INFORMATION CAPABILITIES OF THE STATISTICAL DOCUMENTS OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY FOR THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE FORMER TERRITORIES BELGOROD DEFENSE LINE

Abstract

The study of the frontier zone spaces is an urgent issue in modern Russian and foreign historiography. In the historical realities of the XVI-XVII centuries, the zone of the Russian frontier was located to the south of Moscow and stretched over a huge area of the forest-steppe zone, starting from the headwaters of the Don and going deep into the Steppe. Since the second half of the XVII century, thanks to the creation of the Belgorod defense line, rapid development of the territory of the line itself and adjacent territories began. But the real socio-economic ef fect of the construction of this line of defensive fortifications arose much later, by the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. In our article, the main emphasis is placed on the information capabilities of statistical sources of the first half of the XIX century on the socio-economic history of the Belgorod region. The territory of the Yelets county of the Oryol province, which was a historical part of the defense line, was taken as the object of the study. The study of socio-economic processes at the local level in a broad chronological framework is a promising direction in modern historical science. Shifting research emphasis from fixing the actual state of processes at a certain time in favor of studying their historical evolution over a long chronological period can help a scientist to take a fresh look at both little-studied and well-known facts. The research methodology consists of the use of both traditional methods and modern source-based methods. Our article describes the main markers with the help of which a comprehensive assessment of socio-economic changes in the studied territory will be carried out over a long chronological period. Based on the results of the work, it was concluded that statistical sources of the first half of the XIX century have a wide range of information opportunities for the history of socioeconomic processes that took place on the territory of the county. The obtained information is well combined with the information from mass sources of the XVII-XVIII centuries, without violating the basic methodological principles, but only expanding the possibilities of applying this approach to other territories located near or bordering the Belgorod line.