The ethnic and religious composition of the population of Penza province at the beginning of the 20th century: challenges of the time

Abstract

Background. The socio-cultural and economic processes of the beginning of the 20th century had a huge impact on the further development of Russian society and largely determine the present, especially now against the background of growing social and ethnic conflict. The purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of external and internal factors on the change in the religious and ethnic composition of the region. Materials and methods. The implementation of research tasks was achieved by identifying and analyzing docu-ments extracted from the funds of the State Archive of the Penza Region, as well as processing materials from the general population census and statistical yearbooks. The meth-odological basis is the principles of historicism, objectivity, consistency and reliance on historical sources. Results. The regional material examined the factors that influenced the change in the religious and ethnic composition of the region, the degree of their influence on the indicated processes. Changes in the ethnic composition of the population were re-vealed. Conclusions. Even such a powerful external factor as the World War I was, could not significantly change the existing ethno-religious balance of the Russian province. This was due to the fact that demographic processes are quite inert and short-term shocks are not enough to change the trend that has been forming before for decades.

Keywords

• penza province
• national composition
• world war i
• refugees
• prisoners of war