Rural settlement network of Tarsky district (uyezd) at the end of the XIX – first third of the XX centuries: patterns and features of transformation

Tatarnikova Anna Ivanovna PhD in History Senior Scientific Associate, Tobolsk Complex Scientific State of Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 626152, Russia, Tyumen region, Tobolsk, Ak. Yu. str. Osipova, 15 tatob777@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Saifulina Nadezhda Alekseevna PhD in Law Assistant professor; Department of History, Law, Socio-Economic Disciplines and Teaching Methods; Tyumen State University 626150, Russia, Tyumen region, Tobolsk, Znamensky str., 58 tigrtop@mail.ru

Introduction

One of the most important indicators of economic development and development of any territory is the established settlement system, which includes a network of urban and rural settlements of various types. The density of the settlement network, the peculiarities of land use and economic specialization of settlements, the degree and nature of the relationships between them, as well as transport accessibility and the level of development of social infrastructure largely determine the economic and socio-cultural appearance of the region in which this settlement network operates. At the same time, the economic and socio-cultural characteristics of the territory as a whole and the settlement network as an integral part of it are influenced by the settlement policy of the state, the assessment by central and local authorities of the prospects for further development of the region, the peculiarities of its demographic development, the national composition and cultural traditions of the inhabitants.

In Russia, characterized by the vast extent of its territories, the process of forming a settlement system (initially in the form of folding the framework of the settlement network, later – its further quantitative and qualitative development) was extremely uneven. Thus, at the end of the XIX century, the relatively densely populated central provinces of the European part of the country created a great contrast with its outskirts (Caucasus, Siberia, Central Asia, etc.), where the population density was much lower, and the network of settlements remained sparse.

Attempts to solve the problem of land shortage in the European part of the country by organizing the resettlement of peasants mainly beyond the Urals by the government have changed the picture of settlement on Siberian lands. By the 1890s, the fund of free lands suitable for agricultural work in Western Siberia, where the main flow of "free" and "government" settlers had been going for several previous decades, had significantly decreased. By this time, a relatively dense network of settlements had developed in the southern districts of the Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces, in the Omsk district/county of the Akmola region. The need to solve the agrarian issue forced the Resettlement Department to conduct reconnaissance work in the Tarsky district of the Tobolsk province, according to the results of which a decision was made on the suitability of Tarsky Urmans for settlement. From 1896-1897, the formation of resettlement sites began here, for the settlement of which the state sends immigrants from the forest provinces of European Russia who arrived in Siberia. As a result of the efforts of central and local authorities, the territory of the Tarsky District (Tarsky Priirtyshye) in the 1890s-1920s was subjected to active settlement and economic development, during which a sub-regional settlement system was formed and developed, the basis of which was a network of rural settlements.

The settlement system in the Tarsky District was characterized by similarities with the similar system of the Siberian region and the country as a whole, but, at the same time, had its own specific features due to the natural and climatic features of the territory, most of which was occupied by taiga forests and swamps, the weakness of the development of industry, trade, transport network, polyethnic composition of the population, etc.

The topic of the formation and development of a rural settlement network on the territory of the Tarsky District has not yet received a holistic comprehensive coverage in the research literature. Nevertheless, its aspects such as the formation of resettlement settlements in the district at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, the development of the farm settlement system during the Stolypin agrarian reform were considered by A.D. Kolesnikov ^[9], P. P. Vibe ^[6], D. N. Belyanin ^{[2; 3]}, V. N. Adaev ^[1] and others. The peculiarities of the development of agriculture in Siberia in the 1890s-1920s and the influence of the nature of land use on the typology of settlements were characterized by V. A. Ilyinykh and G. A. Nozdrin ^[8]. Omsk historians E. V. Sokolova ^{[12; 13]} and her student P. V. Bystrova ^[5] studied the role of government and free colonization in the formation of rural settlements in the Tarsky Irtysh region. They also identified the main stages of development of rural settlements in the district. E. V. Titov ^[20], M. L. Berezhnova ^[4], O. A. Gerber and D. G. Korovushkin ^[7] thoroughly investigated the ethnic specifics of the Tar villages.

Of interest are the works of L. N. Mazur ^[10], O. V. Usoltseva ^[21], G. S. Khorokhordin ^[22], devoted to the study of the network of settlements in the Middle Urals, as well as the Tomsk province. The conclusions made by the listed authors allow us to compare the settlement system of the Tarsky District with other regions, to identify common patterns and specifics of its development.

