The lifespan of people. Jeanne Louise Calment - the oldest person who ever lived on Earth

The following graph covers a longer period of time and shows how great life was for people in ancient Greece. This time, not a complete sample is considered, but a regional one: for the 18th century - representatives of Western Europe, and for two periods of Antiquity - Romans and Greeks. As in the previous case, the identification of people by time was carried out on the basis of their dates of birth.

The average life expectancy in ancient Greece in the VI-III centuries BC. was 73.3 years. The number is simply unrealistic. Even in the first half of the 20th century, Europeans, on average, lived less. Of course, these statistics do not take into account people in dangerous professions, for example, the military, where life expectancy is below average. However, this shortcoming is compensated by the practical absence of women in this sample, who traditionally live longer than men. In any case, all this does not matter, because our task is to compare the results obtained with each other.

The graph clearly shows that in the 18th century (and, therefore, partially in the 19th century, since we are talking about people born in the 18th century), even in Western Europe, the average life expectancy was lower than in Ancient Greece. Despite the fact that Greek statistics are based on a little over fifty people, the differences between the two groups are statistically significant, which suggests that Western Europeans certainly lived less than the ancient Greeks. The reliability of this conclusion is as high as before - less than one percent (the smaller this figure, showing the probability of a researcher's error, the higher the reliability).

The main idea that I try to convey in critical publications on history is that the generally accepted chronology of historical events was composed at a relatively late time, approximately in the 17th-18th centuries. Therefore, it would be more interesting to see what life expectancy was not in the Middle Ages or Antiquity, but in the 18th century and in the time immediately preceding it. To do this, we will make statistics for smaller periods of time, for half a century. And for a clearer picture, we will limit the sample only to representatives of Western Europe.

The graph below shows that the highest figures fall on the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. After that, in the second half of the XVIII century, there is an unjustified decline. As before, the specified time periods correspond to the dates of birth of the people for whom the statistics were made. Therefore, the phenomenon of reduced life expectancy applies to people who were only born in the second half of the 18th century, most of whom died at the beginning of the 19th century. Let us consider this period and the two previous half-century periods in more detail.

The average life expectancy in the first half of the 18th century is 67.7 years - about the same as in the previous fifty years. In the second half of the 18th century, this figure dropped to 64.5 years. The difference is just over three years, which is not so much in relation to previous comparisons, and may not seem significant. Therefore, we turn again to the methods of mathematical processing.

The task is to find out whether the decrease in life expectancy in the second half of the 18th century in relation to the previous period of time is reliable or whether the difference in the figures obtained is statistically insignificant and is a consequence of chance. Since in the first half of the 18th century and the second half of the 17th century the life expectancy indicators are approximately the same, we will combine them into one group. This will increase the amount of initial statistical data and increase the reliability of calculations. There will be two groups that need to be compared: the second half of the 18th century, in which the average life expectancy is 64.5 years, and the previous period, covering a hundred years, with an average life expectancy of 67.8 years.
The following table reveals the life expectancy statistics for both groups.

We see that both groups have approximately the same number of people. However, even with a superficial glance, it is noticeable that they were distributed in them in different ways. Thus, in the first group, the number of people who did not live to be 50 years old is greater than those who died between the ages of 50 and 60. In the second - on the contrary, besides, those who died under the age of 50 are two times less than those who died in the range from 50 to 60 years.

Mathematical analysis comparing the two distributions showed that they differ from each other with a high level of statistical significance of less than one percent. Translated from the language of mathematics, this means that people born in the period from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th centuries, on average, lived regularly longer than those who were born in the next fifty years. What underlies this pattern is unclear. From the standpoint of traditional history, this question will remain unanswered, because we are talking about the relatively recent past of Western Europe. It is well studied, and there are no global epidemics or other large-scale cataclysms in it that could affect the decline in life expectancy. Maybe just before that, for some reason, she suddenly became higher than normal, and then dropped to a natural level? But these reasons are also unknown to science.

The only interpretation of the result obtained can be that there was in fact no decrease in life expectancy in the second half of the 18th century. Most likely, people began to live longer than in the first half of this century and, even more so, than in the 17th century. But then no one wrote down the real dates of birth, no one needed it. Then, when the chronology was calculated, the dates of the lives of famous people were also invented. And it just so happened that these fictitious dates somewhat increased the natural life expectancy for that time.

The latest mathematical and statistical analysis once again showed that the chronology before the 18th century is not natural, not reliable, and therefore fictitious. As a final touch to demonstrate the artificiality of the picture of average life expectancy, I present one more diagram. It differs from the previous ones in that its indicators are calculated not on the basis of the dates of life of those who were born in a particular period, but of those who died in it. The periods themselves are reduced to twenty years.

I found a very interesting book and it contains some statistics on life expectancy and infant mortality in the second half of the 18th century.

Actually, this is probably, in principle, almost the first such statistical study in Russia. But the figures here are given mainly from European sources. How accurate they are is another question. But the trends reflect. And very scary trends.

This is a description of one of the centenarians. Natural selection at its finest.

Only half of the people lived up to the age of 15.

I saw quite a lot of icons of various kinds, as well as ancient frescoes. So there is such a canon, pay attention on occasion. All warriors are exclusively without a beard. If you remember that the main growth of hair in young men occurs somewhere around 17-18 years old, then you can understand where this canon came from and who made up the bulk of any army. Not for nothing back in the 19th century. And according to my calculations. Well, you know about Romeo and Juliet.

Women have always lived longer than men.

And in marriage then people lived for a long time. Even despite the short lifespan. Well, they got married at 15-16.

And then the centenarians lived mainly in the mountains.

But this is a very interesting passage that shows the standard of living of the population in various areas. Moreover, as you can see, the larger the city, the lower this standard of living. This is, as it were, a very important point in understanding the history of that time.

From all this, in the cities they didn’t really get married and give birth to people. And the influx of people from the village was not very large. In my series of posts, I clearly show that the population and size of cities have grown little over 200 or even 300 years. until the beginning of the 20th century and the explosive growth of cities.

Avitaminosis is a terrible thing.

And now the scariest part of my post. Child mortality:

And again this is the curse of the cities.

But at the same time, the city was still more advanced in the field of medicine.

Progress in medicine slowly went on.

This is another scary moment of that time. Mothers or wet nurses were often so tired that they fell asleep while feeding or just in bed and pressed their babies down with their whole body so that the babies simply died.

We now have a poor idea of ​​the realities of life at that time. Human life was short and worthless. Therefore, the mentality of people was different. And the realities of life. And all this must be known in order to correctly understand history. Otherwise, it appears before us in the form of a crooked mirror, where everything is different and everything is different.

Addition :

I also found data on mortality in the second half of the 18th century.

Book: Kurganov, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1726-1796).
As you can see, at that time, the birth rate sharply exceeded the death rate. It was then that the population of Europe and Russia increased at a very rapid pace. According to my information, in Russia it began somewhere in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A single autocratic state was formed in Russia and the number of internal strife was sharply reduced. Again, there were fewer fights than before. The raids of the Tatars and other nomads finally became a thing of the past. Labor productivity increased, the ordinary population had more money to feed their offspring, and then they gave birth a lot.
But at the same time, mortality in cities was very high. Let's, for example, compare it with the current one. I live in the city of Perm. The population of the city is somewhere around 1 million people. The death rate is 12 thousand per year. The population of the rest of the Perm Territory is 1.6 mil. people and the death rate is 22 thousand people a year. Of course, most of it still lives in cities, but they are not comparable with the city of Perm in many respects. I think this disproportion in mortality is due to the difference in the quality and availability of medical care. Because the environment in Perm itself is much worse than in other cities of the region, not to mention the village.
If you multiply 12 thousand by 23, as it is written in the book, then you get 276 thousand people. This should have been the population of the city of Perm, subject to mortality, which was in the second half of the 18th century. The almost complete lack of medicine, even for the rich, did its job. Yes, and the environment was clearly not all right. The lack of running water and sewerage, with the general overcrowding of the population, did its job.
Life has become clearly better and certainly more fun.

The post was written within the cycle - .

One way or another, all the above data indicate that the population of Western Europe of the 17th-18th centuries had a high marriageable age and marriages in early adolescence were rare (nobles and sovereign nobility are not considered), but marriages after 25 were a common phenomenon (among the ruling nobility too). It is believed that ordinary European women often married at a later age in order to give birth less (source 5).

Now let's compare with Russia. If, due to low life expectancy, marriage had to be equally early, then the indicators would be close or equal. But the point is that in late 18th century in Ryazan, the average age at first marriage was only 17.5 years old(source 6), which is significantly less than European indicators. I did not find data for other regions in the 18th century, however, back in the 19th century, Russia had one of the lowest marriageable ages in Europe. IN 1815-1861 V the village of Vykhino The average age of the bride was 19.3 before 20.1 years old(source 7). IN Petrovsky(Tambov province) in 1813-1856 this figure was 18.9 years old. For comparison: V 1800-1850. marriageable age of a woman England was 23.4 years(source 5). IN Omelanden (Groningen, Netherlands) average age of the bride between 1801 and 1820 ranged from 23 to 26.7 years(source 8).

