After a long and arduous journey from Omsk, Adolf Januszkiewicz, political exile-turned-tsarist administrator, finally arrived in Semipalatinsk in the late spring of 1846. The city made a positive impression on the Pole, with its bustling trade and cosmopolitan composition reflecting the strategic importance of the Kazakh borderlands. Given its geographic position, Semipalatinsk boasted a significant Turkic population, resulting in the adoption of Kazakh as the lingua franca. This did not preclude the Slavic inhabitants, and Januszkiewicz amusedly noted that even the Russian women “speak it fluently like our ladies speak French.”1 Although seemingly insignificant, this episode encapsulates Russia's imperial policies and their outcomes in the eastern provinces, featuring Semipalatinsk as a microcosm of Siberian colonial society. As one of the thousands of Poles exiled after the November uprising, Januszkiewicz was the reason the empire needed to expand its policing capabilities; the empire's physical expansion, however, resulted in the need to employ a politically suspect yet highly educated former convict. The imperial practice of enfranchising former enemies in the service of empire was nothing new, and as Russia expanded both the exile system and its colonial presence in the early nineteenth century, increased security concerns prompted Petersburg to revitalize the Siberian Cossack Hosts. Russia's constant need for human capital and manpower was particularly pressing in the vast and sparsely populated Siberian landmass, with the practice of coopting local elites and creating an administrative and military estate imperative in the eastern provinces.2
Russia's reliance on foreign troops, particularly within the paradigm of an evolving sosloviia-based political culture, coincided with the rise of Muscovy. Not only did this constitute a crucial aspect of the state's territorial ambitions, but it also contributed to the development of Russian social structures that would later consolidate into sosloviia, or legal estates, in the eighteenth century.3 The appropriation of foreign troops was already in place even before the conquest of Kazan, with Grand Prince Vasilii II establishing the Tatar Kasimov Khanate as a precedent for future imperial administration.4 Presenting this arrangement as a Russian-led initiative, however, reinforces colonial notions of unequal partnership between a dominant core and an inferior non-Russian other, with the latter merely subordinating to the various prikazy coming from above. Recent scholarship has placed these power structures under scrutiny, arguing that Russia's relationship with steppe polities is best defined by a continuous process of negotiation, particularly given the disparities between Eurocentric notions of sedentary sovereignty and the steppe confederations’ flexible approach to alliances and partnerships.5 The emergence of Tatars as a distinct social entity encapsulates this practice of accommodation and compromise, with the formation of “ethno-estates” (etnososloviia) among Turkic societies reliant on a military-service class dating back to the fourteenth century.6 While recent anglophone publications address the issue of sosloviia as an imperial ruling strategy with a multiplicity of collective designations and overlapping identities, the idea of “ethno-estates” remains particular to Russian historiography. Fundamentally, Western scholarship has prompted a critical reexamination of normative identities previously used to define social categories in Russia, demonstrating that legal classifications and class prerogatives were quite fluid, resulting in a highly pluralistic society.7 Nonetheless, questions regarding the intersection of ethnicity, nationality, and state service remain unexplored outside the realm of Russian historiography, making the concept of etnososloviia an important methodological addition to the extant literature on empire, class, and nationality.
This interpretive framework offers a nuanced perspective when faced with the question of imperial rule in Siberia and its effects on the Indigenous population. The application of largely Eurocentric criteria of nationhood or ethnicity obfuscates the vast disparities of lived realities among the inorodtsy, leading to an essentialization of identity and a reductionist approach.8 This article therefore explores Tatar and Kazakh identities as defined by the parameters of the Cossack estate, thus elucidating how the service elite negotiated and renegotiated its relationship with the state throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.
Empire, Exile, and the Establishment of Siberian Cossack Hosts
Almost immediately after its conquest in 1582, Siberia had been used as a dumping ground for prisoners, with POWs from the Livonian War (1558–1583) bolstering its burgeoning convicted criminal population of penal colonists.9 Less than a century later, Siberia's prisoners acquired an ideological veneer following the turbulent exiling of Archpriest Avvakum and subsequent Old Believer dissidents.10 The large-scale usage of Siberia as a prison, however, only came into effect in the late eighteenth century, when the stream of forced labor was redirected east across the Ural mountains. The subsequent decades also brought about an increased territorial rapaciousness, with the empire embarking on its greatest eastern expansion since the original conquest. Naturally, these events exacerbated Russia's chronic shortage of human capital and manpower, with an urgent need for effective administrative and military duties in maintaining the empire's territorial integrity and security apparatus intact.
The dual exigencies of Siberia as a penal colony and colonizing space thus resulted in the elevation of non-Russian elites inhabiting the strategically vulnerable expanse of land stretching across the southern strip of the West Siberian Plain. Service Tatars and Kazakhs experienced a rise in social status during the first half of the nineteenth century, despite their yasak counterparts experiencing a general decline.11 Although this period was relatively short-lived, with the major social and political upheavals of the 1860s prompting a complete reevaluation of the Cossacks’ role within the empire, the reforms of the early nineteenth century elucidate the empire's attitude towards it minorities and its growing fears of a revolutionary threat.12 This poses an interesting question regarding state perceptions of inorodets loyalty and perceived internal threats: how did the empire view its dependency on non-Russian outsourced labor, and what does this reveal about state security and imperial strategy?
Despite the political instability provoked by the palace coups defining the post-Petrine eighteenth century, certain patterns regarding foreign policy and policing practices had emerged and solidified during this period, particularly in Siberia. These changes were to reach their zenith in the nineteenth century, but it is important to first identify their origins, which roughly trace back to Catherine II's reign. Z. A. Tychinskikh identifies the eighteenth century as the second stage in the evolution of the service Tatar estate. It is during this time period that the Tatars were incorporated into the broader state apparatus of Cossackdom; in the centuries prior, they had existed as a distinct ethno-estate whose main task had been to police its yasak compatriots.13 This shift in social function can be traced directly to two historical developments: a population increase swelled by exiles and convicts, and an increasingly aggressive and territorially covetous foreign policy in the Kazakh steppe.
