Migration routes from the Lithuanian border to Belsky County in the 17th century: representation in GIS

The article examines the methods and results of studying migration routes to the Russian state from the west in the 17th century based on materials from Belsky district, utilizing geographic information technologies. In historiography, the issue of mass migration of peasant and townsfolk populations, along with its specific directions, remains insufficiently researched. The time of moving "from the Lithuanian border" is divided into pre-war, wartime, and post-war periods. The largest share of crossings occurred during the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667. After the war, the number of crossings sharply decreased, yet they continued. State policy was directed towards settling the "migrants" on deserted palace lands. This process was accompanied by special censuses of the "migrants." The paper presents the results of studying geographic data from the censuses of 1674 and 1678 regarding "migrants from the Lithuanian border" in the palace volosts of Belsky district. Geographic data from the censuses about places of origin, temporary location, and residence in Belsky district were incorporated into a geographic information project as separate point layers. The initial, intermediate, and final points are connected in GIS with linear objects. Each of the obtained graphs reflects unique migration paths, with the number of pathways of one type represented by the thickness of the graph line. Points with households "from the Lithuanian border" are predominantly localized in the northern volosts of the district and on the border with Vyazemsky district. Compact settlement patterns of migrants from a single microregion, including relatives, are observed in the new location. The concentration of migrant households is marked in the villages of Biberevo, Monino, and Dneprovo. The area of origin was mainly Belarusian Podvinsk and Podneprovye (Vitebsk and Polotsk voivodeships). The censuses documented complex movements through various regions of the Russian state: Rzhevsky, Toropetsky, Vyazemsky, and Moscow districts. The applied approaches have limitations in analyzing source data. These include not only a certain degree of generalization of data (for example, in designating places of origin) but also the representation of several identical migration paths by one linear object, and consequently, restrictions in sampling data about specific individuals.