Despite the publications available in historiography, the topic of the formation and development of the settlement network in the Tarsky District has been studied in fragments, there are no generalizing studies tracing the dynamics of the settlement network, its changes in different historical periods under the influence of political, legal, economic and socio-cultural factors.

The purpose of this article is to characterize the patterns of development and transformation of the rural settlement network of the Tarsky district in the period of the late XIX – first third of the XX century.

The study is based on the analysis and comparison of mass statistical data on the settlements of the considered district contained in the "Lists of settlements of the Tobolsk province" for 1893, 1903, 1912 and the "Lists of settlements of the Siberian Territory" for 1926. ^{[18; 16; 17; 15]} The choice of "Lists" as a source base is due to that they allow us to trace changes in the development of the Tar settlements network over several time slices, contain data on the type of settlement, the number of courtyards, the number of inhabitants, the presence of various infrastructure elements in the villages.

The main part

The Tarsky district (1898-1925 – the county) was located in the subtaiga zone of the West Siberian lowland, most of which was characterized by a flat relief, a large number of rivers, lakes, swamps, alternating chernozem, turf-podzolic and gray forest soils.

Settlement and economic development of the territory of the Tarsky Irtysh region by the Russians began at the end of the XVI century, when the Tarsky prison was built (1594), in the vicinity of which about four dozen settlements, villages, churchyards and loans arose during the XVII century ^{[9, pp. 21-22]}. The first settlers were mostly servants, artisans and disgraced people, a few arable peasants. Having received the consent of the local Yasash Tatars, representatives of the listed social groups settled on vacant land near Tara. During the XVIII – first half of the XIX century. in the characterized area, a supporting framework of the settlement network was formed, which included settlements not only of Russians, but also Tatars and Bukharans. The founders of many Russian villages and villages were exiles, free settlers-peasants, runaways.

With the elimination of the military danger from the nomads, the expansion of the boundaries of agricultural and commercial development of the region, settlements-outposts, frontiers, outposts, prisons, characteristic of the stage of military colonization of Siberia, disappeared or changed their status, turning into villages, villages, zaimki, settlements. By 1868, there were 411 settlements in the Tarsky District, which was part of the Tobolsk province, of which 282 (69%) were villages. Also in the district there were 26 villages, 68 settlements, 28 settlements, 2 repairs, 4 settlements and 1 village with the status of a factory ^{[14, p. 164]}. Considering that the area of the Tarsky district in the designated period was about 80,185 km2, one village accounted for 195 km2 ^{[14, p. 2]}. The bulk of settlements were located on the banks of large floating rivers – the Irtysh, Tara, Shisha, Tuya, etc. At the same time, the northern part of the district was populated much weaker than the southern one. In the north there were rare low-court Tatar villages and yurts, the population of which was engaged in fishing activities, mainly hunting.   

Until the 1890s, the settlement of the Tarsk spaces was spontaneous. The main stream of migrants rushed to the southern regions of Western Siberia. The Urmans of the Tarsky district/county were considered unsuitable for agriculture, so the resettlement services carried out land management work and cutting of plots in the forest-steppe zone of the region. The sharp increase in the flow of migrants from European Russia to Siberia, which occurred in 1896-1913, the depletion of free land reserves in the southern districts /counties of Siberia actualized for the government the task of using the taiga part of the Tarsky Irtysh region to establish new settlers on new lands, agrarian colonization of this territory. The efforts of the authorities to settle the taiga lands of the district gave positive results quite quickly. In 1897, 3,223 migrants settled here ^{[19, p. 93]}. In order to more successfully settle the Tarsk Urmans, the local authorities sought to create here a backbone of economically strong settlements in the band of the initial settlement of the taiga. Such settlements became strong points for the further settlement of settlers in the wilderness ^{[11, l. 22 vol.]}.

The systematic settlement of the Tarsk taiga expanses affected the number and typical structure of the settlement network, changed the pattern of the settlement system (Table 1). If in 1893 the basis of the settlement network of the district were villages (almost 77%), and there were only 9 settlements with the status of a settlement (2%), then by 1903 the ratio of villages and resettlement settlements have undergone significant changes: 285 (43.5%) and 196 (30 %) ^{[18; 16]}. During the same period, the number of villages with the status of yurts increased. The settlement network of the characterized territory was replenished with 208 new settlements of various types.  

