Vol 23, No 3 (2024): Ethnicity and Power in Russia: History and Modernity

The author considers in two contexts the problem of the legal regulation of Muslim women’s position in Russian Turkestan, the Central Asia territories which had become part of Russia - on the one hand, the general state of the women's issue in the Russian Empire, and on the other hand, how the state ensured the rights of the entire local population of the region. Within the text, the role of the imperial police in regulating the legal status of Muslim women is examined. It is emphasized that in various regions of Russia the position of women had its own regional specifics, but it was especially difficult in Islamic Central Asia. However, it is noted that unlike the Bukhara and Khiva khanates, Muslim women of Russian Turkestan gained support from the administration and the police, which helped them resist the traditional provisions of customary law and Sharia. Imperial civil law was considered the norm according to which women could turn to the authorities for protecting their rights. The author also reveals the influence of the new “Regulations on the Administration of the Turkestan Territory” adopted in 1886, which worsened the living conditions of women and left them with the opportunity to protect their rights only through the adoption of Christianity (Orthodoxy). Nevertheless, based on various sources, the article shows that the position of women in the region under Russian rule had significantly improved compared to the preimperial period.

The authors analyze the interaction between the central and regional authorities and the Kazakhs of the Steppe Region at the turn of the XX century on land use issues. The study reveals the problems in this area caused by the mass migration of the peasant population to the region and the process of land seizure by the state to create resettlement sites. The aim is to reconstruct the regulatory framework for appeals of the Kazakh population to the government bodies on the issues of land use, and the procedure for their consideration and decision-making mechanisms. The source base for the article is: the Kazakhs’ petitions and requests, as well as other office materials - interdepartmental correspondence, minutes of meetings, reports, resolutions and decrees - of the Governing Senate, as well as the Department of Agriculture and State Property of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the regional governments of the Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions of the Governor-Generalship of the Steppes as found in the Russian State Historical Archive. The sources used has allow the authors to develop the stated goal of the article, and they have been able show that the main form of interaction between the central and regional authorities and the Kazakhs of the Steppe Region on land use issues were the Kazakhs’ petitions and requests. If a decision concerning their appeals was negative, the Kazakhs had the right to turn to the Governing Senate, the Ministry of the Interior, and the State Duma. In such cases, there were official proceedings lasting up to several years. The decisions on them were necessarily announced to the plaintiffs. The authors concluded that the Kazakhs actively used the tools provided by legislation to resolve land use issues. Nevertheless, it is revealed that in most cases, the central authorities confirmed the legitimacy of regional administration decisions on the seizure of land plots. However, the significant number of petitions and requests testifies to the fact that in the matters of defending their economic interests the Kazakhs were given equal opportunities with other subjects of the Russian Empire.

The author analyzes the activities of Soviet policy towards the Roma population with a focus on state involvement in agricultural cooperation and the creation of Roma collective farms in the Volga region in the 1930s. During that period, even small national groups gained autonomy in the form of republics, districts, and even regions. Therefore, the question of why territorial autonomy for Roma was not founded in the USSR seems quite currently relevant. Meanwhile, in 1936-1937 in the RSFSR, as part of the policy of settling the Roma, the project for creating the Roma national district in the Kuibyshev region was seriously discussed and considered. The circumstances and reasons for the failure to implement the project of creating the Roma national district in the Volga region are clarified across the article. The basis for the research is the archival materials of the fund of the All-Union Resettlement Committee of the Russian State Academy of Economics (fund 5675) introduced by the author into scientific use for the first time. The sources allow revealing the circumstances of the discussion and preparatory work on the creation of the Roma national district. The funds contain significant information and reports with a detailed description of the Roma collective farms, including those containing ethnographic material. The author concludes that the project of creating the Roma national district was of strategic importance for the Soviet leadership and the authorities made great efforts to implement it. By early 1937, all the necessary conditions for the establishment of the district had been created. However, the reluctance of the lower power structures to host the Roma population, the outbreak of large repressions, the abolition of the All-Union Resettlement Committee, and the change of trends in the national policy prevented the implementation of the project.

In their article, author considers the historical experience of introducing new methods of road paving into the practice of road maintenance in St. Petersburg. Obviously, this example is of interest to modern city authorities. The purpose of the study is to determine the degree of development of the asphalt production industry and methods of attracting firms and companies to manufacture road surfaces in the urban environment of the Russian Empire. The topic has practically not been considered by Russian and foreign historians. The source base for the article is documentary materials from St. Petersburg archives. The information on the activities of enterprises producing asphalt and road works was taken from the funds of the St. Petersburg office of the State Bank of Russia, the city government of the capital, and the boards of asphalt enterprises. Modern methods of paving Russian city streets have had relatively brief history. They began to be widely introduced into the urban environment in large economic centers of pre-revolutionary Russia only in the last quarter of the XIX century. The first such pavements appeared in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa and other Russian cities during that period. It should be noted that due to various reasons the asphalt production industry in the Russian Empire was poorly developed, by the First World War, it was in deep crisis. Subsequent events in Russia definitively scaled back the asphalt production in the country, which was revived only by the 1930s.

The author analyzes the problems of organizing oil transportation from the Ural-Emba region based on the materials of the discussion that took place in the Soviet government in 1920-1921 regarding the feasibility of constructing new transport communications - a railway and an oil pipeline - from oil fields to the central industrial regions of the Russian Empire. Based on the sources such as a complex of the published legislative documents and archival materials, some of which are being introduced into scientific use for the first time, the authors considers: the measures taken by the country's leadership to resolve the fuel crisis of 1918-1919, the reasons for the decision to build the Aleksandrov Gai - Emba railway and the Emba - Saratov oil pipeline, the main arguments of the discussion participants about the need to continue the construction, and the difficulties that arose during the construction process, difficulties which ultimately led to the closure of the project. The author comes to the conclusion that among the reasons for freezing the construction of Emba facilities were the Soviet government’s lack of experience in implementing large economic projects in military conditions, insufficient qualifications of managers and specialists of relevant departments, and lack of a built system of construction preparation and planning.