Историко-демографический портрет эмиграции из Болгарии в Россию и СССР (конец XIX – первые десятилетия XX века)
Historical and demographic portrait of emigration from Bulgaria to Russia and USSR (late 19th century – early of the 20th century)

Summary/Abstract: In a historical and demographic study of the resettlement of Bulgarians to Russia and the USSR in the late 19th and early decades of the 20th century, the author analyzes official statistics conducted in Bulgaria, Russia and the USSR from the late 1890s to the mid-1930s. The sources used made it possible to characterize the features of the migration process from Bulgaria to Russia in the least studied period in historiography. The article highlights the differences in the calculations carried out at various stages of the period under study and in the aforementioned countries, the specifics of the legal regulation of the status of immigrants at different times, the impact of the socio-political and economic situation on migration processes both in the region of origin and in the reception areas of Bulgarian immigrants. The paper outlines the main trends related to the movement of Bulgarian agricultural, educational and political migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as demonstrates the change of priorities in the occupations of migrants associated with the process of urbanization and the development of the extractive industry in the receiving region in the 1920s and 1930s. The censuses revealed the main centers of Bulgarian settlement in the Russian Empire and the USSR, where their national diasporas were formed: Odessa, Kiev, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Dnepropetrovsk districts. It is noteworthy that, despite various economic and political transformations, geographically the migration trajectories remained unchanged during the study period, which was explained by the already established tradition. The data from Bulgarian and Russian/Soviet official statistics complement each other in many ways and allow us to recreate a more complete picture of migration from Bulgaria to Russia since the end of the 19th century till the 1930s, to determine the demographic profile of migrant groups, including the composition by gender and occupation, starting points in the sending country and its destinations in the receiving country, as well as the dynamics of the migration process over time and space.

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