Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

In the late XIX century Russia’s policy towards the peripheries was based on a theory of “a strong and indivisible country”. N.P. Ignatyev, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, suggested to extend the application of the law on land captains (enacted in European Russia in 1889) to the whole region of Siberia and to subject its peasant and indigenous population to the new authorities. This proposal was supported by the Minister of Interior I.N. Durnovo, Minister of Finance S. Yu. Vitte and personaly by Alexander III. The law of 1898 introduced the new 107 positions for peasant officials and formation of the new 25 district (uezd) congresses. The peasant and indigenous officials in Siberia exercised far greater control over the peasantry as compared to the land captains in European Russia. From then onward the peasant chiefs were given full mastery of the local peasant and indigenous self-government bodies. They controlled economic activities and morale of peasantry; played a significant role in judicial cases concerning rural population. Congresses of peasant chiefs were established in each district. They acted as courts of second instance challenging decisions made by peasant chiefs. Administrative reforms principally were aimed at strengthening the police control over the peasants and non-Russians in Siberia, accelerating russification of the latter, and at unification of administrative systems in the rural areas of European and Asian parts of Russia. The reform was carried out by the state of landowners and bureaucrats during the bourgeois era, however it retained some vivid feudal features. It quite fell within a range of measures taken by the government in the peripheral territories and aimed at preservation of the Empire’s integrity.