Time to read: 22 minutes(s)

Mikhail Nemtsev: Let's start like Eduard Radzinsky. In 1862, the city of St. Petersburg was buzzing! Conversations about the Great Reform were rife on every corner. Anyone who could read two or three newspapers had an opinion on the Polish question, the Finnish question, the peasant question, and other matters. And here, in this very St. Petersburg of 1862, young people who had come from Siberia were hanging out…

STUDIO: By that time, 300 years had passed since the incorporation of Siberia and what we now call the Far East into the Russian lands began. These territories had been conquered, subjugated, colonized, and attempts had been made to govern them, but they had never become fully part of the state. At least, that was the view of those very young people from the Siberian cities mentioned in the book. Mikhail Nemtsev, research fellow at the Anthropology School of Tyumen State University, historian and philosopher. They considered themselves Siberian patriots, called Siberia a colony, gathered in circles, and dreamed of Siberian self-government that would make this vast territory a worthy and equal part of the Russian state. Their ideas and views became known as "Siberian regionalism." This is the podcast "We'll Make Ourselves of It" from the "NotMoscow Speaking" project. My name is Andrey Allakhverdov. Hello.

What did the "regionalists" want? To cease being a colony and become equal to the metropolis? Or, conversely, to separate from the European part of the Russian state? To integrate into the vertical power structure or to gain autonomy. Integration or separatism? We'll try to find out all this today in a conversation with historian Mikhail Nemtsev. So, we left off with the fact that St. Petersburg was buzzing in the early 1860s.

MN: In 1862, the city of St. Petersburg was abuzz with conversations, squabbles, disputes, discussions, and squabbles about Russia's future. Anyone who could read two or three newspapers and compare five or six opinions already had their own opinion on the Polish question, the land issue, what to do with the tax farm payments and what they should be, where and what kind of railways to build, how to alienate the land for them, what to do with the small peoples living on the outskirts of the empire, and, in general, who needed this empire. And so, in this environment, in the capital of a country embarking on the great reforms of the 60s, at the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, later called the Liberator, several young people met. They had come from various Siberian cities to the capital, to the university. Some were studying there, most were just hanging out; they were called auditors. Among them were, for example, a Cossack and centurion who with difficulty achieved retirement from military service, Grigory Potanin from Omsk.

There was a strange, unsuccessful merchant and adventurer named Popov from Irkutsk, Yadrintsev, and a few others. And these young people, deeply homesick for their native land, formed a Siberian community there. For a while, some of them simply shared an apartment. They, as we would say today, hung out, listened to everything going on around them. And they looked at themselves and decided, well, yes, we, too, are from the wild outskirts, we, too, have our own identity and pride, we are Siberians. They invented, literally invented, Siberian nationalism, only such a word didn't exist yet, so they described themselves as supporters of Siberian independence or Siberian equality.

After a year or a year and a half, most of them returned to Siberia. But they continued to communicate, reading various books. And then, in early 1865, the police, quite by chance, discovered a document in Omsk titled "To the Patriots of Siberia" or "To the Siberian Patriots." Literally by chance, while searching a young man there, they found a document written by his older brother, which is what caused the alarm. The governor-general learned of this document, and searches began in various cities of this young man's friends. And the searches yielded a second document, titled "To the Siberian Patriots." One of the leaflets was titled "To the Patriots of Siberia," the other "To the Patriots of Siberia." It was found in the possession of Nikolai Yadrintsev, but he denied authorship, claiming he had merely copied it.

PROCLAMATION TO THE PATRIOTS OF SIBERIA, 1865

"Siberia, more than other parts of the Russian Empire, felt the full weight of monarchical oppression, the full force of the oppression and insults inflicted on the people by its autocratic rulers. From the very beginning, our country, conquered by our people to establish an independent and free life there, was unlawfully seized by the greedy Muscovite tsars and arbitrarily appropriated by them along with the people. For almost three centuries, voivodes and governors were sent to rule it at will, robbing and plundering, torturing and tormenting, hanging and killing our unfortunate people. […] The appropriation of people's lands, the seizure of entire mountains abounding with treasures for the treasury, […] the plunder of the people, the ruin of foreigners, the collection of taxes that go not to the needs of the people, but to support thieves and murderers of the people – officials, to enrich the tsar's mistresses and a crowd of spies. "The enslavement of entire classes [...]; the flooding of the country with exiled criminals who corrupt the native population, the restriction of trade, the creation of private and state monopolies, and, most recently, the distribution of land to officials and the attempt to create a landed aristocracy to oppress the people; and thousands more such crimes. This is how the Russian government has marked its rule in Siberia! [...] But whatever the government's attitude toward Siberia, it will be unable, due to its distance, to understand its needs; its officials will always be people alien to the people; its special territory, production, population, interests—all this demands the independence of Siberia, and it must separate from Russia for the good of its people, creating its own state on the principles of popular self-government. The democratic composition of society is especially favorable for Siberia to create a republic consisting of states, like America."

