The Russian state continued, in relation to the non-Slavic population of its southern periphery in the XIX century, to pursue its integrative policy, the intensity of which was largely due to the geopolitical arrangement of forces in the region, as well as to the degree of stability of the local management system and the stance of the local elite.One of the important indicators of the integration of the territory into the imperial space was possessing information about the size of its population by the imperial administration.The purpose of the study is to identify, on the basis of analyzing the acupatch documents from the funds of the State Archive of the Astrakhan Region, the State Archive of the Stavropol Territory and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, as well as the achievements of other researchers, the methods of accounting for the number of nomadic peoples, using the example of Kalmyks, Turkmens and Nogais.
The study revealed that three main stages can be distinguished in the policy of accounting for the nomadic population of the southern outskirts of the Russian Empire, the main feature of each of which is the way of collecting information: that is, statistical, metric, and demographic.The first method is related to the formation of a reporting institute of foreign directorates.The second method which was the metrics, left to the clergy, was not considered the systematic and reliable data.
Conducting censuses of the population (family lists, countermarks) testified to the establishment of demographic accounts in nomadic societies of here the southern periphery of the Russian Empire.