Urbanization of Budzak: How small towns turned into cities

The growth of the urban population of an agrarian region such as Bujak has been considered in connection with the administrative-territorial and socio-economic changes of the region in the nineteenth century. At the same time, the specific features of Bujak were often overlooked: a small Moldovan population, the absence of remnants of serfdom, the presence of trade and port infrastructure, and a significant share of the foreign population represented by "Danube" and "Warsaw" colonists. The fact that these cities were part of Romania in 1857-1878 also significantly influenced their further development. Looking at urbanization processes in a broader context allows us to better understand the current situation of the cities in the region

When Budzhak was annexed by the Russian Empire, the urban population was small and mostly consisted of former peasants. As Russian official Pavel Svinyin noted: "For the most part, the inhabitants of Kilia are engaged in farming and fishing, there is no local merchantry... The inhabitants of Akkerman are not divided into classes... they are all engaged in fishing." Due to the introduction of market relations in the farms of foreign colonists and government policy aimed at transforming the region into a center of commodity production, the process of social stratification of the urban population accelerated significantly.

According to the census of 1819, the population of Izmail was 6570 people, Akkerman - 5472, Reni - 1547, Kiliya - 3620, Kahul - 1530, totaling 15,679 people. According to the 1844 census, the urban population grew to 60 thousand people (25% of the region's population). Izmail remained the largest city in the region (27852 inhabitants). It was followed by Akkerman (16241), Reni (6532), and Kilia (5932). During the first half of the nineteenth century, the urban population of Budzhak (excluding Bolgrad) increased 3.9 times. The population of Izmail and Akkerman, important trade centers in the region, grew the most.

During the years of Romanian rule, the largest cities in the region were Izmail (32 thousand people), Cahul (9.6 thousand), and Bolhrad (6.6 thousand). The urban population already accounted for 39.6% of the region's population.

In the post-reform years, the process of population urbanization (the historical process of urban growth and their role in society, manifested by an increase in urban population, the spread of urban lifestyles, etc. Between 1856 and 1900, the share of the urban population in Bessarabia decreased from 21 to 15.3%. The main reasons for this process were

• the end of the resettlement of foreigners to Bessarabia;
• the reorientation of bourgeois households from agriculture to trade and crafts, which led to the emigration of uncompetitive craftsmen to the countryside;
• the peasant reform of 1868, which abolished serfdom and thus allowed most of the peasants who had escaped to return to their villages;
• emigration of townspeople to villages due to the growing demand for agricultural products.

According to the city administration in 1900, more than 28.7 thousand residents of Akkerman (60% of the population) lived outside the city. In the towns of Papushoy and Turlaki, there were 14.8 thousand townspeople (55%). In total, more than 100 thousand citizens of the province, or 41% of their total number, lived outside the cities.

The growth occurred in the period 1880-1890, when the trade infrastructure of port cities was reviving. The outflow of townspeople in the late 1890s is traditionally associated with the end of the global food crisis of 1875-1896 and the stabilization of the grain market. Professional artisans, the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and small strata of the proletariat and intelligentsia remained in the cities.

According to the 1897 census, the urban population was estimated at 88,489 people, or 17.4% of the total population. In the Akkerman district, the share of urban residents was 10.7%, and in the Izmail district - 24.7%.

Statistical data from the early twentieth century indicate an increase in the urban population of the region. As of January 1, 1902, the largest urban centers were Izmail (35.2 thousand people), Ackerman (33.9 thousand), Bolhrad (13.7 thousand), Kilia (12.9 thousand), and Reni (7.7 thousand). The total population of these cities was over 103 thousand people.

In addition to the cities, a significant role in the settlement structure was played by the towns of Turlaki, Shabo, Tuzly, Vilkovo, and Papusoi, with a combined population of over 26 thousand people. The total population of cities and towns in the region at the beginning of the twentieth century reached almost 130 thousand people.

In general, the urban population accounted for more than 30% of the total population of the region.

The vast majority of the urban population of Budzak was made up of burghers. According to the 1897 census, 24,921 residents of Akkerman (88% of the population), 19,857 people (89.1%), Reni - 11,017 (94.8%), and Kilia - 5,912 (85.2%) recognized themselves as such. The proportion of bourgeois in the region was significantly higher than the provincial figure (79%), which indicates a long tradition of preserving and developing the bourgeoisie.

The burghers consisted of small producers, traders, craftsmen, clergy, intellectuals, etc. According to the all-Russian census of 1897, 22% of Bessarabia 's burghers were engaged in agriculture, 21% were employed in the industrial sector, 21% worked in trade, 4% in transportation, over 13.3% were servants and day laborers, 3.7% were represented by the clergy, and 7.8% were government officials and military personnel. In general, the social composition of the urban population of the province did not differ significantly from that of the Russian population.

Bessarabian burghers. IMAGE: humus.livejournal.com

The second largest stratum of the urban population was made up of peasants who continued to farm. In 1819, 404 Bulgarian families lived in Tuchkiv (Izmail) and 194 in Reni, who were engaged in cattle breeding. In 1843, there were 131 retired lower ranks in the town, 93 of whom were engaged in farming and 38 in crafts.

According to Romanian sources, 29.5 thousand out of 55 thousand townspeople were engaged in agriculture. However, Romanian statisticians classified residents of Vilkovo, Tuzly, and Bolhrad as burghers. According to the secretary of the Bessarabian Provincial Statistical Committee, Oleksandr Yehunov, these positions did not differ from ordinary villages. The urban population itself did not exceed 15% of the total population and mostly consisted of artisans (15 thousand people), merchants (2 thousand), Romanian nobility and government officials (1.8 thousand).

