Vladimir Alexandrovich Zverev,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Demography of the Tobolsk Province in the Late Imperial Period: The First Step from Tradition to Modernity
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-4-12
The aim of the study is to reveal and interpret the quantitative parameters of the process of renewal of generations of Tobolsk Province residents at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries in the light of the theory of demographic transition. For the first time in historiography, absolute values and general coefficients of natural movement (marriage, fertility, mortality, natural increase) of the population of the province are calculated and put into diachronic series. An analysis of the constructed series was made and the situation in Tobolsk Province was compared with neighboring sub-regions and European Russia. It has been established that during the period under study in the province, as in other regions of the country, there was an expanded reproduction of the population. In 1884–1914, its total number increased at an average annual rate of 101.7 % – slower than in Siberia as a whole, but faster than in European Russia. There was a very high level of marriage, fertility and mortality, which is a clear sign of the traditional type of population reproduction. For every 1,000 people annually there were an average of 9.3 marriages, 55 babies were born, and 41 people died (most of whom were the same babies). In other areas of Siberia and especially in European Russia, the corresponding figures were still lower. Charts with added linear trends show the general directions of changes that have taken place. The marriage rate declined over time. Mortality was definitely decreasing, despite temporary spikes. On the contrary, the birth rate increased due to some improvement in the welfare of the population and the influx of relatively young immigrants from European Russia into the province. The opposite direction of the mortality and procreation trends gave rise to an upward trend in natural population growth, which on the eve of World War I was approaching the scale of a demographic “explosion”. In the years 1884–1914, the surplus of births over deaths accounted for 79 % of the total population growth in the province, with only 21 % coming from the influx of immigrants from European Russia. Thus, in the late imperial period in Tobolsk Province, as well as in the entire Russian Empire, the traditional, high-cost type of physical reproduction of the population dominated. However, there were signs of its crisis. The population was drawn into the initial phase of the demographic transition in its “English” version, which implies a time lag between the moments when mortality and fertility began to decline.
Publishing: 28/08/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 11/06/2023
How to cite: Zverev V.А. Demography of the Tobolsk Province in the Late Imperial Period: The First Step from Tradition to Modernity // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 4 (30), pp. 167–180. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-4-12.pdf]
Links: Issue 4 2023
Keywords: population; marriage; mortality; fertility; natural increase; the natural movement of the population; population reproduction; demographic transition