of scribes.

The census of 1710, conducted under Peter I, bore the features of a household census, but its results, revealing a catastrophic reduction in tax-paying households, confronted Peter I with the fact of a possible sharp reduction in state taxes. In the 1710 census an attempt was made to record both sexes. From the census of 1678 to the census of 1710, the number of tax-paying households decreased by 19.5%. Peter I rejected the results of the census of 1710 and ordered taxes to be accepted according to the books of 1678. At the same time, Peter I ordered that during 1716 and 1717. a new census, known as the “Landrat” census (named after the officials at the head of the province). This census, carried out in a number of provinces, showed a different process of movement of households and population. If previously, with the aim of relative tax reduction, massive cases of formal unification of households were noticed, then the data of the Landrat census proved this: the process of changing households in the direction of increasing and decreasing was much slower than the process of changing the population.

The census itself predetermined a sharply negative attitude towards it on the part of the population, and even the most severe punishments for concealment did not give the government the desired results. Many errors occurred due to the ignorance and negligence of the census takers, as well as due to bribes to the census takers for missing households. On the other hand, for failure to pay a bribe, empty courtyards were recorded as residential; there were cases of entire villages being omitted, or the same village being registered twice.

The fiscal purpose of the census and the abuses of scribes sometimes led to uprisings, for example, in 1678 in the “Ukrainian” cities.

In 1718, by decree of Peter I, the beginning of per capita censuses (as opposed to household censuses) was laid. The tsar issued a decree by which he ordered to take fairy tales from everyone, so that the truthful ones would bring how many male souls there were in which village...” Capitation censuses were supposed to provide data for imposing a capitation tax on the population and drawing up an allocation of recruits. The first capitation lists of the population, they were called “fairy tales”, were compiled over three years, and then the same number of years were checked - “underwent an audit.” Subsequent capitation censuses began to be called “audits,” and the population lists became “revision tales.”

Over 140 years (from 1719 to 1859) 10 revisions were carried out in Russia, each of which lasted several years. These censuses were very inaccurate - not the entire population was censused, but only those from the tax-paying classes, i.e. those who were subject to taxes. The landowners were in no hurry to submit the next “revision tale,” so many of the dead were considered alive. This, by the way, was the basis of the plot of Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. Despite the shortcomings, audits played a positive role in the development of population accounting. In some of them, attempts were made to take into account more fully not only the total number of tax-paying classes, but also their composition by gender, age, nationality, social and marital status.

Basically, all audits pursued fiscal goals. The enlightened Catherine II said that “... a great state cannot live without taking into account the population... We will not have stable finances, because a penny comes from a person, and it returns to him. How can I, Is it a weak woman to run a state if I don’t know how many souls I have as loyal subjects? I need an audit of the population..."

The data from the first two revisions at one time served as the basis for the writing of the Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov scientific work "On the preservation and reproduction of the Russian people"; materials from the tenth revision were used by K. Marx in his work “On the Emancipation of Peasants in Russia,” in which he examined the state of the landowner economy and the basis for the abolition of serfdom.

After the abolition of serfdom, population censuses began to be conducted in individual cities and even provinces, but many of them were government police “population censuses.” Their disadvantage was that information was collected from householders not about those actually living, but about those registered in the house. In addition, the census did not cover the entire country: only in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some other cities it was carried out regularly, every 10-12 years.

Later they switched to scientifically organized censuses, which were regularly carried out in Moscow (1871, 1882, 1902, 1912), St. Petersburg (1862-1864,1869,1881, 1890,1910,1915) and other cities. In some provinces (Astrakhan - in 1873, Akmola - in 1877, Pskov - in 1870 and 1887, etc.) residents were enumerated in all cities. In 1863 and 1881 the population of the entire Courland, and in 1881 - also the Livonia and Estland provinces was enumerated. At least 200 such local censuses were carried out, but the materials of many of them were not published, and for some nothing is known beyond the year of the census.

Almost every population census leaves a memory of itself. Sometimes these are legends, and more often, especially in modern times, they are recorded on the results of calculations. Their results more or less fully describe the life of society during the period when the accounting was carried out.

This is the information obtained during the first Moscow census. First of all, it is obvious that Moscow in 1871 was a city of grooms, not brides. There were 354 thousand men, and 248 thousand women, i.e., for every 100 men there were an average of 71 women. This ratio spoke of the attractiveness of Moscow “as an industrial, commercial and intellectual center.” The Mother See attracted workers from nearby regions; merchants and young people flocked here for training.

In order to find out what Russia was like a hundred years ago, it is not necessary to consult reference books - just leaf through newspapers and magazines of those years.

If you believe the table published in the St. Petersburg magazine “New World” at the beginning of the last century, the population of the empire on January 1, 1901 was 141,403,900 people. And together with the Principality of Finland, in whose position there was always some kind of “specialness,” the Russian emperor a hundred years ago had exactly 144,186,615 subjects.

Russians among the population of the empire made up 44.3%, Little Russians - 17.8%, and Belarusians - 4.6%. All these peoples in the statistical calculations of that time were united by the common name “Russians”. After the “united Russians,” the most numerous peoples of the empire (6.3%) were Poles (about 8 million people lived in the territory of the part of Poland that belonged to Russia) and Jews (5,063,155 people, or 4.1%). Next came the Tatars (2.97%), Germans (1.42%), Latvians (1.14%), Bashkirs (1.25%) and Georgians (1.1%), each of the remaining nations of Russia accounting for less than 1% .

At the beginning of the last century, 1220169 hereditary nobles, 630 thousand personal nobles, 15386392 tradespeople, 2908846 military Cossacks, 281179 merchants and 588497 clergy lived in Russia. And all this population was fed by an army of peasants.

A hundred years ago, foreigners played a significant role in the economic life of Russia. In 1901, the largest “interspersed” into the Russian monolith were German subjects - 158.1 thousand people; Austria-Hungary - 122 thousand people; Turkey - 121 thousand people; There were just over 9 thousand French people living in Russia at that time, and 7.5 thousand British people. In addition to them, within the Russian Empire, they were engaged in commerce, worked for hire, earning their bread: Belgians (1933 people), Bulgarians (2460 people), as well as Serbs, Norwegians, Romanians, Koreans, Persians, Americans and Japanese. The smallest number of foreign nationals were Spaniards (243 people) and Portuguese (54 people).

It is curious that in almost all foreign “community communities” the number of men and women was different: mostly men came to Russia to work and create capital. Naturally, they found women on the spot, and therefore one should not be surprised at the slanted eyes or dark skin of the inhabitants of today’s Russian outback - you can’t argue against genetics!

An exception to this rule a hundred years ago were the French, English and Germans, among whom the fairer sex predominated. Many of these ladies came to Russia to earn money: German maids, French and English governesses were considered “the best” in wealthy families.

Literacy was an important indicator of the population's life. At the beginning of the 20th century. In our country, there were only 21.1% of the literate population. “In terms of the number of literate people, Russia ranks last among the world’s cultural states,” Niva magazine informed its readers. At the same time, the largest number of literate people (from 77 to 80%) was in the Baltic provinces, followed by St. Petersburg (55.1%) and Moscow (40.2%) provinces. And the most “illiterate” city among Russian cultural centers was Warsaw - only 12.5% ​​could read and write!

An interesting historical fact is the participation of famous Russian writers in population censuses.

It will come as a surprise to many that, along with denouncing the serfdom, Alexander Radishchev was also the founder of domestic demographic statistics, that is, a science that studies and evaluates the results of population censuses. He outlined his views on statistics in the works: “Letter on Chinese Trade” (1794), “Description of My Possession...” (1799), “On Legislation” (1802). Basically, he followed the traditions of the descriptive school, but, like the “political arithmeticians,” he used indirect calculations: he calculated the national income of Russia, the value of its commodity-money portion, etc. In fact, it was Radishchev who developed the principles of generalizing statistical data that formed the basis for conducting “revisions” and “fairy tales” in the 19th century, and in many ways “survived” until the first Russian national census of 1897.

