Population of the Russian Empire (1897-1917). Population of the Russian Empire Population of the Russian Empire in 1913

A.G. Rashin Population of Russia for 100 years (1813 - 1913)
Statistical essays

CHAPTER 1

DYNAMICS OF TOTAL POPULATION IN RUSSIA for 1811 - 1913

In statistical materials on the population of Russia for the indicated period, there are significant discrepancies in dynamic indicators and a number of other significant shortcomings. Therefore, in this chapter, much attention is paid to the review and critical characterization of the main sources about the population of Russia. Our calculations regarding the total population of Russia as a whole and for individual districts and provinces for this period were mainly based on data for three dates - 1811, 1863 and 1913. Let us first consider the sources of population data for the indicated three dates.

Let us turn to the sources of information about the population of the European part of Russia in 1811 and 1816. For the initial period of our study, we used population calculations based on the materials of the 6th and 7th revisions. It should be pointed out that while for some revisions there are special studies, for example, for the 5th revision - the work of E. Dehn, the 9th - P. Koeppen, the 10th - A. Troinitsky, for the 6th and 7th th revisions, no special works were published, except for a general article on the revisions of P. I. Koeppen. A number of materials from these revisions are available in numerous publications (articles and books by K. Herman, E. Zyablovsky, K. Arsenyev, and others).

The 6th revision was made in 1811, and the 7th revision - in 1815. About the reasons that prompted a new revision after such a short time, P. I. Koeppen wrote: “This new national census was undertaken on the occasion of the loss in people from the invasion of the enemy, in order to cancel the payment for the lost souls, especially painful because this loss happened in the first year of the new revision.

About the technical organization of the 6th and 7th revisions, V. Plundovsky wrote: “Tales were written, as before, by landlords, magistrates, town halls, rural authorities ..., but only in double numbers ... were submitted ... to a special revision commission, which was established at the time of the census in every county town.

The audit commission compiled a statement in the following form:

The Treasury Chamber, compiling a listing sheet of the province from these statements, added a column in which the figure of the tax was indicated (in rubles and kopecks) ".

Further, Plandovsky noted: “Although the manifestos of both revisions (6th and 7th) were ordered to write “cash people” in fairy tales, however, as before, one legal (assigned) population was copied, and not the actual one; in the tale, in addition to the actual registered population, those who were temporarily absent were also recorded, since taxes were always collected from those temporarily absent at the place of their settlement.

To clarify the question of how complete the indicators of the 6th revision on the population were, general information on the population by sex, published by K. Arsenyev, deserves attention. The latter pointed out that, starting from the 3rd revision, women were included in revision tales. But in all the first four audits, no separate count of women was made; she was mechanically taken equal to the number of men. Only from the 5th revision we find different data on the number of men and women. According to the materials of the 5th and 6th revisions, women were not fully counted, as a result of which the predominance of the number of women, which is usual for subsequent censuses, is not shown. This can be seen from the following data:

Thus, there were 94.2 women per 100 men in 1796 and 97.4 in 1812.

The data for 1812 are especially doubtful, since as a result of the large losses of the male part of the population in the war, it could be expected that the absolute number of women would exceed the number of men. It is obvious that the total population according to the data of the 5th and 6th revisions is somewhat underestimated due to the underestimation of the female population.

S. A. Novoselsky, recalling the usual ratio of born “104-105 boys per 100 girls”, wrote about the completeness of registration of born girls among the Orthodox population in the first half of the 19th century: “Similar, less satisfactory registration of births (probably also deaths) girls than boys was also observed among the Orthodox population at the beginning of the 19th century, when the “male soul” was of greater importance as a taxable unit in landlord life than the “female soul”. The ratio of those born by sex among the Orthodox population of Russia for the first half of the 19th century is expressed by the following numbers:

Registration of girls born in the first three decades of the 19th century. was certainly incomplete. But, if we take into account that the data on the population of some provinces, mainly the western ones, were exaggerated (as will be shown below), then it can be assumed that the population figures based on the materials of the 6th and 7th revisions, generally close to reality.

To determine the population of European Russia by the end of the pre-reform period of serfdom and the beginning of the post-reform period of capitalist development, we used the materials of the Central Statistical Committee on the population for 1863. ., said: “The figures proposed in the previous tables are taken from the annual information delivered to the Central Statistical Committee by the provincial Statistical Committees. These figures are not entirely uniform for various reasons; because the method of calculation is not the same in all places, since in some provinces information about the actual population served as the basis, and in others, for example. registration information. In some cities, the population figure is the result of more or less correct censuses. Almost all the figures in the population tables refer to the end of 1863." .

The basis of the indicators on the population in 1863 was the materials received through the administrative and police agencies.

Assessing the administrative-police method of calculating the population, the outstanding Russian statistician P.P. Semenov, in the preface to the “Statistical Time Book of the Russian Empire”, emphasized that in practice it is based on household lists, from which the dead and discharged from rural society are excluded annually, and those born are added. and newly assigned to volosts or rural communities.

From this he concluded: “Regarding the main mass of the rural population, that is, the tax-paying estates attached to the area by registration and living in it, the method we are considering represents, in comparison with revisions, no less, and even to some extent a greater degree of fidelity » .

It is also necessary to take revenge that in some cases the moments of the accounting procedure prevented the establishment of the correct dynamic indicators of the population for 1811-1863. So, in particular, we point out that in some provinces the data on the population size turned out to be lower on subsequent dates compared to the data for previous years. The attraction of additional statistical and economic materials for the indicated provinces convinced that there was actually no decrease in the population. Comparison of indicators for several dates led to the assumption that the population on the initial dates was often exaggerated to some extent, this was especially observed in the western provinces.

To assess the reliability of data on the population of Russia for the period 1863-1897. the remarks of the well-known statistician V. G. Mikhailovsky deserve attention. In one of the first articles devoted to the results of the 1897 census, he wrote: “The first census of the population of Russia, expected by everyone with such impatience, probably disappointed very, very many representatives of not only educated society, but also science: the opinion that the census would reveal a complete the inconsistency of the previous data of Russian demography is decisively not justified by the results of the now published preliminary calculations of local commissions, at least in relation to the total population of our fatherland.

It has already been pointed out in the press that the data of the Central Statistical Committee both on the total population of the 50 provinces of European Russia, and on the population of individual provinces in the years following the 1897 census, were exaggerated mainly due to incorrect accounting of the mechanical movement of the population.

As can be seen from the work of B. P. Weinberg in the Yearbook. Russia", in the explanations for the numerical data on the annual population growth until 1909, there was the phrase: "Mechanical movement was not taken into account, for lack of data on this issue." Since 1909, this phrase has been replaced by another: "Mechanical movement was taken into account only where there was also some data on this issue." But it is difficult to say exactly what data on resettlement and how they were entered into the tables on the actual population on January 1 of each year, since, as Weinberg noted, “even the data on resettlement that are placed in the same Yearbook do not agree well with the comparison population in various provinces in successive years.

The following data also testify to the exaggerated estimates of population growth by the Central Statistical Committee for the period after the 1897 census.

In the "Statistical Yearbook of Russia for 1914" indicated that population growth (as a result of natural and mechanical movement) on average for 1908-1913. in European Russia per 1,000 inhabitants was 19.6. Meanwhile, the natural increase in the population of European Russia for certain years was as follows:

table 2

On average, over the years under consideration, the natural increase in population per 1,000 inhabitants of European Russia was only about 16. Therefore, it can be recognized that the above data of the Central Statistical Committee for 1908-1913. are undoubtedly exaggerated.

Let us give other arguments to show how incorrect are the CSK calculations of the dynamics of the population of Russia for the period after the 1897 census. According to the "Statistical Yearbook of Russia for 1916" we have compiled the following table for 1897-1916. (in the table, the absolute data on the population of Russia are given according to the data of the CSC, the growth for the year was calculated by us on the basis of these data):

Table 3

From this table it can be seen that according to the materials of the Central Committee, the population growth for 1908-1913. averaged 2.3% per year.

How exaggerated the indicator of the average annual population growth in Russia was can be judged by comparing this indicator with the natural increase in the population of 50 provinces of European Russia, the Caucasus and Siberia over these years.

Table 4

Natural population growth in the specified territory for 1908-1913. only slightly exceeded 1.6%.

Some local publications also noted the exaggerated calculation of the population of individual provinces by the Central Statistical Committee. So, in the "Zemsky collection of the Chernigov province" for 1914, data are given on the movement of the population of the Chernigov province for 1870-1911, calculated by the Central Statistical Committee. At the same time, it was stated: “Since in recent years there has been no accurate accounting of the population, and its number was calculated by adding the average annual increase, it is not possible to judge a real increase or decrease in the population. According to the Central Statistical Committee, the population of the Chernigov province. was estimated at 3 million 31 thousand souls, and according to the local provincial Statistical Committee at 2 million 826 thousand souls of both sexes. It can be assumed that the last figures are much higher than the actual ones. . Having cited data on the population of the Surazh district from various sources, the authors of Zemsky Sbornik noted that such a huge difference is apparently due to a very significant number of those who moved out of this district and until 1909 were not taken into account.

How exaggerated the estimates of the population of individual provinces can be, if the size of the migrations are not taken into account, can be judged from the following data. Based on published materials on resettlement to Siberia from eight provinces in 1906-1912. the following table has been compiled:

Table 5

Thus, on average for seven years (1906-1912), out of the annual population growth, 50.7% moved to Siberia from the Poltava province, 48.2% from Chernigov, and 37.1% from Kharkov. In the other five provinces cited, the proportion of those who resettled was also significant.

The calculations of the CSK on the population for 1914-1916 also seem to be undoubtedly incorrect. - the years of the First World War. According to these calculations, the population of Russia (together with Poland) in 1916 compared with 1913 was 10,634.9 thousand people more. Meanwhile, the significant military losses of these years, as well as a sharp drop in the birth rate during the war years, are well known. In the work of A. Ya. Boyarsky and P. P. Shusherin, it is said: “According to the available data, in 7 provinces of tsarist Russia, the birth rate by 1917 compared with 1914 had halved. If, out of caution, we assume that the birth rate decreased during the war years by one third of the usual number of births per year, then in 4 years we will get a loss in the number of births for Russia equal to at least 9-10 million. . According to S. A. Novoselsky, the deficit of those born in Russia without Poland for 3 years (1915-1917) was 6.5 million people. .

The size of the error in the calculations of the Central Statistical Committee of the population of 50 provinces of European Russia (due to the underestimation of the mechanical movement of the population) can also be partly judged from the materials presented in the next chapter on migrations to Siberia.

At one time, S. A. Novoselsky published a table of absolute and relative indicators of population movement in 50 provinces of European Russia over a long period (1867-1912). At the same time, he pointed out: “In the table below, the population figures of 50 provinces of European Russia are calculated for individual years according to the calculation by the middle of each given year according to data on natural increase, and, as far as possible, the figures of emigration and resettlement to Siberia are taken into account. According to these calculations, the population of 50 provinces of European Russia in the middle of 1912 is estimated at approximately 119,800,000, and this figure is undoubtedly closer to reality than, for example, the figure given in the yearbook of Russia in 1912, according to which the population of 50 provinces of European Russia to at the beginning of 1912, it reaches 122,550,700. The latter figure not only does not take into account emigration and resettlements to Siberia, but significantly exceeds even the population figure according to the census + natural increase since the census. Since there is almost no immigration in Russia, this figure cannot but be recognized as extremely exaggerated.

After these preliminary remarks, let us turn to the main indicators of the dynamics of the population of Russia for 1811-1913. On Significant Differences in the Rates of Population Growth in Russia for the Period 1811-1863. and the post-reform period can be judged from the following data on the dynamics of the population of Russia (excluding Poland and Finland) from 1811 to 1913.

Table 6

The table shows that the absolute increase in the population of Russia and its rate for the second period (1863-1913) were much higher compared to the corresponding indicators for the first period (1811-1863). Consequently, over the 102 years under consideration, the population of Russia increased by 111 million 637 thousand, or 3.55 times, and the population growth due to the inhabitants of the annexed territories was relatively limited over this century.

The observed significant differences in the population growth rates of 50 provinces of European Russia for the periods under review are also evidenced by the following data relating to 52 years of the pre-reform period (from 1811 to 1863) and 50 years of the post-reform period (from 1863 to 1913):

Table 7

Dynamics of the population of 50 provinces of European Russia for 1811-1913.

Consequently, the total population of European Russia increased from 1811 to 1913 by almost 80 million people, or 191.3%; %, and for 50 years of the second period - 60.6 million people, or 99%; the rate of population growth in the second period was more than twice as high as in the first period. There was a significant difference in the rate of population growth in individual districts and provinces of the country.

Data on the population of Russia (excluding Poland and Finland) for the post-reform period for four dates - 1863, 1885, 1897 and 1913. are shown in the following table:

Table 8

Dynamics of the population of Russia for 1863-1913.

The population of Russia (without Poland and Finland) for the period from 1863 to 1913 increased by 122.2%, in particular, from 1897 to 1913 - by 33.7%. The population growth was higher in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Steppe region. Here, the influence of resettlements to these areas from the inner provinces mainly affected. With regard to the Caucasus, it should be noted the increased rates of population growth in the Kuban, Terek regions and the Stavropol province. So, from 1863 to 1913, in this part of the Caucasus, the population increased by 4.37 times, in the rest of the Caucasus - by 2.48 times. In the Central Asian regions, there was also an increase in population due to the inhabitants of the new territories included in Russia.

The proportion of the entire population of 50 provinces of European Russia in relation to the total population of Russia decreased from 95.7% in 1861 to 78.4% in 1913. This can be seen from the following table:

Table 9

for 1811-1863

Along with the above general characteristics of the dynamics of the population of Russia for 1811-1913. of considerable interest are the data on changes in the size of the population, taken separately for the pre-reform and post-reform eras. At the same time, for both periods - 1811 -1863. and 1863-1913 - Significant unevenness in the rate of population growth in individual provinces and districts should be avenged.

Let us turn to the materials for 1811-1863. We give changes in the population for the pre-reform era for three more fractional periods: 1811-1838, 1838-1851. and 1851 - 1863 The corresponding indicators are given in table. ten :

Table 10

Dynamics of the population of 49 provinces of European Russia for 1811-1863

Data on the population of three Belarusian and three Lithuanian provinces are considered together, since during 1811-1863. repeatedly there were changes in the composition of these provinces - the transition of counties from one province to another.

Data for the Samara, Saratov and Simbirsk provinces are also given together, since the Samara province was formed in 1851 from the counties of the Saratov, Simbirsk and Orenburg provinces.

The table shows that with an average population growth of 46% in some provinces, the population increased by 2-3 times over the period under review, and in some provinces the increase was very insignificant or even a decrease in population.

From the first group, a number of southern provinces should be noted - the Land of the Don Cossacks, Kherson, Tauride, some provinces of the Volga region and Orenburg, where at that time immigrants from other regions of the country were sent.

Of the provinces with a low increase or even with a decrease in population for 1811-1863. Tula, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Pskov, Smolensk, as well as Belarusian and Lithuanian provinces stood out.

K. Arseniev argued that during the period from the 6th to the 7th revisions there was a slight decrease in the population of Russia. “The sixth revision in 1812 showed:

19,100,000 - male

18,600,000 - female

Total 37,700,000 of both sexes

Subsequently, K. Arseniev wrote that within three years from 1812 to 1816 the population decreased by 1 million.

P. I. Koeppen, during his trips around Russia, collected and then published the following data on the change in the size of the taxable population for the period between the 6th and 7th revisions:

Table 11

According to these data, the population in the Moscow and Novgorod provinces has noticeably decreased. In addition, P. I. Keppen also cited data extracted from the book “Short Notes to the Statistical Table of the District Entrusted to the Supervision of Lieutenant General Balashov” (Moscow, 1823, pas 11 and 12). Concerning the question of changes in the population in the provinces located to the south and southeast of Moscow, Koeppen wrote: as a necessary consequence of the heavy people's war that took place near these places in 1812. On the contrary, in the province of Tambov, where the traces of this war were not so sensitive, it increased. In Voronezh, it remained almost at the same level. ”To prove this, Keppen cited a comparative table of male revision souls (Table 12).

To characterize the changes in population between 1811 and 1838. in table. 10 shows data on the population of 49 provinces of European Russia on both dates indicated, and also calculates the population growth in individual provinces in relative numbers. For 27 years, the population in these provinces of European Russia has increased by 7019.8 thousand people, or 16.8%.

