The historical and demographic problems associated with the transition from feudalism to capitalism attract close attention of many Western European scholars. The study covers such aspects as the demographic situation at different stages of this period, chronological and regional differences in the development of the demographic process, its relationship with economic and socio-cultural factors in the development of society .1 In this area of science, there is a growing struggle between reactionary and historical-materialist concepts of interpreting the demographic development of mankind. This is largely due to the acute demographic problems in developing countries, which are playing an increasingly important role in world history and politics. Complex demographic processes are also taking place in other countries of the modern world. In search of an answer to the questions put forward by the current demographic development of mankind, scientists turn to the experience of the past, attract historical materials about demographic behavior and the factors that determine it.

In the West, the name of the English scientist T. Malthus has again become popular, who is mistakenly credited with" discovering " the contradictions between population growth and limited means of subsistence. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. increased attention to the problems of demographic development was objectively caused by the sharp aggravation of population problems, primarily socio - economic ones, in connection with the development of capitalism .2 Already in the first decades of the last century, a profound difference was revealed between approaches to one of the main problems of social history: whether a person is a blind and helpless puppet in the hands of a "divine will" or whether he is able to "create history" by taking into account and transforming existing socio-economic conditions.

Malthus 3 argued that the population always grows exponentially (a married couple, according to the data he collected, always produced more than two children) and outstrips the growth rate of food production, which occurs in arithmetic progression. This, he believed, is the reason for the increasing shortage of the latter. Such a situation is fatally inevitable, and no charity events can help suffering humanity. Any help can only delay, but at the same time deepen the approaching catastrophe. Malthus was a strong opponent of any social measures aimed at alleviating the suffering of the masses. In society, he declared, there is a "natural law of population" - biological self-regulation.

1 См.: Boonstra O. W., Van der Woude A. M. Demographic Transition in the Netherlands. A Statistical Analysis of Regional Differences in the Level and Development of the Birth Rate and of Fertility, 1850 - 1890. - 'AAG Bijdragen', Wageningen, 1984, N 24, p. 1.

2 See Shelestov D. K. Demografiya: istoriya i sovremennost ' [Demography: History and Modernity], Moscow, 1983, p.79.

3 Malthus Th. R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Lnd. 1798. Malthus T. R. Opyt o zakona populyatsii [Experience on the law of population]. Tt I-II. SPb. 1868.

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As a result of population growth, famines and epidemics occur, which reduce the number of people to the proper level. For a short time, their life becomes flaky again, there is enough food, until as a result of a new population growth, a new crisis occurs.

Special indignation of Karl Marx and Fr. Engels was inspired by the reactionary ideas preached by Malthus, according to which it makes no sense for the oppressed and working people to fight for a better future. The founders of Marxism waged a relentless struggle against Malthusianism throughout their lives. At the same time, they did not deny the socio-economic conditionality of demographic processes, in particular, the fact that at a certain level of development of production and its efficiency, natural conditions can set certain limits for the growth of the number of people. But they also showed that these correct ideas were not at all the result of Malthus ' intellectual efforts, but were borrowed by him from his predecessors. In a letter to F. A. Lange dated March 29, 1865, Engels divided all the laws of social development into two categories. The former referred only to specific social formations. The second section includes " laws that are more or less valid for the whole of previous history, expressing only such relations as are common to any society based on class domination and class exploitation." Engels also considered "what is right in the so-called Malthus theory" to be second-order laws, but he immediately added:: "Pop Malthus simply stole this theory from his predecessors, as well as all his other ideas; nothing belongs to him in this theory except the purely arbitrary application of both progressions." 4
"What happens here is exactly the same as with any other commodity," write the founders of Marxism, explaining the laws of population movement in a society dominated by the law of value. "If there are not enough workers, the price of them, i.e. their wages, rises; they live better, marriages multiply, the birth rate increases, more children are left alive until enough workers are born; if there are too many workers, prices fall, unemployment, poverty, hunger and the resulting consequences of all this increase. these are diseases that eliminate the "surplus population" 5 . With an increase in the number of people, qualitatively worse lands will be involved in processing. "In a word, the land is deteriorating to the same extent as the population's demand for its products increases. It is becoming relatively less fertile. This is what gave Malthus the real basis for his theory of population, " Engels wrote. At the same time, Marx and Engels convincingly showed that all these principles work only if the mode of production does not change and the productivity of labor does not increase.