The substitution of rehabilitation in lieu of retribution defined Western Europe's evolution towards more humane policing practices in the eighteenth century, although Andrew A. Gentes considers this progressive shift the result of a modernizing state's need for able-bodied convict-workers rather than the result of enlightened policy.14 Nowhere was the need for state-sponsored projects manned by unfree labor as apparent as in Petrine Russia, wherein exile and execution were replaced by katorga in a utilitarianizing of capital punishment. Nonetheless, keeping in touch with its Greek name origins, most katorzhniki were sent to work in the fledgling port city of Rogervik on the Baltic Coast. This practice continued well after naval-obsessed Peter I's death, with European Russia remaining the main dumping ground for prisoners. 1767 was thus a turning point in the history of the Russian penal system; the opening of the Nerchinsk silver mines in Siberia prompted a permanent shift in the stream of convicts.15 Exile and katorga were united into a singular, holistic system wherein the identity of laborer–colonist was forged, ultimately setting the foundations for the Siberian exile system.
The eighteenth century also served as a turning point in the empire's relationship with central Asia, starting with its gradual expansion into the Kazakh steppe. Martha Brill Olcott divides the latter into two phases separated by a century of consolidation and strengthening of state capacity. Phase one was characterized by the initial incorporation of the Small and Middle Hordes in the north with the intent of securing the empire's southern borders and promulgating trade with its neighboring khanates. Phase two, taking place after Speransky's reforms, was decidedly more violent in its subjugation of the Great Horde, and imparted the empire's plans for further expansion and outright colonization of the remaining Turkic polities.16 Nonetheless, the initial reorganization of Cossack armies in Western Siberia came about as a direct consequence of steppe expansion and increased demand for exerting effective control over the growing exile and convict populations.
The history of Siberian Cossackdom is intrinsically linked to the subjugation of its vast territory, and the pattern of the initial conquest and conscription had effectively remained in place for some three hundred years since Yermak crossed the Urals. The recruitment of Don and other foreign host Cossacks continued well after the original Don troops sailed up the Chusovaya River, whereas the use of Tatar troops dates back to the original conquest when Tyumen and Tobolsk natives took part in the original expedition against Kuchum Khan.17 The swift conquest of Siberia was fueled primarily by Cossacks, with the maintenance and manning of fortresses requiring a stable military presence. External threats from neighboring states and steppe confederations furthered the need for a permanent troops, while native rebellions and the transformation of Siberia into the largest open air prison further drained the state's resources.18 Although social dynamics and administrative procedure were further complicated by the simultaneous existence of regular and irregular troops within the army infrastructure, the eighteenth century brought about the crystallization of two types of hosts: City Cossacks and Line Cossacks. Although their functions frequently overlapped, with various nineteenth century ustavy aiming to legislate away the confusion, important distinctions did exist, with these differences elucidating the empire's security needs and perceptions of non-European inostrantsy and inorodtsy alike.
The bifurcation of Siberian troops into “Line” and “City” Cossacks was a crucial development that crystallized throughout the eighteenth century. Although Cossacks were initially assigned to cities or fortresses, the latter evolved into a complex, codependent chain system, eventually becoming known as “lines.” The first such system emerged in 1716 with the construction of the Omsk fortress at the confluence of the rivers Om and Irtysh. Subsequent fortresses along the Irtysh, such as Zhelensk and Semipalatinsk, furthered the development of this defense system, with the line, along with the Cossacks who served there, eventually becoming named after the eponymous river.19 The line system continued, and by the mid-eighteenth century, two more lines were constructed: the Tobol–Ishim Line (1752–1755) and the Kolyvan–Kuznetsk Line (1747–1768).20
The destruction of the Dzungar Khanate in 1757, however, shifted Petersburg's security concerns, as the Qing Empire's conquest prompted massive population shifts across the continent, particularly amongst its nomadic populations. Kalmyks who managed to flee the genocide in Dzungaria migrated west, while Kazakhs who had hitherto lived along the Syr Darya moved into the steppes formerly occupied by the Oirats. These events naturally concerned Petersburg, and the subsequent decades witnessed an increase in the construction of fortresses and establishment of new lines.21 Plagued by the perennial Siberian shortage of able-bodied servicemen, especially when faced with increased demand, the government turned its attention to parallel hosts, initially inviting 1000 Cossacks from the Don and Yaik (later renamed Ural after the Pugachev rebellion in 1773–1775) to serve for a limited term of two years. These in turn were joined by the Bashkir–Meshcher Host, consisting of Bashkirs and Mishars, although this would later prove to be problematic. Nonetheless, by the turn of the century, the line system in Western Siberia thus became a distinct institution in all but ukaz, although Alexander I would legally cement these practices in a series of army reforms in 1808.
The Incorporation of Turkic Elites into the State Apparatus in Western Siberia
The 1808 “Statute on the New Formation of the Siberian Line Cossack Army” unified the extant defense lines which, at the time, consisted of the Irtysh, Gorky, and Bukhtara Lines stretching across all of Western Siberia up to the Altai Mountains. In addition to creating a single and unified Siberian Line Army, the statute also established the City Cossacks as a distinct entity. The Line Cossacks were primarily tasked with guarding southwestern Siberia against the Kazakh hordes, with the statute drawing parallels between the Line Cossacks and their Transbaikal, Yakut, and Kamchatka counterparts further east. It is important to note that these denotations reflected the ethnic diversity of these armies; those in the more populated west consisted of diverse and therefore non-ethnically specific Line Cossacks, whereas the more eastern oriented armies were more likely to be non-Russian yet more ethnically homogenous.22
The statute is prefaced with several complaints regarding the previous defense system, providing a revealing justification for the amendments proposed by the new legislation. In addition to a lack of standard procedure across the various lines, the frontiersmen were frequently settled separately from their superiors: “the Army, having been settled on a stretch of 2400 versts and finding itself perpetually in active service, does not have [clear groupings], differing from each other, but is rather dependent on the disposition of its Starshina, under the leadership of the Division Commander.”23 The shortage of officers was a primary concern, with important foreign expeditions such as skirmishes with the Kazakhs and the escort of caravans being conducted without regular officers.24 The original contingent of men pooled from “various cities of the native country” proved to be insufficient, despite the arrival of fresh Zaporozhian Cossack troops and the remainder of some Don and Bashkir–Meshcheryak Cossacks after their initial service period expired.25 The shortage of servicemen thus led to two meaningful outcomes: significant privileges for non-Russians, and the amplification of the multinational character of the army.
