Falaleeva, I. N. The Problems of Managing the Kalmyk People of the Astrakhan Governorate and the Don Host Lands in Comparison

Abstract: The article is devoted to the problems of managing the ‘internal’ borderlands of the Russian Empire from the poi of view of the ethnic factor. The author of the given research analyzes differences in the legal status of the Kalmyk people of the Astrakhan Governorate and the Don Host Lands. Based on the comparative analysis of the regulatory acts of the 19th century, the author sets goals to define the influence of the essential (domestic, cultural and economic) factors on the legal regulation of the order of managing ethnic communities of the Volga-Don Region as well as to clarify the management methods and to describe how these are particularly applied to Volga-Don communities. Research methodology is based on the principle of historicism. The research methods include comparative-legal, historical-cultural and situational (concrete historical) methods of critical analysis of sources as well as historiographic critics. The results of the analysis allow to clarify the legal methods of influence on the process of the settlement of the Kalmyks and bringing their status to the status of a country man or a Cossack as a military man. One of such methods was the symbolic change of the names of administrative units while gradually forcing out institutional peculiarities of the military-ancestral organization of nomadic tribes. The author concludes that the legal policy concerning the internal borderlands of the Russian Empire did not have a finalized nature. Strategic tasks aimed at unification of the management of the Kalmyk steppe were solved indirectly through the combination of measures involving the Kalmyk people into a sedentary life style and Orthodoxy. Debates on establishing both tactic and strategic measures provide clear evidence that there were always more than two actors defining the choice of reforms.

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