The 1882 census in Moscow is famous for the fact that the great Russian writer Count L.N. took part in it. Tolstoy. Lev Nikolaevich wrote: “I proposed to use the census in order to find out poverty in Moscow and help it with deeds and money, and make sure that there are no poor people in Moscow.” Tolstoy believed that “for society, the interest and significance of the census is that it gives it a mirror into which, like it or not, the whole society and each of us can look.”

He chose one of the most difficult and difficult sites for himself, a flowing lane where there was a rooming house; among the Moscow chaos, this gloomy two-story building was called “Rzhanova Fortress.” Indeed, the dirty shelter, filled with beggars and desperate people who had sunk to the very bottom, served as a mirror for Tolstoy, reflecting the terrible poverty of the people.

Impressed by what he saw, L.N. Tolstoy wrote his famous article "So what should we do?" (1882). In this article he writes: “The purpose of the census is scientific. The census is a sociological study. The goal of the science of sociology is the happiness of people. This science and its methods differ sharply from other sciences. The peculiarity is that sociological research is not carried out through the work of scientists in their own way offices, observatories and laboratories, and is carried out by two thousand people from society. Another feature is that research in other sciences is carried out not on living people, but here on living people. The third feature is that the goal of other sciences is only knowledge, but here the good of people. Foggy spots can be explored alone, but to explore Moscow you need 2000 people. The purpose of researching foggy spots is only to find out everything about foggy spots, the purpose of studying residents is to derive the laws of sociology and, on the basis of these laws, establish a better life for people. Foggy spots are everything no matter whether they are being investigated or not, they have been waiting and are ready to wait for a long time, but the residents of Moscow care, especially those unfortunate people who constitute the most interesting subject of the science of sociology.”

Lev Nikolayevich hoped to arouse sympathy for urban poverty among the rich, collect money, recruit people willing to contribute to this cause, and, together with the census, go through all the dens of poverty. In addition to fulfilling the duties of a copyist, the writer tried to enter into communication with the unfortunate, find out the details of their needs and help them with money and work, expulsion from Moscow, placing children in schools, old people in shelters and almshouses.

In the 90s of the XIX century. An attempt to rewrite the population of Sakhalin, on his own initiative, was made by the great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. He personally went door to door and filled out thousands of census cards. These cards, which are still stored, convincingly testify to the extreme poverty, illiteracy and lack of culture of the inhabitants of Sakhalin. By rewriting the exiles of Sakhalin, the writer contributed not only to the history of the island, but also to Russian literature. Chekhov communicated with people, learned the stories of their lives, the reasons for their exile, and collected rich material for his notes. The history of this census is captured in his book "Sakhalin Island" (1895). Travel notes from this series clearly reflect the life of the inhabitants of the island and the work of the scribe, which A.P. temporarily became. Chekhov.

“This work, carried out in three months by one person, in essence cannot be called a census; its results cannot be distinguished by accuracy and completeness, but, in the absence of more serious data either in the literature or in the Sakhalin offices, perhaps my figures will also be useful “- this is how the writer himself spoke about the Sakhalin census epic.

Chekhov was also a participant in the 1897 census and led a group of census takers in the Serpukhov district of the Moscow province.

The first and only General Population Census of Russia which empire was held on February 9, 1897. It was initiated by the outstanding Russian scientist P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. It took the tsarist government, with its bureaucratic management system, almost forty years to prepare a general census.

This census is the only source of reliable data on the size and composition of the population of Russia at the end of the 19th century. It was scientifically organized, carried out throughout the country simultaneously, in a short time, according to a single program and uniform instructions.

The unit of observation was the household, for which a census form containing 14 points was compiled. The census program included socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, marital status, place of birth, religion, mother tongue, literacy and occupation. It was widely announced that it “would not serve as a reason for any new taxes or duties,” and its purpose was “to get acquainted with the population and study it,” as well as “to formulate accurate concepts about the most diverse conditions of people’s life.”

The population of Russia in 1897 was 67.5 million people, of which 15% lived in cities. The share of the male population is 49%, female - 51%; average life expectancy - 32 years (31 years for men and 33 years for women); the share of literate people aged 9-49 years (those who can read and write or only read) is 29.6%.

The cost of the 1897 census was about 7 million rubles. Population: 129.9 million people. assumed that the cost per person was 5.5 kopecks.

When filling out the census forms, incidents also happened - when asked about the name and patronymic of their wife, the men from the villages answered like this: “I will call her! That’s what Baba is, and she no longer has a name.” Nicholas II modestly indicated in the “occupation” column: “Master of the Russian land.” In the forms of the All-Russian Population Census of 1897, there was a record that Grigory Rasputin was 28 years old.

The All-Russian Population Census project was discussed in 1870 at the first All-Russian Congress of Statisticians, and in 1872 at the VIII session of the International Statistical Congress. The final draft census was approved by Nicholas II in June 1895.

To conduct the census, along with paid enumerators, free enumerators were also involved, especially for whom Nicholas II established the medal “For work on the first General Census of 1897.” In addition, many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia and noble elite were involved in the preparation and conduct of the first General Census.

However, the direct participation in the organization of the census of many of the best representatives of the Russian intelligentsia of that time did not help to eliminate the shortcomings in the census program and the methods of its implementation, since it was carried out as a police-administrative event. The administration of the census was entrusted to officials from the Ministry of the Interior and the governor's offices, who for the most part did not know the statistics and did not understand their significance. The role of the royal officials who supervised the census is successfully defined in a letter from A.P. Chekhov to the publisher Suvorin on February 8, 1897: “The census was over. The census takers worked excellently, pedantically to the point of ridiculousness. But the zemstvo chiefs, who were entrusted with the census in the districts, behaved disgustingly: they did nothing, understood little even in the most difficult moments said they were sick." A.P. Chekhov himself participated in the 1897 census - he led a group of census takers in the Serpukhov district of the Moscow province.

The great Russian scientist D.I. attached great importance to this work. Mendeleev, who, based on the census, wrote the book “Towards the Knowledge of Russia,” published in 1906 and reprinted several times. Writer L.N. Tolstoy viewed the population census as a sociological study, which is carried out in order to derive the laws of sociology and, on the basis of these laws, “to establish a better life for people.”

After the 1897 census, the question of the need to conduct a new population census in Russia was repeatedly raised. The government, citing the recent holding of the first census, stated that it intended to carry out a second census in 1910. However, when this deadline came, the Ministry of Finance did not have the funds for such a “harmful” undertaking as a census. At the initiative of the Central Statistical Committee in 1911, the question of conducting a new census was again raised. After long bureaucratic delays, it was decided to conduct a second general census in 1915, a census plan was prepared, draft instructions and census forms were drawn up, but the First World War, which began in 1914, prevented the implementation of this plan.

With the establishment of Soviet power, a new stage in the development of statistics in our country began. Immediately after the revolution of 1917 V.I. Lenin proclaimed his famous slogan: “Socialism is accounting.” And in the summer of 1918, practical work began on organizing Soviet statistics.

Changes in state borders in 1918-1921, mass migrations, lack of accurate data on losses in the Civil War and natural population movements in 1917-1921. led to the fact that by the time the USSR was formed there was no reliable data on the population.

First All-Russian Soviet Population Census was carried out in August 1920. The preparation and conduct of the census took place in the most difficult conditions of intervention and civil war, famine, and devastation. During the census, information was obtained about only 70% of the country's population: some areas were inaccessible due to military operations. The material support for the census was difficult: there were not enough workers, transport, paper and other means.

It was decided to combine the population census with an agricultural census and a brief census of industrial enterprises. The agricultural census had to be carried out before the start of the food campaign, so the census work was supposed to be carried out in late August - early September.

The critical moment of the census - August 28 - was also not chosen by chance. On this date there is a church holiday - the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. This choice of critical moment helped respondents remember which events occurred shortly before August 28, and which - after the named date. The reliability of the information received should also be facilitated by the short time frame of the census - in cities it was supposed to be completed in a week (from August 28 to September 3), in rural areas - in two weeks (from August 28 to September 10). However, in reality these deadlines were met in rare cases. Usually they were exceeded by 1.5-2 times.