Given that the incorporation of non-Slavic troops residing within the empire's borders was not enough, Petersburg turned its attentions south of the Siberian Line. Following the standard pattern of subjugation and incorporation, the army now viewed its former enemy, the Kazakhs, as potential troop material: “relating to the enlargement of the entire Army, [enable] the War Chancellery to attract inorodtsy from outside the border to resettle [in the empire] and convert to our faith.”26 It is interesting to note that despite living outside the border, the Kazakhs are referred to as inorodtsy and not inostrantsy, demonstrating not only the empire's future intents towards the steppe, but also the permeability of social identity. This is further highlighted when compared to the Speransky Statute of 1822 that formalized the use of the term inorodets. The statute considered the Kazakhs a separate social category and did not include them in the statute on the inorodtsy, although by 1822, they were fully placed under the legal and territorial auspices of the empire, at least in theory.27 Nonetheless, a significant portion of Kazakhs did convert, as encouraged by the 1808 statute, with baptized Kazakhs and their children making up 4 percent of the Siberian Line Cossacks by 1831.28
Material compensation played an important role in attracting prospective troops, particularly given their destitution brought about by the harsh environment. The Speransky Statute noted the significant volume of petitions issued by indigent Cossacks complaining about their poverty and issued a special exemption allowing line troops to traverse the border for fishing and foraging.29 A standardized salary was introduced amongst all three former lines, and a land allotment was also issued. The statute confirmed the previous senate ruling that accorded six desiatiny of land per soul, whereas those not in the possession of arable land and engaged in raising livestock were granted extensive grazing rights across the border.30 The significance of these land grants only becomes apparent when compared to the 1823 obzor (overview) of the Ural Cossacks. The author decried the material condition of the Ural Host, claiming that the state of agriculture amongst the Cossacks “finds itself in the very worst position,” with the Cossacks engaging in land cultivation very seldom due to the unproductive and limited land holding system: “all lands, belonging the state, are held in common, and so no one can own more than one desiatina from them.”31 This example demonstrates that compared to their increasingly overcrowded European neighbors, Siberian Cossacks held the advantageous position of actively being courted by the government and granted additional concessions.
While the Speransky Statute of 1822 is primarily known for its new categorization of the inorodets, it is equally if not more important to analyze its effects on the non-Russian yet non-yasak population—that is, on the service class. In preparation for this monumental administrative, legislative, and judicial overhaul, Petersburg created the Siberian Committee, which was tasked with conducting a massive survey of the Siberian system.32 Its findings were meticulously documented, with a series of reports elucidating the committee's primary preoccupations and concerns. It is equally important to highlight the legislation's impact on the Kazakh population; frequently overshadowed by the Rules on the Siberian Peoples, the Rules on the Siberian Kirghiz was published as a separate set of reforms, and as previously mentioned, did not incorporate the Kazakhs into the legal category of the inorodtsy.
Although a significant portion of these reforms was inoperable in practice, they did constitute a lasting legal precedent, and despite Speransky treating the Middle Horde as a testing ground for his personal political and social beliefs, he still promulgated official government steppe policies. Speransky's meticulously documented notes leading up to the official enactment of the reforms demonstrate that the Cossacks had always been a crucial component for the empire's internal and external safety, particularly given the borderlands’ population shortage. In his address to the Siberian Committee, Speransky acknowledged that the 1808 Statute on the Line Cossacks was meant to address Kazakh integration, but given the empire's continued encroachments, proposed the following changes:
The acceptance of Kirgiz inside the line for eternal nomadism.
Allowing the Kirgiz across the border for temporary nomadism.
Governing, dividing, and regrouping the Kirgiz inside the line.
Sending off a delegation of trans-line Kirgiz to court.
The issuing of recommendation letters for starshina positions.
Designating mullahs.
Documenting livestock and dealing with faraway sultans to establish the safety of the caravans.33
Speransky's need for reform regarding the Kazakhs stemmed from his dissatisfaction with the administrative shortcomings of the border region, with several factors exacerbating the gubernia's failure to properly govern its borderlands: the military being relatively idle, the inaction of the border commission and its limited influence on the education of the steppe peoples, and poor communication between the border governance (upravlenie pogranichnoe) and the civilian governance (upravlenie grazhdanskoe) which further disrupted the livelihood of peasants living near the line as well as that of the Kazakhs living within the border.34
Special attention should be accorded to Speransky's claims that the Line Cossacks had not engaged in any military expeditions against the Kazakhs in almost 70 years, with the statesman accusing them of idleness. He further claimed that the Cossacks’ primary foreign activities involved small expeditions into the Kazakh steppe for administrative purposes.35 Not one to squander state resources, Speransky proposed an alternative repurposing of the Cossacks. It is important to note that by the first quarter of the century, Russia had already penetrated northern and western Kazakhstan, with Russian presence becoming entrenched around the Irtysh and Ishim rivers as well as around the Caspian and Aral seas.36 Speransky's report made the empire's expansionist intents explicitly known, urging the government to act fast in securing Kazakh lands and loyalty “for their wellbeing and our comfort.”37 The remainder of the report entailed a detailed plan of infiltration and colonization, dispelling the government's fear of possible retaliation. Speransky is highly self-congratulatory of the empire's approach to pacifying its steppe neighbors, claiming that “nothing changes as quickly as the war spirit of the steppe peoples. Who would now recognize in our Kalmyks, Buryats, and Mongols the conquerors of Russia and almost all of Europe? Not only did they become weak, but almost fearful…”38 Naturally this weakness was only supposed to manifest when fighting against, rather than with Russian troops; nonetheless, Speransky's laudatory remarks demonstrate how the empire was acting on precedent regarding the conquest of its former enemies.
