How did peasants live in Tsarist Russia? Analytics and facts

One way or another, all the data presented indicate that the population of Western Europe in the 17th-18th centuries had a high marriageable age and marriages in early adolescence were rare (nobles and nobles are not counted), but marriages after 25 were a common phenomenon (among the ruling nobility too). It is believed that ordinary European women often married at a late age in order to have fewer children (source 5).

Now let’s compare it with Russia. If, due to low life expectancy, people had to get married equally early, then the indicators would be close or equal. But the thing is that in late 18th century in Ryazan, the average age at first marriage was only 17.5 years(source 6), which is significantly less than European indicators. I did not find data for other regions in the 18th century, however, back in the 19th century, Russia had one of the lowest marriageable ages in Europe. IN 1815-1861 V village of Vykhino the average age of the bride was from 19.3 before 20.1 years(source 7) . IN Petrovsky(Tambov province) in 1813-1856 this figure was 18.9 years. For comparison: V 1800-1850. woman's marriageable age England amounted to 23.4 years(source 5) . IN Omelanden (Groningen, Netherlands) average age of the bride between 1801 and 1820 ranged from 23 to 26.7 years(source 8).

There is such a thing as "The Hajnal/Hajnala Line". The Hajnal Line separates regions characterized by early marriage and complex family structures from a zone to the west dominated by late marriage and the nuclear family. (See, for example: Burguiere A., Klapisch-Zuber S.I., Segalen M., Zonabend F. Histoire de la Famille. - Paris: Stock, 1994.). For the reasons given above and below, Russia belonged to the first. They were accepted there universal early marriage immediately upon reaching the minimum acceptable age. Among the serfs, marriages of teenagers 13-16 years old were common, which were encouraged by landowners who wanted to get more offspring from the peasants. 90% Ryazan women in late XVIII been married for centuries 21 years old. Even in 1897 of people aged 45-49 years in Russia there were only 5-6% unmarried and unmarried. IN Western Europe(Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Germany) by 45-49 never married 10-19% women and 8-16% men (source 9).

Now a concrete example of the fact that low life expectancy at birth does not guarantee a low marriageable age. Here is Russia, 1751-1800. Average life expectancy at birth - 30 years(source 10), average age at first marriage 17.5 years(for Ryazan). Here is France, the same 1751-1800. Average life expectancy - 26-36 years old(source 10), average age at first marriage - 26 years or more.

This is also because in popular literature low life expectancy is often misinterpreted to mean that few people lived past 40. Life expectancy at birth was very low due to very high infant and child mortality rates. In England from 1580 to 1800 18 % babies died in the first year of life. Only 69 % newborns lived to see their fifteenth birthday. But those lucky enough to celebrate their 15th birthday could expect to celebrate their birthday 37 more times (source 5), i.e., live about 52 years old. Taking into account the fact that there were almost no marriages under 15 in England during that period, the life expectancy of the married population was most likely more than 52. In some other countries, infant mortality was even higher, in France at the end of the 18th century, only people lived to be 15 49% born. (source 4) This explains why the average life expectancy and the average age at first marriage in this country were almost equal during the same period.

So, we come to the conclusion that the widespread opinion that not only in Russia, but also in Western Europe in the 17th-18th centuries, the age of marriage was equally low is erroneous. The difference was colossal. In addition, low life expectancy at birth did not guarantee a low marriageable age.

Sources of data on marriageable age in different countries:
1. English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580-1837", EA Wrigley, RS Davies, JE Oppen, RS Schofield (Cambridge, 1997)
2. POPULATION GROWTH IN EUROPE, B.C. URLANIS (calculus experience) (M., OGIZ-Gospolitizdat, 1941, 436 pages)
3. Hurwich, Judith J. Noble Strategies: Marriage and Sexuality in the Zimmern Chronicle. Vol. 75
4. L. M. Bacci: Demographic history of Europe
5. Gregory Clark. Goodbye poverty! Brief economic history of the world / Transl. from English Nikolai Edelman. - M.: Gaidar Institute Publishing House, 2012. - 304 p.
6. The Russian Peasantry, 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made. By David Moon. London: Longman, 1999. Pp. xiii+396.
7. Peasant Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Russia. A. Avdeev, A. Blum, I. Troitskaia. Population (English edition), 2004, Vol.59, No. 6, pages 721-764
8. Explaining individual ages at first marriage in a 18th century rural market economy. Richard Paping. University of Groningen
9. Patterns of First Marriage: Timing and Prevalence. N.Y.: United Nations, 1990. P.7-18.
10. Zubets A. N. Quantitative assessments in history (tools for cliometrics). Financial University, 2014.

Perhaps in the imagination of citizens living in an alternative reality or in the descriptions of paid propagandists, the situation in “The Russia We Lost” seems almost like an earthly paradise. It is described something like this: “Before the revolution and collectivization, those who worked well lived well. Because he lived by his own labor, and the poor were lazy people and drunkards. The kulaks were the most hard-working peasants and the best owners, and therefore they lived the best.” What follows is a lament about “Russia-feeding-all-Europe-with-wheat” or, in extreme cases, half-Europe, “while the USSR was importing bread”, trying to prove in such a cheating way that the path of socialism of the USSR was less effective than the path of tsarism. Then, naturally, about the “crunch of a French roll”, enterprising and shrewd Russian merchants, the God-fearing, kind-hearted and highly moral God-bearing people who were spoiled by the Bolshevik bastards, “the best people destroyed and expelled by the Bolsheviks.” Well, really, what kind of evil monster do you have to be to ruin such a sublime pastoral?

Such leafy tales, however, drawn by unkind and dishonest people, appeared when the vast majority of those who remembered how it really was died or were beyond the age at which adequate information could be received from them. By the way, for those who like to wax nostalgic about the wonderful pre-revolutionary times at the end of the 30s, ordinary citizens could easily “clean their faces” in a purely village way without any party committees, the memories of “lost Russia” were so fresh and painful.

A huge number of sources have reached us about the situation in the Russian village before the Revolution - both documentary reports and statistical data, and personal impressions. Contemporaries assessed the reality of “God-bearing Russia” surrounding them not only without enthusiasm, but simply found it desperate, if not scary. The life of the average Russian peasant was extremely harsh, even moreover, cruel and hopeless.

This is the testimony of a person who can hardly be accused of inadequacy, un-Russianness or dishonesty. This is the star of world literature - Leo Tolstoy. This is how he described his trip to several dozen villages in different counties at the very end of the 19th century:

“In all these villages, although there is no mixture of bread, as was the case in 1891, they do not give enough bread, even if it is clean. Cooking - millet, cabbage, potatoes, even the majority, do not have any. The food consists of herbal cabbage soup, whitened if there is a cow, and unbleached if there is none, and only bread. In all these villages, the majority have sold and pawned everything that can be sold and pawned.

From Gushchino I went to the village of Gnevyshevo, from which two days ago peasants came asking for help. This village, like Gubarevka, consists of 10 courtyards. There are four horses and four cows for ten households; there are almost no sheep; all the houses are so old and bad that they are barely standing. Everyone is poor and everyone is begging for help. “If only the guys could get some rest,” the women say. “Otherwise they ask for folders (bread), but there is nothing to give, so he will fall asleep without having dinner”...

I asked to change three rubles for me. There wasn’t even a ruble of money in the entire village... In the same way, the rich, who make up about 20% everywhere, have a lot of oats and other resources, but in addition, landless soldiers’ children live in this village. An entire settlement of these residents has no land and is always in poverty, but now, with expensive bread and stingy alms, they are in terrible, terrifying poverty...

A ragged, dirty woman came out of the hut near which we stopped and walked up to a pile of something lying in the pasture and covered with a torn caftan that was torn everywhere. This is one of her 5 children. A three-year-old girl is sick in extreme heat with something like influenza. It’s not that there is no talk of treatment, but there is no other food except the crusts of bread that the mother brought yesterday, abandoning the children and running off with a bag to collect the tax... This woman’s husband left in the spring and did not return. These are approximately many of these families...

We adults, if we are not crazy, can, it would seem, understand where the people's hunger comes from. First of all, he - and every man knows this - he
1) from the lack of land, because half of the land is owned by landowners and merchants who trade in both land and grain.
2) from factories and factories with those laws under which the capitalist is protected, but the worker is not protected.
3) from vodka, which is the main income of the state and to which the people have been accustomed for centuries.
4) from the soldiery, who select from him the best people at the best time and corrupt them.
5) from officials who oppress the people.
6) from taxes.
7) from ignorance, in which government and church schools deliberately support him.

The further into the Bogoroditsky district and the closer to Efremovsky, the situation gets worse and worse... Almost nothing was born on the best lands, only seeds returned. Almost everyone has bread with quinoa. The quinoa here is unripe and green. That white kernel that is usually found in it is not there at all, and therefore it is not edible. You can't eat quinoa bread alone. If you eat just bread on an empty stomach, you will vomit. Kvass made with flour and quinoa makes people go crazy.”

Well, fans of “Russia That Lost”, is it impressive?

V. G. Korolenko, who lived in the village for many years, visited other famine-stricken areas in the early 1890s and organized canteens there for the hungry and distributed food loans, left very characteristic testimonies of government officials: “You are a fresh person, you come across a village with dozens of typhoid patients, you see how a sick mother bends over the cradle of a sick child to feed him, loses consciousness and lies over him, and there is no one to help, because her husband is muttering on the floor in incoherent delirium. And you are horrified. But the “old servant” got used to it. He has already experienced this, he was already horrified twenty years ago, got sick, boiled over, calmed down... Typhus? But this is always the case with us! Quinoa? Yes, we have this every year!..”

“I meant not only to attract donations for the benefit of the hungry, but also to present to society, and perhaps even to the government, a stunning picture of land disorder and poverty of the agricultural population on the best lands.

I had a hope that when I managed to make all this public, when I loudly told the whole of Russia about these Dubrovtsy, Pro-Left and Petrovtsy, about how they became “non-residents”, how “bad pain” destroys entire villages, as in In Lukoyanov itself, a little girl asks her mother to “bury her alive in a piece of land,” then perhaps my articles will be able to have at least some influence on the fate of these Dubrovkas, raising the question of the need for land reform, at least in the beginning, the most modest.”

I wonder what those who like to describe the “horrors of the Holodomor” - the only famine in the USSR (with the exception of war, of course) - will say to this?

In an attempt to escape hunger, residents of entire villages and regions “walked around the world with their bags”, trying to escape death from starvation. This is how Korolenko, who witnessed it, describes it. He also says that something similar happened in the lives of most Russian peasants.

Cruel sketches from life by Western correspondents of the Russian famine of the late 19th century have been preserved.

Hordes of starving people try to escape in cities

“I know many cases when several families united together, chose some old woman, together provided her with the last crumbs, gave her the children, and they themselves wandered into the distance, wherever their eyes looked, with the longing of the unknown about the children left behind... As the last the population's reserves are disappearing - family after family takes to this mournful road... Dozens of families united spontaneously into crowds, which were driven by fear and despair to the main roads, to villages and cities. Some local observers from the rural intelligentsia tried to create some kind of statistics to take into account this phenomenon that attracted everyone's attention. Having cut a loaf of bread into many small pieces, the observer counted these pieces and, serving them, thus determined the number of beggars who lived there during the day. The figures turned out to be truly frightening... Autumn did not bring improvement, and winter was approaching amid a new crop failure... In the fall, before the start of loan issuances, again whole clouds of equally hungry and equally frightened people left the destitute villages... When the loan came to an end, beggary intensified among These fluctuations became more and more common. The family that gave it yesterday came out with the bag itself today...” (ibid.)

Crowds of starving people from the village reached St. Petersburg. Near the shelter.

Millions of desperate people took to the roads, fled to the cities, even reaching the capitals. Maddened by hunger, people begged and stole. Along the roads lay the corpses of those killed by hunger. To prevent this gigantic flight of desperate people, troops and Cossacks were brought into the starving villages, who did not allow the peasants to leave the village. Often they did not let us out at all; usually, only those who had a passport were allowed to leave the village. A passport was issued for a certain period by local authorities; without it, a peasant was considered a tramp and not everyone had a passport. A person without a passport was considered a vagrant and was subject to corporal punishment, imprisonment and deportation.

The Cossacks do not allow the peasants to leave the village to go with their bags.

I wonder what those who like to speculate about how the Bolsheviks did not let people out of the villages during the “Holodomor” will say about this?

This terrible but ordinary picture “Russia-that-we-lost” is now being carefully forgotten.