It was planned to involve about 114 thousand statisticians (11 thousand instructors and 103 thousand registrars) to participate in the census. Their work was quite difficult, considering that there were cases where bandits destroyed the material collected during the census and it had to be restored again and again. There were other incidents as well. In Kazan villages, census takers were stripped because they thought they were devils and had tails. Entire villages refused to register because they believed that the purpose of the census was “to send extra women to Germany.”

The 1920 population census was carried out according to a very extensive program based on a card data collection system, which made it possible to quickly process materials when manually counting the results. In urban settlements, three forms were used: a household list for collecting materials about possessions (yard plots), a quarterly map with data on residential apartments, and a personal sheet on which the necessary information about each resident was recorded. In rural areas, in addition to the personal sheet, settlement forms were filled out. The question about religion, traditionally included in the questionnaire, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin was excluded, who recorded the necessary information about each tenant. In rural areas, in addition to the personal sheet, settlement forms were filled out. The question about religion, traditionally included in the questionnaire, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin was expelled.

Interesting are the words spoken by the then head of the Central Statistical Office P.I. Popov at the third All-Union Statistical Conference in January 1921: “We did a great job. We carried out three censuses. In a capitalist society, under normal conditions, they prepared for such censuses for years. We had four months at our disposal, if you count from the moment of publication decree on the census (May-August). To carry out this census, it took a colossal effort of effort, it took energy and those ideological motivations, the love for the work that our statisticians showed on the ground. Without this aspect of the work, it could not have been carried out. I will say, that only the heroism of local authorities could overcome all obstacles. Without heroism, without love for the cause, without self-sacrifice, we would not have had a census. Many of our comrades died. I have, according to incomplete data, a message that over 30 people were killed. Many died from diseases ..." .

In 1923, a population census was carried out in cities and urban-type settlements simultaneously with a census of industrial and commercial enterprises.

The first All-Union population census took place on December 17, 1926. for the first time it covered the entire population of the country. The 1926 census was designed at a high level and carried out by experienced specialists who came mainly from zemstvo statistics. Outstanding Soviet statisticians V.G. Mikhailovsky and O.A. Kvitkin developed scientific principles that formed the basis of both this and the following Soviet censuses. The 1926 census was distinguished not only by its well-thought-out method of obtaining information, but also by the wealth of data collected, especially on the social composition of the population and families. Its materials were very necessary; they formed the basis of the first National Economic Plan for the development of the economy and culture of the USSR.

For the first time, the family, literacy and ethnographic composition of the country's population were studied in detail. A feature of the personal leaflet program was the posing of questions about nationality instead of nationality, which was aimed at giving a more detailed picture of the ethnographic composition of the country's population. The term “nationality” emphasized, according to the census organizers, the tribal origin of the respondents, as they themselves defined it. Literacy in the 1926 census was determined by the ability to read at least syllables and sign your last name. The program also included questions about place of birth and duration of permanent residence. However, temporary residence was not limited by duration. The personal sheet also contained questions about injuries and mental illness due to the lack of information in other sources. The reasons for the injury were indicated, and it was noted whether these shortcomings were due to the imperialist or civil war, congenital, or acquired at work.

The personal sheet program asked in particular detail about occupations and livelihoods. It was necessary to indicate the main and side activities, position and specialty, position in the occupation. Particular questions were raised about the unemployed, about the means of subsistence of those without occupation, about the occupations of persons dependent on the respondent. This was necessary during the recovery period, since the information about the unemployed that the labor exchanges that existed at that time had was not reliable enough.

Special paragraphs (8 and 9) provided for the obligation of all citizens to provide registrars with all the necessary information on census issues and established “the imposition of administrative penalties in the amount adopted by the relevant laws for evasion of providing registrars with information on census issues.” Paragraph 10 emphasized: prohibiting the use of citizens' responses for any purpose other than compiling statistical tables. The enumerators involved were school teachers and public education workers in general, students of universities, workers' faculties, technical schools, students of senior classes of secondary educational institutions, employees who meet the educational qualifications and can devote enough time to work on the census, as well as statistical workers of various organizations.

Detailed materials from this census were widely published, and it still remains exemplary in the history of domestic statistics, both in methodology and in the presentation of results.

The Second All-Union Population Census was conducted in January re 1937 (originally scheduled for 1933, but famine caused by collectivization led to a demographic catastrophe, which was carefully hidden). The 1937 census was successful, although its draft, prepared by professional statisticians, was shortened and distorted by Stalin. Stalin had high hopes for this census: it was supposed to demonstrate to the whole world the achievements of the country of socialism. It was assumed that population growth over 11 years (since 1926) would be about 37.6 million people.

However, the census yielded stunning results: the population was 156 million, i.e. the total increase was only 7.2 million. It was impossible to determine how many deaths occurred in prisons, camps, and famine.

Stalin was forced to recognize the census as “sabotage” and classify its results. There were two main reasons. First, as a result of the census, the terrible consequences of the famine of 1932-1934 were “outlined”, when the country lost, according to various sources, from 6 to 8 million people. The second reason is “incorrect” data on the religious beliefs of the population, which resulted from the “incorrect” question in the questionnaires. It sounded something like this: What religion does the respondent belong to? Even people who were not very religious answered: Orthodox, Muslim, etc. According to the results of the census, it turned out that in the country of “militant atheism” there are almost no atheists.

In addition, information about the level of education refuted the myth of universal literacy. Of course, the country has done a lot to overcome the illiteracy of the population, but it was clearly premature to trumpet the final victory. For example, 30% of women did not know how to read syllables and sign their last names (this was the literacy criterion according to the census). Overall, a quarter of the population aged 10 years and older could not read, although there was talk of universal literacy.

The census data was immediately confiscated and destroyed (the main results of the 1937 census that survived in the archives were published only in 1990).

True, some figures remained in the heads of the heads of the statistical service. As a result, the organizers and many ordinary executors of the census ended up in camps along with “enemies of the people”; some of them were shot. For example, the head of the Central Bureau of Investigation Ivan Adamovich Kraval. Among the victims was the famous statistician Olympiy Aristarkhovich Kvitkin, the organizer and developer of the 1926 census, the best demographer in Russia.

The census was declared invalid because during its course there were “gross violations of the elementary foundations of statistical science.” The question of religion disappeared forever from Soviet census forms - out of harm's way. However, living without a census at all is somehow uncomfortable. And it’s inconvenient in front of Europe. Therefore, the next census was scheduled for 1939. And in order to get better results, including increasing the country’s population, Stalin had a brilliant idea: to increase the birth rate of children, although not by improving the life of the population, but by banning abortion. The action did not bring the expected result; the number of abortions for the year amounted to 158 thousand in Moscow and Leningrad alone.

17 January 1939 another census was carried out, this time declared accurate. The census had a clear goal: to show the growth of the USSR population at any cost. She achieved this goal, however, it is obvious that these data must be used with great caution. They do not provide an overall picture, are scattered and often contradictory. Apparently, realizing the incorrectness of the census and the defectiveness of the materials, a significant part of them was transferred to secret funds, and only a few figures were published in the open press.

So, the population turned out to be 170 million. The “growth” over two years was 14 million people. If we remember how “fruitful” these years (1937 - 1938) were for death, then a miracle truly happened. However, when compared with the results of the 1926 census, the miracle immediately faded - the increase over 13 years amounted to 21.2 million people. This is only 9% of the total population growth instead of the expected and natural 29%. Serious measures were taken to increase the number of Soviet people.

For the first time, not only the current population, but also the permanent population was taken into account throughout the country. Fearing a possible undercount of the population, control over the completeness of the census was strengthened. After the end of the census, a continuous control walk was carried out for 10 days; For the first time in the history of the national census, a control form was introduced that contained questions on the census form and was filled out for all those living permanently or temporarily in a given premises, but at the time of the census were located in another place where they should be enumerated as part of the current population. In addition, everyone who was enumerated as a temporary resident or planning to leave was given a certificate of completion of the census.

For the first time in Soviet census practice, criminal penalties were introduced for evading the census. A special unspoken decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was adopted on the search and registration during the census of the homeless population and those not registered in cities, hiding in basements, asphalt boilers, in attics, under bridges, etc.