Table 12

The dynamics of the population in individual provinces from 1811 to 1838 differed sharply. Let's take a look at the most important indicators. Increased population growth rates were: Land. Troops of the Don (+ 156.1%), Tauride (+ 104.6%), Kherson (+106.7%) and Bessarabia (+140%). The population increased significantly in Astrakhan (+ 240%) and Orenburg provinces (+ 124.9%). At the same time, the population only slightly increased in the Nizhny Novgorod province (+ 2.7%) and decreased in Smolensk (-10.6%), Kostroma (-5.4%), Kaluga (-7.3%), Yaroslavl (-7, 7%), Pskov (-9.8%) provinces.

Explaining the causes of uneven population growth in some provinces for the period between the 7th and 8th revisions. K. Arsenyev wrote: “We have the largest increase in the number of people in the provinces, mainly engaged in agriculture; manufacturing provinces represent less advantageous proportions in terms of population multiplication; the most insignificant successes are noticeable in those provinces that release numerous crowds of their inhabitants for various trades and earnings in all parts of the state, especially in the capital: this can and should explain the reason for the poor multiplication of people in the provinces of Vladimir, Kostroma and Yaroslavl. As for the extremely high proportion of the growth of the people in the provinces of Orenburg and Saratov, this comes especially from the great multitude of migrants who come here every year from internal land-poor, populous provinces.

Let's move on to characterizing the changes in population over the period 1838-1851. Let us first consider some materials on the sources of information about the population for these years.

P. Koeppen's study "On the People's Censuses in Russia" gives a detailed description of such a source as the annual listing of the number of souls and taxes, which were submitted by the state chambers to the Ministry of Finance.

“In these statements,” as Keppen writes, “having a special column for each county town and each county, all residents of the taxable state, paying unequal tax with others, are written in a special article. The entire statement is divided into three parts, so that taxes are paid in the first, preferential in the second, and those not included in the salary are shown in the third. It would be unfair to doubt the fidelity of the testimony in the first two departments, which is why it can be assumed that all data on the number of tax-paying and privileged persons are quite accurate, but the testimony on the number of non-paid persons (clergy, nobility, raznochintsy, cantonists, etc.) can only be accidental true; in general, they can be considered approximate. Regardless of this, the statements on the number of souls and taxes submitted by the Treasury Chambers are for the statistician, under the present circumstances, the most reliable of all sources that he can use to find out the total number of male residents in the provinces and in Russia in general "

It was these listing statements of the state chambers on the number of souls and taxes that Koeppen mainly used in research on the number of inhabitants in Russia in 1838.

In another study, The Ninth Revision, when characterizing the sources of information, P. Koeppen pointed to the listing of the number of souls (male) and taxes for the second half of 1851 and to the reports of the state chambers on the results of the 9th national census.

Given the positive assessment of the materials of the state chambers on the size of the entire population, given by such an authoritative statistician. P. Koeppen, we considered it possible to use these materials to clarify the question of what changes occurred in the population of European Russia from 1838 to 1851.

In table. 10 shows data on the population in 1838 and 1851. for individual provinces, as well as calculated indicators of population growth for this period. The population of 49 provinces of European Russia increased from 1838 to 1851 by only 8.3%. It is likely that this increase is somewhat underestimated, since for some northwestern provinces, for example, Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Grodno, the population data for the initial date - in 1838 were shown to be higher than in 1851.

Population growth rates in the group of southern provinces (Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, Land of the Don Cossacks) and in the provinces of the Volga region turned out to be higher as a result of continued migration to these provinces from other regions of Russia.

The increased rate of growth in the Astrakhan province is partly due to the fact that the Tsarevsky district was included in this province.

In a large number of provinces, however, the population growth during this period was the lowest in comparison with other years of the pre-reform period.

The slow growth of the population of Russia between the 8th and 10th revisions was significantly influenced by the particularly difficult economic conditions of the life of the landlord peasants.

The summary table, compiled on the basis of materials published in the article by V. I. Semevsky "Peasants of various names", shows the dynamics of the number of landowners and all other groups of male peasants according to three revisions: 6th, 7th and 10th.

Table 13

There are sharp differences in the movement of the number of the two groups of peasants under consideration, especially during the period from 1835 to 1859, when the number of landlord peasants remained almost stable, and the number of the consolidated group of non-serf peasants increased from 10,550 thousand to 12,800 thousand, or by 21 .3%. Over the entire period (1812-1859), the number of male landlord peasants increased by 4.2%, and male non-serf peasants increased by 69.5%.

V. I. Lenin, in his work “The Economic Content of Populism”, referring to the reasons for the slow growth of the population in the pre-reform period, pointed out: “. The slow growth of the population depended most of all on the intensification of the exploitation of peasant labor, which occurred as a result of the growth of commodity production in the landowners' farms due to the fact that they began to use corvée labor to produce grain for sale, and not only for their own needs.

Even the tsarist minister of finance, Bupge, was forced to admit that the decline in population growth over the 15 years between the 8th and 9th revisions cannot be explained only by such events as wars or cholera epidemics.

The only reason, wrote Bunge, therefore, is to reduce the welfare of the agricultural population, especially the landowning peasants. This is not an unfounded assumption, but an undeniable fact.

Troinitsky explained this phenomenon differently. Recognizing that the birth and death rates among the serfs were more unfavorable compared to the corresponding indicators of other sections of the population, he at the same time argued that: “In any case, the decrease in the composition of the peasant population is due mainly to the transfer of part of this population to other estates".

The transfer of part of the landlord peasants to other estates undoubtedly had some significance, but A. Troinitsky's assertion that transfers to other estates are the main reason for the reduction in the growth of landlord peasants should be recognized as unconditionally wrong. Other facts also deserve attention.

Exceptionally high mortality rates in 1848, as well as in some southern provinces in 1849, are evidenced by the following data cited in the article by V.I. Pokrovsky: only cholera. This year, in 50 provinces of European Russia, 668,012 people died of cholera, while in the Orthodox population alone, the difference between the numbers of deaths in 1847 and 1848 amounted to the disadvantage of the latter, 1,028,830 people. In total, 2,840,354 died in 1848, 2,518,278 were born.

V. I. Pokrovsky gives the following table of births and deaths in some areas of Russia in 1848 per 100 inhabitants:

Table 14

According to Pokrovsky, deaths in southern Russia are due not only to cholera. In 1849, 6,688 people died of cholera in all of Russia, while the number of deaths in Yekaterinoslav province alone reached 116,157 people, or 13.25% of the total population, that is, more than an eighth of the total number of inhabitants of the province died. In addition to cholera, this time the starving population suffered from scurvy.

Tab. 10 on the dynamics of the population of 49 provinces of European Russia from 1851 to 1863 shows that the population of European Russia increased over 12 years by 8311.4 thousand, or by 15.7%. Such an increase in the population of European Russia for the specified period turned out to be compared with the corresponding increase in the first half of the 19th century. higher. Of the indicators for individual provinces, a high rate of population growth in Kherson (+ 49.6%) and Yekaterinoslav (+ 33.5%) provinces should be noted.

In general, the increase in the population of European Russia over the 50 years of the pre-reform era considered was low compared to. corresponding indicators for the fiftieth anniversary of the post-reform era. This is explained, first of all, by the deterioration of the economic situation of the peasantry as a result of intensified exploitation, as well as by wars, crop failures and epidemics.

Based on the data published in the IV edition of the "Military Statistical Collection", the following table was compiled for 1801-1860. about the unfavorable causes that influenced the indicators of the natural movement of the population of Russia in the pre-reform period:

Table 15

The effect of unfavorable conditions on the natural movement of the population of Russia was especially strong in the 1840s. Population growth rates during this decade were very low.

If we compare the above population growth rates with the natural population growth rates in Russia for the first half of the 19th century, cited in a number of publications, in articles and books by authoritative statisticians and economists, then the latter will turn out to be much higher. Therefore, the task of a critical assessment of these indicators of natural population growth and the introduction of possible amendments seemed to us very important.

So, for example, in an article by statisticians-economists V. Pokrovsky and D. Richter “Population Statistics”, the following data were published on the natural movement of the Orthodox population of Russia and for 1801-1860. by decades, calculated on the basis of the reports of the chief prosecutor of the synod:

Table 16

In Russia per 100 inhabitants

Regarding the reliability of this group of dynamic indicators, there were separate critical remarks, but the corresponding corrections were not made to the calculations. It is these demographic indicators for the period under review that appear in a number of historical works. Meanwhile, it seems incredible that, on average, the annual increase in the population of Russia over the first three decades of the 19th century. (1801-1830) amounted to 1.51% and for the second three decades of the XIX century. (1831 - 1860) - 1.18%. These data on the decrease in the natural increase of the population were undoubtedly due in part to the moments of the accounting order; high mortality rates for the second thirty years of the XIX century. appeared as a result of a more correct accounting of the dead. It is difficult to imagine that in reality the mortality rate of the population increased so sharply during this thirty years. The given data show that per 100 inhabitants in 1801 - 1830. there were 2.70 deaths, and in 1831-1860. - 3.74. Obviously, in the first thirty years of the XIX century. the registration of deaths was far from complete.

So, I. Link in the article “On the laws of population movement in Russia” wrote: “In 1799, 540,000 deaths were shown, in 1852, 1,210,000; consequently in thirty-three years the number of deaths more than doubled. This difference would no doubt seem too striking if it could not be partly explained by the fact that accuracy and half a sweat, little known at the end of the last century, were introduced into the official testimony about the number of the dead. In spite of how unsatisfactory even now our metric books are! How many people are still dying now may be unknown in distant travels, field hospitals, battles, etc.

A.P. Roslavsky in the article “Study of the population movement in Russia” also pointed out the incomplete accounting of the dead in the first half of the 19th century: the table on the distribution of the dead by age did not include those who died in the army and navy, who ended their lives in a foreign land, who died from violent death, various accidents and suicides (about 1500 suicides occur annually). Information about the mortality of the latter was not included in the reports delivered to the Holy Synod.

The discrepancies between the data on the population obtained from the materials of the audits and the indicators on the natural movement of the population were repeatedly noted in works on individual provinces.

The founder of Zemstvo sanitary statistics, E. A. Osipov, also considered doubtful and certainly underestimated the mortality rates of the Russian population for the first half of the 19th century cited by Herman, Schnitzler and others. He wrote: ". the surviving data on the mortality rate in Russia for the old years are so contradictory, superficial and doubtful that it is hardly possible to attach any scientific significance to them and substantiate any definite conclusions with them. It is very possible that such favorable mortality rates, as shown by the data of Schnitzler or Hermann, were simply due to a discrepancy between the number of population and the number of deaths, for example. it could be that the deaths were related to the total number of the Russian people, which included the Orthodox and schismatics, meanwhile, those who died among the latter did not fall into the parish registers, which is why the mortality rate should, of course, turn out to be less than the actual "

Based on the materials published in the "Military Sgatisticheskii Sbornik, Russia", we have compiled the following table on the absolute number of births and deaths, as well as on the size of the natural population growth of 50 provinces of European Russia for 1811-1863.

Table 17

Natural movement of the populations of European Russia for 1811-1863. (in thousand)

According to these data, the natural increase was to be 29,964 thousand people. However, this population growth (see Table 10) from 1811 to 1863 by determining the difference between the population in 1811 and 1863. amounted to 19370.3 thousand people. Therefore, one should assume a very significant undercount of the dead during the entire period under consideration, approximately in the range of 12-13%, and this undercount was especially high in the first 30th anniversary of the 19th century.

Even for a later period, due to the insufficient completeness of accounting for the dead, the indicators of natural population growth turned out to be somewhat exaggerated. Thus, in the Statistical Time Book of the Russian Empire, which published data on the population of Russia in 1863, P.P. Semenov wrote: “In relation to the recording of deaths, the drawback, from a statistical point of view, of Orthodox metrics is that since in the metrics only those who were awarded a Christian burial are included in the number of the dead, then not a few dead, such as suicides, persons who died so that their corpses were not found, etc., elude mortal records. We even believe that during severe epidemics and epidemic diseases, with the accumulation of many dead in some parishes, involuntary omissions could occur in the metric records of deaths. Because of these reasons, the excess of those born over those who die cannot be calculated exactly by comparing the numbers of births and deaths; especially in some provinces, in which a significant part of the population is in temporary absences due to the nature of their service (for example, in the Cossack lands) or due to the predominance of seasonal work and dies far from their homeland, the conclusion is about the actual increase in the population, in proportion to the excess of births over dying according to metric books, it would be very erroneous.

In this regard, we consider it possible to counter the incorrect calculations given by V. Pokrovsky and D. Richter about the natural increase in the population of Russia for 1801-1860. other more accurate estimates based on data on the dynamics of the population of 50 provinces of European Russia for 1811 - 1863.

As already mentioned, the corresponding dynamic indicators were calculated on the basis of audit materials and special population estimates. During the period from 1811 to 1863, the population of 49 provinces of European Russia increased by 46.3%. Consequently, the average annual population growth during this time will be determined at 0.73%. Over the course of 53 years, population growth rates have varied significantly from period to period. For 1811 -1816. As a result of the war and its consequences, the population of European Russia generally remained stable or even slightly decreased. For 28 years (1811 -1838) the population growth was 16.8%. The lowest population growth (8.3%) was observed in 1838-1851. As you know, there were frequent crop failures, epidemics and other disasters in these years. And, finally, the population of 49 provinces of European Russia for 1851-1863. increased by 15.7% and the average annual increase over this period was higher and can be calculated at 1.22%.

POPULATION DYNAMICS IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA
for 1863-1913

Let's move on to characterizing the population dynamics for the period 1803-1913. In advance, we consider it necessary to make some more remarks regarding the data we have adopted for 1913. As already indicated, we have two figures for the population of the 50th province of European Russia, while for individual provinces there are only data from the Central Committee.

It should be noted that the data on the absolute population of individual provinces in 1913 are somewhat exaggerated; about the probable extent of these exaggerations, we present the following calculations.

According to the Central Statistical Committee, the total population of 50 provinces of European Russia in 1913 was 126,196 thousand people, and according to the calculations of S. A. Novoselsky, 121,780 thousand people. Thus, the excess, according to the CSC, is 4416 thousand people in absolute numbers, or 3.6%. Despite the fact that the data of the Central Committee for January 1, 1914 turned out to be somewhat exaggerated, nevertheless, they had to be taken for calculating the dynamics of the population, since there are no other summary data on the population of individual provinces for this date. At the same time, without receiving completely accurate data, we still have the opportunity to judge the dynamics of the population,

For the post-reform era of the period of capitalist development of Russia, in addition to the general dynamics of the population of 50 provinces of European Russia for 1863-1913, we also consider it appropriate to dwell separately on dynamic indicators for separate more fractional periods, namely: 1863-1885, 1885- 1897 and 1897-January 1, 1914 (Table 19).

Due to the influence of various factors, the population growth in individual provinces for the period from 1863 to January 1, 1914 was very uneven.

To illustrate this phenomenon, we present the following data (Table 18).

Population dynamics for certain periods is characterized by the following indicators. The population of 50 provinces of European Russia for 23 years (1863-1885) increased by 33.6%. During the years under review, the population increased at a more intensive pace in the group of southern provinces of Tauride (+ 74.7%), the Donskoy Search Region (+ 67.5%) and Kherson (+ 52.4%). The population growth in the Orenburg and Ufa provinces also turned out to be increased (+ 69.1%).

Table 18

The population growth for 1885-1897, which amounted to 14.3%, was generally less significant compared to both the previous period (1863-1885) and the subsequent one (for 1897-January 1, 1914) . At the same time, one can note large differences in the growth of the population of individual provinces over these years. Of the provinces that have significantly increased their numbers, we should again note the group of southern provinces: Don Cossack Oblast (+ 61.2%), Taurida (+ 36.6%) and Kherson (+ 34.8%). Population growth was almost stable in some central and black earth provinces, for example, in Ryazan (+ 1.2%), Tula (+ 0.7%), Yaroslavl (+ 2.0%), Oryol (+ 3 .8%), in Tambov (+ 2.9%), in Kursk (+ 4.6%).

Undoubtedly, this relatively low population growth during the period under review was influenced by crop failure and the famine of 1891.

For individual provinces for the period from 1897 to January 1, 1914. The figures calculated according to the data of the Central Statistical Committee are, of course, exaggerated to some extent. Taking into account the necessary amendments, the population of 50 provinces of European Russia has increased by approximately 30% over 17 years. In contrast to other periods, in the years under review, in general, there were no such sharp differences in the rates of population growth in individual provinces.

