Historians Will Restore the Image of the Residents of Ekaterinburg of the XVIII Century

11:01, May 29, 2024

Scientists will reconstruct the appearance of real people and determine what their lives were like

The scientific team of the UrFU will find out who lived in Ekaterinburg in 1723-1781 (from the date of foundation of the fortress city until Ekaterinburg received the official status of a city): the approximate number and dynamics of the population, social stratification, the way of life of people.

"We already have some developments. In particular, our team's specialist Svetlana Tsemenkova, Associate Professor of the Department of Document Science, Archival Studies and History of Public Administration of the UrFU, as a result of serious work, managed to show in a half-century dynamics how the corps of leaders of the mining department was formed and changed. These are the first people who headed the Siberian Oberbergamt (later: the Chancellery of the Chief Factory Board), mining officers, and heads of structural subdivisions. But what is extremely interesting is that it was possible to find out how these professionals appeared in the mining department," says Dmitry Redin, project leader, and the head of the UrFU Laboratory of Primary Sources Research.

As historians have found out, Ekaterinburg cultivated its own personnel, which was extremely rare in the provinces. Vasily Tatishchev and Wilhelm de Gennin laid a solid foundation of education in the fortress factory, in fact, that was a whole network, including specialized educational institutions: German and Latin schools, and a school of drawing. In addition, Ekaterinburg attracted graduates of the capital's schools (Navigational, Artillery, Engineering, Naval Academy, etc.). In this sense, Ekaterinburg was almost the most educated provincial city during the reign of Peter the Great. Besides, many foreigners worked in Ekaterinburg including craftsmen who came with Gennin from Olonets factories (modern Petrozavodsk) and newly hired contractors (e.g. doctors, craftsmen). Germans (especially Saxons) prevailed among them, but there were also Swedes and Poles.

"In terms of confessional affiliation among foreigners, the majority were Protestant Lutherans, but there were also Calvinists and Catholics. During the first 10 years of its existence, about 60 male foreigners came and left Ekaterinburg. That was a lot for a non-metropolitan city of those times with a population of 500 to 2,000 people. A significant part of them worked in Ekaterinburg itself while others were distributed among the factories of the Ekaterinburg vedomstvo (t/n administrative-territorial entity within the Tobolsk Province in 1723-1781)," explains Dmitry Redin.

Ekaterinburg consisted of two communities: craftsmen and laborers, mining officers, and various supervisors, i.e. people directly connected with production and factory management. And the second community was people who lived in Ekaterinburg, but were not directly connected with the factory, they did neither work there nor serve in the offices. They served the factory workers and supplied them with foodstuffs, household goods, and household items. This community was formed from neighboring (e.g., Shartashskaya) and foreign peasants, merchants, freed exiles, retired craftsmen, etc. They laid the foundation of the civil urban community.

"Over time, the civil community grew, it received the status of a settlement at the factory in 1745. There were elections to the Ekaterinburg City Hall in 1751: the body of the city government proper, and by the early 1780s, or rather, in 1781, Ekaterinburg became a district city. But the thing is that we know little about how people lived. There is not even accurate data on the population of Ekaterinburg in the literature, its gender, age, and social structures. The problem is that the censuses of that time were not universal; per capita, censuses were conducted at different intervals of 15-20 years, counted only the male population (who paid taxes), did not always count children, and never counted women," Redin adds.

In addition to per capita censuses, local authorities conducted various departmental censuses. It is also difficult to compare all the materials of these heterogeneous censuses due to the different structure of census forms and distinct recording systems.

"We have the results of seven different censuses for this period, the data with the help of which we will try to systematize, analyze, and identify the population dynamics to begin with. Ideally, we will try to identify the causes of demographic changes: whether it was due to an external influx of people or internal processes that caused demographic fluctuations, and try to get the most complete picture of the sex and age composition," says Dmitry Redin.

In addition, specialists will have to answer complex questions: how people lived in the early years of Ekaterinburg's foundation, what cultural values and norms they followed, and what everyday traditions they observed.

"We would like to understand what society was like in Ekaterinburg at that time: how the residents positioned themselves, how their social status was defined. The commonly accepted, albeit debatable, practice of viewing 18th-century Russian society as class-based does not define the social stratification that existed very accurately. The social structure was complex and fractional, organized from numerous intra-class strata. There were significant differences in how social groups were categorized by the authorities, and how (by what characteristics and in what circumstances) the inhabitants themselves identified themselves," explains Dmitry Redin.

The result of the huge work should be a database of the population of Ekaterinburg. Among other things, scientists plan to carry out anthropological reconstruction of the appearance of the inhabitants of Ekaterinburg.

"During the reconstruction of Sverdlova - Karl Libknecht Streets, the old, one could say one of the oldest, cemeteries were uncovered. After all, in different years of the 18th century, the northeastern and eastern outskirts of Ekaterinburg, suburban villages, and slobodas (t/n a settlement near a city; a suburb) were located here. According to the preserved remains, we have an opportunity to restore the appearance of several women and men of that time, to see their anthropological features, to learn how our predecessors looked like," concludes Dmitry Redin.

Anna Marinovich

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office.
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