The Aboriginal Peoples of Siberia’s Oath of Allegiance to the Russian Tsar in the Seventeenth Century: Rights and Obligations

This study identifies and characterizes the legal status of the peoples of Siberia as subjects of the Russian monarchs, scrutinizing different tools of the political and legal registration of swearing-in procedures (shertovanie) in the late 16th–17th centuries. Based on an analysis of Siberian administrative documents, the authors describe rights and obligations that were proclaimed for the indigenous population of Siberia. The rights (or rather the possibilities) to be made available to the Siberian natives were set forth in the texts of the sovereign’s pledges (zhalovannoe slovo) and the obligations of subjects in the texts of the oaths of allegiance (shert texts). The author concludes that the specificity of Siberian natives’ citizenship is determined not only by their position in relation to the fur tax (yasak) but also by the content of their obligations described in shert letters. Shert letters describe the form in which foreigners have to express their “submission” and loyalty to the sovereign; they also describe the rules of interaction with the Russian authorities and the rules governing payment of tribute. The oaths of the peoples of Siberia are also compared with the oaths of the Orthodox population of Russia. The author notes that unlike Russian oath (krestotselovalnye) letters, which could not be supplemented and modified by the local administration of territorial entities, shert letters were more adapted to the realities of the Siberia of the 17th century. Despite the similarity of forms and individual articles, the text of the oath in the shert records does not immediately equate “foreigners” to Russians. Through meticulous analysis of each item in the shert texts, the authors managed to reveal similarities and differences between the citizenship of Russians and aboriginals in the Russian state. The study concludes by arguing that these oaths of allegiance were an important tool for the adaptation of the non-Orthodox population to the political and legal realities of the Russian state.