Topographic Descriptions of the Lower Volga Region as a Milestone in the History of Scientific Studies of the Territory: the 1770s - early 1800s

The article studies the history of creation and contents of topographic descriptions of the Lower Volga Region written in the 1770s - early 1800s. Topographic descriptions are a special form of scientific works aiming to comprehensively analyze the geography, natural surroundings, history and economy of a single governorate or province. In the last quarter of the 18th century, several dozen topographic descriptions of various Russian provinces and governorates were written. In the course of our research, four similar works dedicated to the Lower Volga region were discovered, namely: Introduction to Astrakhan Topography by the first correspondent of the Russian Academy of Sciences P. I. Rychkov; Description of Saratov Vicegerency by Saratov Governor I. I. Polivanov; Historical and Topographical Description of Saratov Province written under the editorship of Saratov Governor P. U. Belyakov; and The Economic Description of Astrakhan and Caucasian Governorates by Astrakhan official I. V. Rovinsky. Creation of a topographic description required purposeful large-scale work in terms of empirical data collection. In this connection, P. I. Rychkov failed to complete work on his topographical description and, thus, limited himself to publishing an Introduction to Astrakhan Topography. I. I. Polivanov who worked on the description of Saratov Vicegerency in the early 1780s was probably able to collect more materials but, however, only a short version of his work was published, while other collected materials were not preserved. Saratov Governor P. U. Belyakov and Astrakhan official I. V. Rovinsky were able to complete their works on topographic descriptions. As distinguished from earlier works about the Lower Volga Region, their compositions were largely based on local sources of information - documents, annals, historical legends of local inhabitants. Provincial officials who had to write detailed works devoted to their territories had to use such sources for the first time, since they had limited opportunities to work with scientific literature in Astrakhan and Saratov. The use of a wide range of sources, high level of erudition of the authors allowed them to create unique encyclopedic scientific works depicting the Lower Volga Region. The authors not only collected huge empirical data but offered some original critical interpretation. For the first time ever and on a high professional level, the topographic descriptions analyzed lots of issues related to the history, current state and prospects for the development of the region. Not all topographic descriptions were published. One of the most interesting composition containing topographical and historical descriptions created under the editorship of Saratov Governor P. U. Belyakov was sent to Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Saratov, the manuscript of this work was not preserved and remained unknown to local researchers until the 1920s. In view of the mentioned difficulties, the topographic descriptions had no serious impact on the development of scientific thought in the Lower Volga Region. Unfortunately, the data collected in topographic descriptions, recommendations for the development of the region made by the authors on the basis of their analysis were not applied in practice by the state bodies of the region.

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