Reception of the Resettlement Business in the Turkestan Region in the Assessments of Imperial Experts of the second half of the ХIХth – early ХХth centuries

Abstract

In the article, on the materials of resettlement officials' records and scientific-publicistic works of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries, the perceptions of imperial experts about the organization of resettlement in Turkestan Krai in the dynamics of agrarian and colonization activities in the region are revealed. In the course of the study it is established that expert assessments of the range of problems accompanying peasant resettlements to Turkestan were of critical and prescriptive nature, and the opinions expressed by imperial experts on the circumstances of formation and content of resettlement policy, as well as resettlement practices in different chronological periods of colonization of the Turkestan region, were demanded by the authorities and, with some adjustments, were implemented. The main problem spheres of the resettlement business, the reception of which is made in the texts of imperial experts, have been revealed. Firstly, according to the experts' opinion, the resettlement business initially had an element of managerial disorganization, which was expressed in the prerogative given to the higher provincial administration to make independent decisions in the process of settling and settling settlers. Secondly, according to the conclusions of experts, the governor-general corps of the region was mobilized mainly from the administrators who had experience of administration in the western periphery of the Russian Empire. In the conditions of the eastern periphery, regional administrators sought to protect and promote the interests of the “Russian cause” often without taking into account local ethno-confessional specifics, which a priori created situations of conflict and confrontation. Thirdly, imperial experts believed that the geographical remoteness of Turkestan from the center of the empire, the specificity of natural and climatic conditions, significantly limited the potential of agrarian colonization, which was reflected in the low quality of resettlement material, mostly selected during the development of Western Siberia and the Steppe region. According to experts, resettlement in the Turkestan region acquired a dynamic format only in the early twentieth century, which was due to the escalation of the agrarian and agricultural crisis in the European part of Russia and the subsequent reforms in the agrarian sphere. Imperial experts saw the way out of the crisis situation, which united Turkestan and Russia in a common colonization field, not in measures aimed at restricting or completely banning resettlement in the Turkestan region, but in the gradual sectoral reorientation from grain farming to cotton growing, which significantly expanded the scope of the colonization fund and contributed to the rational organization of the resettlement business.