As part of the general census, two special censuses were carried out: of the special contingent (prisoners, guards of places of detention, employees of the NKVD apparatus) by the NKVD bodies and of military personnel - NPOs. The results of both censuses were added to the overall results.

The materials of the 1939 census had not yet been developed, but they were already outdated: in 1939-1940. The USSR included territories (0.4 million sq. km) with a population of approximately over 20 million people. - There was no exact data about this population. Brief census results were published in 1939-1940, complete ones only in the early 1990s.

Results of the population censuses of 1926,1937,1939. for various reasons, they need a critical reassessment, and the available fragmentary data on the size and movement of the population contradict each other and require clarification and adjustment. In general, in the pre-war period, the population data that appeared in official sources was scattered and contradictory. The lack of systematic publications is due not only to the secrecy that was widespread in those years, but also to the desire to hide from Soviet and foreign readers the consequences of mass repressions, dispossession and the famine of 1933.

For 20 years, no population census was conducted in the country, which was due not only to the economic difficulties of the post-war period, but also to the reluctance to draw attention to the unjustifiably huge human losses during the Great Patriotic War: the magnitude of these losses is still under debate, since the pre-war number The country's population recovered only in 1955.

In addition, after the war, the demographic situation was worsened by famine, which claimed about a million lives. Obviously, the data for this period could not be used for propaganda purposes, so Stalin rejected the statisticians' proposal to conduct a new census in 1949.

Some replacement for the census was the statistical development of voter lists after the elections in February 1946. However, these lists did not include a large number of Russian residents (those in exile, camps, prisons, military personnel), not to mention children and adolescents under 18 years of age. Similar work was carried out repeatedly, and in 1954 (April 1), in addition to the lists, a count of children under the age of 18 was carried out by gender and year of birth. But these operations could not replace the census.

The next population census in the USSR took place in 1959. (as of January 15). In terms of the organization and content of the collected data, it practically did not differ from a similar program in 1939. However, of the 16 questions posed then, some were excluded. Thus, there was no clause on permanent or temporary residence in a given area, since the next two listed on the sheet duplicated it. The issue of literacy was merged with the issue of education. In this regard, there was no need to ask whether the respondent graduated from high school or high school. Questions about the place of work and the occupation at this place of work were swapped (in 1939, they first asked about the type of occupation, and then about the place of work). For those who do not have occupations that provide a source of income, another source of livelihood should be indicated.

The 1959 census had its own characteristics: a single period for conducting a population census was established - 8 days, which became traditional for all subsequent censuses; For the first time, a sampling method was used in the development of materials (development of family data). The growth of the educational level in the country made it possible to abandon the question of literacy and move on to two questions: “education” and “type of educational institution” for students. Data processing was completely mechanized and carried out centrally.

Census data was used in management planning and served as the basis for subsequent calculations of population size and composition. This time the demographic potential was estimated at 208.8 million people.

The next census took place in 1970. (as of January 15). In order to save time and money, for the first time in domestic practice, a sampling method was used when collecting data: some of the information was obtained by surveying not everyone, but only 25% of the population, this became a new phenomenon in our statistics.

The program for developing census materials was 1.5 times wider than the previous one. The census form consisted of 11 questions. This was supplemented by responses to 7 sample census questions. The census work for cities and their suburban areas approved according to a special list (cities with a population of over 500 thousand inhabitants) included recording the movement of the population from their place of residence to their place of work and study.

The question of citizenship was linked to the question of nationality. Moreover, Soviet citizens answered about nationality, and foreigners answered about citizenship. Students had to indicate the type of educational institution instead of its full name in the 1959 census. An interesting innovation was the recommendation that after recording their native language in the top line, persons who can speak fluently in another language of the peoples of the USSR should indicate this.

A special feature of this census was the collection of information about population migration: it was necessary to indicate how long they had been continuously living in a given locality; for those living less than two years, indicate the place of previous permanent residence; state the reason for the change of residence.

An attempt was made to study the duration of work in seasonal and other sectors of the economy, to compare the average annual number of employees according to the census with current statistics.

In addition, the continuous survey covered people of working age employed in household and personal subsidiary farming (men aged 16-59 and women aged 16-54).

A number of technical innovations were used when processing census materials. Its data was used in drawing up the Ninth Five-Year Plan and to develop long-term demographic forecasts.

1979 Census (as of January 17) differed significantly from previous ones in its organization and data processing. A fundamentally new form of census form was used, which was also a technical carrier of primary information for entering it into a computer using special reading devices and recording on magnetic tape.

New questions were added, and the wording of some others was clarified. The census provided extensive information about changes in population composition, which was subsequently widely used.

During the 1979 census, for the first time, a question was asked about the number of children born to a woman (for an in-depth study of fertility dynamics and the study of factors influencing population reproduction).

Table 1.1

Results of the censuses of 1926-1989. in the Russian Federation

Indicators	1926	1937	1939	1959	1970	1979	1989
Population, thousand people	92735	104932	108377	117534	130079	137551	147400
Population share, % urban rural male female Average family size, persons Share of Russian population, % Share of literate people, %	82,3 - 73,6	53 -	66,5 4,06 82,9	45 83,3	45 82,8	46 82,6	47 81,5

Note. Persons aged 9-49 years who could read and write or only read were considered literate.
Information was also obtained on the working-age population employed in household and private farming. When filling out cards, the head of the family was indicated by the family members themselves from among the permanent residents, but if difficulties arose with the determination, then the head should be considered the one who provides the basic means of subsistence.

One of the objectives of the 1979 census was to collect data on the country's centenarians. One of the points in the questionnaire concerned centenarians, more precisely those who are a hundred or more years old. According to the conditions of the census, in this section of the questionnaire it was necessary to record their year of birth, last name and address.

1989 Census was carried out as of January 12. Unlike previous censuses, primary information was entered into a computer using a new optical reading device "Blank", which makes it possible to encode the population's answers to questions on the census form not only by graphic methods, but also by machine-readable characters.

For the first time, the questionnaire included questions about living conditions and place of birth. This made it possible to obtain information about the living conditions of various socio-demographic groups of the population in all regions of the country, about the development of housing cooperation, about the degree of provision of housing for people and its improvement. The development of the national composition of the population was carried out using 128 names (previously - 123).

Along with the general list of questions, there was an additional one, and those included in the sample were asked five more questions: about membership in a social group, place of work, occupation, duration of continuous residence in a given locality: for a woman - how many children she gave birth to and how many of them are alive.

The next population census in Russia was supposed to take place in 1999, but due to the difficult financial and economic situation in the country it was postponed to October 2002.

The first millionaire cities recorded in the 1897 census were Moscow (1039 thousand people) and St. Petersburg (1265 thousand people). Only by 1970 did other cities with a population of more than a million people appear: Yekaterinburg (1025 thousand people), Nizhny Novgorod (1170 thousand people), Novosibirsk (1161 thousand people), Samara (1027 thousand people).

annotation

Keywords

Time scale - century
XVIII

Bibliographic description:
Efremova E.N. Social composition and population of Tver Posad in the 20s. XVIII century (Based on materials of the 1st capitation census) // Studies on source studies of the history of Russia (before 1917): collection of articles / Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Russian History; resp. ed. P.N. Zyryanov. M., 2004. pp. 122-137.

Article text

Efremova E.N.

SOCIAL COMPOSITION AND SIZE OF THE POPULATION OF TVERSKY POSAD IN THE 20'S. 18TH CENTURY

(Based on materials from the 1st capitation census)

End of the first quarter of the 18th century. - the time of the tax reform in Russia, which replaced household taxation with capitation taxation, and the reform of city government. The most important consequence of these events was a change in the social structure of the Russian city. In this article we will try to trace what changes have occurred in the composition and size of the urban society of Tver under the influence of Peter the Great’s reforms of the 20s. XVIII century

The tax reform began with a capitation census, which was supposed to take into account all taxpayers. The personal decree of November 26, 1718 “On the introduction of a revision and on the distribution of the maintenance of troops according to the number of souls subject to revision” outlined in general terms the nature and purpose of the upcoming census. The decree of January 22, 1719 “On conducting a general census of people of the tax-paying class, on submitting audit reports and on penalties for hiding souls” determined the categories of the population subject to audit. In particular, peasants, peasants, householders and business people were subject to the census. Subsequently, the list of the census population was expanded. Thus, the decree of January 5, 1720 ordered that courtyard and church people be included in the census, and the decree of August 23, 1721 - enslaved people.

