Inorodtsy's question in the discourse of the Russian Empire: Between government needs and society images

The main aim of this research is the identification of various interpretations of the term "inorodtsy" (non-Russians) in the discourses of the Russian Empire. The authors have set the following research objectives: to allocate the main discourses raising the foreign question in the Russian Empire; to define features of perception of the foreign question within various discourses. In modern science. the question of the content of the term "inorodtsy" in the Russian Empire is considered, as a rule, through an Orientalism prism. Within the theory of "internal colonization", this concept is treated as an ethnic category, representatives of "modern imperial history" speak about foreigners as an artificially designed social community. The methodological basis of the research is a multiple-factor approach assuming the existence of several multidirectional discourses created by various actors. Based on the Сollection of laws of the Russian Empire, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, journalistic works and academic research, the authors identify power, socio-political and academic discourses differing both in the interpretations of the term "inorodtsy" and in the judgments on the "inorodtsy" question. Within the power discourse, "inorodtsy" were considered as a separate class created for the most effective use of features of economy and self-government of some groups of the population for the benefit of the state. This position remained invariable throughout the existence of the Russian Empire. The socio-political discourse was not uniform, and the division was based on the political principle (the right and the left), and on the territorial one (Siberian and the discourse of European Russia). In the right discourse, "inorodtsy" were considered as "alien", hostile in relation to the Russian people, and included all non-Russian population of the western borderlands of the empire and the Volga region. For the left discourse, "inorodtsy" were understood as non-Russian people of the empire restrained in the rights and therefore natural allies of the Russian people and society in fight for freedoms. The discourse about the Siberian "inorodtsy" united representatives of various currents in society that treated them as backward and harmless peoples of Siberia. The academic discourse was not uniform either. It was divided depending on the scientific direction. Within a legal discourse, foreigners were considered as a class, but with unclear criteria for separation. Within a historical discourse, this concept was ignored; in the ethnographic one, the concept covered indigenous peoples of the borderlands. The main conclusions are as follows: the concept "inorodtsy" of the Russian Empire repeatedly changed its content within various discourse practices, which does not allow to consider it only from positions of colonialism and Orientalism; political preferences and motives of authors determine features of the use of these or those interpretations of this term.

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