Economic and demographic aspects of modernization of provincial towns of the Russian Empire in the post-reform period (on the example of the town of Melenki, Vladimir Province)

The article is devoted to the analysis of a number of economic and demographic indicators of the district town of Melenki in the Vladimir province of the post-reform period, the dynamics of which illustrates the process of provincial modernization in Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The concept of the Russian specialist in the field of economic history B.N. Mironov is used as a theoretical and methodological basis for the study. Among the main indicators of modernization, both economic ones are analyzed: the level of industrial growth, the volume of introduction of new technologies in industrial production and crafts, the degree of displacement of muscle power by “inanimate” energy and mechanisms, the scope of the transition from subsistence production to commercial, trade; and demographic ones: the level of rational attitude to the birth rate and health. Using, among other things, previously unpublished local archival materials, the authors come to the conclusion about the weak development of modernization processes in the city: about the one-sided nature and instability of economic growth of the local industrial sector, as well as about the preservation of the traditional model of demographic behavior of the population. The study allows us to offer a more substantiated picture of the experience of Russian society during the time of the emergence and development of modernization processes in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries.