Legal Status of the Estates in Siberia in the Second Half of the XIX - Beginning of the XX Century
Review. The article is devoted to the development and content of the legal position of the estates in Siberia during the second half of XIX-beginning of XX centuries: nobility, clergy, urban and rural inhabitants (Cossacks, merchants, townspeople, peasants, foreigners). The author conducts comparative-legal analysis of the structure of the Russian and Siberian society, legal status of tax-payers and tax-exempt groups of the population of Siberia and Russia, all-Russia and regional legislation of national suburbs. As a result, the author concludes that the formation of the estates and their legal status in Siberia were connected with the colonial policy of the Tsarist Government, aimed at the development of this region and its subordination to the tasks of the Centre. Reforms and changes in legislation in the second half of XIX-beginning of XX centuries were aimed at disrupting a class-patriarchal social system contributed to blurring the difference and reversal of the legal position at the outset of taxed sectors of the population (urban dwellers, peasants, foreigners) The Government sought to eliminate class privileges of aborigines compared to peasants to subdue the effects of all legislation. However, the process of empowering farmers and foreigners personal (civic) and property rights in their entirety passed slowly, as State policy was deliberately aimed at preserving the remnants of the legal position of peasants and foreigners The comparative analysis of the legal status of nobility and Cossacks in Siberia and Russia showed that in the economic and socio-political relations Siberian version of the legal status of these social groups lost to Russia-wide. Siberian nobility was not the dominant class-bar of feudal lords, and was a privileged layer of society, adjacent to the ruling class. Siberian Cossacks advocated specific labour service layer; having lost the opportunity to receive a hereditary nobility, became a grass-roots links police apparatus, as well as at its 30 tenths of the land put on Cossacks could engage in agriculture.