Table 19

Dynamics of the population of 50 provinces of European Russia for 1863-January 1, 1914

Since the question of the economy of the Russian Empire in 1913 pops up regularly, I have long wanted to collect good statistics for this period somewhere.
I managed to come across a collection of materials. Spread the revised version (the original was unsuitable for the Internet). There are typos in the text, so it is necessary to monitor the "adequacy" of the numbers. But this is the best that I came across on the net on this issue. In the future, I plan to bring the material to a more readable form.
I would like to hear the comments of economists, especially on the budget of the empire.
I cannot establish who the author of this material is, in case someone points it out, I will gladly insert a link to it.

Russia 1913

Indeed, the pre-war five-year period was the time of the highest, last rise of pre-revolutionary Russia, which affected everything
the most important aspects of the life of the country. The demographic situation in the empire was quite
favorable, although the average annual population growth was somewhat reduced (in
1897-1901 it was 1.7%, in 1902-1906. - 1.68%, in 1907-1911. -
1.65%), which, however, is typical for all urbanizing countries. In connection with
the rapid growth of cities, the proportion of city dwellers is noticeably
increased, amounting, however, to the eve of the war only about 15%
population. Industry developed at a high pace. overcoming
consequences of the severe economic crisis of 1900-1903. and following
him a depression, during the years of the pre-war economic upsurge (1909-1913)
almost 1.5 times increased the volume of production. Moreover,
reflecting the country's ongoing process of industrialization, heavy industry
in terms of growth rates, it noticeably exceeded the light one (174.5% against 137.7%). In terms of the total volume of industrial production, Russia occupied the 5th-6th
place in the world, almost equaling France and surpassing it in a number of
the most important indicators of heavy industry.

There has been a marked increase in agricultural production
all cereals and potatoes, as well as a number of industrial crops: cotton, sugar
beets, tobacco. This was achieved mainly by increasing the area
cultivated land on the outskirts of the empire - Siberia, Central Asia, but in some
least and through higher yields, wider use of machines,
improved implements, fertilizers, etc. increased in absolute
in terms of livestock, although per capita figures continued to
decline steadily. The formation of modern and infrastructure continued -
means of communication, means of communication, credit system. The Russian ruble was considered one
of hard convertible currencies, its gold backing was one of the most
strong in Europe.

Finally, in the field of culture, the government made great efforts to
overcoming the serious ailment of Russian society - low literacy: spending on the Ministry of Public Education has increased since 1900
almost 5 times, amounting to 14.6% of budget expenditures in 1913.

: <авансы>Russia

The pace of economic and cultural development of the country, structural
changes in the national economy seemed so impressive that the chairman
the syndical chamber of Parisian stockbrokers M. Verneil,
who came to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1913 to clarify the conditions for granting Russia
another loan, predicted the inevitable, as it seemed to him, during
over the next 30 years, an enormous rise in Russian industry, which can be
will be compared with the colossal shifts in the US economy in the last third of the XIX
century. The French economic observer actually agreed with him.
E. Teri, who also met on the instructions of his
governments with the state of the Russian economy. His conclusion, made in the book "Russia in 1914. An Economic Review",
read: "... The economic and financial situation of Russia at the present
the moment is excellent, ... it is up to the government to make it even better."
Moreover, he warned: "If the majority
European peoples things will go the same way between 1912 and 1950 as
they went between 1900 and 1912, then by the middle of the present century
Russia will dominate Europe both politically and
economic and financial relations". Professor of the Berlin
Agricultural Academy Auhagen, who examined in
1912 - 1913 a number of provinces of central Russia to study the progress
agrarian reform, completed his analysis thus: "I am finishing my presentation of
opinions about the likely success of the case undertaken by the government, agreeing with
opinion of an outstanding farmer, a native of Switzerland, managing about
40 years of one of the largest estates in Russia in the Kharkov province, that
"25 more years of peace and 25 years of land management - then Russia will become different
country".

These predictions and predictions came true only in part and
not at all in the same way and not in the form as suggested by the above-cited
the authors. History did not give Russia the necessary years of calm and peace -
internal and external. And there are many reasons for this - economic, social,
political, which should be the subject of a special study. Important when
it is correct to assess both the general trends in the development of the country at the beginning of the 20th century and
especially in the pre-war five years, and the specific parameters of the level of this
development in the most important spheres of the life of Russian society. Make it very
not easy, and above all - due to the lack of a compact and affordable
source base.

: Russian statistics are on top

Russian statistics is one of the most complete in
world - on the whole quite adequately reflects the main trends
economic, socio-political and cultural life of society. However, when
In this regard, it should be borne in mind that statistical data were collected by various departments: first of all, the Central
Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, statistical services
other ministries, local governments (zemstvos, city
thoughts), scientific and public organizations, etc. Methodology
and technique of data collection, as well as the territorial scope of the surveys
sometimes varied significantly. For this reason, in
statistical publications sometimes give different figures,
sometimes touching on the same aspects of the life of society, which requires special
attention of researchers to the assessment of the reliability and completeness of the
sources. It is these circumstances that, to a large extent, explain
factual inaccuracies and errors occurring in some modern
publications that touch on certain important problems of history
pre-revolutionary Russia, including the most topical and debatable
issues related to the present.

Departmental disunity, dispersion and
the inaccessibility of statistical materials is also represented by considerable
difficulties for researchers. Relatively few reference books
complex content ("Statistical Yearbook of Russia" - edition
Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, "Statistical Yearbook" - publication of the Council of Congresses
representatives of industry and commerce) are incomplete, and besides, in our time, all
more become rarities. Reprints of pre-revolutionary reference books in
Soviet times were practically non-existent.

The purpose of this publication is to bring together
statistical and reference materials characterizing the most important aspects
life of Russian society on the eve of the First World War and thus give
an opportunity for readers interested in the national history of this period,
form an idea about the level of socio-economic, political
and cultural development of the country, as well as, if possible, the dynamics of this
development at the beginning of the 20th century. For this purpose, pre-revolutionary
reference publications, materials of various departments and public organizations,
both published and archived, as well as the press, regulatory
acts and some studies. In the introductory overviews to the sections and in the notes to
The tables contain the source characteristics of the published materials. Some of the indicators are taken from sources unchanged, some
calculated by the compilers of the collection.

In an effort to avoid imposing on readers their conceptual
representations, compilers as analytical materials, giving, as it were,
the key to the interpretation of statistical tables, used documents
government agencies (for example, state control, department
police) and public organizations (Council of Congresses of Representatives of Industry
and trade). In cases where sources allowed,
comparison of indicators for Russia with corresponding data for other
countries or group of countries.

The handbook consists of two parts. The first presents materials
mainly devoted to demographic and socio-economic issues; in
the second - socio-political and cultural spheres of life of Russian society
eve of the First World War.

The compilers do not claim to exhaustively cover all aspects of the
life of Russia of this time and will be grateful to specialists for criticizing the omissions
and for possible additions that could be used in the subsequent
publishing a handbook if it proves useful and attracts attention
readers.

I.TERRITORY AND POPULATION OF RUSSIA

By the eve of the First World War, the length of the Russian Empire with
north to south was 4383.2 versts (4675.9 km) and from east to west - 10,060
versts (10,732.3 km). The total length of land and sea borders was measured at 64
909.5 versts (69,245 km), of which the former accounted for 18,639.5 versts
(19,941.5 km), to the share of oceans and outer seas - about 46,270 versts (49,360.4
km). These data, as well as figures for the total area of ​​the country, calculated from topographic
maps back in the late 80s of the XIX century by Major General of the General Staff I.A.
Strelbitsky (See: Strelbitsky I.A., Calculus of Surfaces and the Russian Empire
in its general composition in the reign of Emperor Alexander III and adjacent to Russia
Asian states. SPb., 1889. S.2-3), with some subsequent clarifications
(See: Anniversary collection of the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. St. Petersburg, 1913.
Sec. II. C.5) were used in all pre-revolutionary publications. Augmented
materials of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they give a fairly complete picture of the territory,
administrative division, location of cities and towns of the Russian
empire.

Table 1 Space, administrative divisions and placement
settlements of the Russian Empire on January 1, 1914

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Russia. 1914 Edition
CSK MIA. Pg., 1915. Department 1. S. 1-25.

Administratively, the Russian Empire was divided into
99 large parts - 78 provinces, 21 regions and 2 independent districts.
The provinces and regions were subdivided into 777 counties and districts (in Finland,
parishes - 51). Counties and parishes, in turn, were divided into camps, departments and
plots - 2523 (and 274 Leismans in Finland).

Along with this, there were governorships, special administrative
subdivisions - governor generals, in large cities - town authorities.

Viceroyalty: Caucasian (provinces, regions, districts: Baku,
Batumi, Dagestan, Elisavetpol, Kars, Kuban, Kutaisi,
Terek, Tiflis, Black Sea, Erivan; Zagatala and Sukhumi districts
and Baku city authorities).

During the period under review, only one general meeting was held in Russia.
population census (January 28, 1897), which most adequately reflected
size and composition of the inhabitants of the empire.

: As a result, CSK data slightly overestimated
population, and this circumstance should be borne in mind when
the use of these materials (See: Kabuzan V.M. On the reliability of population records
Russia (1858 - 1917) // Source study of national history. 1981 M.,
1982. S. 112, 113, 116; Sifman R.I. The dynamics of the population of Russia for
1897 -1914 // Marriage, fertility, mortality in Russia and the USSR. M., 1977.
S.62-82).

Table 2 Permanent population of the Russian Empire according to
according to the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1897 and 1909-1914. (as of January, thousand people).

Significantly overestimated population

According to the adjusted calculations of the Office of the Chief Medical
inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the population of Russia (excluding Finland) in the middle of the year
was: 1909 - 156.0 million, 1910 - 158.3 million, 1911 - 160.8 million, 1912
-164.0 million, 1913 - 166.7 million people. (Ni: Sifman
R.I. Uka h. Op. S. 66).

According to the Office of the Chief Medical Officer
inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were based on data on fertility and
mortality, population of Russia (without Finland) on January 1, 1914
was 174,074.9 thousand people, i.e. for about
1.1 million people are less than the data of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But the Office considered this figure
overpriced. The compilers of the "Report" of the Office for 1913 noted that
"total population according to local statistical committees
is exaggerated, exceeding the sum of the population figures from the 1897 census and
figures of natural increase for the elapsed time. "According to the calculation
compilers, the population of Russia (without Finland) in the middle of 1913.
was 166,650 thousand people. (See: Report on the state of public health and medical
aid in Russia in 1913. Pg., 1915. S. 1, 66-67, 98-99).

Table 2a Calculation of the population of Russia (without Finland) for
1897-1914

See also sections: "Armed Forces", "People's Education"

Table 1

Apparent consumption of the most important products in Russia in 1906-1913. (one)

Table 1 (continued)

Table 1 (continued)

Source: Statistical Yearbook for 1914. Ed. IN AND. Sharago. SPb., 1914. S.660

• (1)- The term “apparent consumption” and the methodology for calculating the latter were borrowed by the compilers of the “Statistical Yearbook” from foreign statistics, in which the so-called “apparent consumption” was calculated by adding to the production of one or another product of its import from abroad and subtracting from the resulting export amounts. This table does not take into account the export of part of the bread in the form of flour, amounting to 0.4 to 0.8 percent of the bread remaining for consumption; the consumption of barley also includes the consumption for brewing (about 3.5%), and the consumption for distilling rye, potatoes, and other products (from 9 to 9.5%) is also included. When calculating the consumption of alcohol, its consumption for technical needs, the manufacture of wine and vodka products, and the smoking of alcohol from grapes and fruits are included. For cotton, data are given on its processing in factories. (A.P. Korelin).

table 2

Annual consumption of basic foodstuffs and manufactured goods per capita in Russia in 1913 (in kg)

Source: The national economy of the USSR. 1922-1972. Anniversary Statistical Yearbook. Ed. CSU USSR. M., 1972. S. 372 (T.M. Kitanina)

Table 3

Meat consumption in Russia in 1912-1913

Source: Statistical materials on the issue of meat consumption in the Russian Empire in 1913. Pg., 1915. Data from the Veterinary Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The summary does not include the Kamchatka and Sakhalin regions, as well as 4 out of 10 Polish provinces.

Line a) contains data on provincial (regional) cities and settlements with more than 50,000 people. both sexes; in line b) - for all other villages and localities.

The compiler singled out information on Polish provinces in a separate group, made a transfer of livestock types to cattle, calculated the number of livestock per capita, and also specified per capita meat consumption - up to hundredths of a pood. It is necessary to take into account the inaccuracy of some indicators specified by the department (A.M. Anfimov).

Table 4

Consumption of peasants in European Russia (per person)

Source: Dikhtyar G.A. Domestic trade in pre-revolutionary Russia. M., 1960. P.30. The author's calculations are based on the results of budget surveys conducted by zemstvo statisticians in 1900-1913. (Norms of consumption of the rural population according to budget research data. M., Economic Department of the All-Russian Union of Cities. 1915. P. 1, 2). “The materials of these surveys,” the author notes, “do not allow us to trace either the dynamics of consumption or the differentiation of food consumption by different class groups of the peasantry.”

Table 5

Consumption of the peasants of the Tula province according to budget studies 1911-1914.

Source: Food of the peasant population of the Tula province (according to the monographic description of 1911-1914). Tula, 1907. Translation into metric measures made by us. (A.M. Anfimov).

Table 6

Consumption of workers in the Seredsky factory district of the Kostroma province depending on the annual income of workers (1911)

Source: Dikhtyar G.A. Domestic trade in pre-revolutionary Russia. M., 1960. P.56

Table 7

Average per capita consumption of the most important foodstuffs in Moscow in 1898-1912. (poods per year)

Source: Consumption of the most important consumer products in Moscow. Statistical department of the Moscow city government. Issue. IV. M., 1916. S. 14, 15. (A.P. Korelin)

(1)- With an absolute increase in meat consumption over 10 years by 20%, its per capita consumption has decreased. At 184 pounds per year, the average daily per capita consumption was just over 1/2 pound (48.5 spools). 10 years ago it was £205. per year, i.e. 5 pounds.

(2) - Based on 1 pood 40 pieces of herring.

Table 8

The average annual consumption by the population of Moscow of the most important foodstuffs for five years in 1898-1912. (thousand pounds)

Source: Consumption of the most important consumer products in Moscow. Statistical Department of the Moscow City Duma. Issue. IV. M., 1916. S. 5, 7, 10, 21, 23, 25, 27, 31, 32. (A.P. Korelin).

Table 9

Production and consumption of alcohol in Russia in 1912-1913. (buckets 40 degrees)

Source: Collection of statistical and economic data on agriculture in Russia and foreign countries. Pg., 1917. S. 183-195. In Transcaucasia - data for Tiflis and Kutaisi provinces, in Western Siberia - for Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenisei provinces. and in the Akmola region, in Eastern Siberia - in the Irkutsk province. and the Trans-Baikal region, in the Amur region - in the Amur and Primorsky regions, in Turkestan - in the Semipalatinsk, Semirechensk and Syr-Darya regions. 1 bucket = 12.3 liters.

Table 9a

Alcohol consumption in Russia per capita of both sexes

Source: National economy in 1913. Pg., 1914. S. 97, 103, 106.

• Bucket = 12.3 liters (A.M. Anfimov)

From the "Explanatory note to the report of state control on the execution of the state list and financial estimates for 1913" Pg., 1914., S.196-198

Sugar consumption

Sugar consumption in our country cannot but be considered extremely insufficient, for it averages only 17-19 pounds per person per year, while in England it reaches 100 pounds, in Germany - 52 pounds, in France - 43 pounds, and in Austria - 31 lbs.

This phenomenon finds its explanation primarily in the inaccessibility of sugar for the population due to its high sale price.

According to the law on the rationing that is in force in our country, for each year the amount of sugar to be released to the domestic market, the size of the emergency stock of sugar at the factories and the marginal prices of sugar within the country, above which the release of sugar from the stock is allowed, are predetermined.

These conditions cannot but contribute to keeping prices at an elevated level, which in turn slows down the growth in consumption. (Sugar prices on the Kiev market in 1913-1914 ranged from 3 rubles 87 kopecks to 4 rubles 04 kopecks per pood).

Table 1c

Annual earnings of industrial and agricultural workers in the regions of European Russia in 1901-1910.

(1) - Agricultural and statistical information on materials received from the owners. Issue. V. Volunteer labor in the households and the movement of workers in connection with the socio-economic review of European Russia in agricultural and industrial relations. Comp. S.A.Korolenko. SPb., 1892. Applications. pp. 142-143.