As to be expected, the century of the exile coincided with Petersburg's preoccupation with crime and punishment, prompting a significant portion of Speransky's report to be focused on policing practices. Having analyzed ten years of statistics from three different gubernii, Speransky identifies three main shortcomings that made the policing of an already exorbitantly large territory even more difficult: the acquisition and division of provisions (dela prodovolstvia), which also entailed trade rights and trade with inorodtsy; land duties (zemskie povinnosti), which in addition to taxation involved servicing public works; and the policing of exiles.39
The exodus of the exiles from internal gubernias is conducted extremely negligently or with excessive cruelty; many of the exiles, having arrived in Siberia, [lose] their papers on the way or [do not] have them issued; it is unknown what crimes they committed nor what sentence they have received; even the census of [exiles] until the year of 1819 had been muddled and lost, so that there is not a possibility of accurately determining their number; the guards that escort [the exiles] consists of a motley crowd of Bashkirs and Meshcheryaks, people often as depraved as their prisoners; incarceration facilities stretch across a span of three thousand versts, constituting a heavy burden on the small villages and settlements…40
The rest of the summary continues in the same vein, with “disorder” (besporiadok), “neglect” (nebrezhenie), and “abuse” (zloupotreblenia) littering the remainder of the scathing report. Nonetheless, Speransky's obloquy did reveal some of the grossest inadequacies of the exile system, prompting the Siberian Committee to address the issue of the exile system, particularly the use of Bashkir and Meshcheryak Cossack hosts, with greater gravity
The Siberian Committee's reports on the “consideration of the ustav on exiles” and the “consideration of the ustav on the stages” addressed the issue of using non-Siberian troops and its effects on discipline and army morale with greater gravity. Although the authors corroborated Speransky's preamble, lamenting the fact that “not only do the guards not protect against the disturbances which the exiles undertake, but oftentimes not only participate, but even encourage,” they also provided a justification for the loose discipline.41 Although Bashkir and Meshcheryak troops were eagerly enrolled in the Line Cossack ranks by the understaffed frontier regiments, these were nonetheless groups that had permanently resettled to the frontier and received land allotments and land rights in accordance to their station.
The Bashkir and Meshcheryak troops employed in escorting exiles across Siberia were not locally stationed, however, but were rather poached from the Orenburg gubernia on two-year contracts. This led to an overall decline in the guards’ morale, whose “alienation from their homes [and fields]” resulted in their “getting used to idleness and falling into destitution.”42 The committee's proposed solution involved local recruitment from City Cossacks, with the logistics of a stage-based system of exiling and transport prompting a frequent exchange of prisoners stretched out across the immense landmass. It is important to note that at the time, these considerations stemmed from practical concerns rather than hesitancy regarding the use of non-Russian troops. The proposed solution involved the replacement of Bashkirs and Mishars with Tatars and Buryats, stressing the need for local troops irrespective of ethnicity. Having trekked across the Western Siberian Plain, often under the escort of Tatar City Cossacks, the exiles were to be intercepted by the Selenga Buryat Regiment upon its arrival in the Irkutsk guberniia.43
The need for regular city troops paved the ground for future legislation, with the need for internal reform akin to that of the Line Cossacks becoming more pressing with the growth of the exile population. One of the main problems highlighted by the committee was the lack of oversight regarding the exiles’ transportation, with clerical abuses regarding identification occurring even prior to the convicts’ arrival at their intended destination. Administrative errors prevented the effective introduction of an efficient system, while the state's limited policing capacity allowed exiles to take advantage of the lax supervision.44 Common abuses entailed prisoners purposely losing documents, confusing locations, and even swapping identities; this was accomplished by selling documents indicating exile to resettlement (soslanie na poselenie) for the much harsher exile to labor (soslanie na katorgu), as immortalized by the hapless Sushilov in Dostoevsky's House of the Dead.45 Irrespective of the injustices experienced by the more vulnerable exiles, this practice led to obvious security concerns, with hardened criminals often arriving in the guise of prospective frontiersmen. The failure of proper identification would further trouble authorities by acquiring a political veneer with the arrival of exiled Poles; the radical republican and future leader of the Paris Commune Jaroslaw Dabrowski brazenly waltzed out of the Moscow barracks where he had been detained due to a lack of clerical oversight.46 While the need for better policing practices was obvious, it was unclear who would perform these duties. As to be expected, Siberia's police force was severely understaffed and lacking in supervision, with extreme cases resulting in runaway exiles being unwittingly appointed as sheriffs.47 The necessity of military muscle made itself increasingly apparent with the new waves of exiles; the government thus compromised, with the “Charter on Siberian City Cossacks” of 1822 not only reforming preexisting Cossack units but also placing them under civilian jurisdiction to better accommodate the state's policing exigencies.
The growth of urban centers in the early nineteenth century prompted by a growing population in Western Siberia severely strained the local administration's capacities. Given that many of the newcomers were of dubious origin, with those being sentenced to exile not constituting the best pioneering stock, the governor and his nachalniki were increasingly dependent on local troops. The committee noted that the existence of City Cossacks was “indispensable for the local police,” with the “multiplicity of the exiles” calling for increased policing.48 As previously noted, there was significant overlap in function with regular police duties, further setting City Cossacks apart from their Line Cossack counterparts. The committee identified the City Cossacks’ tasks as the following:
Serving as sentries and going on patrols in all areas where the increased presence of exiles requires the particular attention of the police.
