The paper brings into focus the mediating role of Kazak leaders in sustaining a feasible balance between the workings of Russian imperial and Kazak native structures. By placing the analysis in the pre-Soviet colonial context and involving the native perspective, the paper challenges the vision of colonialism as viewed from the coloniser's perspective. It argues that not imperial policies but the vicissitudes of everyday colonial practice had finally reshaped the relationship between the Russian coloniser and the Kazak colonised. As the paper shows, this framework enabled the latter to renegotiate the terms under which they could continue to make use of their tribal networks. Ultimately, these networks came to operate as a middle ground and a buffer zone that facilitated Kazak participation in imperial Russian and Soviet structures and, at the same time, proved instrumental in alleviating the devastating effects of central decision making.
This article offers a new explanatory framework for studies of the return of the tsar’s Kalmyk subjects to their ancestors’ lands in Jungaria in 1771, a unique episode of Russian imperial history that illustrates the complex power dynamics of the Inner Asian frontier. By highlighting structural similarities between Russian and Qing approaches to their nomadic counterparts, the article challenges earlier characterisations of the Russian/Kalmyk relationship as one of domination and subjugation, demonstrating instead that Russian imperial authorities continued to adhere to established steppe political practices in their interactions with the Kalmyks until at least the beginning of the nineteenth century.
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