Abstract

The problem of migration processes in the Russian North received wide coverage in the academic literature. M.K. Lyubavskiy, M.M. Bogoslovskiy, N.V. Ustyugov, P.A. Kolesnikov, A.A. Preobrazhenskiy and many other scholars identified the scale, direction, causes and consequences of the movements of peasants both in its territory and beyond it. However, the question of local peasant migrations rarely fell within the historians’ sphere of interest. It is only recently that scholars have addressed this aspect. The purpose of this article is to study peasant migrations within the Ustyug uyezd (district) in the 17th century. The territorial framework of the study case encompasses the Votlozhemskaya and Shemogodskaya volosts, as well as the Sukhonskiy Novovyshlyy, Yarokurskiy and Vondokurskiy stans. The source base of the research is represented by the cadastral and census books of 1623–1626, 1646, 1658, 1667, and 1678. To identify and study local migrations in a volost, an anthroponomic method was used, the essence of which is to compare the names of the residents of peasant households based on various censuses. In this way genealogical schemes were created and subsequently analyzed. As a result, the following conclusions have been drawn. In the 17th-century Ustyug uyezd there was a relatively low level of stability in the rural population. Only 37 percent of peasant families recorded in the 1678 book lived in their villages at the time of the censuses of 1640–1660s. 15 percent of families changed their place of residence within the studied volosts. These moves were mainly related to family circumstances: household division and assistance to incapacitated family members. In addition, some migrations were caused by economic ruin. The analysis of the directions of local migration inside the volost showed that the peasants preferred to move to nearby villages, and there was a kind of “interchange” between settlements. In general, the rural population of the Russian North was very mobile, and it was not uncommon for peasants to move home.