Parish Records of Late Imperial Ekaterinburg for Anthropological Research

The late 19^th century reforms pinpointed the processes of urbanization in Russia accompanied by a significant influx of migrants, the development of urban institutions and identity. Unfortunately, the sources of information about the rapidly changing urban population is fragmentary because the nominative manuscripts of state and municipal censuses in Russia are rarely preserved. Meanwhile the intensive development of urban anthropology and attempts to apply its tools to historical research initiated search for new sources similar to mass surveys and the metricheskie knigi with records on births, marriages and divorces, as well as deaths, including information on birthplace, social status, occupation etc., filled the gap.

Ekaterinburg in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries was one of the fastest growing cities in the Russian Empire. After a brief economic decline caused by the mining industry crisis, the city managed to diversify its economy, trade and finance, transport etc. This caused a significant influx of migrants, primarily from the nearby districts, western and central provinces of European Russia, and even from abroad. From a small closed mining centre with a population of about 39,000 people, by the beginning of the First World War Ekaterinburg had reached 100,000 inhabitants, moving into the category of the large cities in the empire (Bakharev / Zabolotnykh 2020).

Since its foundation in 1723, the ethno-religious composition of Ekaterinburg has been noticeably diverse due to a significant proportion of foreigners – exiles and contract workers mostly Catholics and Lutherans, as well as Old Believers. The history and demography of Ekaterinburg’s religious minorities have been researched in several works. This research is devoted to studying the daily life of the religious communities and supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, grant № 19-29-07154.

The information in Ekaterinburg’s metricheskie knigi were transcribed into database tables, in accordance with the sections of the books "About births"; "About marriages"; "About deaths". That became the core of the database "Register of the Population of the Urals" (URAPP), openly accessed at http://urappdata-urgi.urfu.ru . It has become popular among the professional genealogists and people interested in their ancestry. The transcription process continues, and now the source base consists of information from the metricheskie knigi of ten Eastern Christian parishes in Ekaterinburg, the Catholic Church of St. Anna; St. Paul Lutheran Church; the synagogue, and the Muslim community. In total, the source database for Ekaterinburg includes about 58,000 vital event records for 1880–1925.

The basic principle of transcription is to preserve the available information as much as possible, and exactly in the wording in which it was recorded in the source. Corrections and coding of the death causes is performed at the stage of conducting research with databases. For a more comprehensive outline of the databases and their use in research see a separate article (Glavatskaya et al. 2021).

The analysis of the data contained in the database made it possible to conduct historical and demographic studies and since we have databases on several parishes, we were able to identify the peculiarities of these processes for different religious denominations.

The records of the metricheskie knigi allowed us to identify rejection of new-born children; to assess the scale and dynamics of the conversions from different religious affiliation; to reveal information about practices related to the birth and baptism including a curious practice of naming twins and triples by the same name (Zabolotntkh 2020). Baptism in the city’s Orthodox parishes was during the first three days of the baby's life (Bakharev / Glavatskaya 2019), in contrast to Catholic new-borns, whose baptism was postponed by their parents for a month.

According to the metricheskie knigi, marriages of "minors" in Ekaterinburg were rare: only two percent of the brides married before the age of 16, and less than 1 percent of grooms before the age of 17; on average, women married at the age of 21 and men at the age of 24. Ekaterinburg grooms were on average four to five years older than their brides. The exception was Muslim families, where the men were older than their brides on average by eight years. On average, a marriage lasted 12 years for men and 10 years for women, and remarriage was associated with the loss of a spouse. The rare cases of divorce can sometimes be explored by linking the table entries.

The materials of the metricheskie knigi made it possible to establish the main causes of deaths in old Ekaterinburg, and to identify religious, gender and age characteristics. Infant mortality rate in the city was very high – 400 ‰ . Most children's lives were interrupted by infectious diseases. Diagnosis of the causes of death left much to be desired. The analysis of the data in the metricheskie knigi of the Ascension parish allowed us to link the decrease in the frequency of using outdated terms when determining the causes of death, with the appearance of the young and highly educated priest, John Kornilov, a candidate of the Kiev Theological Academy.

Metricheskie knigi are unique sources for studying not only historical and demographic processes, but also research in the field of historical anthropology. They stand out, making it possible not only to consider the processes that took place in each parish, but also to "peep through the windows" at individual families in their houses. Their good preservation in the country's archives makes it possible to conduct research on a national scale, and the universality of the information contained makes it possible to conduct extensive comparative studies. Modern computer methods allow you to process huge amounts of information and solve complex problems by combining several variable values into the program for analysis. It is urgent to integrate databases created in various research centers and by individual researchers into a comprehensive resource, which will significantly expand the possibilities of scientific analysis and the range of research topics, including topics related to the evolution of everyday practices of Russians, the development of the urban environment, and the integration and adaptation of migrants.