MN: In 1865, these people were arrested, transported to Omsk, and a major trial began. Officials of various levels participated, including the Governor-General of Western Siberia and the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, who were aware of the matter. They interrogated them, trying to determine who had invented it all. The origin of these texts remains unclear. Several years ago, there was a debate among Siberian scholars about who actually wrote them and how. Ultimately, the authorship of these texts has never been determined. Perhaps that's why those involved in this case received relatively lenient sentences. Well, it could have been worse, but Potanin, for example, who tried to take full responsibility, was exiled to Sveaborg in the northwest of the Russian Empire for five years; others also served time. And then, upon returning to Siberia, he became an intellectual and spiritual leader of Siberian society, albeit with a certain history as a political prisoner.

STUDIO: Grigory Potanin was 30 years old at the time of his arrest. Born in the Omsk region, he was of Cossack descent and served in the Cossack army in Siberia for six years. Besides becoming one of the main ideologists of "Siberian regionalism," Potanin was a leading explorer of North and Central Asia, a geographer, ethnographer, botanist, a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and a highly respected scholar not only in Russia but also, for example, in Kazakhstan. He became an honorary citizen of Tomsk, and in late 1917, he was elected chairman of the newly created Siberian Regional Council, and then the Duma. Potanin did not accept Soviet power and died in 1920. A monument to him stands in Tomsk, in the University Grove, but few Tomsk residents know that this is not just a monument, but Grigory Potanin's grave. But let's return to regionalism and proclamations..

MN: These leaflets, or rather, this case, is considered the starting point in the emergence of Siberian regionalism or Siberian regionalism. But now it's possible to imagine that they were engaged in some kind of political agitation, planning a revolution, and so on. But in reality, I think it makes no sense to consider them as radical as they appear if you reread these leaflets. The 60s was essentially the time when mass socio-political life began in Russia. People were discussing issues of what we would now call regional identity and self-determination; back then, they were talking about regional identity. And these young people, who had essentially left the wild outskirts for the capital, were the first to ask a question that residents of Omsk or Barnaul apparently couldn't have posed to themselves back then: what place does Siberia, as a large region, occupy within the Russian Empire itself? And Siberia is very large and diverse. They were the first to raise the question of what constituted Siberia as a whole, not simply as a geographical space, the northern part of the continent, but as a unified social, cultural, and economic space. It's perhaps important to note that this question was being posed at this time in various parts of Europe, with the rise of national movements, the unification of Italy, nationalism in Eastern Europe, Cossack movements in southern Russia, and so on. This was the spirit of the times. And the regionalists were caught up in it. There were very few of them, but they represented the first wave of a true regional intelligentsia.

One of the first questions they posed to themselves and began discussing both in correspondence and in newspaper articles was how to prevent talented people from leaving Siberia for Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan. They wanted them to remain in the region and develop it, connecting with its goals and its historical destiny.

From Grigory Potanin's 1907 book "The Regionalist Tendency in Siberia"

«Drop by drop, the elements for drawing up a Siberian regional program were accumulating; by the time Yadrintsev left St. Petersburg, the main points of this program were outlined. First of all, the question of the abolition of exile was put; the young Siberians thought that this was as fundamental an issue for Siberia as the abolition of serfdom was for European Russia, that the abolition of exile constituted the beginning of the liberation movement in the colony. Then came the question of the manufacturing yoke imposed on Siberia by the Moscow factory district. The third question, considered equally important with the two previous ones, was the question of the Siberian intelligentsia. The young Siberians realized that Siberia was poor in intelligentsia; there were very few educated Siberians, the contingent of Siberians in universities and in higher schools in general did not exceed several dozen people; Given the colony's dire situation, it seemed that a young man who had completed his course and was unwilling to return to his homeland was displaying a lack of civic duty. Patriotic young men vowed to return to their homeland and work exclusively there. They considered it necessary to combat the absenteeism of Siberia's young forces; this led to the idea of ​​establishing a Siberian university.

