SUMMARY:

The article revisits the historical category of “alien peoples” (inorodtsy) and its historical evolution. Contrary to popular misconceptions, this was a neologism coined at the turn of the nineteenth century and referred to “genus” as a taxonomic rank in modern classificatory systems, so its proper translation should be “representatives of a particular taxonomic group.” Its original purpose was to conceptualize the phenomenon of difference and diversity within a single – rationalized and standardized – social and legal structure of the Russian Empire. Specifically, the inorodtsy were conceived of as a special legal estate, one of many that composed the Russian social structure. It was in this sense that the term was used and propagated by the 1822 Statute concerning the Administration of the Alien Peoples (inorodtsy) prepared under the auspices of Mikhail Speransky for the native peoples of Siberia. As the rise of Russian nationalism eventually led to the regime of the Russian nationalizing empire in the late nineteenth century, population diversity was increasingly viewed as a liability, and the meaning of “inorodtsy” in public discourse shifted and acquired negative connotations. However, as a legal category, the inorodtsy persisted without much change until the empire’s collapse and even experienced a revival in the early 1910s. Quite in line with Speransky’s original conceptualization of this social category, the status of the inorodtsy implied a degree of protection and privileges unavailable to “regular” Russian subjects of comparable social standing.