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Paper short abstract:

An attempt will be made to answer the question whether the Pamirs can be considered a colony, or was it a phenomenon of a slightly different order? All this will be considered on the example of the tax policy of the Russian Empire, in the Pamirs from 1892 to 1917.

Paper long abstract:

As a result of the Pamir campaigns 1891-1895. on the territory of the Pamirs and Pamir region the power of the Russian Empire was established. Here a new, to a certain extent unique, phenomenon appeared in the colonial world, which I conventionally called “non-colonized colonies” or “colonies without colonization”. So in the Pamirs and Pamir regions, after they became part of the Russian Empire, the authorities did not particularly try to extract income from subordinate lands in any way, but mainly limited themselves to concern for the welfare of the local population, raising its standard of living, without taking almost no taxes (although sometime in the future it was supposed to start collecting them in full from local residents, but this intention was not realized until the establishment of Soviet power here), with the exception of only a few duties suitable for ensuring the life of the Russian Pamir detachment and local administration. All of this, poorly fitting into the traditional framework of the colonial discourse developed in science in recent decades.

I will try to show the uniqueness of the region in the system of Central Asian colonies of Russia. And to answer the question, can the Pamirs be considered a colony or was it a phenomenon of a slightly different order? All this will be considered on the example of the tax policy of the Russian Empire, in the Pamirs, from the moment its power was established here until 1917.