Regional planning and management of rural settlements in Eastern Siberia in 19th – early 20th centu-ries

Abstract

This article studies territorial transformations, along with the management of rural settlements, carried out by the Russian government in the 19th–early 20th centuries. The methods of historiographic and cartographic analysis, as well as the study of archival sources and statistical data, were used. The work was carried out in two stages: identification of the land-use pattern at the state level within the contem-porary borders of administrative structure; study of the management of the relocation process and def-inition of basic principles in the planning of migration sites. A retrospective analysis of the land use as-sociated with a rural community was presented as diagrams and cartographic materials reflecting the state of territorial development in migration areas. The collected historiographic materials, statistical data and regulatory support reflect the main methods for managing the relocation process and the ex-perience of planning rural settlement at the state level. The migration areas were allocated from free state reserves in the form of individual farms and plots of land. The process management was based on a system of committees involving various specialists, whose tasks included the organisation of so-cial and engineering infrastructure. The performed study of the settlement territory, the allocation of lands for farming societies and minorities, the ordering of the existing land use and the identification of the economic and agricultural potential of the region comprise the methods of the preliminary compre-hensive analysis of the territory during settlement planning. The obtained results are essential for ana-lysing the dynamics of territorial development and studying methods and practices of territorial plan-ning of the rural settlement system.