The flow of starving people was such that the police and Cossacks could not contain it. To save the situation, food loans began to be used in the 90s of the 19th century - but the peasant was obliged to pay them back from the harvest in the fall. If he did not repay the loan, then, according to the principle of mutual responsibility, it was “hanged” on the village community, and then, as it happens, they could ruin it completely, taking everything as arrears, they could collect it “with the whole world” and pay off the debt, they could beg the local authorities to forgive the loan.

Nowadays, few people know that in order to get bread, the tsarist government took harsh confiscation measures - urgently increased taxes in certain areas, collected arrears, or even simply confiscated surpluses by force - by police officers with Cossack detachments, riot police of those years. The main burden of these confiscation measures fell on the poor. Rural rich people usually paid off with bribes.

The constable and the Cossacks enter the village in search of hidden grain.

Peasants covered the grain en masse. They were flogged, tortured, beaten out of bread in any way. On the one hand, it was cruel and unfair, on the other, it helped save their neighbors from starvation. The cruelty and injustice was that there was grain in the state, albeit in small quantities, but it was exported, and a narrow circle of “effective owners” fattened from exports.

Famine in Russia. Troops were brought into the starving village. A Tatar peasant woman on her knees begs the police officer.

“Together with spring, the most difficult time was approaching. Their bread, which the “deceivers” sometimes knew how to hide from the watchful eye of the police officers, from the zealous paramedics, from “searches and seizures,” has completely disappeared almost everywhere.”

Bread loans and soup kitchens really saved a lot of people and alleviated suffering, without which the situation would have become simply monstrous. But their coverage was limited and completely insufficient. In cases where grain aid reached the starving, it was often too late. People were already dying or suffering irreparable health problems, the treatment of which required qualified medical care. But in tsarist Russia there was a catastrophic shortage of not only doctors, even paramedics, not to mention medicines and means to combat hunger. The situation was dire.

Distribution of corn to the hungry, Molvino village, not far from Kazan

“...a boy is sitting on the stove, swollen from hunger, with a yellow face and conscious, sad eyes. In the hut there is clean bread from the increased loan (evidence in the eyes of the recently still dominant system), but now, to restore the exhausted body, one, even clean bread, is no longer enough.”

Perhaps Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko were writers, that is, sensitive and emotional people, this was an exception and they exaggerate the scale of the phenomenon and in reality everything is not so bad?

Alas, foreigners who were in Russia in those years describe exactly the same thing, if not worse. Constant hunger, periodically punctuated by severe famines, was a terrible everyday occurrence in Tsarist Russia.

Hut of a starving peasant

Professor of medicine and doctor Emil Dillon lived in Russia from 1877 to 1914, worked as a professor at several Russian universities, traveled extensively throughout all regions of Russia and saw the situation well at all levels - from ministers to poor peasants. This is an honest scientist, completely uninterested in distorting reality.

This is how he describes the life of the average peasant during tsarist times: “The Russian peasant ... goes to bed at six or five o’clock in the evening in winter because he cannot spend money on buying kerosene for a lamp. He has no meat, eggs, butter, milk, often no cabbage, he lives mainly on black bread and potatoes. Lives? He is dying of hunger due to insufficient quantities."

The chemist and agronomist A.N. Engelhardt lived and worked in the village and left a classic fundamental study of the reality of the Russian village - “Letters from the Village”:

“Whoever knows the village, who knows the situation and life of the peasants, does not need statistical data and calculations to know that we do not sell grain abroad out of excess... In a person from the intelligent class, such doubt is understandable, because it is simply unbelievable, How is it that people live without eating? And yet this is really so. It’s not that they haven’t eaten at all, but they are malnourished, living from hand to mouth, eating all sorts of rubbish. We send wheat, good clean rye abroad, to the Germans, who will not eat any rubbish... Our peasant farmer does not have enough wheat bread for a child’s pacifier, a woman will chew the rye crust that she herself eats, put it in a rag - suck it.”

Somehow it’s very different from a pastoral paradise, isn’t it?

Perhaps at the beginning of the 20th century everything got better, as some “patriots of Tsarist Russia” are now saying. Alas, this is absolutely not true.

According to the observations of Korolenko, a man involved in famine relief, in 1907 the situation in the village not only did not change, on the contrary, it became noticeably worse:

“Now (1906-7) in starving areas, fathers sell their daughters to traders in live goods. The progress of the Russian famine is obvious.”

Famine in Russia. The roofs were dismantled to feed the cattle with straw.

“The wave of resettlement movement is growing rapidly as spring approaches. The Chelyabinsk Resettlement Administration registered 20,000 walkers in February, most from the starving provinces. Typhus, smallpox, and diphtheria were common among settlers. Medical care is insufficient. There are only six canteens from Penza to Manchuria.” Newspaper “Russian Word” dated March 30 (17), 1907

This refers specifically to hungry migrants, that is, refugees from the famine described above. It is quite obvious that the famine in Russia did not actually stop and, by the way, Lenin, when he wrote that under Soviet Power the peasant ate his fill of bread for the first time, was not exaggerating at all.

In 1913 there was the largest harvest in pre-revolutionary Russia, but there was still famine. It was especially cruel in Yakutia and adjacent territories, where it has not stopped since 1911. Local and central authorities showed virtually no interest in the problems of helping the hungry. A number of villages died out completely.

Are there any scientific statistics from those years? Yes, there are, they were summarized and they wrote openly about the famine even in encyclopedias.

“After the famine of 1891, which covered a huge area of ​​29 provinces, the lower Volga region constantly suffered from famine: during the 20th century. Samara province went hungry 8 times, Saratov 9. Over the past thirty years, the largest hunger strikes dated back to 1880 (Lower Volga region, part of the lake and Novorossiysk provinces) and 1885 (Novorossia and part of the non-chernozem provinces from Kaluga to Pskov); Then, after the famine of 1891, there came the famine of 1892 in the central and south-eastern provinces, and the hunger strikes of 1897 and 98. approximately in the same area; in the 20th century famine of 1901 in 17 provinces of the center, south and east, hunger strike of 1905 (22 provinces, including four non-chernozem ones, Pskov, Novgorod, Vitebsk, Kostroma), revealing a whole series of hunger strikes: 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1911 . (mainly eastern, central provinces, Novorossiya)"

Pay attention to the source - clearly not the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, in a casual and phlegmatic way, the encyclopedic dictionary talks about a well-known event in Russia - regular famine. Famine once every 5 years was commonplace. Moreover, it is directly stated that the people in Russia were starving at the beginning of the 20th century, that is, there is no question that the problem of constant hunger was solved by the tsarist government.

“French bread crunch,” you say? Would you like to return to such a Russia, dear reader?

By the way, where does the bread for loans come from in times of famine? The fact is that there was bread in the state, but it was exported abroad in huge quantities for sale. The picture was disgusting and surreal. American charities sent bread to starving regions of Russia. But the export of grain taken from starving peasants did not stop.

The cannibalistic expression “We are underfed, but we will take it out” belongs to the Minister of Finance of the government of Alexander the Third, Vyshnegradsky, by the way, a prominent mathematician. When the director of the department of non-salary fees, A. S. Ermolov, handed Vyshnegradsky a memorandum in which he wrote about “a terrible sign of hunger,” the intelligent mathematician then said in response. And he repeated it more than once.

Naturally, it turned out that some people were malnourished, while completely others exported and received gold from exports. Famine under Alexander the Third became completely commonplace, the situation became noticeably worse than under his father, the “tsar-liberator.” But Russia began to intensively export grain, which its peasants lacked.

They called it that, without any hesitation - “hungry export”. I mean, hungry for the peasants. Moreover, it was not Bolshevik propaganda that came up with all this. This was the terrible reality of Tsarist Russia.

Exports continued even when, as a result of a bad harvest, the net per capita harvest amounted to about 14 poods, with the critical level of hunger for Russia being 19.2 poods. In 1891-92, over 30 million people starved. According to official sharply underestimated data, 400 thousand people died then; modern sources believe that more than half a million people died; taking into account poor accounting of foreigners, the mortality rate could be significantly higher. But “they didn’t eat enough, but they took them out.”

The grain monopolists were well aware that their actions were leading to terrible famine and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. They didn't care about it.

“Alexander III was irritated by the mention of “hunger”, as a word invented by those who had nothing to eat. He gave the highest orders to replace the word “hunger” with the word “famine.” The Main Directorate for Press Affairs immediately sent out a strict circular,” wrote the famous cadet lawyer and opponent of the Bolsheviks Gruzenberg. By the way, for violating the circular you could seriously go to jail. There were precedents.

Under his royal son Nicholas II, the ban was softened, but when they told him about the famine in Russia, he was very indignant and demanded under no circumstances to hear about “this when he deigned to have dinner.” True, for the majority of the people who were lucky enough to have such, God forgive me, a ruler, things were not so successful with dinners and they did not know the word “hunger” from stories:

“A peasant family whose per capita income was below 150 rubles (average level and below) systematically had to face hunger. From this we can conclude that periodic famine was largely typical for the majority of the peasant population."

By the way, the average per capita income in those years was 102 rubles. Do modern guardians of Tsarist Russia have a good idea of ​​what such dry academic lines mean in reality?

“Systematically collide”...

“With average consumption close to the minimum norm, due to statistical dispersion, the consumption of half of the population turns out to be less than the average and less than the norm. And although the country was more or less provided with bread in terms of production volumes, the policy of forcing exports led to the fact that average consumption balanced at the level of the hunger minimum and approximately half of the population lived in conditions of constant malnutrition...”

Photo caption: Famine in Siberia. Photogr. photographs from nature taken in Omsk on July 21, 1911 by a member of the State. Duma Dzyubinsky.

First photo: Family of a widow. Pukhovoy village, Kurgan. u., V.F. Rukhlova, going “to the harvest.” The harness includes a second-year foal and two boys in the harness. Behind is the eldest son, who has fallen from exhaustion.

Second photo: Kr. Tobol. lips., Tyukalin. u., Kamyshinskaya vol., Karaulnoy village, M. S. Bazhenov with his family, going “to the harvest.” Source: “ISKRY” MAGAZINE, YEAR ELEVEN, under the newspaper “Russkoe Slovo”. No. 37, Sunday, September 25, 1911

Moreover, this is all constant, “background” hunger, all sorts of tsar-famines, pestilences, shortages - this is additional.

Due to extremely backward agricultural technologies, population growth “ate up” the growth of labor productivity in agriculture, the country confidently fell into the loop of a “black dead end”, from which it could not get out under the exhausted system of public administration of the “Romanov tsarism” type.

Minimum physiological minimum for feeding Russia: no less than 19.2 pounds per capita (15.3 pounds for people, 3.9 pounds is the minimum feed for livestock and poultry). The same number was the standard for calculations by the USSR State Planning Committee in the early 1920s. That is, under the Soviet Government it was planned that the average peasant should have remained at least this amount of bread. The tsarist authorities were little concerned about such issues.

Despite the fact that since the beginning of the twentieth century, average consumption in the Russian Empire finally amounted to a critical 19.2 pounds per person, but at the same time in a number of regions, an increase in grain consumption occurred against the backdrop of a fall in the consumption of other products.

Even this achievement (a minimum of physical survival) was ambiguous - according to estimates, from 1888 to 1913, the average per capita consumption in the country decreased by at least 200 kcal.

This negative dynamic is confirmed by the observations of not just “disinterested researchers” - ardent supporters of tsarism.

So one of the initiators of the creation of the monarchical organization “All-Russian National Union” Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov wrote in 1909:

“Every year the Russian army becomes more and more sick and physically incapable... Of three guys it is difficult to choose one who is completely fit for service... Poor nutrition in the village, a wandering life to earn money, early marriages that require intense labor at almost adolescence - these are the reasons physical exhaustion... It’s scary to say what hardships a recruit sometimes endures before serving. About 40 percent recruits ate meat almost for the first time upon entering military service. In service, a soldier eats, in addition to good bread, excellent meat soup and porridge, i.e. something that many people in the village no longer have a clue about...” Exactly the same data was given by the Commander-in-Chief, General V. Gurko - on conscription from 1871 to 1901, saying that 40% of peasant boys tried meat in the army for the first time in their lives.

That is, even ardent, fanatical supporters of the tsarist regime admit that the nutrition of the average peasant was very poor, which led to mass illness and exhaustion.

“The Western agricultural population mainly consumed high-calorie animal products; the Russian peasant satisfied his food needs with lower-calorie bread and potatoes. Meat consumption is unusually low. In addition to the low energy value of such nutrition... consumption of a large mass of plant food, compensating for the lack of animal food, entails severe gastric diseases.”

