Modern Russian Historiography of Colonization of the Steppe Region in the Second Half of the 19th - Early 20th Centuries

Based on studies of the agricultural colonization of the steppe region in the post-Soviet period, the article outlines the key approaches of the Russian historiographical tradition, which enshrines the principles of scientific reflection in the evaluation of the Imperial Russian experience in the second half of the 19th century. The study identifies the stages of formation, development and evolution of the historiographical tradition of the question due to the influence of different contexts in the 1990s-2000s. It is established that the initial period of Russian historiography (second half of the 1990s) was characterized by preserved inertia research in the evaluation of the agrarian-colonial activities of the Russian Empire in the steppe region. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Soviet historiography concept of the voluntary nature of the steppe region's annexation by Russia ceased to be relevant and was roundly criticized. In the early 1990s, it was not possible to conduct research in the field of the agricultural development of the steppe region, which was predetermined by the format of the organization of historical science in the USSR. The history of the borderlands and national minorities of the Empire in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet period was a "subordinate knowledge" which was formed and disseminated by Russian researchers. In the context of state independence, the agrarian colonization in the Republic of Kazakhstan became a subject of sharp controversy, in which colonization was presented as a national trauma. In the methodological crisis of the time, the reaction of Russian historiography on this issue was political correctness and silence. The second phase of the institutionalization of the Russian historiography of the agrarian colonization of the steppe region (mid-1990s-2016) was marked by the introduction of Western research methodological concepts in the context of Russian historical science. This process occurred in a favorable sociocultural and scientific background, the signs of which was the ideologization of scientific knowledge, interdisci-plinarity in the coverage of agrarian and colonization processes in Russia. The theory and practice of "new imperial history" created prerequisites for expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge and going beyond the regional approach to the study of agricultural colonization of the borderlands, which contributed to the constructive interaction between the Russian and Kazakh historians.

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