(2) - A set of reports of factory inspectors for 1901, St. Petersburg, 1903. S. 162-165.

(3) - Materials of the Commission established on November 16, 1901 to study the issue of movement from 1861 to 1900. the well-being of the rural population of the middle agricultural provinces in comparison with other areas of European Russia. SPb., 1903. Ch.P.

(4) - A set of reports of factory inspectors for 1910, St. Petersburg, 1911. S.280-283.

(5) - Prices for laborers in agricultural farms of private owners of European or Asian Russia in 1910, St. Petersburg, 1913. S.P. HP. (A.M. Anfimov).

Table 11

Distribution of workers (in%) by the amount of earnings in June 1914 in various groups of industries

Source: Earnings of factory workers in Russia (June 1914 and June 1916). Issue. 1., M., 1918. S.20-21 (N.A. Ivanova’s calculations).

Table 12

Average annual salary in rubles workers of various industries of the factory industry of European Russia in 1910-1913.

He kept records of the population, mainly by mechanical calculation of birth and death data submitted by provincial statistical committees. These data, published in the Statistical Yearbook of Russia, fairly accurately reflected the natural population growth, but did not fully take into account migration processes - both internal (between provinces, between town and countryside) and external (emigration and immigration). If the latter, due to their small scale, did not have a noticeable impact on the total population, then the errors due to the underestimation of the internal migration factor were much more significant. Since 1906, the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been trying to adjust its calculations, introducing amendments to the expanding resettlement movement. But still, the practiced system of counting the population did not completely avoid the repeated registration of migrants - at the place of permanent residence (registration) and place of stay. As a result, the data of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs somewhat overestimated the real population, and this circumstance should be borne in mind when using the materials of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Population according to the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Population according to the UGVI Ministry of Internal Affairs

According to the adjusted calculations of the Office of the Chief Medical Inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the population of Russia (excluding Finland) in the middle of the year was: 1909 - 156.0 million, 1910 - 158.3 million, 1911 - 160.8 million, 1912 .- 164.0 million, 1913 - 166.7 million people.

According to the calculations of the Office of the Chief Medical Inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were based on data on births and deaths, the population of Russia (excluding Finland) on January 1, 1914 was 174,074.9 thousand people, i.e. about 1.1 million people less than according to the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But the Office considered this figure too high. The compilers of the "Report" of the Office for 1913 noted that " the total population according to local statistical committees is exaggerated, exceeding the sum of the population figures from the 1897 census and the natural increase figures for the elapsed time". According to the calculations of the compilers of the "Report", the population of Russia (excluding Finland) in the middle of 1913 was 166,650 thousand people.

Calculation of the population for 1897-1914.

Number, composition and population density by provinces and regions

The population of Russia in comparison with other states

The ratio of urban and rural population

In terms of the ratio of the number of urban and rural population, Russia occupied one of the last places among the largest states of the early 20th century.

As can be seen from the table, the largest percentage of the urban population of the empire is in the Vistula provinces, then in gradual order they go: Finland, Central Asian regions, European Russia, the Caucasus and Siberia.

If we consider the percentage of the urban population in individual provinces, it is clear that a few provinces with large industrial, commercial and administrative centers influence the increase in the percentage. Of the 51 provinces of European Russia, there are seven such provinces: Estonian, Tauride, Courland, Kherson, Lifland, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the percentage of the urban population is above 20. Of these, two capital provinces stand out especially (50.2% and 74.0% ). In the Vistula region, there are only two out of 9 provinces, where the percentage of the urban population is above 20 (Petrokovskaya - 40.2%, Warsaw - 41.7%). In the Caucasus, there are four out of twenty such provinces (Tiflis - 22.1%, Baku - 26.6%, Batumi - 25.6%, Black Sea - 45.5%). In Siberia, two out of ten (Amur - 28.6% and Primorskaya - 32.9%). There were no such cases among the Central Asian regions, and only in the Fergana region the percentage of the urban population approached 20 (19.8%). Finland also has only one county, Nyland, where the percentage of the urban population exceeded 20 (46.3%). So, out of 99 provinces and regions of the Russian Empire, only 14 are those where the urban population accounted for over 20% of the total population, while in the remaining 85 this percentage is below 20.

In two provinces and regions, the percentage of the urban population is below 5%; in forty (including three Finnish) - from 5% to 10%; in twenty-nine (including one Finnish) - from 10% to 15%; in twenty (including two in Finland) - from 15% to 20%.

The percentage of the urban population increases on the one hand to the west and southwest, on the other hand - to the east and southeast of the Ural Range, with exceptions in the form of industrial and commercial provinces: Vladimir, Yaroslavl, etc. In the Caucasus, the percentage of urban dwellers is greater in provinces and regions lying behind the main ridge, except for the Kutaisi province, where it is lower than in all other regions and provinces of the Caucasus. In the Central Asian regions, there is an increase in the percentage of the urban population towards the southeast.

Population in 1800-1913

Other population data

A quarter of you will die from famine, pestilence and sword.
V. Bryusov. Pale Horse (1903).

APPEAL TO READERS.
First of all, it must be clarified that from the end of 1917 to the autumn of 1922, two leaders ruled the country: Lenin, and then immediately Stalin. The fairy tales composed during the Brezhnev years about a certain period of rule by a friendly or not too Politburo, which dragged on almost until the congress of the winners, have nothing in common with history.
“Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be able to use this power with sufficient caution,” Lenin writes with horror on December 24, 1922. PSS, vol. 45, p. 345. Stalin held this post for only 8 months, but Ilyich, experienced in politics, had enough time to understand what happened ...
In the preface to the Trotsky Archive (in 4 volumes) there is a significant remark: "In 1924-1925, Trotsky was actually in complete solitude, finding himself without like-minded people."
I thank all readers who wished to help me by criticizing or providing information that supplements the facts presented. Please indicate the exact sources from which the data were obtained, indicating the author, title of the work, year and place of publication, pages on which the specific quotation is located. Sincerely, the author.

"Accounting and control is the main thing that is required for the correct functioning of a communist society." Lenin V. I. PSS, vol. 36, p. 266.

As a result of 4 years of the First World War and 3 years of civil wars, Russia's losses amounted to more than 40 billion gold rubles, which exceeded 25% of the country's total pre-war wealth. More than 20 million people died or became disabled. Industrial production in 1920 decreased, in comparison with 1913, by 7 times. Agricultural production amounted to only two-thirds of the pre-war. The crop failure that engulfed many grain regions in the summer of 1920 further exacerbated the food crisis in the country. The difficult situation in industry and agriculture was deepened by the collapse of transport. Thousands of kilometers of railway track were destroyed. More than half of the locomotives and about a quarter of the wagons were out of order. Kovkel I.I., Yarmusik E.S. History of Belarus from ancient times to our time. - Minsk, 2000, p.340.

Researchers of Soviet history know that there is not a single national statistics in the world that is as false as the official statistics of the population of the USSR.
History teaches that civil war is more destructive and deadly than war against any enemy. It leaves behind widespread poverty, hunger and devastation.
But the last reliable censuses and records of the population of Russia end in 1913-1917.
After these years, complete falsification begins. Neither the count of the population in 1920, nor its census in 1926, nor even the "rejected" census of 1937 and then the "accepted" census of 1939, are reliable.

We know that on January 1, 1911, the population of Russia was 163.9 million souls (together with Finland 167 million).
As the historian L. Semennikova believes, “according to statistical data, in 1913 the population of the country was about 174,100 thousand people (it included 165 peoples).” Science and Life, 1996, No. 12, p.8.

TSB (3rd ed.) determines the total population of the Russian Empire before the First World War at 180.6 million people.
In 1914 it increased to 182 million souls. According to the statistics of the end of 1916, 186 million lived in Russia, that is, the increase over 16 years of the 20th century amounted to 60 million. Kovalevsky P. Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. - Moscow, 1990, No. 11, p.164.

At the beginning of 1917, a number of researchers raise the final figure of the country's population to 190 million. But after 1917 and until the 1959 census, no one knew for sure, except for the elected "rulers", how many inhabitants there were on the territory of the state.

The extent of violence, lacerations and murders, the losses of its inhabitants are also hidden. Demographers only guess about them and estimate them approximately. And the Russians are silent! And how else: printed works and evidence that reveal this slaughter, they are not aware of. What is known from school textbooks, for the most part, is not facts, but propaganda fabrications.

One of the most confusing is the question of the number of people who left the country during the years of revolution and civil war. The exact number of fugitives is unknown.
Ivan Bunin: “I was not one of those who were taken by surprise by it, for whom its size and atrocities were a surprise, but nevertheless reality surpassed all my expectations: what the Russian revolution soon turned into, no one who did not see it will understand. This spectacle was sheer horror for anyone who had not lost the image and likeness of God, and hundreds of thousands of people fled from Russia after the seizure of power by Lenin, who had the slightest opportunity to escape ”(I. Bunin. “Cursed Days”).

The newspaper of the right SRs "Will of Russia", which had a good information network, cited such data. On November 1, 1920, there were about 2 million emigrants from the territory of the former Russian Empire in Europe. In Poland - one million, in Germany - 560 thousand, in France - 175 thousand, in Austria and Constantinople - 50 thousand each, in Italy and Serbia - 20 thousand each. In November, another 150,000 people moved in from Crimea. Subsequently, emigrants from Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe were drawn to France, and many - to both Americas.

The question of the number of emigrants from Russia cannot be resolved on the basis of sources located only in the USSR. At the same time, in the 20-30s, the issue was considered in a number of foreign works based on foreign data.

At the same time, we note that in the 1920s, extremely contradictory data on the number of emigrants, compiled by charitable organizations and institutions, appeared in foreign emigrant publications. This information is sometimes mentioned in modern literature.

In the book of Hans von Rimschi, the number of emigrants is determined (based on data from the American Red Cross) at 2,935 thousand people. This figure included several hundred thousand Poles who repatriated to Poland and registered as refugees with the American Red Cross, a significant number of Russian prisoners of war who were still in 1920-1921. in Germany (Rimscha Hans Von. Der russische Biirgerkrieg und die russische Emigration 1917-1921. Jena, Fromann, 1924, s.50-51).

The data of the League of Nations for August 1921 determine the number of emigrants at 1444 thousand (including 650 thousand in Poland, 300 thousand in Germany, 250 thousand in France, 50 thousand in Yugoslavia, 31 thousand in Greece, 30 thousand in Bulgaria). It is believed that the number of Russians in Germany peaked in 1922-1923 - 600,000 in the whole country, of which 360,000 were in Berlin.

F. Lorimer, considering the data on emigrants, joins E. Kulischer's estimates reported to him in writing, which determined the number of emigrants from Russia at about 1.5 million, and together with repatriates and other migrants - about 2 million (Kulischer E. Europe on the Move: War and popular changes, 1917-1947, N.Y., 1948, p.54).

By December 1924, there were about 600,000 Russian emigrants in Germany alone, up to 40,000 in Bulgaria, about 400,000 in France, and more than 100,000 in Manchuria. True, not all of them were emigrants in the exact sense of the word: many served on the CER before the revolution.

Russian emigrants also settled in Great Britain, Turkey, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Egypt, Kenya, Afghanistan, Australia, and in total in 25 states, not counting the countries of America, primarily the USA, Argentina and Canada.

But if we turn to Russian literature, we will find that estimates of the number of total emigrants sometimes differ by two or three times.

IN AND. Lenin wrote in 1921 that there were from 1.5 to 2 million Russian emigrants abroad then (Lenin V.I. PSS, vol. 43, p. 49, 126; vol. 44, p. 5, 39, although in one case he gave the figure of 700 thousand people - v.43, p.138).

V.V. Komin, claiming that there were 1.5-2 million people in white emigration, relied on information from the Geneva mission of the Russian Red Cross Society and the Russian Literary Society in Damascus. Komin V.V. The political and ideological collapse of the Russian petty-bourgeois counter-revolution abroad. Kalinin, 1977, part 1, pp. 30, 32.

L.M. Spirin, stating that the number of Russian emigrants was 1.5 million, used data from the refugee section of the International Labor Office (late 1920s). According to these data, the number of registered emigrants was 919 thousand. Spirin L.M. Classes and parties in the Russian Civil War 1917-1920. - M., 1968, p. 382-383.

S.N. Semanov gives the figure of 1 million 875 thousand emigrants in Europe alone on November 1, 1920 - Semanov S.N. Liquidation of the anti-Soviet Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. M., 1973, p.123.

Data on eastern emigration - to Harbin, Shanghai - are not taken into account by these historians. Southern emigration is also not taken into account - to Persia, Afghanistan, India, although there were quite numerous Russian colonies in these countries

On the other hand, J. Simpson (Simpson Sir John Hope. The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey. L., Oxford University Press, 1939) cited clearly underestimated information, determining the number of emigrants from Russia as of January 1, 1922 at 718 thousand . in Europe and the Middle East and 145 thousand in the Far East. These data include only officially registered (received the so-called Nansen passports) emigrants.

G. Barikhnovsky believed that there were less than 1 million emigrants. Barikhnovsky G.F. The ideological and political collapse of the white emigration and the defeat of the internal counter-revolution. L., 1978, pp. 15-16.

According to I. Trifonov, the number of repatriated for 1921-1931. exceeded 180 thousand Trifonov I.Ya. Liquidation of the exploiting classes in the USSR. M., 1975, p.178. Moreover, the author, citing Lenin's data on 1.5-2 million emigrants, in relation to 20-30 years old, calls the figure 860 thousand. Ibid., pp. 168-169.

Probably, about 2.5% of the population left the country, that is, about 3.5 million people.

On January 6, 1922, the Vossische Zeitung newspaper, respected in the circles of the intelligentsia, published in Berlin, brought the problem of refugees to the discussion of the German public.
The article “The New Great Migration of Peoples” said: “The Great War caused a movement among the peoples of Europe and Asia, which may be the beginning of a large historical process of the example of the great migration of peoples. A special role is played by Russian emigration, of which there are no similar examples in recent history. Moreover, in this emigration we are talking about a whole range of political, economic, social and cultural problems and it is impossible to resolve them either with general phrases or momentary measures ... For Europe, there is a need to consider the Russian emigration not as a temporary incident ... But it is precisely the community of destinies that was created by this war is for the vanquished, it encourages us to think, apart from momentary burdens, about future opportunities for cooperation.”

Looking at what is happening in Russia, the emigration saw that any opposition is being destroyed in the country. Immediately (in 1918) the Bolsheviks closed down all opposition (including socialist) newspapers. Censorship is introduced.
In April 1918, the Anarchist Party was crushed, and in July 1918 the Bolsheviks broke off relations with their only allies in the revolution - the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Peasant Party. In February 1921, arrests of the Mensheviks began, and in 1922, the trial of the leaders of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party took place.
This is how a regime of military dictatorship of one party emerged, turned against 90% of the country's population. Dictatorship was understood, of course, as "violence not limited by law." Stalin I.V. Speech at Sverdlovsk University on June 9, 1925

The emigration was dumbfounded at making conclusions that only yesterday seemed impossible to it.

Paradoxical though it may sound, Bolshevism is the third manifestation of Russian great power, Russian imperialism; the first was the Muscovite kingdom, the second was the Petrine empire. Bolshevism is for a strong centralized state. There was a combination of the will for social truth with the will for state power, and the second will turned out to be stronger. Bolshevism entered Russian life as a highly militarized force. But the old Russian state was always militarized. The problem of power was fundamental to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. And they created a police state, in terms of methods of government very similar to the old Russian state ... The Soviet state has become the same as any despotic state, it operates with the same means, violence and lies. Berdyaev N. A. Origins and meaning of Russian communism.
Even the old Slavophile dream of moving the capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow, to the Kremlin, has been realized by red communism. A communist revolution in one country inevitably leads to nationalism and nationalist politics. Berdyaev N. A.

Therefore, when assessing the size of emigration, it is necessary to take into account: a considerable part of the White Guards who left their homeland later returned to Soviet Russia.

In The State and Revolution, Ilyich promised: “... the suppression of a minority of exploiters by a majority of yesterday’s wage slaves is so comparatively easy, simple and natural than the suppression of uprisings of slaves, serfs, wage workers, that it will cost mankind much cheaper” (Lenin V.I. PSS, v.33, p.90).

The leader even ventured to estimate the total "cost" of the world revolution - half a million, a million people (PSS, vol. 37, p. 60).

