Aliens’ Discourse in the Vocabulary of Authority and Science During the Period of Revolution and Socialist Transformations in Siberia (1917-1930s)

Abstract

The evolution of terminology for describing Siberian ethnicities in Soviet Russia and the USSR, and Russian Empire has recently become the subject of research interest for historians. Studying this subject is important for understanding the features of socialist construction in so-called national outskirts . This article focuses on the term “ inorodtsy ” ( aliens ). Analysis of sources showed that the language for describing the autochthonous population was rather conservative and was changing considerably slower than political transformations appeared. Former names for social groups were not immediately replaced by new emerging concepts. Challenging the new Soviet political vocabulary, the term aliens was still actively used until the late 1920s due to the following reasons. First of all, such institutions of the Imperial Russia as inorodtsy local governments and yasak were still functioning during the first years after the revolution. Second, political environment of protracted civil confrontation in the region. Third, the self-identification of the indigenous ethnicities by the means of imperial categories of social stratification ( yasak aliens ) which the peoples used to justify their special case in post-revolutionary Russia. The usage of this terminology in scientific and popular literature was also caused by the aliens’ discourse being associated with the field of historical experience relevant for the researchers. Ideology trends aimed at radically rethinking this experience and creating an image of socialist future for the indigenous ethnicities, hence the term inorodtsy was replaced with new definitions, and moreover it was banished from the language in the early 1930s.