The textbook is devoted to the study of the class and class structure of the population of the Middle Volga region and the Volga region in the second half of the 16th - early 20th centuries. The textbook discusses the main parameters of the formation of the rural and urban society of the region, its class structure, the registration of the legal and socio-economic situation of certain groups of the population. It is shown that these processes took place in conditions of constant mass migrations, intensive settlement of the space of the southern regions of the Middle Volga region and their inclusion in the all-Russian system of relations.