By decree of February 28, 1721, the census population included “townspeople and commoners living in towns and settlements.” It was necessary to take tales from the townspeople in which to indicate “by the names of the men, the sexes of the people and their children, in-laws, clerks, housekeepers, serfs and hired people, separately by name and age.”

The government planned to conduct the census in two stages. At the first stage, it was supposed to collect tales about the tax-paying population, process the data obtained and determine the size of the per capita salary. These events took three years - 1719-1721. At the second stage - 1722-1727. - the accuracy of the census data was checked locally. Revision of the capitation census of 1719-1721. conducted nine census offices or “offices of witnessing souls.”

In Tver, the first capita census was also carried out in two stages. At the first stage, tales about townspeople, courtyard people and workers were collected. In June 1722, the Tver Provincial Town Hall presented to Major General and Life Guards Major Mikhail Yakovlevich Volkov, who headed the work of the office for the audit of the St. Petersburg province, a census book of townspeople, courtyard people and workers of the city of Tver, compiled on the basis of fairy tales “about souls” the male sex and about their children and about relatives and about clerks and about lavosh workers and about purchased ones and about hired workers and about other people of every rank”, collected in 1721.

In the surviving census book of 1722, the description is given by township, and within townships - by parish. At the end of the description of the settlements there is information about persons included after the last census, and at the end of the book - about those who left to live in other cities and counties. The descriptive article is based on information about the main unit of audit accounting - the male soul (MS). When conducting an audit, first the fairy tale, and then the census book, included information about the name and age of the head of the family, his children and relatives, serfs and hired workers employed on his farm. At the beginning of the descriptive article, data is provided about the head of the family, his children and relatives, then serfs and, finally, hired workers are listed. Information about the dependent population of the settlement was not included in a separate part of the book, as will be the case during subsequent audits. This circumstance indicates the closeness of the forms of the first capitation census and the censuses of the times of household taxation, the descriptive article of which contains information about all male persons living in the household, regardless of their class affiliation.

During the audit, i.e. At the second stage of the census, fairy tales of the urban population were again collected, and household and name lists were compiled. The re-collection of tales of the townspeople and commoners of Tver was carried out by the captain of the Koporye Infantry Regiment, Matvey Khotyaintsov, in 1722-1723. The final examination of the tales of the townspeople of the city of Tver was carried out in March 1724. The evidence of the tales of clerks and house servants, clergymen, soldiers, messengers and brickmakers of the city of Tver, collected in 1721, was carried out in September 1723 by Major General M. Ya. Volkov, captains S.L. Ignatiev and M. Khotyaintsov.

Based on the fairy tales examined in 1726-1727. Two census books were compiled - a book of townspeople and merchants of the city of Tver and a book of servants of the Tver bishop's house, clerks and their servants, who were paid per capita for the Koporsky and Rentselev infantry regiments.

Thus, the materials of the first per capita census of the townspeople of Tver, deposited in fund 350 (Landrat books and revision tales) of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, are represented by the census book of townspeople, courtyard people and workers of 1722, tales of townspeople, artisans, craftsmen and commoners of 1722-1723, tales of clerks and house servants, clergymen, soldiers, messengers and brickmakers of 1722-1723, a census book of servants of the Tver bishop's house, clerks and their servants, put in capitation salary for the Koporsky and Rentselev infantry regiments, 1726 and the census book of townspeople and merchants 1722-1727.

Of greatest interest are the primary census materials - tales compiled for an individual or family. When conducting the census, the government did not develop uniform forms for audit documents, so the tales of the 1st audit, compiled in different regions of the country, may have their own characteristics.

The surviving tales of the population of Tver Posad are dated 1722-1723. and belong to the second stage of the census. According to the observation of M.Ya. Volkov, the tales of the townspeople, collected at the second stage of the census, differ significantly from the tales of 1721. One of the significant differences noted by the author is the fact that during the audit of the census, the townspeople were obliged to justify their right to live in city ​​and their belonging to a certain class. They had to make this justification for themselves, relatives, serfs and hired workers. In those cases when a townsman or his ancestors were listed in the town according to the 1678 census, he either referred to this census, or indicated that his grandfather, father and he were the old townspeople of this city. In other cases, townspeople gave a more or less complete history of their lives, associated with the transition to new places of residence, from one class to another, with a change of occupation.

For example, the townsman of the city of Tver, Ivan Ivanovich Zubchaninov, in his fairy tale, told the scribes that “... my grandfather and father were with the boyar Nikita Ivanov, son Romanov, residents of the village of Svistunova and in the last 157th year, by decree of the imperial majesty and according to the building books according to the conclusion of the breeder and builder Ivan Istlenyev with others and those of that village of Svistunov, the inhabitants of the trade and crafts were withdrawn and included in the Tver settlement and in the census books of the year 186 he, my father Ivan, and so did I, Ivan, in Tver Posad was written, but my grandfather Kozma was not written for that before those census books died...”

This information is extremely important when conducting genealogical research, as it allows, without involving additional sources, to determine the time of appearance in the city of the ancestors of the family taken for research, the place of previous residence and social origin.

An important feature of the tales of the inhabitants of Tver 1722-1723. is the availability of information about the occupation of the townspeople, and for the merchants, information about the amount of capital. Thus, the merchant of the third article, I.I. Zubchaninov, indicated in his fairy tale: “I sell cereals and oatmeal for fifty rubles.” This information is extremely important for determining the level of socio-economic development of Tver in the first quarter of the 18th century.

Thus, the tales of the population of Tver Posad, collected in 1722-1723, contain information about: 1) the composition of the male half of the family (name, age, indication of the degree of relationship with the head of the family); 2) ancestors of the head of the family - origin (rank, previous place of residence) and time of appearance in the city; 3) the nature of commercial and industrial activity - “how much trade or what kind of craft is involved.”

Among the surviving materials of the 1st revision of the city of Tver, two categories of tales stand out - tales of the taxable and non-taxable classes.

The first category includes tales of the townspeople and commoners of Tver in 1722-1723. The tales were systematized by scribes into three large groups: 1) 266 merchant tales; 2) 320 tales of artisans and craft people; 3) 395 tales of “posad people who feed on menial labor and Christ for the sake of worldly alms and written work” who returned from the runs of Tver and commoners.

Summing up the census of the posad population of Tver, the census takers included merchants, artisans, unskilled workers and people engaged in written work in this group - a total of 2532 dmp (981 tales), including serf workers and raznochintsy - “people appointed to the posad from different ranks.” In Tver, the number of commoners, according to fairy tales of 1722-1723, was insignificant - 86 dmp (45 fairy tales).

The second category of tales consists of tales of non-taxable groups of the population, which were subject to a census due to the fact that the legislation did not clearly define the classes subject to audit. Subsequently, the composition of the tax-paying population was clarified and only tax-paying categories who performed various state duties even before the 1st audit were included in the salary. The nobility, clergy and retired military ranks, exempt from paying state duties, were excluded from the number of revision souls.

Tales of representatives of the tax-exempt classes of Tver 1722-1723. collected in a separate book, which includes 280 tales (871 dmp, including 154 courtyard servants): 1) 32 tales of clerks (52 dmp); 2) 160 tales of servants of the Tver bishop's house (secretaries, clerks, boyar children, watchmen, grooms, bailiffs, cooks, carpenters, nailers, tailors, etc.) (384 dmp); 3) 23 tales of soldiers of the Tver garrison (55 dmp); 4) 8 tales of messengers (19 dmp); 5) 43 tales of clergy (180 dmp); 6) 14 tales of masons and brickmakers (27 dmp).

However, by the time the census books of 1726-1727 were compiled. representatives of a number of non-taxable classes listed above were subject to poll tax. Thus, 128 deputies were assigned to the Tver Posad per capita salary: soldiers of the Tver garrison - 55, masons and bricklayers - 24, “singers and whistlers who are called Vesna” - 21, messengers - 15, soldiers’ children - 7, retired watchmen - 6 dmp.