Fragmentary information about the loss of population in certain specific regions can be found here and there. It is known, for example, that Moscow, in which 1580 thousand people lived by the beginning of 1917, in 1917-1920. lost almost half of the inhabitants (49.1%) - this is stated in the article about the capital in 5 volumes of ITU, 1st ed. (M., 1927, column 389).

In connection with the ebb of workers to the front and the countryside, with a typhoid epidemic and general economic ruin, Moscow in 1918-1921. lost almost half of its population: in February 1917 in Moscow there were 2.044 thousand, and in 1920 - 1.028 thousand inhabitants. In 1919, the death rate especially increased, but from 1922 the decline in the population in the capital began to decrease, and its numbers increased rapidly. TSB, 1st ed. v.40, M., 1938, p.355.

Here are the data on the dynamics of the city's population that the author of an article named in a review collection on Soviet Moscow, which was published in 1920.
“As of November 20, 1915, there were already 1,983,716 inhabitants in Moscow, and the next year the capital stepped over the second million. On February 1, 1917, just on the eve of the revolution, 2,017,173 people lived in Moscow, and on the modern territory of the capital (including some suburban areas annexed in May and June 1917), the number of Moscow residents reached 2,043,594.
According to the census in August 1920, 1,028,218 inhabitants were counted in Moscow. In other words, since the census on April 21, 1918, the decline in the population of Moscow amounted to 687,804 people, or 40.1%. This population decline is unprecedented in European history. Only St. Petersburg overtook Moscow in terms of its depopulation. Since February 1, 1917, when the population of Moscow reached its maximum, the number of inhabitants of the capital has fallen by 1,015,000 people, or by almost half (more precisely, by 49.6%).
Meanwhile, the population of St. Petersburg (within the boundaries of the city government) in 1917 reached, according to the calculation of the city statistical bureau, 2,440,000 people. According to the census of August 28, 1920, there were only 706,800 people in St. Petersburg, so that since the revolution the number of inhabitants of St. Petersburg has decreased by 1,733,200 people, or 71%. In other words, the population of St. Petersburg was declining almost twice as fast as Moscow.” Red Moscow, M., 1920.

But in the final figures there is no exact answer to the question: how much did the population of the country decrease from 1914 to 1922?
Yes, and why - too.

The country silently listened to how Alexander Vertinsky cursed her:
- I don't know why and who needs it,
Who sent them to death with an unshakable hand,
Only so mercilessly, so evil and unnecessary
They put them in eternal rest.

Immediately after the war, sociologist Pitirim Sorokin reflected on the mournful statistics in Prague:
- The Russian state entered the war with 176 million subjects.
In 1920, the RSFSR, together with all the Union Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, etc., had only 129 million people.
For six years, the Russian state has lost 47 million subjects. This is the first payment for the sins of war and revolution.
Whoever understands the significance of the population for the fate of the state and society, this figure says a lot...
This decrease of 47 million is explained by the separation from Russia of a number of regions that have become independent states.
Now the question is: what is the situation with the population of the territory that makes up the modern RSFSR and the republics allied with it?
Has it decreased or increased?
The following numbers give the answer.
According to the 1920 census, the population of 47 provinces of European Russia and Ukraine has decreased since 1914 by 11,504,473 people, or 13% (from 85,000,370 to 73,495,897).
The population of all Soviet republics has decreased by 21 million, which is 154 million, a loss of 13.6%.
War and revolution devoured not only all those who were born, for nevertheless a certain number continued to be born. It cannot be said that the appetite of these persons was moderate and their stomach was modest.
Even if they gave a number of real values, it is difficult to recognize the price of such "conquests" as cheap.
But they absorbed more than 21 million victims.
Of the 21 million, the direct victims of the world war fall:
killed and dead from wounds and diseases - 1,000,000 people,
missing and captured (most of whom returned) 3,911,000 people. (in official data, the missing and those taken prisoner are not separated from each other, so I give the total figure), plus the wounded 3,748,000, in total for the direct victims of the war - no more than 2-2.5 million. The figure of direct victims of the civil war.
As a result, we can take the number of direct victims of war and revolution close to 5 million. The remaining 16 million fall on the share of their indirect victims: the share of increased mortality and falling birth rates. Sorokin P.A. The current state of Russia. (Prague, 1922).

"Tough time! As historians now testify, 14-18 million people died during the civil war, of which only 900 thousand were killed at the fronts. The rest fell victim to typhoid, Spanish influenza, other diseases, and then the white and red terror. "War Communism" was partly caused by the horrors of the civil war, partly by the delusions of a whole generation of revolutionaries. Direct seizures of food from the peasants without any compensation, rations for workers - from 250 grams to a pound of black bread, forced labor, executions and prison for market operations, a huge army of homeless children who lost their parents, hunger, savagery in many parts of the country - such was the harsh pay for the most radical revolution that has ever shaken the nations of the earth!” Burlatsky F. Leaders and advisers. M., 1990, p.70.

In 1929, the former Major General and Minister of War of the Provisional Government, and at that time a teacher of the Military Academy of the Headquarters of the Red Army A.I. Verkhovsky published a detailed article in Ogonyok on the threat of intervention.

His demographic calculations deserve special attention.

“The dry columns of figures given in statistical tables usually pass by ordinary attention,” he writes. - But if you look closely at them, then what sometimes terrible numbers are!
The Publishing House of the Communist Academy published B.A. Gukhman "Main Issues of the USSR Economy in Tables and Diagrams".
Table 1 shows the dynamics of the population of the USSR. It shows that on January 1, 1914, 139 million people lived in the territory now occupied by our Union. By January 1st, 1917, the table puts the population at 141 million. Meanwhile, the population growth before the war was about 1.5% per year, which gives an increase of 2 million people per year. Consequently, from 1914 to 1917, the population should have increased by 6 million and amounted not to 141, but to 145 million.
We see that 4 million is not enough. These are the victims of the world war. Of these, 1.5 million we consider killed and missing, and 2.5 million must be attributed to the decrease in the birth rate.
The next figure in the table refers to August 1, 1922, i.e. covers 5 years of the civil war and its immediate aftermath. If the development of the population had proceeded normally, then in 5 years its growth would have been about 10 million, and, consequently, the USSR in 1922 should have numbered 151 million.
Meanwhile, in 1922 the population was 131 million people, i.e., 10 million less than in 1917. The Civil War cost us another 20 million people, i.e. 5 times more than the world war. Verkhovsky A. Intervention is not permissible. Ogonyok, 1929, No. 29, p.11.

The total human losses suffered by the country during the world and civil wars, interventions (1914-1920) exceeded 20 million people. - History of the USSR. The era of socialism. M., 1974, p.71.

The total population losses in the civil war on the fronts and in the rear from hunger, disease and terror of the White Guards amounted to 8 million people. TSB, 3rd ed. The losses of the Communist Party on the fronts amounted to over 50 thousand people. TSB, 3rd ed.

There were diseases, too.
At the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. In 10 months, the global flu pandemic (called the “Spanish flu”) affected about 300 million people and claimed up to 40 million lives. Then a second, although less strong, wave arose. The malignancy of this pandemic can be judged by the number of deaths. In India, about 5 million people died from it, in the United States for 2 months - about 450 thousand, in Italy - about 270 thousand people; in total, this epidemic claimed about 20 million victims, while the number of diseases also amounted to hundreds of millions.

Then came the third wave. Probably 0.75 billion people have been ill with the "Spanish flu" in 3 years. The world population at that time was 1.9 billion. Losses from the "Spaniard" exceeded the death rate of the 1st World War on all its fronts combined. In the world then died up to 100 million people. The "Spanish flu" supposedly existed in two forms: in elderly patients, it usually, in fact, was expressed in severe pneumonia, death occurred in 1.5-2 weeks. But there were few such patients. More often, for some unknown reason, young people from 20 to 40 years old died from the "Spanish flu" ... Most people under the age of 40 died from cardiac arrest, this happened two or three days after the onset of the disease.

Young Soviet Russia was lucky at first: the first wave of the "Spanish disease" did not touch it. But at the end of the summer of 1918, epidemic influenza came from Galicia to Ukraine. Only in Kyiv alone, 700 thousand cases were recorded. Then the epidemic began to spread through the Oryol and Voronezh provinces to the east, to the Volga region, and to the northwest, to both capitals.
Doctor V. Glinchikov, who at that time worked in the Petropavlovsk hospital in Petrograd, noted that in the first days of the epidemic, out of 149 patients with the Spanish flu, 119 people died. In the city as a whole, the mortality rate from influenza complications reached 54%.

During the epidemic in Russia, more than 2.5 million cases of "Spanish flu" were registered. The clinical manifestations of the "Spanish flu" are well described and studied. There were completely atypical clinical manifestations for influenza, characteristic of brain lesions. In particular, “hiccupping” or “sneezing” encephalitis, sometimes occurring even without a typical influenza fever. These excruciating diseases are damage to certain areas of the brain, when a person continuously hiccups or sneezes for quite a long time, day and night. Some have died from it. There were other monosymptomatic forms of the disease. Their nature has not yet been determined.

In 1918, the country suddenly began simultaneous epidemics of plague and cholera.

In addition, in 1918-1922. in Russia, several epidemics of unprecedented forms of typhus are also rampant. During these years, more than 7.5 million cases of typhus alone were registered. Probably more than 700 thousand people died from it. But it was impossible to take into account all the sick people.

1919. "In connection with the extreme overcrowding of Moscow prisons and prison hospitals, typhus has assumed an epidemic character there." Anatoly Mariengof. My age.
A contemporary wrote: “Entire wagons are dying of typhus. Not a single doctor. No medicines. Whole families are delirious. Dead bodies along the road. At the stations there are piles of corpses.
It was typhus, and not the Red Army, that destroyed Kolchak's troops. “When our troops,” wrote N.A. Semashko, - we entered beyond the Urals and into Turkestan, a huge avalanche of epidemic diseases (typhus of all three varieties) moved against our army from Kolchak and Dutov troops. Suffice it to mention that out of the 60,000-strong enemy army that went over to our side in the very first days after the defeat of Kolchak and Dutov, 80% turned out to be infected with typhus. The typhus on the Eastern, relapsing, mainly on the South-Eastern Front, rushed at us in a stormy stream. And even typhoid fever, this sure sign of the lack of elementary sanitary measures - at least vaccinations, spread like a wide wave through the Dutov army and spread to us ""...
In the captured Omsk, the capital of Kolchak, the Red Army found 15,000 abandoned sick enemies. Calling the epidemic "the legacy of the whites," the victors fought on two fronts, the main one against typhus.
The situation was catastrophic. In Omsk every day 500 people fell ill and 150 died. The epidemic engulfed the refugee shelter, the post office, the orphanage, workers' hostels, the sick were lying side by side on plank beds, on rotten mattresses on the floor.
Kolchak's armies, retreating east under the onslaught of Tukhachevsky's troops, took everything with them, including prisoners, and among them there were many patients with typhus. First, they were driven in stages along the railway, then they were put on trains and taken to Transbaikalia. People were dying in droves. The corpses were thrown out of the cars, drawing a dotted line of rotting bodies along the rails.
So by 1919, all of Siberia was infected. Tukhachevsky recalled that the road from Omsk to Krasnoyarsk was a realm of typhus.
In the winter of 1919–1920 an epidemic in Novonikolaevsk, the capital of typhus, led to the death of tens of thousands of people (they did not keep an exact record of the victims). The city's population has halved. At the Krivoshchekovo station there were 3 stacks of 500 corpses each. Another 20 wagons with the dead were nearby.
“All the houses were occupied by Chekatif, and Chekatrup was a dictator in the city, who built two crematoria and dug miles of deep trenches for burying corpses,” reads the ChKT report, see: GANO. F.R-1133. Op. 1. D. 431c. L. 150.).
In total, during the days of the epidemic, 28 military and 15 civilian medical institutions functioned in the city. Chaos reigned. Historian E. Kosyakova writes: “At the beginning of January 1920, in the overcrowded Eighth Novonikolaev Hospital, patients lay on their beds, in the aisles, and under the beds. In infirmaries, contrary to sanitary requirements, double bunk beds were arranged. Patients with typhus, medical patients and the wounded were placed in the same room, which in fact was not a place of treatment, but a source of typhoid infection.
It was strange that this disease affected not only Siberia, but also the North. In 1921-1922. out of 3 thousand population of Murmansk, 1560 people were ill with typhus. Cases of smallpox, Spanish flu and scurvy have been reported.

In 1921-1922. and in the Crimea epidemics of typhus and - in noticeable proportions - cholera raged, there were outbreaks of plague, smallpox, scarlet fever and dysentery. According to the People's Commissariat for Health, in the Yekaterinburg province at the beginning of January 1922, 2 thousand patients with typhus were recorded, mainly at railway stations. A typhoid epidemic was also observed in Moscow. There, as of January 12, 1922, there were 1,500 patients with relapsing fever and 600 patients with typhus. Pravda, No. 8, January 12, 1922, p.2.

In the same 1921, an epidemic of tropical malaria began, which also captured the northern regions. Mortality reached 80%!
The causes of these sudden severe epidemics are still unknown. At first they thought that malaria and typhus came to Russia from the Turkish front. But the malaria epidemic in its usual form cannot survive in those regions where it is colder than +16 degrees Celsius; how it penetrated the Arkhangelsk province, the Caucasus and Siberia, is not clear. Until now, it has not been clarified where the cholera bacilli came from in the Siberian rivers - in those regions that were almost not inhabited. However, hypotheses were expressed that in these years bacteriological weapons were used against Russia for the first time.

Indeed, after the landing of British and American troops in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, in the Crimea and Novorossiysk, in Primorye and the Caucasus, outbreaks of these unknown epidemics immediately began.
It turns out that during the years of the 1st World War, in the town of Porton Down near Salisbury (Wiltshire), a top-secret center, the Experimental Station of the Royal Engineers, was created, where experiments on humans were performed by physiologists, pathologists and meteorologists from the best universities in Britain.
During the existence of this secret complex, more than 20 thousand people became participants in thousands of tests of plague and anthrax, other deadly diseases, as well as poisonous gases.
Initially, experiments were carried out on animals. But since it is difficult to find out in experiments on animals how exactly the effects of chemicals on human organs and tissues occur, in 1917 a special laboratory appeared in Porton Down, designed for experiments on humans.
Later it was reorganized into the Microbiological Research Center. The CCU was located at Harvard Hospital in the western part of Salisbury. The test subjects (mostly soldiers) agreed to the experiments voluntarily, but almost no one knew what risk they were taking. The tragic story of the Porton veterans was told by British historian Ulf Schmidt in his book Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments.
In addition to Porton Down, the author also reports on the activities of the Edgewood Arsenal organized in 1916, a special unit of the chemical forces of the US Armed Forces.

The black plague, as if returned from the Middle Ages, caused a special fright of physicians. Mikhel D.V. The fight against the plague in the South-East of Russia (1917-1925). - On Sat. History of science and technology. 2006, no. 5, p. 58–67.

In 1921, Novonikolaevsk experienced a wave of cholera epidemic, which came along with the flow of refugees from starving areas.

In 1922, despite the consequences of the famine, the outbreak of infectious epidemics in the country decreased. So, at the end of 1921, more than 5.5 million people were ill with typhus, typhoid and relapsing fever in Soviet Russia.
The main foci of typhus were the Volga region, Ukraine, the Tambov province and the Urals, where the fatal epidemic struck, first of all, the Ufa and Yekaterinburg provinces.

But already in the spring of 1922, the number of patients dropped to 100 thousand people, although the turning point in the fight against typhus came only a year later. Thus, in Ukraine, the number of cases of typhus and deaths from it in 1923 decreased by 7 times. In total, in the USSR, the number of diseases per year decreased by 30 times. The Volga region.

The fight against typhus, cholera and malaria continued until the mid-1920s. American Sovietologist Robert Gates believes that Russia during the reign of Lenin lost 10 million people from terror and civil war. (Washington Post, 30.4.1989).

Stalin's defenders zealously dispute these data, inventing fake statistics. Here, for example, is what Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the CRPF, writes: “In 1917, the population of Russia within its current borders was 91 million people. By 1926, when the first Soviet census was conducted, its population in the RSFSR (that is, again on the territory of present-day Russia) had grown to 92.7 million people. And this despite the fact that only 5 years earlier ended the destructive and bloody Civil War. Zyuganov G.A. Stalin and Modernity. http://www.politpros.com/library/9/223.

Where did he get these figures from, from which statistical collections exactly, the main communist of Russia does not stutter, hoping that they will believe him without proof.
Communists have always used someone else's naivety.
And what was really?