Guarding salt works, distilleries, and various state goods while they are being transported.
The collection of taxes, particularly those of nomadic and wandering inorodtsy living further apart.
Guarding and selling state grain.
Acting as regular troops in distant lands, serving as border control.
Performing postal service duties, if the need arises.49
Despite performing the jobs of a half-dozen professions at once, the committee noted that the City Cossacks were nonetheless underpaid, with their non-standardized salary being small and subject to fluctuations. The authors further noted that the Cossacks’ allowance was based on the findings of the 1737 prikaz that based pay, limited provisions, and fodder on the local exigencies of the previous century.50 In addition to their lowly renumeration, City Cossacks were expected to provide their own horses, outfits, and weapons, which, given the rising prices of those goods, resulted in the Cossacks’ “extreme destitution.”51
The committee provided a thorough breakdown of the Cossacks’ impecunious position, identifying the following as the principal detriments to their livelihood:
A significant portion of Cossacks do not have allotted lands.
The lands they do receive from the government are not enough to fulfill their needs.
They do not possess direct superiors, nor are their duties explicitly outlined.
They often move from place to place, and having served far from home, they do not have the possibility to take care of their agricultural affairs.52
Although subsequent commentary made it clear that the committee aimed to standardize the government's approach to all military units stationed in Siberia, calling for a rapprochement with the Line Cossacks’ duties, structure, and treatment as stipulated in the 1808 Regulations, a clear distinction was nonetheless apparent, with a fundamental difference between external border control and internal policing. The consequential publication of the “1822 Charter to Siberian City Cossacks” thus aimed to rectify the shortcomings identified by the Siberian Committee, ameliorating and strengthening the position of non-Russian Cossacks in the process.
One of the primary and most telling distinctions between the City Cossacks and the Line Cossacks was that the City Cossacks were placed under civilian rather than military jurisdiction. This shift towards a domestic orientation further demonstrated the state's new security preoccupations, with the need for internal control subsuming the City Cossacks’ original role of dealing with an external enemy. Nonetheless, the new charter differentiated between City Cossacks in regiments (gorodovye kazaki v polkakh) and Village Cossacks (stanichnye Kazaki). This bifurcation highlights the importance of peripheries and borderlands in the government's administrative thought, and the key differences between the two are analyzed in below.
The charter aimed to reorganize the various Cossack teams based on gubernia administrative units, thus establishing separate regiments for separate provinces. The Yenisei Regiment was formed from Krasnoyarsk, Yenisei, and Turukhansk Cossacks, while the Tomsk Regiment was formed from Tomsk, Kuznetsk, and Narym Cossacks. It is interesting to note that among these lesser provinces, there was no ethnic differentiation between Tatar and Russian troops. The only exception to this rule was the establishment of two separate Cossack Regiments in Tobolsk province: the Tobolsk City Cossack Regiment and the Siberian Tatar Cossack Regiment. The latter were also religiously exclusive, with the charter stipulating that non-Muslim Cossacks were not to be assigned to the Tatar regiment.53 It is important to note that the Tobolsk Tatars were the most significant group of Tatars inhabiting the West Siberian Plain, even being referred to by their own ethnonym of “Tobolik” or “Tabulyk,” with their language being considered its own distinct dialect.54 It is therefore unsurprising that the Tobolsk Tatars were accorded their own regiment given their numerical supremacy, although in every other respect they did not differ from the other regiments.
Although the charter did not strip the City Cossacks of their numerous administrative functions, it did create a more comprehensive system wherein tasks were clearly divided into three categories: police matters, by far the most extensive category; economic matters, including the distribution of government goods to remote places, collecting taxes, supervising factories, and replacing other Cossack teams. Unlike previous legislation regulating the City Cossacks, this charter was a lot more specific in delineating the Cossacks’ policing duties, with the surveillance of exiles taking up half of the instructions, which included, “night patrols in cities, the capturing of fugitives in cities and counties, acting as a convoy for government transports, conducting patrols near plants and factories to prevent exiles from escaping, conveying the exiles to the stage road, [and] acting as the mounted guard at the stages.”55 State security concerns regarding the exile population resulted in the Cossacks gaining more privileges, with the perennially understaffed and under-governed territory needing increased surveillance. This was further highlighted by the uncommon liberalization of ranks, with the charter graciously allowing for the recruitment of people “of free status” to the Cossack ranks if faced with a shortage.56
Land allotments were another telling feature of the City Cossacks’ newly privileged position. According to the new regulations, Cossacks were to receive 15 desiatiny per person, although if they engaged in clearing swamps and marshlands themselves in order to aggrandize their holdings, the land would be added on top of the preexisting allotment.57 For context, the previously mentioned Ural Cossack Host had definitively less agreeable agricultural arrangements, with the commonly held lands allowing for no more than one desiatina per soul, as stipulated by the 1823 publication.58 As previously mentioned, even the Line Cossacks had been allotted a mere 6 desiatiny, placing the City Cossacks in the most fortuitous position.
Although they were treated as more of an afterthought, the Station or Stanitsa Cossacks deserve a quick mention. Mainly consisting of Cossacks that inhabited rural areas further dispersed from cities, these Cossacks were primarily used in the event of an emergency.59 Enjoying greater decentralization, the Abakan, Pelymsky, and Tomsk Tatars were granted the right to form a village, but “only if they so wished.”60 Their main purpose was to perform guard duties, with the primary concern being the capture of escaped fugitives.61 Public works such as fixing roads and constructing houses were also included, but exiles always took precedence, particularly when it came to official escorts.62 Although they were not salaried, the Station Cossacks were exempt from taxes and had extensive trading rights in addition to their land rights. The regulation also provided for the transfer of a Station Cossack to the ranks of the City Cossacks if the individual demonstrated proof of destitution, providing a counterargument to Raeff's claims regarding the Station Cossacks’ gradual equalization with the peasantry. Nonetheless, mobility was limited in the opposite direction, wherein individual Regimental Cossacks were not allowed to transfer to the Village Cossacks; it was only if an entire team or at least three quarters of its members requested an official transfer that they were granted the right to become Village Cossacks.63 Overall, the existence and continued cultivation of Station Cossacks outlines the intricate layers of executive devolution, with the various hosts and sub-hosts complimenting each other's duties in relation to geographic proximity and political exigency.
