PRACTICES OF OBLIGATING THE PEOPLES OF SIBERIA BY THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE IN THE 17TH CENTURY

Abstract

At the beginning of the 17th century, Russia’s central government ordered the peoples of Siberia to swear oaths of allegiance (shert’). The oath text determines that the one who takes the oath becomes a subject of the Russian monarch. The government appealed to the oath in case of conflicts with the peoples of Siberia or for avoiding such conflicts in negotiations. The Siberian peoples had to renew their oath whenever the tsar changed (and the nomadic peoples of Siberia had to renew their oath whenever their leader changed as well). The government also called on the oath when replacing governors in Russian towns, for which it introduced a special procedure — the proclamation of the “grand sovereign word”, or when negotiating with “traitors” (participants of armed rebellions and escapes of Siberian natives from their lands to territories beyond the control of Russia’s authorities). The return to peaceful conditions of coexistence was realized through renewing the oath. The author found that, by the second half of the 17th century, both sides of political communication — representatives of the tsarist administration and Siberian foreigners — have developed stable tactics regarding the procedures for the renewal of oaths, but they interpreted the meaning of the oaths in different ways.