Development of the peasant farm and demoecological processes in the Orel Governorate in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries

We consider the poorly studied topic of demographic development and its impact on agriculture in Central Russia on the example of the Orel Governorate. The study described and revealed the reasons for the expansion of peasant arable land, as well as analyzed the rate of reduction of forest and hay resources during the studied period. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of land use and processing of peasant plots. The study determined the ratio of natural and anthropogenic factors in the development of agricultural society in the Orel Governorate in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries on the example of peasant farms in the region. We identify trends in the strategy of demographic behavior of the rural population, mainly represented by the peasantry, and the influence degree of the growing population on the natural resources of the region. The main sources were statistical materials presented by various collections on land ownership and land use, as well as reviews and commemorative books of the Orel Governorate. A special place is occupied by archival documents stored in the State Archive of the Orel Region. A comprehensive study of sources is carried out using both traditional scientific methods (system analysis, structural approach, retrospective) and modern approaches (civilizational, mathematical statistics method). We establish the dependence of the increase in the demographic load on natural resources during the studied time and the presence in the region of all demoecological crisis signs the late 19th –early 20th centuries.