The Dynamics of the Number and Settlement of the Bashkirs in the Second Half of the XIX – First Half of the XX Centuries

According to the First General Population Census in the territory of the Russian Empire in 1897 there were 1 321 363 people who considered their native language Bashkir. Almost three decades later, according to the All-Union Population Census of 1926, 713,693 Bashkirs lived on the territory of the USSR. The reasons for such a drastic reduction in the population of the Bashkir population in the first half of the twentieth century have been almost halved to this day. As a rule, this topic provokes greater interest among politicians than scientists. So, for example, considering the demographic development of the Bashkirs from the 18th century. To the beginning of the XXI century. Historian and one of the activists of the Bashkir national movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. M.M. Kulsharipov writes about a certain "tragic demography" of the Bashkir people. Is the decrease in the number of the Bashkir population in the late XIX - early XX century? Was the result of "tragic demographics", or there were other reasons, not only demographic ones, to be learned within the framework of this work. In the Introduction, the relevance of the topic is substantiated, the goals and objectives of the research, the actual novelty and practical significance are determined. The first chapter of the work - "The settlement and the number of Bashkirs at the end of the XIX - first half of XX centuries. This chapter examines the history of the study of the number and settlement of the Bashkirs, what studies were conducted on the issue that allowed estimating the number and distribution in the second half of the XIX - first half of the XX centuries. Also, an overview of the statistical data was made. The second chapter of the work - "The main reasons for the decline in the Bashkirs in the early XX centuries. In the second chapter of the work, the previously unused data were analyzed, for example, the Bashkir population of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was made, the national composition of the population of this republic based on the results of the All-Russia population census of 1920. The reasons for the reduction of the number are considered. The assimilation factor that was present, according to the analysis of which, we can see to what extent and approximately how many there was a reduction in the number. It is for Bashkiria, the assessment of the consequences of the famine of 1921-1922. And the Civil War do not give us a complete idea of the reduction in the number.