Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The agrarian crisis of the mid-1930s in the Soviet Union remains unstudied in the Russian and foreign historiography. The article attempts to identify the impact of agricultural and food crises, caused by 1936 crop failure and the official procurement policy on the demographic processes in the Urals. The demographic crisis in the Ural village took place against the background of political repressions. During the fall of 1936 and the first half of 1937 the crisis changed the demographic behavior of the population: the number of births decreased, the number of deaths increased. Deterioration of reproduction indicators was recorded among both the urban and rural population. The growth of infant mortality was especially sharp and the main cause of death was contagious infectious diseases. The author calculated excessive mortality of the urban and rural populations in 1936 and 1937, it amounted to nearly 50 thousand residents of the Sverdlovsk region. Furthermore, there was a dramatic increase of rural population migration to the cities. This demographic situation proved to be extremely unfavorable. Food supply system, systems of medical services, trade, consumer cooperatives in the country were unable to cope with negative situation. Due to the lack of food supplies farmers faced a problem of survival, not all managed to escape from the village. State aid came too late, just before the spring sowing in 1937, but its recipients were only the farmers who participated in the field work. For the first time in historiography the author’s conclusions on the demographic crisis of the mid-1930s are based on the analysis of archival documents of current civil registration. The January 1937 census recorded a reduction of the rural population in Urals, in comparison with the 1926 census data. The reconstruction of reproductive processes on a monthly basis was only made possible by the use of materials held by registrar authorities. These materials showed that in September of 1937 in the Urals village death rate exceeded birth rate, while the mortality peak had already passed.