Abstract

The mass agrarian migrations of the second half of the 19th century, which reached their peak during the Stolypin reforms, were characterized by increased contacts between different groups of Russian settlers. The economic and sociocultural relations between Late Settlers and Old-Time Russian Siberians have been well-documented in the academic literature. However, beyond this dichotomy, processes within the settler community itself, in which non-Slavic ethnic groups (Chuvash, Mordvins, and representatives of other peoples of the European part of the country) played a significant role, deserve close attention. Based on materials from peasant handwritten memoirs, the author’s interviews with rural residents on issues of ethnic (self)identification, as well as local periodicals and archival documents from the State Archives of the Novosibirsk Region on the national policy of the Soviet state in 1920s and 1930s, this paper analyzes ethnocultural interactions within the community of late (Slavic and non-Slavic) settlers in Siberia. The theoretical framework for the study is the concept of «state-directed development» by F. Hirsch (2005), which explains the contradictory nature of numerous national projects of those years. The paper reveals the history of a typical resettler village, the ways of representing ethnicity in such areas of village life as shared leisure, joint education, and collective labor. Particular attention is paid to the specifics of the settlement’s first collective farms, which, as documents indicate, were formed along ethnic lines. It is shown that the subsequent exclusion of ethnicity from the rural communicative space led to transformations in the villagers’ ethnic identity and certain distortions of local historical memory.