Conclusion
The significant changes brought about by penal reform and foreign policy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries prompted Petersburg to reconsider and renegotiate its relationship with the Siberian Cossacks. Given the centralizing state's decreasing reliance on irregular Cossack troops in favor of the regular army, this new approach was a temporary reversal of policy that happened to benefit the inorodets elites. Nonetheless, this further reveals the flexibility of the soslovie system, demonstrating that social prerogatives were dynamic and subject to immediate political exigencies.
The reliance on inorodets troops had important implications for Siberia's Indigenous population, as the strengthening of the service elite coincided with the physical prosperity of their respective groups; the Tobol–Irtysh Tatars were one of the few Siberian peoples whose population increased, whereas the Small and Middle Horde Kazakhs dominated their southern Great Horde neighbors who had not been active members in the Tsar's service. Aside from reinforcing pre-conquest steppe power dynamics, the imperial government further developed the economic peculiarities of the etnososloviia. While the varying obligations of City and Line Cossacks affected Tatars and Kazakhs differently, both groups were primarily rewarded with land in return for their service. The Siberian Tatars’ votchiny (landed estates) further strengthened the Cossacks’ position over their yasak counterparts, entrenching feudal relationships among the Siberian Tatars. The economic divergence among the nomadic Kazakhs was even more drastic, as the land holdings granted to those who served established new economic dynamics, especially when contrasted with the remainder of the non-sedentary population.
In the age of nationalism, the cultivation of a social elite among a conquered minority had far-reaching consequences. While the rise of pan-Turkism and other Tatar or Kazakh national revivals lies outside the scope of this article, it is nonetheless important to note how the establishment of a service elite helped develop a distinct class with social, economic, and political privileges. Although the Russian government was aware of the potential issues this could bring about, its immediate concerns regarding policing practices and foreign policy required an able service class, demonstrating the empire's flexible approach to identity, especially within the soslovie system.
Notes
Adolf Januszkiewicz, Zywot Adolfa Januszkiewicza i jego listy ze stepow kirgizkich (Paryz: Drukarnia J. Claye, 1861), 11.
While the existence of ethnic minorities serving in some kind of state capacity, whether military or administrative, has been highlighted by historians as early as G. F. Müller in the eighteenth century, the question of estates shaping empire has been relatively neglected. In “Nomadic Nobles: Pastoralism and Privilege in the Russian Empire,” Slavic Review 81, no.1 (2022): 77–96, https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2022.78, Gulmira Sultangalieva, Ulzhan Tuleshova, and Paul W. Werth explore colonial mechanisms of governance by analyzing the unique case of Kazakh nobility which, unlike other steppe elites, consisted of established Kazakh upper classes as well as non-aristocratic lower orders. By exploring the Kazakh's legal rights and obligations, this article assesses the state's policies of integration and differentiation as malleable categories dependant on geopolitical consideration. Sultangalieva et al. further highlight the necessity of broadened conceptual approaches regarding class, nobility, and state servitude.
The development of Russian sosloviia, or legal estates, has been subject to extensive historiographical debate, especially within the last couple decades. Mid-nineteenth century Russian historians were prone to argue that the sosloviia were artificially introduced only in the preceding century, and unlike Western Europe, were not the organic expression of medieval society's development, but were rather imposed from above by Peter I. This historical interpretation placed the Western estates with the Russian sosloviia at political odds; if the former had acquired a corporate vitality that placed them in opposition to the absolutist state, the latter had become a tool for the autocracy to maintain its monopoly on power. Soviet historiography naturally followed suit, albeit with appropriate Marxist adjustments. Gregory L. Freeze's “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (1986) provides an important revision of these historical interpretations, arguing instead that modern conceptions of sosloviia materialized only in the nineteenth century, continuing to evolve even on the eve of the Great Reforms. Furthermore, Freeze demonstrates that the four estates of nobility, clergy, townspeople, and peasants were not as strictly delineated as previoushistorians had claimed, elucidating the numerous subdivisions with varying responsibilities among the estates.
Janet Martin's “Muscovite Frontier Policy: The Case of the Khanate of Kasimov,” The Frontier in Russian History 19, no. 1 (1992): 169–179, https://doi.org/10.1163/187633192X00118, analyzes Muscovy's “gathering of the lands” through the prism of state building, with the acquisition of reliable vassals prompting the Grand Princes to turn their patronage south. By granting lands on the Oka River, Muscovy created a buffer zone neighboring the Kazan Khanate, although this practice was soon extended to other pomestiia and against other enemies as well.
See Michael Khodarkovsky's Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
In “Sluzhilye Tatary: Genezis i transformatsiia etnososlovnoi straty (na materiale zapadnoi Sibiri),” Srednevekovye tiurko-tatarskie gosudarstva no. 8 (2016): 244–251, Z. A. Tychinskikh argues that the phenomenon of service Tatars predated the Russian colonization of Siberia, maintaining that the term “Tatar” had already acquired ethnic and social connotations under the auspices of the Golden Horde. Tychinskikh further demonstrates that the Tatar “ethno-estate” (etnososlovnaya strata) served the khans in the capacity of military servitude during the khanate period; it was only after this initial stage of gestation that Muscovy coopted an already established and well-developed institution.
See Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, ed. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) for a critical analysis of Russian imperial rule and the impact of sosloviia on the empire's sociopolitical development.