There is such a thing as "Hajnal/Hajnal Line". The Hainala line separates regions characterized by early marriage and complex family structures from the zone to the west of late marriage and the nuclear family. (See, for example: Burguiere A., Klapisch-Zuber S.I., Segalen M., Zonabend F. Histoire de la Famille. - Paris: Stock, 1994.). For the reasons given above and below, Russia was one of the first. There were accepted universal early marriages as soon as the minimum age is reached. Among the serfs, marriages of teenagers aged 13-16 were common, which were encouraged by the landlords who wanted to get more offspring from the peasants. 90% Ryazan women in late XVIII century have been married to 21 years old. Even in 1897 of people aged 45-49 in Russia there were only 5-6% unmarried and unmarried. IN Western Europe(Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Great Britain, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Germany) by 45-49 never married 10-19% women and 8-16% men (source 9).

Now a concrete example of the fact that low life expectancy at birth is not a guarantee of a low marriageable age. Here is Russia 1751-1800 years. Average life expectancy at birth - 30 years(source 10), average age at first marriage 17.5 years old(for Ryazan). Here is France, the same 1751-1800. Average life expectancy - 26-36 years old(source 10), average age at first marriage - 26 years and over.

It is also because in the popular literature low life expectancy is often misinterpreted to mean that only a few lived past 40 years of age. Life expectancy at birth was very low due to very high infant and child mortality rates. in England with 1580 to 1800 18 % babies die in the first year of life. Only 69 % newborns lived to their fifteenth birthday. But those who were lucky enough to celebrate their 15th birthday could expect to celebrate their birthday 37 more times (source 5), i.e., live about 52 years old. Given the fact that there were almost no marriages under 15 in England at that time, the life expectancy of the married population was most likely more than 52. In some other countries, infant mortality was even higher France the end of the 18th century, only 49% born. (source 4) This explains why the average life expectancy and the average age at first marriage in this country in the same period were almost equal.

So, we come to the conclusion that the widespread opinion that not only in Russia, but also in Western Europe of the 17th-18th centuries, the age of marriage was equally low is erroneous. The difference was enormous. In addition, low life expectancy at birth was not a guarantee of a low marriageable age.

Sources of data on marriageable age in different countries:
1. English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580-1837", EA Wrigley, RS Davies, JE Oppen, RS Schofield (Cambridge, 1997)
2. POPULATION GROWTH IN EUROPE, B.Ts. URLANIS (calculus experience) (M., OGIZ-Gospolitizdat, 1941, 436 pages)
3. Hurwich, Judith J. Noble Strategies: Marriage and Sexuality in the Zimmern Chronicle. Vol. 75
4. L. M. Bacci: The demographic history of Europe
5. Gregory Clark. Goodbye poverty! Brief economic history of the world / Per. from English. Nicholas Edelman. - M .: Publishing house of the Gaidar Institute, 2012. - 304 p.
6. The Russian Peasantry, 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made. By David Moon. London: Longman, 1999. Pp. xii+396.
7. Peasant Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Russia. A. Avdeev, A. Blum, I. Troitskaia. Population (English edition), 2004, Vol.59, No.6, pages 721-764
8. Explaining individual ages at first marriage in a 18th century rural market economy. Richard Paping. University of Groningen
9. Patterns of First Marriage: Timing and Prevalence. N.Y.: United Nations, 1990. P.7-18.
10. Zubets A. N. Quantitative assessments in history (instruments for cliometry). Financial University, 2014.

Unless in the imagination of citizens living in an alternative reality or in the descriptions of paid propagandists, the situation in “Russia that we have lost” seems almost like heaven on earth. It is described something like this: “Before the revolution and collectivization, whoever worked well lived well. Because he lived by his labor, and the poor were lazy and drunkards. The kulaks were the most hardworking peasants and the best masters, and therefore lived the best of all. This is followed by a lament about “Russia-feeding-all-Europe-wheat” or, in extreme cases, half of Europe, “while the USSR was importing bread”, trying to prove in such a cheating way that the path of socialism of the USSR was less effective than path of tsarism. Then, of course, about the "crunch of French rolls", enterprising and quick-witted Russian merchants, God-fearing, kind-hearted and highly moral God-bearing people, who were spoiled by the Bolshevik bastards, "the best people ruined and expelled by the Bolsheviks." Well, really, what kind of evil freak do you have to be to ruin such an exalted pastoral?

Such leafy tales, however, drawn by unkind and dishonorable people, appeared when the overwhelming majority of those who remembered how it really was died or passed the age at which one can receive adequate information from them. By the way, for those who like to nostalgic about the beautiful pre-revolutionary times in the late 30s, ordinary citizens could easily “clean their faces” without any party committees in a purely rural way, so memories of “lost Russia” were fresh and painful.

A huge number of sources have come down to us about the situation in the Russian countryside before the Revolution - both documentary reports and statistics, as well as personal impressions. Contemporaries assessed the surrounding reality of "God-bearing Russia" not only without enthusiasm, but simply found it desperate, if not scary. The life of the average Russian peasant was exceptionally harsh, even more so - cruel and hopeless.

Here is the testimony of a man who is difficult to blame for inadequacy, un-Russianness or dishonesty. This is the star of world literature - Leo Tolstoy. This is how he described his trip to several dozen villages in different counties at the very end of the 19th century:

“In all these villages, although there is no admixture to bread, as it was in 1891, bread, although pure, is not given in plenty. Welding - millet, cabbage, potatoes, even the majority, there is none. The food consists of herbal cabbage soup, whitened if there is a cow, and unwhitened if there is none, and only bread. In all these villages, most have sold and pledged everything that can be sold and mortgaged.

From Gushchin I went to the village of Gnevyshevo, from which peasants had come two days before, asking for help. This village, like Gubarevka, consists of 10 households. There are four horses and four cows for ten households; there are almost no sheep; all the houses are so old and bad that they can hardly stand. Everyone is poor and everyone is begging for help. “If only the guys had a little rest,” the women say. “And then they ask for folders (bread), but there is nothing to give, and they will fall asleep without supper” ...

I asked to exchange three rubles for me. In the whole village, there was not even a ruble of money ... In the same way, the rich, who make up about 20% everywhere, have a lot of oats and other resources, but in addition, landless soldiers' children live in this village. A whole village of these inhabitants does not have land and is always in poverty, but now it is with expensive bread and with a stingy supply of alms in terrible, terrifying poverty ...

From the hut, near which we stopped, a ragged, dirty woman came out and went up to a pile of something lying on a pasture and covered with a caftan torn and seething everywhere. This is one of her 5 children. A three-year-old girl is sick in the strongest heat with something like influenza. It’s not that there is no talk of treatment, but there is no other food than the crusts of bread that the mother brought yesterday, leaving the children and running away with a bag for collection ... The husband of this woman left the spring and did not return. Such are approximately many of these families...

We, adults, if we are not crazy, it would seem that we can understand where the hunger of the people comes from. First of all, he - and every man knows this - he
1) from lack of land, because half of the land is owned by landowners and merchants who trade in both land and grain.
2) from factories and factories with those laws under which the capitalist is protected, but the worker is not protected.
3) from vodka, which is the main income of the state and to which the people have been accustomed for centuries.
4) from the soldiery, which selects the best people from him at the best time and corrupts them.
5) from officials who oppress the people.
6) from taxes.
7) from ignorance, in which he is consciously supported by government and church schools.

The farther into the depths of Bogoroditsky district and closer to Efremov, the situation gets worse and worse ... Almost nothing was born on the best lands, only seeds returned. Almost everyone has bread with quinoa. The quinoa here is unripe, green. That white nucleolus, which is usually found in it, is not at all, and therefore it is not edible. Bread with quinoa cannot be eaten alone. If you eat one piece of bread on an empty stomach, you will vomit. From kvass, made on flour with quinoa, people go crazy "

Well, lovers of “Russia-which-lost”, is it impressive?

V. G. Korolenko, who lived in the village for many years, visited other starving areas in the early 1890s and organized canteens for the starving and distributed food loans there, left very characteristic testimonies of government officials: “You are a fresh person, you stumble upon a village with dozens of typhoid patients, you see how a sick mother bends over the cradle of a sick child to feed him, faints and lies over him, and there is no one to help, because the husband on the floor mutters in incoherent delirium. And you are horrified. And the "old servant" got used to it. He had already experienced it, he had already been horrified twenty years ago, had been ill, boiled over, calmed down ... Typhus? Yes, we always have! Quinoa? Yes, we have this every year! .. ".

“I had in mind not only to attract donations in favor of the starving, but also to present before society, and perhaps before the government, a stunning picture of land dislocation and poverty of the agricultural population on the best lands.

I had a hope that when I managed to announce all this, when I would loudly tell the whole of Russia about these Dubrovites, Prolevets and Petrovtsy, about how they became “non-inhabitants”, how “bad pain” destroys entire villages, as in Lukoyanov himself, a little girl asks her mother to “bury her alive in the country”, then, perhaps, my articles will be able to have at least some influence on the fate of these Dubrovka, raising the question of the need for land reform, even if at first the most modest.

I wonder what those who like to describe the "horrors of the Holodomor" - the only famine of the USSR (with the exception of the war, of course) will say to this?

In an attempt to save themselves from hunger, the inhabitants of entire villages and regions "went with a bag around the world", trying to escape from starvation. Here is how Korolenko, who witnessed this, describes it. He also says that this happened in the life of most Russian peasants.

Cruel sketches from nature by Western correspondents of the Russian famine of the late 19th century have been preserved.

