Historia provinciae: журнал региональной истории (Mar 2023)
Modernization of the Kazakh Institutions of Power in the Structure of West Siberian Governorate-General in the 19th Сentury
Abstract
The problem of the possibility of peaceful and mutually beneficial unification of peoples as a part of a single state is always relevant in world history. In particular, the example of the unification of the Kazakh and Russian peoples is valuable. The purpose of this article is to identify the main features of the modernization of Kazakh institutions of power in the structure of the West Siberian Governorate-General. The work is based on the results of the analysis of historiography and archival documents from the Historical Archive of Omsk Oblast that allowed us to confirm the hypothesis that if compared with the classical empires of the Western world, the Russian Empire developed and functioned as an “empire on the contrary.” After 1822, modernization of the traditional institutions of power of the Kazakhs as a part of the West Siberian Governorate-General was carried out in stages, taking into account local specifics. The Russian authorities promoted the democratization of the traditional system of governance, gradually weakening the influence of the Kazakh aristocracy, which was already losing the trust of the people. At the same time, preference was given to talented representatives of the ordinary people who had earned authority in the society by their conscientious work on leading positions in the administration or as traditional judges called biys. Since the vector of administrative and political integration was directed towards unification, after 1868, the positions of the imperial administration were getting stronger and stronger. At the uyezd level, the representatives of the Kazakh aristocracy, sultans, were replaced by uyezd chiefs. They were Russian officers, who were endowed with full military, police, administrative, and judicial power. Every uyezd chief had a senior assistant and a junior assistant, and the latter was usually a Kazakh. At the same time, at the volost level, volost rulers were chosen from among the Kazakh population. They usually had great influence, especially in administrative and economic issues. In the sphere of the court, Kazakh biys continued to maintain their longlasting authority among the Kazakh population. The study of the modernization of Kazakh institutions of power in the structure of the West Siberian Governorate-General shows that unlike the classical empires that carried out colonization based on pumping out resources of a colonized country and imposing the only possible system of their own laws and their civilization, the Russian Empire was formed on the basis of the principles of integration of peoples within a multinational state. The analysis of the administrative modernization carried out in the Kazakh steppe confirms that, among other things, the policy of the Russian Empire was aimed at a dialogue between two cultures and peoples, the purpose of which was not displacement or destruction, but reasonable compromise and successful cooperation.
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