Even during the lifetime of the founders of Marxism, progress was observed in agriculture, which overturned the principles of land use that operated under the feudal mode of production. "The area of cultivated land is limited - let's say," Engels wrote elsewhere. "The labour-power employed in this area increases with the growth of the population; let us even assume that the value of the crop does not always increase to the same extent as the expenditure of labour; then there is still a third element... - science, and its progress is just as endless and at least goes on in the same way fast, as is population growth. " 7 Malthus ' interpretation of the nature of the connection between the demographic process and the development of productive forces had a certain significance, but only as a generalization of the experience of historical epochs already passed. Malthus's fundamental mistake was to project this experience of the past as an "eternal law" for the entire future of humanity.

In recent decades, historians and demographers have processed impressive arrays, built models, for example, of demographic behavior, compiled by English researchers.-

4 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 31, p. 393.

5 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 316.

6 Ibid., vol. 27, p. 149.

7 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 568.

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by E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, and by the French scientist J. Dupaquier 8 . The latter showed what kind of" life path "people went through during feudalism (the "old regime"). This model figuratively demonstrated the impact of both high birth rates and high mortality. A group consisting of 1 thousand French women was studied. Of these, 400-500 died in childhood; but at the same time, 375 - 460 survivors and married women gave birth to about 2 thousand children (including about 1 thousand girls), and the cycle of population reproduction began again.

However, the lack of a correct, comprehensively grounded and properly systematized theoretical basis significantly devalues many specific historical and demographic studies of Western scientists that are of serious interest. R. S. Schofield, who together with E. A. Wrigley made a serious contribution to elucidating the "socio-economic mechanism" of demographic behavior of the inhabitants of England in the XVI-XIX centuries, wrote that his work allegedly confirms the teachings of Malthus 9 . Because of theoretical (and terminological) confusion, participants in Western discussions about the transition from feudalism to capitalism10 often simply do not understand each other. For the same reason, the debate about the nature of agricultural development cycles in the XVI - XVIII centuries and the significance of biological and demographic factors in them ultimately proved fruitless.

The French historian J. Bois correctly noted that the point of view of his opponents, such as V. Abel, M. Postan and E. Leroy Laduri, "remained exclusively demographic... As a result, the neo-Malthusian perspective continued to dominate; the essence of the matter continued to be the juxtaposition of population and resources: faster growth in the number of people caused overpopulation, fragmentation of land, and decline in production; the same thing caused the agrarian crisis. Do we deny these phenomena? Of course not. In fact, the weakness of the Malthusian thesis lies not in what it asserts, but in what it is silent about, namely, the role that the dynamics of duties played in these fluctuations"11 . Another historian who participated in the discussion, R. Brenner (USA), emphasized the fact that even during periods of economic decline or military ruin, feudal lords continued to take away part of the product they produced from the peasants, and this led to famine and a sharp decline in the population .12
Soviet scientists strongly oppose the widespread biological and other idealistic concepts in bourgeois demography. B. C. Urlanis wrote about the fundamental difference between the approaches of Marxist and bourgeois science: "Demography, based on the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, proceeds from the fact that socio-economic factors are crucial in demographic processes; biological and geographical factors are subordinate... A characteristic feature of bourgeois demography is the biologization of demographic phenomena." Elsewhere, he notes: "Production relations that develop in the course of economic activity have a decisive influence on the level, intensity and nature of processes occurring in the population, and this influence is different in various social formations" 13 .

8 Wrigley E. A. and Scho field R. S. The Population History of England 1541 - 1871. A Reconstruction. Lnd. 1981, pp. 454 - 484; Dupaquier J. Pour la demographie historique. P. 1984, p. 76.

