Источники о нормотворческой деятельности инородческих органов местного самоуправления на Юге России в XIX – начале XX в.

Abstract

The article analyses public censure as a source of regulatory activity of the inorodsty (non-Russian indigenous ethnicities) local authorities in the South of Russia in the 19th – early 20th century. Integration of nomadic peoples in the all-Empire legal and economic sphere made provisions for continuation of some common law institutions. Among these were local self-government bodies. Local self-government activities in indigenous societies incorporate practices of representative democracy within the framework of customary and positive law and also interactions between state and society, all of which has much relevance to this day and age. Assembly (skhod) produced public censure that included purview with majority decision. Most sources come from the State archive of Stavropol Region and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. General and special scientific research methods assess public censure as a source on the history of the inorodsty in the South of Russia in the 19th – early 20th century. The form of sentence was not fixed by law, and yet content analysis of documentary materials from the State Archive of the Stavropol Region and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia concludes that it remained unchanged throughout the 19th – early 20th century. Content of public censure allows to reconstruct the spectrum of issues put before the assembly and to classify them by topic: legal, social, and financial and economic. The author concludes that verdicts of the inorodsty societies of the period, as legal acts of local significance and great information value, are one of the main sources on socio-political and socio-economic history of the region.