SUMMARY:

This article focuses on the problem of the agent of “Russian colonization” in the territories beyond the Urals. The authors examine different visions of such “agents,” conflicts in interpretation of their mission and their civilizational, ethnic, cultural, moral and religious “fitness.” Because different imperial ideologists saw in Russian peasants and Russian Cossacks the most desirable agents of Russian colonization who were destined to play this role, the article focuses on “colonial discourses” directed at these categories of the imperial population. At the fore of the authors’ analysis are the attempts of the imperial center and different agents from the borderlands to elaborate a program and a policy of steady “acculturation” and integration of the imperial borderlands with the imperial center. These attempts depended on how the problem of the agents of colonization and Russification was to be resolved. The authors deal with these problems in three main thematic chapters: Cossacks as doubtful colonists and “Russifiers;” the “cultural powerlessness” of the Russian peasantry and the threat of losing their “Russianness;” and Russians as Orthodox: the problematic correspondence of these two categories in the Asiatic borderlands. The article shows that regardless of the growth of the Russian population on the Asiatic borderlands, which could have been taken as a sign of successful colonization, colonization actually created new problems for the empire such as the “Kirgyz problem” and “Buriat problem,” problems of competition between different categories of Russians, and of ineffective economic behavior of Russian peasants. It did so without satisfying the imperial center’s colonial ambitions. The empire failed to find a compromise between the ideals of Russian colonization, the need to ease agrarian crises at the center of the country, to domesticate the Asian borderlands and to preserve the loyalty of their local population. Russian peasant colonizers were often viewed as “culturally impotent” and thus not suitable for their civilizational mission. Cossacks, in addition, were accused of being not quite Russian or being inclined to lose their “Russianness.” The very concept of “Russian” and “Orthodox” were contested in connection with colonization projects. At the same time, these discussions framed the movement of Russian peasants to the east in terms of imperial expansion and Russian nationalism. This contradicted the tendency of imperial ideologists and politicians who refused to recognize the explicit colonial status of the Asian borderlands, insisting instead on their inherent connection to central Russia.