Hunger led to severe mass diseases and severe epidemics. Even according to the pre-revolutionary studies of the official body (a department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire), the situation looks simply terrifying and shameful. The study shows the mortality rate per 100 thousand people. for such diseases: in European countries and individual self-governing territories (for example, Hungary) within countries.

In terms of mortality for all six major infectious diseases (smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, typhus), Russia was firmly in the lead, by a huge margin, many times over.
1. Russia – 527.7 people.
2. Hungary – 200.6 people.
3. Austria – 152.4 people.

The lowest total mortality rate for major diseases is Norway – 50.6 people. More than 10 times less than in Russia!

Mortality by disease:

Scarlet fever: 1st place – Russia – 134.8 people, 2nd place – Hungary – 52.4 people. 3rd place – Romania – 52.3 people.

Even in Romania and disadvantaged Hungary, the mortality rate is more than two times less than in Russia. For comparison, the lowest mortality rate from scarlet fever was in Ireland - 2.8 people.

Measles: 1. Russia – 106.2 people. 2nd Spain – 45 people. 3rd Hungary – 43.5 people. The lowest mortality rate from measles is Norway - 6 people, in impoverished Romania - 13 people. Again the gap with the nearest neighbor on the list is more than double.

Typhus: 1. Russia – 91.0 people. 2. Italy – 28.4 people. 3. Hungary – 28.0 people. The smallest in Europe is Norway – 4 people. Typhus, by the way, in Russia-which-we-lost was attributed to losses from hunger. This is what doctors were recommended to do - to write off starvation typhus (intestinal damage due to fasting and related diseases) as infectious. This was written quite openly in the newspapers. In general, the gap with the closest neighbor in misfortune is almost 4 times. Someone, it seems, said that the Bolsheviks falsified statistics? Oh well. But here, either fake it or not, it’s the level of a poor African country.

Whooping cough: 1. Russia – 80.9 people. 2. Scotland – 43.3 people. 3. Austria – 38.4 people.

Smallpox: 1. Russia – 50.8 people. 2. Spain – 17.4 people. 3. Italy – 1.4 people. The difference with the very poor and backward agrarian Spain is almost 3 times. It’s even better not to remember the leaders in eliminating this disease. Poor Ireland, oppressed by the British, from where thousands of people fled overseas - 0.03 people. About Sweden it’s even indecent to say 0.01 people per 100 thousand, that is, one out of 10 million. The difference is more than 5000 times.

The only thing where the gap is not so terrible is just a little more than one and a half times - diphtheria: 1. Russia - 64.0 people. 2. Hungary – 39.8 people. 3rd place in mortality – Austria – 31.4 people. The world leader in wealth and industrialization, only recently freed from the Turkish yoke, Romania - 5.8 people.

“Children eat worse than calves from an owner who has good livestock. The mortality rate of children is much higher than the mortality rate of calves, and if the mortality rate of calves for an owner with good livestock was as high as the mortality rate of children for a peasant, then it would be impossible to manage... If mothers ate better, if our wheat, which the German eats, stayed at home, then children would grow better and there would not be such mortality, all this typhus, scarlet fever, and diphtheria would not be rampant. By selling our wheat to the Germans, we are selling our blood, that is, peasant children.”

It is easy to calculate that in the Russian Empire, only because of increased morbidity from hunger, disgusting medicine and hygiene, just like that, by the way, about a quarter of a million people died every year for a sniff of tobacco. This is the result of the incompetent and irresponsible government administration of Russia. And this is only if it were possible to improve the situation to the level of the most disadvantaged country in “classical” Europe in this regard - Hungary. Reducing the gap to the level of an average European country would save approximately half a million lives a year. Over the entire 33 years of Stalin’s reign in the USSR, torn apart by the consequences of the Civil, brutal class struggle in society, several wars and their consequences, a maximum of 800 thousand people were sentenced to death (significantly fewer were executed, but so be it). So this number is easily covered by only 3-4 years of increased mortality in “Russia-which-we-lost.”

Even the most ardent supporters of the monarchy did not speak, they simply shouted about the degeneration of the Russian people.

“A population that exists from hand to mouth, and often simply starvation, cannot produce strong children, especially if we add to this the unfavorable conditions in which, in addition to lack of nutrition, a woman finds herself during pregnancy and afterwards.”

“Let’s stop, gentlemen, deceiving ourselves and playing tricks with reality! Do such purely zoological circumstances as lack of food, clothing, fuel and basic culture mean nothing to the Russian common people? But they are reflected extremely clearly in the deterioration of the human type in Great Russia, Belarus and Little Russia. It is precisely the zoological unit - the Russian man - that in many places is engulfed in fragmentation and degeneration, which has forced, in our memory, to lower the standard twice when accepting recruits for service. A little over a hundred years ago, the tallest army in Europe (Suvorov’s “miracle heroes”) - the current Russian army is already the shortest, and a terrifying percentage of recruits have to be rejected for service. Does this “zoological” fact mean nothing? Doesn’t our shameful infant mortality rate, unheard of anywhere in the world, mean anything, in which the vast majority of the living masses do not live to reach a third of the human age?”

Even if we question the results of these calculations, it is obvious that the dynamics of changes in nutrition and labor productivity in the agriculture of tsarist Russia (and this made up the vast majority of the country’s population) were completely insufficient for the rapid development of the country and the implementation of modern industrialization - with the massive departure of workers to factories There would have been nothing to feed them under the conditions of Tsarist Russia.

Maybe this was the general picture for that time and it was like that everywhere? What was the food situation like among the geopolitical opponents of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century? Something like this, data from Nefedov:

The French, for example, consumed 1.6 times more grain than Russian peasants. And this is in a climate where grapes and palm trees grow. If in numerical terms the Frenchman ate 33.6 pounds of grain per year, producing 30.4 pounds and importing another 3.2 pounds per person. The German consumed 27.8 pounds, producing 24.2, only in the dysfunctional Austria-Hungary, which was living out its last years, grain consumption was 23.8 pounds per capita.

The Russian peasant consumed 2 times less meat than in Denmark and 7-8 times less than in France. Russian peasants drank 2.5 times less milk than Danes and 1.3 times less than Frenchmen.

A Russian peasant ate as much as 2.7 (!) g of eggs per day, while a Danish peasant ate 30 g, and a French peasant 70.2 g per day.

By the way, dozens of chickens appeared among Russian peasants only after the October Revolution and Collectivization. Before this, feeding chickens with grain that your children do not have enough was too extravagant. Therefore, all researchers and contemporaries say the same thing - Russian peasants were forced to fill their bellies with all sorts of rubbish - bran, quinoa, acorns, bark, even sawdust, so that the pangs of hunger would not be so painful. In essence, it was not an agricultural society, but a farming and gathering society. Much like in the less developed societies of the Bronze Age. The difference with developed European countries was simply devastating.

“We send wheat, good clean rye abroad, to the Germans, who will not eat any rubbish. We burn the best, clean rye for wine, but the worst rye, with fluff, fire, calico and all sorts of waste obtained from cleaning rye for distilleries - this is what a man eats. But not only does the man eat the worst bread, he is also malnourished. ...from bad food, people lose weight, get sick, the guys grow tighter, just like what happens with poorly kept cattle...”

What does this academic dry expression mean in reality: “the consumption of half the population is less than average and less than the norm” and “half the population lived in conditions of constant malnutrition”, this is: Hunger. Dystrophy. Every fourth child did not even live to see one year old. Children fading before our eyes.

It was especially difficult for children. In case of famine, the most rational thing for the population is to leave the necessary food for workers, reducing it for dependents, which obviously includes children who are unable to work.

As the researchers candidly write: “Children of all ages, under all conditions, experience a systematic caloric deficit.”

“At the end of the 19th century in Russia, only 550 out of 1000 children born lived to be 5 years old, while in most Western European countries - more than 700. Before the Revolution, the situation improved somewhat - “only” 400 children out of 1000 died.”

With an average birth rate of 7.3 children per woman (family), there was almost no family in which several children did not die. Which could not but be reflected in the national psychology.

Constant hunger had a very strong impact on the social psychology of the peasantry. Including the real attitude towards children. L.N. During the famine of 1912 in the Volga region, Liperovsky was involved in organizing food and medical assistance to the population, testifies: “In the village of Ivanovka there is one very nice, large and friendly peasant family; all the children of this family are extremely beautiful; One day I went into their mud hut; a child was screaming in the cradle and the mother was rocking the cradle with such force that it was thrown up to the ceiling; I told the mother how such rocking could be harmful to the child. “May the Lord take away at least one... And yet this is one of the good and kind women in the village.”

“From 5 to 10 years of age, Russian mortality is approximately 2 times higher than the European one, and up to 5 years of age it is an order of magnitude higher... The mortality rate of children over one year of age is also several times higher than the European one.”

Caption under the photo: Aksyutka, satisfying her hunger, chews white refractory clay, which has a sweetish taste. (Patrovka village, Buzuluk district)

For 1880-1916. Excess child mortality compared to was more than a million children per year. That is, from 1890 to 1914, only because of incompetent public administration in Russia, approximately 25 million children died for just a pinch of tobacco. This is the population of Poland in those years if it had died out completely. If you add to this the adult population who did not live up to the average level, the overall numbers are simply terrifying.

This is the result of tsarism's control of the "Russia-that-we-lost."

By the end of 1913, the main indicators of social well-being, quality of nutrition and medicine - life expectancy and infant mortality in Russia were at African levels. Average life expectancy in 1913 - 32.9 years Melyantsev V.A. East and West in the second millennium: economics, history and modernity. - M., 1996. While in England - 52 years, France - 50 years, Germany - 49 years, Central European - 49 years.

According to this most important indicator of the quality of life in the state, Russia was at the level of Western countries somewhere in the early to mid-18th century, lagging behind them by about two centuries.

Even the rapid economic growth between 1880 and 1913 has not reduced this gap. Progress in increasing life expectancy was very slow - in Russia in 1883 - 27.5 years, in 1900 - 30 years. This shows the effectiveness of the social system as a whole - agriculture, economics, medicine, culture, science, political structure. But this slow growth, associated with an increase in population literacy and the spread of basic sanitary knowledge, led to population growth and, as a consequence, a decrease in land plots and an increase in the number of “mouths.” An extremely dangerous unstable situation arose from which there was no way out without a radical restructuring of social relations.

However, even such a short life expectancy applies only to the best years; during the years of mass epidemics and famines, life expectancy was even lower in 1906, 1909-1911, as even engaged researchers say, life expectancy “for women did not drop below 30, but for men - below 28 years.” What can I say, what a reason for pride - the average life expectancy was 29 years in 1909-1911.

Only the Soviet Government radically improved the situation. So just 5 years after the Civil War, the average life expectancy in the RSFSR was 44 years. . While during the 1917 war it was 32 years, and during the Civil War it was approximately 20 years.

Soviet Power, even without taking into account the Civil War, made progress compared to the best year of Tsarist Russia, adding more than 11 years of life per person in 5 years, while Tsarist Russia during the same time during the years of greatest progress - only 2.5 years in 13 years. By the most unfair calculation.

It is interesting to see how Russia, while starving itself, “fed all of Europe,” as some peculiar citizens are trying to convince us. The picture of “feeding Europe” looks like this:

With an exceptional combination of weather conditions and the highest harvest for Tsarist Russia in 1913, the Russian Empire exported 530 million poods of all grain, which amounted to 6.3% of the consumption of European countries (8.34 billion poods). That is, there can be no question that Russia fed not only Europe, but even half of Europe.

Importing grain in general is very typical for developed industrial European countries - they have been doing this since the end of the 19th century and are not at all embarrassed. But for some reason there is no talk about the inefficiency of agriculture in the West. Why is this happening? It’s very simple - the added value of industrial products is significantly higher than the added value of agricultural products. With a monopoly on any industrial product, the position of the manufacturer becomes generally exclusive - if someone needs, for example, machine guns, boats, airplanes or a telegraph, and no one has them except you - then you can simply increase the insane rate of profit , because if anyone doesn’t have such things that are extremely necessary in the modern world, then they don’t exist, there’s no question of doing it quickly yourself. But wheat can be produced even in England, even in China, even in Egypt, and its nutritional properties will not change much. If Western capital doesn't buy wheat in Egypt, no problem - it will buy it in Argentina.

Therefore, when choosing what is more profitable to produce and export - modern industrial products or grain, it is much more profitable to produce and export industrial products, if, of course, you know how to produce them. If you don’t know how and need foreign currency, then all that remains is to export grain and raw materials. This is what Tsarist Russia did and what post-Soviet ErEf is doing, having destroyed its modern industry. Quite simply, skilled labor gives a much higher rate of profit in modern industry. And if you need grain to feed poultry or livestock, you can buy it in addition, taking out, for example, expensive cars. Many people know how to produce grain, but not all of them can produce modern technology, and the competition is incomparably less.

