Understanding Siberia as a Russian Colony : Bureaucracy and Civil Society in the Imperial Era of the Great Reforms

Diego Repenning’s Understanding Siberia as a Russian Colony explores the relationship between Siberia and the Russian state during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Amongst Russia’s historical regions, Siberia has enjoyed an ambiguous standing, creating a paradoxical image of a Russian and a foreign territory. This book argues that this ambiguousness can be overcome by acknowledging the colonial nature of Siberia’s position within the empire.

By applying a colonial outlook to the study of Siberia, Repenning reveals its contradictory attachment to the Russian state and explains the origins of the regionalist movements that erupted after the fall of the imperial and Soviet polities. He examines the bureaucratic structures put in place after the Great Reforms in Russia and Siberia, exploring the mechanisms undergirding Siberia’s colonial nature. The book considers the role played by the people who occupied middle and lower positions within imperial administration and the institutions that emerged from the Great Reforms: the intelligentsia, raznochintsy, popovichi and professionals employed within zemstva. Through the analysis of their activities, we learn how these individuals affected the development of Russia’s civil society. This allows Repenning to consider the excluding and including measures that characterise the imperial settings that affected Siberians’ relationship to the Russian state. At the same time, it provides a way to understand that the geographical composite encompassed by the Russian State was historically built and can be understood from following its fault lines.