The Activity of Special Commissions on the Allotment of Land to the Mohammedan Peoples in the Stavropol Province in the XIX century: Problems and Climatic Factors

The article is devoted to the activities of Special Commissions for the allotment of land to the Mohammedan peoples in the Stavropol province in the XIX century.The main problem facing the Commissions was solving the problem of the distribution of pasture territories among nomadic peoples.A similar issue, in particular, between the Kalmyks and Stavropol Turkmens, arose in 1806, when the Turkmen population was included in the Kalmyk steppe of Astrakhan province by the decision of the authorities.This decision has aggravated land relations in general among the nomadic peoples.The situation in land use was aggravated by the growth of the peasant population in the Stavropol province.Newly arrived Russian peasants in difficult climatic conditions of the territory were forced to switch to cattle breeding as the most profitable type of management, thus entering into a struggle for pastures and water resources with nomadic peoples.Constant complaints and conflicts from all parties involved in land disputes throughout the first half of the 19th century raised an urgent question for the Russian authorities about the exact definition of the boundaries of the territories of nomadic peoples.The difficult natural and climatic conditions of the region were among the main reasons for the failure of the project to delimit the territories of nomads between Kalmyks and Turkmens.The arid territory, the lack of water resources, the shortage of winter feed stocks caused by the burning of pastures in the rest of the year predetermined the constant dependence of nomadic farms on natural disasters, created serious obstacles to the further development of nomadic cattle breeding.Disputes and conflicts between pastoralists over limited water resources and the best pasture areas were especially fierce.Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 19th century, Kalmyks and Turkmens have managed to develop a regime of mutual migrations in the same territory, since they understood that the lack of consensus on this issue could lead to the ruin of one of the peoples.Eventually, the Russian authorities cut the Gordian knot of land contradictions between Kalmyks and Turkmens, transferring in 1859 the lands of Bolshederbetovsky ulus and a separate part of Maloderbetovsky ulus to the department of Stavropol province, thereby giving the solution of all conflict situations due to nomadic pastures and water sources to the local administration.It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that the intensity of land disputes between Kalmyks and Turkmens somewhat weakened due to the partial abandonment of pastoralists from the practice of herding cattle and the gradual transition of the nomadic population to a sedentary lifestyle.