Colonisation of the Steppe Krai in the Socio-Political Discourse of the Second Half of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Centuries

The aim of the article is to reveal the content of the socio-political discourse about the colonisation of the remote territories, in particular, the Steppe Krai (Governor-Generalship of the Steppes). In the 1870s and 1880s, the fundamentals of the socio-political discourse on the development of outlying regions (in particular, the Steppe Krai) were being formed. Within the contextual frame of this discourse, the ideas of Siberian separatism and the basic principles of the theory of the "Great Russian Nation" were competing with each other. The presence of the two competing positions in the agrarian colonisation of the steppe regions not only predetermined the content of the socio-political discourse but also greatly influenced the formation of governmental practices in the region directed at the incorporation of the Steppe Krai under development into the all-imperial construct. The discursive field included the issues of peasant colonisation, solution to the problems of non-Russians, organisation of local communities in the region. The main source of research is periodical materials, scientific monographs, collections of articles of liberal and nationalistic orientation that covered the key aspects of the socio-political discourse. The liberal ideas were covered by socio-political periodicals such as Vestnik Evropy, Russkaya Mysl', Delo, Vostochnoe Obozrenie, Sibir'. The national-conservative position was serially advocated by the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti and the magazine Russkiy Vestnik. The method of continuous viewing of the texts of articles, speeches, comments used in the study allowed to reconstruct the main positions of the discourse of the authorities and society. In this way, the liberal segment of the discourse was based on the idea of Siberian regional identity and Siberian regionalism on the whole. Siberian liberals focused their attention on the issues which were alien to the imperial understanding of objectives concerning the development of the outlying regions of the country. It was liberal political journalism that, in contrast to its opponents, expressed doubts over the "kulturtraeger" potential of Russian peasantry, which contributed to the liberation of society from the idealistic assessments of the cultural potential of peasants. The nationalistic discourse was based on the security of the empire and prevention of any separatism in the outlying regions. The Steppe Krai positioned itself as a "proving ground" in which the overcoming of local ethnographic features and class distinctions would open up opportunities for a successful implementation of the project aimed at forming a unified nation and a unified Russian State of an imperial type.

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