Remnev Anatoly

NATIONALITY “SIBERIAN”: REGIONAL IDENTITY AND HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM OF 19TH CENTURY

The article is devoted to the analysis of the historical experience and prospects of constructing regional Siberian identity. The author focuses his attention on the peculiar social movement that originated in the second half of the 19^th century and was known as the “Siberian regionalism”. Having conducted the detailed analysis of regionalists’ theoretical constructions and real activity, A.Remnev shows that the factors that prevented the transition of the “Siberian issue” into the stage of political separatism were for the most part of a temporary character. He draws the conclusion that regional identity of Siberians is still open for elaboration, and economic dependence, social and cultural abjection of Siberia, incompletion of integration processes under the conditions of inequality of territories might turn into the ground for protest and separatist sentiments.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2011-62-3-109-128

Controlled Colonization and Spontaneous Migration Processes on Asian Peripheries of Russian Empire

The article aims at analyzing theoretical constructions that describe the Romanov Empire seeking for paths of national consolidation of the “united and indivisible” Russia. The aspects of the people’s colonization process comprehension reviewed by the authors deepen the understanding of why it was included in the imperial theories and practices of “russification” and what was so debatable about it. The authors demonstrate that despite the obvious difference in the content and direction of theoretical conceptions and explanatory models they possessed an overarching element i.e. civilizational rhetoric and the acknowledgement of a Russian peasant’s crucial role in the political, economic, socio-cultural and mental widening of Russia. The ideological formulas offered were replicated and propagandized by journals and newspapers becoming an important factor in shaping public opinion and building stereotypes about historical and geographic meaning of the peasants’ movement to the East.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2010-5859-3-150-191