The article by Vladimir Shubkin "The Difficult Farewell" (Noviy Mir, No. 4, 1989) is devoted to the population losses of the times of Lenin and Stalin. According to Shubkin, during the years of Lenin's rule from the autumn of 1917 to 1922, the demographic losses of Russia amounted to almost 13 million people, of which emigrants (1.5-2 million people) must be subtracted.
The author, referring to the study by Yu.A. Polyakova, points out that the total human losses from 1917 to 1922, taking into account missed births and emigration, amount to about 25 million people (academician S. Strumilin estimated losses from 1917 to 1920 at 21 million).
During the years of collectivization and famine (1932-1933), the human losses of the USSR, according to V. Shubkin's calculations, amounted to 10-13 million people.

If we continue to study arithmetic, then during the 1st World War for more than four years, the Russian Empire lost 20 - 8 = 12 million people.
It turns out that the average annual losses of Russia during the First World War amounted to 2.7 million people.
Apparently, this includes casualties among the civilian population.

However, these figures are also disputed.
In 1919-1920, the publication of a 65-volume list of the killed, wounded and missing lower ranks of the Russian army in 1914-1918 was completed. Its preparation was started as early as 1916 by members of the General Staff of the Russian Empire. Based on this work, the Soviet historian reports: "During the 3.5 years of the war, the losses of the Russian army amounted to 68,994 generals and officers, 5,243,799 soldiers. This includes those killed, wounded and missing." Beskrovny L. G. The Russian Army and Navy at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Essays on the Military-Economic Potential. M., 1986. P.17.

In addition, it is necessary to take into account the captured. At the end of the war, 2,385,441 Russian prisoners were registered in Germany, 1,503,412 in Austria-Hungary, 19,795 in Turkey, and 2,452 in Bulgaria, totaling 3,911,100 people. Proceedings of the Commission for the Survey of the Sanitary Consequences of the War of 1914-1920. Issue. 1. S. 169.
Thus, the total amount of human losses in Russia should be 9,223,893 soldiers and officers.

But from here you need to subtract 1,709,938 wounded who returned to duty from field hospitals. As a result, minus this contingent, the number of those killed, dying of wounds, seriously wounded and captured will be 7,513,955 people.
All figures are given according to the information of 1919. In 1920, work on the lists of losses, including clarifying the number of prisoners of war and missing, made it possible to revise the total military losses and determine them at 7,326,515 people. Proceedings of the Survey Commission ... S. 170.

The unprecedented scale of the 1st World War, indeed, led to a huge number of prisoners of war. But the question of the number of servicemen of the Russian army who were in enemy captivity is still debatable.
Thus, in the encyclopedia "The Great October Socialist Revolution" over 3.4 million Russian prisoners of war are named. (M., 1987, p. 445).
According to E.Yu. Sergeev, a total of about 1.4 million soldiers and officers of the Russian army were captured. Sergeev E.Yu. Russian prisoners of war in Germany and Austria-Hungary // Modern and recent history. 1996. N 4. S. 66.
Historian O.S. Nagornaya calls a similar figure - 1.5 million people (Nagornaya O.S. Another military experience: Russian prisoners of war of the First World War in Germany (1914-1922). M., 2010. P. 9).
Other data from S.N. Vasilyeva: "by January 1, 1918, the Russian army lost prisoners: soldiers - 3,395,105 people, and officers and class officials - 14,323 people, which amounted to 74.9% of all combat losses, or 21.2% of the total number of mobilized" . (Vasilyeva S. N. Prisoners of war in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia during the First World War: Textbook for a special course. M., 1999. S. 14-15).
Such a discrepancy in numbers (more than 2 times) is apparently the result of poorly established accounting and registration of prisoners of war.

But if you delve into the statistics, all these figures do not look too convincing.

“Speaking of the losses of the Russian population as a result of two wars and a revolution,” writes historian Yu. Polyakov, “a strange disparity in the population of pre-war Russia is striking, which, according to various authors, reaches 30 million people. This discrepancy in the demographic literature is explained, first of all, by the territorial discrepancy. Some take data on the territory of the Russian state in the pre-war (1914) boundaries, others - on the territory within the boundaries established in 1920-1921. and existing before 1939, the third - on the territory in modern borders with a retrospection for 1917 and 1914. Estimates are sometimes made with the inclusion of Finland, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva, sometimes without excluding them. We do not resort to data on the population in 1913-1920, calculated on the territory in modern borders. These data, which are important for showing the dynamics of the growth of the current population, are not very applicable in historical studies on the First World War, the October Revolution and the Civil War.
These figures speak of the population in the territory that exists now, but in 1913-1920. it did not correspond to either the legal or actual borders of Russia. Recall that according to these data, the population of the country on the eve of the First World War was 159.2 million people, and at the beginning of 1917 - 163 million (USSR in figures in 1977. - M., 1978, p. 7). The difference in determining the size of the pre-war (at the end of 1913 or the beginning of 1914) population of Russia (within the boundaries established in 1920-1921 and existing until September 17, 1939) reaches 13 million people (from 132.8 million to 145.7 million).
Statistical collections of the 60s determine the population at that time at 139.3 million people. Inconsistent data are given (in relation to the territory within the boundaries before 1939) and for 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921, etc.
An important source is the 1917 census. A significant part of its materials has been published. Studying them (including unpublished arrays stored in archives) is quite useful. But the census materials do not cover the country as a whole, the conditions of the war affected the accuracy of the data, and in determining the national composition, its data have the same defects as all pre-revolutionary statistics, which made serious mistakes in determining nationality, based only on linguistic affiliation.
Meanwhile, the difference in determining the size of the population, according to the citizens' own application (this principle is accepted by modern statistics), is very large. A number of nationalities before the revolution were not taken into account at all.
The 1920 census also, unfortunately, cannot be named among the basic sources, although its materials should undoubtedly be taken into account.
The census was carried out during the days (August 1920) when there was a war with bourgeois-landlord Poland and the front and front-line areas were inaccessible to census takers, when Wrangel still occupied the Crimea and Northern Tavria, when counter-revolutionary governments existed in Georgia and Armenia, and large territories Siberia and the Far East were under the rule of the interventionists and the White Guards, when nationalist and kulak gangs were active in different parts of the country (many scribes were killed). Therefore, the population of many outlying territories was calculated according to pre-revolutionary information.
The census also had shortcomings in determining the national composition of the population (for example, the small peoples of the North were united in a group under the dubious name "Hyperboreans"). There are many contradictions in the data on population losses in the First World War and the Civil War (the number of those killed, those who died from epidemics, etc.), on refugees from the occupied by Austro-German troops and front-line territories in 1917, on the demographic consequences of crop failure and famine.
Statistical collections of the 60s give figures of 143.5 million people as of January 1, 1917, 138 million - as of January 1, 1919, 136.8 million - as of August 1920.
In 1973-1979. at the Institute of History of the USSR, under the guidance of the author of these lines (Polyakov), a methodology was developed and implemented for using (with the use of a computer) the data of the 1926 census to determine the population of the country in previous years. This census recorded the composition of the country's population with an accuracy and scientific character unprecedented in Russia before. The materials of the 1926 census were published widely and completely - in 56 volumes. The essence of the methodology in general form is as follows: based on the data of the 1926 census, primarily based on the age structure of the population, the dynamic series of the country's population for 1917-1926 is restored. At the same time, data on the natural and mechanical movement of the population for the indicated years contained in other sources and in the literature are recorded and taken into account in the computer memory. Therefore, this method can be called the method of retrospective use of population census materials, taking into account the complex of additional data at the disposal of the historian.
As a result of the calculations, many hundreds of tables were obtained, characterizing the movement of the population in 1917-1926. for different regions and the country as a whole, determining the number and proportion of the peoples of the country. In particular, the size and national composition of the population of Russia in the autumn of 1917 on the territory within the borders of 1926 (147,644.3 thousand) were determined. It seemed to us extremely important to carry out the calculation on the actual territory of Russia in the autumn of 1917 (i.e., without the areas occupied by the Austro-German troops), because the population behind the front line was then excluded from the economic and political life of Russia. The definition of the actual territory was carried out by us on the basis of military maps, fixing the front line for the autumn of 1917.
The population on the actual territory of Russia in the autumn of 1917, excluding Finland, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva, was determined at 153,617 thousand people; without Finland, including Khiva and Bukhara - 156,617 thousand people; with Finland (together with the Pechenga volost), Khiva and Bukhara - 159,965 thousand people. Polyakov Yu.A. The population of Soviet Russia in 1917-1920 (Historiography and sources). - Sat. Problems of the Russian social movement and historical science. M., Nauka, 1981. pp. 170-176.

If we recall the figure of 180.6 million people named in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, then which of the mentioned Yu.A. Polyakov can’t take the numbers, then in the autumn of 1917 the population deficit in Russia will not be 12 million, but will fluctuate between 27 and 37.5 million people.

What can these numbers be compared to? In 1917, for example, Sweden had a population of 5.5 million. In other words, this statistical error is equal to 5-7 Sweden.

The situation is similar with the losses of the country's population in the civil war.
“The countless victims suffered in the war against the White Guards and interventionists (the country's population decreased by 13 million people from 1917 to 1923) were rightly attributed to the class enemy - the culprit, the instigator of the war.” Polyakov Yu.A. 1920s: moods of the party avant-garde. Questions of the history of the CPSU, 1989, No. 10, p.30.

In the reference book of V.V. Erlikhman, Population loss in the 20th century. (M.: Russian panorama, 2004) it is said that in the civil war of 1918-1920. about 10.5 million people died.

According to the historian A. Kilichenkov, "during the three years of fratricidal civil slaughter, the country lost 13 million people and retained only 9.5% of the previous (before 1913) gross national product." Science and Life, 1995, No. 8, p. 80.

Professor of Moscow State University L. Semyannikova objects: "The civil war, extremely bloody and destructive, claimed, according to Russian historians, 15-16 million lives." Science and Life, 1995, No. 9, p.46.

Historian M. Bernshtam in his work “Parties in the Civil War” tried to draw up a general balance of the losses of the population of Russia during the war years of 1917-1920: “According to the special reference book of the Central Statistical Bureau, the number of population in the territory of the USSR after 1917, excluding the population of territories that had departed from Russia and not included in the USSR, amounted to 146.755.520 people. - The administrative-territorial composition of the USSR on July 1, 1925 and on July 1, 1926, in comparison with the pre-war division of Russia. Experience in establishing a connection between the administrative-territorial composition of pre-war Russia and the modern composition of the USSR. CSU USSR. - M., 1926, pp. 49-58.

This is the initial figure of the population, which from October 1917 found itself in the zone of the socialist revolution. On the same territory, the census of August 28, 1920, together with those who were in the army, finds only 134,569,206 people. — Statistical Yearbook 1921. Issue. 1. Proceedings of the CSB, vol. VIII, no. 3, M., 1922, p.8. The total population deficit is 12.186.314 people.
Thus, the historian summarizes, during the incomplete three first years of the socialist revolution on the territory of the former Russian Empire (from the autumn of 1917 to August 28, 1920), the population lost 8.3 percent of its original composition.
Over the years, emigration allegedly amounted to 86,000 people (Alekhin M. White emigration. TSB, 1st ed., vol. 64. M., 1934, column 163), and the natural decline - the excess of deaths over births - 873,623 people (Proceedings of the CSB, vol. XVIII, M., 1924, p. 42).
Thus, the losses from the revolution and civil war for the first incomplete three years of Soviet power, without emigration and natural loss, amounted to more than 11.2 million people. Here it should be noted, - the author comments, - that the "natural decline" requires a reasonable interpretation: why the decline? Is the term “natural” accepted in science appropriate here? It is clear that the excess of mortality over births is an unnatural phenomenon and belongs to the demographic results of the revolution and the socialist experiment.

However, if we consider that this war lasted 4 years (1918-1922), and the total losses are taken as 15 million people, then the average annual losses of the country's population during this period amounted to 3.7 million people.
It turns out that the civil war was more bloody than the war with the Germans.

At the same time, the size of the Red Army by the end of 1919 reached 3 million people, by the autumn of 1920 - 5.5 million people.
The famous demographer B.Ts. Urlanis in the book “Wars and Population of Europe”, speaking about the losses among the fighters and commanders of the Red Army in the civil war, cites such figures. The total number of those killed and dead, in his opinion, is 425 thousand people. Approximately 125 thousand people were killed at the front, approximately 300 thousand people died in the active army and in military districts. Urlanis B. Ts. Wars and population of Europe. - M., 1960. pp. 183, 305. Moreover, the author writes that "the comparison and the absolute value of the figures give reason to assume that the dead and wounded are attributed to combat losses." Urlanis B.Ts. Ibid, p. 181.

The reference book "The National Economy of the USSR in Figures" (M., 1925) contains completely different information about the losses of the Red Army in 1918-1922. In this book, according to official data from the statistical department of the Main Directorate of the Red Army, the combat losses of the Red Army in the civil war are 631,758 Red Army soldiers, and sanitary (with evacuation) - 581,066, for a total of 1,212,824 people (p. 110).

The white movement was rather small. By the end of the winter of 1919, that is, by the time of its maximum development, according to Soviet military reports, it did not exceed 537 thousand people. Of these, no more than 175 thousand people died. - Kakaurin N.E. How the revolution fought, v.2, M.-L., 1926, p.137.

Thus, there were 10 times more reds than whites. But there were many more victims in the ranks of the Red Army - either 3, or 8 times.

But, if we compare the three-year losses of the two opposing armies with the losses of the Russian population, then there is no escape from the question: so who fought with whom?
White with red?
Or those and others with the people?

“Cruelty is inherent in any war, but in the civil war in Russia, incredible ruthlessness reigned. White officers and volunteers knew what would happen to them if they were captured by the Reds: more than once I saw terribly disfigured bodies with epaulettes carved on their shoulders. Orlov, G. Drozdov's diary. // Star. - 2012. - No. 11.

The Reds were no less brutally destroyed. "As soon as the party affiliation of the communists was established, they were hung on the first bough." Reden, N. Through the Hell of the Russian Revolution. Memoirs of a midshipman 1914-1919. - M., 2006.

The atrocities of Denikin's, Annenkov's, Kalmyk's and Kolchak's men are well known.

At the beginning of the Ice Campaign, Kornilov declared: "I give you an order, very cruel: do not take prisoners! I take responsibility for this order before God and the Russian people!" One of the participants of the campaign recalled the cruelty of ordinary volunteers during the "Ice Campaign" when he wrote about the massacres of those captured: "All the Bolsheviks captured by us with weapons in their hands were shot on the spot: alone, in tens, hundreds. It was a war "for extermination". Fedyuk V.P. White. Anti-Bolshevik Movement in the South of Russia 1917-1918.

A witness, the writer William, told about Denikin's people in his memoirs. True, he is reluctant to talk about his own exploits, but he conveys in detail the stories of his accomplices in the struggle for the united and indivisible.
“The Reds were driven out - and how many of them were put, the passion of the Lord! And they began to put things in order. Liberation has begun. First, the sailors were frightened. They stayed with the fool, “our business, they say, is on the water, we will live with the Cadets” ... Well, everything is as it should, in a good way: they kicked them out behind the pier, forced them to dig a ditch for themselves, and then they will bring them to the edge and from revolvers one by one. So, believe me, like crayfish they moved in this ditch until they fell asleep. And then, in this place, the whole earth moved: therefore, they didn’t finish it off, so that it would be disrespectful to others. ”

The commander of the US occupation corps in Siberia, General Grevs, in turn, testifies: “Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as is usually thought. I will not be mistaken if I say that in Eastern Siberia, for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were 100 people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements.

“It is possible to put an end to ... the uprising as soon as possible, more decisively, without stopping at the most strict, even cruel measures against not only the rebels, but also the population supporting them ... For harboring ... there must be a merciless reprisal ... For intelligence, communications, use the local residents, taking hostages . In case of incorrect and untimely information or treason, the hostages are to be executed, and the houses belonging to them to be burned.” These are quotes from the order of the supreme ruler of Russia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak dated March 23, 1919

And here are excerpts from the order of the specially authorized Kolchak S. Rozanov, governor of the Yenisei and part of the Irkutsk province, dated March 27, 1919: in villages that do not issue Reds, “shoot the tenth”; burn the resisting villages, and “shoot the adult male population without exception”, completely take away property and bread in favor of the treasury; hostages in case of resistance of fellow villagers “to shoot mercilessly”.