The calculations are confirmed by the request of the residents of Turlaki (Akkerman district) to allocate 0.5 desks to each family for viticulture. According to Izmail official Hryhorii Ossovskyi, in 1903, 110 residents of Izmail and its suburbs sowed more than 66 desks of land. While criticizing the urbanization of the Romanian era, the Russian government did not take significant steps to restore the trade and industrial potential of the cities.

Villagers in Bujak. IMAGE: gazeta.ua

According to statistical reports of 1905, almost half of the bourgeois allotments were up to 10 desks, and a quarter were from 10 to 100 desks. If we apply the property differentiation of peasants by the size of their land allotments to the urban population, then more than 50% of the urban population can be attributed to middle-class and wealthy peasant households, which is generally no different from the rural population.

In total, according to the 1897 census, 2470 people (4.9%) of the population of Izmail and Akkerman and 895 people (4.8%) of the population of Reni and Kiliya recognized themselves as peasants. A certain decrease was caused by the return of peasants to villages and their transition to other strata of the population.

Cattle traders. IMAGE: mahala.com.ua

The "other classes" include artisans and urban day laborers, and other workers. The number of urban artisans was constantly growing throughout the period.

According to the 1844 census, artisans accounted for 1.2% of the population of Izmail, 1.6% of Akkerman, and 2.3% of the townspeople of Reni. In Kiliya, only 25 people called themselves artisans.

Since the late nineteenth century, industrial workers should be separately identified. Because of their small number (in 1908, 32 enterprises in the Izmail district employed 657 workers, including more than 130 workers in Bolhrad), they were not actually recorded by Russian officials. On the eve of the First World War, the proletariat in the region was just emerging and had not yet formed a separate social category.

During the nineteenth century, the proportion of nobles and government officials among the urban population of Budzak sharply decreased, which was caused by the decline of noble land ownership in the region.

According to the census of 1827, there were no nobles in the village of Tuchkov (Izmail) at all. Only 37 retired officers, 42 retired lower ranks, and 25 Polish gentry lived there. Two retired officers lived in Reni.

Nobility. IMAGE: historyextra.com

According to the 1835 report of Izmail mayor Serhii Tuchkov, 12,227 people lived in the city at that time, including 716 nobles (5.6% of the population); in 1843 the number of nobles and petty-bourgeoisie increased to 1,801 (6.5% of the population). Subsequently, their share decreased significantly due to the rapid growth of the urban population. For example, in Izmail in 1847, there were 899 nobles and officials (including military officers), who accounted for 3.05% of the city's population. In 1845, 98 nobles and officials lived in Kiliya, including 25 artisans, which accounted for 1.88% of the city's total population.

In 1897, 683 nobles with their families lived in Akkerman, and 559 in Izmail, which accounted for 2.5% of the population. In Reni and Kilia, 207 nobles with families were recorded, including 118 in Kilia, which accounted for 1.1% of the population.

At the end of the nineteenth century, most of the nobles of the Izmail district (1109 out of 1525 people) moved to Izmail. In fact, cities became the center of the nobility, where aristocrats gradually formed the local intelligentsia and government.

In terms of number of people, merchants and honorary citizens occupied the fourth place in the urban population of Budzhak.

Izmail bazaar in 1880: bessarabia.ua

In the first half of the nineteenth century, merchants were represented by individuals who mostly lived in Odesa, Akkerman, and Izmail. Thus, Major Lavrov reported in 1808: "The wealthy merchants in Kiliya were the Odessans Mettaka and Khioni."

According to the census of 1897, in Akkerman there were 336 merchants with their families, 175 honorary citizens, and in Izmail, 14 and 106, respectively. Together, their total share was 1.25% of the population. In Reni and Kilia, 2 merchants and 77 honorary citizens were registered. The share of this category in these cities was 0.4%.

The clergy was a small group. There were 333 priests with families in Akkerman and Izmail (0.7%), and 69 people (0.4%) in Reni and Kiliya.

It is advisable to recognize the ethnic composition of the social classes of the urban population. According to the 1844 census, 10.1% of the urban population of the region were Moldovans, 3.6% Jews, 38.2% Russians, 15.8% Ukrainians (in government reports - "Little Russians"), and 9.3% Bulgarians. There was a significant predominance of Russians and Ukrainians among the burghers, who were mostly represented by nobles, artisans, officers, and craftsmen.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of the townspeople of Kilia and Reni were ethnically Ukrainians (30.6% of the population), Moldovans (25.2%), Russians (14.4%), and Jews (9.7%). In Izmail and Akkerman, 22,532 townspeople (44.6%) identified themselves as Ukrainians, 10,453 (20.7%) as Russians, and 7,968 (15.6%) as Jews.

By ethnic origin, most of the merchants of Izmail and Akkerman were Jews (174), Armenians (63), and Russians (50). Among the honorary citizens, most were Russians (213), Armenians (58), and Ukrainians (45). In Reni and Kiliya, Russians (41 people) and Moldovans (26 people) predominated among merchants and honorary citizens. By ethnic origin, 1185 nobles of these cities were Russian, 44 were Ukrainians, and 13 were Moldovans.

Thus, Ukrainians and Russians prevailed in the structure of the urban population of Budzak. The most numerous social group was the burghers, while other segments of the population - peasants, workers, merchants, and nobility - were less represented, but played a more prominent role in the political life of the cities, which requires further consideration.

Андрій Шевченко