Ideological and Political Legal Bases for the Russian Expansion in Kazakhstan (1714 – mid-XIX century)

Abstract

The article deals with the methods used by the Russian Empire for the expansion towards the Kazakh Khanate and its future incorporation. Special attention is drawn to the ideological bases of the Russian statehood caused peculiarities of those methods’ contents and normative background for their implementation.
 The Kazakh Khanate was founded in 1465. There were united diversified tribes having complicated administrative systems and quite different economic specializations. Several decades later khanate was divided into three various subjects called juzes. There were created Minor, Middle and Senior juzes. Each of them occasionally had economic and political relationships with the Moscow Tsardom. That state leaders found out the great strategic interest the Kazakh steeps posed for them. Peter the Great, the first Russian emperor proclaimed in 1721, looked for the new trade way to India. The Kazakh territories fit well enough for that goal. That’s why there were arranged two military expeditions to examine possible means to create that way and to settle well-equipped fortresses along the rivers Amu Darya and Sirdarya. During the reign of Anna (1730–1740) the Minor (1731) and the Middle (1740) juzes were incorporated into the Russian Empire due to their requests. The Senior juze was incorporated in 1818 under the reign of Alexander I without any requests. Each juze was given a charter guaranteeing its status within the empire and proscribing obligations as a pay for the emperor’s adherence to them.
 The Russian Empire authorities used all the possible means to break traditional Kazakh governing bodies, customs, land use system and culture. There were special Emperor’s rescripts implementing militarized system of government for juzes and establishing all-Russian courts’ jurisdiction there. Local legal customs were being gradually excluded from use. Such way measures collided with charters given to juzes after their incorporation. They were aimed to make Kazakhs and their territories unalienable integrated parts of the Russian Empire. Its state policy was based on the ideological principles dating back to the Mongol-Tatar statehood and to the concept of “Moscow – the Third Rome”.