How Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Egor Gavrilovich (from the history of the Yakut political exile)

This article is written on the basis of a significant set of unpublished sources that are stored in archival funds of the four archives of our country (The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), The State Archive of the Tomsk Region, The State Archive in Tobolsk and The National Archive of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)). In terms of methodology, the article is written in the genre of microhis-tory, which means not to examine the "little things" but to study the past in details. The aim of the article is to analyze the sociopolitical, economic and other factors of the country's life, that caused conflicts between the deportees and the indigenous inhabitants of Yakutia in the first half of the 1880s. It is shown how micro-historical approach can provide a better understanding of macro-historical events of the past centuries through the specific example of the quarrel between the state criminal Ivan Piskovoy and the indigene of Zhuleysky Nasleg (a rural settlement in the Tatta region of Yakutia) Egor Abramov. One episode (it was one of everyday life events at first sight) in the history of the Yakut political exile in the early 1880s is analyzed against the background of the political, social and economic processes in the country. The focus is on the relationship between the political convict Piskovoy and the local resident of Yakutia Abramov. Piskovoy was exiled to Yakutia for participation in the Chyhyryn conspiracy in 1877 among the monarchist state peasants of Kiev province. The plot was prepared on the initiative and with the direct participation of the well-known Russian populists group (Y.V. Stefanovich, L.G. Deitch, I.V. Bokhanovsky), which resorted to mystification on behalf of the Tsar. At the time this conspiracy made a great stir in the ruling circles and caused a lively debate among revolutionaries. They discussed mainly the advisability and the permissibility of using immoral means (forgery, fraud, imposture) by the revolutionaries for involving the peasantry in the struggle against the autocracy. After his arrival at the destination point of his exile, Piskovoy was assigned to live in Zhuleysky Nasleg in Baturussky Ulus within the Yakutsk district and he was billeted on the indigene Abramov's jurt. Forced coexistence within a few months led eventually to a bitter quarrel between them. The reason was the houseowner's jealousy, who accused the lodger of having an intimate relationship with his wife. The apogee of the conflict was a fierce scuffle followed by mutual complaints of the participants to a higher authority. On the basis of a careful study we draw a conclusion that the objective basis of the fierce conflict between them was the authorities' unreadiness to change some of the most important aspects of State policy. Social contradictions resulted in particular conflicts between newly arrived and indigenous population of the Yakutsk region in the form of verbal abuse, scuffles, beatings and injuries that have become a fairly commonplace phenomenon in the history of the Yakut banishment. One of such typical conflicts was the quarrel between Piskovoy and Abramov.

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