Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2017 number

Problems of modern urbanization stimulate an increased interest of researchers to the urban history. Studying local municipal practices represents the Russian Empire’s history in its regional aspect. Siberia was the Russian Empire periphery in the late XVIII - early XIX centuries. The implementation of administrative and municipal reforms of Catherine II coincided with the time of its administrative-territorial development. The article objective is to carry out comparative analysis of the municipal dumas’ composition in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Yeniseisk in the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, which appeared due to « Charter to the Towns» of 1785. The author has studied the legislation of this period, the practice of municipal self-government of Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Yeniseisk based on three Siberian archives. Most of archival materials have been introduced into scientific discourse for the first time. The comparative analysis is applied to study East and West Siberian cities. In the Russian Empire Dumas were opened at different times after publishing the «Charter to the Towns». Irkutsk Duma was created in 1787, Yeniseisk Duma - in 1789, and Krasnoyarsk Duma - in 1804. The Duma reflected the cities’ social structure (which were different in each city), the effect of various social groups on the local communities, and showed the level of urban development. In Yeniseisk the service people along with merchants played an important role in the city, so they entered the general municipal Duma. In Krasnoyarsk the petty bourgeois became one of the leading social groups in the city, so they were candidates in the city mayors because merchants were few. In Irkutsk merchant class occupied a key position, and it was the mayor who selected six members of the Duma six-membered structure without contradicting legislation. The small number of «urban population» did not allow forming two fully functional Dumas in the Siberian cities. So only one Duma was formed, but it had more than six deputies. The article emphasizes that in 1822 this practice was changed by M. M. Speransky’s Siberian reform.