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The relevance of the topic chosen by the author of the article is due to the fact that a complete and in-depth study of Russian history of the 17th century is impossible without studying regional history and, in particular, such an important component as studying the history of provincial society, including issues related to its formation or the emergence of certain population groups. In this regard, the author investigated the emergence of one of the groups of the service population of the society of the South of Russia - the gunners. The gunners in the southern Russian cities were a rather small group of service "instrument" people who served the artillery. The purpose of the article is to consider the process of the emergence of gunners as a social group of the population in the cities of the South of Russia and the Belgorod line in the 16th-17th centuries. The methodological base of the study is based on the following basic historical principles and methods: the principle of historicism, the principle of objectivity, the comparative historical method, the historical typological method, the statistical method. In general, the work is based on the use of problem-chronological and systemic methods, which allows us to consider events within a single general historical context. The work draws on a wide range of archival and published sources. As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that the emergence of gunners as a population group in the cities of the South of Russia and the Belgorod line at the end of the 16th-17th centuries was associated with the construction of military fortress cities to protect the southern borders of the state and the recruitment of their garrisons. There were three main ways of settling new cities: forced relocation ("reduction") of service people from old cities, voluntary relocation of service people who expressed a desire ("similarity") and the recruitment of "free, willing" people. However, in the second half of the 17th century, in connection with the final formation of the garrisons of the southern Russian cities, the gunners actually become a closed service group of the population, since the main ways to replenish the ranks of the gunners remain their transfer from other cities and recruitment from the Pushkar families.