During the same period, the majority of the servants of the Tver bishop's house (314 dmp) were paid per capita salary for the Koporye Infantry Regiment, stationed in the Tver district: boyar children - 51, church watchmen - 125, grooms - 29, cattlemen - 3, bailiffs - 23, cooks - 4, joiners and carpenters - 5, cutters and tailors - 10, nailers - 4, icon painters - 5, saddlers - 2, window makers - 3, stokers - 2, blacksmiths - 2, bell ringer - 1, sexton - 1, grain watchman - 1, as well as courtyard people - 43 dmp.

What was the total population of Tver based on the results of the 1st audit? The literature and written sources contain various estimates of the population of Tver at the end of the first quarter of the 18th century.

According to M.Ya. Volkov, the permanent population of the city must include all people (with members of their families) who lived in a given locality and were assigned to it for service, religious worship and in terms of taxation. Based on this definition, both taxable and non-taxable groups of the population of the township should be considered townspeople. Information about the number of tax-paying and non-tax-paying townspeople contains tales of 1722-1723. So, according to fairy tales, 3403 dmp lived in Tver - 2532 dmp of taxable classes and 871 dmp of non-taxable classes. However, this figure does not include coachmen, of whom in Tver until the 20s. XVIII century there were 651 dmp. Thus, the total population of the Tver settlement should have been about 8.5 thousand citizens of both sexes, which is quite close to the figure given by M.Ya. Volkov.

Another, more recent source providing information about the townspeople population of Tver is the census book of townspeople and merchants of 1722-1727. However, unlike the tales of 1722-1723. The census book contains information only about the tax-paying population of the city.

This circumstance is due to the fact that during the audit the government constantly clarified the population groups subject to the census, as a result of which only tax-paying segments of the population were taken into account in the final documents. Therefore, when considering the results of the population censuses of 1719-1858, it is necessary to take into account that the information given in them about the number of the urban population relates only to its taxable part and does not include data on non-taxable categories of citizens (nobility, clergy, etc.) .

Compilers of the census book of 1722-1727. The following categories of tax-paying population of Tver Posad are distinguished: 1) merchants of the first, middle and lower articles - 686 dmp; 2) artisans - 912 dmp; 3) laborers - 73 dmp; 4) townspeople who “feed on worldly alms for Christ’s sake” - 39 dmp; 5) townspeople who “feed on written work” - 8 dmp; 6) capital Tver residents and those returning from running - 36 dmp; 7) courtyard people assigned to the settlement after 1721, - 60 dmp; 8) “whistlers and singers called Spring,” included in the per capita salary in 1726, - 21 dmp; 9) assigned to the merchants for trades and trades - 24 dmp (10 peasants, 1 son of a streltsy, 8 clergy, 5 foreigners); 10) those assigned to the workshop - 147 DMP (4 peasants, 21 clergymen, 2 riflemen’s children, 13 foreign immigrants, 55 soldiers of the Tver garrison, 7 soldiers’ children, 15 messengers, 24 masons and brickmakers, 6 retired watchmen); 11) “posad people from different cities who were ordered to be in Tver until the decree on a per capita salary” - 39 dmp.

Thus, according to the census book of 1722-1727, 2853 townspeople and commoners lived in Tver, including 205 courtyards.

Data quite close to the information in the census book is given by I.K. Kirilov - 2828 dmp. A.A. Kizevetter, speaking about the population of the Tver settlement, refers to the General Table of 1738, according to which the final figure of the 1st audit of the Tver settlement population is 2846 dmp. In addition, the author reports a number of final figures of the 1st revision, in particular: 2716 dmp and 2871 dmp (including 225 serfs) according to the documents of the Chief Magistrate and 2857 dmp according to the statement of 1728 compiled in the Tver Town Hall.

The difference in figures reported by different sources is understandable. The fact is that the reconciliation of information collected during the 1st audit was carried out until the beginning of the 2nd audit (1743-1747) and the number of audit souls was constantly updated.

The first final result of the 1st revision for the tax-paying estates was summed up in 1724 after an examination of the tales. Thus, in Tver, the taxable population amounted to 2532 dmp. Then this figure increased slightly. According to the census book of townsmen and merchants of 1722-1727, compiled no earlier than 1726, there were 2853 dmp in the Tver settlement.

However, it must be borne in mind that, in addition to the townspeople, from whom the magistrate had to supervise the collection of the poll tax, representatives of some tax-paying urban classes were placed on shelves. In particular, according to the census book of 1726, the per capita salary for the Koporye Infantry Regiment included 314 DMP servants of the Tver bishop's house and 51 serfs of the clerks of the Tver Provincial Chancellery.

Thus, the total number of tax-paying population of Tver according to the census books of 1722-1727. and 1726 was 3218 dmp.

In 1747-1749, when the results of the 2nd revision were clarified and compared with the data of the 1st revision, verified once again, a “Brief statement of the number of men and women in the city of Tver and the county subject to the per capita salary of men and women” was compiled. what rank it was according to the current audit and what it consisted of according to the previous census...” According to this statement, the number of the tax-paying population of Tver according to the results of the 1st audit was 3257 dmp, which is quite close to the total result of the indicators of the number of tax-paying population of Tver Posad based on the materials of two censuses books 1722-1727 and 1726. It is the statement of 1747-1749. uses M.Ya. Volkov, determining the number and composition of the tax-paying population of Tver in 1722-1727.

Quite interesting observations were made by analyzing data from fairy tales of 1722-1723, the census book of townsmen and merchants of 1722-1727, and statements of 1747-1749. and materials of the 2nd audit of the urban population of Tver. These observations will help to reveal the content of the terms “posadskie”, “raznochintsy”, “merchants” and “merchants in the workshop”, used in office work of the 20-40s. XVIII century

The regulations of the Chief Magistrate of 1721 divided the townspeople into two parts - “regular citizens”, who formed two merchant guilds, and “mean people” - hired workers and laborers. To the first guild, the Regulations included bankers, noble merchants who have large trading markets and who trade various goods in rows, city doctors, pharmacists, healers, skippers of merchant ships, goldsmiths, silversmiths, icon painters, painters; to the second - citizens who trade in small goods and various tavern goods, as well as artisans: carvers, turners, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers and the like. With the formation of guilds in 1722, guilds were separated from the “regular” citizens. The Instruction to the Magistrates of 1724 included “vile people” among the citizens, as well as those categories of commoners who were not engaged in commercial and industrial activities, but were included in the salary for a given city during the reform.

Thus, as a result of the reform of city government, the population of the city, based on a 40-altyn per capita salary, was divided into two categories - merchants and guilds.

It was already noted above that tales of 1722-1723. and census book 1722-1727. are called townspeople: merchants of the first, middle and lower classes, artisans, unskilled workers, townspeople who “feed for Christ’s sake on worldly alms and written work,” as well as their serfs. The total number of the townspeople's population, according to the census book of 1722-1727, is 2573 dmp, and minus the 139 dmp of household servants - 2434 dmp. This number practically repeats the figure given in the statement of 1747-1749. for the merchants of Tver, - 2436 dmp.

Thus, when comparing the numerical indicators of the two sources, the conclusion suggests itself that the merchants of the time of the 2nd revision (1743-1747) were understood to be the same categories of the population that in the first quarter of the 18th century. were designated by the term “posadsky”. The only difference between the merchants of the 40s. XVIII century from the townspeople of the first half of the 18th century. was that it did not include courtyard people, who were now included in a separate group of townspeople.

Let us take a closer look at what the commercial and industrial elite of the Tver Posad were like (merchants of the three articles), which, together with other posads, during the audit, entered a new category of the population - the merchants.

The scribes divide the trade and industrial elite of the posad into “the main Tver merchants, which have trades and trades from thousands to one hundred rubles,” - 31 families (76 dmp), middle merchants - 13 families (37 dmp) and smaller articles - 222 families (573 dmp). Thus, the merchant class of all three articles was represented by 266 families (686 dmp). It should be noted that the tales of the townspeople of 1722-1723. and census book 1722-1727. report absolutely identical information about the composition and number of merchants in Tver Posad.