MN: Grigory Potanin later wrote in letters that the very demand for Siberian independence was a literary device, intended to awaken self-awareness. People should consider who we are here? Why do we live here? And what role can this place play in our lives? What role can we play in its destiny? Not just the outskirts of an empire, where anyone born is a failure. This is a special territory with its own, perhaps unique, future. That's what he had in mind. And not a revolution modeled on the American colonies that defied the British king. The police tried to portray them as separatist villains. True, that's true. But they didn't see themselves that way. They had social, economic, and political goals. They wanted to engage in politics, not conspiracies, but politics itself. This required political representation, and hence the demand for Siberian autonomy, the extension of the zemstvo reform to Siberia, and the creation of some form of Siberian self-government. The Zemstvo reform was extended to Siberian territory already in the 20th century, and self-government arose after the 1905 revolution – the Siberian Regional Duma, which, unfortunately, only convened in the winter of 1917-18 and did not have time to properly govern the region.

STUDIO: Okay, autonomy, but how was it supposed to manifest itself? You say they weren't aiming for revolution. The point was that Siberia was perceived, to some extent, as a colony.

MN: This is Nikolai Yadrintsev's famous book, "Siberia as a Colony." It wasn't perceived as a colony, but Yadrintsev demanded that it be perceived as one, and attitudes toward it would change accordingly. The fact is that even at the beginning of the 20th century, and even later, the violent nature of Siberia's annexation by the Russian Empire wasn't just not disputed; it was taken for granted. England was conquering India, France and Holland were conquering the Pacific islands and Africa, but the Russian Empire was conquering Siberia and the Caucasus. And now we look upon wars of conquest as savagery and a relic of the past. And yet, that was precisely the past we have now lived through. Siberia was conquered, annexed to Russia, and transformed into a vast outlying area, not yet fully developed by the Russian state and its people. There's a famous painting by a Pole who endured forced labor to Siberia. Here are the exiles on the border between Siberia and Russia, crying, hugging, looking at the sign. Now they've left Europe and are heading into the depths of some unknown Asia. Here they are crossing the Urals and plunging into some abyss of space, frozen rivers, scattered villages, and strange people speaking unknown languages ​​and moving through the hills within sight of the highway.

Siberia wasn't perceived as a single, large region annexed to the empire, to which the empire had any obligations. And this is precisely what Yadrintsev meant, because in his time, the word "colony" had a rather neutral, positive connotation. A colony was an outpost of civilization in some remote wilderness. "Siberia as a colony," as Nikolai Yadrintsev put it, meant that Russia had to assume certain obligations to Siberia. And Siberians should demand this from the Russian Empire. His demands were, generally speaking, simple: an end to penal colonization, that is, exile to Siberia. He described in great detail, having been imprisoned himself, how these utterly declassed people, arriving in transit from the Russian Empire, corrupted, defiled, and robbed Siberians. How they mocked foreigners—that's the historical term of the time.

STUDIO: Along with Grigory Potanin, Nikolai Yadrintsev was one of the main ideologists of Siberian regionalism. Unlike Potanin, he did not live to see the convocation of the Siberian Regional Duma, but he did see the opening of Tomsk University, for which he had long advocated. His father was a merchant who managed gold mines in Siberia, and his mother was a ransomed serf. Yadrintsev himself was an explorer, ethnographer, archaeologist, and publicist. He traveled not only throughout Siberia; on one of his Asian expeditions, he explored the ruins of Genghis Khan's ancient capital, Karakorum. "Siberia as a Colony" is far from Yadrintsev's only book, but it is one of the fundamental studies that underpinned "Siberian regionalism.".

MN: Developing the local economy, industry, and so on. Today, we'd say through direct investment. Establishing a university and developing Siberian culture—officials should be local, not foreigners. Well, because at that time, some official from Kursk or St. Petersburg, for example, viewed service in Tobolsk as a mission to the outskirts, which gave them the opportunity to earn a rank and return to the European part of the country, but with a new rank and a new position, that's all. No, officials should be from here, from Tobolsk, from Krasnoyarsk, from Barnaul; they should be patriots of their region. For that, a university is needed. Well, the creation of a university was discussed for about 40 or 50 years, that is, throughout the 19th century, in Omsk or Tomsk. Ultimately, one was established in Tomsk in 1888, but only as part of the medical faculty. Because the tsarist regime was wary of creating a law faculty or any other faculties—who knows what they might come up with. But it's clear that doctors are needed. Yadrintsev sided with those who believed that a university was absolutely essential for the development of regional culture and, therefore, for the region's development. And then, when the region had developed sufficiently, it would finally transition from its status as a colony to, well, a regular region within Russia. Thus, Anatoly Remnev, a historian from Omsk, borrowing a metaphor from 19th-century documents, titled one of his articles "Pushing Russia into Siberia." Russia needed to be pushed into Siberia so that Siberia would become a regular part of Russia.

