A cutthroat competition: the Sartakovo argument over the right for attachment as a case of the peasants' conflict of the Stolypin time

The article represents the first results of a case-study project to explore conflicts between Siberian migrants and old residents during the late imperial period. The peasants' movement from the land-hungry regions of European Russia to Siberia inspired Donald Treadgold to call it "The Great Siberian Migration". While continuing the long tradition of studying this milestone of Siberian history, the current publication brings it into a new discourse. Migration is investigated not as a means of developing Siberia but as a source of contradictions which initiate the start of conflict-solving mechanisms existing in the Russian peasant society of the early 20th c. The immediate object of study is a conflict concerning attachment (prichisleniye) of several unauthorized migrants to the Sartakovo rural commune (Barnaul uyezd, Tomsk Province). This case is especially precious for Sartakovo was a village of the "new old residents" who themselves arrived from the European Russia not long ago. Thus we may be sure that the Sartakovo conflict is a clash of discordant material interests, not of different cultures. The Sartakovo conflict followed three stages during 1910-1916. It was a legal struggle of the migrants for the right of attachment to the commune that prevailed until the summer of 1912. After all of their appeals had been declined, from the summer of 1912 up to the spring of 1915, newcomers would take by force all they needed for running their husbandries, plowlands to be mentioned fist of all. The Sartakovo commune would try to get a reimbursement for the occupied lands judicially but stepped back against threats of arson and death. There emerged a kind of equilibrium: the authority of law that weighed to the side of the old residents was balanced by the newcomers' readiness for desperate resistance for the sake of their vital interests. But in 1915 the newcomers undertook to expand their tilth and went further from using commune's reserve lands to intruding into other peasants' parcels. The old residents' vital interests being now endangered, they too appeared ready to use extreme measures. State and police officials dealing directly with peasants (krest'yanskiy nachal'nik and stanovoy pristav) supported the old residents without hesitation but the head of uyezd (district) police (ispravnik) and the governor underestimated the danger of bloodshed. In 1916, when the old residents attempted to stop the newcomers' plowing by force, both the sides used weapons and each of the parties lost one man killed. Only after that the authorities forced the migrants out of the province. The mortal outcome of the Sartakovo conflict is an exception determined by personal qualities of the migrants who acted unusually vigorously in their struggle for the land. However dramatic is the finale of the conflict, its first and second stages are more important for understanding phenomena of the migration epoch since they depict the process of establishing the fragile balance with perspectives of its prolongation. The story of the Sartakovo conflict reveals the role of base processes (independent of the state authorities) in the life of the peasant society of Russia at the dawn of the 20th century.

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