Hordes of starving people try to escape in the cities

“I know many cases when several families joined together, chose some old woman, jointly supplied her with the last crumbs, gave her children, and they themselves wandered into the distance, wherever their eyes looked, with longing for the unknown about the children left ... As the last stocks are disappearing from the population - family after family goes on this mournful road ... Dozens of families, united spontaneously into crowds, who were driven by fear and despair to the main roads, to villages and cities. Some local observers from the rural intelligentsia tried to create some kind of statistics to account for this phenomenon that attracted everyone's attention. Having cut the loaf of bread into many small pieces, the observer counted these pieces and, serving them, determined in this way the number of beggars who stayed during the day. The figures turned out to be truly frightening... Autumn did not bring improvement, and winter approached amid a new crop failure... In the autumn, before the start of loan disbursements, again whole clouds of the same hungry and the same frightened people left the destitute villages... When the loan came to an end, begging intensified among these fluctuations and became more and more common. The family, who filed yesterday, came out today with a bag…” (ibid.)

Crowds of starving people from the village reached St. Petersburg. Near the hostel.

Millions of desperate people took to the roads, fled to the cities, reaching even the capitals. Mad with hunger, people begged and stole. Along the roads lay the corpses of those who died of starvation. To prevent this gigantic flight of desperate people, troops and Cossacks were brought into the starving villages, who did not allow the peasants to leave the village. Often they were not allowed to leave the village at all, usually only those who had a passport were allowed to leave the village. The passport was issued for a certain period of time by the local authorities, without it the peasant was considered a vagabond and not everyone had a passport. A person without a passport was considered a vagabond, subjected to corporal punishment, imprisonment and deportation.

The Cossacks do not allow the peasants to leave the village to go with a bag.

It is interesting that those who like to speculate about how the Bolsheviks did not let people out of the villages during the “Holodomor” will say about this?

About this terrible, but ordinary picture "Russia-which-we-lost" is now diligently forgotten.

The flow of the starving was such that the police and the Cossacks could not keep it. To save the situation in the 90s of the 19th century, food loans began to be used - but the peasant was obliged to pay them back from the harvest in the fall. If he did not repay the loan, then, according to the principle of mutual responsibility, they “hung” it on the village community, and then, as it turned out, they could ruin it cleanly, taking everything as arrears, they could collect it “with the whole world” and repay the debt, they could beg the local authorities to forgive the loan.

Now, few people know that in order to get bread, the tsarist government took harsh confiscation measures - urgently increased taxes in certain areas, collected arrears, or even simply seized the surplus by force - by police officers with detachments of Cossacks, OMON of those years. The main burden of these confiscation measures fell on the poor. The rural rich usually paid off with bribes.

The constable with the Cossacks enter the village in search of hidden grain.

Peasants massively hid bread. They were flogged, tortured, beaten out bread by any means. On the one hand, it was cruel and unfair, on the other hand, it helped to save their neighbors from starvation. Cruelty and injustice were in the fact that there was bread in the state, albeit in small quantities, but it was exported, and a narrow circle of “effective owners” fattened from exports.

Famine in Russia. Troops are brought into the starving village. A Tatar peasant woman is on her knees begging a constable.

“Together with the spring approached, in fact, the most difficult time. Their bread, which the "deceivers" were sometimes able to hide from the watchful eye of the police officers, from the zealous paramedics, from the "search and seizure", almost everywhere has completely disappeared.

Grain loans and canteens really saved a lot of people and eased suffering, without which the situation would have become simply monstrous. But their reach was limited and wholly insufficient. In those cases when grain aid reached the starving, it often turned out to be too late. People have already died or received irreparable health disorders, for the treatment of which qualified medical assistance was needed. But in tsarist Russia there was a catastrophic shortage not only of doctors, even paramedics, not to mention medicines and means of combating starvation. The situation was horrendous.

Distribution of corn to the starving, the village of Molvino, not far from Kazan

“... a boy is sitting on the stove, swollen from hunger, with a yellow face and conscious, sad eyes. In the hut - clean bread from an increased loan (evidence in the eyes of the recently still dominant system), but now, to correct an exhausted organism, one, even if pure bread, is no longer enough.

Perhaps Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko were writers, that is, sensitive and emotional people, this was an exception and they exaggerate the scale of the phenomenon and in reality everything is not so bad?

Alas, foreigners who were in Russia in those years describe absolutely the same thing, if not worse. Constant hunger, periodically punctuated by cruel hungry plagues, was a terrible everyday life of tsarist Russia.

The hut of a starving peasant

Professor of Medicine and Dr. Emil Dillon lived in Russia from 1877 to 1914, worked as a professor at several Russian universities, traveled extensively in all regions of Russia, saw the situation well at all levels at all levels - from ministers to poor peasants. This is an honest scientist, completely uninterested in distorting reality.

This is how he describes the life of the average peasant in Tsarist times: “The Russian peasant … goes to bed at six or five in the evening in the winter because he cannot spend money on buying kerosene for a lamp. He has no meat, eggs, butter, milk, often no cabbage, he lives mainly on black bread and potatoes. Lives? He is starving to death for not having enough of them."

The scientist-chemist and agronomist A.N. Engelhardt, lived worked in the countryside and left a classic fundamental study of the reality of the Russian village - "Letters from the village":

“He who knows the countryside, who knows the position and way of life of the peasants, does not need statistical data and calculations to know that we sell grain abroad not from an excess ... In a person from an intelligent class, such doubt is understandable, because it is simply unbelievable, How is it that people live without eating. In the meantime, this is true. It’s not that they didn’t eat at all, but they are malnourished, live from hand to mouth, eat all sorts of rubbish. Wheat, good pure rye, we send abroad, to the Germans, who will not eat any rubbish ... Our peasant farmer does not have enough wheat bread for a child’s nipple, the woman will chew the rye crust that she eats, put it in a rag - suck it.

Somehow very much at odds with the pastoral paradise, isn't it?

Perhaps at the beginning of the 20th century everything got better, as some “patriots of tsarist Russia” are now saying. Alas, this is absolutely not the case.

According to the observations of Korolenko, a person involved in helping the starving, in 1907 the situation in the countryside not only did not change, on the contrary, it became noticeably worse:

“Now (1906-7) in starving areas, fathers are selling their daughters to live goods dealers. The progress of the Russian famine is obvious.”

Famine in Russia. The roofs were pulled down to feed the cattle with straw.

“The migration wave is growing rapidly as spring approaches. The Chelyabinsk Resettlement Administration registered 20,000 walkers in February, most of them from starving provinces. Typhus, smallpox, and diphtheria are common among the settlers. Medical care is not enough. There are only six canteens from Penza to Manchuria.” The newspaper "Russian Word" dated March 30 (17), 1907

This refers to the hungry migrants, that is, refugees from hunger, who were described above. It is quite obvious that the famine in Russia did not actually stop and, by the way, Lenin, when he wrote that under Soviet power, the peasant for the first time ate bread to the full, did not exaggerate at all.

In 1913 there was the largest harvest in pre-revolutionary Russia, but the famine was all the same. It was especially cruel in Yakutia and adjacent territories, where it has not stopped since 1911. Local and central authorities were practically not interested in the problems of helping the starving. A number of villages died out completely.

Are there any scientific statistics of those years? Yes, there are, they summed up and openly wrote about the famine even in encyclopedias.

“After the famine of 1891, which covered a vast region of 29 provinces, the lower Volga region constantly suffers from famine: during the 20th century. Samara province went hungry 8 times, Saratov 9. Over the past thirty years, the largest hunger strikes date back to 1880 (the Lower Volga region, part of the lakeside and Novorossiysk provinces) and 1885 (Novorossia and part of the non-chernozem provinces from Kaluga to Pskov); then, after the famine of 1891, the famine of 1892 came in the central and southeastern provinces, the famines of 1897 and 98. approximately in the same area; in the 20th century the famine of 1901 in 17 provinces of the center, south and east; . (mainly eastern, central provinces, Novorossiya)"

Pay attention to the source - clearly not the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, in an ordinary and phlegmatic way, the encyclopedic dictionary talks about everything known in Russia - the regular famine. Hunger every 5 years was commonplace. Moreover, it is directly stated that the people in Russia were starving at the beginning of the 20th century, that is, there is no question that the problem of constant hunger was solved by the tsarist government.

"The crunch of a French roll," you say? Would you like to return to such a Russia, dear reader?

By the way, where does the bread for loans in the famine come from? The fact is that there was bread in the state, but it was exported in large quantities abroad for sale. The painting was disgusting and surreal. American charitable societies sent bread to the starving regions of Russia. But the export of grain taken from the starving peasants did not stop.

The cannibalistic expression “We are undernourished, but we will take it out” belongs to the Minister of Finance of the government of Alexander III, Vyshnegradsky, by the way, a major mathematician. When A.S. Ermolov, director of the non-reimbursable fees department, handed Vyshnegradsky a memorandum in which he wrote about the “terrible sign of hunger,” the intelligent mathematician then answered and said. And then repeated it over and over again.

Naturally, it turned out that some were malnourished, while others were exporting and receiving gold from exports. Starvation under Alexander the Third became completely commonplace, the situation became noticeably worse than under his father, the “tsar-liberator.” But Russia began to intensively export bread, which was not enough for its peasants.

This is what they called it, not at all embarrassed - “hungry export”. I mean, hungry for the peasants. Moreover, it was not Bolshevik propaganda that came up with all this at all. This was the terrible reality of tsarist Russia.

