Sergey Vadimovich Vinogradov,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Astrakhan State University named after V.N. Tatishchev, Astrakhan, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Yuliya Gennadevna Yeshchenko,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Astrakhan State University named after V.N. Tatishchev, Astrakhan, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
State Policy to Create a New Migration Model in the Russian Empire in the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-4-9
The article analyzes the main components of migration policy implemented in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Within the framework of the concept of three stages of the migration process the authors characterize the migration model that developed during the period under study, which implied planning (development of the main directions of state migration policy); organization of the movement of labor resources (creation of appropriate management and administrative structures); consolidation and adaptation of migrants (providing benefits to migrants, debt forgiveness, loans for the initial settlement). Before the peasant reform, the main task of the government, which defended in its domestic policy the interests of, primarily, the landowning nobility, was the retention of peasants in the landed estates through the system of serfdom. Under these conditions, internal migration developed poorly and the vast peripheral territories that entered the Russian Empire in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were developed and populated very slowly. The main sources of settlement in the new lands were: 1) “free migration”, consisting of runaway serfs, former soldiers and representatives of free estates, such as merchants, Cossacks, etc.; 2) peasant migration, which implied the resettlement to new lands of state peasants, who were forced to do so on a mandatory basis by the state authorities. But these sources, given the vastness of the developed territories, were clearly insufficient. The development of a new migration model was due to a change of vector in the socio-economic development of the country. Its difference from the previous model was the emergence of the labor market and, accordingly, an increase in migration flows to the outskirts in the context of a shortage of agricultural land and the relative overpopulation of villages in the old agrarian areas. In the emerging new system of socio-economic relations, the state, interested in the rapid development of the peripheral territories, had to regulate the movement of migration flows, setting them in the right direction. For this purpose at the level of the central state apparatus specialized administrative bodies were created to organize the movement of migrants. The main source of internal labor migration in the period under study were former serfs.
Publishing: 28/08/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 02/04/2023
How to cite: Vinogradov S.V., Yeshchenko Yu.G. State Policy to Create a New Migration Model in the Russian Empire in the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 4 (30), pp. 116–132. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-4-09.pdf]
This work has been supported by the grants the Russian Science Foundation No. 23-28-00547 “Model of Regulation of Labor Mmigration in the Russian Empire in 1861–1914 (By the Example of the Formation of Industrial and Commercial Clusters of the Volga-Caspian Fishing Region)”: https://rscf.ru/en/project/23-28-00547/.
Links: Issue 4 2023
Keywords: migration model; state policy; migration policy; post-reform period; resettlement; development; colonization