9 Schofield R. S. The Impact of Scarcity and Plenty on Population Chainge in England 1541 - 1871. - Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Autumn 1983, Vol. XIV, p. 270.

10 For the discussion on this issue in the journal "Past and Present", see: E. V. Gutnova. On the driving forces of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. - Questions of History (hereinafter - VI), 1983, N 9.

11 Bois G. Crise du Feodalisme. P. 1976, p. 357.

12 See Brenner R. The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism. - Past and Present (далее - РР), November 1982, N 97.

13 Urlanis B. C. Population. Research, Journalism, Moscow, 1976, p. 17, 18.

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At the same time, Soviet researchers warn of the danger of a simplistic approach to the fundamental problem of the correlation of demographic and socio-economic factors. "We find the idea that there is no direct, direct connection between the level of material security and birth rate more convincing," point out V. Z. Drobizhev and Yu. A. Polyakov. "This connection... it appears... indirectly, through a number of other factors " 14 . "Demographers," the authors continue, " name various factors that influence population growth. But it's not enough to name them. The main task is to find out the degree of influence of each of them, to determine how close their ties are." The main thing in historical and demographic research is "not just to name any figures, but to reveal the extremely complex interrelationships of general socio-economic and demographic processes"15 . It is precisely the interpretation of historical and demographic processes and the disclosure of their internal mechanism that is particularly acute in the ideological struggle.

Let us focus on some of the recent results achieved by Western historical and demographics16 . One of the fundamental historical and demographic studies of recent years can be considered the already mentioned work of E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield. From the metrics of 404 English parishes over a period of more than 300 years, data on the frequency of births, marriages and burials were extracted and analyzed; 3688884 so-called monthly tables were examined .17 The authors published the results of the study in separate articles published shortly after the publication of their monograph. Thus, Wrigley showed that from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, the birth rate in England rose from 3.07% to 3.96%, and the death rate fell from 3.07% to 2.45%. Positive changes in both indicators led to population growth, but more important was the increase in the birth rate. "At the center of the scene," Wrigley writes, " was marriage." And marriage depended on economic conditions: "It was clear that people were more willing to marry during times of economic recovery... The change in long-term trends in the intensity of marriage depended mainly on whether it was easy or difficult for young couples to obtain funds for setting up and then running an independent household."18
F. Mandels, an American historian who studied the socio-economic and demographic development of Flanders in the 18th century, writes that the fragmentation of land plots and other economic changes led to "a decrease in the age of marriage and an increase in the birth rate." At the same time, he names features that are characteristic of different economic regions of Flanders. In the coastal zone, where the nature of the soil and socio-economic relations were dominated by large farms that required significant capital investment, there was no significant population growth. But in the "inner part, where the parcel-sharing of land was intensively developed", the population doubled from 1705 to 1794. During the economic boom, " a certain number of people who had not yet married left the farms where they still lived (as family members or servants) and started their own farms. A piece of land was a necessary prerequisite for starting a family." The development of the textile industry in Flanders has served as an incentive to increase the birth rate among the poorest as well. "When they became convinced that working in the textile industry could always provide an additional income, and that children could also increase the weaver's income by working without pay ,the old factors that delayed reproduction began to fall." 19
14 Drobizhev V. Z., Polyakov Yu. A. Population of the USSR and history of the Soviet society. - VI, 1974, N 4, p. 32.

15 Ibid., pp. 32, 35.

16 A more general review of historical and demographic studies conducted abroad is given in the following articles: Samarkin V. V. Historical Demography of the Western European Middle Ages-VI, 1977, N 2, pp. 186-192; Shelestov D. K. On modern, bourgeois historical demography. - VI, 1982, N 6.

17 Wigley E. A. and Schofield R. S. Op. cit.

18 Wrigley E A The Growth of Population in Eighteenth-Century England; A Condrum Resolved. - PP, February 1983, N 98, pp. 130, 133, 137, 140.

