Some Trends in the Movement of the Population of the Indigenous Peoples of the Irkutsk Province at the Turn of the XIX-XX Centuries in the Context of Changing the Systems of Traditional Economy

Abstract

The traditional economy of the peoples at the pre-industrial stages of development performs the function of preserving the ethnos since ethnic self-identification in this case is directly related to economic activity (other reliable signs of the ethnos, in addition to self-identification, cannot be objectively identified). Therefore, changes in the traditional economy are reflected in the demographic dynamics. To study this connection it is proposed to use the model of a traditional economy which is a system whose elements are actually economic traditions. The connections that characterize the structure of the system are four factors: the conditionality of economic activities by the environment; subsistence economy; priority of public interests over individual interests in the process of economic activity; and rationality of economic activity manifested in a complex of ecological traditions. At the turn of the XIX–XX, the traditional economy of the Tofalar and Evenks of the Irkutsk province transformed its main method of nature management — from consumer hunting to commercial hunting. Some groups of Western (Irkutsk) Buryats changed the form of the production mode and transitioned from cattle breeding to agriculture: in most territorial groups, agriculture had previously been the main method of nature management; in the course of the transformation, agriculture had moved to the forefront of the traditional economy. The change in the method of nature management among the Evenks and Tofalar led to the destruction of two of the four main structural ties of the traditional economy system — the subsistence economy and the priority of public interests over individual which became one of the reasons for the negative dynamics of population movement. The change in the form of nature management among some groups of the Buryats and the intensification of agriculture in the other contributed to the stabilization of their numbers since those changes did not pose a threat to the structural ties of the traditional economy system.