The professional composition of the population of the Kalmyk steppe of the Astrakhan province based on the materials of the 1897 census: source analysis

Abstract

Currently, researchers are paying special attention to one of the branches of historical science — historical professionology. Research in this area is devoted to the study of the historical development of various types of occupations, professions, the main sources of which are the results of population censuses. This study is devoted to the source analysis of the materials of the First general population census of pre-revolutionary Russia. The subject of the research of the scientific article is the study of the professional structure of the population on the example of the Kalmyk steppe of the Astrakhan province. The research object is the materials of the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire in 1897, since the population census of 1897 became not only the first informative source in the history of the Russian state about the entire population, but also the basis for new promising studies of socio-economic and statistical-demographic conditions. The research methodology includes conducting a source study, within the framework of which one of the stages of source analysis was carried out — an analysis of the content of census materials for the Astrakhan province, providing for the use of structural and functional analysis, historical and comparative method and classification method, which allowed to identify the information potential for studying the occupations of the population of the Kalmyk steppe. The novelty of this scientific article lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian historiography, a critical analysis of the professional composition of the population of the Kalmyk steppe of the Astrakhan province was carried out at the end of the XIX century. The author came to the conclusion that the Astrakhan province has been in economic development since the beginning of its successful colonization in the XVI century. It became an agricultural and cattle-breeding region of Russia, in which the migrant population from virtually agricultural provinces, while continuing to preserve the traditional type of their occupations, was reorganized, adapting to local types of management in the new conditions of the capitalistically transforming All-Russian market. This could not but influence nomadic farming, in particular the Kalmyks, which contributed to the transition to a pastoral and agricultural form of farming in the Kalmyk steppe, and subsequently to a sedentary lifestyle. The research was carried out through the implementation of the project of the Russian Scientific Foundation No. 23-18-20019 "Between East and West: the civilizational and cultural development of Kalmyk society as part of pre-revolutionary Russia" (https://grant.rscf.ru/project/23-18-20019 /).