HIERARCHIES OF THE FRONTIER: POWER PRACTICES IN THE COLONIZED URALS AND TRANS-URALS (15TH - 18TH CENTURIES)

Abstract

The paper identifies the main ways of organizing power hierarchies in the vast region of the Urals and the Trans-Urals from the middle of the 15th century — the time when the Moscow state began its expansion towards the North-Western Urals, — though the middle of the 16th century (the emergence of the Stroganov latifundia in the Kama region with the subsequent conquest of the Western Siberia by Ermak’s military expedition organized by Stroganovs) to the early 18th century. This region was characterized by a complex ethnic and confessional composition, with local elites that predated the arrival of the Moscow state and maintained intricate relations with Muscovite authorities. Drawing on chronicles and administrative documents of the period, as well as the works of contemporary scholars in ethnic and estate history, I aim to highlight specific practices of the central government that combined efforts to unify forms of rule with attempts to transform elements of the regional diversity — Slavic, Finno-Ugric, and Turkic groups — into ‘quasi-estates’, each assigned a distinct ‘service’ within the framework of the emerging empire. The article analyses the previously largely unexplored issue of the disappearance of the Komi-Permyak population in the Middle Kama region — within the Stroganovs’ “latifundia.”