The export continued even when, as a result of a crop failure, the net per capita collection amounted to about 14 pounds, while the critical level of hunger for Russia was 19.2 pounds. In 1891-92 over 30 million people were starving. According to official, sharply underestimated data, 400 thousand people died then, modern sources believe that more than half a million people died, given the poor accounting of foreigners, the death rate could be significantly higher. But "they weren't finished, but they took them out."

The grain monopolists were well aware that their actions led to a terrible famine and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. They didn't care about it.

“Alexander III was annoyed by the mention of “hunger” as a word invented by those who have nothing to eat. He commanded the highest to replace the word "hunger" with the word "malnutrition." The Main Directorate for Press Affairs immediately sent out a strict circular,” wrote Gruzenberg, a well-known Cadet lawyer and opponent of the Bolsheviks. By the way, for violating the circular, one could go to jail in earnest. There were precedents.

Under his royal son Nicholas II, the ban was softened, but when they told him about the famine in Russia, he was very indignant and demanded in no case to hear "about this when she deigned to dine." True, for the majority of the people who managed to have such, God forgive me, the ruler, things were not so successful with dinners and they knew the word “hunger” not from stories:

“A peasant family with a per capita income of less than 150 rubles (average and below) had to systematically face hunger. Based on this, we can conclude that periodic famine was largely typical of the majority of the peasant population.

By the way, the average per capita income in those years was 102 rubles. Do modern guardians of tsarist Russia have a good idea of ​​what such dry academic lines mean in reality?

"Systematic encounter"...

“With average consumption close to the minimum norm, due to statistical dispersion, the consumption of half of the population turns out to be less than the average and less than the norm. And although the country was more or less provided with bread in terms of production volumes, the policy of forcing exports led to the fact that the average consumption was balanced at the level of the hunger minimum and about half of the population lived in conditions of constant malnutrition ... "

Photo caption: Famine in Siberia. Photogr. photographs from nature taken in Omsk on July 21, 1911 by a member of the State. Duma Dzyubinsky.

First photo: The family of the widow kr. d. Poohovoy, Kurgan. U., V. F. Rukhlova, going "to the harvest." In the harness is a foal in the second year and two boys on a harness. Behind - the eldest son, who fell from exhaustion.

Second photo: Kr. Tobol. lip., Tyukalin. u., Kamyshinskaya vol., village of Karaulnoy, M.S. Bazhenov with his family, going "to the harvest." Source: JOURNAL "ISKRA", YEAR ELEVENTH, with the newspaper "Russian Word". No. 37, Sunday, September 25, 1911

Moreover, this is all constant, “background” hunger, all sorts of king-starvation, pestilence, crop shortages - this is additional.

Due to the extremely backward agricultural technologies, population growth "ate" the growth of labor productivity in agriculture, the country confidently fell into the loop of the "black impasse", from which it could not get out under the exhausted system of public administration such as "Romanov tsarism".

The minimum physiological minimum for feeding Russia: at least 19.2 poods per capita (15.3 poods for people, 3.9 poods for livestock and poultry). The same number was the norm for the calculations of the State Planning Committee of the USSR in the early 1920s. That is, under Soviet power, it was planned that the average peasant should have at least this amount of bread left. The tsarist authorities did not care much about such questions.

Despite the fact that since the beginning of the 20th century, the average consumption in the Russian Empire finally amounted to a critical 19.2 poods per person, but at the same time, in a number of regions, an increase in grain consumption occurred against the background of a decrease in the consumption of other products.

Even this achievement (minimum physical survival) was ambiguous - according to estimates from 1888 to 1913, the average per capita consumption in the country was reduced by at least 200 kcal.

This negative dynamics is confirmed by the observations of not just "disinterested researchers" - ardent supporters of tsarism.

So one of the initiators of the creation of the monarchist organization "All-Russian National Union" Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov wrote in 1909:

“Every year the Russian army becomes more and more sick and physically incapable ... Of the three guys, it is difficult to choose one who is quite fit for service ... Poor food in the countryside, a wandering life on earnings, early marriages that require hard work at almost adolescence - these are the reasons physical exhaustion ... It's scary to say what hardships a recruit sometimes undergoes before service. About 40 per cent. recruits almost for the first time ate meat upon entering the military service. In the service, a soldier eats, in addition to good bread, excellent meat cabbage soup and porridge, i.e. something that many people in the village already have no idea about ... ". Exactly the same data was given by the commander-in-chief, General V. Gurko - on conscription from 1871 to 1901, saying that 40% of peasant boys taste meat in the army for the first time in their lives.

That is, even ardent, fanatical supporters of the tsarist regime admit that the food of the average peasant was very poor, which led to mass illness and exhaustion.

“The Western agricultural population mainly consumed high-calorie animal products, the Russian peasant satisfied his need for food with the help of bread and potatoes with a lower calorie content. Meat consumption is unusually low. In addition to the low energy value of such nutrition ... the consumption of a large mass of plant food, which compensates for the lack of animal food, entails severe gastric diseases.

Famine led to severe mass diseases and severe epidemics. Even according to pre-revolutionary studies of an official body (a department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire), the situation looks simply horrifying and shameful. The study shows the death rate per 100 thousand people. for such diseases: in European countries and individual self-governing territories (for example, Hungary) as part of countries.

In terms of mortality for all six major infectious diseases (smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, typhoid), Russia was firmly in the lead, by a huge margin.
1. Russia - 527.7 people
2. Hungary - 200.6 people
3. Austria - 152.4 people

The lowest total mortality for major diseases - Norway - 50.6 people. More than 10 times less than in Russia!

Mortality by disease:

Scarlet fever: 1st place - Russia - 134.8 people, 2nd place - Hungary - 52.4 people. 3rd place - Romania - 52.3 people.

Even in Romania and disadvantaged Hungary, the death rate is more than two times less than in Russia. For comparison, the lowest death rate from scarlet fever was in Ireland - 2.8 people.

Measles: 1. Russia - 106.2 people. 2nd Spain - 45 people. 3rd Hungary - 43.5 people. The lowest death rate from measles is Norway - 6 people, in impoverished Romania - 13 people. Again, the gap with the nearest neighbor in the list is more than twice.

Typhus: 1. Russia - 91.0 people. 2. Italy - 28.4 people 3. Hungary - 28.0 people The smallest in Europe - Norway - 4 people. Under typhus, by the way, in Russia-which-we-lost, they wrote off losses from starvation. Doctors were recommended to do so - to write off starvation typhus (intestinal damage during starvation and concomitant diseases) as infectious. This was written quite openly in the newspapers. In general, the gap with the closest neighbor in misfortune is almost 4 times. Someone, it seems, said that the Bolsheviks falsified statistics? Oh well. And here, at least forge, at least not - the level of a poor African country.

Whooping cough: 1. Russia - 80.9 people. 2. Scotland - 43.3 people 3. Austria - 38.4 people

Smallpox: 1. Russia - 50.8 people. 2. Spain - 17.4 people 3. Italy - 1.4 people. The difference with a very poor and backward agrarian Spain is almost 3 times. About the leaders in the elimination of this disease, it is even better not to remember. Impoverished Ireland, oppressed by the British, from where thousands of people fled across the ocean - 0.03 people. It is even indecent to say about Sweden 0.01 people per 100 thousand, that is, one in 10 million. The difference is more than 5000 times.

The only thing in which the gap is not so terrible, just a little more than one and a half times - diphtheria: 1. Russia - 64.0 people. 2. Hungary - 39.8 people 3rd place in terms of mortality - Austria - 31.4 people. Romania, the world leader in wealth and industrialization, has only recently got rid of the Turkish yoke - 5.8 people.

“Children eat worse than calves from an owner who has good cattle. The death rate of children is much greater than the death rate of calves, and if the death rate of calves of a farmer who has good livestock was as high as the death rate of children of a peasant, then it would be impossible to manage .... If mothers ate better, if our wheat, which the Germans eat, stayed at home, then the children would grow better and there would be no such mortality, all these typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria would not rage. When we sell our wheat to a German, we sell our blood, that is, peasant children.

It is easy to calculate that in the Russian Empire, only because of the increased incidence of hunger, disgusting medicine and hygiene, just like that, by the way, for a snuff of tobacco, about a quarter of a million people died a year. This is the result of the mediocre and irresponsible government of Russia. And this is only if it were possible to improve the situation to the level of the most disadvantaged country of "classical" Europe in this respect - Hungary. If the gap were reduced to the level of a central European country, this alone would save about half a million lives a year. For all 33 years of Stalin's rule in the USSR, torn apart by the consequences of the Civil, cruel class struggle in society, several wars and their consequences, a maximum of 800 thousand people were sentenced to death (significantly fewer were executed, but so be it). So this number is easily covered by only 3-4 years of increased mortality in “Russia-which-we-lost.”

Even the most ardent supporters of the monarchy did not speak, they simply shouted about the degeneration of the Russian people.

“A population that exists from hand to mouth, and often simply starving, cannot give strong children, especially if we add to this those unfavorable conditions in which, in addition to lack of nutrition, a woman finds herself during pregnancy and after her.”

