Migratory behavior of the Russian peasantry in the government and the public and political discourse second half XIX - early XX centuries

In the article the author attempts to identify participants and reveal the meaning of power discourse and social and political discourse in the frame of factors and conditions of forming migration behaviour of the peasantry of Russia in the post-reform period. It is evident that the problem of the formation of migration behavior of the Russian peasantry as an important phase to join in the resettlement process, was being adjusted for a long time within the coordinate system of the positivism methodology. As a result, the reflection of the migration movement to Siberia, circumstances of structuring migration intentions and migration behaviour of the rural population, was carried out either with an emphasis on the idea unmotivated mobility of the peasantry, "the tendency to vagabondage", or on economic failure of peasant households. The method of deconstructing discourses, based on the detection of its recipients and the senders, the circumstances and conditions of creating texts, allowed to detect new distinctions of understanding the reasons for migration behaviour of the most mass social layer in the Russian Empire. The study showed a lack of direct correlation between the peasant shortage of land and migration activity. It was proved that "the motive of vagabondage" was originally replicated in publicism and later became widespread in power discourse in order to regulate mass character of the resettlement process. The shift of the emphasis of discourse towards understanding the logic of peasant behavior, implementing through the organization of economic activity, predetermined the fundamental "reset" in the views of the authorities and society on the migration behaviour of farmers and the resettlement process. At the turn of XIX-XX centuries, the centre of the agricultural situation in the country was increasingly the issues associated with higher migration intentions in the peasant rural. With population growth, migration, with legislation registration and circular practices, the intonation and meaning of social and political discourse and power discourse changed. Migration activity of the peasantry in journalistic articles, materials of clerical nature was regarded as the response of the peasantry to the manifestation of the crisis in the agricultural and environmental sector. The authority were confident that the solution of the agrarian issue was possible with the help of palliative means of self-resourceful character (agricultural fields), and it meant the understanding of the importance and relevance of the organization of the resettlement case. The emotional stress of the discourse, linguistic structures which were used, the reading of the discourse through the modern achievements of the human sciences, especially by means of social psychology, provide a unique opportunity to identify a human being as a carrier of migration attitude due to schematic context of the economic grounds of his actions and social behavior.

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