Therefore, Russia was forced to export grain to the industrial West in order to receive foreign currency. However, over time, Russia clearly lost its position as a grain exporter.

Since the early 90s of the 19th century, the United States of America, rapidly developing and using new agricultural technologies, has confidently displaced Russia as the main exporter of wheat in the world. Very quickly the gap became such that Russia, in principle, could not make up for what it had lost - the Americans firmly held 41.5% of the market, Russia’s share dropped to 30.5%.

All this despite the fact that the US population in those years was less than 60% of the Russian population - 99 versus 171 million in Russia (excluding Finland).

Even the total population of the USA, Canada and Argentina was only 114 million - 2/3 of the population of the Russian Empire. Contrary to the recent widespread misconception, in 1913 Russia did not surpass these three countries in total in wheat production (which would not be surprising, having one and a half times the population employed mainly in agriculture), but was inferior to them, and in total harvest cereals were inferior even to the United States. And this despite the fact that while almost 80% of the country’s population was employed in the agricultural production of the Russian Empire, of which at least 60-70 million people were employed in productive labor, and in the USA - only about 9 million. The USA and Canada were at the head of the scientific and technological revolution in agriculture, widely using chemical fertilizers, modern machines and new, competent crop rotation and highly productive varieties of grain and confidently squeezed Russia out of the market.

In terms of grain harvest per capita, the United States was two times ahead of Tsarist Russia, Argentina - three times, Canada - four times. In reality, the situation was very sad and Russia’s position was getting worse – it was falling further and further behind the world level.

By the way, the United States also began to reduce grain exports, but for a different reason - before the First World War, they were rapidly developing more profitable industrial production and with a small population (less than 100 million), workers began to move into industry.

Argentina also began to actively develop modern agricultural technologies, quickly squeezing Russia out of the grain market. Russia, “which fed all of Europe,” exported grain and bread in general almost as much as Argentina, although the population of Argentina was 21.4 times less than the population of the Russian Empire!

The USA exported large quantities of high-quality wheat flour, and Russia, as usual, exported grain. Alas, the situation was the same as with the export of raw materials.

Soon Germany ousted Russia from the seemingly unshakable first place as an exporter of Russia's traditionally main grain crop - rye. But in general, in terms of the total amount of exported “classic five grains,” Russia continued to hold first place in the world (22.1%). Although there was no longer talk of any unconditional dominance and it was clear that Russia’s years as the world’s largest grain exporter were already numbered and would soon be gone forever. So Argentina's market share was already 21.3%.

Tsarist Russia fell further and further behind its competitors in agriculture.

And now about how Russia fought for its market share. High quality grain? Reliability and stability of supplies? Not at all - at a very low price.

The emigrant agricultural economist P. I. Lyashchenko wrote in 1927 in his work on grain exports in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: “Russian bread was not taken by the best and most expensive buyers. To the American pure and high-grade grain of uniformly high standards, the American strict organization of trade, consistency in supply and prices, Russian exporters contrasted grain that is contaminated (often with direct abuse), mismatched, does not correspond to trade standards, thrown onto the foreign market without any system and restraint at the least moments. favorable conditions, often in the form of goods, unsold and only on the way looking for a buyer.”

Therefore, Russian merchants had to play on the proximity of the market, price differences, etc. In Germany, for example, Russian grain was sold cheaper than world prices: wheat by 7-8 kopecks, rye by 6-7 kopecks, oats by 3-4 kopecks. per pood. - right there

This is what they are, “wonderful Russian merchants” - “wonderful entrepreneurs”, there is nothing to say. It turns out that they were unable to organize grain cleaning, stability of supplies, and could not determine market conditions. But in the sense of squeezing grain from peasant children, they were experts.

And where, I wonder, did the income from the sale of Russian bread go?

For a typical year 1907, income from the sale of bread abroad amounted to 431 million rubles. Of this, 180 million was spent on luxury goods for the aristocracy and landowners. Russian nobles left another 140 million, crunching on French rolls, abroad - they spent it at the resorts of Baden-Baden, went on a spree in France, lost in casinos, and bought real estate in “civilized Europe.” To modernize Russia, efficient owners spent as much as one-sixth of the income (58 million rubles) from the sale of grain extorted from starving peasants.

Translated into Russian, this means that “effective managers” took the grain from the starving peasant, took it abroad, and drank the gold rubles received for human lives in Parisian taverns and squandered it in casinos. It was to ensure the profits of such bloodsuckers that Russian children died of hunger.

The question of whether the tsarist regime could carry out the rapid industrialization necessary for Russia with such a management system does not even make sense to raise here - there can be no question of this. This is, in fact, a verdict on the entire socio-economic policy of tsarism, and not just the agricultural one.

How was it possible to pump out food from a malnourished country? The main suppliers of marketable grain were large landowner and kulak farms, supported by the cheap hired labor of land-poor peasants who were forced to hire out as workers for a pittance.

Exports led to the displacement of traditional Russian grain crops by crops that were in demand abroad. This is a classic sign of a third world country. In the same way, in all the “banana republics” all the best lands are divided between Western corporations and local comprador latifundists, who produce cheap bananas and other tropical products for next to nothing through the cruel exploitation of the poor population, which are then exported to the West. And local residents simply do not have enough good land for production.

The desperate situation with famine in the Russian Empire was quite obvious. These are the peculiar gentlemen now, explaining to everyone how good it was to live in Tsarist Russia.

Ivan Solonevich, an ardent monarchist and anti-Soviet, described the situation in the Russian Empire before the Revolution as follows:

“The fact of Russia’s extreme economic backwardness compared to the rest of the cultural world is beyond any doubt. According to the figures of 1912, the national income per capita was: in the USA (USA - P.K.) 720 rubles (in pre-war gold terms), in England - 500, in Germany - 300, in Italy - 230 and in Russia - 110. So, even before the First World War, the average Russian was almost seven times poorer than the average American and more than twice as poor as the average Italian. Even bread - our main wealth - was scarce. If England consumed 24 pounds per capita, Germany - 27 pounds, and the USA - as much as 62 pounds, then Russian consumption of bread was only 21.6 pounds, including all this for livestock feed. (Solonevich uses somewhat inflated data - P.K. .) It is necessary to take into account that bread occupied a place in the Russian diet that it did not occupy anywhere else in other countries. In rich countries of the world, such as the USA, England, Germany and France, bread was replaced by meat and dairy products and fish - fresh and canned..."

S. Yu. Witte emphasized at a ministerial meeting in 1899: “If we compare consumption here and in Europe, then its average per capita in Russia will be a fourth or fifth of what in other countries is considered necessary for normal existence.”

These are the words of not just anyone, the Minister of Agriculture 1915–1916. A. N. Naumov, a very reactionary monarchist, and not at all a Bolshevik and revolutionary: “Russia actually does not get out of the state of hunger in one province or another, both before the war and during the war.” And then he says: “Speculation in grain, predation, and bribery are flourishing; commission agents supplying grain make a fortune without leaving the phone. And against the background of complete poverty of some - the insane luxury of others. Two steps away from the convulsions of starvation - an orgy of satiety. Villages around the estates of those in power are dying out. Meanwhile, they are busy building new villas and palaces.”

In addition to the “hungry” comprador exports, there were two more serious reasons for the constant hunger in the Russian Empire - one of the lowest yields in the world for most crops, caused by the specific climate, extremely backward agricultural technologies, leading to the fact that, despite a formally large area of ​​land, land, The Russian sowing season available for processing with antediluvian technologies in a very short period of time was extremely insufficient and the situation only worsened with population growth. As a result, the widespread problem in the Russian Empire was land shortage - the very small size of the peasant plot.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the situation in the villages of the Russian Empire began to become critical.

So, just for example, in the Tver lips. 58% of peasants had an allotment, as bourgeois economists elegantly call it, “below the subsistence level.” Do supporters of Russia-that-we-lost understand what this really means?

“Look into any village, what kind of hungry and cold poverty reigns there. The peasants live almost together with their livestock, in the same living space. What are their allotments? They live on 1 dessiatine, 1/2 dessiatine, 1/3 dessiatine, and from such a small plot they have to raise 5, 6 and even 7 souls of the family...” Duma meeting 1906 Volyn peasant - Danilyuk

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the social situation in rural areas changed dramatically. If before this, even during the severe famine of 1891-92, there was practically no protest - dark, downtrodden, massively illiterate, duped by churchmen, peasants obediently chose their scrip and accepted death by starvation, and the number of peasant protests was simply insignificant - 57 individual protests in the 90s. e years of the 19th century, then by 1902 mass peasant uprisings began. Their characteristic feature was that as soon as the peasants of one village protested, several nearby villages immediately burst into flames. This shows a very high level of social tension in the Russian village.

The situation continued to deteriorate, the agrarian population grew, and the brutal Stolypin reforms led to the ruin of a large mass of peasants who had nothing to lose, complete hopelessness and hopelessness of their existence, not least of all this was due to the gradual spread of literacy and the activities of revolutionary educators, as well as a noticeable weakening of the influence of churchmen in connection with the gradual development of enlightenment.

The peasants desperately tried to reach out to the government, trying to talk about their cruel and hopeless lives. Peasants, they were no longer speechless victims. Mass protests began, seizures of landowners' lands and equipment, etc. Moreover, the landowners were not touched; as a rule, they did not enter their houses.

Court materials, peasant orders and appeals show the extreme degree of despair of the people in “God-saved Russia.” From materials from one of the first ships:

“...When the victim Fesenko turned to the crowd who had come to rob him, asking why they wanted to ruin him, the accused Zaitsev said, “You alone have 100 tithes, and we have 1 tithe* per family. You should try to live on one tithe of land..."

accused... Kiyan: “Let me tell you about our peasant, unhappy life. I have a father and 6 young children (without a mother) and I have to live with an estate of 3/4 of a dessiatine and 1/4 of a dessiatine of field land. For grazing a cow we pay... 12 rubles, and for a tithe of bread we have to work 3 tithes for harvesting. It’s impossible for us to live like this,” Kiyan continued. - We're in a loop. What do we do? We, men, have applied everywhere... we are not accepted anywhere, there is no help for us anywhere”;

The situation began to develop progressively, and by 1905 mass protests had already captured half of the country’s provinces. In total, 3,228 peasant uprisings were registered in 1905. The country openly talked about a peasant war against the landowners.

“In a number of places in the fall of 1905, the peasant community appropriated all power to itself and even declared complete disobedience to the state. The most striking example is the Markov Republic in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow province, which existed from October 31, 1905 to July 16, 1906.”

For the tsarist government, all this turned out to be a big surprise - the peasants endured it, obediently starving for decades, and they endured it here on you. It is worth emphasizing that the peasants’ protests were overwhelmingly peaceful; in principle, they did not kill or injure anyone. At most, they could beat the clerks and the landowner. But after massive punitive operations, the estates began to be burned, but still they tried with all their might not to commit murder. The frightened and embittered tsarist government began brutal punitive operations against its people.

“Blood was shed then exclusively on one side - the blood of peasants was shed during punitive actions by the police and troops, during the execution of death sentences for the “ringleaders” of the protests... The merciless reprisal against peasant “arbitrariness” became the first and main principle of state policy in the revolutionary village. Here is a typical order from the Minister of Internal Affairs P. Durny to the Kyiv Governor-General. “...immediately exterminate, by force, the rebels, and in case of resistance, burn their homes... Arrests now do not achieve their goal: it is impossible to judge hundreds and thousands of people.” These instructions were fully consistent with the order of the Tambov vice-governor to the police command: “arrest less, shoot more...” The governors-general in the Ekaterinoslav and Kursk provinces acted even more decisively, resorting to artillery shelling of the rebellious population. The first of them sent a warning to the volosts: “Those villages and hamlets whose residents allow themselves to commit any violence against private economies and lands will be shelled by artillery fire, which will cause destruction of houses and fires.” A warning was also sent out to the Kursk province that in such cases “all the dwellings of such a society and all its property will be ... destroyed.”

A certain order of implementing violence from above while suppressing violence from below has developed. In the Tambov province, for example, upon arrival in the village, punitive forces gathered the adult male population for a gathering and offered to hand over the instigators, leaders and participants in the riots, and return the property of the landowners. Failure to comply with these demands often resulted in a volley being fired into the crowd. The dead and wounded served as proof of the seriousness of the demands put forward. After this, depending on the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the requirements, the courtyards (residential and outbuildings) of the extradited “culprits”, or the village as a whole, were burned. However, Tambov landowners were not satisfied with the improvised reprisal against the rebels and demanded the introduction of martial law throughout the province and the use of military courts.

