The article deals with the actual problem of the influence of scientific institutions of the Orenburg Region on the imperial policy of acculturation of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century. The author states that, despite the turn made by modern researchers from the so-called “colonial approach” to a more flexible concept of “acculturation”, a number of problems still remain little studied. In particular, we are talking about the role of local scientific and educational institutions in the implementation of the imperial policy of acculturation. In the border Orenburg Region in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century, three scientific institutions functioned: the Orenburg Provincial Statistical Committee, the Orenburg Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and the Orenburg Scientific Archival Commission. Created largely on the initiative of the provincial authorities, these institutions were supposed to carry out not only a comprehensive study of the Orenburg Region, but also nomadic peoples living in Central Asia, on the one hand to answer the question of the possibility of spreading the influence of Russian civilization and culture, and on the other to develop specific mechanisms of acculturation policy. Based on the analysis of published and unpublished sources, the author identifies the following mechanisms of acculturation used by scientific institutions of the Orenburg Region: ethnographic and statistical research, museification and construction of the historical narrative of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. The author believes that Orenburg researchers, having collected a significant array of sources on the history, ethnography, culture and life of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, played an important role in preserving their ethnoidentity.