It was already noted above that information from fairy tales of 1722-1723 is of undoubted value. about the nature of the entrepreneurial activity of the townspeople - the type of occupation and the amount of capital in circulation of the merchants.

Thus, under the first article, 31 capital were declared from 110 to 6250 rubles, with 1 joint - Yakov Ivanovich and Dmitry Dmitrievich Kirilov. Total 30410 rub. Capital of 1000 rubles. and above, 7 Tver merchants announced: brothers Matvey Grigorievich and Alexey Grigorievich Arefiev - 6250 rubles each. each, Kozma Fedorovich Voroshilov - 5000 rubles, brothers Ivan Vasilyevich, Alexey Vasilyevich and Semyon Vasilyevich Yankovsky - 2500 rubles each, 1300 rubles. and 1000 rub. accordingly, Semyon Andreevich Volochaninov - 1000 rubles. Capital of 700 rubles. had Gerasim Fedorovich Sedov, 650 rubles. - Pyotr Mikhailovich Vagin, 600 rubles. - Vasily Andreevich Volochaninov. The main occupation of these merchants was trading in bread and hemp. A.G. Arefiev, among other things, traded in leather and lard.

Judging by the size of the capital, the above-mentioned group of the first-class merchants of Tver was engaged in wholesale trade “to Piterburgh and other ports,” although only two merchants have a direct indication of trade with the capital - S.V. and A.V. Yankovskikh.

Trading in grain was the main occupation of another 18 families of first-class merchants, whose capital ranged from 110 to 500 rubles. In addition to bread, 1 merchant traded in matting, 1 in fish, 3 in hemp, and 2 people were engaged in the cultivation and sale of malt (fishing and trade). 7 Tverites are named as contractors hired to “send supplies from merchants by water to Petersburg” and “to transport the sovereign’s provisions.” 7 merchants of the first article traded in the shops and squares of the city. The main items of their trade were bread, wine, gingerbread, boots and small goods.

Based on the materials of fairy tales of 1722-1723, we can conclude that trading bread was the main occupation for 28 families (except for 3 who traded in shops) of the first-class merchants of Tver, regardless of what nature it was - wholesale or retail. The richest merchants, whose capital amounted to 600 rubles. and above were engaged in wholesale trade in bread and hemp to the ports.

It should be noted that the merchants of the first article quite actively used the labor of serfs. According to the census book, they had 82 DMP serfs.

The average merchant class announced 13 capitals ranging from 50 to 100 rubles. - only 1005 rub. 6 families were engaged in the trade in bread, 2 in hops, 2 in the cultivation and sale of malt. 5 merchants conducted trade in the shop and in the square: small goods - 2, fish - 1, hats - 1, icons - 1. Three middle class merchants were engaged in contracts and “were hired by merchants to carry goods and provisions to Piterburgh,” while for Matvey Ivanovich Yankovsky this was the only occupation (capital 50 rubles).

222 families who declared capital from 1 to 50 rubles included themselves in the lower category: 11 families - 50 rubles, 3 - 45 rubles, 10 - 40 rubles, 1 - 35 rubles, 22 - 30 rubles ., 1 - 25 rubles, 45 - 20 rubles each, 18 - 15 rubles each, 44 - 10 rubles each, 44 - 5 rubles each, 10 - 3 rubles each, 6 - 2 rubles each, 5 - 1 rub. Total RUB 3,682. Merchants of the lower grade traded bread - 33, oats and hay - 18, hops - 5, hemp - 1, rolls and gingerbread - 15, kvass - 3, cattle - 4, boots - 4, bast shoes - 2, hats - 1, mittens - 1, with locks and nails - 2, with wood chips - 1, with leather - 1 family. Among the merchants who traded in the shops, traders of small goods predominated - 51, as well as fish and meat - 41 families. Representatives of 14 families were engaged in growing and trading malt. 3 merchants, in addition to trade, were hired as contractors to merchant people. 17 people practiced peddling small goods in the villages of the Tver district, and 2 families practiced bargaining in a tavern.

Thus, the main items of trade of the Tver merchants, who made up the commercial and industrial elite of the settlement, were different types of bread, malt, hemp, and meat. The main occupation of the first-class merchants was wholesale trade to the ports, which was quite natural given the fact that Tver was an important intermediate point in the trade of the central regions of the country with St. Petersburg and abroad.

The division of the commercial and industrial elite of the posad into three articles was based on the principle of tax capacity, i.e. the difference is in the economic situation - the size of the owner’s “belly”. Using the example of Tver Posad, this difference can be clearly seen in the size of the merchants' trading capital: the first article - from 110 to 6250 rubles, the average article - from 50 to 100 rubles, the smaller article - from 1 to 50 rubles.

Returning to the question of the social composition of urban society, it should be noted that, according to the decree of February 28, 1721, in addition to the townspeople, “commoners living in towns and settlements” were also subject to the census. According to V.M. Kabuzan, commoners in the 18th century. were a somewhat vague group of the population, which included retired civil servants and military officials, foreigners, children of military officials, etc. M.Ya. Volkov divides commoners into two groups - “officials” and “non-officials”, classifying the first as archers, Cossacks, dragoons, city soldiers, clerical servants, gunners, collars, government artisans, coachmen, and the second as newcomers, like usually peasants who abandoned their owners.

What categories of the population made up this stratum of the Tver settlement? Judging by the materials of the 1st audit of the urban population of Tver, raznochintsi were understood as “people of various ranks” who were registered in the town after the first collection of tales of town residents, held in 1721. According to the tales of 1722-1723, in Tver there were 86 raznochintsi, ranked to imprisonment in a merchant class, a workshop or in menial work. Of the 45 cases of registration of “various ranks of people” in the Tver posad, 11 cases accounted for immigrants from the clergy, 7 - from foreign immigrants (Polish and Swedish nations), 5 - from peasants, in one case each - from monastery servants and Streltsy children, 20 - for “various ranks of people who were ordered to be in Tver before the decree”

RECRUITMENT AND RECRUITMENT.

Freemen and serfs were the most diligent suppliers of recruits when the regular army began to form. From these classes, the initial rank-and-file personnel of the guards regiments were predominantly recruited, and then later received the gentry composition. To recruit them, Peter even violated serfdom: boyar slaves were allowed to enter them without the consent of their masters. The new regiments that moved to Narva in 1700 were predominantly composed of the same classes. Before that, it was ordered to take as soldiers freed slaves and serfs who, upon examination, were found fit for military service. Prince B. Kurakin wrote in his chronicle autobiography that then “the will was told to every rank, who wants to become a soldier, if he wants, then go, and many of the houses went”; at the same time the Baltic fleet was being equipped; because “they recruited young guys to become sailors and recruited 3,000 people.” This was how the dense mass of superfluous people thinned out in a society ossified from lack of work. The purge was thorough: of the tens of thousands of these combat hunters, hardly anyone returned home, or better yet, to their former homeless state; those who did not have time to go on the run, all died under the two Narva, near Riga, Erestfer, Shlusselburg, and most of all from hunger, cold and widespread disease. When periodic recruitments were established, they captured not only tax people, urban and rural, but also courtyards, walkers, clergy, monastery servants, even clerks. Thus, a hitherto alien principle was introduced into the state system - all-class conscription.

