Guarding the House of the Dead

Abstract The expansion of state capacity as a prerogative for increased penal practices in the first quarter of the nineteenth century forced the Russian Empire to renegotiate its relationship with the Siberian Cossack Hosts, and most notably, their inorodets troops. This article will explore the consolidation of Turkic “ethno-estates” across the West Siberian Plain in the early nineteenth century, focusing on the empire's courtship of Tatar and Kazakh service elites as a response to its growing policing needs within the ever-expanding exile system. Although the material condition of most Siberian inorodtsy continued to decline during this period, a closer analysis of the reforms leading up to Speransky's Statute of 1822 demonstrates that the empire's chronic shortage of able-bodied men placed the service Tatars and Kazakhs in a relatively fortuitous position.