“Stop, gentlemen, deceive yourself and cunning with reality! Do such purely zoological circumstances as the lack of food, clothing, fuel and elementary culture among the Russian common people mean nothing? But they are reflected extremely expressively in the decline of the human type in Great Russia, Belorussia, and Little Russia. It is precisely the zoological unit - the Russian man in many places is engulfed in refinement and degeneration, which, in our memory, forced us to lower the norm twice when recruiting recruits for service. A little over a hundred years ago, the tallest army in Europe (Suvorov's “miracle heroes”), the current Russian army is already the shortest, and a terrifying percentage of recruits have to be rejected for service. Does this "zoological" fact mean nothing? Doesn’t our shameful, nowhere in the world, infant mortality mean anything, in which the vast majority of the living mass of the people do not live up to a third of a human century?

Even if the results of these calculations are questioned, it is obvious that the dynamics of changes in nutrition and labor productivity in the agriculture of Tsarist Russia (and this constituted the vast majority of the country's population) were completely insufficient for the rapid development of the country and the implementation of modern industrialization - with the massive departure of workers to factories there would be nothing to feed them in the conditions of tsarist Russia.

Maybe this was the general picture for that time and it was like that everywhere? And what was the situation with food at the beginning of the 20th century among the geopolitical opponents of the Russian Empire? Something like this, data on Nefedov:

The French, for example, consumed 1.6 times more grain than Russian peasants. And this is in a climate where grapes and palm trees grow. If in numerical terms, a Frenchman ate 33.6 poods of grain per year, producing 30.4 poods and importing another 3.2 poods per person. The German consumed 27.8 poods, producing 24.2, only in the dysfunctional Austria-Hungary, which was living out its last years, the consumption of grain was 23.8 poods per capita.

The Russian peasant consumed 2 times less meat than in Denmark and 7-8 times less than in France. Russian peasants drank 2.5 times less milk than a Dane and 1.3 times less than a Frenchman.

The Russian peasant ate eggs as much as 2.7 (!) g per day, while the Danish peasant - 30 g, and the French - 70.2 g per day.

By the way, dozens of chickens appeared among Russian peasants only after the October Revolution and Collectivization. Before that, feeding chickens with grain that your children lack was too extravagant. Therefore, all researchers and contemporaries say the same thing - Russian peasants were forced to stuff their stomachs with all sorts of rubbish - bran, quinoa, acorns, bark, even sawdust, so that the pangs of hunger were not so painful. In fact, it was not an agricultural, but a society engaged in farming and gathering. Approximately as in not the most developed societies of the Bronze Age. The difference with the developed European countries was simply deadly.

“We send wheat, good clean rye abroad, to the Germans, who will not eat any rubbish. We burn the best, purest rye for wine, and the most bad rye, with fluff, fire, calico and all sorts of waste obtained when cleaning rye for distilleries - this is what the peasant eats. But not only does the peasant eat the worst bread, he is still malnourished. ... from bad food, the people lose weight, get sick, the guys grow tighter, just like it happens with badly kept cattle ... "

What does this academic dry expression mean in reality: “the consumption of half the population is below average and below the norm” and “half the population lived in conditions of constant malnutrition”, this is it: Hunger. Dystrophy. Every fourth child who did not live even up to a year. Children fading before our eyes.

It was especially hard for the children. In case of famine, it is most rational for the population to leave the necessary food for workers, reducing it to dependents, which obviously include children unable to work.

As the researchers candidly write: “In children of all ages who, under any conditions, have a systematic calorie deficit.”

“At the end of the 19th century in Russia, only 550 out of 1000 children born lived to the age of 5, while in most Western European countries - more than 700. Before the Revolution, the situation improved somewhat - “only” 400 children out of 1000 died.”

With an average birth rate of 7.3 children per woman (family), there was almost no family in which several children did not die. That could not but be deposited in national psychology.

Constant famine had a very strong influence on the social psychology of the peasantry. Including - on the real attitude towards children. L.N. Liperovsky during the famine of 1912 in the Volga region was engaged in organizing food and medical assistance to the population, testifies: “In the village of Ivanovka there is one very nice, large and friendly peasant family; all the children of this family are extremely beautiful; somehow I went to them in the clay; a child was crying in the cradle, and the mother was swinging the cradle with such force that it was thrown up to the ceiling; I told my mother how bad such rocking could be for the child. “Yes, may the Lord take at least one away ... And yet this is one of the good and kind women in the village.”

“From 5 to 10 years of age, Russian mortality is approximately 2 times higher than in Europe, and up to 5 years it is an order of magnitude higher ... The mortality of children older than one year is also several times higher than in Europe.”

Photo caption: Aksyutka, satisfying her hunger, chews white refractory clay, which has a sweetish taste. (v. Patrovka, Buzuluk. u.)

For 1880-1916 The excess mortality of children compared to was more than a million children a year. That is, from 1890 to 1914, only because of mediocre public administration in Russia, approximately 25 million children died for a sniff of tobacco. This is the population of Poland in those years, if it had died out completely. If you add to them the adult population who did not live up to the average level, then the total numbers will be simply terrifying.

This is the result of the administration of tsarism in "Russia-which-we-have-lost."

By the end of 1913, the main indicators of social well-being, the quality of nutrition and medicine - the average life expectancy and infant mortality in Russia - were at the African level. Average life expectancy in 1913 - 32.9 years Melyantsev V.A. East and West in the second millennium: economy, history and modernity. - M., 1996. While in England - 52 years, France - 50 years, Germany - 49 years, Central European - 49 years.

According to this most important indicator of the quality of life in the state, Russia was at the level of Western countries somewhere in the early to mid-18th century, lagging behind them by about two centuries.

Even the rapid economic growth between 1880 and 1913 did not reduce this gap. Progress in increasing life expectancy was very slow - in Russia in 1883 - 27.5 years, in 1900 - 30 years. This shows the effectiveness of the social system as a whole - agriculture, economy, medicine, culture, science, political structure. But this slow growth associated with an increase in the literacy of the population and the spread of the simplest sanitary knowledge led to an increase in the population and, as a result, a decrease in land plots and an increase in the number of “mouths”. An extremely dangerous unstable situation arose from which there was no way out without a radical reorganization of social relations.

However, even such a short life expectancy applies only to the best years, during the years of mass epidemics and hunger strikes, life expectancy was even less in 1906, 1909-1911, as even biased researchers say, life expectancy “for women did not fall below 30, but in men - below 28 years. What can I say, what a reason to be proud - the average life expectancy was 29 years in 1909-1911.

Only the Soviet Power radically improved the situation. So just 5 years after the Civil War, the average life expectancy in the RSFSR was 44 years. . While during the war of 1917 it was 32 years, and during the Civil War - about 20 years.

Soviet Power, even without taking into account the Civil War, made progress compared to the best year of tsarist Russia, adding more than 11 years of life per person in 5 years, while tsarist Russia during the same time in the years of the greatest progress - only 2.5 years in 13 years. By the most unfair calculation.

It is interesting to see how Russia, starving herself, “feeded the whole of Europe”, as some peculiar citizens are trying to convince us. The picture of "feeding Europe" is as follows:

With exceptional weather conditions and the highest harvest for tsarist Russia in 1913, the Russian Empire exported 530 million poods of all grain, which accounted for 6.3% of the consumption of European countries (8.34 billion poods). That is, there can be no question that Russia fed not only Europe, but even half of Europe.

Grain import is generally very typical for developed industrial European countries - they have been doing this since the end of the 19th century and are not at all shy. But for some reason, there is not even a question of inefficiency in agriculture in the West. Why is this happening? Quite simply, the value added of industrial products is significantly higher than the value added of agricultural products. With a monopoly on any industrial product, the position of the manufacturer becomes generally exceptional - if someone needs, for example, machine guns, boats, airplanes or a telegraph, and no one has them, except for you, then you can wind up just a crazy rate of profit , because if someone doesn’t have such things that are extremely necessary in the modern world, then they don’t exist, there is no talk of doing it yourself quickly. And wheat can be produced even in England, even in China, even in Egypt, from this its nutritional properties will change little. If Western capital does not buy wheat in Egypt, no problem, it will buy it in Argentina.

Therefore, when choosing what is more profitable to produce and export - modern industrial products or grain, it is much more profitable to produce and export industrial products, if, of course, you know how to produce them. If you don’t know how and need foreign currency, then all that remains is to export grain and raw materials. This is what tsarist Russia was doing and post-Soviet ErEF is doing, which has destroyed its modern industry. Quite simply, skilled hands give a much higher rate of profit in modern industry. And if you need grain to feed poultry or livestock, you can buy it in addition, taking out, for example, expensive cars. Very many people know how to produce grain, but far from everyone knows how to produce modern equipment, and competition is incomparably less.

Therefore, Russia was forced to export grain to the industrial West in order to obtain currency. However, over time, Russia was clearly losing its position as a grain exporter.

Since the beginning of the 90s of the 19th century, the United States of America, which is rapidly developing and using new agricultural technologies, has confidently displaced Russia from the place of the main exporter of wheat in the world. Very quickly, the gap became such that Russia, in principle, could not make up for the lost - 41.5% of the market was firmly held by the Americans, Russia's share dropped to 30.5%.

All this despite the fact that the US population in those years was less than 60% of the Russian population - 99 against 171 million in Russia (excluding Finland).

Even the total population of the USA, Canada and Argentina was only 114 million - 2/3 of the population of the Russian Empire. Contrary to the widespread misconception of recent times, in 1913 Russia did not surpass these three countries in aggregate in terms of wheat production (which would not be surprising, having one and a half times the population employed mainly in agriculture), but was inferior to them, but in total grain yielded even to the United States. And this is despite the fact that, while in the agricultural production of the Russian Empire, almost 80% of the country's population was employed, of which at least 60-70 million people were employed in productive labor, and in the USA - only about 9 million. The US and Canada were at the head of the scientific and technological revolution in agriculture, widely using chemical fertilizers, modern machines and new, competent crop rotation and highly productive varieties of grain and confidently squeezed Russia out of the market.

