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- Convenor:
-
Aibubi Duisebayeva
(Al-Farabi Kazakh National University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- History
Abstract
This panel examines the multiple arenas in which Kazakh populations negotiated imperial power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than treating the Kazakh steppe as a passive object of Russian imperial expansion, the three papers collectively argue that local actors, whether pastoralists, litigants, or communities living alongside imperial infrastructure, actively shaped the terms of their incorporation into the empire. Drawing on archival materials from Kazakhstani and Russian archives, the panel traces how everyday resistance operated across three distinct but interconnected domains: economic policy, physical infrastructure, and law.
Iskakova, in `Imperial Infrastructure and Everyday Resistance: Negotiating Control and Vulnerability in the Kazakh Steppe`, examines railways, telegraph networks, and postal services as sites of both imperial control and local contestation, showing how physical acts of disruption created zones of relative autonomy within the imperial system.
Duisebayeva, in `Between Ambition and the Steppe: Imperial Agronomic Policy and Kazakh Agency in the Late Russian Empire`, explores how Kazakhs responded to imperial agronomic reforms, demonstrating that their selective engagement with stud stations, livestock exhibitions, and demonstration feeding programs reflected not inertia but deliberate agency rooted in the logic of traditional nomadic pastoralism.
Teleuova, in `When Law Confronts the People: Legal Resistance in the Kazakh Steppe`, turns to the legal arena, arguing that Kazakh actors strategically mobilized customary law and judicial precedent to defend local jurisdiction and resist imperial legal encroachment.
Together, these papers argue that the Kazakh steppe functioned not as a space of straightforward colonial domination but as a contested field of negotiation, where imperial ambitions were continuously tested, deflected, and reframed by local populations on their own terms.
Accepted papers
Abstract
This paper examines the role of imperial infrastructure – railways, telegraph networks, and postal services—in governing the Kazakh steppe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the Semipalatinsk, Akmola, and Semirechye regions. Drawing on archival materials from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the paper analyzes the dual nature of infrastructure as both an instrument of integration and a space of resistance.
The central argument is that infrastructure functioned not only as a mechanism of imperial control but also as a field of interaction in which Kazakh populations were simultaneously incorporated into imperial economic processes and engaged in practices of resistance. On the one hand, Kazakhs actively participated in the economic system by supplying livestock and raw materials and facilitating their transportation to railway stations and regional fairs. On the other hand, this very integration created opportunities for contestation.
A revealing case is documented along the Altai railway line on April 5, 1914, when a telegraph official discovered damage to a communication line. According to the report, the damage was caused by local individuals, presumably with the intention of removing telegraph equipment, although no theft ultimately occurred. The incident required immediate repair and official investigation, demonstrating the vulnerability of the communication network.
Such actions should not be interpreted merely as isolated criminal offenses but rather as forms of everyday resistance aimed at disrupting infrastructural functioning. By targeting telegraph lines, railways, and postal routes, local actors could slow administrative processes, interfere with the transmission of orders, and create zones of relative autonomy. Thus, participation in the imperial system did not preclude resistance; on the contrary, it enabled the emergence of new strategies of contestation.
Abstract
This paper examines the response of the Kazakhs to imperial agronomic reforms in the Kazakh Steppe in the early twentieth century. The paper argues that the selective participation of Kazakhs in imperial economic projects constituted not passive indifference but a deliberate strategy of negotiation, a form of everyday resistance enacted through engagement with the empire on local terms.
Seeking to rationalize livestock production and integrate the steppe into the imperial economy, Russian authorities undertook a series of successive yet largely unsuccessful measures. Initially, the administration promoted the breeding of fine-wool sheep oriented toward wool export. However, the harsh natural conditions of the steppe proved incompatible with this type of animal husbandry, and even the feathergrass posed a physical threat to the animals. Following this, regional agronomic organizations established a network of stud stations to improve other local livestock, yet this initiative likewise found little resonance among ordinary Kazakhs, petitions came predominantly from wealthy livestock owners. Further attempts to engage the local Kazakhs through demonstration feedings and livestock exhibitions with money prizes met with a similarly limited response.
The paper concludes that such selectivity reflects not inertia but deliberate agency. Kazakhs rationally assessed imperial instruments and engaged with them only to the extent that doing so did not conflict with the logic of traditional nomadic pastoralism. Imperial agronomic policy in the steppe thus functioned not as a coherent modernization project but as a contested field of negotiation, in which the local population actively defined the terms of its own participation.
Abstract
This paper examines judicial precedent as a form of local agency and strategic resistance in the context of the incorporation of the Kazakh steppe into the administrative and legal system of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century. At the intersection of customary and imperial legal orders, the steppe emerged as a space of negotiation between local populations and imperial authorities, where customary law, bureaucratic procedures, and judicial practices interacted to produce a hybrid legal order. Rather than a simple displacement of local norms by imperial legislation, a complex dynamic of interaction, reinterpretation, and accommodation between multiple legal regimes took shape.
From the perspective of Kazakh actors, judicial precedent was not an abstract legal procedure but a concrete instrument for influencing authority and maintaining control within their communities. Through participation in legal processes, they defended their jurisdiction, challenged decisions, negotiated between imperial and local norms, and preserved locally grounded conceptions of justice. Customary norms and traditional mechanisms of dispute resolution functioned as tools of “legal resistance,” enabling local actors to shape bureaucratic procedures, contest rulings, and protect the interests of families, clans, and communities.
Archival materials, including the “Yazykbaev case” and the “Karakoi case” from the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA), illustrate concrete mechanisms of interaction between imperial and local judicial systems. In the Yazykbaev case, the imperial court attempted to overturn a decision of the local court; however, local actors, relying on customary norms, successfully defended the authority of local justice. In contrast, the Karakoi case resulted in the exile of participants by imperial decision; nevertheless, local populations, including Kazakhs and other steppe inhabitants, continued to rely predominantly on local courts and customary procedures. These mechanisms were familiar, accessible, and perceived as more legitimate, as they incorporated recognizable forms of sanction without rigid bureaucratic formalities.
These cases demonstrate that judicial precedent functioned as a mechanism of both infrastructural and everyday resistance, perceived within the steppe as a means of defending local interests and preserving legal autonomy. The findings suggest that the nineteenth-century Kazakh steppe should be understood as a space of a hybrid legal order, where local populations actively negotiated with imperial authority and developed strategies to sustain their own jurisdiction. From an internal perspective, the legal field was not merely an instrument of imperial power but an arena of everyday resistance, institutional hybridity, and the enactment of local conceptions of justice.