population in the 1760s to about 52 percent by 1795. Ukrainians also moved into
the Don Cossack lands, constituting a third of the population by the end of the
century, and into the lower Volga (about 7 percent).
Virtually all the other ethnic groups in the empire in the eighteenth century—
Estonians, Tatars, Chuvash, Bashkir, Finno-Ugric peoples of the Urals, Iakuts, and
more—each constituted under 2 percent of the overall population. Few of these
ethnic groups moved much, save for Middle Volga peoples, who were as dynamic as
Ukrainian and Russian settlers, if less populous. Tatars lived around the empire,
from the late sixteenth century moving out from their Middle Volga heartland. By
the eighteenth century they were a significant portion of the populations in the
southern Urals (about 14 percent) and lower Volga. Crimean Tatars were in the
absolute majority in the Crimean peninsula (about 76 percent in 1796), even after
many had migrated to the Ottoman empire with Russian conquest. Of other Middle
Volga people, Mordva moved from the Middle Volga to the southern Urals, lower
Volga, and west to Tambov and Nizhnii Novgorod gubernii. Many who went to the
southern Urals became Tatar in culture as they fell into economic dependence on
Tatars. The Cheremisy (Mari) were a smaller group but paralleled the Mordva in
their movement into the Urals and Nizhnii Novgorod gubernii. Meanwhile the
Chuvash remained compactly in the Middle Volga, with some out-migration to the
lower Volga and Orenburg gubernia in the late eighteenth century.
The Bashkirs remained concentrated in the southern Urals, but over the eight-
eenth century their declining share of the population illustrates the speed of
settlement of the Orenburg area. While 71 percent of the southern Urals popula-
tion in 1719, by the 1740s Bashkirs were already 33 percent and from the 1760s
through 1790s they declined from 25 percent to 20 percent of the population
in their traditional homelands. In the empire’s western borderlands, Jews and
Germans were other regionally concentrated groups. Jews constituted 10 percent
of the population in Ukrainian and Belarus’an territories acquired in the partitions,
with a concentration in Right Bank territories acquired in the 1790s; by the end of
the century they were also moving into Left Bank Ukraine and Novorossiia.
Germans, meanwhile, were concentrated in a few areas. In the Baltic provinces
German Junker nobles were politically dominant, but constituted only 7 percent of
the population in Livland, 4 percent in Estland; in the lower Volga, German
agrarian settlers were about 5 percent of Saratov gubernia in the 1780s–90s. In
the Baltics, Estonian and Latvian peasants, enserfed, did not migrate much.
East Slavic peasants were the largest social group and greatest source of the
diverse life paths the eighteenth century sustained and are the primary focus in
this chapter. We begin with“single-holder”settlers (odnodvortsy) on the southern
border and proceed to explore the varieties of peasant life.
ODNODVORTSY
Odnodvortsyrepresent a rural interstitial group between serf-owners and serfs in the
southern borderlands. Small landholders, as a social group they were descended
Soslovie, Serfs, and Society on the Move 359