Now that we live in a post-colonial world, the phrase "Siberia as a colony" has a completely different meaning. We can't discuss colonization as a positive process. We simply don't use the word that way anymore. We must always remember this when discussing Siberian autonomism. Autonomism is understanding the region as a unified whole. By understanding it this way, we can set goals for what should happen to the region, how it should develop, and so on. We can even demand that the central government make appropriate economic and political decisions.

From Nikolai Yadrintsev's book "Siberia as a Colony," 1882

Throughout its history, Siberia has experienced much oppression, injustice, and disorder. These calamities began with the voivodeship administration; arbitrary rule prevailed in Siberia more than anywhere else; the region was subjected to all manner of abuses, and its life remains far from settled until recent times. Meanwhile, numerous social issues and needs are now emerging that require urgent attention. These include: the abolition of criminal exile, which hinders security and the development of civil life, the organization of resettlements, the arrangement of the daily life of non-Russians, the adoption of measures against bloodsucking and kulaks, the improvement of the lot of gold-mining workers, and many others. Finally, the region is experiencing a need for intellectual life, a desire for publicity, a desire to address social needs through the press; society desires guarantees for the individual and protection from local tyranny.

STUDIO: But demanding economic decisions from the central government means there's no autonomy as such. The central government was supposed to decide and provide everything anyway.

MN: A self-governing body was needed, namely, a Siberian Regional Duma. A body that would unite representatives of various classes, various peoples, and that would be able to represent Siberians and, on their behalf, conduct dialogue with the central government. Ideally, in a well-developed federation—well, a real federation, let's say—the regional legislative assembly of the Altai Krai approaches the Federal Assembly with a proposal to amend some paragraph of federal law, because it benefits the Altai Krai for some reason. And a discussion ensues. Representatives of the Altai Krai speak in the Federal Assembly, and vice versa. In general, this situation can be observed in various federations around the world. And this is precisely what they were striving for. In fact, this is what happened after 1905, when the creation of the Siberian Regional Duma was announced, preparatory meetings began in St. Petersburg, and Siberia experienced its own movement, and so on. Well, essentially, this goal of the regionalist movement was achieved. If you recall, according to the manifesto of October 17, 1905, the imperial government authorized the creation of political parties and the State Duma in the Russian Federation. Accordingly, the emperor's power was limited. There's some debate about the extent of this State Duma's powers. The State Duma learned to work and engage in dialogue with the tsarist regime, and so on. This same process was supposed to occur at a lower level as well. That is, regional parliaments could engage in dialogue with the Duma, propose things to the tsar, defend the region's interests, and so on. But in reality, we don't know how this would have worked, because it truly was a problem that couldn't be solved theoretically. There were different opinions on this matter. And this is one of the most unclear issues. How could this have worked? But such questions can only be resolved practically. Of course, one could now say that the discussion was about attempts to federalize the empire. And this aspiration, which was particularly noticeable in the national outskirts, ran counter to the policies of Nicholas II. Nicholas II conceived of the empire as, first and foremost, the state of the Great Russian nation, the Great Russian people, and he was opposed to all of this. And, in fact, this opposition to the empire was what brought it down during the First World War. The empire collapsed, in part because such a mood and movement arose in the national outskirts that few were interested in preserving it.

STUDIO: Well, you also mentioned Siberian patriotism and talk about this particular type of Siberian. What are its characteristics?

MN: Siberia had become an extensive contact zone, where the Slavic population from the western part of the continent interbred with the non-Slavic population from the eastern part. And Yadrintsev noticed that this interbreeding was creating a new kind of population. These were unique Russians. They had their own identity, third- and fourth-generation residents of Siberian villages, and they didn't really identify with the Russia beyond the Urals. But his attitude toward this was mixed. On the one hand, he believed that, yes, indigenous peoples were disappearing in Siberia; the Russian Empire was simply exterminating them, not with fire and sword, as those PMC figures like Poyarkov, Khabarov, and others did in the 17th century, but by other methods, purely economic and demographic. And, generally speaking, this needed to be stopped; they needed to be helped. On the other hand, Siberian peoples must gradually integrate into the Russian people, somehow unite with these Siberian Russians, because Siberia's future is, after all, within Russia and how it can be the most economically and culturally developed part of the country. At the same time, it can be said that Yadrintsev paid great attention to issues of race. The language of race and racial relations was completely standard for his time. It's unacceptable today. The more pragmatic and realistic Potanin paid great attention to climate. There's this theory that Russia has a unique climate that creates unique demands on people, shapes their consciousness, and teaches them how to survive in Siberia's harsh conditions.

