«IZVESTIYA IRKUTSKOGO GOSUDARSTVENNOGO UNIVERSITETA». SERIYA «POLITOLOGIYA. RELIGIOVEDENIE»
«THE BULLETIN OF IRKUTSK STATE UNIVERSITY». SERIES «POLITICAL SCIENCE AND RELIGION STUDIES»
ISSN 2073-3380 (Print)

List of issues > Series «Political Science and Religion Studies». 2014. Vol. 10

Administrative Russification of Peasant Communities in Siberia: Projects and Practices of Imperial Experts in The Middle of The Xix Century

Author(s)
N. G. Suvorova
Abstract
Unique administrative appearance of Siberian region has been due to multiethnic population, peculiarity of original elements of traditional political culture, and social organization of Russian peasants and native peoples. Government’s use of the previously tested model of interaction between the “crown” administration and local society, in which traditional institutes of self-administration of the population of Russia and mutually beneficial union of the government and the peasant community was emphasized, greatly contributed to securing new territory. Russian peasantry and “crown” officials played an important part in the process of social adaptation of the foreign-born population. The Siberian “Peasantry program” in the first half of the XIX century fit quite well in a big imperial project of “Gradual integration of the regions of the Empire and their collective smooth promotion towards modernization without any qualitative expansion of the imperial unification sphere” (Caspe). Starting with the second half of the XIX century the so-called “peasant question” was examined in the context of new imperial ideologies, including cultural and national incorporation. Administrative and social class reorganizations served as additional means for implementation of new russification programs of peasant communities in Siberia. Reformations schemes and their implementation in traditional institutes of self-administration of Siberian natives, immigrants, and foreign-born residents are at the core of the research. Peasant organizations were the main expansion channel of the modern government towards traditional society. The government introduced elements of modern state administration not only through peasant self-government institutions but also through a so-called “Russian model of the peasant community”. Starting with the Second Siberian Committee programs the government of Siberian suburbs had been trying to form up a unified administrative structure by using a differentiated approach towards various ethnicities and by accepting or rejecting existing traditional administrative institutes. In this regard, evaluation of administrative reform projects in relation to various categories of Siberian population has proved to be especially productive, because it allows not only to consider the organization of the local administrative branch as one of regional options of the incorporational policy of self-administration, but also to reveal local differences in administrative organization that were formed by ethnosocial and confessional development specifics.
Keywords
Russification, incorporation, peasant self-government, II Siberian Committee
UDC
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