In terms of grain harvest per capita, the United States was two times ahead of Tsarist Russia, Argentina - three times, Canada - four times. In reality, the situation was very sad and Russia's position was getting worse - it was falling further and further behind the world level.

By the way, the United States also began to reduce the export of grain, but for a different reason - before the First World War, they had a rapid development of more profitable industrial production, and with a small population (less than 100 million), workers began to move into industry.

Argentina also actively began to develop modern agricultural technologies, quickly squeezing Russia out of the grain market. Russia, "which fed the whole of Europe," exported almost as much grain and bread as a whole as Argentina, although the population of Argentina was 21.4 times less than the population of the Russian Empire!

The United States exported a large amount of high-quality wheat flour, and Russia, as usual, grain. Alas, the situation was the same as with the export of raw materials.

Soon Germany ousted Russia from the seemingly unshakable first place as an exporter of the traditionally main grain crop in Russia - rye. But in general, in terms of the total amount of exported “classic five grains”, Russia continued to hold first place in the world (22.1%). Although there was no talk of any unconditional dominance, and it was clear that Russia's years as the world's largest grain exporter were already numbered and would soon be gone forever. So the market share of Argentina was already 21.3%.

Tsarist Russia lagged behind its competitors in agriculture more and more.

And now about how Russia fought for its market share. High quality grain? Reliability and stability of supplies? Not at all - at a very low price.

In 1927, the agrarian emigrant economist P.I. Lyashchenko wrote in his work on the grain exports of Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: “The best and most expensive buyers did not take Russian bread. American pure and high-grade grain of monotonously high standards, American strict organization of trade, restraint in supply and prices, Russian exporters opposed grain contaminated (often with direct abuse), mixed varieties, not corresponding to commercial samples, thrown onto the foreign market without any system and holding at the moments of the least favorable market conditions, often in the form of goods, unsold and only on the way looking for a buyer.

Therefore, Russian merchants had to play on the proximity of the market, price half-duties, etc. In Germany, for example, Russian grain was sold cheaper than world prices: wheat for 7-8 kopecks, rye for 6-7 kopecks, oats for 3-4 kopecks. for a pud. - there

Here they are, "wonderful Russian merchants" - "wonderful entrepreneurs", there is nothing to say. It turns out that they were unable to organize the cleaning of grain, nor the stability of supplies, they could not determine the market situation. But in the sense of squeezing grain from peasant children, they were experts.

And where, I wonder, did the proceeds from the sale of Russian bread go?

For a typical 1907 year, the income from the sale of bread abroad amounted to 431 million rubles. Of these, 180 million were spent on luxury goods for the aristocracy and landowners. Another 140 million Russian nobles, crunching French rolls, left abroad - they spent it in the resorts of Baden-Baden, squandered in France, lost in casinos, bought real estate in "civilized Europe". The effective owners spent as much as one-sixth of their income (58 million rubles) from the sale of grain, knocked out from the starving peasants, on the modernization of Russia.

Translated into Russian, this means that “effective managers” took away bread from a starving peasant, took it abroad, and drank the gold rubles received for human lives in Parisian taverns and blew it into a casino. It was to ensure the profits of such bloodsuckers that Russian children died of hunger.

The question of whether the tsarist regime could carry out the rapid industrialization necessary for Russia with such a control system does not even make sense to raise here - this is out of the question. This, in fact, is a verdict on the entire socio-economic policy of tsarism, and not just agrarian.

How, then, was it possible to pump food out of an undernourished country? The main suppliers of marketable grain were the large landlord and kulak farms, which maintained themselves at the expense of cheap hired labor from small-land peasants, who were forced to be hired as workers for a pittance.

Exports led to the displacement of traditional Russian grain crops by crops that were in demand abroad. This is a classic sign of a third world country. In the same way, in all sorts of “banana republics”, all the best lands are divided between Western corporations and local comprador latifundists, who produce cheap bananas and other tropical products through the most brutal exploitation of the poor population, which are then exported to the West. And local residents simply do not have enough good land for production.

The desperate situation with famine in the Russian Empire was quite obvious. It is now a kind of gentlemen, explaining to everyone how, it turns out, it was good to live in tsarist Russia.

Ivan Solonevich, an ardent monarchist and anti-Soviet, described the situation in the Russian Empire before the Revolution as follows:

“The fact of Russia's extreme economic backwardness in comparison with the rest of the cultural world is beyond any doubt. According to the figures of 1912, the per capita national income was: in the USA (USA - P.K.) 720 rubles (in pre-war gold terms), in England - 500, in Germany - 300, in Italy - 230 and in Russia - 110. So, the average Russian, even before the First World War, was almost seven times poorer than the average American and more than twice as poor as the average Italian. Even bread - our main wealth - was scarce. If England consumed 24 poods per capita, Germany - 27 poods, and the USA - as much as 62 poods, then Russian consumption of bread was only 21.6 poods, including all this for livestock feed. (Solonevich uses somewhat inflated data - P.K. .) At the same time, it must be taken into account that bread occupied such a place in the diet of Russia that it did not occupy anywhere else in other countries. In the rich countries of the world, like the USA, England, Germany and France, bread was replaced by meat and dairy products and fish - fresh and canned ... "

S. Yu. Witte in 1899 at a meeting of ministers emphasized: “If we compare consumption in our country and in Europe, then its average size per capita will be in Russia a fourth or fifth of what in other countries is recognized as necessary for ordinary existence”

Here are the words of not just anyone, the Minister of Agriculture in 1915-1916. A. N. Naumov, a very reactionary monarchist, and not at all a Bolshevik and a revolutionary: “Russia actually does not get out of a state of famine in one or another province, both before the war and during the war.” And then he follows: “Bread speculation, predation, bribery flourish; commissioners who supply grain make their fortunes on the phone. And against the background of complete poverty of some - the insane luxury of others. Two steps away from convulsions of starvation - orgies of satiety. Villages around the estates of those in power are dying out. Meanwhile, they are busy building new villas and palaces.

In addition to the “hungry” comprador exports, the constant famine in the Russian Empire had two more serious reasons - one of the lowest yields in the world for most crops, caused by the specifics of the climate, extremely backward agricultural technologies, leading to the fact that, with a formally large area of ​​​​land, land, available for processing by antediluvian technologies in a very short period of time, the Russian sowing was extremely insufficient and the situation only worsened with population growth. As a result, in the Russian Empire, land scarcity was a general misfortune - a very small size of the peasant allotment.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the situation in the countryside of the Russian Empire began to acquire a critical character.

So, just for example, along the Tverskaya lips. 58% of the peasants had allotments, as bourgeois economists elegantly call it - "below the subsistence level." Do the supporters of Russia-which-we-lost understand what this means in reality?

“Look into any village, what a hungry and cold poverty reigns there. Peasants live almost together with cattle, in the same living quarters. What clothes do they have? They live on 1 tithe, on 1/2 tithe, on 1/3 tithe, and from such a small piece of land you have to bring up 5, 6 and even 7 souls of the family ... "Session of the Duma 1906 Volyn peasant - Danilyuk

At the beginning of the 20th century, the social situation in the countryside changed dramatically. If before that, even during the severe famine of 1891-92, there was practically no protest - dark, downtrodden, indiscriminately illiterate, fooled by churchmen, the peasants dutifully chose a bag and accepted starvation, and the number of peasant protests was simply insignificant - 57 single performances in 90 - years of the 19th century, then by 1902 mass peasant uprisings began. Their characteristic feature was that as soon as the peasants of one village protested, several nearby villages immediately broke out. This shows a very high level of social tension in the Russian countryside.

The situation continued to deteriorate, the agrarian population grew, and the brutal Stolypin reforms led to the ruin of a large mass of peasants who had nothing to lose, complete hopelessness and hopelessness of their existence, not least due to the gradual spread of literacy and the activities of revolutionary enlighteners, as well as a noticeable weakening of the influence of churchmen in connection with the gradual development of enlightenment.

The peasants desperately tried to get through to the government, trying to tell about their cruel and hopeless life. Peasants, they were no longer dumb victims. Mass demonstrations began, squatting of landowners' lands and inventory, etc. Moreover, the landowners were not touched, as a rule, they did not enter their houses.

The materials of the courts, peasant orders and appeals show the extreme degree of despair of the people in "God-saved Russia." From the materials of one of the first courts:

“... When the victim Fesenko turned to the crowd that came to rob him, asking why they want to ruin him, the accused Zaitsev said: “You alone have 100 tithes, and we have 1 tithe* per family. Would you try to live on one tithe of land ... "

the accused… Kiyan: “Let me tell you about our masculine, unhappy life. I have a father and 6 young children (without a mother) and I have to live with an estate of 3/4 tithes and 1/4 tithes of field land. For grazing a cow, we pay ... 12 rubles, and for a tithe for bread, we have to work 3 tithes of harvesting. It’s not good for us to live like this,” Kiyan continued. - We're in a loop. What do we do? We, peasants, applied everywhere… nowhere do they accept us, nowhere do we get help”;

The situation began to develop on the rise, and by 1905 mass demonstrations had already captured half of the country's provinces. In total, 3228 peasant uprisings were registered in 1905. The country spoke openly about the peasant war against the landowners.