STUDIO: Is there some specific regional identity shared by all those who live east of the Urals?

MN: I think regional self-identification is an extremely natural and widespread type of self-identity. And it shouldn't be surprising at all. Of course, there's the Siberian myth. Siberians readily embrace it and share it. But in reality, Siberia doesn't exist. Siberia can be imagined, but it's such a vast territory with such fundamental differences in everything—culture, lifestyle, economic management, national and ethnic composition, and so on—that upon closer inspection, it's divided into large fragments, vast territories within which people develop their own self-awareness. And that's as it should be. Regional self-awareness is that layer of self-awareness that lies between national allegiance and self-identification with family, a particular city, and so on. Well, for Siberia, of course, it exists, too, and even in Soviet times, despite the Soviet regime's suspicion of any means of regional self-identification, a certain image of Siberia as a special place was nevertheless maintained. Well, Siberians carry this myth within themselves, of course, and it's very pleasant, I'd even say flattering. However, as a Siberian, I view it ironically; I personally don't see any fundamental differences between people who live in Siberia and those who live in the Far East, the north, or the south of the country. But the myth does exist, and I think it will grow stronger, because in a federation, regional identity is truly an important political factor. Since Siberia is divided into regions, and these regions, in the process of true federalization—which, I hope, will begin under different circumstances—must acquire their own political identity and independence, regional identity and self-awareness must, of course, develop. And how could it be otherwise? I could start listing them: there's Western Siberia, southern Western Siberia, and Old Siberia, as the historian and demographer Sergei Rasskazov wrote. There's the North, there are the national republics of Southern Siberia, there's Baikal Siberia, and there's Krasnoyarsk Krai, which is, in a sense, mentally distinct. There's the Far East, which gradually emerged as a distinct space in the second half of the 20th century, and this emergence, in fact, continues to this day. In other words, new, large regions are currently forming in Russia. Against this backdrop, regional history, including the history of regional social movements, becomes the material for shaping this image. What does it mean to be a Siberian? To be a Siberian means, to some extent, embracing the ideas of Siberian regionalism. Regionalism has been absent for about a hundred years, but the image exists, and it provides quite good material for such a political self-imagination.

STUDIO: What ideas remain relevant? The university problem has been resolved; there's more than one university. Industry is developing. There's even a law on indigenous minorities, which should protect them in one way or another. Are there any other ideas that remain relevant today?

MN: I think the most important problem facing modern Russia is federalization. That is, the Russian Federation must become a federation not only in letter but also in spirit. This is federalization from above, of course. Russia began the process of becoming a true federation in the 90s. Then this process was interrupted, but it must be continued. It is difficult; it requires a great deal of political, cultural, and economic work, and so on. But it is necessary. That is, the development of regional economies, regional cultures, and national cultures in those regions where this is necessary. In this sense, Siberia is no exception. There are problems with federalization in the Urals, in southern Russia, and in northern Russia. Siberia is a part of the country that faces the challenges of dismantling the hyper-centralized state and transforming it into a federal republic, challenges that all other parts of the country face as well.

Federal subjects are territories that enjoy self-government. Accordingly, they possess the political and economic instruments to ensure this self-government. This doesn't mean they should be autonomous from the state. It does mean, for example, that they have the ability to conduct competitive elections for governors, to introduce their own laws, their own constitutions, and so on. Regions can even have a second official language. And in some regions, this is generally necessary. And so on. In this sense, in an ideal world, we could have a federalist movement that would discuss how to overcome hypercentralization and restore this second level of self-government. But the truth is, we now need to restore the first level of self-government after this constitutional pseudo-reform of 2020; we need to restore the municipal level of self-government. But this is a task that faces everyone in the country. In this sense, the Kursk Region faces it just as much as the Siberian regions. But this doesn't mean that talk of self-government is necessarily talk of separatism. No. Because separatism, in fact, operates without the idea of ​​self-government. Separatist thinking doesn't conceive of itself as part of a larger whole. Therefore, the idea of ​​self-government is opposed to the idea of ​​separatism. It presupposes a more complex, more modern political thinking.

STUDIO: I thank historian and philosopher Mikhail Nemtsev for his engaging story and analysis. This was the podcast "We'll Take It Ourselves From Now On." Listen in, react, and comment. See you there.