Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 8-12-2016 Envisioning Siberia: Siberian Regionalism through Evolution and Revolution Anthony Johnson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation Johnson, Anthony, "Envisioning Siberia: Siberian Regionalism through Evolution and Revolution." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/53 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ENVISIONING SIBERIA: SIBERIAN REGIONALISM THROUGH EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION by ANTHONY W. JOHNSON Under the Direction of Hugh D. Hudson, Jr., PhD ABSTRACT As the Russian government enacted the Great Reforms of the 1850s and 1860s, Siberian students in St. Petersburg at the time came to the realization that urban, judicial, and land reforms had to take place in Siberia in order for the region to develop. Starting with meetings of the Siberian Circle in the capital, regionalists strove to elevate Siberia’s socio-political position within the Russian Empire. Regionalists believed that the Russian government envisioned Siberia exclusively as a place of exile and hard labor, as a territory for natural resources, and as a region unworthy of any real development. The chief theorists of regionalism, Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin and Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev, sought to reconceptualize the relationship between European Russia and Siberia while publicizing regional needs. For regionalists, ending the system of Siberian exile, fostering the development of education, and pushing Siberia’s political and economic development would make Siberia a vital and vibrant region of the empire and end Siberia’s traditionally subservient status. Forces constantly pushed regionalism, as regionalists found their movement shaped, in turn, by the Russian state, Siberian realities, revolutionary forces, and civil war. Regionalists struggled to come to terms with their desire to see Siberia included in the Russian Empire in meaningful ways even as the government treated the region as an economic, political, and cultural afterthought. While regionalists endeavored to construct viable alternatives for regional development, evolving reality did as much, if not more, to shape regionalism, pushing its adherents in new and surprising directions, sometimes against their will. INDEX WORDS: Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin, Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev, Siberian Regionalism, History of Siberia, History of Tomsk, Socio-Political Movements, oblastnichestvo. ENVISIONING SIBERIA: SIBERIAN REGIONALISM THROUGH EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION by ANTHONY W. JOHNSON A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2016 Copyright by Anthony W. Johnson 2016 ENVISIONING SIBERIA: SIBERIAN REGIONALISM THROUGH EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION by ANTHONY W. JOHNSON Committee Chair: Hugh D. Hudson, Jr Committee: Bruce J. DeHart Denise Z. Davidson Jared Poley Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2016 iv DEDICATION This is for the members of my family. They tolerated everything involved in my writing this, doing so with grace and patience. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are so many people who have influenced my intellectual journey. Baretta Haynes believed that I could be a good historian when I was thirteen, and she did everything that she could to encourage me. Helen Holden recruited me for an AP European History course in high school and then proceeded to ply me with readings ranging from Plato to Machiavelli, convincing me that history courses should be cross-listed as World Domination 101. Circumstances sent me in the direction of Paul van Gilder, who, after one conversation in his office prior to my first semester in college, told me that I would really like his particular brand of history. That turned out to be a gross understatement, as I occasionally find myself mimicking his teaching style. Among my professors, special thanks go to three in particular from my time at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. When I was twenty, I met Kathleen Zebley (now Liulevicius) who, at the beginning of my first semester, informed me that I would never make it to graduate school. (Of course, I had never even thought about graduate school.) At the end of my first semester, and much to my shock, she asked me: “Have you ever considered going to graduate school?” I hope she knows that that question pretty much screwed up the next sixteen years of my life in one way or another. Even with Kathleen’s peculiar form of encouragement, I had no plans to attend graduate school. After mentioning the idea of graduate school to my advisor, Bruce DeHart, he warned me, in no uncertain terms, that graduate school was a horrible idea and that my life would be most miserable should I choose to pursue a graduate degree. He essentially told me to go home and think long and hard about whether I really wanted to do such an absolutely idiotic thing. I do not know how I arrived at my decision—perhaps I thought vi (foolishly, as it were) that things could not get much worse—but I returned a few days later to tell him that I wanted to pursue graduate studies in history. I believe that the sadist in him decided to help me get into graduate school, while the masochist in me allowed that to happen. Thank you, Bruce (I think). Finally, Robert Brown encouraged my studies at Pembroke, fostered my almost self-destructive stint in graduate school, and then assisted me as I returned to Pembroke as a lecturer. I sometimes feel as though I may not have deserved the opportunities afforded me by Robert, but I appreciated (and still appreciate, as it were) every single one. I hope I have, in some small measure, justified the support of Robert, Bruce, and Kathleen. This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of two individuals in very particular: Hugh D. Hudson at Georgia State University and Bruce J. DeHart at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. I want to thank Hugh for the weekly discussions about the dissertation, as these always proved beneficial. He consistently cut to the heart of any argument, and in the process, he made me think about how I structured my dissertation. Bruce read every word of this dissertation, and this work is immeasurably better for his recommendations. Considering the fact that much of this dissertation was written after midnight, he had to heap an immense amount of constructive abuse upon the manuscript in order to turn it into a readable product. He invested much time to this project, and never asked for one thing in return (except that I finish, of course). I hope he will accept my thanks as a start. Both of them sought to make me a better writer and a better thinker. I hope I have internalized some of their skills. A dissertation on such a topic requires the assistance of multiple libraries, and I have the utmost respect and appreciation for the members of the Interlibrary Loan Departments at my home libraries—Pullen Library at Georgia State University and Mary Livermore Library at The vii University of North Carolina at Pembroke. The staffs at both took my occasionally arcane references and located the exact document, journal article, or book that I needed without fail. Members of the staff at the Davis Library at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also deserve credit for finding works for me. They also put up with my overdue books as I clawed my way through Potanin’s letters, the Siberian Separatist Affair, and many other documents that they loaned to me. Similarly, the staff at the reading room at Tomsk State University’s library also proved helpful and friendly. The piles of books, articles, and dissertations on my work desk helped this project tremendously. Last but not least, Valentina Mikhailovna from the reading room at the State Archives in Tomsk was very patient as I tried to learn the ins-and-outs of working my way through a fraction of their holdings. Speaking of Tomsk, my thanks go to Vadim Zyubanov for getting me there. That is a simple sentence, but there was so much involved in that process that it makes my brain ache to think about all of it. Without his help, I never would have picked up increased skill in Russian, I never would have been able to explore the archives, and I never would have stumbled across such a phenomenal topic. Also, I never would have had the opportunity to meet so many people who shaped my perceptions of Russia in a remarkably positive way. There are so many people to thank in Tomsk that I hesitate to start naming names, but I must mention three. Thank you, Maya Beshimova. Whenever I was verging on insanity, you were always available for a conversation about nothing in particular, a stroll through the city (even when the temperature was thirty below zero), or a quick dinner. Even now, you help me more than you realize. Thank you, Nastya Shirokikh. I cannot include everything here, but thank you for the walks, the talks, the movies, and then some. Also, thank you, grandma. Yes, after two viii trips to Tomsk, I have a Russian grandmother—Valentina Mikhailovna Velin’sh. Thank you for the borshch and sympathy, grandma. A final thanks goes to the members of my committee: Hugh, Bruce, Denise Z. Davidson, and Jared Poley. I appreciate you going through the trouble to read this and provide feedback.