Russia's historical annexations of non-Slavic peoples significantly predated Siberia's conquest, and its highly stratified social structure precluded the existence of a singular legal category for its conquered minorities. Muscovite and early imperial society were roughly divided into those who served the Tsar and those who paid taxes, resulting in the frequent incorporation of a conquered polity's social elite and the recognition of their privileged status. Russia's modernization and centralization in the nineteenth century, however, prompted a reexamination of its imperial policy in the borderlands. Infamously mismanaged, Siberia and its administration were subject to a series of reforms drafted by M. M. Speransky in 1822. One of the most significant reforms was the “Statute on the Inorodtsy,” which created a legal category known as inorodets for non-Slavs living east of the Urals to better regulate the payments of yasak, or fur tribute. Although this was the closest the empire had gotten to creating a legally specific category of “other,” the term was fraught with exceptions, ambiguities, and renegotiations. See John W. Slocum's “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of ‘Aliens’ in Imperial Russia,” The Russian Review no. 2 (1998) for a thorough analysis of the category's legal and semantic evolution throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 43.
The perseverance of Old Believer communities in Siberia played an important role in shaping political reimaginings of dissidents’ religious practices among nineteenth century intellectuals. For a thorough examination of current methodologies and historiography regarding Old Belief, see Robert O. Crummey's “Past and Current Interpretations of the Old Belief” and “Old Belief as Popular Religion” in Old Believers in a Changing World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).
In A History of the Peoples of Siberia, 161, Forsyth identifies the Buryats (along with the Yakuts and semi-independent Chukchis) as the only Indigenous Siberian groups that had not experienced decline by the late nineteenth century. Despite contrary contemporary reports regarding the decline of “even the Tatars,” S. N. Korusenko and N. A. Tomilov's “Tatary Sibiri v XVIII– nachale XX v.: Rasselenie, chislennost′ i sotsial′naia struktura,” Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i еtnografii 15, no. 2 (2011) demonstrates that the service Tatars were unaffected; while the Barabinsk Tatar population did shrink, the Tomsk population increased slightly, whereas the Tobol-Irtysh population grew substantially.
Aleksei Aleksandrovich Volvenko's “Novye Kazach′i voiska v pravitel′stvennykh proektakh i chinovnich′ikh zapiskakh 1860-kh godov,” Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 4, no. 2 (2021): 68–79, offers a seminal analysis of government policy regarding Cossack armies functioning in the role of colonizers. By drawing on the aborted plans of West Siberian Governor General A. P. Khrushchev to establish new Cossack troops and to resettle Cossacks along the border with Qing China, Volvenko demonstrates how the state abandoned its usage of Cossacks as a colonization tool by the 1860s in its eastern provinces.
Tychinskikh, “Sluzhilye Tatary,” 245.
Andrew A. Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 6.
Alan Wood, Russia's Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East: 1581–1991 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 66.
Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 28.
Gabdel′bar Faizrakhmanov, Istoriia Tatar Zapadnoi Sibiri s drevneishikh vremen do nachala XX veka (Kazan′: Tatarskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel′stvo, 2007), 230.
In “Sotsial′noe polozhenie Sibirskikh Tatar v sostave Rossiiskogo gosudarstva,” ibid., Faizrakhmanov argues that the seventeenth century was defined by Indigenous uprisings, which the government oftentimes struggled to contain. Native elites that eventually succumbed and aligned themselves with the Russian state were fully enfranchised, while those that continued to defy tsarist authorities were brutally put down. Faizrakhmanov postulates that the absence of an upper class among the Baraba Tatars was entirely dueto the fact that its nobility had been completely decimated in the course of the seventeenth century uprisings.
F. F. Saprygin, “Stanovlenie i razvitie Sibirskogo Kazach′ego Voiska 1808–1917 gg., istoricheskii ocherk,” Postsovetskii materik no. 4 (2020): 75.
S. R. Muratova, Na strazhe rubezhei Sibiri: Stroitel′stvo Sibirskikh ukreplennykh linii (Tobol′sk: Tobol′skii Gosudarstvennyi Pedagogicheskii Institut, 2007), 32.
Saprygin, “Stanovlenie i razvitie Sibirskogo Kazach′ego Voiska,” 77.
In “Sem′ia i semeinyi byt ussuriiskikh kazakov,” Zabaikal′skoe Kazachestvo: Istoriia i Sovremennost′, ed. E. V. Drobotushenko et al. (Chita: Zabaikal′skii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2018), Julia V. Argudyaeva examines the demographic composition of the Amur and Ussuri Cossack hosts formed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and analyzes how government resettlement policy affected their social structures. Argudyaeva elucidates how the state purposely combined troops from the Kuban, Terek, Orenburg and Don Hosts, identified by the author as Russo-Ukrainian, with Transbaikal Cossacks of Buryat and Evenk extraction; this synthesis of east Slavic and Asian troops was meant to highlight the relative ethnic distinctiveness of the mother hosts while positing the newly formed Amur and Ussuri troops as an ethnically heterogenous antithesis.
Vysochaishie utverzhdennyi doklad Voennago Ministra, “Ustav 23 239– 19 Avgusta, 1808 – O novom obrazovaniu Sibirskago Lineinago Kazach′iago voiska. – S prilozheniem shtata i polozheniia odnoi Kazachei Konno-Artilleriiskoiroty, iz 12 orudii sostoiashchei,” in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. Sobranie Pervoe. Tom XXX. 1808–1809 gg., ed. M. M Speransky, (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830), 537.
Ibid.
Ibid., 538.
Ibid., 543.
For a detailed analysis of Speransky's Rules on the Siberian Kirghiz, see Roman Yu. Pochekaev, “The political and legal views of Mikhail Speranskiy in the Rules on the Siberian Kirghiz,” The Legal History Review 84, 1-2 (2016): 290–312, https://doi.org/10.1163/15718190-08412p09.
S. M. Andreev, “Istochniki formirovaniia sibirskogo lineinogo kazachestva v doreformennyi period,” Izvestiia Tomskogo politekhnicheskogo universiteta no. 3 (2007): 161.
