Oriental Studies (Dec 2023)
Bashkirs and Kalmyks in Russia’s Imperial Environments, Eighteenth to Mid-Nineteenth Centuries: Military Service as Integration Factor
Abstract
Introduction. In the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, Imperial Russia was characterized by one particular phenomenon — presence of ethnic troops, namely: Bashkir-Meshcheryak, Stavropol Kalmyk, Volga Kalmyk, and Crimean Tatar hosts. In addition to direct combat activities, such ethnic military units were to integrate their peoples into imperial environments. So, Bashkirs and Kalmyks had been recruited for military service among the first. Materials and methods. The article analyzes archival and published sources. It employs the historical genetic, historical comparative, and structural methods for due insights into the military history of frontier-based Bashkirs and Kalmyks throughout the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Results. In Bashkir society, there were no institutionalized Genghisid elites believed to have monopoly on political power, and clan structures were somewhat equal. The Kalmyk Khanate did have a vertical structure of power, army and administrative apparatus. Peter I had been the first to actively involve Bashkirs and Kalmyks in Russia’s military endeavors. The imperial government had been seeking to subjugate the autonomous Khanate via Christianization (a separate host compiled from Kalmyk Christians) and control over elites. These ended in a political protest — the 1771 Exodus of Kalmyks to Dzungaria. So, since 1825, Kalmykia remained under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The accelerated integration of Bashkiria began with the activities of the Orenburg Expedition, which led to the Bashkir Rebellion of 1735–1740. The latter resulted in that the region was reshaped administratively, former elites of Bashkir society replaced by new ones, and tribal volosts substituted by territorial subdivisions. Since 1798, the canton system gave rise to new service elites. The institutionalization of military service was implemented via the 1834 establishment of the Bashkir-Meshcheryak Host that existed until 1863. Great importance was assigned to symbolic policies pursued by the imperial government towards ethnic elites of peoples in military service — awards in the form of weapons, cloth, banners, orders, and medals (subsequently). The peculiarity of the awards was that the government feared the nobility’s expansion at the expense of non-Russian elites and would bestow some surrogate awards, money, and mediocre ranks. Conclusions. In the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, Bashkirs and Kalmyks proved active participants of Russia’s foreign policies as guardians of its southeastern and southern borders. Military service did accelerate the integration of the peoples into imperial institutions — legal, social, economic ones. However, the process ended more successfully for Bashkirs, which was largely facilitated by the presence of patrimonial rights to land and the absence of a hierarchical vertical structure in society. Meanwhile, the presence of a vertical power structure in the form of an autonomous domain, Russian government’s intervention in the latter’s internal affairs (creation of a separate host from Kalmyk Christians), the Exodus of 1771, and the subsequent abolition of the Khanate slowed down the integrative processes never to be completed in the examined period.
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