“To Say the Sovereign’s Awarding…”: Practices of the Monarch’s Appeal to the Siberian Population at the End of the 16^th – 17^th Centuries

The article analyzes the problem of the origin of specific communicative practices that existed on the territory of Siberia in the late 16^th – 17^th centuries and the so-called “granted word”. This practice was as follows: on behalf of the tsar the authorized person (voivode) communicated with a “direct proclamation” to his subjects. The paper concludes by arguing that the “granted word” goes back to the earlier forms of sovereign “awards”, which included measures of encouragement and benefits. Moreover, the set of addressees of the tsarist “granted word” changed from the end of the 16^th century and depended on the goals of the award, which were set by the central government. Based on the analysis of the Siberian administrative documentation of the 17^th century, the authors identified the categories of addressees of the proclamation on behalf of the monarch. It has been established that by the 1650s in Siberia there was a practice of the proclamation of three versions of the “granted word”. They were supposed to be proclaimed one by one. The first version was addressed to service people (Boyar sons, Cossacks and Soldiers). The second one was addressed to peasants, traders and craftspeople. The third version was for Siberian natives – yasak-payers. During the 1st third of the 17^th century, this particular form of direct address of the tsar to the population of Siberia acquired a new function. The “granted word” concretized, confirmed and consolidated the rights and obligations for each category of the Siberian population as subjects of the Russian monarch. According to the authors, the reasons for existing such practice on the territory of Siberia are concluded in the specifics of borderability. The monarch sought to additionally legitimate his right to manage this territory and wanted to remind his political influence.

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