The Problem of Labour Migration of Ukrainian Peasants and Burghers in the Internal Policy of Russian Empire in the Second Half of the Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Centuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2019.06.142Keywords:
Russian empire, Ukraine, labour migration, peasants, burghers.Abstract
Abstract. The purpose of this research is to highlight the results of Russian policy for Ukrainian labour migrants, which is both of theoretical and practical importance, since it enables modern Ukrainian leaders to take into account positive and negative experience of unprivileged classes labour migration in the late 19th andin the early 20th centuries. The research methods are based on the main principles of historicist tradition, scientific objectivity, comprehensive approach and data classification. In order to achieve the purpose the authors use a number of general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, classification) as well as specific historical methods, such as problematic and chronological, comparative, retrospective and method of periodization. As the result of the research, the authors have made a conclusion about quite high activity of the inhabitants of Dnipro Ukraine in migration movements during the second half of the 19th century and the early of the 20th century due to the lack of land. The economic reasons were predominant formost migrants, as they were unable to satisfy their primary needs within their region. These are general observations. To be more precise, we can determine a certain range of social and economic factors which made direct and indirect impact on stepping up of migration movements on Ukrainian lands of the Russian empire within the period of 1861–1917. These factors include: 1) the lack of land for most small agrarian producers due to the implementation of legislation acts concerning former serf (in 1861), udilni (in 1863) and state peasants (in 1866); 2) small labour market in the late 19th and early 20th century that resulted in agrarian overpopulation of Ukrainian villages (from 7 to 12 million by various estimates); 3) the availability of the special social unprivileged class of kozaks who inhabited Left-Bank Ukraine (with the highest level of migration) and always had a possibility to sell their land and receive some money to move out; 4) the prevailing government ideas concerning Ukrainian people as the best colonization element that is proved by a large number of legislations acts related to so-called "malorosiyski kozaky". Because of fiscal interests, the central power restricted the intention of some part of its citizens to find better resources in other regions of the country for a long period. However, the need for economic growth of remote eastern and south-eastern regions of the empire and necessity for the defence of these territories from aggressive neighbours, e.g. Japan, forced the government to provide more possibilities for labour migrants to move from тthe densely populated central parts of the country to its borderlands.
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