Labor Migration from Austria-Hungary to the Caucasus and Central Asia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, residents of Austria-Hungary actively migrated to the Russian Empire. This migration was labour-related, and its participants were representatives of different nationalities, social classes, and professions. At the turn of the 20th century, the number of Austro-Hungarian natives within the Russian Empire exceeded 100,000 individuals. Goals. The article aims to study the labour migration of Habsburg subjects to the southern Asian peripheries of the Russian Empire, specifically the Caucasus and Central Asia. To facilitate this, the paper shall determine the preconditions for this migration movement, its scale, national and professional composition, results and significance. Materials and methods. The study is based on an analysis of various sources, namely: materials from the first All-Russian Census of 1897, legal acts defining the status of migrants, and documents from the State Archive of Stavropol Krai. Results. The labour migration of residents of the Habsburg Monarchy to the Caucasus and Central Asia was linked to a shortage of skilled workers and specialists in those regions amid the onset of capitalist modernisation. The movement to the Caucasus consisted of two waves — the relocation of Czech peasant colonists to the Black Sea coast in the late 1860s and 1870s, and the subsequent multinational labour migration to the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia at the turn of the century to come. Austro-Hungarian settlers appeared later in Central Asia, at the end of the 19th century, and in much smaller numbers. Conclusions. According to the 1897 Census, 2,573 natives of the Habsburg Monarchy resided in the Caucasus, and 144 more — in Central Asia. In both places, most of them were ethnic Czechs but there were also Slovaks, Austrian Germans, Hungarians, Romanians and people of other nationalities. The immigrants from Austria-Hungary belonged to various social and professional groups, such as industrial and agricultural workers, peasants, craftsmen, servants, technical specialists, teachers, musicians, etc. The conditions for adaptation in the southern periphery of the empire were difficult but most of the migrants coped with this task successfully. They settled there permanently, found their economic niches, and some of them became Russian subjects. Austro-Hungarian migrants made a positive contribution to the economic and cultural development of the Caucasus and Central Asia in the pre-revolutionary period.