Orenburg’s toponymy: staging the Russian Empire in the steppe

Abstract Orenburg, a Russian border fortress on the Kazakh steppe founded in 1743, was the first city of the Tsarist Empire that was provided with a full set of official street names. While toponymic designations in empires have often been investigated in the context of the struggle of competing national groups for visibility, the case of Orenburg provides an example of how toponymic designations served to claim a newly conquered region as an integral part of the empire. As Orenburg’s street names were rarely in use in everyday life, this article argues moreover that both their orientation and representation functions were of little importance, and that their main purpose was to demonstrate the progressive governing techniques the administration had at its disposal.