Family and property demographics of land-owner peasants in Russia in the middle of the eighteenth century

The article provides an analysis of family and property demographics of the peasant household in the fortress village of Russia in the middle of the eighteenth century. The author that the development of the topic is not enough in the historical literature. The source base of this study was documents extracted mainly from the funds of the personal origin: orders and instructions of the landlords, reports and records of governing estates. The census records and homestead descriptions of villages are especially valuable as they provide the list of names of the inhabitants of the yard, their age, family relationships. The object of study was the large and medium landowners ‘ ownership of the Central provinces of Russia - Moscow, Suzdal and Rostov, where there was an early process of formation of local-patrimonial estates. Based on the system approach such tasks as the population of the yard, the composition, structure and typology of family, its human resources, system of mar-riage are examined. The article presents the demographic characteristics of the family with children, adoles-cents, healthy and elderly people. The age and sex ratio of male and female population of a peasant family are also studied. In the work there was discussed such question which is little-studied in Russian historiography as marital relations in land environment: the proportion of married couples, the age of those who enter into mar-riage, age difference between husband and wife. Special emphasis is given to the impact of the financial status of the yard to the marital status of the peasants. Negative aspects of the demographic policy of the landowners, which were directed on the increase, first, the solvency of the rural world, were clarified. The obtained results will be useful for developing an information base of research on Russian history and historical demography