Table 1

The number of rural settlements of various types in the Tarsky district (county)  (1893-1926) ^{[18; 16; 17; 15]}

In the period from 1903 to 1912, the number of resettlement settlements in Tarsky Uyezd increased from 196 to 310 (1.6 times), and the ratio between villages and settlements turned out to be in favor of the latter. Despite the difficult conditions of resettlement of migrants in the taiga areas (remoteness from neighboring settlements, lack of communication routes, etc.), their number increased from year to year. According to P. P. Vibe, by 1913 there were up to 350 villages in the Tarsk Urmans, where about 80 thousand people lived ^{[6, p. 105]}. Considering that 808 settlements were recorded in the county as a whole in 1912, it can be concluded that approximately 43% of all Tar settlements were located in the taiga part.

The revolutionary events of 1917 and the civil war that followed them led not only to changes in the political system, but also to the breakdown of the economic structure of the country, which especially affected the countryside. Agrarian overpopulation, land redistribution, and a drop in the level of material well-being of peasants stimulated the resettlement movement to Siberia, with which most migrants pinned hopes for improving their situation. In the first decade of its rule, the Soviet government did not hinder, but, on the contrary, promoted the spread of individual land use, continuing the policy on the formation of farms initiated during the Stolypin agrarian reform. As a result, thanks to the twenty-year encouragement of the development of the farm system of farming (1906-1926), significant changes in the settlement system took place in the Siberian region. In addition to the usual villages, villages, settlements, small farms, single-family villages, mills, zaimki began to appear here.

If in 1912 there was not a single village with the status of a farm in the Tarsky Irtysh region, then in 1926 there were 996 (!) ^{[17; 15]}. In total, the share of settlements of the named type in the total number of Tar villages was 51.2%. Most of the farms were located in the Catherine and Znamensky districts of the district (791 and 139 out of 996, respectively). Basically, one or two-yard settlements prevailed in these areas, the population of which ranged from one to thirteen people. In the district as a whole, the size of farms was higher (see Table 2).

The development of a network of farms has made its own adjustments to the system of rural settlement in the Tarsky district. Firstly, the density of the settlement network increased; secondly, its basis began to be not settlements and villages, but farms; thirdly, local mono-ethnic groups of settlements began to form: Latvian, Estonian, German, Polish, Belarusian. From 1912 to 1926, the district's settlement network expanded by 1,138 settlements, and the total number of villages increased 2.4 times. Despite the quantitative growth of villages and villages, their share in the settlement network decreased. At the same time, there was a reduction in the number and proportion of resettlement settlements, lockups, evictions and yurts.

The study of the size of settlements of different types on three time slices (for 1893, 1912 and 1926) showed two contradictory trends. On the one hand, during the period under review, villages that had the status of villages, villages, settlements, yurts were enlarged. As can be seen from Table 2, the indicators of their yard and crowded grew. On the other hand, if we characterize the average size of a typical Tar settlement, then we have to state that it gradually expanded. 

Table 2

The average size of settlements of different types by the number of courtyards and the number of inhabitants in the Tarsky district (county) (1893-1926) ^{[18; 17; 15]}

The reduction in the indicators of the yard (from 51 yards to 43) and the population (from 303 inhabitants to 255) of villages in the period from 1893 to 1912 occurred due to the settlement of urban spaces by immigrants, the formation of a large number of settlements, which in the first years of their existence were relatively small in size (on average 29 yards, 171 inhabitants) ^{[18; 17]}. In the following years (1912-1926), the decline in the average size of the settlement continued due to the appearance of almost a thousand small farms in the district. As a result, by 1926, the average yard of the Tar settlement was 34 yards, the population was 165 inhabitants ^[15].

In comparison with other districts of the southwestern part of the Siberian Territory (Omsk, Barabinsk, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Biysk), the Tarsky district occupied the penultimate place in terms of the size of its settlements, ahead of only Novosibirsk, whose settlements on average numbered 31 households and 147 inhabitants ^[15].

It is important to note that the decrease in the size of settlements in the 1920s was not a specific phenomenon inherent exclusively in the settlement system in the Tarsky Irtysh region. Similar processes took place in most of the subregions of Siberia, with the exception of its northern part, where the small size of villages remained for several centuries.  

In the list of settlements of the Tarsky District for 1926, three communes, a collective farm and a state farm were recorded as separate settlements. The appearance of these types of collective farms and their designation in the source as separate settlements was a consequence of changes in the agrarian policy of the Soviet government, which was looking for optimal forms of organizing life in rural areas corresponding to the tasks of communist construction during the period under review.

The study of district-by-district data on the average size of settlements of various types showed that the villages, villages and settlements of the Muromtsevsky district located on the border of the forest-steppe and taiga zones differed in the largest number and population. So, the average size of the village in this area was 241 yards and 1135 inhabitants; villages – 104 yards, 570 inhabitants; settlements – 49 yards, 242 inhabitants. The smallest size of the villages of the listed statuses was characterized by the network of settlements of the Znamensky district, located in the forest, Urman zone of the district. Here, the village averaged only 96 yards and 471 inhabitants; the village – 44 yards, 229 inhabitants; the village – 17 yards, 90 inhabitants ^[15].

In general, the size of rural settlements was determined not only by the natural and climatic conditions of the area, but also by its transport accessibility, the degree of involvement in trade and economic relations, the traditions of land use of the dominant ethnic group, etc.

As noted above, the development of the farm system contributed to the consolidation of the settlement network of the Tarsky district, whose area by 1926 was 74,632 km2. During this period, there was an average of 38 square kilometers per village, while back in 1912 this figure exceeded 90 km2. ^{[15; 17]}.

The increase in the density of the network of settlements testified to the increasing economic development of Tarsk spaces, the involvement of the territory of the district in the system of socio-economic relations of the region and the country, gave impetus to the development of transport, industrial, commercial and socio-cultural infrastructure.

Conclusion

Summarizing the statistical data presented in the work, conclusions about trends and contradictions in the development of the Tarsk settlements network, it can be noted that the period of the late XIX – first third of the XX century was a time of intensive transformation of the rural settlement system in the Tarsk Irtysh region. It consisted in changes in the typical structure of the settlement network, its number, the size of the constituent units.

For a long time, communal land use prevailed in the characterized territory, giving life to villages, villages, settlements, yurts. The spread of individual land use in the 1910s and 1920s made significant adjustments to the structure of the rural settlement network. Until the early 1900s, it was dominated by villages. In the 1910s, they were displaced by resettlement settlements that arose en masse as a result of the active settlement of Tarsk Urmans by migrants from the European part of the country. In the 1920s, the basis of the settlement network began to be small farmsteads, the appearance of which was first associated with the Stolypin agrarian reform, and later with the more or less loyal attitude of the new Soviet government (in the first decade of its existence) to the individual form of land use.

The policy of the first imperial, then Soviet governments, aimed at encouraging resettlement to the Tarsky uyezd/district, led to the emergence of one and a half thousand new settlements in the region. For thirty-three years (from 1893 to 1926), the number of settlements here has grown 4.3 times (!). At the same time, the greatest growth occurred in 1912-1926 due to the formation of farms.

The farm settlement in the Tarsky district was mainly represented by villages of Latvians, Estonians, Belarusians, and, in smaller numbers, Poles, Germans. Immigrants from the western regions of the country preferred to settle in single-family farms next to their fellow countrymen, which led to the creation of local mono-ethnic groups of settlements. These groups differed from each other by different traditions of farming, peculiarities of house building, organization of everyday life, leisure activities, etc.

With the increase in the number of farms, there was a decrease in the share of villages, villages, settlements and yurts in the structure of the settlement network of the district. However, the number and population of the villages of the listed types continued to grow throughout the period under consideration.

In general, the dynamics of the number and size of rural settlements in the Tarsky District were influenced by the settlement and land management policy pursued by the authorities; the level of development of transport and economic infrastructure; the degree of involvement of the population in the urbanization processes unfolding in the Siberian Region; the ethnic composition of migrants settling on new lands and economic practices adopted in their environment, etc.

In the 1930s, as a result of the policy of collectivization, the settlement of farms, there was a reduction in the number of rural settlements of the Tarsky District, their size decreased. Many mono-ethnic farms and settlements were merged into larger villages and settlements with a mixed ethnic composition of residents. This led to the destruction of cultural, everyday, linguistic and confessional relationships of former migrants who had a common small homeland. At the same time, the outflow of rural population to cities increased, the birth rate began to decline, the destruction of the traditional way of peasant life began, which negatively affected the development of the rural settlement network of the district and its infrastructure.