The political leaders of the Czechoslovak corps B. Pavel and V. Girs in their official memorandum to the allies in November 1919 stated: “Admiral Kolchak surrounded himself with former tsarist officials, and since the peasants did not want to take up arms and sacrifice their lives for the return of these people to power , they were beaten, flogged with whips and killed in cold blood by the thousands, after which the world called them "Bolsheviks".

“The most significant weakness of the Omsk government is that the vast majority is in opposition to it. Roughly speaking, approximately 97% of the population of Siberia today is hostile to Kolchak. Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Eichelberg. New time, 1988. No. 34. S. 35-37.

However, the fact that the Reds brutally cracked down on the recalcitrant workers and peasantry is also true.

It is interesting that during the years of the civil war there were almost no Russians in the Red Army, although few people know this ...
“You wouldn’t go, Vanek, to the soldiers.
In the Red Army there are bayonets, tea,
The Bolsheviks will manage without you"...

In the defense of Petrograd from Yudenich, in addition to the Latvian riflemen, more than 25 thousand Chinese participated, and in total there were at least 200 thousand Chinese internationalists in the Red Army units. In 1919, more than 20 Chinese units operated in the Red Army - near Arkhangelsk and Vladikavkaz, in Perm and near Voronezh, in the Urals and beyond the Urals ...
Probably there is no person who has not seen the film "The Elusive Avengers", but not many people know that the film was based on the book by P. Blyakhin "The Red Devils", and there are already very few people who remember that there is no gypsy Yashka in the book, there is a Chinese Yu-yu, and in the film, filmed in the 30s, instead of Yu there was a Negro Johnson.
Yakir, the first organizer of Chinese units in the Red Army, recalled that the Chinese were distinguished by high discipline, unquestioning obedience to orders, fatalism and self-sacrifice. In the book “Memories of the Civil War,” he writes: “The Chinese looked at the salary very seriously. Life was easily given, but pay on time and feed well. Yes, like this. Their representatives come to me and say that 530 people were hired and, therefore, I have to pay for all of them. And how many there are, then nothing - the rest of the money that is due to them, they will divide among everyone. For a long time I talked to them, convinced them that this was not right, not our way. Yet they got theirs. Another argument was given - we, they say, should send the families of the dead to China. We had a lot of good things with them on a long, long-suffering journey through the whole of Ukraine, the whole Don, to the Voronezh province.
What else?

There were about 90 thousand Latvians, plus 600 thousand Poles, 250 Hungarians, 150 Germans, 30 thousand Czechs and Slovaks, 50 thousand from Yugoslavia, there were a Finnish division, Persian regiments. In the Korean Red Army - 80 thousand, and in different parts about 100 more, there were Uighur, Estonian, Tatar, mountain units ...

The personnel command staff is also curious.
"Many of Lenin's most bitter enemies agreed to fight side by side with the Bolsheviks they hated when it came to defending the Motherland." Kerensky A.F. My life is underground. Change, 1990, No. 11, p. 264.
S. Kavtaradze's book "Military Specialists in the Service of Soviet Power" is well-known. According to his calculations, 70% of the tsarist generals served in the Red Army, and 18% in all the White armies. There is even a list of names - from general to captain - of officers of the General Staff who voluntarily joined the Red Army. Their motives were a mystery to me until I read the memoirs of N.M. Potapov, quartermaster general of the infantry, who in 1917 led the counterintelligence of the General Staff. He was a difficult man.
I will briefly retell what I remember. I'll just make a reservation first - part of his memoirs was published in the 60s in the Military History Journal, and I read the other in the Leninka manuscript department.
So what's in the magazine.
In July 1917, Potapov met with M. Kedrov (they had been friends since childhood), N. Podvoisky and V. Bonch-Bruevich (head of party intelligence, and his brother Mikhail later led the Field Operational Headquarters of the Red Army for some time). These were the leaders of the Bolshevik Voenka, the future organizers of the Bolshevik coup. After long negotiations they came to an agreement: 1. The General Staff will actively help the Bolsheviks in overthrowing the Provisional Government. 2. The people of the General Staff will move into structures to create a new army to replace the decomposed one.
Both parties fulfilled their obligations. Potapov himself, after October, was appointed manager of the Ministry of War, since the people's commissars were constantly on the road, in fact, he served as the head of the People's Commissariat, and from June 1918 he worked as an expert. By the way, he played an important role in the operations of Trust and Syndicate-2. He was buried with honors in 1946.
Now about the manuscript. According to Potapov, the army was completely decomposed through the efforts of Kerensky and other democrats. Russia was losing the war. The influence of the banking houses of Europe and the USA on the government was too noticeable.
The pragmatic Bolsheviks, in turn, needed the destruction of false democracy in the army, the establishment of iron discipline, in addition, they defended the unity of Russia. The regular patriotic officers were well aware that Kolchak had promised the Americans to give up Siberia, while the British and French secured similar promises from Denikin and Wrangel. Actually, on these conditions, arms were supplied from the West. Order #1 has been cancelled.
Trotsky restored iron discipline and complete subordination of the rank and file to the commanders in six months, resorting to the most stringent measures, up to and including executions. After the revolt of Stalin and Voroshilov, known as the military opposition, the Eighth Congress introduced unity of command in the army, forbidding the attempts of the commissars to interfere. Tales of hostages were myths. The officers were well provided for, they were honored, awarded, their orders were unconditionally carried out, one after another the armies of their enemies were thrown out of Russia. This position suited them as professionals. So, anyway, wrote Potapov.

Pitirim Sorokin, a contemporary of the events, testifies: “Since 1919, power has in fact ceased to be the power of the working masses and has become simply a tyranny, consisting of unprincipled intellectuals, declassed workers, criminals and various adventurers.” Terror, he noted, "began to be carried out against the workers and peasants to a greater extent." Sorokin P.A. The current state of Russia. New world. 1992. No. 4. P.198.

That's right - against the workers and peasants. Suffice it to recall the executions in Tula and Astrakhan, Kronstadt and Antonovism, the suppression of hundreds of peasant uprisings...

And how not to rebel when you are robbed?

“If we can say in the cities that the revolutionary Soviet power is strong enough to resist all attacks from the bourgeoisie, then in no case can we say the same about the countryside. We must most seriously put before ourselves the question of stratification in the countryside, about creating two opposing hostile forces in the countryside ... Only if we can split the village into two irreconcilable hostile camps, if we can ignite there the same civil war that was going on not so long ago in the cities, if we manage to restore the village the poor peasants against the rural bourgeoisie – only if we can say that we will do what we could do for the cities in relation to the countryside.” Yakov Sverdlov Speech at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the 4th convocation on May 20, 1918

On June 29, 1918, speaking at the 3rd All-Russian Congress of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, N.I. Melkov exposed the exploits of the food detachments in the Ufa province, where “the food business was “well organized” by the chairman of the food administration, Tsyurupa, who was made commissar of food for all of Russia, but the other side of the matter is clearer for us, the Left S.R., than for anyone. or. We know how this bread was squeezed out of the villages, what atrocities this Red Army did in the villages: purely robber gangs appeared, who began to rob, reached debauchery, etc. Party of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Documents and materials. 1917-1925 In 3 volumes. T. 2. Part 1. M., 2010. S. 246-247.

For the Bolsheviks, the suppression of the resistance of their opponents was the only way to retain power in a peasant country in order to turn it into the base of the international socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks were confident in the historical justification and justice of the use of merciless violence against their enemies and "exploiters" in general, as well as coercion in relation to the vacillating middle strata of the city and countryside, primarily the peasantry. Based on the experience of the Paris Commune, V.I. Lenin considered the main reason for its death to be the inability to suppress the resistance of the overthrown exploiters. It is worth thinking about his admission, repeated several times at the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921, that “the petty-bourgeois counter-revolution is undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich and Kolchak put together”, and ... “is a danger, in many respects times greater than all the Denikins, Kolchaks and Yudenichs put together.

He wrote: "... The last and most numerous of the exploiting classes rose up against us in our country." PSS, 5th ed., v.37, p.40.
“Everywhere the greedy, gluttonous, bestial kulaks united with the landlords and capitalists against the workers and against the poor in general... Everywhere it entered into an alliance with foreign capitalists against the workers of their own country... There will be no world: the kulak can and can easily be reconciled with the landowner , king and priest, even if they quarreled, but never with the working class. And that is why we call the battle against the kulaks the last, decisive battle. Lenin V.I. PSS, vol. 37, p. 39-40.

As early as July 1918, there were 96 peasant armed uprisings against the Soviet government and its food policy.

On August 5, 1918, an uprising broke out among the peasants of the Penza province, dissatisfied with the food requisitions of the Soviet government. It covered the volosts of the Penza and neighboring Morshansky districts (8 volosts in total). See: Chronicle of the Penza regional organization of the CPSU. 1884-1937 Saratov, 1988, p. 58.

On August 9 and 10, V.I. Lenin received telegrams from the chairman of the Penza Provincial Committee of the RCP (b) E.B. Bosch and the chairman of the Council of Provincial Commissars V.V. Kuraev with a message about the uprising and in response telegrams gave instructions on organizing its suppression (see V. I. Lenin, Biographical Chronicle, V. 6. M., 1975, pp. 41, 46, 51, and 55; , 148, 149 and 156).

Lenin sends a letter to Penza addressed to V.V. Kuraev, E.B. Bosch, A.E. Minkin.
August 11, 1918
T-sham Kuraev, Bosch, Minkin and other Penza communists
Shchi! The uprising of the five volosts of the kulaks must lead to merciless suppression.
This is required by the interest of the entire revolution, for now everywhere is the “last decisive battle” with the kulaks. You have to give a sample.
1) Hang (be sure to hang, so that the people can see) at least 100 notorious kulaks, rich people, bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take away all the bread from them.
4) Assign hostages.
Make it so that for hundreds of miles around the people see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle the bloodsuckers of the kulaks.
Wire receipt and execution.
Your Lenin.
P.S. Find stronger people. Foundation 2, on. 1, d. 6898 - autograph. Lenin V.I. unknown documents. 1891-1922 - M.: ROSSPEN, 1999. Doc. 137.

The Penza revolt was suppressed on August 12, 1918. The local authorities managed to do this through agitation, with limited use of military force. Participants in the murder of five pro-Darmians and three members of the village council c. Heaps of the Penza district and the organizers of the rebellion (13 people) were arrested and shot.

All punishments were brought down by the Bolsheviks on farmers who did not hand over grain and products: peasants were arrested, beaten, shot. Naturally, the villages and volosts rebelled, the peasants took up pitchforks and axes, dug up hidden weapons and brutally cracked down on the "commissars".

Already in 1918, more than 250 major uprisings took place in Smolensk, Yaroslavl, Oryol, Moscow and other provinces; more than 100 thousand peasants of the Simbirsk and Samara provinces revolted.

During the Civil War, the Don and Kuban Cossacks, peasants of the Volga region, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia fought against the Bolsheviks.

In the summer of 1918, in Yaroslavl and the Yaroslavl province, thousands of city workers and surrounding peasants rebelled against the Bolsheviks, in many volosts and villages, the entire population without exception, including women, the elderly, and children, took up arms.

The summary of the Headquarters of the Eastern Red Front contains a description of the uprising in the Sengileevsky and Belebeevsky districts of the Volga region in March 1919: “The peasants went berserk, with pitchforks, with stakes and rifles alone and crowds climb machine guns, despite piles of corpses, their fury is indescribable.” Kubanin M.I. Anti-Soviet peasant movement during the civil war (war communism). - On the agrarian front, 1926, No. 2, p.41.

Of all the anti-Soviet actions in the Nizhny Novgorod region, the most organized and large-scale was the uprising in Vetluzhsky and Varnavinsky districts in August 1918. The reason for the uprising was dissatisfaction with the food dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and the predatory actions of the food detachments. The rebels included up to 10 thousand people. Open confrontation in the Uren region lasted about a month, but individual gangs continued to operate until 1924.

An eyewitness to a peasant rebellion in the Shatsk district of the Tambov province in the fall of 1918 recalled: “I am a soldier, I have been in many battles with the Germans, but I have not seen anything like this. The machine gun mows down the rows, but they go, they see nothing, they climb through the corpses, over the wounded, their eyes are terrible, the mothers of the children go ahead, shouting: Mother, Intercessor, save, have mercy, we will all lie down for You. There was no more fear in them.” Steinberg I.Z. The moral face of the revolution. Berlin, 1923, p.62.

Since March 1918, Zlatoust and its environs have been fighting. At the same time, about two-thirds of the Kungur district was engulfed in the fire of the uprising.
By the summer of 1918, the "peasant" regions of the Urals also flared with resistance.
Throughout the Ural region - from Verkhoturye and Novaya Lyalya to Verkhneuralsk and Zlatoust, and from Bashkiria and the Kama region to Tyumen and Kurgan - detachments of peasants smashed the Bolsheviks. The number of rebels was incalculable. Only in the area of ​​Okhansk-Osa there were more than 40 thousand of them. 50 thousand rebels put the Reds to flight in the region of Bakal - Satka - Mesyagutovskaya volost. On July 20, the peasants took Kuzino and cut the Trans-Siberian Railway, blocking Yekaterinburg from the west.

In general, by the end of the summer, vast territories were liberated from the Reds by the rebels. This is almost the entire South and Middle, as well as part of the Western and Northern Urals (where there were no whites yet).
The Urals were also on fire: the peasants of the Glazovsky and Nolinsky districts of the Vyatka province took up arms. In the spring of 1918, the flames of the anti-Soviet uprising engulfed Lauzinskaya, Duvinskaya, Tastubinskaya, Dyurtyulinsky, Kizilbashsky volosts of the Ufa province. In the region of Krasnoufimsk, a battle took place between Yekaterinburg workers, who came to requisition grain, and local peasants, who did not want to give bread. Workers against peasants! Neither one nor the other did not support the Whites, but this did not prevent them from exterminating each other ... On July 13-15 near Nyazepetrovsk and on July 16 near Verkhny Ufaley, the Krasnoufim rebels defeated units of the 3rd Red Army. Suvorov Dm. Unknown civil war, M., 2008.

N. Poletika, historian: "The Ukrainian village waged a brutal struggle against food requisitions and requisitions, ripping open the stomachs of the rural authorities and agents of Zagotzern and Zagotskot, stuffing these stomachs with grain, carving Red Army stars on their foreheads and chests, driving nails into their eyes, crucifying on the crosses."

The uprisings were suppressed in the most brutal and customary way. In six months, 50 million hectares of land were confiscated from the kulaks and distributed among the poor and middle peasants.
As a result, by the end of 1918, the amount of land in the use of the kulaks decreased from 80 million hectares to 30 million hectares.
Thus, the economic and political positions of the kulaks were severely undermined.
The socio-economic face of the countryside has changed: the share of the peasant poor, which in 1917 was 65%, by the end of 1918 decreased to 35%; middle peasants instead of 20% became 60%, and kulaks instead of 15% became 5%.

But a year later, the situation has not changed.
The delegates from Tyumen told Lenin at the party congress: "To carry out the surplus appropriation, they arranged such things: those peasants who did not want to give the apportionment were put in pits, filled with water and frozen ..."

F. Mironov, commander of the Second Cavalry Army (1919, from an appeal to Lenin and Trotsky): “The people are groaning ... I repeat, the people are ready to throw themselves into the arms of the landlord bondage, if only the torment were not so sick, so obvious, as it is now. .."

In March 1919, at the VIII Congress of the RCP (b), G.E. Zinoviev briefly described the state of affairs in the countryside and the mood of the peasants: "If you now go to the village, you will see that they hate us with all their might."

A.V. Lunacharsky in May 1919 informed V.I. Lenin on the situation in the Kostroma province: “There were no serious unrest in most districts. There were only purely hungry demands, not even riots, but simply demands for bread, which is not there ... But on the other hand, in the east of the Kostroma province there are forest and grain kulak districts - Vetluzhsky and Varnavinsky, in the latter there is a whole rich, prosperous, Old Believer region, the so-called Urensky ... A uniform war is being waged with this region. We want at all costs to pump out those 200 or 300 thousand poods from there... The peasants resist and become extremely hardened. I saw terrible photographs of our comrades, from whom Varnavin's fists skinned, whom they froze in the forest or burned alive ... ".

