The Problem of Studying the State System and Law of the Khanate of Sibir in Russian Historiography

The article analyses the views of Russian researchers on the questions of the evolution of the statehood and law of the Khanate of Sibir. The authors note that the fifty years of studying this problem saw a transition from the efforts characteristic of the Soviet historical science to transfer the theory of feudalism to the Siberian realities to the understanding that the analogies of the state institutions should be searched within the framework of the Horde heritage and its inertia in the post-Horde world (V.V. Trepavlov, D.M. Iskhakov). Despite this positive shift of research focus, the analogy method has led to the situation that some of the proposed schemas lack the understanding of the Siberian specifics, whose detection is difficult because of the poor source base. The efforts to solve these contradictions were made by using neo-evolutional theories in the study of nomadic societies, including archeological studies on the monuments of the Khanate of Sibir used as the materials (S.F. Tataurov, A.V. Matveev). The proposed new approaches allowed reconstructing the administration apparatus as a whole (khan, land assembly, prime minister (bek), qarachi or qarachi union, princes and murzas) and revealing the specific origin and fates of the representatives of the Siberian aristocracy (V.V. Trepav-lov, D.N. Maslyuzhenko). Different schemas of interrelations of the central and local powers and their manifestations in the distribution of fortified fortresses were revealed (S.F. Tataurov, A.V. Matveev, S.A. Chernyshov). A new trend in the research was the determination of the composition of the courts of the Kuchum dynasty that happened to be in Muscovy by capture or departure (A.V. Belyakov). In these conditions, Siberian tsarevitches became the center of attraction for other natives of Siberia; this gives new opportunities in the study of the statehood of the Khanate of Sibir when doing micro-historical work with unpublished sources from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. It is this direction that is the most perspective for further work. Within the studies of the law of the Khanate of Sibir, the range of sources has been detected that can be used to conduct a deeper study of legal institutions, in particular, the question of the importance of the real detection of the balance of ordinary and sharia law on its territory has been raised. A special role in the reconstruction of legal institutions belongs to the study of tax relations and the institution of Tarkhanate, connected with it, as well as trade regulation which obviously played a significant role in the history of the Khanate. The historio-graphical errors revealed during this research give reason to revisit some studied questions taking into account the latest groundwork in the field of the usage of interdisciplinary approach.

Keywords

Authors

References