Territorial Colonisation in Late Imperial Russia. Stages in the Development of a Concept

The idea of the progressive “colonization” of vast, sparsely populated territories became a political imperative in the last ten years of the Tsarist Empire. By the eve of World War I, there was a sizable literature on “resettlement” (pereselenie) and “colonization” (kolonizatsiia), a body of knowledge built up over time through careful study of foreign models. It comprised theoretical treatises, manuals, and specialized periodicals. In 1914, an authoritative semi-official publication proclaimed that the “lands of Asiatic Russia are an indivisible and inseparable part of our state and at the same time our only colony.” How did this terminology become part of the imperial lexicon? What exactly did Russian authors mean by “colonization” and what nuances did the meaning of the word acquire in the decades before the revolution? This article explores the colonization discourse articulated by Russia’s intellectual and administrative elite, including unofficial and oppositionist components. It traces how a modern vision of resettlement emerged from older patterns of territorial transformation, careful study of the Western colonial experience, and the need to respond to the challenges created by the political and intellectual context of the postreform era