SUMMARY:

In the archival section of this issue, Ab Imperio presents materials pertaining to the history of the Omsk region (oblast’), a peculiar administrative unit on the fluctuating frontier of the Russian empire, an episode in the history of the Russian empire’s territorial expansion and integration of newly acquired realms. The publication of these materials was prepared by Elena Bezvikonnaia who also wrote the foreword . In her foreword, Bezvikonnaia places the history of the Omsk region in the context of the development of the Russian imperial administration, which was characterized by flexible policy toward regional diversity. The imperial administration, on the one hand, was imbued with the desire to rationalize government following Enlightenment models that presumed the demarcation of a clear state border/frontier, but, on the other hand, encountered insurmountable difficulty in mapping the state’s territory in a southeastern borderland made up of a few sedentary inhabitants (Cossacks and Russian city dwellers) and the nomadic population of the Middle Horde (now known as Kazakhs). The result was a compromise expressed in the form of the Omsk region which was established in 1822, lacked clear-cut frontiers and was entrusted with the task of creating an administrative framework for dealing with the nomadic population of the steppe and for further expansion of the empire in Asia. Bezvikonnaia provides a brief historical sketch of this administrative formation and an analysis of frontier developments on that part of the imperial borderland rim. She approaches the history of the Omsk region from the perspectives of central and regional bureaucrats (which often proved to be at odds with one another) and their views on the nature and functions of the state frontier. She also extends the analysis of the Omsk region to the concept of the frontier as a meeting point between different socio-economic structures, in this case between the sedentary population (often settlers brought to the region by empire’s advance) and the native, nomadic population. Bezvikonnaia concludes that the complex history behind this frontier episode may best be conceptualized in the concept of the “Eurasian frontier” and within the context of the Russian empire as a peculiar type of organization of political space. The archival documents include “Proposals as to the Establishment of the Omsk Oblast’,” correspondence between different administrative bodies of Siberia and internal documentation of the Omsk regional government. The published documents provide an insight into the semantics and machinery of the imperial administration in the borderland as well as report on the social and cultural profile of one of the Russian empire’s regions.