Foreign Fugitive Slaves from Central Asia Who Were Coming into the Borders of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century: to the Statement of the Problem

The article is dedicated to slaves who hand no ties to the Russian Empire, but were coming into its territory from Central Asia in the first half of the 19th century.Based on the documents of the Orenburg Military Governor we make a conclusion that the number of such slaves was quite large.Although information for only 6 years, 1813, 1823 and 1846-1849 was analyzed (in the last case -only for a single border fort), we found more than 20 "Persians", "Uzbeks", and "Kazylbash" etc. who ran from enslavement in the Steppe to the border of the Russian Empire.The analysis of the preserved information about these people, including personal testimonies of some of them, allows to speak that among them members of Iranian world were prevalent.They were likely forced to flee to Russia, because escape to their homeland was too risky for them (at least, one of them mentioned it himself).The vast majority of such slaves, having made it to Russian Empire, expressed a desire to return back home, although 2 people (who grew in captivity) preferred to remain in Astrakhan.For Russian officials, liberation of such slaves wasn't a priority until 1851.This is why, it seems, summary statistics about them wasn't maintained, and in public the attention was much more drawn to "Russian captives".Russian officials did not undertake any special actions to liberate such slaves at that time, even in the part of the Steppe they formally controlled.Nevertheless, foreign fugitive slaves were sent to Astrakhan at state expense, and some were even bought new clothes.Only in 1851 the situation changed: Orenburg and Samara General-Governor V.A. Perovsky issued a decree that forbade under strict sanctions (up to exile to Siberia) possession of captives for the nomads loyal to Russia.