The widespread use of corporal punishment by the population of the rebellious villages and hamlets noted in August 1904 was noted everywhere. In the actions of the punishers, the morals and norms of serfdom were revived.

Sometimes they say: look how little the tsarist counter-revolution killed in 1905 - 1907. and how much - the revolution after 1917. However, the blood shed by the state machine of violence in 1905-1907. must be compared, first of all, with the bloodlessness of the peasant uprisings of that time. Absolute condemnation of the executions then carried out on peasants, which was voiced with such force in L. Tolstoy’s article.”

This is how one of the most qualified specialists in the history of the Russian peasantry, V.P., describes the situation in those years. Danilov, he was an honest scientist, personally hostile to the Bolsheviks, a radical anti-Stalinist.

The new Minister of Internal Affairs in the Goremykin government, and subsequently the Pre-Council (Head of the Government) - liberal Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin thus explained the position of the tsarist government: “The government, for the purpose of self-defense, has the right to “suspend all norms of law.” When a “state of necessary defense” sets in, any means are justified, even the subordination of the state to “one will, the arbitrariness of one person.”

The tsarist government, without any hesitation, “suspended all norms of law.” Based on the verdicts of military courts alone, 1,102 rebels were hanged from August 1906 to April 1907. Extrajudicial killings were a widespread practice - peasants were shot without even finding out who he was, and, at best, were buried with the inscription “familyless.” It was in those years that the Russian proverb “they will kill you and will not ask for your name” appeared. Nobody knows how many such unfortunates died.

The protests were suppressed, but only for a while. The brutal suppression of the revolution of 1905-1907 led to the desacralization and delegitimization of power. The long-term consequences of this were the ease with which both revolutions of 1917 occurred.

The failed revolution of 1905-1907 did not solve Russia's land or food problems. The brutal suppression of a desperate people drove the situation deeper. But the tsarist government was unable and unwilling to take advantage of the resulting respite, and the situation was such that emergency measures were required. Which, in the end, had to be carried out by the Bolshevik government.

An indisputable conclusion follows from the analysis: the fact of major food problems, constant malnutrition of the majority of peasants and frequent regular famines in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. no doubt. The systematic malnutrition of most of the peasantry and frequent outbreaks of famine were widely discussed in the journalism of those years, with most authors emphasizing the systemic nature of the food problem in the Russian Empire. This ultimately led to three revolutions within 12 years.

There was not a sufficient amount of developed land in circulation at that time to provide for all the peasants of the Russian Empire, and only the mechanization of agriculture and the use of modern agricultural technologies could provide it. All together this constituted a single interconnected set of problems, where one problem was insoluble without the other.

The peasants understood very well the hard way that land shortage was such, and the “question of land” was the key one; without it, conversations about all sorts of agricultural technologies lost their meaning:

“It is impossible to keep silent about the fact,” he said, “that a lot of accusations were made here by some speakers against the peasant /79/ population, as if these people were incapable of anything, good for nothing and not suitable for anything at all, that the planting of culture among them - the work also seems unnecessary, etc. But, gentlemen, think; Why should the peasants use the crop if they have 1 - 2 dessiatines. There will never be any culture." Deputy, peasant Gerasimenko (Volyn province), Duma meeting 1906

By the way, the reaction of the tsarist government to the “wrong” Duma was simple - it was dispersed, but this did not increase the land for the peasants and the situation in the country remained, in fact, critical.

This was commonplace, ordinary publications of those years:

April 27 (14), 1910
TOMSK, 13, IV. In the Sudzhenskaya volost there is famine in resettlement settlements. Several families became extinct.
For three months now, the settlers have been eating a mixture of rowan and rotten mushrooms with flour. Food assistance is needed.
TOMSK, 13, IV. Embezzlement was discovered in resettlement warehouses in the Anuchinsky and Imansky areas. According to reports from the field, something terrible is happening in these areas. The displaced people are starving. They live in dirt. No income.

July 20 (07), 1910
TOMSK,6,VII. Due to chronic hunger, in 36 villages of the Yenisei district, endemic typhus and scurvy are rampant among settlers. The mortality rate is high. The settlers eat surrogates and drink swamp water. Two paramedics from the epidemic squad became infected.

September 18 (05), 1910
KRASNOYARSK, 4,IX. There is currently famine in the entire Minusinsk district due to the poor harvest this year. The settlers ate all their livestock. By order of the Yenisei governor, a batch of bread was sent to the district. However, this bread is not enough for half of the starving people. Emergency assistance required.

February 10 (January 28), 1911
SARATOV, 27, I. News has been received of starvation typhus in Aleksandrov-Gai, Novouzensky district, where the population is in dire need. This year the peasants collected only 10 pounds per tithe. After three months of correspondence, a feeding station was established.

April 1 (March 19), 1911
RYBINSK, 18, III. The village elder Karagin, 70 years old, contrary to the foreman’s prohibition, gave the peasants of the Spasskaya volost some extra grain from the grain store. This “crime” brought him to the dock. At the trial, Karagin tearfully explained that he did this out of pity for the starving men. The court fined him three rubles.

There were no grain reserves in case of crop failure - all excess grain was swept away and sold abroad by greedy grain monopolists. Therefore, in the event of a shortage of food, famine immediately occurred. The harvested crop on a small plot was not enough even for the average peasant for two years, so if there was a crop failure for two years in a row or there was a superposition of events, illness of the worker, draft animals, fire, etc. and the peasant went bankrupt or fell into hopeless bondage to the kulak - the rural capitalist and speculator. The risks in the climatic conditions of Russia with backward agricultural technologies were exceptionally high. Thus, there was a massive ruin of the peasants, whose lands were bought up by speculators and rich villagers who used hired labor or rented out draft animals to the kulaks. Only they had enough land and resources to create the necessary reserves in case of famine. For them, shortages and hunger were manna from heaven - the entire village owed them money, and soon they had the required number of completely bankrupt farm laborers - their neighbors.

A peasant devastated by a bad harvest, left without everything, with only one plow. (s. Slavyanka, Nikol. u.) 1911

“Along with low yields, one of the economic prerequisites for our hunger strikes is the insufficient supply of land to peasants. According to the well-known calculations of Mares, in black earth Russia, 68% of the population does not receive enough bread for food from allotment lands even in good years and is forced to obtain food by renting land and outside earnings.”

As we see, by the year of publication of the encyclopedic dictionary - the last peaceful year of the Russian Empire, the situation had not changed and had no tendency to change in a positive direction. This is also clearly evident from the statements of the Minister of Agriculture cited above and subsequent studies.

The food crisis in the Russian Empire was precisely systemic, insoluble under the existing socio-political system. The peasants could not feed themselves, much less the growing cities, where, according to Stolypin’s idea, masses of ruined, robbed and destitute people, willing to do any work, should have poured. The massive devastation of peasants and the destruction of the community led to death and terrible mass hardships, followed by popular uprisings. A significant proportion of workers led a semi-peasant existence in order to somehow survive. This did not contribute to the growth of their qualifications, the quality of their products, or labor mobility.

The reason for the constant hunger was in the socio-economic structure of Tsarist Russia; without changing the socio-economic structure and method of management, the task of getting rid of hunger was insoluble. The greedy pack at the head of the country continued its “hungry export”, filling their pockets with gold at the expense of Russian children who died of starvation and blocking any attempts to change the situation. The country's highest elite and the most powerful landowner lobby of hereditary nobles, who had completely degenerated by the beginning of the 20th century, were interested in grain exports. They had little interest in industrial development and technological progress. Personally, gold from grain exports and the sale of the country’s resources was enough for them to live a luxurious life.

The complete inadequacy, helplessness, corruption and outright stupidity of the country's top leaders left no hope for resolving the crisis.

Moreover, no plans were even made to solve this problem. In fact, since the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire was constantly on the verge of a terrible social explosion, reminiscent of a building with spilled gasoline, where the slightest spark was enough for a catastrophe, but the owners of the house practically did not care.

An indicative point in the police report on Petrograd dated January 25, 1917 warned that “Spontaneous uprisings of the hungry masses will be the first and last stage on the way to the beginning of the senseless and merciless excesses of the most terrible of all - the anarchist revolution.” By the way, anarchists actually participated in the Military Revolutionary Committee that arrested the Provisional Government in October 1917.

At the same time, the Tsar and his family led a relaxed, sybaritic life; it is very significant that in the diary of Empress Alexandra at the beginning of February 1917 she speaks of children who “run around the city and shout that they have no bread, and this is just for the sake of to cause excitement."

Simply amazing. Even in the face of catastrophe, when there were only a few days left before the February Revolution, the country’s elite did not understand anything and fundamentally did not want to understand. In such cases, either the country perishes, or society finds the strength to change the elite to a more adequate one. It happens that it changes more than once. This happened in Russia too.

The systemic crisis in the Russian Empire led to what it was supposed to lead to - the February Revolution, and then another, when it became clear that the Provisional Government was unable to solve the problem, then another - the October Revolution, held under the slogan “Land to the peasants!” when, as a result, the country's new leadership had to resolve critical management issues that the previous leadership was unable to resolve.

Literature

1. Tolstoy L.N. Complete works in 90 volumes, academic anniversary edition, volume 29
2. V. G. Korolenko “In a hungry year” Observations and notes from the diary Collected works in ten volumes.
3. Emile Dillon
4. A.N. Engelgardt From the village. 12 letters. 1872–1887. St. Petersburg, 1999.
5. Newspaper “Russian Word” dated March 30 (17), 1907 http://starosti.ru/article.php?id=646
6. http://ilin-yakutsk.narod.ru/2000-1/72.htm
7. New encyclopedic dictionary / Under the general. ed. acad. K.K. Arsenyev. T.14. St. Petersburg: F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron, 1913. Stb.41.
8. Nefedov “Demographic-structural analysis of the socio-economic history of Russia. End of the 15th – beginning of the 20th century"
9. O. O. Gruzenberg. Yesterday. Memories. Paris, 1938, p. 27
10. Nikita Mendkovich. PEOPLE'S NUTRITION AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE RUSSIAN MONARCHY IN 1917 http://1sci.ru/a/195
11. Vishnevsky A.G. Sickle and ruble. Conservative modernization in the USSR. 1998 p.13
12. S.A. Nefedov. "On the causes of the Russian Revolution." Collection "Problems of Mathematical History", URSS, 2009.
13. Menshikov M.O. Youth and the army. October 13, 1909 // Menshikov M.O. From letters to neighbors. M., 1991. P. 109, 110.
14. B. P. Urlanis Population growth in Europe (Calculation experience). B.m.: OGIZ-Gospolitizdat, 1941. P. 341.
15. Novoselsky “Mortality and life expectancy in Russia.” PETROGRAD Printing house of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 1916 http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/novoselskij/novoselskij.html
16. Engelhardt A.N. From the village. 12 letters. 1872–1887. St. Petersburg, 1999. pp. 351–352, 353, 355.
17. Sokolov D.A., Grebenshchikov V.I. Mortality in Russia and the fight against it. St. Petersburg, 1901. P.30.
18. Menshikov M.O. National Congress. January 23, 1914 // Menshikov M.O. From letters to neighbors. M., 1991. P.158.
19. Prokhorov B.B. Health of Russians over 100 years // Man. 2002. No. 2. P.57.
20. L. N. Liperovsky. A trip to hunger. Notes of a member of the famine relief detachment of the Volga region (1912) http://www.miloserdie.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=12&id=502
21. Rosset E. Duration of human life. M. 1981
22. Adamets S. Mortality crises in the first half of the twentieth century in Russia and Ukraine.
23. Urlanis B.U. Fertility and life expectancy in the USSR. M., 1963. With. 103-104
24. Collection of statistical and economic information on agriculture in Russia and foreign countries. Year ten. Petrograd, 1917. P.114–116. 352–354, 400–463.
25. I. Pykhalov Did Russia feed half of Europe?
26. In the 19th century, Russia had a chance to become the world's largest grain exporter http://www.zol.ru/review/show.php?data=1082&time=1255146736
27. I.L. Solonevich People's Monarchy M.: ed. "Phoenix", 1991. P.68
28. Minutes of the speeches of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte and the Minister of Foreign Affairs M. N. Muravyov at a meeting of ministers chaired by Nicholas II on the basis of the current trade and industrial policy in Russia.
29. A. N. Naumov Quoted. M.K. Kasvinov Twenty-three steps down. M.: Mysl, 1978. P. 106
30. Russia 1913 Statistical and documentary reference book. Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian History St. Petersburg 1995
31. Aron Avrekh. P.A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia Chapter III. Agrarian reform
32. V. P. Danilov. Peasant revolution in Russia, 1902 - 1922.
33. Aron Avrekh. P.A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia Chapter I. Agrarian reform
34. New encyclopedic dictionary. Under general ed. acad. K.K. Arsenyev. T.14. St. Petersburg: F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron, 1913. Stb.41–42.

