PERM’ PROVINCE ETHNIC LANDSCAPE IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY: MAPPING INTER-ETHNIC CLUSTERS

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct the ethnic landscape in early 20th century Perm’ province. The methods used by the author were cultural landscape studies, cross-cultural psychology, cartography and historical statistical analysis. The sources were mainly published statistics and maps from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. The author analyzed the province’s ethnic makeup and proposed four wide ethnic groups - Russians, Finno-Permians, Turks and Mansi. This general dataset was decomposed by 482 districts (volost’, the smallest contemporary administrative unit) and was connected with the administrative province map. The visual analysis of this ethnic map enabled the reconstruction of spatial distribution of the peoples of the Middle Urals in the early 20th century, uncovered inter-cultural communication zones, and described the size and character of inter-ethnic contacts. We can conclude that Perm’ province was more ethnically heterogeneous than is shown by published aggregates. According to the 1897 census, the non-Russian population in the province totaled less than 10%. At the same time the districts with fully or partly non-Russian population made up 18,5%. Only two counties out of twelve in Perm’ province were homogeneously ethnic Russian. Others were parts of three big inter-ethnic clusters - western (mainly Finno-Permians and Russians), southern (mainly Russians, Turks and Finno-Permians) and eastern (mainly Russians and Mansi) or had non-Russian enclaves inside themselves.