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Abstract:

This paper examines how the Central Asian prison aid committees helped to establish Russian imperial power in Akmola and Turgay between 1871 and 1917. Originating from the late nineteenth century imperial carceral crisis, the state transformed these committees into closely controlled civil society organizations, aimed to bolster state capacity within the corrupt and underfunded colonial penal system and eventually preserve the Russian rule of law on the southern frontier. This paper thus disputes the conventional historiographical depictions of penal aid committees in the Russian Empire as either restricted civil institutions dedicated to improving the well-being of convicts through charitable efforts and other benevolent initiatives, or as insignificant civil organizations primarily concerned with internal financial management. Instead, it highlights their significant role in bolstering the Russian colonial authority in the Kazakh steppe.

Through an exploration of their interactions with the government and their contributions to addressing capacity issues, the analysis underscores the committees' involvement in prison funds, security enhancements, labor provision, and the promotion of moral discipline. In return, the state promoted the religious authority of the Orthodox Church (e.g., by converting non-believers) and supported social mobility of merchants (e.g., by granting them political appointments, estate ranks and exemption from poll tax). Consequently, the committees turned imperial prisons into tools of legitimate state enforcement, aligning punitive measures with imperial legal standards while advocating for humane treatment of convicts. Since 1902, shifts in the geopolitical landscape and public health challenges – such as migration of European peasants to Central Asia, Russian entanglement with both regional and global conflicts including the wars with Japan and with Ottomans in Persia as well as World War I, the local communist movements and anti-mobilization Turkic uprisings, and epidemic of typhus – led the imperial government to steer the committees towards charitable initiatives and increased accountability over prison resources. The hierarchical relationships between the state and the penal aid committees based of bureaucratic paternalism and amalgamation of the Russian Orthodoxy with the imperial power thereby shaped both the “discipline” and the “punishment” approaches in the carceral system in Central Asia, aiming to maintain Russian authority over the steppe and extend it beyond Eurasia in the end of the long nineteenth century.