Prospects of the agrarian territory development of the steppe region in the colonization plans of the Russian power in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries

In the given article the authors focused their attention on discussing the prospects of agrarian colonization of the steppe region of Western Siberia in the power segment of the social and political discourse in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. During this period the steppe region, as a geographical and geopolitical space, began to be considered by the authorities and society as an important bridge between Russia and the East, an object of conflict of economic and political interests of different states. In this context, it is important to identify the factors and conditions of the embodiment of public interest in relation to the poorly developed agricultural area, which found expression in individual statements, programs and project activities of power factors aimed at the gradual integration of the steppes into the empire. Obviously, the process of "appropriation" of the remote area in the tradition of the government approach combined with the regional specificity: geographically distant suburbs, multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition of the population, etc. This regional specificity identified the key positions and differences in the approaches to the strategic issues of colonization of the West Siberian steppe regions. During the 19th century, the visions of the central and regional authorities in regard to the Siberian autochthons in general preserved their guarding activities and were characterized by important changes determined by the course and the logic of colonization. The quantitative growth of the Slavic population due to migration, existing penitentiary and exile hard labor practices, natural population growth were a natural background in which these changes took place. The reduction of income from mining the "soft stuff" led to a change of state economic priorities and, eventually, to the reorientation of the regional national economy on other sectors. The discourse associated with the determination of the possible colonization of the West Siberian steppe areas developed in a certain historical context, in which the natural growth of migration movement was impossible to stop. A significant wave of the peasant population in the steppes of Western Siberia contributed significantly to the "breakdown" of an extremely conservative and restrictive approach to the agrarian colonization of the steppes in the second half of the 19th century. By the mid-1870s, the ground for making practical decisions in the field of the agrarian question concerning the steppe zone of the colonized region was mainly prepared. In fact, for the first time the steppe region of Western Siberia became a basis for the implementation of the imperial projects for its "right", with a focus on agricultural development, colonization. Thus, the question about the prospects of the agrarian colonization of the West Siberian steppe regions with varying degrees of intensity was involved in the power segment of the social and political discourse and solved in terms of the imperial problems, among which was a long dominating idea of the military "appropriation" of the region. However, the dynamic growth of the resettlement movement in the steppe regions gradually modified the tone and content of the discourse, sensitizing individual regional representatives of the higher bureaucracy for recognition of the efficiency of agricultural practices. As a result, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, two approaches to the evaluation of options for the agrarian colonization of the region, progressive and restrained, finally took shape. In the system of their coordinates, the central and regional governments found best ways of incorporating the region into the empire-wide construct.

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