Asian frontier and the foreign policy powers of the governor-generals in Asian Russia

The authors suggest that the peculiarities of geo-strategic position of Siberia necessitated the autonomy of local government in terms of foreign policy. The practice of giving special foreign policy powers to the Siberian authorities was not an entirely new phenomenon in the center-periphery relationship. The authors note that the intensification of activities of Russia in the Far Eastern and Central Asian areas in the XIX century caused the need for the operational decisions on the spot. This situation was well understood by the capital government so they were forced to provide some independence in foreign policy to the local authorities. The authors state that on this specific aspect of the Siberian authorities' activity, one can observe certain contradictions between the decentralizing and centralizing tendencies of the autocratic policy. The government represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to strictly control and direct all the activities of the local administration. According to the authors, it was connected by the one requirement from the government that the governors-general of Asiatic Russia had to have the presence of even if of a small experience in diplomatic activity. It is logically followed from the contiguous position of the Siberian regions and provinces as well as active foreign policy in these areas on the one hand, and the inability to control and direct this process in detail from St. Petersburg on the other. The archival sources indicated that the foreign policy aspect of the activity of the highest local administration in the person of the governor-general was closely related to their administrative and political actions as the heads of the region and manifested itself in a different and sometimes very unexpected ways. The undoubted proof was the establishment of a special regime for the border and the coastal administrations. The governor-general of Western Siberia also had a certain amount of autonomy in foreign policy. In this case as in Eastern Siberia it is closely intertwined with the exercise of the territorial head of the region political and administrative powers, which is reflected in legislative sources. For example, the region of Siberian Kirghiz created in 1822 had the ultimate goal of strengthening Russia's military-strategic presence in the steppe area. The question of the administrative borders of Western Siberia, discussed in the second half of the XIX century, was closely associated with the intensification of Russian foreign policy in the Central Asian direction. The authors came to the conclusion made on the basis of comparative analysis of the features of the Asian Russia governor-generals foreign policy activities. The depth of its autonomy was directly dependent not only on the distance to the capital, but also on the position of Russia in the region as a whole as well as its diplomatic influence on neighboring countries and the personal authority of the governor-general.

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