Vyatka peasants-settlers in Bashkiria in the post-reform period (60–90ss of the 19th century)

Abstract

Background. Comprehension of the current state of calm multinational environ-ment of Bashkortostan, which ranks second in Russia in terms of diversity of national com-position after Dagestan, presupposes knowledge of the specifics issue of the settlement in Southern Urals by Russian peasants and other peoples of European Russia and the Urals during the imperial period. The purpose of the work is to analyze the reasons for the resettle-ment of peasants of Vyatka province to the Southern Urals and to identify the specifics of the settlement within the Ufa province of Vyatka migrants, representing the main stream of new-comer peasants who arrived in post-reform times from Central Russia, the Volga region and the Urals to the Bashkir region, where a huge colonization land fund was formed since 60s of the 19th century. Materials and methods. The achievement of the set objectives was achieved using the unpublished documents extracted from the funds of the State Archive of Orenburg Region and the Scientific Archive of the Republics of Bashkortostan. The method-ological substrate represents the combined use of the principle of historicism in its traditional format with genetic, comparative historical and statistical methods, coupled with the general scientific dialectical method; this methodological approach makes it possible to consider the reasons for the exodus of Vyatka settlers to the Southern Urals, in specific historical context. Results. It has been established that difficult natural and climatic conditions with poor agri-cultural practices determined the crisis of the patriarchal farming system in the Urals and caused an outflow of the surplus peasant population to Bashkiria, famous for its rich black soils. It is shown that the Vyatka settlers settled mainly in the Ufa and Birsk districts, whose landscape was similar to the climate of the Vyatka province. Conclusions. The study of the migration movement from the Western Urals to the Southern Urals in the post-reform period allows us to better understand the complex reasons for the migration of peasants in general from European Russia and the Western Urals to the Bashkir region, the main object of peasant colonization of that time, and to understand the degree of contribution of the newcomer peas-antry to the positive development of the agricultural economy of the South Urals, the expan-sion of sown areas and mutually beneficial ethnocultural interaction between settlers and Bashkir patrimonial people.

Keywords

• peasant resettlement
• vyatka province
• ufa province
• ufa county
• latrines
• causes of resettlement
• government lands
• land management