Annotation of the results obtained in 2023
Implementation of the work plan: - a detailed research plan was drawn up, each point of which corresponded to the topic of one of the published articles. - key points of the project related to the characteristics of the state model for regulating labor migration to the outlying territories of the Russian Empire during the period under study and its regional features characteristic of the Volga-Caspian fishing region were published in leading Russian peer-reviewed publications indexed in international bibliographic databases Web of Science Core Collection and/or Scopus and in the RINC; - a bibliographic review on the project problem was carried out, which served as the basis for historiographic analysis in all articles published as part of the grant; - the degree of study of the problem is structured according to a territorial principle and is divided into three main groups: foreign, domestic and regional. It is concluded that, despite the extensive historiography of the settlement of the Astrakhan province, labor migration as a factor in the development of the peripheral territories of the Volga-Caspian fishing region in the post-reform period did not become the subject of special research; - work was carried out in central and regional archives in order to collect and analyze the research source base: in the Russian State Historical Archive (St. Petersburg) and in the State Archive of the Astrakhan Region (Astrakhan); - a generalizing collective monograph “Model of regulation of labor migration in the Russian Empire in 1861–1914” was prepared and published. (using the example of the formation of industrial and fishing clusters in the Volga-Caspian fishing region)"; - the theoretical and methodological basis of the research has been developed based on the theory of Doctor of Economics L.L. Rybakovsky about the three-stage nature of the migration process and the characteristics of the criteria for an industrial cluster, developed by Doctor of Economics. O.P. Burmatova; - stages of the project, speeches by team members at scientific conferences were covered on the portal of Astrakhan State University: https://asu.edu.ru/news/15020-nauchnyi-sotrudnik-iz-agu-prinial-uchastie-v-konferencii-ran. html; https://asu.edu.ru/news/14572-professor-agu-obsudil-perspektivy-sotrudnichestva-s-institutom-demogra.html; https://asu.edu.ru/news/15747-professor-agu-prinial-uchastie-v-nauchnoi-konferencii-v-krasnoiarske.html. Information about specific scientific results achieved: - the labor migration model that existed before 1861 is analyzed, and the changes that occurred during the post-reform period are shown. It has been proven that, in the Volga-Caspian fishing region, the main resource, which was a source of income for the elite and the population, was fishing, and depending on which elite group (government officials, landowner nobility, merchants) received the right from the state to own/use river and marine fishing grounds, it depended on which categories of the population and in what numbers migrated to the region. Therefore, the change in migration patterns of settlement of the Volga-Caspian region in the pre-reform period directly depended on which elite group received preferential access to fishing. In conditions of serfdom and the absence of a free labor market, none of the migration models used led to unambiguous success. The process of settling the region and developing its natural resources progressed at a slow pace: by the end of the 18th century. no more than 50–70 thousand people lived in this territory. The new migration model that emerged in Russia during the post-reform period assumed the leading role of the state in the colonization process through the implementation of an active resettlement policy and the encouragement of entrepreneurial activity of migrants. Its difference from the models of the previous period was the growth of the migration flow due to the emergence and development of the free labor market; in the creation at the level of the central state apparatus of specialized administrative bodies for organizing the resettlement movement; in increasing public investment to encourage internal migration. - the features of labor migration to the Volga-Caspian fishing region were identified in comparison with the all-Russian migration process during the period under study. a) In the Volga-Caspian fishing region, most of the labor migrants were sent to a kind of free economic zone that was formed in the second half of the 1860s. through the purchase by the Ministry of State Property of landowners' lands in the lower reaches of the Volga and along the northern coast of the Caspian Sea. In these territories, as a result of the enforcement of the Charter of the Caspian Fishing and Seal Fisheries adopted in 1865, preferential conditions were created for the development of business activity. These measures contributed to the creation of a large number of new fishing enterprises and an increase in incomes of the population, and the development of entrepreneurship and the demand for labor attracted new flows of migrants to the region; b) The territory of the Volga-Caspian fishing region (administratively, the largest part of which was the Astrakhan province) was located in arid steppe and semi-desert zones, poorly suitable for agriculture. The land surveying and allocation of resettlement areas for migrants carried out in other parts of the country was not relevant for the Volga-Caspian region, since in agricultural terms most of the land could only be used for grazing livestock. The absence of demarcated areas did not impede the migration flow, since the main type of economic activity was fishing, and the land had value only if there were coastal fishing grounds on it; c) As the main tool for securing and adapting migrants to new places of residence, the state actively used the practice of providing benefits, loans and other support measures. In the Volga-Caspian fishing region, among them we can note the implementation of measures to stimulate small business (replacing the deposit with a guarantee when leasing fishing areas to individual peasants or peasant societies); allocation of land plots for settlement to Kalmyks and Kyrgyz who wished to transition to a sedentary lifestyle, etc. - achievements and shortcomings in the model of state regulation of labor migration in the post-reform period were identified. The implementation of the state migration model, based on free migration and the promotion of entrepreneurship, in the Volga-Caspian fishing region showed high results: it was solved as a task of settling the outlying region (in terms of population growth rates in the second half of the 19th century, the Astrakhan province became one of the leaders among the territories of the European parts of the Russian Empire) and the development of its natural resources (creation of industrial and fishing clusters). The rapid settlement and development of the territory in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries, significant fish reserves and the availability of convenient transport communications made the Volga-Caspian fishing region the largest fish-producing and fish-processing region of the Russian Empire. Among the negative features of the state migration model for the region, one should note the uncontrolled influx of labor migrants, among whom there were many antisocial elements; the spread of poaching and predatory exploitation of fish resources, leading to their depletion; the gradual concentration of production in several large fishing companies, which lobbied for their interests and interfered with free competition and small business.

 

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