As noted in the same 1919 in a report to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the chairman of the Higher Military Inspectorate N.I. Podvoisky:
"The workers and peasants who took the most direct part in the October Revolution, not having understood its historical significance, thought to use it to satisfy their immediate needs. Being maximalist with an anarcho-syndicalist bias, the peasants followed us during the period of the destructive period of the October Revolution, nor in rather than showing disagreement with its leaders. During the period of the creative period, they naturally had to disagree with our theory and practice.

Indeed, the peasants parted ways with the Bolsheviks: instead of giving them all the bread grown in their labors with respect, they pulled out machine guns and sawn-off shotguns taken from the war from secluded places.

From the minutes of the meetings of the Special Commission for the Supply of the Army and the Population of the Orenburg Governorate and the Kirghiz Territory on rendering assistance to the proletarian center on September 12, 1919
Listened. Comrade Martynov's report on the catastrophic food situation of the Center.
Decided. Having heard the report of Comrade Martynov and the contents of the conversation by direct wire with Comrade Blumberg, authorized by the Council of People's Commissars, the Special Commission decides:
1. To mobilize members of the collegium, party and non-party workers of the provincial food committee to send them to the districts in order to increase the bulking of grain and deliver it to the stations.
2. To carry out a similar mobilization among the workers of the Special Commission, the food section of the Kirghiz Revolutionary Committee and use the workers of the political department of the 1st Army to send them to the regions.
3. Urgently instruct the chairmen of the district food committees to take the most exceptional measures to strengthen the bulk [grain], the responsibility of the chairmen and members of the collegiums of the regional food committees.
4. Comrade Gorelkin, head of the department of transport of the Gubernia Food Committee, to order to show maximum energy for the organization of transport.
5. Send to the areas of the following persons: comrade Shchipkova - to the Orskaya railway area. (Saraktash, Orsk), comrade Styvrina - to the Isaevo-Dedovsky, Mikhailovsky and Pokrovsky regional food committees, comrade Andreeva - to Iletsk and Ak-Bulaksky, comrade Golynicheva - to the Krasnokholmsky regional food committee, comrade Kiselev - to Pokrovsky, t. Chukhrit - to Aktobe, giving him the broadest powers.
6. Send all available bread to the centers immediately.
7. Take all measures to export from Iletsk all the stocks of grain and millet available there, for which purpose send the required number of wagons to Iletsk.
8. Apply to the Revolutionary Military Council with a request to take possible measures to provide the Gubernia Food Committee with transport in this hasty work, for which, if necessary, cancel the underwater outfit of the Revolutionary Military Council for some areas and issue a mandatory decree that the Revolutionary Military Council guarantees timely payment of the carters who brought bread.
9. To propose to osprogenivs 8 and 49 to temporarily serve the needs of the army with the help of their districts so that the remaining districts can be used to supply the centers ...
Genuine with proper signatures
Archive of the KazSSR, f. 14. op. 2, d. 1. l 4. Certified copy.

Trinity-Pechora uprising, anti-Bolshevik rebellion on the upper Pechora during the civil war. The reason for it was the export of grain stocks by the Reds from Troitsko-Pechorsk to Vychegda. The initiator of the uprising was the chairman of the volost cell of the RCP (b), the commandant of Troitsko-Pechorsk I.F. Melnikov. The conspirators included the commander of the Red Army company M.K. Pystin, priest V. Popov, deputy. chairman of the volost executive committee M.P. Pystin, forester N.S. Skorokhodov and others.
The uprising began on February 4, 1919. The rebels killed part of the Red Army, the rest went over to their side. During the uprising, the head of the Soviet garrison in Troitsko-Pechorsk, N.N. Suvorov, red commander A.M. Cheremnykh. District military commissar M.M. Frolov shot himself. The judicial board of the rebels (chairman P.A. Yudin) executed about 150 communists and activists of the Soviet government - refugees from the Cherdyn district.

Then anti-Bolshevik riots broke out in the volost villages of Pokcha, Savinobor and Podcherye. After Kolchak's army entered the upper reaches of the Pechora, these volosts fell under the jurisdiction of the Siberian Provisional Government, and the participants in the uprising against the Soviet regime in Troitsko-Pechorsk entered the Separate Siberian Pechora Regiment, which proved to be one of the most combat-ready units of the Russian army in offensive operations in the Urals.

Soviet historian M.I. Kubanin, reporting that 25-30% of the total population participated in the uprising against the Bolsheviks in the Tambov province, summed up: "There is no doubt that 25-30 percent of the village population means that the entire adult male population went to Antonov's army." Kubanin M.I. Anti-Soviet peasant movement during the years of the civil war (war communism) .- On the agrarian front, 1926, No. 2, p.42.
M.I. Kubanin also writes about a number of other major uprisings during the years of military communism: about the Izhevsk People's Army, which had 70,000 people, which managed to hold out for more than three months, about the Don uprising, in which 30,000 armed Cossacks and peasants participated, and with rear forces that had a force of one hundred thousand man and broke through the red front.

In the summer-autumn of 1919, in the peasant uprising against the Bolsheviks in the Yaroslavl province, according to M.I. Lebedev, chairman of the Yaroslavl provincial Cheka, 25-30 thousand people participated. Regular units of the 6th Army of the Northern Front and detachments of the Cheka, as well as detachments of Yaroslavl workers (8.5 thousand people), were thrown against the "white-greens", ruthlessly cracking down on the rebels. In August 1919 alone, they destroyed 1845 and wounded 832 rebels, shot 485 rebels on the orders of the Revolutionary Military Tribunals, and over 400 people went to prison. Documentation Center for the Modern History of the Yaroslavl Region (TsDNI YAO). F. 4773. Op. 6. D. 44. L. 62-63.

The scope of the insurgent movement in the Don and Kuban reached a special strength by the autumn of 1921, when the Kuban rebel army under the leadership of A.M. Przhevalsky made a desperate attempt to capture Krasnodar.

In 1920-1921. on the territory of Western Siberia, liberated from the Kolchak troops, a bloody 100,000-strong peasant revolt against the Bolsheviks blazed.
“In every village, in every village,” wrote P. Turkhansky, “the peasants began to beat the communists: they killed their wives, children, relatives; they chopped with axes, chopped off their arms and legs, opened their bellies. The food workers were dealt with especially cruelly.” Turkhansky P. Peasant uprising in Western Siberia in 1921. Memories. - Siberian archive, Prague, 1929, No. 2.

The war for bread was not for life, but for death.
Here is an excerpt from the Report of the Administration Department of the Novonikolaevsky Uyezd Executive Committee of Soviets on the Kolyvan Uprising to the Administration Department of Sibrevkom:
“In the rebellious areas, the komacheks are almost completely exterminated. The survivors were random, who managed to escape. Even those expelled from the cell were exterminated. After the suppression of the uprising, the defeated cells were restored on their own, increased their activities, and a large influx into the cells of the poor was noticeable in the villages after the suppression of the uprising. The cells insist on arming them or on creating special-purpose detachments from them under district party committees. There were no cases of cowardice, extradition of cell members by individual members of the cells.
The police in Kolyvan were taken by surprise, 4 policemen and an assistant to the district police chief were killed. The remaining policemen (a small percentage fled) handed over their weapons to the rebels one by one. About 10 policemen from the Kolyvan militia took part in the uprising (passively). Of these, after our occupation of Kolyvan, three were shot by order of a special department of the district check.
The reason for the unsatisfactoriness of the police is due to its composition from the local Kolyvan burghers (there are about 80-100 workers in the city).
The communist executive committees were killed, the kulak took an active part in the uprising, often becoming the head of the insurgent departments.
http://basiliobasilid.livejournal.com/17945.html

The Siberian rebellion was suppressed as ruthlessly as all the others.

“The experience of the civil war and peaceful socialist construction has convincingly proved that the kulaks are the enemies of Soviet power. The complete collectivization of agriculture was a method of liquidating the kulaks as a class. (Essays on the Voronezh organization of the CPSU. M., 1979, p. 276).

The Statistical Directorate of the Red Army determines the combat losses of the Red Army for 1919 at 131,396 people. In 1919, there was a war on 4 internal fronts against the White armies and on the Western Front against Poland and the Baltic states.
In 1921, none of the fronts no longer existed, and the same department estimates the losses of the "workers' and peasants'" Red Army for this year at 171,185 people. Parts of the Cheka of the Red Army were not included and their losses are not included here. Not included, perhaps, are the losses of the ChON, VOKhR and other communist detachments, as well as the militia.
In the same year, peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks flared in the Don and Ukraine, in Chuvashia and in the Stavropol region.

Soviet historian L.M. Spirin summarizes: “We can say with confidence that there was not only not a single province, but not a single county, where there were no protests and uprisings of the population against the communist regime.”

When the civil war was still in full swing, on the initiative of F.E. Dzerzhinsky in Soviet Russia everywhere (on the basis of the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of April 17, 1919) special units and troops are being created. These are military-party detachments at factory party cells, district committees, city committees, ukoms and provincial committees of the party, organized to help the organs of Soviet power in the fight against counter-revolution, to carry out guard duty at especially important facilities, etc. They were formed from communists and Komsomol members.

The first CHONs arose in Petrograd and Moscow, then in the central provinces of the RSFSR (by September 1919, they had been created in 33 provinces). CHONs of the front line of the Southern, Western and Southwestern fronts took part in front-line operations, although their main task was to fight against internal counter-revolution. The personnel of the CHON was divided into personnel and militia (variable).

On March 24, 1921, the Central Committee of the Party, on the basis of the decision of the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), adopted a resolution on the inclusion of the ChON in the militia units of the Red Army. In September 1921, the command and headquarters of the CHON of the country were established (commander A.K. Alexandrov, chief of staff V.A. Kangelari), for political leadership - the Council of the CHON under the Central Committee of the RCP (b) (secretary of the Central Committee V.V. Kuibyshev, deputy chairman VChK I.S. Unshlikht, commissar of the headquarters of the Red Army and commander of the CHON), in the provinces and districts - the command and headquarters of the CHON, the Councils of the CHON at the provincial committees and party committees.

They were quite a serious police force. In December 1921, there were 39,673 personnel in the CHON. and variable - 323,372 people. The ChON included infantry, cavalry, artillery and armored units. More than 360 thousand armed fighters!

With whom did they fight if the civil war officially ended in 1920? After all, special-purpose units were disbanded by the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) only in 1924-1925.
Until the very end of 1922, martial law was maintained in 36 provinces, regions and autonomous republics of the country, that is, almost the entire country was under martial law.

CHON. Regulations, guidelines and circulars. - M .: ShtaCHONresp., 1921; Naida S.F. Parts of special purpose (1917-1925). Party leadership in the creation and activities of the CHON // Military History Journal, 1969. No. 4. pp.106-112; Telnov N.S. From the history of the creation and combat activities of communist special forces during the civil war. // Scientific notes of the Kolomna Pedagogical Institute. - Kolomna, 1961. Volume 6. S. 73-99; Gavrilova N.G. The activities of the Communist Party in the leadership of special forces during the civil war and the restoration of the national economy (based on the materials of the Tula, Ryazan, Ivanovo-Voznesensk provinces). Diss. cand. ist. Sciences. - Ryazan, 1983; Krotov V.L. The activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the creation and combat use of special forces (CHON) in the fight against counter-revolution (1919-1924). Dis. cand. ist. Sciences. - Kharkov, 1969; Murashko P.E. The Communist Party of Belarus - the organizer and leader of the communist formations for special purposes (1918-1924) Diss. cand. ist. Sciences - Minsk, 1973; Dementiev I.B. CHON of the Perm province in the fight against the enemies of Soviet power. Diss. cand. ist. Sciences. - Perm, 1972; Abramenko I.A. Creation of communist detachments for special purposes in Western Siberia (1920). // Scientific notes of Tomsk University, 1962. No. 43. S.83-97; Vdovenko G.D. Communist detachments - Parts of the special purpose of Eastern Siberia (1920-1921) .- Diss. cand. ist. Sciences. - Tomsk, 1970; Fomin V.N. Parts of special purpose in the Far East in 1918-1925. - Bryansk, 1994; Dmitriev P. Parts for special purposes. - Soviet Review. No. 2.1980. S.44-45. Krotov V.L. Chonovtsy.- M.: Politizdat, 1974.

The time has come to finally look at the results of the civil war in order to realize: out of more than 11 million dead, more than 10 million are civilians.
We need to admit that it was not just a civil war, but a war against the people, first of all, the peasantry of Russia, which was the main and most dangerous force in resisting the dictatorship of the exterminating power.

Like any war, it was waged in the interests of profit and robbery.

D. Mendeleev, the creator of the periodic system of elements, the most famous Russian scientist, was engaged not only in chemistry, but also in demography.
Hardly anyone will deny him a thorough approach to science. In his work To the Knowledge of Russia, Mendeleev predicted in 1905 (based on the data of the All-Russian population census) that by the year 2000 the population of Russia would be 594 million people.

It was in 1905 that the Bolshevik Party actually began the struggle for power. The retribution for their so-called socialism was bitter.
On the land that was called Russia for centuries, by the end of the 20th century, according to Mendeleev’s calculations, we were missing almost 300 million people (before the collapse of the USSR, about 270 million lived in it, and not about 600 million, as the scientist predicted).

B. Isakov, head of the department of statistics at the Plekhanov Moscow Institute of National Economy, states: “Roughly speaking, we are “halved”. Because of the “experiments” of the 20th century, the country lost every second inhabitant... Direct forms of genocide claimed from 80 to 100 million lives.”

Novosibirsk. September 2013

Reviews of “Russia in 1917-1925. Loss arithmetic” (Sergey Shramko)

Very interesting and rich in digital material article. Thanks, Sergey!

Vladimir Eisner 02.10.2013 14:33.

I completely agree with the article, at least on the example of my relatives.
My great-grandmother died young in 1918, when food detachments raked out all her grain, and she ate from hunger somewhere in a rye field. From this, she had a "volvulus of the intestines" and she died in terrible agony.
Further, my grandmother's sister's husband died from persecution already in 1920, when two daughters were babies.
Another grandmother's sister's husband died of typhus in 1921, and two daughters were also babies.
In my father's family, from 1918 to 1925, three little brothers died of starvation.
My mother's two brothers died of starvation, and she herself, born in 1918, barely survived.
The food detachments wanted to shoot my grandmother when she was pregnant with my mother and shouted to them: "Oh, you robbers!"
But grandfather stood up and he was arrested, beaten and released barefoot for 20 kilometers.
Both my mother's and father's parents had to leave with their families from warm houses in the city to remote villages to unadapted houses. Due to hopelessness, contact with the rest of the relatives was lost, and we do not know the whole terrible picture from 1917 to 1925. Sincerely. Valentina Gazova 09/19/2013 09:06.

Reviews

Thank you Sergey for the great and intelligible work. Now, when the Khmer Rouge again begin to wave flags, erecting terrible blocks here and there to the tyrant, chanting their utopian prayers, powdering the brains of young people, polluting weak souls with heresy, WE must defend our state with the whole world in order to prevent the Middle Ages! Ignorance! - This is a terrible force, especially in the countryside, in the countryside. I see this in my native Siberian places. Those who knew the real horror, and went through it - they are no longer alive. Only the children of the war remained. In my village, where 30 households have been preserved, my aunt was left alone - a child of war. It turns out that one knows the horror of complete ruin, the destruction of high-quality human capital, all sorts of prospects. And the rest of the youth, completely ignorant! She up to one place that HISTORY! She needs to survive! Drinking too much, ready even tomorrow under the banner of the next proletarians to become; on a new divide, shred, exile and put up against the wall! I lived in Siberia, according to the stories of the old people, I know how a red bloody tornado swept through the land, which did not know serfdom. Grandmother, recalling the time of the depeasantization of a peasant (dispossession of kulaks), collectivization, she always began to cry, pray and whisper: “Oh, Lord, don’t worry, you’re a granddaughter, you saw it with your eyes, you lived with it inside” Now the fields are all abandoned, the farms are destroyed, and this the whole consequence of those terrible years when the Stalinists and Leninists forged a new man, burning out in him the feelings of an owner, a master! Here at the exit, in the end, they got completely dead villages. "Vaska take the land! After all, your grandfather went to the lead for it!" - I say to my fellow countryman, who recently turned fifty. And he sits on a bench, already toothless, lets out a cigarette, spits on the grass, in galoshes on his bare feet, and smoky smile "-" And nah ... I Nikolaich she is to me, that land, what will I do with it! A seed was thrown to this terrible fruit in the year 17. Here is this mighty tree called HOLY RUSSIA and collapsed, tearing out roots, roots, to one of the fertile earth. another demolition, revolutionary bacchanalia ... As they say, do not wake up dashing!