The capitation census was another and even more powerful means of simplifying the social composition. Its production itself is quite characteristic, brightly illuminating the methods and means of the converter. When, with the conquest of Livonia, Estland and Finland, the tension of the Northern War began to weaken, Peter had to think about putting the regular army he created on a peaceful footing. Even after the end of the war, this army had to be kept under arms, in permanent quarters and in government pay, without being sent home, and it was not easy to figure out where to go with it. Peter drew up a sophisticated plan for the quartering and maintenance of his regiments. In 1718, when peace negotiations with Sweden were underway at the Åland Congress, he gave a decree on November 26, stated, according to his habit, in the first words that came to his mind. The first two paragraphs of the decree, with the usual hasty and careless laconicism of Peter’s legislative language, read: “Take fairy tales from everyone, give them a year’s time, so that the truthful ones bring how many male souls there are in each village, declaring to them that whoever hides something, then it will be given to the one who announces it; write down how many souls a private soldier will cost with a share of the company and regimental headquarters for him, putting the average salary." Further, the decree, equally unclear, prescribed the procedure for its execution, threatening the executors with confiscations, cruel sovereign wrath and ruin, even the death penalty, the usual embellishments of Peter’s legislation. This decree gave hectic work to provincial and rural administrations, as well as to landowners. A one-year deadline was set for submitting tales about souls; but until the end of 1719, fairy tales arrived from only a few places, and then most of them were incorrect. Then the Senate sent guards soldiers to the provinces with instructions to chain the officials who collected the fairy tales and the governors themselves in irons and keep them in chains, not releasing them anywhere until they sent all the fairy tales and the statements compiled from them to the office established for the census in St. Petersburg. Strictness did little to help matters: the presentation of fairy tales was still continuing in 1721. The slowdown was primarily due to the difficulty of understanding the confusing decree, which required a number of explanations and additions. At first it was understood to mean that it concerned only the owning peasants; but then it was ordered that the servants who lived in the villages should be included in the fairy tales, and they demanded additional fairy tales. Another obstacle appeared: sensing that things were leading to a new heavy tax, the owners or their clerks wrote their hearts out, “with great secrecy.” By the beginning of 1721, more than 20 thousand hidden souls had been revealed. Voivodes and governors were ordered to conduct personal visits to the localities to check the submitted tales. The Holy Synod called for assistance in this verification, audits, the parish clergy, promising him, for covering up the secret, deprivation of his place, rank, property, “and, due to merciless punishment on the body, hard labor, even if someone was in considerable old age.” Finally, with the help of the strictest decrees, torture, and confiscations, which lubricated the rusty wheels of the government machine, by the beginning of 1722, according to fairy tales, 5 million souls were counted. Then they began to implement the 2nd paragraph of the decree of November 26, “to lay out the troops on the ground,” to schedule the regiments per soul, which were supposed to support them. 10 generals and colonels with a brigadier were sent as dispatchers to 10 rewritten provinces. The shelves were supposed to be placed in “eternal apartments” by company, in special settlements, without placing them in peasant households, to prevent quarrels between owners and guests. The planner had to convene the nobles of his district and persuade them to build these settlements with company yards for officers and regimental yards for headquarters. A new problem: the book spreaders were ordered to check the shower fairy tales in advance. This was a secondary revision of fairy tales, and it revealed a huge secret of souls, reaching in some places up to half of the available souls. The initially calculated fabulous figure of 5 million became impossible to guide when deploying regiments on a heart-to-heart basis. Peter and the Senate turned to landowners, clerks and elders with threats and caresses, set deadlines for correcting the tales, and all these deadlines were missed. Moreover, the auditors themselves, due to unclear instructions or inability to understand them, got confused in sorting souls. They were perplexed about who to write in the per capita salary and who not to write, and bothered the government with requests, and they did not have accurate information about the available composition of the army, and only in 1723 did they think of collecting information about this. However, the auditors were ordered to “completely” finish their work and return to the capital by the beginning of 1724, when Peter ordered the start of the poll collection. None of them returned on time, and all notified the Senate in advance that the matter would not be completed by January 1724; they were extended until March, and the correct poll tax was postponed until 1725. The reformer did not wait six years for the end of the work he had undertaken: the auditors did not return even by January 28, 1725, when he closed his eyes.

Household census

In the 17th century In connection with the development of crafts and trade, the unit of taxation becomes the household - the “yard”. And censuses are turning into door-to-door censuses. The number and scale of censuses expanded so much that an Accounting Order was formed in Moscow. The household censuses of 1646 and 1678 were especially large, covering almost the entire territory of the state. In accordance with tax purposes, they covered only the taxable, mainly male population. However, in some of these censuses, both women and part of the non-taxable population were taken into account, distribution was given by age groups, marital status, sometimes even occupation, rank and profession were indicated. The last household census was carried out in 1710 under Peter I. For the first time, an attempt was made to take into account not only the taxable population, but the entire population, including the privileged strata. The census dragged on for several years and ended in failure: it could not take into account the entire population. The number of households according to this census turned out to be almost 20% less compared to 1678, while their increase was expected. Peter I did not accept the results of the 1710 census and ordered a new census to be carried out in 1716-1717. However, this new census showed even worse results: the number of households decreased by one third compared to 1678. Such results partly reflected the actual decline in the population of Russia due to wars and ruinous living conditions, but to a greater extent were the result of incorrect information. Many landowners tried to reduce the number of households by combining several tax-paying households into one. Therefore, household taxation was replaced by capitation taxation, and the censuses were transformed accordingly. On November 26, 1718, Peter I issued a decree that ordered “to take fairy tales from everyone (give them a year’s time), so that the truthful ones would bring how many male souls there are in each village.” Population lists (“tales”) were to be collected in 1719 and then subjected to verification (“revision”) within three years. For evading the census or “hiding souls,” the decree provided for severe punishment, including the death penalty.

Capitation censuses

This decree marked the beginning of a whole series of per capita censuses (“revisions”), which, with various changes, were carried out in Russia over the next 140 years, from 1719 to 1859, until the abolition of serfdom. There were 10 revisions in total, each of which lasted for several years.

Capitation censuses were still far from modern population censuses both in terms of population coverage and methods of implementation. Their object was mainly only the tax-paying population, they took into account the ascribed (legal) and not the actual population, they were carried out for a long time, and the information collected did not relate to one point in time. Therefore, even the total population according to audit data can only be determined approximately. Since the audits were related to taxation, the population was hostile to them and tried to avoid the census. Landowners and other persons responsible for compiling “fairy tales” underestimated the number of tax-paying souls. The officials who carried out the audits also committed abuses.

And yet, despite significant defects, Russian audits were a significant step forward in the development of population registration. They were named, and during all revisions such an important feature as age was taken into account (and in the form of the number of years completed, and not by assignment to an age group). Most of the revisions, except for the first, second and sixth, also took into account the female population (also indicating age) not for calculating taxes, but “for information only.” Some revisions gave a distribution of the population by marital status, nationalities and classes.

The latest audits have already covered more than 80% of the country's total population, and in the territories where they were carried out - more than 90%. This made it possible, although with additional calculations, to still determine the total population of the country, its distribution and composition, based on direct accounting data.

The audits provided rich material for studying the population of Russia. Even today they have not lost their scientific value (as historical material).

After the abolition of serfdom, the audits lost their significance as a census of the tax-paying population and were no longer carried out. Meanwhile, as capitalism developed in Russia, the need for complete and detailed data on the size and composition of the entire population began to be increasingly felt. Only a scientifically organized general census could provide such data.

The first All-Russian scientifically organized census

It was held in 1897 as of January 28 (February 9, new style). It was initiated by the outstanding Russian scientist P.P. Semenov - Tian-Shansky. This census represents the only source of reliable data on the size and composition of the population of Russia at the end of the 19th century.

It was carried out over three months instead of the expected one and a half months. Such a long period of time could not but affect the quality of the collected materials. But if we take into account all the difficulties and doubts about the possibility of conducting a census at all, such a period should not be considered the biggest drawback. About 150 thousand personnel took part in the census, which also cannot be considered very large. The results of the census were published in 1905 in 89 volumes. The total population of the Russian Empire within the borders of those years was 125,640 thousand people. Borisov V. A. Demography. - M.: NOTABENE Publishing House, 1999, 2001. - P. 52.

Census materials showed not only the total population and its distribution throughout the country and its regions, but also its structure according to a wide range of indicators: by gender, age, marital status and marital status, by literacy and religion, by native language (which indirectly expressed national composition of the population), by occupations that provide a means of subsistence, and by sectors of the national economy, etc.

The development of the census results and their publication were completed in 1905, and in 1908 the question was raised about conducting a new, regular census in 1910 (i.e., in accordance with international recommendations "in a year ending in 0) . However, due to various circumstances, mainly of a financial nature, the date for the second population census was postponed to 1915, which was also not implemented due to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.