“Ustav 23 239,” 538.
Ibid., 541.
A. Levshin, Istoricheskoe i Statisticheskoe Obozrenie Uralskikh Kazakov (Sankt-Peterburg: V Voennoi Tipografii Glavnago Shtaba ego Imperatorskago Velichestva, 1823), 53.
In “Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie Rossiiskoi imperii. Sibirskii komitet: Poisk sposobov upravleniia Sibir′iu v 1822–1838 gg.,” Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta no. 3 (2012): 141–148, E. A. Semshchikov argues that the Siberian Committee was formed as part of a series of administrative reforms reshaping some the empire's political institutions in the early nineteenth century. Nonetheless, the committee was more of an ad hoc institution meant to address Siberia's immediate problems, functioning between 1822–1838. While a second Siberian Committee was formed in 1852, it now included the Caucasian Committee, pointing to a more centralized colonial approach. This evolution was completed in 1864 when the committees were abolished for good and their tasks subsumed by the central government.
M. M. Speransky, “Prilozhenie pervoe: Otchet Taĭnogo T͡Sovetnika Speranskago v obozrenii Sibiri s predvaritel'nymi svedenii͡ami i osnovanii͡ami k obrazovanii͡u ei͡a upravlenii͡a,” in Sibirskie okrainy: oblastnye ustanovleniia, sviazannye s sibirskim uchrezhdeniem 1822 g., v stroe upravleniia russkogo gosudarstva: Istoriko-iuridicheskie ocherki, prilozheniia, ed. Sergei Mikhailovich Prutchenko, (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografiia A. S. Suvorina, 1899), 60.
Ibid.
Ibid., 63.
Alton Donnelly's “The Mobile Steppe Frontier: The Russian Conquest and Colonization of Bashkiria and Kazakhstan to 1850,” in Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917, ed. Michael Rywkin, (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1988) argues that the Russian subjugation of the Kazakhs was facilitated by the proximity of aggressive neighbors, with Mongol and Central Asian expansionism prompting the Kazakhs to seek Russian protection. While the initial process was relatively peaceful, colonial settlers increasingly encroached on the Kazakhs pasture lands and disrupted traditional nomadic migration cycles. Despite some Kazakhs settling down as agriculturalists, relations continued to deteriorate in the first half of the nineteenth century, ultimately culminating in the Kenesary Rebellion (1837–1847).
Speransky, “Prilozhenie pervoe: Otchet Taĭnogo T͡Sovetnika Speranskago v obozrenii Sibiri s predvaritel'nymi svedenii͡ami i osnovanii͡ami k obrazovanii͡u ei͡a upravlenii͡a,” 64.
Ibid., 64–65.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 10.
Sibirskii Komitet, “Rasmotrenie Ustava ob Etapakh: Prisudstvie 19 Genvaria 1822, no. 24,” in Sibirskie okrainy, 174.
Ibid.
Ibid.
This well-known and infamous practice was immortalized by Fyodor Dostoevsky's autobiographical House of the Dead, wherein the narrator describes the fate of a certain Sushilov, a simple peasant initially given the much lighter sentence of exile to settlement. On his way to his colony, however, the hapless Sushilov is befriended by Mikhailov, a hardened criminal sentenced to hard labor. Mikhailov proceeds to ply Sushilov with vodka, successfully proposingan exchange of names and by default punishments, assuring Sushilov that his sentence entails light, specialized labor. In exchange, Sushilov receives a red shirt and a silver ruble. The following day Sushilov is no longer treated to alcohol, but given that he now has currency in the form of his ruble and shirt, Sushilov is capable of continuing the party by liquifying his assets into more vodka. By the time he figures out what Mikhailov's sentence actually entails, he has no means of purchasing his name back, with the artel of prisoners ensuring that the deal is honored. Unfortunately, such cases were fairly common, with the committee's legislation shedding light on this important issue.
Sibirskii Komitet, “Rasmotrenie Ustava o Ssyl′nykh: Prisutstviia 5, 18 i 19 ianvaria 1822 goda, no. 23,” in Sibirskie okrainy, 171.
Daniel Beer, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016), 81.
Robert J. Abott, Policemen of the Tsar: Local Police in an Age of Upheaval (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022), 188.
Sibirskii Komitet, “Razsmotrenie o gorodovykh kozakakh: Prisutstvie 13-go Aprelia 1822, no. 38,” in Sibirskie okrainy, 190.
Ibid., 190.
Ibid.
Ibid., 191.
Ibid.
“Ustav Sibirskikh gorodovykh Kazakov 1822 goda,” art. 77, in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. Sobranie Pervoe. Tom XXXIII. 1822–1823 gg., ed. M. M Speransky, (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830), 538.
N. A. Tomilov, Tiurkoiazychnoe naselenie zapadno-Sibirskoĭ ravniny v kontse XVI-pervoi chetverti XIX vv. (Tomsk: Izdatel′stvo Tomskogo Universiteta, 1981), 61.
“Ustav Sibirskikh gorodovykh Kazakov 1822 goda,” art. 23, 533.
Ibid., art. 61, 537.
Ibid., arts. 114–116, 540.
Levshin, Istoricheskoe i Statisticheskoe Obozrenie Uralskikh Kazakov, 53.
In Siberia and the Reforms of 1822 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956), Marc Raeff argues that Speransky's statute aimed for an economic and social rapprochement between the Station Cossacks and the Siberian peasantry. Raeff points to various agricultural concessions accorded to theses Cossacks which resulted in a growing number of settlements, although given that Station Cossacks were not salaried, a general increase of revenue from additional land grants was necessary for their upkeep.
“Ustav Sibirskikh gorodovykh Kazakov 1822 goda,” art. 142, 541.
Ibid., art. 158, 542.
Ibid., art. 167, 543.
Ibid., art. 188, 544.