The Far East of Russia as a Region of Transit Migration on the Eve of the First World War

Abstract

The article is devoted to the role of the Far East as a region of transit migration in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The author focuses on the period on the eve of the First World War, associated with the implementation of government resettlement policy in the framework of the agrarian reform of P.A. Stolypin. The source base for this study was the documents stored in the fund “Head of the Settlement of Settlers in the Khabarovsk District” of the State Archive of the Khabarovsk Territory (Khabarovsk, Russian Federation). In addition, materials from regional periodicals were used – the newspapers Priamurskiye Vedomosti (Khabarovsk), Priamurye (Khabarovsk), Priamurskaya Zhizn (Khabarovsk), and Dalniy Vostok (Vladivostok). The methodological basis of the study was the theoretical developments of national and foreign migration scientists. Using these conceptual approaches, the author shows a close connection between the failures of the government's resettlement policy and the development of the phenomenon of emigration from the Russian Empire. It is proved that the survival rate of new settlers remained an extremely acute problem in the Russian Far East at the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, historical sources show that the reasons for this situation were not only the psychological unpreparedness of some of the settlers to settle in a certain place, but also the desire of some of them to use government loans for resettlement for selfish purposes. The documents involved allow substantiating the thesis that the expert community of the region associated with the structures of the administration of the Amur Governor-General realized that there were objective problems that prevented the successful consolidation of settlers in the region. These problems were associated with the underdevelopment of the socio-cultural infrastructure, unfavorable climatic conditions, and competition for the migrant peasants from agricultural producers from Manchuria. All these factors led to the fact that part of the settlers began to consider the Far East only as a transit region and moved on, emigrating to the USA, Australia and other countries. Copyright © 2022 by Cherkas Global University.