The Tsar family’s settlements and peasants of the Solvychegodsk Uyezd of the Vologda province at the end of the XVIII-mid-XIX centuries

The paper analyzes the dynamics of the number of the Tsar family’s settlements and peasants in the Solvychegodsk Uyezd of the Vologda province. The research is based on records sources identified in the funds of the Russian State Historical Archive and the Russian Archive of Ancient Acts. The problem was considered as part of a study of the evolution of demographic characteristics in a Tsar family’s village in a remote northern uyezd. It was revealed that the number of appanage settlements decreased over time, especially intensively in the northwestern corner of Solvychegodsk uyezd. In this case, it was not the desolation of villages that was observed, but the merging of a number of them into a single settlement or the absorption of some villages by others. Population growth in the Tsar family’s village of Solvychegodsk uyezd was lower than in the whole uyezd and in the state village, both in the uyezd and in the Vologda province. However, in individual volosts the situation with the dynamics of the number of peasants varied. The population of the Tsar family’s settlements, according to orders, differed markedly. These indicators were higher for the Afanasyevsky appanage order relative to the indicators for the the Tsar family’s village of Solvychegodsk uyezd and the province as a whole.