Pudenko K.  

Ecological adaptation of the Slavic-Russian population of the Middle Volga in the VI - XIX centuries

The history of the Slavic-Russian population on the Middle Volga begins in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Most modern scholars believe that this is due to the emergence of the Imenkovo culture tribes in this territory in the 4th-5th centuries AD. By the 7th century, it was a culturally diverse population that consisted of several territorial groups: Samarskaya Luka and Ulyanovsk Volga Area, Kazan Volga Area, Udmurt Kama Area, settlements on the basin Sura and Sviyaga. They had their own specifics, but nevertheless were closely related. From the eighth century part of the Slavic population migrates to the west, and the remaining groups are from the composition of the Turks who came here, and from the 9th century and Finns of Kama Area. In one form or another, the Slavs lived on the Middle Volga as part of the Bulgarian state, and then the Golden Horde and the Kazan Khanate. Since the second half of the XVI century. the Russian population begins to increase due to the military estate, and from the XVII - XVIII century peasant colonization is taking place. In the XIX century. a common ethnographic map of the region’s population has developed. It generally remained until the middle of the twentieth century. In each of these periods, the Slavic-Russian population occupied certain ecological niches, which most often did not coincide. This is partly due to certain global climatic phenomena, for example, the so-called "small ice age" - XIV - XIX centuries and the preceding small climatic optimum of the X — XIII century. But at an early stage - in the second half of the 1st millennium AD The choice of habitats was very diverse. For IV-V centuries. most often there are settlements located in the steppe or forest-steppe strip, often in the upper reaches of ravines, where small steppe rivers began. In the VI - VII centuries. Slavic settlements appear in the floodplain of large rivers - the Volga and Kama and on the banks of their small tributaries. It is noteworthy that this is due to the development of new territories where deciduous forests grew, alternating with steppe plots. Displaced by the Bulgars or assimilated by them in the 9th-10th centuries they do not stand out from the general mass of the mixed population of Bulgaria. Separate Russian villages in the 11th – 12th centuries appear in the lower reaches of the Kama River, on low river terraces, close to main trade routes, but always if there are conditions for cattle breeding and agriculture. In the XIII - early XV century. Russian settlements on the Middle Volga are recorded mainly on the high banks of the Volga. The trend towards the development of coastal territories mainly along the Volga and in the lower reaches of the Kama continued in the 16th century, which was supported by the protectionist policies of the Moscow state. In the XVIII - XIX centuries. the Russian population develops lands along the banks of small rivers, lakes, streams and springs in the distance from the Volga and Kama. At the same time, Russian villages are found on the watershed, where water supply was based on wells.


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