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In one of my previously published posts on the topic: “RUSSIA, WHICH THEY LOST” (it was about natural increase and mortality in the Russian Empire and European countries), I cited this quote from the book by V.B. Bezgin “Peasant everyday life. Traditions of the late 19th - early 20th centuries":

“According to demographers, a Russian peasant woman of this period (the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries - approx.) gave birth on average 7-9 times. The average number of births among peasant women in the Tambov province was 6.8 times, and the maximum was 17. Here are some extracts from the report of the gynecological department of the Tambov provincial zemstvo hospital for 1897, 1901:

“Evdokia Moshakova, peasant woman, 40 years old, married for 27 years, gave birth 14 times”; “Akulina Manukhina, peasant woman, 45 years old, married for 25 years, gave birth 16 times.”

In the absence of artificial birth control, the number of children in a family depended solely on the reproductive capabilities of the woman.

High infant mortality played the role of a spontaneous regulator of the reproduction of the rural population. According to survey data (1887-1896), the proportion of deceased children under five years of age on average in Russia was 43.2%, and in a number of provinces over 50%.”

Agree, the data on child mortality is impressive, isn’t it? I decided to “dig” deeper into this issue, and what I “dug” plunged me into a real shock.

“According to data for 1908-1910. the number of deaths under 5 years of age accounted for almost 3/5 of the total number of deaths. The mortality rate of infants was especially high” (Rashin “Population of Russia for 100 years. 1811-1913”).

“... in 1905, out of every 1000 deaths of both sexes in 50 provinces of European Russia, 606.5 of the dead were children under 5 years of age, i.e. almost two thirds (!!!). In the same year, out of every 1,000 male deaths, 625.9 were children under 5 years old; out of every 1,000 female deaths, 585.4 were among girls under 5 years old. In other words, in Russia every year a huge percentage of children who have not even reached the age of 5 die - a terrible fact that cannot help but make us think about the difficult conditions in which the Russian population lives if such a significant percentage of the dead are for children under 5 years old."

Please note that in the quotes I have given we are not talking about the dark and deaf years of serfdom and the complete lack of rights of the peasantry of Tsarist Russia, but about the beginning of the 20th century! Speaking about this time, lovers and admirers of tsarism love to prove that the empire was “on the rise”: the economy was growing, the well-being of the people was also growing, the level of education and medical care was increasing.

"Gentlemen"!!! Not everything is as you think! Read the contemporaries of that “prosperous” time, for example, Nechvolodov (I note to you - a Russian, gendarmerie general, the largest analyst of the tsarist secret services) “From Ruin to Prosperity”, 1906 edition (I gave this material), Rubakin “Russia in Figures” edition 1912, Novoselsky “Mortality and life expectancy in Russia”, 1916 edition.

The main result is the gigantic external debt of the Russian Empire by 1914, the sale (“...we are not selling, but selling out” - as Nechvolodov wrote) of national wealth to foreigners, the purchase by the same foreigners of basic industries: metallurgy, shipbuilding, the oil industry, etc. ., its tiny share of industrial production in global production, a significant lag behind the USA, England, France, Germany in terms of gross national product per capita - “European Russia, compared with other countries, is a country
half-impoverished” (Rubakin “Russia in Figures”, 1912 edition).

The main thing is that there would be a desire to read the authors I’m talking about, but no - at least read what I have already given in my LiveJournal on the topic “RUSSIA THAT THEY LOST” (tag “Tsarist Russia”). Everything that is posted there is based precisely on these sources (and on other authors), plus statistical data from the Collection “Russia 1913. Statistical and documentary reference book."

However, I have moved somewhat away from the topic of infant mortality in the Russian Empire. I think that what you have already read about her from me has interested you. Now I will give you the most detailed statistics that will convince you that the horror that both Rashin and Rubakin wrote about was just that.

We will start with the mortality rate of infants under 1 year of age in European Russia for the period 1867-1911.

The following table (source: P.I. Kurkin “Mortality and Fertility in the Capitalist States of Europe,” 1938 edition) shows infant mortality rates for the entire period under review.

Of 100 babies born, the following died before the age of 1 year:

1867 – 24.3;
1868 – 29.9;
1869 – 27.5;
1870 – 24.8;
1871 – 27.4;
1872 – 29.5;
1873 – 26.2;
1874 – 26.2;
1875 – 26.6;
1876 ​​– 27.8;
1877 – 26.0;
1878 – 30.0;
1879 – 25.2;
1880 – 28.6;
1881 – 25.2;
1882 – 30.1;
1883 – 28.4;
1884 – 25.4;
1885 – 27.0;
1886 – 24.8;
1887 – 25.6;
1888 – 25.0;
1889 – 27.5;
1890 – 29.2;
1891 – 27.2;
1892 – 30.7;
1893 – 25.2;
1894 – 26.5;
1895 – 27.9;
1896 – 27.4;
1897 – 26.0;
1898 – 27.9;
1899 – 24.0;
1900 – 25.2;
1901 – 27.2;
1902 – 25.8;
1903 – 25.0;
1904 – 23.2;
1905 – 27.2;
1906 – 24.8;
1907 – 22.5;
1908 – 24.4;
1909 – 24.8;
1910 – 27.1;
1911 – 23.7.

With a generally high infant mortality rate, infant mortality was extremely high in 1868, 1872, 1878, 1882, 1890 and 1892.

Minimum mortality for 1867-1911. was achieved in 1907. But is it worth rejoicing at the fact that such a record low figure was obtained this year? In my opinion - no! Subsequently (1908-1910) it grows again to 27.1, after which there is a decline again to 23.7, which is quite natural if we analyze the trend in child mortality since 1867. The trend is the same - after any drop in this indicator for infants under 1 year, it increases again.

The only reason for some optimism among supporters of the tsarist empire is that from 1892 until 1911, the infant mortality rate among infants under 1 year of age did not reach the 1892 record 30.7 infant deaths per 100 births and showed a slight decrease at the maximum. But at the same time, please do not forget that with the beginning of the First World War, the economic situation in the Russian Empire only worsened, which could not but affect child mortality, because as the same Rubakin rightly noted: “... Any national disaster, be it a crop failure , epidemic, etc., first of all, is reflected in child mortality, which immediately increases.”

And now, if any of the admirers of tsarism are itching to accuse Kurkin that the figures he gives are biased (the publication, they say, is from 1938, i.e. Stalinist), I suggest, in fairness, to familiarize yourself with one more source.

In the work of S.A. Novoselsky “Review of the main data on demography and sanitary stratification”, edition of 1916 (!)) published the following summary data on the mortality of infants under one year in European Russia for 1867-1911.

So, out of 100 babies born, the following died before the age of 1 year (over five years):

1867-1871 – 26.7 (26.78 for Kurkin);
1872-1876 – 27.3 (26.26 for Kurkin);
1877-1881 – 27.0 (27.0 for Kurkin);
1882-1886 - 27.1 (27.14 for Kurkin);
1887-1891 – 26.9 (26.9 for Kurkin);
1892-1896 – 27.5 (27.54 for Kurkin);
1897-1901 – 26.0 (26.06 for Kurkin);
1902-1906 – 25.3 (25.2 for Kurkin);
1907-1911 – 24.4 (24.5 for Kurkin).

You can see for yourself that the data from both authors is almost identical. And although data for five years,
demonstrate a downward trend in infant mortality among infants under 1 year of age from 1892-1896. to 1907-1911 by 11.27%, this decline, generally not very significant, was interrupted with the outbreak of the First World War due to the rapid deterioration of the economic and epidemiological situation in the empire.

For example, the incidence of typhus in the Russian Empire increased from 118.4 thousand diseases in 1913 to 133.6 thousand in 1916. And these are only registered cases, among which, in the same “prosperous” year of 1913, according to the “Report on the state of public health and the organization of medical care for 1913,” only 20% were subjected to hospital treatment!

And now, a small “lyrical” digression for those who, after all, have not read my materials. The Russian Empire, according to the same Novoselsky (“Mortality and life expectancy in Russia” edition of 1916), was among the European countries he cited back in the relatively prosperous years 1905-1909. demonstrated superiority in mortality from smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and whooping cough. In the prosperous year of 1912, more people suffered from scabies (!) and malaria (!) than influenza (4,735,490 people and 3,537,060 people, respectively, against 3,440,282 people) (Statistical collection of Russia.
1914, data are also given for 1912).

As always, cholera behaved unpredictably even in prosperous years. For example, in 1909 10 thousand 677 people died from it, and already in the next 1910. – 109 thousand 560 people, i.e. more than 10 times! And this too, only registered cases. (M.S. Onitskansky “On the spread of cholera in Russia”, St. Petersburg, 1911). The annual incidence rate of tuberculosis grew steadily, from 278.5 thousand in 1896. up to 876.5 thousand in the “prosperous” year of 1913. And it has never (!) (since the aforementioned 1896) had a tendency to decrease! (Novoselsky “Mortality and life expectancy in Russia”, 1916 edition).

This deplorable situation in the Russian Empire only worsened with the beginning of the First World War. Therefore, as I already said above, Rubakin absolutely rightly noted: “... Any national disaster, be it a crop failure, an epidemic, etc., first of all, affects infant mortality, which immediately increases.”

I think that after the above statistics, no one will want to argue that the First World War, as a national disaster, was better than a crop failure or an epidemic, and its consequences did not in any way affect child mortality in general, and infants under 1 year of age in particular.

Now we put an end to the “lyrical” digression and again return to the topic of conversation.

Do you want to know which of the 50 provinces of the European part of the Russian Empire were the leaders in infant mortality among infants under 1 year of age? I have the answer to this question! So, for 1867-1881. The leaders in infant mortality (per 1000 children under 1 year of age) were the following provinces:

Perm - 438 children (Quiet horror!!!);
Moscow - 406 children (and this is not the abandoned outskirts of the empire!);
Nizhny Novgorod - 397 children (!);
Vladimirskaya - 388 children (!);
Vyatskaya – 383 children (!)

The general result for 50 provinces of European Russia is 271 children (under 1 year old) died per 1000 births.

For 1886-1897 The leaders in infant mortality (per 1000 children under 1 year of age) from the 50 provinces of the European part of the Russian Empire were the following provinces:

Perm - 437 children (Again the highest figure among 50 provinces);
Nizhny Novgorod - 410 children (Quiet horror!);
Saratovskaya - 377 children (!);
Vyatskaya – 371 children (!);
Penza and Moscow 366 children each (!);

The general result for 50 provinces of European Russia is 274 children (under one year old) died per 1000 births.

For 1908-1910 The leaders in infant mortality (per 1000 children under 1 year of age) from the 50 provinces of the European part of the Russian Empire were the following provinces:

Nizhny Novgorod - 340 children;
Vyatskaya – 325 children;
Olonetskaya – 321 children;
Perm - 320 children;
Kostroma - 314 children;

The general result for 50 provinces of European Russia is that 253 children (under one year old) died per 1000 births.

(Sources: D.A. Sokolov and V.I. Grebenshchikov “Mortality in Russia and the fight against it”, 1901, “Population movement in European Russia for 1908, 1909 and 1910”).

Well, tell me. Maximum infant mortality rates (for infants under 1 year) compared to 1867-1881. decreased!

Ooo!!! Don't rush to draw conclusions!

By 1908-1910 infant mortality rates decreased mainly in a number of provinces with particularly high infant mortality (in Perm, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, St. Petersburg, Orenburg, Kazan) and increased in Kursk, Kiev, Bessarabian, Vitebsk, Kovno, Ekaterinoslav, Vilna provinces, Oblast Donskoy troops.

For example, in the Don Army Region for 1867-1881. the infant mortality rate was 160 deaths of infants under 1 year per 1000 births, in 1886-1897. it became 206 deaths of infants under 1 year per 1000 births, and in 1908-1910. it rose to a record 256 deaths under 1 year per 1,000 births. The growth in mortality in this area is no less impressive in its pace than the decline in mortality, say, in the Perm province.

For other provinces, changes in mortality rates for infants under 1 year of age for 1867-1881 and 1908-1910. were relatively small.