“In a number of places in the autumn of 1905, the peasant community appropriated all power to itself and even declared complete disobedience to the state. The most striking example is the Markov Republic in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow province, which existed from October 31, 1905 to July 16, 1906.

For the tsarist government, all this turned out to be a big surprise - the peasants endured, dutifully starving for decades, they endured here on you. It is worth emphasizing that the performances of the peasants were, in the vast majority, peaceful, they basically did not kill or injure anyone. Maximum - they could beat the clerks and the landowner. But after mass punitive operations, the estates began to burn, but still they tried with all their might not to kill. Frightened and embittered, the tsarist government began brutal punitive operations against its people.

“Blood was shed then exclusively on one side - the blood of the peasants was shed during punitive actions by the police and troops, during the execution of death sentences for the “instigators” of speeches ... The merciless reprisal against peasant “arbitrariness” became the first and main principle of state policy in the revolutionary countryside. Here is a typical order of the Minister of Internal Affairs P. Durny to the Kyiv Governor-General. "...immediately exterminate, by the force of the rebels, and in case of resistance, burn their homes ... Arrests now do not achieve their goal: it is impossible to judge hundreds and thousands of people." These instructions were fully consistent with the order of the Tambov vice-governor to the police command: “arrest less, shoot more ...” The governor-generals in the Yekaterinoslav and Kursk provinces acted even more decisively, resorting to artillery shelling of the rebellious population. The first of them sent a warning to the volosts: “Those villages and villages whose inhabitants allow themselves any violence against private savings and land will be shelled by artillery fire, which will cause destruction of houses and fires.” In the Kursk province, a warning was also sent out that in such cases, "all the dwellings of such a society and all its property will be ... destroyed."

A certain procedure was developed for the implementation of violence from above while suppressing violence from below. In the Tambov province, for example, upon arrival in the village, the punishers gathered the adult male population for a gathering and offered to extradite the instigators, leaders and participants in the unrest, to return the property of the landowners' savings. Failure to comply with these requirements often entailed a volley into the crowd. The dead and wounded served as proof of the seriousness of the demands put forward. After that, depending on the fulfillment or non-fulfilment of the requirements, either the yards (residential and outbuildings) of the extradited "guilty" or the village as a whole were burned. However, the Tambov landowners were not satisfied with the impromptu reprisals against the rebels and demanded the introduction of martial law throughout the province and the use of courts-martial.

The widespread use of corporal punishment of the population of the rebellious villages and villages, noted in August 1904, was noted everywhere. The mores and norms of serfdom were revived in the actions of the punishers.

Sometimes they say: look how little the tsarist counter-revolution killed in 1905-1907. and how much - the revolution after 1917. However, the blood shed by the state machine of violence in 1905-1907. must be compared, first of all, with the bloodlessness of the Peasant uprisings of that time. The absolute condemnation of the executions carried out then on the peasants, which sounded with such force in the article of L. Tolstoy "

This is how one of the most qualified specialists in the history of the Russian peasantry V.P. describes the situation of those years. Danilov, he was an honest scientist, personally hostile to the Bolsheviks, a radical anti-Stalinist.

The new Minister of the Interior in the government of Goremykin, and later the pre-Council of Ministers (Head of the Government), liberal Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin, explained the position of the tsarist government in this way: “The government, in order to protect itself, has the right to “suspend all the rules of law.” When a “state of necessary defense” sets in, any means are justified, and even the subordination of the state to “one will, the arbitrariness of one person.”

The tsarist government, not at all embarrassed, "suspended all the rules of law." From August 1906 to April 1907, 1,102 rebels were hanged only by the verdicts of courts-martial. Extrajudicial reprisals were a mass practice - peasants were shot without even finding out who he was, burying him, at best, with the inscription "without a family name." It was in those years that the Russian proverb “they will kill and they won’t ask for names” appeared. How many such unfortunate people died - no one knows.

The speeches were suppressed, but only for a while. The brutal suppression of the revolution of 1905-1907 led to the desacralization and delegitimization of power. A distant consequence of this was the ease with which both revolutions of 1917 took place.

The failed revolution of 1905-1907 did not solve either the land or food problems of Russia. The brutal suppression of the desperate people drove the situation deeper. But the tsarist government failed to take advantage of the resulting respite, and did not want to take advantage of it, and the situation was such that emergency measures were already required. Which, in the end, the Bolshevik government had to carry out.

An indisputable conclusion follows from the analysis carried out: the fact of major food problems, the constant malnutrition of most of the peasants and frequent regular famines in tsarist Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. is beyond doubt. The systematic malnutrition of most of the peasantry and frequent outbreaks of famine were widely discussed in the journalism of those years, with most authors emphasizing the systemic nature of the food problem in the Russian Empire. In the end, this led to three revolutions within 12 years.

At that time, there was not enough developed land to provide all the peasants of the Russian Empire in circulation, and only the mechanization of agriculture and the use of modern agricultural technologies could provide them. All together, this constituted a single interconnected set of problems, where one problem was unsolvable without the other.

The peasants understood perfectly well what land shortage was in their own skin, and the “question of land” was the key one, without it, talking about all sorts of agricultural technologies lost its meaning:

“It is impossible to keep silent about the fact,” he said, that the peasant / 79 / population was accused a lot here by some speakers, as if these people were incapable of anything, good for nothing and not suitable for anything at all, that planting culture in them - work also seems to be superfluous, etc. But, gentlemen, think about it; what is it that the peasants should apply culture on if they have 1-2 dess. There will never be any culture.” Deputy, peasant Gerasimenko (Volyn province), Duma session 1906

By the way, the reaction of the tsarist government to the "wrong" Duma was unpretentious - it was dispersed, but the land from this did not increase from the peasants and the situation in the country remained, in fact, critical.

This was commonplace, the usual publications of those years:

April 27 (14), 1910
TOMSK, 13, IV. In the Sudzhenskaya volost, in resettlement settlements, there is famine. Several families have died out.
For three months now, the settlers have been eating a mixture of mountain ash and rotten with flour. Food aid is needed.
TOMSK, 13, IV. Waste was found in resettlement warehouses in the Anuchinsky and Imansky districts. According to reports from the field, something terrible is happening in these areas. The settlers are starving. They live in the dirt. There is no income.

July 20 (07), 1910
TOMSK, 6, VII. As a result of chronic hunger, epidemic typhus and scurvy are rampant among the settlers in 36 villages of the Yenisei district. The mortality rate is high. Settlers eat surrogates, drink swamp water. From the composition of the epidemic squad, infect two paramedics.

September 18 (05), 1910
KRASNOYARSK, 4, IX. In the entire Minusinsk district at the present time, due to crop failure this year, there is famine. The settlers ate all their livestock. By order of the Yenisei governor, a batch of bread was sent to the county. However, this bread is not enough, and for half of the hungry. Urgent help needed.

February 10 (January 28), 1911
SARATOV, 27, I. News has been received of starvation typhus in Alexandrov-Gai, Novouzensky district, where the population is in dire need. This year the peasants collected only 10 pounds from the tithe. After a three-month correspondence, a nutritional center is established.

April 01 (March 19), 1911
Rybinsk, 18, III. The village headman Karagin, 70 years old, contrary to the prohibition of the foreman, gave the peasants of the Spassky volost a little extra grain from the grain store. This "crime" brought him to the dock. At the trial, Karagin explained with tears that he did it out of pity for the starving peasants. The court fined him three rubles.

There were no grain reserves in case of crop failure - all excess grain was swept out and sold abroad by greedy grain monopolists. Therefore, in case of crop failure, hunger immediately arose. The harvested crop on a small plot was not enough even for a middle peasant for two years, so if there was a crop failure for two years in a row or there was an overlap of events, illness of a worker, draft cattle, fire, etc. and the peasant went bankrupt or fell into hopeless bondage to the kulak - the rural capitalist and speculator. The risks in the climatic conditions of Russia with backward agricultural technologies were exceptionally high. Thus, there was a massive ruin of the peasants, whose lands were bought by speculators and wealthy rural residents who used hired labor or rented draft cattle to the kulaks. Only they had enough land and resources to create the necessary reserve in case of famine. For them, poverty and hunger were manna from heaven - the whole village turned out to be indebted to them, and soon they had the required number of completely ruined farm laborers - their neighbors.

A peasant ruined by a crop failure, left without everything, with only one plow. (village Slavyanka, Nikol. u.) 1911

“Along with low yields, one of the economic prerequisites for our hunger strikes is the insufficient provision of peasants with land. According to the well-known calculations of Mares, in black-earth Russia, 68% of the population do not receive enough bread from allotment lands for food even in good years and are forced to obtain food by renting land and extraneous earnings.

As we can see, by the year of the publication of the encyclopedic dictionary - the last peaceful year of the Russian Empire, the situation had not changed and had no tendency to change in a positive direction. This is also perfectly evident from the statements of the Minister of Agriculture, cited above and subsequent studies.

The food crisis in the Russian Empire was precisely systemic, insoluble under the existing socio-political system. The peasants could not feed themselves, let alone grown cities, where, according to Stolypin’s idea, masses of ruined, robbed and destitute people were supposed to pour, willing to do any work. The mass ruin of the peasants and the destruction of the community led to death and terrible mass deprivation, followed by popular uprisings. A significant proportion of the workers led a semi-peasant existence in order to somehow survive. This did not contribute either to the growth of their qualifications, or the quality of their products, or the mobility of the labor force.

