Colonization Narrative in the «Notes of the West Siberian Department of the Russian Geographical Society» (on the Materials of the Altai District)

In 1877, the creation of the West Siberian Department of the Russian Geographical Society in Omsk marked a new stage in the history of scientific study of the Altai Mining District, which was expressed, among other things, in the active expeditionary activities of that time leading scientists to the region. The article analyzes the publication's content of the department's printed organ — «Notes», dedicated to the colonization process and migrations of the second half of the 19th century. The content of the works on the theme, their specificity, and their role in shaping the resettlement agenda are identified. It is emphasized that despite the positive assessment of the role of migration in the development of the Altai territory, experts of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries identified bifurcation points in the work of the «pro-gram» of peasant development of the territory (the relationship with the local Russian and foreign population, the agricultural potential of hotel lacunae, the impact of migration on the scrapping of the type of land use consistent with the natural and climatic conditions of the region, land crowding, rapid plowing of soils, etc.). The article concludes about the unique nature of field materials, their «live» content, the desire for fixation and objectification.

Ethnographic Notes on the Population of the Steppe Region in the Travel Diary of G. E. Katanaev 1893

The travel diaries of the chairman of the Army Economical Board of the Siberian Cossack Host and the chairman of the West Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Georgy Efremovich Katanaev, contains valuable ethnographic information about the population of the Siberian Cossack lines, which is only partially put in the scientific circulation. In this article, ethnographic notes by G. E. Katanaev, which were done in 1893 during a duty trip in the Kokchetav district of Aqmola Region. The source is interesting not only for information about the ethnic composition of the Siberian Cossack Host and the ethnocultural processes in it, but also for the ideas of the diary`s author about ethnicity and its transformation possibilities.

HISTORIOGRAPHIC «LANDSCAPE» ON AGRARIAN COLONIZATION OF THE STEPPE REGION IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19th – EARLY 20th CENTURY

In this article, the authors try to reveal the formation and development of historiography in the context of the Imperial experience of agrarian colonization of the steppe region in the second-half of the XIX-early XX centuries. During this period, new challenges arose for the colonization of the Steppe region, and the Russian Empire began to conduct agricultural colonization and scientific examination of territories in order to carry out administrative, territorial, and socio-economic reforms. Attracting officials, employees of the West Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (WSDIRGS), as representatives of resettlement agencies, they contributed to the colonization of the Steppe territory and argued for the imperial aspect of the region's development.

BRANCHES OF THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY IN SIBERIA (END XIX – BEGINNING OF XX CENTURY)

The article deals with the history of the Siberian Departments and sub-Departments of the Imperial Russian geographic society. The first scientific organization in Siberia was the Siberian Department of RGS (Irkutsk), later transformed into the East Siberian Department of RGS. In the late XIX – early XX century. Geographic Departments and sub-departments of RGS opened in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Yakutsk, Chita and other Siberian cities. The emergence of geographic societies was caused by the need of economic development of Siberia, which caused an increased interest in the scientific study of all aspects of life at the region. Physical-geographical geological, statistical, economic, ethnographic data on Siberia played an important role. The collection, systematization and analysis of these data became one of the main activities of Siberian geographic societies. The specificity of each geographic society was determined by the area of action, presence of intellectual, financial and material potential.

“Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Mikhail Fedorovich Ordered…”: Documents on the Situation of the Lithuanian, German and Jewish Prisoners after the End of the Smolensk War of 1632–1634

The article is based on the documents of the Siberian Department (Sibirsky prikaz) from the Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts dealing with the problem of determining the legal status of Lithuanian, German and Jewish prisoners after the Russian-Polish (Smolensk) War of 1632–1634 and the signing of the Polyanovsky peace treaty with Poland. The documents show that captive foreigners, including Jews, were allowed to remain permanently in Russia without obligatory conversion to Christianity.