19 Mendels F. F. Industrialization and Population Pressure in Eighteenth- Century Flanders. N. Y., 1981, pp. 140 - 143, 248,

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Many other historians who have studied demographic development in various European countries have also come to conclusions about the decisive influence of economic factors on the "demographic revolution". C. Connell, who has studied the process of "extremely rapid natural population growth" in Ireland since the end of the XVIII century, came to the conclusion that the real " key to the problem is that since 1780for about half a century, there were opportunities to establish their own farm for almost everyone who wanted it"20 . "Regional variations in marriage rates in Ireland in 1841 can be interpreted as a function of two indicators that strongly influenced the economic situation... the availability of plots in the mountains and wild lands that could be reclaimed, and the availability of opportunities to get work in "home" textile manufactories, " 21 writes E. L. Almqvist. M. Haynes, who studied the development of agriculture and demographic indicators in Upper Silesia, came to: It is concluded that population growth in the second half of the 19th century was directly related to better food conditions and the fact that "increased mortality associated with crop failures" disappeared. In addition, the growth of the population, he argues, was facilitated by the opportunities to find jobs outside of agriculture that opened up in connection with the development of industry .22
As a result of many years of research, a generalizing conclusion about the determining influence of socio-economic factors on demographic development was reached by Zh. Dupaquier. "Under the old demographic regime, population growth was limited not so much by mortality as by the difficulties that representatives of the younger generation encountered in finding employment, establishing "their own hearth" 23 .

Especially wide opportunities for creating new family-economic units opened up in those regions of Europe where scattered manufactories and domestic crafts were developing. The high intensity of marriage among weavers is attributed by H. Madick to the fact that "the creation of a new economic unit strongly depended on the increase in the working capacity of both partners" 24. In the regions where domestic industry and scattered manufactory developed alongside agriculture, demographic growth was most significant. "Already... at the beginning of the 18th century, observant contemporaries noted population growth in regions with domestic crafts and scattered manufactories, while in regions with a predominance of agriculture, relative stagnation was observed, " writes D. Gaunt. "This pattern is established by researchers in relation to Saxony, Switzerland and Flanders" 25 . The West German historian and demographer A. E. Imhof believes that the population growth since the 18th century was caused by such factors as " improved communications, expanding the borders of individual markets, more effective administrative measures (strict quarantines), increased demand for labor in rural industries, the development of industry,.. improving food and feed and better nutrition, raising hygiene standards " 26 .

These examples show that many Western researchers overcome the simplified idea of the parallelism of demographic growth and the movement of indicators of material well-being. The relationship between these processes is more complex. Demographic changes are associated with the maturation of capitalist production relations. Instead of patriarchal-closed

20 Connell K. H. Land and Population in Ireland 1780 - 1845. In: Glass D. V. and Eversley D. E. C. Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography. Lnd. S. a., p. 428.

21 Almquist E. L. Pre-Famine Ireland and the Theory of European Proto- Industrialization: Evidence from the 1841 Census. - The Journal of Economic History (далее - JEH), 1979, Vol. XXXIX, N 3, p. 713.

22 Haines M. P. Population and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Easten Europe: Prussias Upper-Silesia. - JEH, June 1976, Vol. XXXVI, N 2, pp. 348, 351.

23 Dupaquier J. Op. cit, p. 49.

24 Medick H. The Proto-Industrial Family Economy: the Structural Function of Household and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism. - Social History," 1976, N 3, p. 304.

25 Gaunt D. Pre-Industrial Economy and Population Structure. The Elements of Variance in Early Modern Sweden. - Scandinavian Journal of History, 1977, N 2, p. 184.

26 Irahoi A. E. Einfuhrung in die historische Demographic Munchen. 1977, S. 60 - 61.

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The world was opening up more opportunities for people, which, however, did not mean a general increase in the standard of living. It was not so much about achieving well-being as about the possibility of independent economic existence (in most cases as an exploited one). Concrete historical data indicate that population growth was often accompanied by mass pauperization.

Socio-economic factors also affected the dynamics of mortality. At first glance, it may seem, and this is how people of that time perceived it, that catastrophic increases in mortality were the result of natural factors, such as the impact of worsening weather conditions on agriculture (crop failures and hunger strikes), the spread of plague and other epidemics. But most demographic historians have now come to the conclusion that even here there are very complex processes that developed under the influence of socio - economic factors.

