Interethnic Division of Labor in the Irkutsk Province According to the Census of 1897

The interethnic division of labor in the Irkutsk province at the end of the 19th century is considered. The author believes that the Russian model of the conquest of Siberia, in contrast to the American frontier, aimed at the destruction of barbarians, assumed the “pacification” of foreigners and their inclusion through tributary relations in the Moscow Kingdom, and later in the Russian Empire. Since Russian warriors went to Siberia not for lands, but for taxable heads, this implied their unconditional preservation. This is one of the main reasons for the relatively peaceful and bloodless annexation of Siberia. The author considers interethnic division of labor to be another factor in the relatively conflict- free cohabitation of Russians and other European newcomers with the local population. Russians were mainly farmers, nomads of the south of Siberia were cattle breeders, the indigenous population of the taiga and Arctic zones were hunters and fishermen, reindeer herders. Siberian historians pay less attention to this aspect than to other subjects of the history of interaction between the alien and the indigenous population of Siberia. The process of inclusion of the indigenous inhabitants of Siberia into the imperial space is studied in the most detailed way in the works of L. M. and I. L. Dameshek, L. I. Sherstovа. E. V. Karikh has studied the interethnic division of labor of Russians and indigenous peoples of Siberia in its western part. The author, based on the census data of 1897, proves that hunting and fishing were the main occupation of the indigenous inhabitants of the north of the Tungus Of Irkutsk province, while cattle breeding was still the main occupation of the Yakuts. The peculiarity of the economy of the Buryat population of the southern Irkutsk province, unlike the Turks of southern Siberia, was that nomadic cattle breeding had already ceased to be the main thing in their lives, and agriculture became the main occupation, as well as the alien population – Russians and other immigrants from European Russia. Their nomadic past was evidenced by the fact that cattle breeding remained an essential addition to agriculture as the main and secondary occupation.