The reason for the constant famine was in the socio-economic structure of tsarist Russia, without a change in the socio-economic structure and method of management, the task of getting rid of hunger was unsolvable. The greedy pack at the head of the country continued its “hungry export”, stuffing its pockets with gold at the expense of Russian children who died of starvation and blocking any attempts to change the situation. The highest elite of the country and the most powerful landlord lobby from hereditary nobles, who finally degenerated by the beginning of the 20th century, were interested in the export of grain. They had little interest in industrial development and technological progress. Personally, for a luxurious life, they had enough gold from grain exports and the sale of the country's resources.

The complete inadequacy, helplessness, venality and outright stupidity of the country's top leaders left no hope of resolving the crisis.

Moreover, no plans were even made to solve this problem. In fact, starting from the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire was constantly on the verge of a terrible social explosion, resembling a building with spilled gasoline, where the slightest spark was enough for a catastrophe, but the owners of the house practically did not care.

An indicative moment in a police report on Petrograd dated January 25, 1917 warned that "Spontaneous protests of the hungry masses will be the first and last stage on the way to the beginning of senseless and merciless excesses of the most terrible of all - the anarchist revolution". By the way, the anarchists really participated in the Military Revolutionary Committee, which arrested the Provisional Government in October 1917.

At the same time, the tsar and his family led a relaxed sybarite life, it is very significant that in the diary of Empress Alexandra in early February 1917 she speaks of children who “run around the city and scream that they have no bread, and this is just to to get excited."

Simply amazing. Even in the face of a catastrophe, when only a few days remained before the February Revolution, the country's elite did not understand anything and did not want to understand in principle. In such cases, either the country perishes, or society finds the strength to change the elite to a more adequate one. Sometimes it changes more than once. This is what happened in Russia.

The systemic crisis in the Russian Empire led to what it was supposed to lead to - the February Revolution, and then another, when it turned out that the Provisional Government was unable to solve the problem, then another - the October Revolution, held under the slogan "Land to the peasants!" when, as a result, the new leadership of the country had to solve critical management issues that the previous leadership was unable to solve.

Literature

1. Tolstoy L.N. Complete Works in 90 Volumes, Academic Anniversary Edition, Volume 29
2. V. G. Korolenko “In the year of hunger” Observations and notes from the diary Collected works in ten volumes.
3. Emile Dillon
4. A.N. Engelgardt From the village. 12 letters. 1872–1887 SPb., 1999.
5. The newspaper "Russian Word" dated March 30 (17), 1907 http://starosti.ru/article.php?id=646
6. http://ilin-yakutsk.narod.ru/2000-1/72.htm
7. New Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ed. ed. acad. K.K. Arsenyeva. T.14. St. Petersburg: F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron, 1913. Stb.41.
8. Nefedov “Demographic and structural analysis of the socio-economic history of Russia. Late 15th - early 20th century
9. O. O. Gruzenberg. Yesterday. Memories. Paris, 1938, p. 27
10. Nikita Mendkovich. NATIONAL FOOD AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE RUSSIAN MONARCHY IN 1917 http://1sci.ru/a/195
11. Vishnevsky A.G. Sickle and ruble. Conservative modernization in the USSR. 1998 p.13
12. S.A. Nefyodov. "On the Causes of the Russian Revolution". Collection "Problems of Mathematical History", URSS, 2009
13. Menshikov M.O. Youth and the army. October 13, 1909 // Menshikov M.O. From letters to neighbors. M., 1991. S. 109, 110.
14. B. P. Urlanis Population growth in Europe (An attempt to calculate). B.M.: OGIZ-Gospolitizdat, 1941. S. 341.
15. Novoselsky "Mortality and life expectancy in Russia". PETROGRAD Printing house of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 1916 http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/novoselskij/novoselskij.html
16. Engelgardt A.N. From the village. 12 letters. 1872–1887 SPb., 1999, pp. 351–352, 353, 355.
17. Sokolov D.A., Grebenshchikov V.I. Mortality in Russia and the fight against it. SPb., 1901. P.30.
18. Menshikov M.O. National convention. January 23, 1914 // Menshikov M.O. From letters to neighbors. M., 1991. P. 158.
19. Prokhorov B.B. Health of Russians for 100 years // Man. 2002. No. 2. P.57.
20. L. N. Liperovsky. A trip to hunger. Notes of a member of the Volga Famine Relief Detachment (1912) http://www.miloserdie.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=12&id=502
21. Rosset E. The duration of human life. M. 1981
22. Adamets S. Mortality crises in the first half of the twentieth century in Russia and Ukraine.
23. Urlanis B.U. Fertility and life expectancy in the USSR. M., 1963. With. 103-104
24. Collection of statistical and economic data on agriculture in Russia and foreign countries. Year ten. Petrograd, 1917, pp. 114–116. 352–354, 400–463.
25. I. Pykhalov Did Russia Feed Half of Europe?
26. In the 19th century, Russia had a chance to become the world's largest grain exporter http://www.zol.ru/review/show.php?data=1082&time=1255146736
27. I.L. Solonevich People's Monarchy M.: ed. "Phoenix", 1991. p.68
28. Minutes of the speeches of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte and the Minister of Foreign Affairs MN Muravyov at a ministerial meeting chaired by Nicholas II on the issue of the foundations of the commercial and industrial policy in force in Russia.
29. A. N. Naumov, cit. MK Kasvinov Twenty-three steps down. M.: Thought, 1978. S. 106
30. Russia 1913 Statistical and documentary reference book. Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian History St. Petersburg 1995
31. Aron Avrekh. P.A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia Chapter III. agrarian reform
32. V. P. Danilov. Peasant revolution in Russia, 1902 - 1922
33. Aron Avrekh. P.A. Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia Chapter I. Agrarian reform
34. New encyclopedic dictionary. Under total ed. acad. K.K. Arsenyeva. T.14. St. Petersburg: F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron, 1913. St. 41–42.

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They also play an important role in extending the life of a person. In good conditions, people can live up to 100 years and older.
The oldest people have reached the age of just over 120 years (maximum life expectancy). For Western economies for the current period, there are also high expectations of an increase in life expectancy (implying the success of medicine).

The highest life expectancy today, for people living in Andorra is up to 83.5 years. The lowest life expectancy is in the African countries of Swaziland, up to 34.1 years.

Jeanne Louise Calment - oldest person in the world

Jeanne Louise Calment was born February 21, 1875 in the city of Arles in the family of ship carpenter Nicolas Calment. Her parents were married on October 16, 1861. In addition to Jeanne Louise, they had several more children, but she did not know about this, since they all died in infancy.

IN 1896 at the age of 21, Jeanne marries her cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment, a wealthy merchant. This marriage gave her the opportunity to leave her job and enjoy a comfortable life where she could pursue her hobbies such as tennis, biking, swimming, skating, piano and opera. She lived with her husband for 55 years (he died in 1942). They had a daughter, Yvonne, and a son, Frederick.
Her daughter died at the age of 36 from pneumonia, and her son, who later became a doctor, died in 1963 at the age of 37 from a ruptured aneurysm in a motorcycle accident.

IN 1965 aged 90 years old, she sells her house to her boyfriend, André-Francois Raffray. who was then 47 years old, on the condition that he would pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs. He would do this until his death in 1995 at the age of 77. His wife continued to pay even after her husband's death. In total, the Raffrays paid out more than twice the price of Jeanne Louise's house.

IN 1985, Jeanne Louise aged 110 years moves to a nursing home in Arles. In 1988, on the centenary of Vincent van Gogh's visit to Arles, she attracted media attention as the only living person to have met Van Gogh. This meeting took place, according to her, a hundred years ago, in 1888, when she was 12 or 13 years old, the artist came to buy fabrics in her father's shop. She described him as a very ugly and rude man who made her feel "disappointed".

Aged 114 years old, she starred in the French-Canadian film about Van Gogh "Vincent", becoming the oldest actress in the world. In 1995, when she turned 120, a documentary film was made about her.
After her 122nd birthday, her health deteriorated sharply, she stopped appearing in public, and within five months she was dying.

By October 17 1995 , Jeanne Calment reached 120 years and 238 days and became the oldest person in the world, surpassing Shigechiyo Izumi who died in 1986 at the age of 120 years and 237 days.
After her death on August 4, 1997, the 116-year-old Canadian Marie-Louise Meilleur becomes the oldest person in the world.

Health

Jeanne Louise Calment (February 21, 1875 - August 4, 1997) is the oldest person on Earth whose birthday and death date are confirmed. Lived 122 years and 164 days.

All members of her family died at relatively old ages: her older brother, François Calment, at 97, her father at 93, and her mother at 86. Jean Louise led a relatively healthy lifestyle. Until the age of 85, she took bike rides. Until her 110th birthday, and before coming to the nursing home, she lived alone. At 114, she fell off a stool and broke her collarbone, after which she had to undergo surgery for the first time in her life.

Jeanne Calment was often asked questions about her longevity. She claimed that for cooking she used all her life olive oil, as they also rubbed the skin. She drank up to one a week and ate up to a pound chocolate.

Average life expectancy in different centuries

Map of life expectancy of people from different countries of the world born in 2007

Men



Women

Population pyramid of Russia in 2011 by sex and age.

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