ABSTRACT
A century has passed since the 1894 death of Nikolai M. Iadrintsev, the champion of Siberian autonomy and the author of the well-known classic, Siberia as a Colony (St. Petersburg, 1882). Although these hundred years drastically changed the world, they did not alter the subordinate position of Siberia vis-à-vis European Russia as it emerged from the very beginning of Siberia’s colonization by ethnic Slavs. The persistence of a colonial relationship between Moscow and Siberia is rooted in the nature of economic development in Siberia. This colonialism has, if anything, been reinforced by the efforts to transform the country’s economy and the corresponding political struggles under way since 1985. The present essay examines the recent re-emergence of a Siberian regionalism in the context of the region’s continued economic subordination to Moscow.