Summarizing the results of his research, the French historian P. Huber figuratively characterizes the complex, but ultimately determined by socio-economic factors, nature of demographic crises: "A real demographic crisis... It is caused by a series of meteorological adversities (most often by alternating rainy years) in a certain economic and social context. Mediocre harvests follow one another, but they are also poorly preserved, stocks are running out, and the price of wheat, and therefore bread, the main food product, is rampant.: as a rule, prices double, often rising three or four times... Hunger caused by both high cost and physical lack of food causes an increase in mortality... The rise in prices is not accompanied by an increase in the incomes of the masses. Just the opposite: the common people must turn to spoiled or poor quality nutritious products (dubious quality flour, carrion, all sorts of herbs, etc.), they are attacked by epidemic (mainly stomach) diseases, they are spread by beggars, vagabonds, soldiers... but more often than we think, this is just the most dangerous thing. a real famine that brought death. " 27
Dupaquier believes that the dramatic increases in mortality that occurred in eighteenth-century France were caused by the combined influence of two different factors: on the one hand, repeated outbreaks of epidemic diseases, and on the other, food crises caused by adverse weather conditions. The former primarily affected mortality, while the latter had a stronger impact on marriage and birth rates. When both factors were at work simultaneously, the mortality rate was catastrophic (for example, in 1693-1694 and 1709-1710). Famine, as Dupaquier emphasizes, "precedes, prepares the ground" for such jumps .28
Observed in the XVIII-XIX centuries. In Europe, the drop in deaths was also due to improvements in health care, in particular the disappearance of the plague. But these changes were still minor. They became possible at a certain level of development of the productive forces. "At present, the participants in the dispute over this problem can be divided into two camps, "writes one of the authors of the" Economic History of Europe " compiled by the international collective, P. Beyroh, describing the discussion about the reasons for the cessation of the plague's influence on the population and the demographic rise in the XVIII century: "on the one hand, there are adherents of "economic", and on the other - adherents of the "medical" explanation. However, representatives of the second direction also have to admit that, despite the beneficial effect of smallpox vaccination on population growth, it was the increase in economic resources that played a more significant role in keeping more people alive " 29 .

Summarizing the results of historical and demographic studies conducted on the basis of materials from France and North America, the English historian M. McInnis also

27 Goubert P. L'Ancien Regime. Vol. 1. P. [S. A.], p. 36.

28 Dupaquier J. Op. cit., p. 45.

29 The Fontana Economic History of Europe. The Industrial Revolution. Glasgow. 1973, p, 483.

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emphasizes the importance of socio-economic factors. "Both rural and urban families can be considered as social organisms that adapted their activity in the field of fertility to those material conditions that were expressed in the form of opportunities to earn a living, in the relative prices of labor, real estate and consumer goods... The socio-economic environment has influenced the demographic behavior of people through the amount of income and price levels, " Makinnis emphasizes. "In its most generalized form,"he continues," this economic, or at least potentially socio - economic, model seems well-suited for considering the diversity that is evident in the birth rate in Europe up to the major decline that will occur at the end of the nineteenth century. " 30 "A large number of demographic studies that were conducted by English and French scientists, recreating the history of families and conducting regional studies,.. As the work on the European peasantry says, it shows that both the birth rate and marriage rates in rural areas were very sensitive to changes in the economic situation. " 31
Thus, the facts collected by Western scientists, properly understood and generalized, confirm the historical-materialist concept of the determining significance of the material conditions of society's life and the development of production for demographic processes.

Of course, the nature of the relationship between socio-economic and demographic factors changes in the course of social development. But the former have always been crucial.

Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the ESR Yu.

30 McInnis M. The Fertility Transition in Europe and America. In: Family- Building and Family Planning in Pre-Industrial Societies. Uppsala. 1980, pp. 6, 7.

31 Europas Peasants and Their Markets. Essays in Agrarian Economic History. Princeton. 1975, p. 10.

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