Estate, occupation, social stratum: the problem of the provincial Russian cities' social structure study in the late 19th -early 20th centuries (a case study of Tambov and Tobolsk)

The study of cities has been a topical research field of modern social history. This interest is determined both by the historic role of cities as centers and "locomotives" of social change and the lack of answers to topical issues of the urban history. The article presents a brief source-studying and a historiographical analysis of the social structure issue in the late period of the Russian Empire. Approaches and methods as well as criteria and grounds of their use are described. The authors compare social structure of two Russian provincial governmental centers of the Central Black Earth Region (Tambov) and West Siberia (Tobolsk) in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The study was carried out on the basis of a complex interdisciplinary approach of mass historical source analysis (personal sources included) by means of methods practiced in social sciences and computer technologies. Occupational, estate and social composition of Tambov and Tobolsk has undergone a multi-aspect analysis. To qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the social, demographic and economic markers of governmental centers development approaches and methods of "new historical demography" were employed. Such issues as age, gender and social characteristics of urban occupational and estate groups were studied; the composition and specific weight of the elite, middle layers and lower layers were specified. The study of the social aspects of two governmental centers located in different regions of the Russian Empire which happened to be in different historical circumstances allowed the authors to see general and specific points in the structure of social change, analyze the pace and the influence of urbanization and modernization on social transformations. The results demonstrate the decrease of the number and the specific weight of some occupational and estate groups and the increase of others within the composition of provincial governmental centers population and certain strata. This showed processes of formation and disintegration of classes characteristic of the Russian society as a whole and urban population in particular in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Non-urban estates grew in number due to the inflow of peasants. However, the most "urban" estates from the viewpoint of constant life in the cities were the noblemen and civil servants (77.9 % in Tobolsk Province, 67.1 % in Tambov Province), the honored citizens, merchants and petty bourgeoisie (74.2 % and 65.3 % correspondingly). The results provided for some general development trends of the urban population under study (vagueness of estates, professionalization growth, etc.) as well as some regional specificity of social transformation in the regions which influenced the further history of the two cities.

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