And further. A short comment regarding the Moscow province. P.I. Kurkin in his special study on infant mortality in the Moscow province for 1883-1892. indicated: “Children who died before the age of 1 year of life make up 45.4% of the total number of deaths of all ages in the province, and this ratio for individual five-year periods ranges from 46.9% in 1883-1897. to 45.7% in 1888-1892. and up to 43.5% in 1893-1897.” (Source – Kurkin “Infant mortality in the Moscow province and its districts in 1883-1897”, 1902).

For complete clarity, a picture of infant mortality for 1908-1910 should also be given.

So, the 50 provinces of European Russia can be divided into the following 5 groups:

1st group with a mortality rate from 14 to 18% - 11 provinces: Estland, Courland, Livonia, Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, Podolsk, Volyn, Tauride, Ekaterinoslav, Poltava, located in the west and south of the Russian Empire. (At least one Russian province, E-MY!!!);

2nd group, where the mortality rate was from 18 to 22% - 8 provinces: Vitebsk, Mogilev, Kovno, Bessarabian, Kherson, Kharkov, Chernigov, Ufa, located mainly (with the exception of the Bashkir Ufa province) in the west and south of the Russian Empire. (Where are the original Russian provinces???);

3rd group, having a mortality rate from 22 to 26%, - 6 provinces: Astrakhan, Kiev, Kazan, Orenburg, Arkhangelsk, Don Army Region;

4th group with mortality from 26 to 30% - 14 provinces: St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Pskov, Vologda, Novgorod, Moscow, Ryazan, Oryol, Kursk, Voronezh, Tula, Tambov, Saratov, Samara, located mainly in the central zone, on the northeast and southeast of the Russian Empire (This is Central Russia! This is where Russia degenerated!);

Group 5 with a mortality rate of 30% or more - 11 provinces: Kaluga, Tver, Penza, Smolensk, Vladimir, Simbirsk, Kostroma, Olonetsk, Vyatka, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod provinces, located mainly in the north and central part of Russia. Moreover, Nizhny Novgorod, Vyatka, Olonets and Perm provinces had an infant mortality rate above 32%!

The source of all this data is Rashin “Population of Russia for 100 years. 1811-1913.” For those who don’t believe that everything I posted there exists, find this magnificent book, open it and read it. Everything is very simple!

Now for a little shock! The numbers I cited above are relative, i.e. we talked about the mortality rate of children under 1 year of age per 1000 births. And how many children under 1 year of age died in absolute numerical terms, at least during some of the periods under consideration?

And here Rashin helped us:

“According to data for 1895-1899. out of a total of 23 million 256 thousand. 800 born babies died before the age of one year - 6 million 186 thousand 400 children!!! HOW IS THIS NOT A REAL GENOCIDE!!! Do lovers of Tsarist Russia have anything to say?

I think the question is rhetorical...

But that's not all. In conclusion, considering the mortality rate of children under 1 year of age in the Russian Empire, I will give another very useful comparison (N.A. Rubakin “Russia in Figures” (St. Petersburg, 1912):

“The following table shows the place that Russia occupies among other nations of the globe in terms of the mortality of its children.

In 1905, out of 1000 births, the following died before the age of 1 year:

In Mexico – 308 children;
In Russia – 272 children;
In Hungary – 230 children;
In Austria – 215 children;
In Germany – 185 children;
In Italy – 166 children;
In Japan – 152 children;
In France – 143 children;
In England - 133 children;
In Holland – 131 children;
In Scotland - 116 children;
In the United States of America - 97 children;
In Sweden – 84 children;
In Australia – 82 children;
In Uruguay – 89 children;
There are 68 children in New Zealand.”

These figures are so eloquent, so vivid, that any explanations for them become completely unnecessary.

In this regard, in the official review “Mortality of infants aged from birth to one year in 1909, 1910 and 1911 in European Russia”, compiled by the Director of the Central Statistical Committee, Prof. P. Georgievsky, we meet the following recognition:

“25-30 years have passed... In all countries, mortality has dropped significantly, even where it was very low, such as in Sweden, where it almost halved from 13.2 to 7.5. On the contrary, Russia - according to these data dating back to 1901, not only in comparison with European, but also with all states (except for Mexico, where the coefficient reaches 30.4) has a sad lead in terms of losing the largest number of babies during the first year their lives compared with the number of births in the same year, namely, per 100 live births there are 27.2 deaths in the first year of life (here we are talking about the number of children who died per 100 births - approx.)" (Source - P. Georgievsky "Mortality infants aged from birth to one year in 1909, 1910 and 1911 in European Russia", 1914).

Let my opponents from the “gold chasing” camp try to comment on this somehow. And I'll see what they can do...

At this point, I consider the issue of infant mortality among infants under 1 year of age closed.

Let's move on to the issue of infant mortality among children who died under the age of 5, since it was with them that our conversation with you on the topic of infant mortality in the Russian Empire began. I remind you of the sacramental phrase of N.A. Rubakina (“Russia in Figures”, St. Petersburg, 1912 edition):

“... in 1905, out of every 1000 deaths of both sexes in 50 provinces of European Russia, 606.5 of the dead were children under 5 years of age, i.e. almost two thirds (!!!)

Looking ahead, I want to say right away - this is quiet horror in the brightest colors!

So, our main source is already well known to you, Rashin “Population of Russia over 100 years. 1811-1913.” And we will present it (with regard to infant mortality for children under 5 years of age) for the same periods as when considering infant mortality for infants under 1 year of age.

So, for 1867-1881. The leaders in child mortality (per 1000 children under 5 years of age) were the following provinces:

Moscow - 554 children (quiet horror for the ancient capital of the state
Russian!!!);
Perm - 541 children (among dead infants under 1 year old, she was the leader in
this period);
Vladimirskaya - 522 children (!);
Nizhny Novgorod - 509 children (!);
Vyatskaya – 499 children (!)

For 1887-1896 The leaders in child mortality (per 1000 children under 5 years of age) were the following provinces:

Perm - 545 children (Leader in mortality among infants under 1 year for the same
period);
Nizhny Novgorod - 538 children (!);
Tula - 524 children (!);
Penza - 518 children (!);
Moscow - 516 children (!);

Generalized results for 50 provinces of European Russia for 1867-1881. – 423 children (under 5 years of age) died per 1000 births.

For 1908-1910 The leaders in child mortality (per 1000 children under 5 years of age) were the following provinces:

Samara - 482 children;
Smolenskaya - 477 children;
Kaluzhskaya - 471 children;
Tverskaya - 468 children;
Saratovskaya - 465 children;

The general result for 50 provinces of European Russia is 389 children (under 5 years old) died per 1000 births.

From 1867-1881 to 1908-1910. On average, the mortality rate of children under 5 years of age in European Russia decreased from 423 to 389 children per 1000 births. At the same time, along with groups of provinces in which the infant mortality rate decreased, there is a group of provinces where changes in mortality were relatively insignificant, as well as a group of provinces where infant mortality increased.

If we analyze the infant mortality rates for deceased children under 5 years of age per 1000 births (for the three periods under consideration) for 50 provinces of European Russia, we obtain the most interesting data:

1867-1881

500 or more (!) children died in 4 provinces;
450-500 children died in 13 provinces;
400-450 children died in 14 provinces;

1887-1896

500 or more (!) children died in 12 (!!!) provinces;
450-500 children died in 9 provinces;
400-450 children died in 10 provinces;
350-400 children died in 8 provinces;
300-350 children died in 7 provinces;
Less than 300 children died in 4 provinces.

Notice how significantly the number of provinces has increased where the infant mortality rate for children under 5 years of age was 500 (or more) deaths per 1000 births. I am almost sure that if we look up mortality data for the provinces of the Russian Empire, where the famine of 1891-1892 took place, it will turn out that these provinces are the leaders in mortality among children under 5 years of age. Someday I’ll deal with this issue, but for now let’s continue.

1908-1910

500 or more children did not die in any province;
450-500 children died in 7 provinces;
400-450 children died in 18 provinces;
350-400 children died in 9 provinces;
300-350 children died in 7 provinces;
Less than 300 children died in 9 provinces

Positive dynamics in child mortality for children under 5 years of age, although extremely small, is still there. There are no more provinces where 500 or more children under 5 years of age per 1,000 births died; there are more provinces where less than 300 children under 5 years of age per 1,000 births died, but at the same time, the number of provinces where the death rate was 400 or more has increased significantly. up to 450 children under 5 years of age per 100 births.

So now draw your conclusions after all this, and to help you a little, I will again give you a small quote from Rubakin “Russia in Figures” (St. Petersburg, 1912):

“... in some corners of the Kazan province in 1899-1900, some public schools did not admit students, since those who were supposed to enter school that year “became dead” 8-9 years ago, during the era the great national disaster of 1891-1892, which, however, is not the greatest, but there are many of which in Russian history.”

And further. I deliberately do not want to talk or write much about the reasons that gave rise to the terrible situation in which the Russian Empire was in terms of infant mortality among children under 5 years of age. Anyone interested in this can read about it in Bezgin’s “Peasant Everyday Life. Traditions of the late 19th - early 20th centuries,” as well as Milov’s “The Great Russian Plowman and the Peculiarities of the Russian Historical Process.”

I will dwell on this issue only briefly.

So, the main reasons for the high infant mortality rate in Tsarist Russia were: - unsanitary conditions caused by the living conditions of the peasantry and city residents, and in connection with this constant outbreaks of infectious diseases (especially in summer). Here, for example, is a small quote from the “Explanatory Note to the State Control Report on the Execution of State Schedules and Financial Estimates for 1911.” (SPb., 1912. P. 194-200):

“As a result of a survey of the cities of Kyiv, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don and St. Petersburg in 1907-1910. It turned out that one of the reasons for the widespread epidemics of typhus and cholera was contamination of the water supply with sewage.” If such a situation was observed in the largest cities of the Russian Empire, then what was it like where there was no running water at all, and where the culture of life was at the level of dirty chicken huts (for those who don’t know, most peasant huts were heated “black.” Source - Bezgin "Peasant everyday life. Traditions of the late 19th - early 20th centuries")?

It is not surprising that at the same time, the main sore of the empire was scabies, and for the most part it was not the residents of the Central Asian possessions of the Russian Empire who suffered from it, but the residents of the European part of the Russian Empire (

Another tenacious myth: supposedly the inhabitants of that time turned into decrepit ruins by the age of 35-40 and instantly died from countless diseases in terrible convulsions. Let's figure out where this came from.

Of course, lowering the bar for “childhood” plays a role - a peasant child began working (that is, working hard, and not just helping with housework) at the age of 13-14. A nobleman at the age of 15 could already take part in wars - this is not the modern Pepsi generation, which is afraid to go into the army at 18. :) Noble girls got married at 12-14 and no one considered it pedophilia.

The “old age” bar remained approximately at the same level as now. A great deal of documentation has been preserved confirming this:

Decree of Philip V of France in 1319 allowing persons over 60 to pay tax to the local seneschal rather than travel to the king's court.
- Decree of Philip VI of 1341 on pensions reserved for civil servants and military personnel over 60 years of age.
- Decree of Edward II of England on military training of all men from 15 to 60 years of age.
- Henry VII's decree on pensions for soldiers over 60 years of age.

Against this background, the strict order of King Pedro I the Cruel of Castile on “compulsory labor for everyone” from 12 to 60 years old stands out - you can understand what’s going on by looking at the date: 1351. The great epidemic of the Black Death is ending, half (or more) of the population of Castile has died out, there is a catastrophic shortage of workers. Well, quickly pick up sickles and rakes and march-march into the field! That is, a peasant’s age of 60 was not considered something abnormal, since they were forced into forced labor after the plague (and probably with detachments too! :)

By the way, regarding the age of marriage. If early marriage was the norm among nobles, then among peasants, townspeople, city dwellers, and artisans, the situation was somewhat different. In the 14th century, in the south and east of Europe people got married at the age of 16-17, in the north and west - generally at 19-20. But at the border of 1400-1500, that is, closer to the Renaissance and Reformation, marriages became earlier, turning into an institution for the mass production of labor for developing industry. Let us note that by the so-called “Renaissance” (for some it’s the Renaissance, and for some it’s an ass), the skills of obstetrics, gynecology and contraception, which were fully developed in the “gloomy” Middle Ages, are lost, and the further it goes, the worse and worse the situation becomes. It was precisely in the years 1500-1600 that, thanks to a catastrophic decline in the quality of life and climatic anomalies (we look at longevity, deep problems arose.

