Authors

Discussion

While the acceleration of the Tsarist resettlement policy to Siberia in 1907–1910 can be regarded as a chapter in the history of a “nationalizing empire” intent in shaping the demographic composition, loyalty, ethnicity or religious identity of a vast peripheral region (“to make Siberia Russian” in Anatolii Remnëv’s words), government policies also produced major changes in the social and economic structure of the local society. The unrealized project of a new Siberian statute (1910) was accompanied by long discussions among the central and regional elites about property relations and their consequences. The apparently simple goal of transferring peasants and populating Siberia also involved responding to challenges and clarifying ideas about what the proper social hierarchy of a reformed empire should be. The organization of resettlement highlighted disputed notions about justice, authority, effective administration, and rational exploitation of resources. Politics and economics were deeply interrelated.