Political thought of the late regionalist Nikolai Kozmin (based on materials from the journalism of the early 20th century)

This work undertakes a historical reconstruction of the political views of Nikolai Kozmin, a representative of the late period of the Siberian regionalist movement. The research objective is achieved through an analysis of the journalistic works of this scholar-ethnographer from the early 20th century. The methodological toolkit of "new political history" is applied to this group of sources. Consequently, this research paradigm allows the historical reconstruction of the political ideas of Kozmin, a late regionalist, to focus on his ideological and political world, emphasizing the understanding of the individual and the people as the primary subjects of political and historical processes. The study emphasizes that, like the classical proponents of regionalist ideology, Kozmin championed the idea of representative popular sovereignty based on moderate administrative decentralization. According to the teachings of the Siberian democratic regionalists, excessive and hypertrophied centralization led exclusively to administrative chaos. This state of affairs was manifested in the frequent replacement of governors, which resulted in administrators being detached from real life. The centralism of the administrative machinery was accompanied by the growth of a bureaucratic apparatus rife with corruption. It was precisely decentralization on democratic principles that was intended to rectify the situation. The article demonstrates that Kozmin advocated a concept of an integrative character for the federal project. The core of this idea was that an optimal construction of the relationship between parts and the whole was only possible within a union based on a voluntary alliance. The foundation for such a condition is reasonable autonomism, cultivated through the establishment of representative bodies within the subjects of such a federation. Like all regionalists, the scholar-ethnographer sincerely believed that regional legislative advisory bodies would transform from a political dream into real functioning organs of state power. A separate strand of Kozmin's political thought addressed the ethno-political and ethno-cultural significance of Siberia's indigenous peoples in the global historical process. The author concludes that the central focus of the political reflection of this "junior" regionalist was the narrative concerning the democratic character of Siberian regionalism, its federalist nature, and its relative realism. For the scholar, the ideal of statehood was seen in a decentralized model of administrative-political governance, based on a network of representative (legislative-advisory) bodies established in every component of the federation to strengthen the union-partnership unity between the center and the regions. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References