Reform of 1868: Activities of the West Siberian and Orenburg Administrations on Colonisation of the Kazakh Steppe

This study examines the administrative-colonial reforms that institutionalised Russian rule in Kazakhstan during the 1867-1868 "Provisional Regulations", which declared all Kazakh lands state property and enabled accelerated confiscation of fertile steppe territory for peasant resettlement.Drawing on newly retrieved archival records and pre-revolutionary press, we reconstruct the policymaking and field practices of the West Siberian and Orenburg Governor-Generalships, the bodies responsible for directing military colonisation and supervising migration flows.We trace the creation of a province-level hierarchy comprising governor-generalships, districts, volosts and aul administrations, designed primarily to meet imperial military needs, while simultaneously facilitating agrarian colonisation.Analysis shows how these administrations orchestrated cadastral surveys, issued land-grant charters to immigrant communities and compelled Kazakh pastoralists to relocate, undermining nomadic grazing cycles and fragmenting customary land tenure.The rapid influx of Russian and Ukrainian peasants, coupled with fiscal burdens and grazing restrictions, precipitated a deep structural crisis in the Kazakh economy, eroding traditional social relations and accelerating socioeconomic stratification.The article demonstrates that colonial regulatory measures not only dispossessed Kazakh households but also entrenched patterns of inequality and ecological stress across the steppe.Our findings refine understandings of imperial tsarist frontier governance and its enduring impact on Central Asian rural development.