The golden autumn of the Middle Ages in the period before the clearly drawn border of the Black Death differed in a positive direction in this very “quality of life”. Otherwise, where would such piquant stories come from:

In 1338, a certain cleric wrote an extensive slander to the Bishop of Lincoln, which describes the treacherous and dissolute behavior of Countess Alicia de Lacy, who, after the death of her legal spouse, vowed to take monastic vows and transfer all property to the monastery. But here's the trouble - before she was tonsured, a certain knight kidnapped the countess from the monastery and Madame de Lacy agreed to marry him. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the Countess was 60 years old - such adventures were at her age! :)

The cleric can be understood: the monastery lost the property of her ladyship, so in the complaint the bishop is asked to punish the romantic knight with a fine of a ruble in order to somehow compensate for the losses. By the way, at the same time in France and England, widows of 60 years old who owned a fortune were exempt from having to marry or pay a fine for refusing (to help) a king or lord. Well, grandma won’t go to war? Although, if you remember Eleanor of Aquitaine (who died at 84), who remained cheerful until old age... :))

Some examples of the life expectancy of the highest nobility and clergy in the 14th century:

King Philip IV the Handsome - 46 years old, suspected stroke. Philip was not lucky with his children - the heirs Louis, Philip and Charles died at 26, 31 and 34 years old, respectively.
- King Philip VI of Valois - 57 years old.
- King Edward III of England - 65 years old.
- Grand Duke of Burgundy Philip II the Bold - 62 years old.
- King Alfonso XI of Castile - 39 years old, died of the plague.
- Pope Clement V - 50 years old.
- Pope John XXII - elder, broke all records: 90 years. And this with such nervous work!
- Pope Benedict XII - 57 years old.
- Master of the Templars Jacques de Molay - 69 years old, violent death. :)

So retirement age at that time was not something unusual or out of the ordinary.

Scientists studying the ancient world claim that our ancestors lived much shorter than modern humans. No wonder, because before there was no such developed medicine, there was no knowledge in the field of our health that allows a person today to take care of himself and predict dangerous diseases.

However, there is another opinion that our ancestors, on the contrary, lived much longer than you and I. They ate organic food and used natural medicines (herbs, decoctions, ointments). And the atmosphere of our planet was much better than it is now.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. This article will help you better understand what the life expectancy of people was in different eras.

The ancient world and the first people

Science has proven that the first people appeared in Africa. Human communities did not appear immediately, but in the process of a long and painstaking formation of a special system of relationships, which today are called “public” or “social.” Gradually, ancient people moved from place to place and occupied new territories of our planet. And around the end of the 4th millennium BC, the first civilizations began to appear. This moment became a turning point in the history of mankind.

The times of the primitive communal system still occupy most of the history of our species. This was the era of the formation of man as a social being and as a biological species. It was during this period that methods of communication and interaction were formed. Languages ​​and cultures were created. A person learned to think and make reasonable decisions. The first rudiments of medicine and healing appeared.

This primary knowledge became a catalyst for the development of humanity, thanks to which we live in the world that we have now.

Ancient human anatomy

There is such a science - paleopathology. She studies the structure of ancient people from remains found during archaeological excavations. And according to the data obtained during the research of these finds, scientists found that ancient people were sick just like us, although before the advent of this science everything was completely different. Scientists believed that prehistoric man was not sick at all and was completely healthy, and diseases appeared as a result of the advent of civilization. Thanks to knowledge in this area, modern scientists have found that diseases appeared before humans.

It turns out that our ancestors were also exposed to danger from harmful bacteria and various diseases. Based on the remains, it was determined that tuberculosis, caries, tumors and other diseases were not uncommon among ancient people.

Lifestyle of ancient people

But it was not only diseases that created difficulties for our ancestors. Constant struggle for food, for territory with other tribes, non-compliance with any hygiene rules. Only during the hunt for a mammoth, out of a group of 20 people, about 5-6 could return.

Ancient man completely relied on himself and his abilities. Every day he fought for survival. There was no talk of mental development. The ancestors hunted and defended the territory in which they lived.

Only later did people learn to collect berries, roots, and grow some grain crops. But it took a very long time for humanity to get from hunting and gathering to the agrarian society that marked the beginning of a new era.

Lifespan of primitive man

But how did our ancestors cope with these diseases in the absence of any medications or knowledge in the field of medicine? The very first people had a hard time. The maximum they lived to was 26-30 years old. However, over time, people learned to adapt to certain environmental conditions and understand the nature of certain changes occurring in the body. Gradually, the life expectancy of ancient people began to increase. But this happened very slowly as healing skills developed.

There are three stages in the formation of primitive medicine:

• Stage 1 – formation of primitive communities. People were just beginning to accumulate knowledge and experience in the field of healing. They used animal fats, applied various herbs to wounds, and prepared decoctions from ingredients that came to hand;
• Stage 2 – development of the primitive community and gradual transition to their collapse. Ancient man learned to observe the processes of the disease. I began to compare the changes that occurred during the healing process. The first “medicines” appeared;
• Stage 3 – collapse of primitive communities. At this stage of development, medical practice finally began to take shape. People have learned to treat certain ailments in effective ways. They realized that death can be deceived and avoided. The first doctors appeared;

In ancient times, people died from the most minor diseases, which today do not cause any concern and can be treated in one day. A person died in the prime of his strength before reaching old age. The average lifespan of a person in prehistoric times was extremely low. Everything began to change for the better in the Middle Ages, which will be discussed further.

Middle Ages

The first scourge of the Middle Ages was hunger and disease, which still migrated from the ancient world. In the Middle Ages, people not only starved, but also satisfied their hunger with terrible food. Animals were killed on dirty farms in complete unsanitary conditions. There was no talk of sterile preparation methods. In medieval Europe, a swine flu epidemic claimed tens of thousands of lives. In the 14th century, a plague pandemic that broke out in Asia wiped out a quarter of Europe's population.

Lifestyle of a medieval man

What did people do in the Middle Ages? The eternal problems remain the same. Diseases, the struggle for food, for new territories, but to this were added more and more problems that a person had when he became smarter. Now people began to fight wars for ideology, for ideas, for religion. If earlier man fought with nature, now he fought with his fellow men.

But along with this, many other problems also disappeared. Now people have learned to make fire, build reliable and durable homes for themselves, and began to observe primitive rules of hygiene. Man learned to hunt skillfully and invented new methods to simplify everyday life.

Life expectancy in antiquity and the Middle Ages

The wretched state in which medicine was in ancient times and the Middle Ages, many diseases that were incurable at that time, meager and terrible nutrition - all these are signs that characterize the early Middle Ages. And this is not to mention the constant strife between people, wars and crusades that claimed hundreds of thousands of human lives. The average life expectancy still did not exceed 30-33 years. Forty-year-old men were already called “mature husband”, and a man of fifty was even called “elderly”. Residents of Europe in the 20th century. lived to be 55 years old.

In ancient Greece, people lived on average 29 years. This does not mean that in Greece a person lived to be twenty-nine years old and died, but this was considered old age. And this despite the fact that at that time the first so-called “hospitals” had already been formed in Greece.

The same can be said about Ancient Rome. Everyone knows about the powerful Roman soldiers who served in the empire. If you look at the ancient frescoes, in each of them you can recognize some god from Olympus. One immediately gets the impression that such a person will live a long time and remain healthy throughout his life. But statistics say otherwise. The life expectancy in Rome was barely 23 years old. The average duration throughout the Roman Empire was 32 years. So Roman wars weren't all that healthy? Or are incurable diseases to blame for everything, from which no one was insured? It is difficult to answer this question, but data taken from more than 25,000 epitaphs on the tombstones of cemeteries in Rome indicate precisely these numbers.

In the Egyptian empire, which existed before the beginning of our era, which is the cradle of civilization, the Siberian Front was no better. She was only 23 years old. What can we say about the less civilized states of antiquity, if life expectancy even in ancient Egypt was negligible? It was in Egypt that people first learned to treat people with snake venom. Egypt was famous for its medicine. At that stage of human development, it was advanced.

Late Middle Ages

What about the later Middle Ages? In England, from the 16th to the 17th centuries, the plague raged. Average life expectancy in the 17th century. reached only 30 years of age. In 18th-century Holland and Germany, the situation was no better: people lived to an average of 31 years.

But life expectancy in the 19th century. began to slowly but surely increase. Russia in the 19th century was able to increase the figure to 34 years. In those days, people in England lived shorter lives: only 32 years.

As a result, we can conclude that life expectancy in the Middle Ages remained low and did not change over the centuries.

Modernity and our days

And only with the advent of the 20th century did humanity begin to equalize its average life expectancy. New technologies began to appear, people mastered new methods of curing diseases, the first medicines appeared in the form in which we are accustomed to seeing them now. The life expectancy rate began to increase sharply in the mid-twentieth century. Many countries began to develop rapidly and improve their economies, which made it possible to increase the standard of living of people. Infrastructure, medical equipment, everyday life, sanitary conditions, the emergence of more complex sciences. All this led to a sharp improvement in the demographic situation throughout the planet.

The twentieth century heralded a new era in the development of mankind. It was truly a revolution in the world of medicine and improving the quality of life of our species. Over the course of just half a century, life expectancy in Russia has almost doubled. From 34 years to 65. These numbers are amazing, because for several millennia a person could not increase his life expectancy by even a couple of years.

But the sharp rise was followed by the same stagnation. From the mid-twentieth century until the twenty-first century, no discoveries were made that radically changed ideas about medicine. Certain discoveries were made, but this was not enough. Life expectancy on the planet has not increased as rapidly as it did in the middle of the 20th century.

XXI Century

Humanity is faced with an acute question about our connection with nature. The ecological situation on the planet began to deteriorate sharply against the backdrop of the twentieth century. And many were divided into two camps. Some believe that new diseases appear as a result of our disregard for nature and the environment, while others, on the contrary, believe that the more we move away from nature, the more we extend our stay in the world. Let's consider this issue in more detail.

Of course, it is foolish to deny that without special achievements in the field of medicine, humanity would remain at the same level of knowledge of itself, its body at the same level as in the Middle Ages, or even later centuries. Now humanity has learned to treat diseases that have destroyed millions of people. Entire cities were carried away. Advances in the field of various sciences such as biology, chemistry, physics allow us to open new horizons in improving our quality of life. Unfortunately, progress requires sacrifice. And as we accumulate knowledge and improve technology, we inexorably destroy our nature.

Medicine and healthcare in the 21st century

But this is the price we pay for progress. Modern man lives many times longer than his distant ancestors. Today medicine works wonders. We have learned how to transplant organs, rejuvenate skin, delay the aging of body cells, and identify pathologies at the stage of formation. And this is only a small part of what modern medicine can offer every person.

Doctors have been valued throughout human history. Tribes and communities with more experienced shamans and healers survived longer than others and were stronger. States in which medicine was developed suffered less from epidemics. And now in those countries where the healthcare system is developed, people can not only be treated for diseases, but also significantly prolong their lives.

Today, the vast majority of the world's population is free from the problems that people faced before. There is no need to hunt, no need to make fire, no need to be afraid of dying from a cold. Today man lives and accumulates wealth. Every day he does not survive, but makes his life more comfortable. Goes to work, rests on weekends, has the opportunity to choose. He has all the means for self-development. People today eat and drink as much as they want. They don't need to worry about getting food when everything is in the stores.

Life expectancy today

Average life expectancy today is approximately 83 years for women and 78 years for men. These figures cannot be compared with those in the Middle Ages and especially in antiquity. Scientists say that biologically a person has about 120 years. So why are older people who turn 90 still considered centenarians?

It's all about our attitude to health and lifestyle. After all, the increase in the average life expectancy of a modern person is associated not only with improved medicine. The knowledge that we have about ourselves and the structure of the body also plays a big role here. People have learned to follow the rules of hygiene and body care. A modern person who cares about his longevity, leads a correct and healthy lifestyle and does not abuse bad habits. He knows that it is better to live in places with a clean environment.

Statistics show that in different countries where the culture of a healthy lifestyle is instilled in citizens from childhood, the mortality rate is significantly lower than in countries where this is not given due attention.

The Japanese are the longest living nation. People in this country have been accustomed to the right way of life since childhood. And how many examples of such countries are there: Sweden, Austria, China, Iceland, etc.

It took a long time for a person to reach this level and life expectancy. He overcame all the challenges that nature threw at him. How much we suffered from illness, from cataclysms, from the awareness of the fate that was in store for all of us, but we still moved on. And we are still moving towards new achievements. Think about the path we have taken through the centuries-old history of our ancestors and that their legacy should not be wasted, that we must only continue to improve the quality and duration of our lives.

About life expectancy in different eras (video)